She went slowly upstairs. After all she had troubles enough of her own. She had her father to think of--and Clement. They were her world, hemispheres which, though her whole happiness depended upon it, she could hardly hope to bring together, divided as they were by an ocean of prejudice. How her father now regarded Clement, whether his hatred of the name were in the slightest degree softened, whether under the blow which had stunned him, he thought of her lover at all, or remembered that it was he, and not Arthur, who had saved his life, she had no notion.
Alas! it would be but natural if the name of Ovington were more hateful to him than ever. He would attribute--she felt that he did attribute Arthur's fall to them. He had said that it was the poison of trade, their trade, their cursed trade, which had entered his veins, and, contaminating the honest Griffin blood, had destroyed him. It was they who had ruined him!
And then, as if the stain were not enough, it was from them again that it could not be hid. They knew of it, they must know of it. There must be interviews about it, dealings about it, dealings with them. They might feign horror of it, they who in the Squire's eyes were the real cause of it. They might hold up their hands at the fact and pity him!
Pity him! If anything, anything, she was sure, could add to her father's mortification, it was that the Ovingtons were involved in the matter.
With every stair, the girl's heart sank lower. Once more in her father's room, she watched him. But she was careful not to let her solicitude appear, and though she was assiduous for his comfort and conduced to it by keeping Miss Peacock and the servants at a distance, she said almost as little to him as he to her. From time to time he sighed, but it was only when she reminded him that it was his hour for bed that he let a glimpse of his feelings appear.
"Ay," he muttered, "I'm better there! Better there, girl!" And with one hand on his stick and the other on his chair he raised himself up by his arms as old men do. "I can hide my head there."
She lent him her shoulder across the room and strove by the dumb show of her love to give him what comfort she might, what sympathy. But tears choked her, and she thought with anguish that he was conquered.
The unbreakable old man was broken. Shame and not the loss of his money had broken him.
It would not have surprised her had he kept his bed next day. But either there was still some spring of youth in him, or old age had hardened him, for he rose as usual, though the effort was apparent. He ate his breakfast in gloomy silence, and about an hour before noon he declared it his will to go out. Josina doubted if he was fit for it, but whatever the Squire willed his womenfolk accepted, and she offered to go with him. He would not have her, he would have Calamy--perhaps because Calamy knew nothing. "Take me to the stable," he said. And Josina thought "He is going to see the old mare--to bid her farewell."
It certainly was to his old favorite that he went, and he stood for some minutes in her box, feeling her ears and passing his hand between her forelegs to learn if she were properly cleaned; while the grey smelled delicately about his head, and nuzzled with her lips in his pockets.
"Ay," said Calamy after a while, "she were a trig thing in her time, but it's past. And what are the legs of a horse when it's a race wi'
ruin?"
"What's that?" The Squire let his stick fall to the ground. "What do you mean?" he asked, and straightened himself, resting his hand on the mare's withers.
"They be all trotting and cantering," Calamy continued with zest, as he picked up the stick, "trotting and cantering into town since morning, them as arn't galloping. They be covering all the roads wi'
the splatter and sound of them. But I'm thinking they'll lose the race."
"What do you mean?" the Squire growled. Something of his old asperity had come back to him.
"Mean, master? Why, that Ovington's got the shutters up, or as good.
Their notes is no better than last year's leaves, I'm told. And all the country riding and spurring in on the chance of getting change for 'em before it's too late! Such-like fools I never see--as if the townsfolk will have left anything for them! Watkins o' the Griffin, he's three fi-pun notes of theirs, and he was away before it was light, and Blick the pig-killer and the overseer with him, in his tax-cart. And parson he's gone on his nag--trust Parson for ever thinking o' the moth and rust except o' Sunday! They've tithe money of his. And the old maid as live genteel in the villa at the far end o'
the street, she've hired farmer Harris's cart--white as a sheet she was, I'm told! Wouldn't even stay to have the mud wiped off, and she so particular! And there's three more of 'em started to walk it. I'm told the road is black with them--weavers from the Valleys and their missuses, every sort of 'em with a note in his fist! There was two of them came here, wanted to see Mr. Arthur--thought he could do something for 'em."
"D----n Mr. Arthur!" said the Squire. But inwardly he was thinking, "There goes the last chance of my money! A drowning man don't think whether the branch he can reach is clean or dirty! But there never was a chance. That young chap came to bamboozle me and gain time, and that's their play." Aloud, "Give me my stick," he said. "Who told you--this rubbish?"
"Why, it's known at the Cross! The rooks be cawing it. Ovington is over to Bullon or some-such foreign place, these two days! And Dean he won't be long after him! They're talking of him, too. Ay, Parson should ha' thought of the poor instead of laying up where thieves break through and steal. But we're all things of a day!"
"Take me to the house," said the Squire.
"Shadows as pass! Birds i' the smoke!" continued the irrepressible Calamy, smacking his lips with enjoyment. "Leaves and the wind blows!
Mr. Arthur--but there, your honor knows best where the shoe pinches.
