CHAPTER XIXThe week in early June which witnessed Arthur’s return to his seat at the bank—that and the following week which saw his mother’s five thousand pounds paid over for his share in the concern—saw the tide of prosperity which during two years had been constantly swelling, reach its extreme point. The commerce and wealth of the country, as they rose higher and higher in this flood-time of fortune, astonished even the casual observer. Their increase seemed to be without limit; they answered to every call. They not only filled the old channels, but over-ran them, irrigating, in appearance at least, a thousand fields hitherto untilled. Abroad, the flag of commerce was said to fly where it had never flown before; its clippers brought merchandise not only from the Indies, East and West, and tea from China, and wool from Sydney, and rich stuffs from the Levant, but Argosies laden with freight still more precious were—or were reported to be—on their way from that new Southern continent on the opening of which to British trade so many hopes depended. The gold and silver of Peru, the diamonds of Brazil, the untapped wealth of the Plate were believed to be afloat and ready to be exchanged for the produce of our looms and spindles, our ovens and forges.Nor was that produce likely to fail, for at home the glow of foundries, working night-shifts, lit up the northern sky, and in many a Lancashire or Yorkshire dale, old factories, brought again into service, shook, almost to falling, under the thunder of the power-loom. Mills and mines, potteries and iron-works changed hands from day to day, at ever-rising prices. Men who had never invested before, save in the field at their gate, or the house under their eyes, rushed eagerly to take shares in these ventures, and in thousands of offices and parlors conned their securities, summed up the swelling total of their gains, and rushed to buy and buy again, with a command of credit which seemed to have no bottom.To provide that credit, the banks widened their operations, increased, on the security of stocks ever rising in value, their over-drafts, issued batch after batch of fresh notes. The most cautious admitted that accommodation must keep step with trade; and the huge strides which this was making, the changed conditions, the wider outlook, the calling in of the new world to augment the wealth of the old—all seemed to demand an advance which promised to be as profitable as it was warranted. To the ordinary eye the sun of prosperity shone in an unclouded sky. Even the experienced, though they scanned the heavens with care, saw nothing to dismay them. Only here and there an old fogey whose memory went back to the crisis of ’93, or to the famous Black Monday of twenty years earlier, uttered a note of warning; or some mechanical clerk, of the stamp of Rodd, sunk in a rut of routine, muttered of Accommodation Bills where his employer saw only legitimate trade. But their croakings, feeble at best, were lost in the joyous babble of an Exchange, enriched by commissions, and drunk with success.It was a new era. It was the age of gold. It was the fruit of conditions long maturing. Men’s labor, aided by machinery, was henceforth to be so productive that no man need be poor, all might be rich. Experts, reviewing the progress which had been made and the changes which had been wrought during the last fifty years, said these things; and the vulgar took them up and repeated them. The Bank of England acted as if they were true. The rate of discount was low.And while all men thus stretched out their hands to catch the golden manna Aldersbury was not idle. The appetite for gain grows by what it feeds upon and Aldersbury appetites had been whetted by early successes in their own field. The woollen mills, sharing in the general prosperity of the last two years, had done well, and more than one mill had changed hands at unheard-of prices. The Valleys were said to be full of money which, or part of it, trickled into the town, improving a trade already brisk. Many had made large gains by outside speculations and had boasted of them. Report had multiplied their profits, others had joined in and they too had gained, and their gains had fired the greed of their neighbors. Some had followed up their first successes. Others prepared to extend their businesses, built new premises, put in new-fangled glass windows, and by their action gave an impetus to subordinate trades, and spread still farther the sense of well-being.On the top of all this had come the Valleys Railroad Scheme, backed by Ovington’s Bank, and offering to everyone a chance of speculating on his door-step: a scheme which while it appealed to local pride, had a specious look of safety, since the railway was to be built under the shareholders’ own eyes, across the fields they knew, and by men whom they saw going in and out every day.There was a great run on it. Some of the gentry, following the old Squire’s example, held aloof, but others put their hundreds into it, not much believing in it but finding it an amusing gamble. The townsfolk took it more seriously, with the result that a week after allotment the shares were changing hands at a premium of thirty shillings and there was still a busy market in them. Some who, tempted by the premium, sold at a profit suspected as