Читать книгу Ovington's Bank - Weyman Stanley John - Страница 4

In remote hamlets a few churches still recall the fashion of Garthmyle. It was a wide church of two aisles having clear windows, through which a flood of cold light fell on the whitewashed walls, and on the maze of square pews, some colored drab, some a pale blue, through which narrow alleys, ending in culs-de-sac, wound at random. The Griffin memorials, though the earliest were of Tudor date, were small and mean, and the one warm scrap of color in the church was furnished by the faded red curtain which ran on iron rods round the Squire's pew and protected his head from draughts. That curtain was watched with alarm by many, for at a certain point in the service it was the Squire's wont to draw it aside, and to stand for a time with his back to the east while his hard eyes roved over the congregation. Woe to the absentees! His scrutiny completed, with a grunt which carried terror to the hearts of their families, he would draw the curtain, turn about again, and compose himself to sleep.

In its severity and bleakness the church fairly matched the man, who, old and gaunt and grey, was its central figure; who, like it, embodied, meagrely and plainly as he dressed, the greatness of old associations, and like it, if in a hard and forbidding way, owned and exacted an unchanging standard of duty.

For he was the Squire. Whatever might be done elsewhere, nothing was done in that parish without him. The parson, aged and apathetic, knew better than to cross his will-had he not to get in his tithes? The farmers were his tenants, the overseers rested in the hollow of his hand. Hardly a man was hired and no man was relieved, no old wife sent back to her distant settlement, no lad apprenticed, but as he pleased. He was the Squire.

On Sundays the tenants waited in the churchyard until he arrived, and it was this which deceived Arthur when, Mrs. Bourdillon feeling unequal to the service, he reached the church next morning. He found the porch empty, and concluding that his uncle had entered, he made his way to the Cottage pew, which was abreast of the great man's. But in the act of sitting down he saw, glancing round the red curtain, that Josina was alone. It struck him then that it would be pleasant to sit beside her and entertain himself with her conscious face, and he crossed over and let himself into the Squire's pew. He had the satisfaction of seeing the blood mount swiftly to her cheeks, but the next moment he found the old man-who had that morning sent word that he would be late-at his elbow, in the act of entering behind him.

It was too late to retreat, and with a face as hot as Josina's he stumbled over the straw-covered footstool and sat down on her other hand. He knew that the Squire would resent his presence after what had happened, and when he stood up his ears were tingling. But he soon recovered himself. He saw the comic side of the situation, and long before the sermon was over, he found himself sufficiently at ease to enjoy some of the agréments which he had foreseen.

Carved roughly with a penknife on the front of the pew was a heart surmounting two clasped hands. Below each hand were initials-his own and Josina's; and he never let the girl forget the August afternoon, three years before, when he had induced her to do her share. She had refused many times; then, like Eve in the garden, she had succumbed on a drowsy afternoon when they had had the pew to themselves and the drone of the preacher's voice had barely risen above the hum of the bees. She had been little more than a child at the time, and ever since that day the apple had been to her both sweet and bitter. For she was not a child now, and, a woman, she rebelled against Arthur's power to bring the blood to her cheeks and to play-with looks rather than words, for of these he was chary-upon feelings which she could not mask.

Of late resentment had been more and more gaining the upper hand with her. But to-day she forgave. She feared that which might pass between him and his uncle at the close of the service, and she had not the heart to be angry. However, when the dreaded moment came she was pleasantly disappointed. When they reached the porch, "Take my seat, take my meat," the Squire said grimly. "Are you coming up?"

"If I may, sir?

"I want a word with you."

This was not promising, but it might have been worse, and little more was said as the three passed, the congregation standing uncovered, down the Churchyard Walk and along the road to Garth.

The Squire, always taciturn, strode on in silence, his eyes on his fields. The other two said little, feeling trouble in the air. Fortunately at the early dinner there was a fourth to mend matters in the shape of Miss Peacock, the Squire's housekeeper. She was a distant relation who had spent most of her life at Garth; who considered the Squire the first of men, his will as law, and who from Josina's earliest days had set her an example of servile obedience. To ask what Mr. Griffin did not offer, to doubt where he had laid down the law, was to Miss Peacock flat treason; and where a stronger mind might have moulded the girl to a firmer shape, the old maid's influence had wrought in the other direction. A tall meagre spinster, a weak replica of the Squire, she came of generations of women who had been ruled by their men and trained to take the second place. The Squire's two wives, his first, whose only child had fallen, a boy-ensign, at Alexandria, his second, Josina's mother, had held the same tradition, and Josina promised to abide by it.

When the Peacock rose Jos hesitated. The Squire saw it. "Do you go, girl," he said. "Be off!"

For once she wavered-she feared what might happen between the two. But "Do you hear?" the Squire growled. "Go when you are told."

She went then, but Arthur could not restrain his indignation. "Poor Jos!" he muttered.

Unluckily the Squire heard the words, and "Poor Jos!" he repeated, scowling at the offender. "What the devil do you mean, sir? Poor Jos, indeed? Confound your impudence! What do you mean?"

Arthur quailed, but he was not lacking in wit. "Only that women like a secret, sir," he said. "And a woman, shut out, fancies that there is a secret."

"Umph! A devilish lot you know about women!" the old man snarled. "But never mind that. I saw your mother yesterday."

"So she told me, sir."

