Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/319

 312 aforesaid, a woman with a parti-coloured face, the result of cold and sorrow, and a lean, hungry man with long pale face, restive eyes, and a nose acutely accented with cold.

Whistle! puff! puff! The fog was transparent to the distance of about fifty yards either side of the windows, discovering a limited roof-view of Lambeth, damp through to the rafters. But, clear of London, the fog changed to cold, white mist, which the sun gradually broke into masses of pearl light, and the east wind blew away in wreaths that caught awhile in hedgerows and low woodlands, till at last sun and east wind together made the whole landscape clear and bright to the horizon.

During the latter part of February one topic had warmed London through and through—the smash of the Anglian Bank. Such mercantile depravity! Why, the very thought of it circulated the blood to the tips of your fingers; consequently, no matter afforded conversation more comfortable for a cold morning.

Conversation commenced thus: good-natured agriculturist to surly ditto:

“Zalisbury Market?”

“Hum!”

“Know Jack Sprot?”

“Hum!”

“Done up!”

“Hum!”

“That bank did it!”

“Hum!”

“Beg your pardon!” exclaimed the lean man, breaking into the conversation; “depositor or shareholder?”

“Depositor, I think.”

“Shareholder!” grunted the surly man.

“So he is!” cried the lean man, consulting a list in a newspaper. ‘James Sprot, farmer.’ Not one shall escape!” he added, his eyes gleaming fiercely.

“Oh, Smithers! it’s carnal to talk so,” sobbed the woman.

“I say not one shall escape!” retorted the lean man, savage with his wife’s rebuke. “Look’ee here, gentlemen, last week I’d a snug little shop doing a brisk trade in coals.”

“And the green line!” cried the woman.

“And milk!” added the man, his eyes growing still fiercer.

“Wood and eggs!” sobbed the woman.

“I’d put in a new shop-front!”

“And Smithers used to preach at the Duck Chapel, and they’d come to me, this ‘ooman’ and that ‘ooman,’ it was so blessed to hear the pure gospel, and one would buy an egg, and another a ‘ha’porth’ of milk—it all helped.”

And the woman’s voice sunk in a flood of tears.

“Have a drop of ‘summut,’ mother,” said the good-natured agriculturist passing the “pocket-pistol.”

“I’d have them all punished, I would, directors and shareholders and all!” thundered the lean man, after taking the “pistol” from his wife, and indulging in a long sip.

“And what did you lose by the bank?” inquired Westby.

“Oh, sir! all our credit,” said the woman, gradually reviving.

“But your balance?”

“It was our credit we cared for!” exclaimed the man, bridling up.

“Why, sir, what with that shop-front and all, they’d been accommodating us a little. I will speak out, Smithers!”

“I feared you’d lost a deal of money,” said the good-natured agriculturist, laughing.

“So I have, sir!” retorted the lean man, firing up. “Credit is money—every child knows that.”

And the lean man, being touched to the quick, proved with that fervid eloquence which had excited the Duck congregation, that credit, and not capital, was the true basis of mercantile transactions.

“Jack Sprot,” grunted the surly man to his neighbour, “you don’t chance to know his whereabouts, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” was the dry reply, “and if I did I should not tell.”

“Oh! it’s no consequence, only I knows a party as wants to pay him a rather heavy balance on a corn account—that’s all.”

“Any luggage?” inquired the porter of the surly man at the Salisbury station.

“No!”

Then why did the surly man hang about so while Westby was engaging his fly?

“Ouze ’ouse at Wishford?” inquired the flyman, turning round on his box. “I’ze zard a’ yearing.”

“Mrs. Wilson’s.”

A gleam of satisfaction lighted up the surly man’s face.

“Confound that fellow!” muttered Westby; “there’s a queer mosaic look in his face, and his wanting to know the whereabouts of that man Sprot—it’s rather suspicious.”

The district of Salisbury Plain is on this wise—bleak down, intersected with valleys; bleak down, but not barren, corn-land here and there on the highest ground; green valleys, with trout-streams and water-meadows, and in these valleys a succession of villages where dwell the tillers of the bleak down, the shepherds, and their masters, the owners of the many thousand sheep which feed on the steep down slopes.

Westby’s route lay along one of these valleys through Wilton. The day was so gloriously sunny that it needed the east wind to record the season of the year. To the left of the turnpike-road, somewhat less than two miles distant, lay the high down line of Salisbury race-course, and on a lower road running parallel with the turnpike, with a goodly cultivation between the two roads, was a straggling line of cottages—George Herbert’s Bemerton, and Quidhampton—with simmering smoke amid the leafless trees, and sparkling water-gleams from the winding river and the water-meadows in the rear. Then on, beneath the shadow of Wilton Park wall, and skirting the town of Wilton, into the open valley again, with a glimpse of the white Byzantine tower of Wilton church across the water-meadows, and so along the valley with a trout-stream hard by the road,