soon as they had sold that they had thrown away their one chance of wealth, and went into the market and bought again, and so the rise was maintained and even extended. More than once Ovington put in a word of caution, reminding his customers that the first sod was not yet cut, that all the work was to do, that even the Bill was not yet passed. But his warnings were disregarded.To the majority it seemed a short and easy way to fortune, and they wondered that they had been so simple in the past as to know nothing of it. It was by this way, they now saw, that Ovington had risen to wealth, while they, poor fools, not yet admitted to the secret, had gaped and wondered. And what a secret it was! To rise in the morning richer by fifty pounds than they had gone to bed! To retire at night with another fifty as good as in the bank, or in the old and now despised stocking! The slow increment of trade seemed mean and despicable beside their hourly growing profits, made while men slept or dined, made, as a leading tradesman pithily said, while they wore out their breeches on their chairs! Few troubled themselves about the Bill, or the cutting of the first sod, or considered how long it would be before the railroad was at work! Fewer still asked themselves whether this untried scheme would ever pay. It was enough for them that the shares were ever rising, that men were always to be found to buy them at the current price, and that they themselves were growing richer week by week.For the directors these were great days! They walked Bride Hill and the Market Place with their heads high and their toes turned out. They talked in loud voices in the streets. They got together in corners and whispered, their brows heavy with the weight of affairs. They were great men. The banker, it is true, did not like the pitch to which the thing was being carried, but it was his business to wear a cheerful face, and he had no misgivings to speak of, though he knew that success was a long way off. And even on him the prosperity of the venture had some effect. Sir Charles and Acherley, too, were not of those who openly exulted; it is possible that the latter sold a few shares, or even a good many shares.But Purslow and Grounds and Wolley? Who shall describe the importance which sat upon their brows, the dignity of their strut, the gravity of their nod, the mock humility of their reticence? Never did they go in or go out without the consciousness that the eyes of passers-by were upon them! Theirs to make men’s fortunes by a hint—and their bearing betrayed that they knew it. Purslow’s apron was discarded, no longer did he come out to customers in the street; if he still rubbed one hand over the other it was in self-content. Grounds was dazzled, and wore his Sunday clothes on week-days. Wolley, always a braggart, swaggered and talked, closed his eyes to his commitments and remembered only his gains. He talked of buying another mill, he even entered into a negotiation with that in view. He was convinced that safety lay in daring, and that this was the golden moment, if he would free himself from the net of debt that for years had been weaving itself about him.He assumed the airs of a rich man, but he was not the worst. The draper, if more honest, had less brains, and success threw him off his balance. “A little country ’ouse,” he said, speaking among his familiars. “I’m thinking of buying a little country ’ouse. Two miles from town. A nice distance.” He recalled the fact that the founder of Sir Charles’s family had been Mayor of Aldersbury in the days of Queen Bess, and had bought the estate with money made in the town. “Who knows,” with humility—“my lad’s a good lad—what may come of it? After all there is nothing like land.”Grounds shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t double——”“Double itself in a month, Grounds? No. But all in good time. All in good time. ’Istory repeats itself. My lad may be a parliament-man, yet. I saw Ovington this morning.” Two months before it would have been “Mr. Ovington.” “He’s sold those Anglo-Mexicans for me and it beats all! A gold-mine! Bought at forty, sold at seventy-two! He wanted me to pay off the bank, but not I, Grounds. When you can borrow at seven and double the money in a month! No, no! Truth is, he’s jealous. He gets only seven per cent. and sees me coining! Of course he wants his money. No, no, I said.”Grounds looked doubtful. He was too cautious to operate on borrowed money. “I don’t know. After all, enough is as good as a feast, Purslow.”Purslow prodded him playfully. “Ay, but what is enough?” he chuckled. “No. We’ve been let in and I mean to stay in. There’s plenty of fools grubbing along in the old way, but you and me, we are inside now, Grounds, and I mean to stay in. The days of five per cent are gone for you and me. Gone! ’Twarn’t by five per cent. that Ovington got where he is.”“My wife wants a silk dress.”