Weyman Stanley John
Ovington's Bank

CHAPTER XXV

While the leaven of uneasiness, fermenting into fear, and liable at any moment to breed panic, worked in Aldersbury, turning the sallow bilious and the sanguine irritable-while the contents of the mail-bag and the Gazette were awaited with growing apprehension, and inklings of the truth, leaking out, were turning to water the hearts of those who depended on the speculators, life at Garth was proceeding after its ordinary fashion. No word of what was impending, or might be impending, travelled so far. No echo of the alarm that assailed the ears of terrified men, forced on a sudden to face unimagined disaster, broke the silence of the drab room, where the Squire sat brooding, or of the garden where Josina spent hours, pacing the raised walk and looking down on that strip of sward where the water skirted the Thirty Acres wood.

That strip of sward where she had met him, that view from the garden were all that now remained to her of Clement, all that proved to her that the past was not a dream; and they did much to keep hope alive in her breast, and to hold her firm in her resolve. So precious indeed were the associations they recalled, that while, with the hardness of a woman who loves elsewhere, she felt little sympathy with Arthur in his disappointment, she actively resented the fact that he had chosen to address her there, and so had profaned the one spot, on which with some approach to nearness, she could dream of Clement.

Living a life so retired, and with little to distract her, she gave herself to long thoughts of her lover, and lived and lived again the stolen moments which she had spent with him. It was on these that she nourished her courage and strengthened her will; for, bred to submission and educated to obey, it was no small thing that she contemplated. Nor could she have raised herself to the pitch of determination which she had reached had she not gained elevation from the thought that the matter now rested in her own hands, and that all Clement's trust and all his dependence were on her. She must be true to him or she would fail him indeed. Honor no less than love required her to be firm, let her timid heart beat as it might.

On wet days she sat in the Dutch summer-house, the squat tower with the pyramidal roof and fox-vane on top, which flanked the raised walk, and had, when viewed from below, the look of a bastion. But the day after Ovington's return happened to be fine. It was one of those days of mild sunshine and soft air, which occur in late autumn or early winter and, by reason of their rarity, linger in the memory; and she was walking in the garden when, an hour before noon, Calamy came to tell her that "the master" was asking for her. "And very peevish," he added, shaking his head as he stalked away under the apple-trees, "as he's like to be, more and more till the end."

She overtook the man in the hall. "Is he alone, Calamy?" she asked.

"Ay, but your A'nt's been with him. He's for going up the hill."

"Up the hill?"

"Ay, he's one that will walk while he can. But the next time, I'm thinking," shaking his head again, "it won't be his feet he'll go out on."

"Mrs. Bourdillon has gone?"

"Ay, miss, she's gone-as we're all going," despondently, "sooner or later. She brought some paper, for I heard her reading to him. It would be his will, I expect."

Josina thought the supposition most unlikely, for if her father was close with his money he was at least as close with his affairs. As long as she could remember he had held himself in a crabbed reserve, he had moved a silent master in a dependent world, even his rare outbursts of anger had rather emphasized than broken his reticence.

And since the attack which had consigned him to darkness he had grown even more taciturn. He had not repelled sympathy; he had rendered it impossible by ignoring the existence of a cause for it. While all about him had feared for his sight and, as hope faded, had dreaded the question which they believed to be trembling on his lips, he had either never hoped, or, drawing his own conclusions, had abandoned hope. At any rate, he had never asked. Instead he sat-when Arthur was not there to enliven him or Fewtrell to report to him-wrapped in his own thoughts, too proud to complain or too insensible to feel, and silent. Whatever he thought, whatever he feared, he hid all behind an impenetrable mask; and whether pride or patience or resignation were behind that mark, none knew. Complaint, pity, sympathy, these, he seemed to say, were for the herd. He had ruled; darkness and helplessness had come upon him, but he was still the master.

Arthur might think that he failed, but those who were always about him saw few signs of it. To-day, when Josina entered his room she found him on his feet, one hand resting on the table, the other on his cane. "Get your hat and cloak," he said. "I am going up the hill."

So far his longest excursion had been to the mill, and Josina thought that she ought to remonstrate. "Won't it be too far, sir?" she said.

"Do as I say, girl. And tell Calamy to bring my hat and coat."

