"You can remind him of what I did for him," he answered eagerly. "I saved his life. He would not be alive now but for me. You can tell him that. Remind him of that, Jos. Tell him that sometime after dinner, when he is in a good humor. He owes his life to me, and that's not a small thing--is it? Even he must see that he owes me something. What's a paltry thousand or two thousand? And I only borrowed them; he won't lose a penny by it--not a penny!" earnestly. "What's that in return for a man's life? He must know----"
"He does know!" she cried; and the honest indignation in her eyes, the indignation that she could no longer restrain, scorched him. For this was too much, this was more than even she, gentle as she was, could bear. "He does know all--all, Arthur!" she repeated severely. "That it was not you--not you, but Clement, Mr. Ovington, who saved him! And fought for him--that night! Oh, Arthur, for shame! For shame! I did not think so meanly of you as this! I did not think that you would rob another----"
"What do you mean?" He tried to bluster afresh, but the stick shook in his hand. "Confound it, what do you mean?"
"What I say," she answered firmly. "And it is no use to deny it, for my father knows it. He knows all. He has seen Clement----"
"Clement, eh?" bitterly. "Oh, it's Clement now, is it?" He was white with rage and chagrin, furious at the failure of his last hope. "It's that way, is it? You have gone over to that prig, have you? And he's told you this?"
"Yes."
"And you believe him?"
"I do."
"You believe him against me?"
"Yes," she said, "for it is the truth, Arthur. I know that he would not tell me anything else."
"And I? Do you mean to say that I would?"
She was silent.
It was check and mate, the loss of his last piece, the close of the game--and he knew it. With all in his favor he had made one false move, then another and a graver one, and this was the end.
He could not face it out. There was no more to be said, nothing more to be done, only shame and humiliation if he stayed. He flung a word of passionate incoherent abuse at her, and before she could reply he turned his back on her and strode away. Sorrowfully Jos watched him as he hurried along the path, cutting at the hedge with his stick, cursing his luck, cursing the trickery of others, cursing at last, perhaps, his own folly. She watched him until the ghostly hedges and the misty distances veiled him from sight.
Ten minutes later he burst in upon his mother at the Cottage and demanded twenty pounds. "Give it me, and let me go!" he cried. "Do you hear? I must have it! If you don't give it me, I shall cut my throat!"
Scared by his manner, his haggard eyes, his look of misery, the poor woman did not even protest. She went upstairs and fetched the sum he asked for. He took it, kissed her with lips still damp with rain, and bidding her send his clothes as he should direct--he would write to her--he hurried out.
CHAPTER XLII
"I wun't do it! I wun't do it!" the Squire muttered stubbornly. "Mud and blood'll never mix. Shape the chip as you will, 'tis part of the block! Girls' whimsies are women's aches, and they that's older must judge for them. She'd only repent of it when 'twas too late, and I've paid my debt and there's an end of it."
From the hour of that scene at Ovington's he had begun to recover.
From that moment he began to wear a stiff upper lip and to give his orders in hard, sharp tones, as he had been wont to give them in days when he could see; as if, in truth, his irruption into the life of the town and his action at the bank had re-established him in his own eyes. Those about him were quick to see the change--he had taken, said they, a new lease of life. "Maybe, 'tis just a flicker," Calamy observed cautiously; but even he had to admit that the flame burned higher for a time, and privately he advised the new man who filled Thomas's place "to hop it when the master spoke," or he'd hop it to some purpose.
The result was that there was a general quickening up in the old house. The master's hand was felt, and things moved to a livelier time. To some extent pride had to do with this, for the rumor of the Squire's doings in Aldersbury had flown far and wide and made him the talk of the county. He had saved the bank. He had averted ruin from hundreds. He had saved the country-side. He had paid in thirty, forty, fifty thousand pounds. Naturally his people were proud of him.
And doubtless the bold part he had played had given the old man a fillip; others had stood by, while he, blind as he was, had asserted himself, and acted, and rescued his neighbors from a great misfortune.
But the stiffness he showed was not due to this only. It was assumed to protect himself. "I wun't do it! I wun't do it! It's not i'
reason," he told himself over and over again; and in his own mind he fought a perpetual battle. On the one side contended the opinions of a lifetime and the prejudices of a caste, the beliefs in which he had been brought up, and a pride of birth that had come down from an earlier day; on the other, the girl's tremulous gratitude, her silence, the touch of her hand on his sleeve, the sound of her voice, the unceasing appeal of her presence.
Ay, and there were times when he was so hard put to it that he groaned aloud. No man was more of a law to himself, but at these times he fell back on the views of others. What would Woosenham say of it? How would he hold up his hands? And Chirbury--whose peerage he respected, since it was as old as his own family, if he thought little of the man? And Uvedale and Cludde? Ay, and Acherley, who, rotten fellow as he was, was still Acherley of Acherley? They had held the fort so stoutly in Aldshire, they had repelled the moneyed upstarts so proudly, they had turned so cold a shoulder on Manchester and Birmingham! They had found in their Peninsular hero, and in that little country churchyard where the maker of an empire lay resting after life's fever, so complete a justification for their own claims to leadership and to power! And no one had been more steadfast, more dogged, more hide-bound in their pride and exclusiveness than he.