“Let ’er ’ave it! And come to me for it! You can afford it!” He strutted off. “Grounds all over!” he muttered. “Close; d—d close! Hasn’t the pluck of a mouse—and a year ago he could buy me twice over!” In fancy he saw his Jack a college-man and counsellor, and by and by he passed various parks and halls before his mental vision and saw Jack seated in them, saw him Sir John Purslow, saw him Member for Aldersbury. He held his head high as he marched across the street to his shop, jingling the silver in his fob. Queen Bess, indeed, what were Queen Bess’s days to these?But a man cannot talk big without paying for the luxury. The draper’s foreman asked for higher wages; his second hand also. Purslow gave the rise, but, reminded that their pay was in arrear, “No, Jenkins, no,” he said. “You must wait. Hang it, man, do you think I’ve nothing better to do with my money in these days than pay you fellows to the day? ’Ere! ’ere’s a pound on account. Let it run! Let it run! All in good time, man. Fancy my credit’s good enough?”And instead of meeting the last acceptance that he’d given to his cloth-merchant, he took it up with another bill at two months—a thing he had never done before. “Credit! Credit’s the thing in these days,” he said, winking. “Cash? Excuse me! Out of date, man, with them that knows. Credit’s the ’orse!”Arthur Bourdillon wore his honors more modestly, and courted the mean with success. But even he felt the intoxication of this noontide prosperity. At Garth he had doubted, and suffered scruples to weigh with him. But no sooner had he returned to the bank than the atmosphere of money enveloped him, and discerning that it was now in his power to make the best of two worlds, hitherto inconsistent, he plunged with gusto into the business. As secretary of the company he was a person to be courted; as a partner, now recognized, in the bank, he was more. He felt himself capable of all, for had not all succeeded with him? And awake to the fact that the times were abnormal—though he did not deduce from this the lesson he should have drawn—he thanked his stars that he was there to profit by them, and to make the most of them.He was beyond doubt an asset to the bank. His birth, his manners, his good looks, the infection of his laugh made him a favorite with gentle and simple. And then he worked. He had energy, he was tireless, no task was too hard or too long for him. But he labored under one disadvantage, though he did not know it. He had had experience of the rise, not of the fall. As far back as he had been connected with Ovington’s, trade had continued to expand, things had gone well; and by nature he was sanguine and leant towards the bold policy. He threw his weight on that side, and, able and self-confident, he made himself felt. Even Ovington yielded to the thrust of his opinion, was swayed by him, and at times, perhaps, put a little out of his course.Not that Arthur was without his troubles. Naturally and inevitably a cloud had fallen on the relation, friendly hitherto, between him and Clement. Clement had grown cool to him, and the change was unwelcome, for it was in Arthur’s nature to love popularity and to thrive and to bask in the sunshine of it. But it could not be helped. Without breaking eggs one could not make omelettes. Clement blamed him, he knew, feeling, and with reason, that what he had done deserved acknowledgment, and that it lay with Arthur to see that justice was done. And Arthur, for his part, would have gladly acquitted himself of the debt had it consisted with his own interests. But it did not.Had he suspected the tie between Clement and Josina he might have acted otherwise. He might have foreseen the possibility of Clement’s gaining the old man’s ear, might have scented danger, and played a more cautious game. But he knew nothing of this. Garth and Clement stood apart in his mind. Clement and Josina were as far as he knew barely acquainted. He was aware, therefore, of no special reason why Clement should desire to stand well at Garth, while he felt sure that his friend was the last person to push a claim, or to thrust himself uninvited on the Squire’s gratitude.Accordingly, and the more as the banker had not himself taken up the quarrel, he put it aside as of no great importance. He shrugged his shoulders and told himself that Clement would come round. The cloud would pass, and its cause be forgotten.In the meantime he ignored it. He met Clement’s hostility with bland unconsciousness, smiled and was pleasant. He was too busy a man to be troubled by trifles. He was not going to be turned from his course by the passing frown of a silly fellow, who could not hold an advantage when he had won it.Betty was another matter. Betty was behaving ill and showing temper, in league apparently with her brother and sympathizing with him. She was changed from the Betty of old days. He had lost his hold upon her, and though this fell in well enough with the change in his views—or the possible change, for he had not quite made up his mind—it pricked his conceit as much as it surprised him. Moreover, the girl had a sharp tongue and was not above using it, so that more than once he smarted under its lash.“Fine feathers make fine birds!” she said, as Arthur came bounding into the house one day and all but collided with her. “Only they should be your own, Mr. Daw!”“Oh, I give your father all the credit,” he replied, “only I do some of the work. But you used not to be so critical, Betty.”“No? Well, I’ll tell you why if you like.”“Oh, I don’t want to know.”“No, I don’t think you do!” the girl retorted. “But I’ll tell you. I thought your feathers were your own then. Now—I should be uneasy if I were you.”“Why?”