Josina had put a brave face on the matter, but when she came down to
breakfast on the Monday, the girl was almost sick with apprehension.
Her hands were cold, and as she sat at table she could not raise her
eyes from her plate. The habit of years is not to be overcome in an
hour, and that which the girl had to face was beyond doubt formidable.
She had passed out of childhood, but in that house she was still a
child. She was expected to be silent, to efface herself before her
elders, to have no views but their views, and no wishes that went
beyond theirs. Her daily life was laid out for her, and she must
conform or she would be called to heel. On love and marriage she must
have no mind of her own, but must think as her father permitted. If he
chose she would be her cousin’s wife, if he did not choose the two
would be parted. She could guess how he would treat her if she resisted
his will, or even his whim, in that matter.
And now she must resist his will in a far worse case. Arthur was her
cousin. But Clement? She was not supposed even to know him. Yet she
must own him, she must avow her love for him, she must confess to
secret meetings with him and stolen interviews. She must be prepared
for looks of horror, for uplifted hands and scandalized faces, and to
hear shameful things said of him; to hear him spoken of as an upstart,
belonging to a class beneath her, a person with whom she ought never to
have come in contact, one whom her father would not think of admitting
to his table!
And through all, she who was so weak, so timid, so subject, must be
firm. She must not flinch.
As she sat at table she was conscious of her pale cheeks, and trembled
lest the others should notice them. She fancied that her father’s face
already wore an ominous gloom. “If you’ve orders for town,” he flung at
Miss Peacock as he rose, “you’ll need be quick with them. I’m going in
at ten.”
Miss Peacock was all of a flutter. “But I thought, sir, that the Bench
did not sit——”
“You’d best not think,” he retorted. “Ten, I said.”
That seemed to promise a blessed respite, and the color returned to
Josina’s cheeks. Clement could hardly arrive before eleven, and for
this day she might be safe. But on the heels of relief followed
reflection. The respite meant another sleepless night, another day of
apprehension, more hours of fear; the girl was glad and she was sorry.
The spirit warred with the flesh. She did not know what she wished.
And, after all, Clement might appear before ten. She watched the clock
and watched her father and in returning suspense hung upon his
movements. How he lingered, now hunting for a lost paper, now grumbling
over a seed-bill, now drawing on his boots with the old horn-handled
hooks which had been his father’s! And the clock—how slowly it moved!
It wanted eight, it wanted five, it wanted two minutes of ten. The hour
struck. And still the Squire loitered outside, talking to old
Fewtrell—when at any moment Clement might ride up!
The fact was that Thomas was late, and the Squire was saying what he
thought of him. “Confound him, he thinks, because he’s going, he can do
as he likes!” he fumed. “But I’ll learn him! Let me catch him in the
village a week after he leaves, and I’ll jail him for a vagrant! Such
impudence as he gave me the other day I never heard in my life! He’ll
go wide of here for a character!”
“I dunno as I’d say too much to him,” the old bailiff advised. “He’s a
queer customer, Squire, as you’d ought to have seen before now!”
“He’ll find me a queer customer if he starts spouting again! Why,
damme,” irritably, “one might almost think you agreed with him!”
Old Fewtrell screwed up his face. “No,” he said slowly, “I’m not saying
as I agree with him. But there’s summat in what he says, begging your
pardon, Squire.”
“Summat? Why, man,” in astonishment, “are you tarred with the same
brush?”
“You know me, master, better’n that,” the old man replied. “An’ I bin
with you fifty years and more. But, certain sure, times is changed and
we’re no better for the change.”
“But you get as much?”
“Mebbe in malt, but not in meal. In money, mebbe—I’m not saying a
little more, master. But here’s where ’tis. We’d the common before the
war, and run for a cow and geese, and wood for the picking, and if a
lad fancied to put up a hut on the waste ’twas five shillings a year;
and a rood o’ potato ground—it wasn’t missed. ’Twas neither here nor
there. But ’tisn’t so now. Where be the common? Well, you know, Squire,
laid down in wheat these twenty years, and if a lad squatted now, he’d
not be long of hearing of it. We’ve the money, but we’re not so well
off. That’s where ’tis.”
The Squire scowled. “Well, I’m d—d!” he said. “You’ve been with me
fifty years, and——” and then fortunately or unfortunately the curricle
came round and the Squire, despising Fewtrell’s hint, turned his wrath
upon the groom, called him a lazy scoundrel, and cursed him up hill and
down dale.
The man took it in silence, to the bailiff’s surprise, but his sullen
face did not augur well for the day, and when he had climbed to the
back-seat—with a scramble and a grazed knee, for the Squire started the
horses with no thought for him—he shook his fist at the old man’s back.
Fewtrell saw the gesture, and felt a vague uneasiness, for he had heard
Thomas say ugly things. But then the man had been in liquor, and
probably he didn’t mean them.
The Squire rattled the horses down the steep drive with the confidence
of one who had done the same thing a thousand times. Turning to the
left a furlong beyond the gate, he made for Garthmyle where, at the
bridge, he fell into the highway. He had driven a mile along this when
he saw a horseman coming along the road to meet him, and he fell to
wondering who it was. His sight was good at a distance, and he fancied
that he had seen the young spark before, though he could not put a name
to him. But he saw that he rode a good nag, and he was not surprised
when the other reined up and, raising his hat, showed that he wished to
speak.
It was Clement, of course, and with a little more wisdom or a little
less courage he would not have stopped the old man. He would have seen
that the moment was not propitious, and that his business could hardly
be done on the highway. But in his intense eagerness to set himself
right, and his anxiety lest chance should forestall him, he dared not
let the opportunity pass, and his hand was raised before he had well
considered what he would say.