"Ay! And I dare say you didn't like what she told you! But I want you to understand, young man, once for all, that you've got to choose between Aldersbury and Garth. Do you hear? I've done my duty. I kept the living for you, as I promised your father, and whether you take it or not, I expect you to do yours, and to live as the Griffins have lived before you. Who the devil is this man Ovington? Why do you want to mix yourself up with him? Eh? A man whose father touched his hat to me and would no more have thought of sitting at my table than my butler would! There, pass the bottle."

"Would you have no man rise, sir?" Arthur ventured.

"Rise?" The Squire glared at him from under his great bushy eyebrows. "It's not to his rise, it's to your fall I object, sir. A d-d silly scheme this, and one I won't have. D'you hear, I won't have it."

Arthur kept his temper, oppressed by the other's violence. "Still, you must own, sir, that times are changed," he said.

"Changed? Damnably changed when a Griffin wants to go into trade in Aldersbury."

"But banking is hardly a trade."

"Not a trade? Of course it's a trade-if usury is a trade! If pawn-broking is a trade! If loan-jobbing is a trade! Of course it's a trade."

The gibe stung Arthur and he plucked up spirit. "At any rate, it is a lucrative one," he rejoined. "And I've never heard, sir, that you were indifferent to money."

"Oh! Because I'm going to charge your mother rent? Well, isn't the Cottage mine? Or because fifty years ago I came into a cumbered estate and have pinched and saved and starved to clear it? Saved? I have saved. But I've saved out of the land like a gentleman, and like my fathers before me, and not by usury. Not by money-jobbing. And if you expect to benefit-but there, fill your glass, and let's hear your tongue. What do you say to it?"

"As to the living," Arthur said mildly, "I don't think you consider, sir, that what was a decent livelihood no longer keeps a gentleman as a gentleman. Times are changed, incomes are changed, men are richer. I see men everywhere making fortunes by what you call trade, sir; making fortunes and buying estates and founding houses."

"And shouldering out the old gentry? Ay, damme, and I see it too," the Squire retorted, taking the word out of his mouth. "I see plenty of it. And you think to be one of them, do you? To join them and be another Peel, or one of Pitt's money-bag peers? That's in your mind, is it? A Mr. Coutts? And to buy out my lord and drive your coach and four into Aldersbury, and splash dirt over better men than yourself?"

"I should be not the less a Griffin."

"A Griffin with dirty hands!" with contempt. "That's what you'd be. And vote Radical and prate of Reform and scorn the land that bred you. And talk of the Rights of Men and money-bags, eh? That's your notion, is it, by G-d?"

"Of course, sir, if you look at it in that way-"

"That's the way I do look at it!" The Squire brought down his hand on the table with a force that shook the glasses and spilled some of his wine. "And it's the way you've got to look at it, or there won't be much between you and me-or you and mine. Or mine, do you hear! I'll have no tradesman at Garth and none of that way of thinking. So you'd best give heed before it's too late. You'd best look at it all ways."

"Very well, sir."

"Any more wine?"

"No, thank you." Arthur's head was high. He did not lack spirit.

"Then hear my last word. I won't have it! That's plain. That's plain, and now you know. And, hark ye, as you go out, send Peacock to me."

But before Arthur had made his way out, the Squire's voice was heard, roaring for Josina. When Miss Peacock presented herself, "Not you! Who the devil wants you?" he stormed. "Send the girl! D'you hear? Send the girl!"

And when Josina, scared and trembling, came in her turn, "Shut the door!" he commanded. "And listen! I've had a talk with that puppy, who thinks that he knows more than his betters. D-n his impertinence, coming into my pew when he thought I was elsewhere! But I know very well why he came, young woman, sneaking in to sit beside you and make sheep's eyes when my back was turned. Now, do you listen to me. You'll keep him at arm's length. Do you hear, Miss? You'll have nothing to say to him unless I give you leave. He's got to do with me now, and it depends on me whether there's any more of it. I know what he wants, but by G-d, I'm your father, and if he does not mend his manners, he goes to the right-about. So let me hear of no more billing and cooing and meeting in pews, unless I give the word! D'you understand, girl?"

"But I think you're mistaken, sir," poor Jos ventured. "I don't think that he means-"

"I know what he means. And so do you. But never you mind! Till I say the word there's an end of it. The puppy, with his Peels and his peers! Men my father wouldn't have-but there, you understand now, and you'll obey, or I'll know the reason why!"

"Then he's not to come to Garth, sir?"

But the Squire checked at that. Family feeling and the pride of hospitality were strong in him, and to forbid his only nephew the family house went beyond his mind at present.

"To Garth?" angrily. "Who said anything about Garth? No, Miss, but when he comes, you'll stand him off. You know very well how to do it, though you look as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth! You'll see that he keeps his distance. And let me have no tears, or-d-n the fellow, he's spoiled my nap. There, go! Go! I might as well have a swarm of wasps about me as such folks! Pack o' fools and idiots! Go into a bank, indeed!"

Jos did go, and shutting herself up in her room would not open to Miss Peacock, who came fluttering to the door to learn what was amiss. And she cried a little, but it was as much in humiliation as grief. Her father was holding her on offer, to be given or withheld, as he pleased, while all the time she doubted, and more than doubted, if he to whom she was on offer, he from whom she was withheld, wanted her. There was the rub.

For Arthur, ever since he had begun to attend at the bank, had been strangely silent. He had looked and smiled and teased her, had pressed her hand or touched her hair, but in sport rather than in earnest, meaning little. And she had been quick to see this, and with the womanly pride, of which, gentle and timid as she was, she had her share, she had schooled herself to accept the new situation. Now, her father had taken Arthur's suit for granted and humbled her. So Jos cried a little. But they were not very bitter tears.