“You might fall among crows and be plucked. I can tell you, you’d be a sorry sight in your own feathers!”He turned a dusky red. The shaft had gone home, but he tried to hide the wound. “A dull bird, eh?” he said, affecting to misunderstand her. “Well, I thought you liked dull birds. I couldn’t be duller than Rodd, and you don’t find fault with him.”It was a return shot, aimed only to cover his retreat. But the shot told in a way that surprised him. Betty reddened to her hair, and her eyes snapped.“At any rate, Mr. Rodd is what he seems!” she cried.“Oh! oh!”“He’s not hollow!”“No! Of course not. A most witty, bright, amusing gentleman, the pink of fashion, and—what is it?—the mould of form! Hollow? Oh, no, Betty, very solid, I should say—and stolid!” with a grin. “Not a roaring blade, perhaps—I could hardly call him that, but a sound, substantial, wooden—gentleman! I am sure that your father values him highly as a clerk, and would value him still more highly as——”“What?”“I need not put it into words—but it lies with you to qualify him for the post. Rodd? Well, well, times are changed, Betty! But we live and learn.”“You have a good deal to learn,” she cried, bristling with anger, “about women!”He got away then, retiring in good order and pleased that he had not had the worst of it; hoping, too, that he had closed the little spitfire’s mouth. But there he found himself mistaken. The young lady was of a high courage, and perhaps had been a little spoiled. Where she once felt contempt she made no bones about showing it, and whenever they met, her frankness, sharpened by a woman’s intuition, kept him on tenter-hooks.“You seem to think very ill of me,” he said once. “And yet you trouble yourself a good deal about me.”“You make a mistake!” she replied. “I am not troubling myself about you. I’m thinking of my father.”“Ah! Now you are out of my reach. That’s beyond me.”“I wish he were!”“He knows his own business.”“I hope he does!” she riposted. And though it was the memory of Rodd’s warning that supplied the dart, the animosity that sped it had another source. The truth was that her brother had at last taken her into his confidence.It was not without great unhappiness that he had seen all the hopes which he had built upon the Squire’s gratitude come to nothing. He had hoped, and for a time had been even confident; but nothing had happened, no message, no summons had reached him. The events of that night might have been a dream, as far as he was concerned. Yet he could not see his way to blow his own trumpet, or proclaim what he had done. He stood no better than before, and indeed his position was worse.For as long as the Squire lay bedridden and ill he could not go to him. Even when the report came that he was mending, Clement hesitated. To go to him, basing his claim on what had happened, to go to him and tell the story, as he must, with his own lips—this presented difficulties from which a man with delicate feelings might well shrink!Meanwhile a veil had fallen between him and Josina. He had sworn that he would not see her again until he could claim her, and he supposed her to be engrossed by her father’s illness and tied to his bedside. He even, with a lover’s insight, inferred the remorse which she felt and her recoil from a continuance of their relations. Meanwhile he did not know what to do. He did not see any outlet. He was in an impasse with no prospect of delivery. And while he felt that Arthur had behaved ungenerously, while he even suspected that his friend had taken the credit which was his own due, he had no clue to his motives, or his schemes.It was Betty who first saw into the dark place. For one day, longing as lovers long for a confidante, he had told her all, from the first meeting with Josina to his final parting from the girl by the brook, and his brief and unfortunate interview with her father on the road. The romance charmed Betty, the audacity of it dazzled her; for, a woman, she perceived more clearly than Clement the gulf between the town and the country, the new and the old. She listened to his tale with sighs and tears and little endearments, and led him on from one thing to another. She could not hear too much of a story that hardly a woman alive could have heard with indifference. She praised Josina to the top of his bent, and if she could not give him much hope, she gave sympathy.And, shrewdly, in her own mind she put things together. “Arthur is off with the old love,” she thought, “and on with the new.” He had changed sides, and that explained many things. So, with hardly any premises, she jumped to a conclusion so nearly correct that, could Arthur have read her mind, he would have winced even more than he did under the thrusts of her satire.But she did not tell Clement. Her suspicions were not founded on reason, and they would only alarm him, and he was gloomy enough as it was. Instead, she cheered him and bade him be patient. Something might turn up, and in no case could much be done until the Squire was well enough to leave his room.At bottom she was not hopeful. She saw arrayed between Clement and his love a host of difficulties, apart from Arthur’s machinations. The pride of class, the old man’s obstinacy, the young girl’s timidity, Josina’s wealth—these were obstacles hard to surmount. And Arthur was on the spot ready to raise new barriers, should these be overcome.