Now, if he gave way, what would they say? What laughter would there not be from one end of the county to the other, what sneers, what talk of an old man's folly and an old man's weakness! For it was not even as if the man's father had been a Peel or the like, a Baring or a Smith! A small country banker, a man just risen from the mud--not even a stranger from a distance, or a merchant prince from God knows where!
Oh, it was impossible. Impossible! Garth, that had been in the hands of gentlefolk, of Armigeri from Harry the Eighth, to pass into the hands, into the blood of--no, it was impossible! All the world of Aldshire would jeer at it, or be scandalized by it.
"I wun't do it!" said the Squire for the hundredth time. It was more particularly at the thought of Acherley that he squirmed. He despised Acherley, and to be despised by Acherley--that was too much!
"Of course," said a small voice within him, "he would take the name of Griffin, and in time----"
"Mud's mud," replied the Squire silently. "You can't change it."
"But he's honest," quoth the small voice.
"So's Calamy!"
"He saved----"
"And I ha' paid him! Damme, I ha' paid him! Ha' done!" And then, "It's that blow on the head has moithered me!"
Things went on in this way for a month, the Squire renewing his vigor and beginning to tramp his fields again, or with the new man at his bridle-hand to ride the old grey from point to point, learning what the men were doing, inquiring after gaps, and following the manure to the clover-ley, where the oats and barley would presently go in. Snow lay on the upper hills, grizzling the brown sheets of bracken, and dappling the green velvet of the sloping ling; the valley below was frost-bound. But the Squire had a fire within him, a fire of warring elements, that kept his blood running. He was very sharp with the men and scolded old Fewtrell. As for Thomas's successor, the lad learned to go warily and kept his tongue between his teeth.
The girl had never complained; it seemed as if that which he had done for her had silenced her, as if, she, too, had taken it for payment.
But one day she was not at table, and Miss Peacock cut up his meat.
She did not do it to his mind--no hand but Jos's could do it to his mind--and he was querulous and dissatisfied.
"I'm sure it's small enough, sir," Miss Peacock answered, feebly defending herself. "You said you liked it small, Mr. Griffin."
"I never said I liked mince-meat! Where is the girl? What ails her?"
"It's nothing, sir. She's been looking a little peaky the last week or two. That's all. And to-day----"
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's only a headache, sir. She'll be well enough when the spring comes. Josina was always nesh--like her mother."
The Squire huddled his spoon and fork together, and pushed his plate away, muttering something about d--d sausage meat. Her mother? How old had her mother been when she--he could not remember, but certainly a mere child beside him. Twenty-five or so, he thought. And she was nesh, was she? He sat, shaving his chin with unsteady fingers, eating nothing; and when Calamy, hovering over his plate, hinted that he had not finished, he blew the butler out of the room with a blast of language that made Miss Peacock, hardened as she was, hold up her hands. And though Jos was at breakfast next morning, and answered his grumpy questions as if nothing were amiss, a little seed of fear had been sown in the Squire's mind that grew as fast as Jonah's gourd, and before noon threatened to shut out the sun.
A silk purse could not be made out of a sow's ear. But a good leather purse, that might pass in time--the lad was stout and honest. And his father, mud, certainly, and mud of the pretentious kind that the Squire hated: mud that affected by the aid of gilding to pass for fine clay. But honest? Well, in his own way, perhaps: it remained to be seen. And times were changing, changing for the worse; but he could not deny that they were changing. So gradually, slowly, unwelcome at the best, there grew up in the old man's mind the idea of surrender.
If the money were paid back, say in three months, say in six months--well, he would think of it. He would begin to think of it. He would begin to think of it as a thing possible some day, at some very distant date--if there were more peakiness. The girl did not whine, did not torment him, did not complain; and he thought the more of her for that. But if she ailed, then, failing her, there was no one to come after him at Garth, no one of his blood to follow him--except that Bourdillon whelp, and by G--d he should not have an acre or a rood of it, or a pound of it. Never! Never!
Failing her? The Squire felt the air turn cold, and he hung, shivering, over the fire. What if, while he sought to preserve the purity of the old blood, the old traditions, he cut the thread, and the name of Griffin passed out of remembrance, as in his long life he had known so many, many old names pass away--pass into limbo?
Ay, into limbo. He saw his own funeral procession crawl--a long black snake--down the winding drive, here half-hidden by the sunken banks, there creeping forth again into the light. He saw the bleak sunshine fall on the pall that draped the farm-wagon, and heard the slow heavy note of the Garthmyle bell, and the scuffling of innumerable feet that alone broke the solemn silence. If she were not there at window or door to see it go, or in the old curtained pew to await its coming--if the church vault closed on him, the last of his race and blood!
He sat long, thinking of this.
And one day, nearly two months after his visit to the bank--in the meantime he had been twice into town at the Bench--he was riding on the land with Fewtrell at his stirrup, when the bailiff told him that there was a stranger in the field.
"Which field?" he asked.
"Where they ha' just lifted the turnips," the man said. "Oh!" said the Squire. "Who is it? What's he doing there?"