She obeyed him, and a minute later they left the house by the yard door. He walked with a firm step, his hand sometimes on her shoulder, sometimes on her arm; but aware how easily she might forget to warn him of an obstacle, or to allow for his passage, she accompanied him with her heart in her mouth. Yet she owned a certain sweetness in his dependence on her, in the weight of his hand on her shoulder, in his nearness.

Before they left the yard he halted. "Look in the pig-styes," he said. "Tell me if that idle dog has cleaned them?"

She went and looked, and assured him that they were in their usual state. He grunted, and they moved on. Passing beneath the gable end of the summer-house they descended the steep, rutted lane which led to the mill. "The first day of the year was such a day," the Squire muttered, and raised his face that the sun might fall upon it.

When they came to the narrow bridge beside the mill, with its roughened causeway eternally shaken by the roar and wet with the spray of the overshot wheel, she trembled. There was no parapet, and the bridge was barely wide enough to permit them to pass abreast. But he showed no fear, he stepped on to it firmly, and on the crown he halted. "Look what water is in the pound," he said.

"Had I not better wait-till you are over, sir?"

"Do as I say, girl! Do as I say!" He struck his cane impatiently on the stones.

She left him unwillingly, and more than once looked back, but always to see him standing, gaunt and slightly stooping, his sightless eyes bent on the groaning, laboring wheel, on the silvery cascade that poured over its black flanges, on the fragment of rainbow that glittered where the sun shot the spray with colors. He was seeing it all, as he had seen it a thousand times: in childhood, when he had lingered and wondered before it, fascinated by the rush and awed by the thunder of the falling water; in youth, when with gun or rod he had just glanced at it in passing; in manhood, when it had come to be one of the amenities of the property, and he had measured its condition with an owner's eye; ay, and in later life, when to see it had been rather to call up memories, than to form new impressions. Now, he would never see it again with his eyes, and he knew it. And yet he had never seen it more clearly than he did to-day, as he stood in darkness, with the cold breath of the water-fall on his cheek.

She grasped something of this as she hurried back, and satisfied as to the pound he went on. They ascended the lane which, on the farther side of the brook, led to the highway, and crossing the road began to climb the rough track, that wound up through that part of the covert which was above the road.

Here and there a clump of hollies, a spreading yew, a patch of young beech to which the leaves still clung, blocked the view, but for the most part the eye passed unobstructed athwart trees stripped of foliage, and disclosing here a huge boulder, there a pile of moss-grown stones. A climb of a third of a mile, much of it steep, brought them without mishap-though a hundred times she trembled lest he should trip-to the abrupt glacis of sward that fringed, and in places ran up into, the limestone face.

It was broken by huge stones, precariously stayed in their descent, or by outcrops of rock from which sprang slender birches, light, graceful, their white bark shining.

"Are we clear of the wood?" he asked, lifting his face to meet the breeze.

"Yes, sir."

He turned leftwards. "There's a flat stone with a holly to north of it. D'you see it? I'll sit there."

She led him to it and he sat down on the stone, his stick between his knees, the sunshine on his face. She sat beside him, and as she looked over the expanse of pleasant vale and the ring of hills that compassed it about, the sense of his blindness moved her almost to tears. At their feet Garth, its red walls, its buildings and yards and policies, lay as on a plan. Beyond it, the tower of Garthmyle Church rose in the middle distance, a few thatched roofs peeping through the half-leafless trees about it. Leftwards the valley narrowed as the Welsh hills closed in, while to their right it melted into the smiling plain with its nestling villages, its rows of poplars, its shining streams. She fancied that he had been in the habit of coming to this place, and the thought that he saw no more from it now than when he sat in his room below, that he viewed nothing of the bright landscape spread beneath her own eyes, swelled her breast with pity. She could have cast her arms about him and wept as she strove to comfort him-could have sworn to him that while he lived her eyes should be his! Ay, she could have done this, all this-if he had been other than he was!

Perhaps it was as well-or perhaps it was not as well-that she did not give way to the impulse. For presently in a voice as dry as usual, "Do you see the gable of Wolley's Mill, girl? Carry your eyes right of the hill, over the coppice at the corner of Archer's Leasow?"

She told him that she could see it.

"That's two miles away. It's the farthest I own in that direction, but there's a slip of Acherley's land between us and it. Now look down the valley-d'you see five poplars in a row?"