The week in early June which witnessed Arthur’s return to his seat at the bank—that and the following week which saw his mother’s five thousand pounds paid over for his share in the concern—saw the tide of prosperity which during two years had been constantly swelling, reach its extreme point. The commerce and wealth of the country, as they rose higher and higher in this flood-time of fortune, astonished even the casual observer. Their increase seemed to be without limit; they answered to every call. They not only filled the old channels, but over-ran them, irrigating, in appearance at least, a thousand fields hitherto untilled. Abroad, the flag of commerce was said to fly where it had never flown before; its clippers brought merchandise not only from the Indies, East and West, and tea from China, and wool from Sydney, and rich stuffs from the Levant, but Argosies laden with freight still more precious were—or were reported to be—on their way from that new Southern continent on the opening of which to British trade so many hopes depended. The gold and silver of Peru, the diamonds of Brazil, the untapped wealth of the Plate were believed to be afloat and ready to be exchanged for the produce of our looms and spindles, our ovens and forges.
Nor was that produce likely to fail, for at home the glow of foundries, working night-shifts, lit up the northern sky, and in many a Lancashire or Yorkshire dale, old factories, brought again into service, shook, almost to falling, under the thunder of the power-loom. Mills and mines, potteries and iron-works changed hands from day to day, at ever-rising prices. Men who had never invested before, save in the field at their gate, or the house under their eyes, rushed eagerly to take shares in these ventures, and in thousands of offices and parlors conned their securities, summed up the swelling total of their gains, and rushed to buy and buy again, with a command of credit which seemed to have no bottom.
To provide that credit, the banks widened their operations, increased, on the security of stocks ever rising in value, their over-drafts, issued batch after batch of fresh notes. The most cautious admitted that accommodation must keep step with trade; and the huge strides which this was making, the changed conditions, the wider outlook, the calling in of the new world to augment the wealth of the old—all seemed to demand an advance which promised to be as profitable as it was warranted. To the ordinary eye the sun of prosperity shone in an unclouded sky. Even the experienced, though they scanned the heavens with care, saw nothing to dismay them. Only here and there an old fogey whose memory went back to the crisis of ’93, or to the famous Black Monday of twenty years earlier, uttered a note of warning; or some mechanical clerk, of the stamp of Rodd, sunk in a rut of routine, muttered of Accommodation Bills where his employer saw only legitimate trade. But their croakings, feeble at best, were lost in the joyous babble of an Exchange, enriched by commissions, and drunk with success.
It was a new era. It was the age of gold. It was the fruit of conditions long maturing. Men’s labor, aided by machinery, was henceforth to be so productive that no man need be poor, all might be rich. Experts, reviewing the progress which had been made and the changes which had been wrought during the last fifty years, said these things; and the vulgar took them up and repeated them. The Bank of England acted as if they were true. The rate of discount was low.
And while all men thus stretched out their hands to catch the golden manna Aldersbury was not idle. The appetite for gain grows by what it feeds upon and Aldersbury appetites had been whetted by early successes in their own field. The woollen mills, sharing in the general prosperity of the last two years, had done well, and more than one mill had changed hands at unheard-of prices. The Valleys were said to be full of money which, or part of it, trickled into the town, improving a trade already brisk. Many had made large gains by outside speculations and had boasted of them. Report had multiplied their profits, others had joined in and they too had gained, and their gains had fired the greed of their neighbors. Some had followed up their first successes. Others prepared to extend their businesses, built new premises, put in new-fangled glass windows, and by their action gave an impetus to subordinate trades, and spread still farther the sense of well-being.
On the top of all this had come the Valleys Railroad Scheme, backed by Ovington’s Bank, and offering to everyone a chance of speculating on his door-step: a scheme which while it appealed to local pride, had a specious look of safety, since the railway was to be built under the shareholders’ own eyes, across the fields they knew, and by men whom they saw going in and out every day.
There was a great run on it. Some of the gentry, following the old Squire’s example, held aloof, but others put their hundreds into it, not much believing in it but finding it an amusing gamble. The townsfolk took it more seriously, with the result that a week after allotment the shares were changing hands at a premium of thirty shillings and there was still a busy market in them. Some who, tempted by the premium, sold at a profit suspected as soon as they had sold that they had thrown away their one chance of wealth, and went into the market and bought again, and so the rise was maintained and even extended. More than once Ovington put in a word of caution, reminding his customers that the first sod was not yet cut, that all the work was to do, that even the Bill was not yet passed. But his warnings were disregarded.
