The blood mounted to Clement's face, and his pulses began to throb, his ideas to tumble over one another. The old man, who sat before him, his hands on his stick, stubbornly confronting the darkness, the old man, whom he had thought insensible, took on another hue, became instead inscrutable, puzzling, perplexing. Why had he sent for his daughter? What was in his mind? What was he going to say? What had he--but even while Clement wondered, his thoughts in a whirl, strange hopes jostling one another in his brain, the door opened, and Josina came in.
She came in with a timid step, but as soon as her eyes met Clement's, the color rose vividly to her cheeks, then left her pale. Her lip trembled. But her look--fleeting as it was and immediately diverted to her father--how he blessed her for that look! For it bade him take confidence, it bade him have no fear, it bade him trust her. Silently and incredibly, it took him under her protection, it pledged her faith to him.
And how it changed all for him! How it quelled, in a moment, the disappointment and anger he was feeling, ay, and even the vague hopes which the Squire's action in summoning her had roused in him! How it gave calmness and assurance where his aspirations had been at best to the extravagant and the impossible.
But, whatever his feelings, to whatever lover's heaven that look raised him, he was speedily brought to earth again. The old man had proved himself thankless; now, as if he were determined to show himself in the worst light, he proceeded to prove himself suspicious.
"Come here, girl," he said, "and count these notes." Fumbling, he took the parcel from his pocket and handed it to her. "Ha' you got them?
Then count them! D'you hear, wench? Count them! And have a care to make no mistake! Lay 'em in piles o' ten. They are hundreds, are they?
Hundreds, eh?"
She untied the parcel, and brought all her faculties to bear on the task, though her fingers trembled, and the color, rising and ebbing in her cheeks, betrayed her consciousness that her lover's eyes were upon her. "Yes, sir, they are hundred-pound notes," she said.
"All?"
"Yes, all, I think, sir."
"Bank of England?" He poked at her skirts with his stick. "Bank of England, eh? Are you sure?"
"Yes, sir, so far as I can see."
"Ay, ay. Well, count 'em! And mind what you are doing, girl!"
Clement did not know whether to smile or to be angry, but a moment later he felt no bent towards either. For with a certain dignity, "I ha' been deceived once," the Squire continued. "I ha' signed once and paid for it. I'm in the dark. But I don't act i' the dark again. If I can't trust my own flesh and blood, I'll not trust strangers. No, no!
I don't know as there's any one I can trust."
"I quite understand, sir," Clement said--though it was the last thing he had had it in his mind to say a moment earlier.
"I don't mind whether you understand or not," the Squire retorted.
"Ha' you done, girl?" after an interval of silence.
"Not quite, sir. I have five heaps of ten."
"Well, well, get on. We are keeping the young man."
He spoke as he would have spoken of any young man in a shop, and Clement winced, and Josina knew that he winced and she reddened. But she went on with her work. "There are sixty-one, sir," she said. "That makes----"
"Six thousand one hundred pounds. Ay, it's right so far. Right so far.
And the gold"--he paused and seemed to be at a nonplus--"I'm afraid 'twould take too long to count it. Well, let it be. Get some paper and write a receipt as I tell you."
"There is no need, sir," Clement ventured.
"There's every need, young man. I'm doing business. Ha' you got the pen, girl? Then write as I tell you. 'I, George Griffin of Garth, in the County of Aldshire, acknowledge that I have this 16th day of December 1825 received from Messrs. Ovington of Aldersbury, six thousand one hundred pounds in Bank of England notes, and'--ha' you got that? Ha' you got that?--'two bags stated by them to contain five thousand pounds in gold.' Ha' you got that down? Then show me the place, and----"
But as she put the pen in his hand he let it drop. He sat back in his chair. "Ay, he showed me the place before," he muttered, his chin on his breast. "It was he gave me the pen, then, girl. And how be I to know? How be I to know?"
It came home to them--to them both. In his voice, his act, his attitude was the pathos of blindness, its helplessness, its dependence, its reliance on others--on the eyes, the hand, the honesty of others. The girl leant over him. "Father," she said, tears in her voice, "I wouldn't deceive you! You know I wouldn't. I would never deceive you!"
"Ha' you never deceived me? Wi' that young man?" sternly.
"But----"
"Ay, you have! You have deceived me--with him."
She could not defend herself, and, suppressing her sobs, "I will call Calamy," she said. "He can read. He shall count the notes."
But he put out his hand and grasped her skirts. "No," he said.
"What'll I be the better? Give me the pen. If you deceive me in this, wench--what matter if the notes be short or not, or what comes of it?"
"I would cut off my hand first!" she cried. "And Clement----"
"Eh?" He sat up sharply.
She was frightened, and she did not continue. "This is the place, sir," she said meekly.
"Here?"
"Yes, sir, where you are now."
He wrote his name. "Dry it," he said. "And ring the bell. And there, give it to him. He wants to be off. Odds are the shutters'll be up afore he gets there. Calamy!" to the man who had appeared at the door, "see this gentleman off, and be quick about it. He's no time to lose.
And, hark you, come back to me when he's gone. No, girl," sternly, "you stay here. I want you."
CHAPTER XXXIX
In ordinary times, news is slow to make its way to the ears of the great. Protected from the vulgar by his deer park, looking out from the stillness of his tall-windowed library on his plantations and his ornamental water, Sir Charles Woosenham was removed by six miles of fine champaign country from the common fret and fume of Aldersbury. He no longer maintained, as his forefathers had maintained, a house in the town, and in all likelihood he would not have heard the talk about the bank, or caught the alarm in time, if one of his neighbors had not made it his business to arouse him.
Acherley, baffled in his attempt at blackmail, and thirsting for revenge, had bethought him of the Chairman of the Valleys Railroad. He had been quick to see that he could use him, and perhaps he had even fancied that it was his duty to use him. At any rate, one fine morning, some days before this eventful Wednesday, he had mounted his old hunter, Nimrod, and had cantered across country by gaps and gates from Acherley to Woosenham Park. He had entered by a hunting wicket, and leaping the ha-ha, he had presented himself to Sir Charles ten minutes after the latter had left the breakfast table, and withdrawn himself after his fashion of a morning, into a dignified seclusion.
Alas, two minutes of Acherley's conversation proved enough to destroy the baronet's complacency for the day. Acherley blurted out his news, neither sparing oaths nor mincing matters. "Ovington's going!" he declared. "He's bust-up--smashed, man!" And striking the table with a violence that made his host wince, "He's bust-up, I tell you," he repeated, "and I think you ought to know it! There's ten thousand of the Company's money in his hands, and if there's nothing done, it will be lost to a penny!"
Sir Charles stared, stared aghast. "You don't say so?" he exclaimed.
"I can't believe it!"
"Well, it's true! True, man, true, as you'll soon find out!"
"But this is terrible! Terrible!"
Acherley shrugged his shoulders. "It'll be terrible for him," he sneered.
"But--but what can we do?" the other asked, recovering from his surprise. "If it is as bad as you say----"
"Bad? And do, man? Why, get the money out! Get it out before it is too late--if it isn't too late already. You must draw it out, Woosenham!
At once! This morning! Without the delay of a minute!"
"I!" Sir Charles could not conceal the unhappiness which the proposal caused him. No proposal, indeed, could have been less to his taste. He would have to make up his mind, he would have to act, he would have to set himself against others, he would have to engage in a vulgar struggle. A long vista of misery and discomfort opened before him. "I?