“I wun’t do it! I wun’t do it!” the Squire muttered stubbornly. “Mud
and blood’ll never mix. Shape the chip as you will, ’tis part of the
block! Girls’ whimsies are women’s aches, and they that’s older must
judge for them. She’d only repent of it when ’twas too late, and I’ve
paid my debt and there’s an end of it.”
From the hour of that scene at Ovington’s he had begun to recover. From
that moment he began to wear a stiff upper lip and to give his orders
in hard, sharp tones, as he had been wont to give them in days when he
could see; as if, in truth, his irruption into the life of the town and
his action at the bank had re-established him in his own eyes. Those
about him were quick to see the change—he had taken, said they, a new
lease of life. “Maybe, ’tis just a flicker,” Calamy observed
cautiously; but even he had to admit that the flame burned higher for a
time, and privately he advised the new man who filled Thomas’s place
“to hop it when the master spoke,” or he’d hop it to some purpose.
The result was that there was a general quickening up in the old house.
The master’s hand was felt, and things moved to a livelier time. To
some extent pride had to do with this, for the rumor of the Squire’s
doings in Aldersbury had flown far and wide and made him the talk of
the county. He had saved the bank. He had averted ruin from hundreds.
He had saved the country-side. He had paid in thirty, forty, fifty
thousand pounds. Naturally his people were proud of him.
And doubtless the bold part he had played had given the old man a
fillip; others had stood by, while he, blind as he was, had asserted
himself, and acted, and rescued his neighbors from a great misfortune.
But the stiffness he showed was not due to this only. It was assumed to
protect himself. “I wun’t do it! I wun’t do it! It’s not i’ reason,” he
told himself over and over again; and in his own mind he fought a
perpetual battle. On the one side contended the opinions of a lifetime
and the prejudices of a caste, the beliefs in which he had been brought
up, and a pride of birth that had come down from an earlier day; on the
other, the girl’s tremulous gratitude, her silence, the touch of her
hand on his sleeve, the sound of her voice, the unceasing appeal of her
presence.
Ay, and there were times when he was so hard put to it that he groaned
aloud. No man was more of a law to himself, but at these times he fell
back on the views of others. What would Woosenham say of it? How would
he hold up his hands? And Chirbury—whose peerage he respected, since it
was as old as his own family, if he thought little of the man? And
Uvedale and Cludde? Ay, and Acherley, who, rotten fellow as he was, was
still Acherley of Acherley? They had held the fort so stoutly in
Aldshire, they had repelled the moneyed upstarts so proudly, they had
turned so cold a shoulder on Manchester and Birmingham! They had found
in their Peninsular hero, and in that little country churchyard where
the maker of an empire lay resting after life’s fever, so complete a
justification for their own claims to leadership and to power! And no
one had been more steadfast, more dogged, more hide-bound in their
pride and exclusiveness than he.
Now, if he gave way, what would they say? What laughter would there not
be from one end of the county to the other, what sneers, what talk of
an old man’s folly and an old man’s weakness! For it was not even as if
the man’s father had been a Peel or the like, a Baring or a Smith! A
small country banker, a man just risen from the mud—not even a stranger
from a distance, or a merchant prince from God knows where! Oh, it was
impossible. Impossible! Garth, that had been in the hands of
gentlefolk, of Armigeri from Harry the Eighth, to pass into the hands,
into the blood of—no, it was impossible! All the world of Aldshire
would jeer at it, or be scandalized by it.
“I wun’t do it!” said the Squire for the hundredth time. It was more
particularly at the thought of Acherley that he squirmed. He despised
Acherley, and to be despised by Acherley—that was too much!
“Of course,” said a small voice within him, “he would take the name of
Griffin, and in time——”
“Mud’s mud,” replied the Squire silently. “You can’t change it.”
“But he’s honest,” quoth the small voice.
“So’s Calamy!”
“He saved——”
“And I ha’ paid him! Damme, I ha’ paid him! Ha’ done!” And then, “It’s
that blow on the head has moithered me!”
Things went on in this way for a month, the Squire renewing his vigor
and beginning to tramp his fields again, or with the new man at his
bridle-hand to ride the old grey from point to point, learning what the
men were doing, inquiring after gaps, and following the manure to the
clover-ley, where the oats and barley would presently go in. Snow lay
on the upper hills, grizzling the brown sheets of bracken, and dappling
the green velvet of the sloping ling; the valley below was frost-bound.
But the Squire had a fire within him, a fire of warring elements, that
kept his blood running. He was very sharp with the men and scolded old
Fewtrell. As for Thomas’s successor, the lad learned to go warily and
kept his tongue between his teeth.
The girl had never complained; it seemed as if that which he had done
for her had silenced her, as if, she, too, had taken it for payment.
But one day she was not at table, and Miss Peacock cut up his meat. She
did not do it to his mind—no hand but Jos’s could do it to his mind—and
he was querulous and dissatisfied.