To the majority it seemed a short and easy way to fortune, and they wondered that they had been so simple in the past as to know nothing of it. It was by this way, they now saw, that Ovington had risen to wealth, while they, poor fools, not yet admitted to the secret, had gaped and wondered. And what a secret it was! To rise in the morning richer by fifty pounds than they had gone to bed! To retire at night with another fifty as good as in the bank, or in the old and now despised stocking! The slow increment of trade seemed mean and despicable beside their hourly growing profits, made while men slept or dined, made, as a leading tradesman pithily said, while they wore out their breeches on their chairs! Few troubled themselves about the Bill, or the cutting of the first sod, or considered how long it would be before the railroad was at work! Fewer still asked themselves whether this untried scheme would ever pay. It was enough for them that the shares were ever rising, that men were always to be found to buy them at the current price, and that they themselves were growing richer week by week.
For the directors these were great days! They walked Bride Hill and the Market Place with their heads high and their toes turned out. They talked in loud voices in the streets. They got together in corners and whispered, their brows heavy with the weight of affairs. They were great men. The banker, it is true, did not like the pitch to which the thing was being carried, but it was his business to wear a cheerful face, and he had no misgivings to speak of, though he knew that success was a long way off. And even on him the prosperity of the venture had some effect. Sir Charles and Acherley, too, were not of those who openly exulted; it is possible that the latter sold a few shares, or even a good many shares.
But Purslow and Grounds and Wolley? Who shall describe the importance which sat upon their brows, the dignity of their strut, the gravity of their nod, the mock humility of their reticence? Never did they go in or go out without the consciousness that the eyes of passers-by were upon them! Theirs to make men’s fortunes by a hint—and their bearing betrayed that they knew it. Purslow’s apron was discarded, no longer did he come out to customers in the street; if he still rubbed one hand over the other it was in self-content. Grounds was dazzled, and wore his Sunday clothes on week-days. Wolley, always a braggart, swaggered and talked, closed his eyes to his commitments and remembered only his gains. He talked of buying another mill, he even entered into a negotiation with that in view. He was convinced that safety lay in daring, and that this was the golden moment, if he would free himself from the net of debt that for years had been weaving itself about him.
He assumed the airs of a rich man, but he was not the worst. The draper, if more honest, had less brains, and success threw him off his balance. “A little country ’ouse,” he said, speaking among his familiars. “I’m thinking of buying a little country ’ouse. Two miles from town. A nice distance.” He recalled the fact that the founder of Sir Charles’s family had been Mayor of Aldersbury in the days of Queen Bess, and had bought the estate with money made in the town. “Who knows,” with humility—“my lad’s a good lad—what may come of it? After all there is nothing like land.”
Grounds shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t double——”
“Double itself in a month, Grounds? No. But all in good time. All in good time. ’Istory repeats itself. My lad may be a parliament-man, yet. I saw Ovington this morning.” Two months before it would have been “Mr. Ovington.” “He’s sold those Anglo-Mexicans for me and it beats all! A gold-mine! Bought at forty, sold at seventy-two! He wanted me to pay off the bank, but not I, Grounds. When you can borrow at seven and double the money in a month! No, no! Truth is, he’s jealous. He gets only seven per cent. and sees me coining! Of course he wants his money. No, no, I said.”
Grounds looked doubtful. He was too cautious to operate on borrowed money. “I don’t know. After all, enough is as good as a feast, Purslow.”
Purslow prodded him playfully. “Ay, but what is enough?” he chuckled. “No. We’ve been let in and I mean to stay in. There’s plenty of fools grubbing along in the old way, but you and me, we are inside now, Grounds, and I mean to stay in. The days of five per cent are gone for you and me. Gone! ’Twarn’t by five per cent. that Ovington got where he is.”
“My wife wants a silk dress.”
“Let ’er ’ave it! And come to me for it! You can afford it!” He strutted off. “Grounds all over!” he muttered. “Close; d—d close! Hasn’t the pluck of a mouse—and a year ago he could buy me twice over!” In fancy he saw his Jack a college-man and counsellor, and by and by he passed various parks and halls before his mental vision and saw Jack seated in them, saw him Sir John Purslow, saw him Member for Aldersbury. He held his head high as he marched across the street to his shop, jingling the silver in his fob. Queen Bess, indeed, what were Queen Bess’s days to these?