Squire Acherley's gone through on his bay, and Parson Hoggins with him, and 'Where's that d--d young banker?' he asks. Thinks I, if the Squire heard you, you'd get a flip o' the tongue you wouldn't like! But he's a random-tandem talker as ever was! And"--halting abruptly--"by gum, I expect here's another for Mr. Arthur! There's some one drove up the drive now, and gone to the front door."
"Take me in! Take me in!" said the Squire peevishly, his heart very bitter within him. For this was worse than anything that he had foreseen. His twelve thousand pounds was gone, but even that loss--monstrous, incredible, heart-breaking loss as it was--was not the worst. Ruin was abroad, stalking the countryside, driving rich and poor, the widow and the orphan to one bourne, and his name--his name through his nephew--would be linked with it, and dragged through the mire by it, no man so poor that he might not have a fling at it. He had held his head high, he had refused to stoop to such things, he had condemned others of his class, Woosenham and Acherley, and their like, because they had lowered themselves to the traffic of the market-place. But now--now, wherever men met and bragged of their losses and cursed their deluders, the talk would be of his nephew! His nephew! They might even say that he had had a share in it himself, and canvass and discuss him, and hint that he was not above robbing his neighbors--but only above owning to the robbery!
This was worse, far worse than the worst that he had foreseen when the lad had insisted on going his own way. Worse, far worse! Even his sense of Arthur's dishonor, even his remembrance of the vile, wicked, reckless act which the young man had committed, faded beside the prospect before him; beside the certainty that wherever, in shop or tavern, men cursed the name of Ovington, or spoke of those who had ruined the country-side, his name would come up and his share in the matter be debated.
Ay, he would be mixed up in it! He could not but be mixed up in it!
His nephew! His nephew! He hung so heavily on Calamy's arm, that the servant for once held his tongue in alarm. They went into the house--the house that until now dishonor had never touched, though hard times had often straitened it, and more than once in the generations poverty had menaced it.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
But before they crossed the threshold they were intercepted. Miss Peacock, her plumage ruffled, and that which the Squire was wont to call her "clack" working at high pressure, met them at the door.
"Bless me, sir, here's a visitor," she proclaimed, "at this hour! And won't take any denial, but will see you, whether or no. Though I told Jane to tell him----"
"Who is it?"
"Goodness knows, but it's not my fault, sir! I told Jane--but Jane's that feather-headed, like all of them, she never listens, and let him in, and he's in the dining-parlor. All she could say, the silly wench, was, it was something about the bank--great goggle-eyes as she is! And of course there's no one in the way when they're wanted. Calamy with you, and Josina traipsing out, feeding her turkeys. And Jane says the man's got a portmanteau with him as if he's come to stay. Goodness knows, there's no bed aired, and I'm sure I should have been told if----"
"Peace, woman!" said the Squire. "Did he ask to see me, or----" with an effort, "my nephew?"
"Oh, you, sir! Leastwise that's what Jane said, but she's no more head than a goose! To let him in when she knows that you're hardly out of your bed, and can't see every Jack Harry that comes!"
"I'll see him," the Squire said heavily. He bade Calamy take him in.
"But you'll take your egg-flip, Mr. Griffin? Before you----"
"Don't clack, woman, don't clack!" cried the Squire, and made a blow at her with his stick, but with no intention of reaching her. "Begone!
Begone!"
"But, dear sir, the doctor! You know he said"
"D--n you, I'll not take it! D'you hear? I'll not take it! Get out!"
And he went on through the house, the tap of his stick on the stone flags going before him and announcing his coming. Half-way along the passage he paused. "Did she say," he asked, lowering his voice, "that he came from the bank?"
"Ay, ay," Calamy said. "And like enough. Ill news has many feet. Rides apace and needs no spurs. But if your honor will let me see him, I'll sort him! I'll sort him, I'll warrant! One'd think," grumbling, "they'd more sense than to come here about their dirty business as if we were the bank!" The man was surprised that his master took the matter with any patience, for, to him, with all the prejudices of the class he served, it seemed the height of impertinence to come to Garth about such business. "Let me see him, your honor, and ask what he wants," he urged.
But the Squire ruled otherwise. "No," he said wearily, "I'll see him."
And he went in.
The front door stood open. "There's a po-chay, right enough," Calamy informed him. "And luggage. Seems to ha' come some way, too."
"Umph! Take me in. And tell me who it is. Then go."
The butler opened the door, and guided the old man into the room. A glance informed him who the visitor was, but he continued to give all his attention to his master, in this way subtly conveying to the stranger that he was of so little importance as to be invisible. Nor until the Squire had reached the table and set his hand on it did Calamy open his mouth. Then, "It's Mr. Ovington," he announced.
"Mr. Ovington?"
"Ay, the young gentleman."
"Ah!" The old man stood a moment, his hand on the table. Then, "Put me in my chair," he said. "And go. Shut the door."
And when the man had done so, "Well!" heavily, "what have you come to say? But you'd best sit. Sit down! So you didn't go to London? Thought better of it, eh, young man? Ay, I know! Talked to your father and saw things differently? And now you've come to give me another dose of fine words to keep me quiet till the shutters go up? And if the worst comes to the worst, your father's told you, I suppose, that I can't prosecute--family name, eh? That's what you've come for, I suppose?"
"No, sir," Clement answered soberly. "I've not come for that. And my father----"