“I’m sure it’s small enough, sir,” Miss Peacock answered, feebly
defending herself. “You said you liked it small, Mr. Griffin.”
“I never said I liked mince-meat! Where is the girl? What ails her?”
“It’s nothing, sir. She’s been looking a little peaky the last week or
two. That’s all. And to-day——”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s only a headache, sir. She’ll be well enough when the spring
comes. Josina was always nesh—like her mother.”
The Squire huddled his spoon and fork together, and pushed his plate
away, muttering something about d—d sausage meat. Her mother? How old
had her mother been when she—he could not remember, but certainly a
mere child beside him. Twenty-five or so, he thought. And she was nesh,
was she? He sat, shaving his chin with unsteady fingers, eating
nothing; and when Calamy, hovering over his plate, hinted that he had
not finished, he blew the butler out of the room with a blast of
language that made Miss Peacock, hardened as she was, hold up her
hands. And though Jos was at breakfast next morning, and answered his
grumpy questions as if nothing were amiss, a little seed of fear had
been sown in the Squire’s mind that grew as fast as Jonah’s gourd, and
before noon threatened to shut out the sun.
A silk purse could not be made out of a sow’s ear. But a good leather
purse, that might pass in time—the lad was stout and honest. And his
father, mud, certainly, and mud of the pretentious kind that the Squire
hated: mud that affected by the aid of gilding to pass for fine clay.
But honest? Well, in his own way, perhaps: it remained to be seen. And
times were changing, changing for the worse; but he could not deny that
they were changing. So gradually, slowly, unwelcome at the best, there
grew up in the old man’s mind the idea of surrender. If the money were
paid back, say in three months, say in six months—well, he would think
of it. He would begin to think of it. He would begin to think of it as
a thing possible some day, at some very distant date—if there were more
peakiness. The girl did not whine, did not torment him, did not
complain; and he thought the more of her for that. But if she ailed,
then, failing her, there was no one to come after him at Garth, no one
of his blood to follow him—except that Bourdillon whelp, and by G—d he
should not have an acre or a rood of it, or a pound of it. Never!
Never!
Failing her? The Squire felt the air turn cold, and he hung, shivering,
over the fire. What if, while he sought to preserve the purity of the
old blood, the old traditions, he cut the thread, and the name of
Griffin passed out of remembrance, as in his long life he had known so
many, many old names pass away—pass into limbo?
Ay, into limbo. He saw his own funeral procession crawl—a long black
snake—down the winding drive, here half-hidden by the sunken banks,
there creeping forth again into the light. He saw the bleak sunshine
fall on the pall that draped the farm-wagon, and heard the slow heavy
note of the Garthmyle bell, and the scuffling of innumerable feet that
alone broke the solemn silence. If she were not there at window or door
to see it go, or in the old curtained pew to await its coming—if the
church vault closed on him, the last of his race and blood!
He sat long, thinking of this.
And one day, nearly two months after his visit to the bank—in the
meantime he had been twice into town at the Bench—he was riding on the
land with Fewtrell at his stirrup, when the bailiff told him that there
was a stranger in the field.
“Which field?” he asked.
“Where they ha’ just lifted the turnips,” the man said. “Oh!” said the
Squire. “Who is it? What’s he doing there?”
“Well, I’m thinking,” said Fewtrell, “as it’s the young gent I’ve seen
here more ’n once. Same as asked me one day why we didn’t drill ’em in
wider.”
“The devil, he did!” the Squire exclaimed, kicking up the old mare, who
was leaning over sleepily.
“Called ’em Radicals,” said Fewtrell, grinning. “Them there Radical
Swedes,” says he. “Dunno what he meant. ‘If you plant Radicals, best
plant ’em Radical fashion,’ says he.”
“Devil he did!” repeated the Squire. “Said that, did he?”
“Ay, to be sure. He used to come across with a gun field-way from
Acherley; oh, as much as once a week I’d see him. And he’d know every
crop as we put in, a’most same as I did. Very spry he was about it,
I’ll say that.”
“Is it the banker’s son?” asked the Squire on a sudden suspicion.
“Well, I think he be,” Fewtrell answered, shading his eyes. “He be
going up to the house now.”
“Well, you can take me in,” to the groom. “I’ll go by the gap.”
The groom demurred timidly; the grey might leap at the gap. But the
Squire was obstinate, and the old mare, who knew he was blind as well
as any man upon the place, and knew, too, when she could indulge in a
frolic and when not, bore, him out delicately, stepping over the
thorn-stubs as if she walked on eggs.
He was at the door in the act of dismounting when Clement appeared.
“D’you want me?” the old man asked bluntly.’
“If you please, sir,” Clement answered. He had walked all the way from
Aldersbury, having much to think of and one question which lay heavy on
his mind. That was—how would it be with him when he walked back?