But a man cannot talk big without paying for the luxury. The draper’s foreman asked for higher wages; his second hand also. Purslow gave the rise, but, reminded that their pay was in arrear, “No, Jenkins, no,” he said. “You must wait. Hang it, man, do you think I’ve nothing better to do with my money in these days than pay you fellows to the day? ’Ere! ’ere’s a pound on account. Let it run! Let it run! All in good time, man. Fancy my credit’s good enough?”
And instead of meeting the last acceptance that he’d given to his cloth-merchant, he took it up with another bill at two months—a thing he had never done before. “Credit! Credit’s the thing in these days,” he said, winking. “Cash? Excuse me! Out of date, man, with them that knows. Credit’s the ’orse!”
Arthur Bourdillon wore his honors more modestly, and courted the mean with success. But even he felt the intoxication of this noontide prosperity. At Garth he had doubted, and suffered scruples to weigh with him. But no sooner had he returned to the bank than the atmosphere of money enveloped him, and discerning that it was now in his power to make the best of two worlds, hitherto inconsistent, he plunged with gusto into the business. As secretary of the company he was a person to be courted; as a partner, now recognized, in the bank, he was more. He felt himself capable of all, for had not all succeeded with him? And awake to the fact that the times were abnormal—though he did not deduce from this the lesson he should have drawn—he thanked his stars that he was there to profit by them, and to make the most of them.
He was beyond doubt an asset to the bank. His birth, his manners, his good looks, the infection of his laugh made him a favorite with gentle and simple. And then he worked. He had energy, he was tireless, no task was too hard or too long for him. But he labored under one disadvantage, though he did not know it. He had had experience of the rise, not of the fall. As far back as he had been connected with Ovington’s, trade had continued to expand, things had gone well; and by nature he was sanguine and leant towards the bold policy. He threw his weight on that side, and, able and self-confident, he made himself felt. Even Ovington yielded to the thrust of his opinion, was swayed by him, and at times, perhaps, put a little out of his course.
Not that Arthur was without his troubles. Naturally and inevitably a cloud had fallen on the relation, friendly hitherto, between him and Clement. Clement had grown cool to him, and the change was unwelcome, for it was in Arthur’s nature to love popularity and to thrive and to bask in the sunshine of it. But it could not be helped. Without breaking eggs one could not make omelettes. Clement blamed him, he knew, feeling, and with reason, that what he had done deserved acknowledgment, and that it lay with Arthur to see that justice was done. And Arthur, for his part, would have gladly acquitted himself of the debt had it consisted with his own interests. But it did not.
Had he suspected the tie between Clement and Josina he might have acted otherwise. He might have foreseen the possibility of Clement’s gaining the old man’s ear, might have scented danger, and played a more cautious game. But he knew nothing of this. Garth and Clement stood apart in his mind. Clement and Josina were as far as he knew barely acquainted. He was aware, therefore, of no special reason why Clement should desire to stand well at Garth, while he felt sure that his friend was the last person to push a claim, or to thrust himself uninvited on the Squire’s gratitude.
Accordingly, and the more as the banker had not himself taken up the quarrel, he put it aside as of no great importance. He shrugged his shoulders and told himself that Clement would come round. The cloud would pass, and its cause be forgotten.
In the meantime he ignored it. He met Clement’s hostility with bland unconsciousness, smiled and was pleasant. He was too busy a man to be troubled by trifles. He was not going to be turned from his course by the passing frown of a silly fellow, who could not hold an advantage when he had won it.
Betty was another matter. Betty was behaving ill and showing temper, in league apparently with her brother and sympathizing with him. She was changed from the Betty of old days. He had lost his hold upon her, and though this fell in well enough with the change in his views—or the possible change, for he had not quite made up his mind—it pricked his conceit as much as it surprised him. Moreover, the girl had a sharp tongue and was not above using it, so that more than once he smarted under its lash.
“Fine feathers make fine birds!” she said, as Arthur came bounding into the house one day and all but collided with her. “Only they should be your own, Mr. Daw!”
“Oh, I give your father all the credit,” he replied, “only I do some of the work. But you used not to be so critical, Betty.”
“No? Well, I’ll tell you why if you like.”
“Oh, I don’t want to know.”
“No, I don’t think you do!” the girl retorted. “But I’ll tell you. I thought your feathers were your own then. Now—I should be uneasy if I were you.”
“Why?”
“You might fall among crows and be plucked. I can tell you, you’d be a sorry sight in your own feathers!”