"Yes, sir, I see them."

"That's our boundary towards the town. Behind us we march with the watershed. Facing us-the boundary is the far fence of Whittall's farm at the foot of the hills."

"The black and white house, sir?"

"Ay. Well, look at it, girl. There's five thousand acres and a bit over; and there's two hundred and ninety people living on it-there's barely one of them I don't know. I've looked after them, but I've not cosseted them, and don't you cosset them. And it's not only the people; there's not a field I don't know nor a bit of coppice that I can't see, nor a slate roof that I have not slated, and the Lord knows how much of it I've drained. It's been ours, the heart of it since Queen Bess, and part of it since Mary; sometimes logged with debt, and then again cleared. I came into it logged, and I've cleared it. It's come down, sometimes straight, sometimes sideways, but always in a man's hands. Well, it will soon be in a girl's. In two or three years, more or less, it will be yours, my girl. And do you mark what I say to you this day. You're the heir of tail, and I couldn't take it from you, if I would-but do you mark me!" He found her hand and gripped it so hard as to give her pain, but she would not wince. "Don't you part with an acre of it! Not with an acre of it! Not with an acre of it! Do you hear me, girl; or I think I'll turn in my grave! If you are bidden to do it when your son comes of age, you think of me and of this day, and don't put your hand to it! Hold to the land, hold to the land, and they as come after you shall hold up their heads as we have held ours! It isn't money, it isn't land bought with money, it's the land that's come down, that will keep Griffins where Griffins have been. When I am gone do you mark that! Whatever betide, let 'em say what they like, don't you be one of those that sell their birthright, the right to govern, for a mess of pottage!"

"I will remember, sir!" she said with tears. "I will, I will indeed!"

"Ay, never forget it, don't you forget this day. I ha' brought you up the hill on purpose to show you that. For fifty years I have spared and lived niggardly and put shilling to shilling to clear that land and to drain it and round it-and may be, for Acherley is a random spendthrift, I'll yet add that strip of his to it! I've lived for the land, that those who come after me may govern their corner as Griffins have governed it time out of mind. I've done my duty by the people and the land. Don't you forget to do yours."

She told him earnestly that she never would-she never would. After that he was silent awhile. He let her hand go. But presently, and without warning, "Why don't you ha' the lad?"

Josina was surprised and yet not surprised; or if surprised at all, it was at her own calmness. Her color ebbed, but she neither trembled nor faltered. She had not even to summon up the thought of Clement. The charge to which she had just listened clothed her with a dignity which the prospect, spread before her eyes and insensibly raising her mind to higher issues, helped to support. "I couldn't, sir," she said quietly. "I do not love him."

"Don't love him?" the Squire repeated-yet not half so angrily as she expected. "What's amiss with him?"'

"Nothing, sir. But I do not love him."

"Love? Bah! Love'll come! Maids ha' naught to do with love! When they're married love'll come fast enough, I'll warrant! The lad's straight and comely and a proper age-and what else do you want? What else do you want, eh? He's of your own blood, and if he's wild ideas 'tis better than wild oats, and he'll give them up. He's promised me that, or I'd never ha' said yes to him! Why, girl!" with sudden exasperation, "'twas only the other day you were peaking and puling for him! Peaking and puling like a sick sparrow, and I was saying, no! And now-why, damme, what do you mean by it?"

"It was all a mistake, sir," she said with dignity. "I never did think of him, or wish for him. It was a mistake."

"A mistake! What do you mean?"

"You bade me think no more of him, and I obeyed. But-but I never had any thought of him."

That did irritate the old man; it seemed to him that she played with him. In a rage he struck his cane on the ground. "Damme!" he exclaimed. "That's womanlike all over! Give her what she wants and she doesn't want it. But, see here, I'll not have it, girl. I know your flimsies and you've got to have him! Do you hear?"

He was enraged by this queer twist in her, and he blustered. But his anger-and he felt it-lacked something of force. He did not know how to bring it to bear. And when she did not reply to him at once, "Do you forget that he saved my life?" he cried, dropping to a lower level. "D'you forget that, you ungrateful wench?"

"But he did not save mine, sir!" she answered, with astonishing spirit. "Yet it is mine that you ask me to give him. And indeed, indeed, sir, he does not love me."