“Then come in.” And feeling for the door-post with his hand, the Squire
entered the house and turned with the certainty of long practice into
the dining-room. He walked to the table as firmly as if he could see,
and touching it with one hand he drew up with the other his chair. He
sat down. “You’d best sit,” he said grudgingly. “I can’t see, but you
can. Find a chair.”
“My father has sent me with the money,” Clement explained. “I have a
cheque here and the necessary papers. He would have come himself, sir,
to renew his thanks for aid as timely as it was generous and—and
necessary. But”—Clement boggled a little over the considered phrase, he
was nervous and his voice betrayed it—“he thought—I was to say——”
“It’s all there?”
“Yes, sir, principal and interest.”
“Have you drawn a receipt?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve brought one with me. But if you would prefer that it
should be paid to Mr. Welsh—my father thought that that might be so?”
“Umph! All there, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The old man did not speak for awhile. He seemed to be at a loss, and
Clement, who had other and more serious business on his mind, and had
his own reasons for feeling ill at ease, waited anxiously. He was
desperately afraid of making a false step.
Suddenly, “Who was your grandfather?” the Squire asked.
Clement started and colored. “He had the same name as my father,” he
said. “He was a clothier in Aldersbury.”
“Ay, I mind him. I mind him now. And his father, young man?”
“His name was Clement,” and foreseeing the next question, “he was a
yeoman at Easthope.”
“And his father?”
Clement reddened painfully. He saw only too well to what these
questions were tending. “I don’t know, sir,” he said.
“And you set up—you set up,” said the Squire, leaning forward and
speaking very slowly, “to marry my heiress?”
“No, sir, your daughter!” Clement said, his face burning. “If she’d not
a penny——”
“Pho! Don’t tell me!” the old man growled, and to Clement’s
surprise—whose ears were tingling—he relapsed into silence again. It
was a silence very ominous. It seemed to Clement that no silence had
ever been so oppressive, that no clock had ever ticked so loudly as the
tall clock that stood between the windows behind him. “You know,” said
the old man at last, “you’re a d—d impudent fellow. You’ve no birth,
you’re nobody, and I don’t know that you’ve much money. You’ve gone
behind my back and you’ve stole my girl. You’ve stole her! My father’d
ha’ shot you, and good reason, before he’d ha’ let it come to this. But
it’s part my fault,” with a sigh. “She’ve seen naught of the world and
don’t know the difference between silk and homespun or what’s fitting
for her. You’re nobody, and you’ve naught to offer—I’m plain, young
gentleman, and it’s better—but I believe you’re a man, and I believe
you’re honest.”
“And I love her!” Clement said softly, his eyes shining.
“Ay,” drily, “and maybe it would be better for her if her father
didn’t! But there it is. There it is. That’s all that’s to be said for
you.” He sat silent, looking straight before him with his sightless
eyes, his hands on the knob of his stick. “And I dunno as I make much
of that—’tis easy for a man to love a maid—but the misfortune is that
she thinks she loves you. Well, I’m burying things as have been much to
me all my life, things I never thought to lose or part from while I
lived. I’m burying them deep, and God knows I may regret it sorely. But
you may go to her. She’s somewhere about the place. But”—arresting
Clement’s exclamation as he rose to his feet—“you’ll ha’ to wait.
You’ll ha’ to wait till I say the word, and maybe ’tis all moonshine,
and she’ll see it is. Maybe ’tis all a girl’s whimsy, and when she
knows more of you she’ll find it out.”
“God bless you, sir!” Clement cried. “I’ll wait. I’m not afraid. I’ve
no fear of that. And if I can make myself worthy of her——”
“You’ll never do that,” said the old man sternly, as he bent lower over
his stick. He heard the door close and he knew that Clement had
gone—gone on wings, gone on feet lighter than thistle-down, gone, young
and strong, his pulses leaping, to his love.
The Squire was too old for tears, but his lip trembled. It was not
alone the sacrifice that he had made that moved him—the sacrifice of
his pride, his prejudices, his traditions. It was not only the
immolation of his own will, his hopes and plans—his cherished plans for
her. But he was giving her up. He was resigning that of which he had
only just learned the worth, that on which in his blindness he depended
every hour, that which made up all of youth and brightness and
cheerfulness that was left to him between this and the end. He had sent
the man to her, and they would think no more of him. And in doing this
he had belied every belief in which he had been brought up and the
faith which he had inherited from an earlier day—and maybe he had been
a fool!
But by and by it appeared that they had not forgotten him, or one, at
any rate, had not. He had not been alone five minutes before the door
opened behind him, and closed again, and he felt Josina’s arms round
his neck, her head on his breast. “Oh, father, I know, I know,” she
cried. “I know what you have done for me! And I shall never forget
it—never! And he is good. Oh, father, indeed, indeed, he is good!”
“There, there,” he said, stroking her head. “Go back to him. But, mind
you,” hurriedly, “I don’t promise anything yet. In a year, maybe, I’ll
talk about it.”
THE END