He turned a dusky red. The shaft had gone home, but he tried to hide the wound. “A dull bird, eh?” he said, affecting to misunderstand her. “Well, I thought you liked dull birds. I couldn’t be duller than Rodd, and you don’t find fault with him.”
It was a return shot, aimed only to cover his retreat. But the shot told in a way that surprised him. Betty reddened to her hair, and her eyes snapped.
“At any rate, Mr. Rodd is what he seems!” she cried.
“Oh! oh!”
“He’s not hollow!”
“No! Of course not. A most witty, bright, amusing gentleman, the pink of fashion, and—what is it?—the mould of form! Hollow? Oh, no, Betty, very solid, I should say—and stolid!” with a grin. “Not a roaring blade, perhaps—I could hardly call him that, but a sound, substantial, wooden—gentleman! I am sure that your father values him highly as a clerk, and would value him still more highly as——”
“What?”
“I need not put it into words—but it lies with you to qualify him for the post. Rodd? Well, well, times are changed, Betty! But we live and learn.”
“You have a good deal to learn,” she cried, bristling with anger, “about women!”
He got away then, retiring in good order and pleased that he had not had the worst of it; hoping, too, that he had closed the little spitfire’s mouth. But there he found himself mistaken. The young lady was of a high courage, and perhaps had been a little spoiled. Where she once felt contempt she made no bones about showing it, and whenever they met, her frankness, sharpened by a woman’s intuition, kept him on tenter-hooks.
“You seem to think very ill of me,” he said once. “And yet you trouble yourself a good deal about me.”
“You make a mistake!” she replied. “I am not troubling myself about you. I’m thinking of my father.”
“Ah! Now you are out of my reach. That’s beyond me.”
“I wish he were!”
“He knows his own business.”
“I hope he does!” she riposted. And though it was the memory of Rodd’s warning that supplied the dart, the animosity that sped it had another source. The truth was that her brother had at last taken her into his confidence.
It was not without great unhappiness that he had seen all the hopes which he had built upon the Squire’s gratitude come to nothing. He had hoped, and for a time had been even confident; but nothing had happened, no message, no summons had reached him. The events of that night might have been a dream, as far as he was concerned. Yet he could not see his way to blow his own trumpet, or proclaim what he had done. He stood no better than before, and indeed his position was worse.
For as long as the Squire lay bedridden and ill he could not go to him. Even when the report came that he was mending, Clement hesitated. To go to him, basing his claim on what had happened, to go to him and tell the story, as he must, with his own lips—this presented difficulties from which a man with delicate feelings might well shrink!
Meanwhile a veil had fallen between him and Josina. He had sworn that he would not see her again until he could claim her, and he supposed her to be engrossed by her father’s illness and tied to his bedside. He even, with a lover’s insight, inferred the remorse which she felt and her recoil from a continuance of their relations. Meanwhile he did not know what to do. He did not see any outlet. He was in an impasse with no prospect of delivery. And while he felt that Arthur had behaved ungenerously, while he even suspected that his friend had taken the credit which was his own due, he had no clue to his motives, or his schemes.
It was Betty who first saw into the dark place. For one day, longing as lovers long for a confidante, he had told her all, from the first meeting with Josina to his final parting from the girl by the brook, and his brief and unfortunate interview with her father on the road. The romance charmed Betty, the audacity of it dazzled her; for, a woman, she perceived more clearly than Clement the gulf between the town and the country, the new and the old. She listened to his tale with sighs and tears and little endearments, and led him on from one thing to another. She could not hear too much of a story that hardly a woman alive could have heard with indifference. She praised Josina to the top of his bent, and if she could not give him much hope, she gave sympathy.
And, shrewdly, in her own mind she put things together. “Arthur is off with the old love,” she thought, “and on with the new.” He had changed sides, and that explained many things. So, with hardly any premises, she jumped to a conclusion so nearly correct that, could Arthur have read her mind, he would have winced even more than he did under the thrusts of her satire.
But she did not tell Clement. Her suspicions were not founded on reason, and they would only alarm him, and he was gloomy enough as it was. Instead, she cheered him and bade him be patient. Something might turn up, and in no case could much be done until the Squire was well enough to leave his room.
At bottom she was not hopeful. She saw arrayed between Clement and his love a host of difficulties, apart from Arthur’s machinations. The pride of class, the old man’s obstinacy, the young girl’s timidity, Josina’s wealth—these were obstacles hard to surmount. And Arthur was on the spot ready to raise new barriers, should these be overcome.