Ovington's Bank. Stanley John Weyman

and the home-farm and pay his debts with the rest. But pride of race was strong in him, he had seen that to sell was to lose the position which his forbears had held, and he had refused. Instead he had set himself to free the estate, and he had pared, he had pinched, he had almost starved himself and others. He had become a byword for parsimony. In the end, having benefited much by enclosures in the 'nineties, he had succeeded. But no sooner had he deposited in the bank the money to pay off the last charge than the loss of his only son had darkened his success. He had married again--he was by this time past middle age--but only a daughter had come of the marriage, and by that time to put shilling to shilling and acre to acre had become a habit of which he could not break himself, though he knew that only a woman would follow him at Garth.

      Withal he was a great aristocrat, a Tory of the Tories, stern and unbending. Fear of France and of French doctrines and pride in his caste were in his blood. The Quarterly Review ranked with him after his Bible, and very little after it. Reform under the most moderate aspect was to him a shorter name for Revolution. He believed implicitly in his class, and did not believe in any other class. Manufacturers and traders he hated and distrusted, and of late jealousy had been added to hatred and distrust. The inclusion of such men in the magistracy, the elevation of Peel to the Ministry had made him fancy that there was something in the Queen's case after all; when Canning and Huskisson had also risen to power he had said that Lord Liverpool was aging and the Duke was no longer the man he had been.

      He was narrow, choleric, proud, miserly; he had been known to carry an old log a hundred yards to add it to his wood-pile, and to travel a league to look for a lost sixpence. He dressed shabbily, which was not so much remarked now that dandies aped coachmen, as it had been in his younger days; and he rode about his fields on an old white mare which he was believed to hold in affection next after his estate and much before his daughter. He ruled his parish with a high hand. He had no mercy for poachers. But he was honest and he was just. The farmers must pay the wage he laid down--it was a shilling above the allowed rate. But the men must work it out, and woe betide the idle; they had best seek work abroad, and heaven help them if a foreign parish sent them home. In one thing he was before his time; he was resolved that no able-bodied man should share in the rates. The farmers growled, the laborers grumbled, there were hard cases. But he was obdurate--work your worth, or starve! And presently it began to be noticed that the parish was better off than its neighbors. He was a tyrant, but a just tyrant.

      Such was the man whom Ovington was going to meet, and from whose avarice he hoped much. He had made his market of it once, for it was by playing on it that he had lured the Squire from Dean's, and so had gained one of his dearest triumphs over the old Aldersbury Bank.

      His hopes would not have been lessened had he heard a dialogue which was at that moment proceeding in the stable-yard at Garth to an accompaniment of clattering pails and swishing besoms. "He've no bowels!" Thomas the groom declared with bitterness. "He be that hard and grasping he've no bowels for nobody!"

      Old Fewtrell, the Squire's ancient bailiff, sniggered. "He'd none for you, Thomas," he said, "when you come back gallus drunk from Baschurch Fair. None of your Manchester tricks with me, says Squire, and, lord, how he did leather 'ee."

      Thomas did not like the reminiscence. "What other be I saying!" he snarled. "He've no bowels even for his own flesh and blood! Did'ee ever watch him in church? Well, where be he a-looking? At his son's moniment as is at his elbow? Never see him, never see him, not once!"

      "Well, I dunno as I 'ave, either," Fewtrell admitted.

      "No, his eyes is allus on t'other side, a-counting up the Griffins before him, and filling himself up wi' pride."

      "Dunno as I couldn't see it another way," said the bailiff thoughtfully.

      "What other way? Never to look at his own son's moniment?"

      "Well, mebbe----"

      "Mebbe?" Thomas cried with scorn. "Look at his darter! He ain't but one, and he be swilling o' money! Do he make much of her, James Fewtrell? And titivate her, and pull her ears bytimes same as you with your grand-darters? And get her a horse as you might call a horse? You know he don't. If she's not quick, it's a nod and be damned, same as to you and me!"

      Old Fewtrell considered. "Not right out the same," he decided.

      "Right out, I say. You've been with him all your life. You've never knowed no other and you're getting old, and Calamity, he be old too, and may put up with it. But I don't starve for no Squire, and I'm for more wage. I was in Aldersbury Saturday and wages is up and more work than men! While here I'm a-toiling for what you got twenty year ago. But not me! I bin to Manchester. And so I'm going to tell Squire."

      The bailiff grinned. "Mebbe he'll take a stick same as before."

      "He'd best not!" Thomas said, with an ugly look. "He'd best take care, or----"

      "Whist! Whist! lad. You be playing for trouble. Here be Squire."

      The Squire glared at them, but he did not stop. He stalked into the house and, passing through it, went out by the front door. He intended to turn right-handed, and enter the high-terraced garden facing south, in which he was wont to take, even in winter, a few turns of a morning. But something caught his eye, and he paused. "Who's this?" he muttered, and shading his eyes made out a moment later that the stranger was Ovington. A visit from him was rare enough to be a portent, and the figure of his bank balance passed through the Squire's mind. Had he been rash? Ovington's was a new concern; was anything wrong? Then another idea, hardly more welcome, occurred to him: had the banker come on his nephew's account?

      If so--however, he would soon know, for the visitor was by this time half-way up the winding drive, sunk between high banks, which, leaving the road a third of a mile from the house, presently forked, the left branch swerving through a grove of beech trees to the front entrance, the right making straight for the stables.

      The Squire met his visitor at the gate and, raising his voice, shouted for Thomas. "I am sorry to trespass on you so early," Ovington said as he dismounted. "A little matter of business, Mr. Griffin, if I may trouble you."

      The old man did not say that it was no trespass, but he stood aside punctiliously for the other to precede him through the gate. Then, "You'll stay to eat something after your ride?" he said.

      "No, I thank you. I must be in town by noon."

      "A glass of Madeira?"

      "Nothing, Squire, I thank you. My business will not take long."

      By this time they stood in the room in which the Squire lived and did his business. He pointed courteously to a chair. He was shabby, in well-worn homespun and gaiters, and the room was shabby, walled with bound Quarterlies and old farm books, and littered with spurs and dog leashes--its main window looked into the stable yard. But there was about the man a dignity implied rather than expressed, which the spruce banker in his shining Hessians owned and envied. The Squire could look at men so that they grew uneasy under his eye, and for a moment, owning his domination, the visitor doubted of success. But then again the room was so shabby. He took heart of grace.

      "I shouldn't trouble you, Mr. Griffin," he said, sitting back with an assumption of ease, while the Squire from his old leather chair observed him warily, "except on a matter of importance. You will have heard that there is a scheme on foot to increase the value of the woollen industry by introducing a steam railroad. This is a new invention which, I admit, has not yet been proved, but I have examined it as a business man, and I think that much is to be expected from it. A limited company is being formed to carry out the plan, if it prove to be feasible. Sir Charles Woosenham has agreed to be Chairman, Mr. Acherley and other gentlemen of the county are taking part, and I am commissioned by them to approach you. I have the plans here----"

      "What do you want?" The Squire's tone was uncompromising. He made no movement towards taking the plans.

      "If you will allow me to explain?"

      The old man sat back in his chair.

      "The railroad will be a continuation of the Birmingham and Aldersbury railroad, which is in strong hands at Birmingham.