Stanley Weyman - Ovington's Bank

But he hated the desk and he hated figures. His thoughts as he stood behind the bank counter, or drummed his restless heels against the legs of his high stool, were far away in fallow and stubble, or where the trout, that he could tickle as to the manner born, lay under the caving bank. And to his father and to those who judged him by the bank standard, and felt for him half scornful liking, he seemed to be an inefficient, a trifler. They said in Aldersbury that it was lucky for him that he had a father.

Perhaps of all about him it was from that father that he could expect the least sympathy. Ovington was not only a banker, he was a banker to whom his business was everything. He had created it. It had made him. It was not in his eyes a mere adjunct, as in the eyes of one born in the purple and to the leisure which invites to the higher uses of wealth. Able he was, and according to his lights honorable; but a narrow education had confined his views, and he saw in his money merely the means to rise in the world and eventually to become one of the landed class which at that time monopolized all power and all influence, political as well as social. Such a man could only see in Clement a failure, a reversion to the yeoman type, and own with sorrow the irony of fortune that so often delights to hand on the sceptre of an Oliver to a "Tumble-down-Dick."

Only from Betty, young and romantic, yet possessed of a woman's intuitive power of understanding others, could Clement look for any sympathy. And even Betty doubted while she loved-for she had also that other attribute of woman, a basis of sound common-sense. She admired her father. She saw more clearly than Clement what he had done for them and to what he was raising them. And she could not but grieve that Clement was not, more like him, that Clement could not fall in with his wishes and devote himself to the attainment of the end for which the elder man had worked. She could enter into the father's disappointment as well as into the son's distaste.

Meanwhile Clement, dreaming now of a girl's face, now of a new drill which he had seen that morning, now of the passing sights and sounds which would have escaped nine men out of ten but had a meaning for him, drew near to the town. He topped the last eminence, he rode under the ancient oak, whence, tradition had it, a famous Welshman had watched the wreck of his fortunes on a pitched field. Finally he saw, rising from the river before him, the amphitheatre of dim lights that was the town. Descending he crossed the bridge.

He sighed as he did so. For to him to pass from the silent lands and to enter the brawling streets where apprentices were putting up the shutters and beggars were raking among heaps of market garbage was to fall half way from the clouds. To right and left the inns were roaring drunken choruses, drabs stood in the mouths of the alleys-dubbed in Aldersbury "shuts" – tradesmen were hastening to wet their profits at the Crown or the Gullet. When at last he heard the house door clang behind him, and breathed the confined air of the bank, redolent for him of ledgers and day-books, the fall was complete. He reached the earth.

If he had not done so, his sister's face when he entered the dining-room would have brought him to his level.

"My eye and Betty Martin!" she said. "But you've done it now, my lad!"

"What's the matter?"

"Father will tell you that. He's in his room and as black as thunder. He came home by the mail at three-Sir Charles waiting, Mr. Acherley waiting, the bank full, no Clement! You are in for it. You are to go to him the moment you come in."

He looked longingly at the table where supper awaited him. "What did he say?" he asked.

"He said all I have said and d-n besides. It's no good looking at the table, my lad. You must see him first and then I'll give you your supper."

"All right!" he replied, and he turned to the door with something of a swagger.

But Betty, whose moods were as changeable as the winds, and whose thoughts were much graver than her words, was at the door before him. She took him by the lapel of his coat and looked up in his face. "You won't forget that you're in fault, Clem, will you?" she said in a small voice. "Remember that if he had not worked there would be no walking about with a gun or a rod for you. And no looking at new drills, whatever they are, for I know that that is what you had in your mind this morning. He's a good dad, Clem-better than most. You won't forget that, will you?"

"But after all a man must-"

"Suppose you forget that ' after all ,'" she said sagely. "The truth is you have played truant, haven't you? And you must take your medicine. Go and take it like a good boy. There are but three of us, Clem."

She knew how to appeal to him, and how to move him; she knew that at bottom he was fond of his father. He nodded and went, knocked at his father's door and, tamed by his sister's words, took his scolding-and it was a sharp scolding-with patience. Things were going well with the banker, he had had his usual four glasses of port, and he might not have spoken so sharply if the contrast between the idle and the industrious apprentice had not been thrust upon him that day with a force which had startled him. That little hint of a partnership had not been dropped without a pang. He was jealous for his son, and he spoke out.

"If you think," he said, tapping the ledger before him, to give point to his words, "that because you've been to Cambridge this job is below you, you're mistaken, Clement. And if you think that you can do it in your spare time, you're still more mistaken. It's no easy task, I can tell you, to make a bank and keep a bank, and manage your neighbor's money as well as your own, and if you think it is, you're wrong. To make a hundred thousand pounds is a deal harder than to make Latin verses-or to go tramping the country on a market day with your gun! That's not business! That's not business, and once for all, if you are not going to help me, I warn you that I must find someone who will! And I shall not have far to look!"

"I'm afraid, sir, that I have not got a turn for it," Clement pleaded.

"But what have you a turn for? You shoot, but I'm hanged if you bring home much game. And you fish, but I suppose you give the fish away. And you're out of town, idling and doing God knows what, three days in the week! No turn for it? No will to do it, you mean. Do you ever think," the banker continued, joining the fingers of his two hands as he sat back in his chair, and looking over them at the culprit, "where you would be and what you would be doing if I had not toiled for you? If I had not made the business at which you do not condescend to work? I had to make my own way. My grandfather was little better than a laborer, and but for what I've done you might be a clerk at a pound a week, and a bad clerk, too! Or behind a shop-counter, if you liked it better. And if things go wrong with me-for I'd have you remember that nothing in this world is quite safe-that is where you may still be! Still, my lad!"

For the first time Clement looked his father fairly in the face-and pleased him. "Well, sir," he said, "if things go wrong I hope you won't find me wanting. Nor ungrateful for what you have done for us. I know how much it is. But I'm not Bourdillon, and I've not got his head for figures."

"You've not got his application. That's the mischief! Your heart's not in it."

"Well, I don't know that it is," Clement admitted. "I suppose you couldn't-" he hesitated, a new hope kindled within him. He looked at his father doubtfully.

"Couldn't what?"

"Release me from the bank, sir? And give me a-a very small capital to-"

"To go and idle upon?" the banker exclaimed, and thumped the ledger in his indignation at an idea so preposterous. "No, by G-d, I couldn't! Pay you to go idling about the country, more like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, as I am told you do, than a man! Find you capital and see you loiter your life away with your hands in your pockets? No, I couldn't, my boy, and I would not if I could! Capital, indeed? Give you capital? For what?"