"Then why should he want you?" he retorted. "But he'll soon make you sure of that, if you'll let him. And you've got to take him. You've got to take him. Let's ha' no more words about it. I've said the word."

"But I've not, sir," she replied, with that new and astonishing courage of hers. "And I cannot say it. I am grateful to him, I shall ever be grateful to him for saving you-and he is my cousin. But he does not love me, he has never made love to me. And am I, your daughter, to-to accept him, the moment it suits him to marry me?"

That touched the Squire's pride. It gave him to think. "Never made love to you?" he exclaimed. "What do you mean, girl?"

"Until he came to me in the garden on Tuesday he never-he never gave me reason to think that he would come. Am I," with a tremor of indignation in her voice, "of so little account, is that which you have just told me that I may some day bring to him so little, that I must put all in his hand the moment he chooses to lift it?"

The Squire was bothered by that, and "You are like all women!" he exclaimed. "I don't know where to ha' you. That's where it is. You twist and you turn, and you fib-"

"I am not fibbing, sir."

"And you've as many quirks as-as a hunted hare. There's no holding you! My father would ha' locked you up with bread and water till you did what you were told, and my mother'd ha' boxed your ears till she put some sense into you. But we're a d-d silly generation. We're too soft!"

She minded this little, as long as he did not put her to the supreme test; as long as he did not ask her if there was anyone else, any other lover. But his mind was now busy with Arthur. Was it true that the young spark was thinking more of Garth than of the girl? More of the heiress than of the sweetheart? More of lucre than of love? If so, d-n his impudence! He deserved what he had got! From which point it was but a step to thoughts of the bank. Ay, Arthur was certainly one who had his plans for getting on, and getting on in ways to which no Griffin had stooped before. Was this of a piece with them?

The doubt had a cooling effect upon him. While Josina trembled lest the fateful question should still be put, and clenched her little hands as she summoned up fortitude to meet it-while she tried to still the fluttering of her heart, the old man relapsed into thought, muttered inarticulately, fell silent.

She would have given much to know the direction of his thoughts.

At last, "Well, you're so clever you must settle your own affairs," he grumbled. "I'm d-d if I understand either of you, girl or man. In my time if a wench said No, we took her and hugged her till she said Yes! We didn't go to her father. But since the old king died there's no red blood in the country-it's all telling and no kissing. There, I've done with it. Maybe when he turns his back on you, you'll be wanting him fast enough."

"No, sir, never!" she answered, overwhelmed by a victory so complete.

"Anyway, don't come fretting to me if you do! Your aunt told me that you were pining for him, but I'm hanged if she knows more than I do-or happen you don't know your own mind. Now look out, and tell me if they've finished thatching that wagoner's cottage at the Bache?"

"Yes, sir. I can see the new straw from here," she said.

"Have they brought it down over the eaves?"

"I'm afraid I can't see that. It's too far."

"Mind me to ask Fewtrell. Now get me home. Where's your arm? I'll go down through the new planting."

"But it's not so safe, sir," she remonstrated. "There's the stone stile, and-"

"When I canna get over the stone stile I'll not come up the hill. I want to see the planting. D'you take me that way and tell me if the rabbits ha' got in. March, girl!"

She obeyed him, but in fear and trembling, for there was not only the awkward stile to climb, but the track ran over outcrops of rocks on which even a careful walker might slip. However, he crossed the stile with ease, aided less by her arm than by his own memory of its shape, and of every stone that neighbored it; and it was only over the treacherous surface of the rock that he showed himself really dependent on her care. Memory could not help him here, and here it was, as he leant on her shoulder, that she felt, her breast swelling with pity, the real, the blood tie between them. Her heart went out to him, and her eyes were dim with tears when at length they stood again on the high road, and viewed, on a level with themselves but divided from them by the trough of green meadows in which the brook ran, the gables and twisted chimneys, the buttressed walls, that gave to Garth its air of a fortress.

The girl gazed at it, the old man's hand still on her shoulder. It was her home: she knew no other, she had never been fifty miles from it. It stood for peace, safety, protection. She loved it-never more than now, and never as much as now. And never as much as now had she loved her father; never before had she understood him so well. The last hour had wrought a change, dimly suspected by both, in their relations. They stood on a level-more on a level, at any rate; with no gulf between them but the natural interval of years, a green valley as it were, which the eyes of understanding and the light foot of love could cross at will.