The Squire pulled up his horses. “D’you want me?” he asked, civilly
enough.
“If I may trouble you, sir,” Clement answered as bravely as he could.
“It’s on important business, or—or I wouldn’t detain you.” Already, his
heart in his mouth, he saw the difficulty in which he had placed
himself. How could he speak before the man? Or on the road?
The Squire considered him. “Business, eh?” he said. “With me? Well, I
know your face, young gentleman, but I can’t put a name to you.”
“I am Mr. Ovington’s son, Clement Ovington, sir.”
All the Squire’s civility left him. “The devil you are!” he exclaimed.
“Well, I’m going to the bank. I like to do my business across the
counter, young sir, to be plain, and not in the road.”
“But this is business—of a different sort, sir,” Clement stammered,
painfully aware of the change in the other’s tone, as well as of the
servant, who was all a-grin behind his master’s shoulder. “If I could
have a word with you—apart, sir? Or perhaps—if I called at Garth
tomorrow?”
“Why?”
“It is upon private business, Mr. Griffin,” Clement replied, his face
burning.
“Did your father send you?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t see,” the Squire replied, scowling at him from under his
bushy eyebrows, “what business you can have with me. There can be none,
young man, that can’t be done across the counter. It is only upon
business that I know your father, and I don’t know you at all. I don’t
know why you stopped me.”
Clement was scarlet with mortification. “If I could see you a few
minutes—alone, sir, I think I could explain what it is.”
“You will see me at the bank in an hour,” the old man retorted.
“Anything you have to say you can say there. As it is, I am going to
close my account with your father, and after that the less I hear your
name the better I shall be pleased. At present you’re wasting my time.
I don’t know why you stopped me. Good morning.” And in a lower tone,
but one that was perfectly audible to Clement, “D—d young
counterskipper,” he muttered, as he started the horses. “Business with
me, indeed! Confound his impudence!”
He drove off at speed, leaving Clement seated on his horse in the
middle of the road, a prey to feelings that may be imagined. He had
made a bad beginning, and his humiliation was complete.
“Young counterskipper!” That rankled—yet in time he might smile at
that. But the tone, and the manner, the conviction that under no
circumstances could there be anything between them, any relations, any
equality—this bit deeper and wounded more permanently. The Squire’s
view, that he addressed one of another class and another grade, one
with whom he could have no more in common than with the servant behind
him, could not have been made more plain if he had known the object of
the lad’s application.
If he had known it! Good heavens, if he said so much now, what would he
have said in that case? Certainly, the task which love had set this
young man was not an easy one. No wonder Josina had been frightened.
He had—he had certainly made a mess of it. His ears burned, as he sat
on his horse and recalled the other’s words.
Meanwhile the Squire drove on, and with the air and movement he
recovered his temper. As he drew near to the town the market-traffic
increased, and sitting high on his seat he swept by many a humble gig
and plodding farm-cart, and acknowledged with a flicker of his
whip-hand many a bared head and hasty obeisance. He was not loved; men
who are bent on getting a pennyworth for their penny are not loved. But
he was regardful of his own people, and in all companies he was
fearless and could hold his own. Men did not love him, but they trusted
him, knowing exactly what they might expect from him. And he was
Griffin of Garth, one of the few in whose hands were all county power
and all county influence. As he drove down the hill toward the West
Bridge, seeing with the eye of memory the airy towers and lofty
gateways of the older bridge that had once stood there and for
centuries had bridled the wild Welsh, his bodily eyes noted the team of
the out-going coach which he had a share in horsing. And the coachman,
proudly and with respect, named him to the box-seat.
From the bridge the town, girdled by the shining river, climbs
pyramid-wise up the sides of a cleft hill, an ancient castle guarding
the one narrow pass by which a man may enter it on foot. The smiling
plain, in the midst of which it rises, is itself embraced at a distance
by a ring of hills, broken at one point only, which happens to
correspond with the guarded isthmus; on which side, and some four miles
away, was fought many centuries ago a famous battle. It is a proud
town, looking out over a proud county, a county still based on ancient
tradition, on old names and great estates, standing solid and
four-square against the invasion that even in the Squire’s day
threatened it—invasion of new men and new money, of Birmingham and
Liverpool and Manchester. The airy streets and crowded shuts run down
on all sides from the Market Place to the green meadows and leafy
gardens that the river laps: green meadows on which the chapels and
quiet cloisters of religious houses once nestled under the shelter of
the walls.
The Squire could remember the place when his father and his like had
had their town houses in it, and in winter had removed their families
to it; when the weekly Assemblies at the Lion had been gay with cards
and dancing, and in the cockpit behind the inn mains of cocks had been
fought with the Gentlemen of Cheshire or Staffordshire; when fine
ladies with long canes and red-heeled shoes had promenaded under the
lime trees beside the river, and the town in its season had been a
little Bath. Those days, and the lumbering coaches-and-six which had
brought in the families, were gone, and the staple of the town, its
trade in woollens and Welsh flannels, was also on the decline. But it
was still a thriving place, and if the county people no longer filled
it in winter, their stately houses survived, and older houses than
theirs, of brick and timber, quaint and gabled, that made the streets a
joy to antiquaries.
The Squire passed by many a one, with beetling roof and two-storied
porch, as he drove up Maerdol. His first and most pressing business was
at the bank, and he would not be himself until he had got it off his
mind. He would show that d—d Ovington what he thought of him! He would
teach him a lesson—luring away that young man and pouching his money.
Ay, begad he would!