Stanley Weyman - Ovington's Bank

"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.