Brownlows

As for Sara, she would have said, had she been questioned, that she thought of nothing else all day; and in fact it was her prevailing pre-occupation. All the humiliations involved in it came gleaming across her mind by intervals. Her pride rose up in arms. She did not know as yet about the repetition or rather anticipation of her case which her brother had been guilty of. But she did ponder over the probable consequences. The hardest thing of all was that they would say it was the fault of her race, that she was only returning to her natural level, and that it was not wealth nor even admiration which could make true gentlefolks; all which were sentiments to which Sara would have subscribed willingly in any but her own case. When Powys arrived with Mr. Brownlow in the evening, she received him with a stateliness that chilled the poor young fellow to his heart. And he too had so many thoughts, and just at that moment was wondering with an intensity which put all the others to shame how it could possibly end, and what his honor required of him, and what sort of a grey and weary desert life would be after this dream was over. It seemed to him absolutely as if the dream was coming to an end that night. Jack, who was never very courteous to the visitor, left them immediately after dinner, and Mr. Brownlow retired to the library for some time, and Powys had no choice but to go where his heart had gone before him, up to the drawing-room where Sara sat alone. Of course she ought to have had a chaperone; but then this young man, being only a clerk from the office, did not count.

She was seated in the window, close to the Claude, which had been the first thing that brought these two together; but to-night she was in no meditative mood. She had provided herself with work, and was laboring at it fiercely in a way which Powys had never seen before. And he did not know that her heart too was beating very fast, and that she had been wondering and wondering whether he would have the courage to come up stairs. He had really had that courage, but now that he was there, he did not know what to do. He came up to her at first, but she kept on working and did not take any notice of him, she who up to this moment had always been so sweet. The poor young fellow was cast down to the very depths; he thought they had but taken him up and played upon him for their amusement, and that now the end had come. And he tried, but ineffectually, to comfort himself with the thought that he had always known it must come to an end. Almost, when he saw her silence, her absorbed looks, the constrained little glance she gave him as he came into the room, it came into his mind that Sara herself would say something to bring the dream to a distinct conclusion. If she had told him that she divined his presumption, and that he was never more to enter that room again, he would not have been surprised. It had been a false position throughout—he knew that, and he knew that it must come to an end.

But, in the mean time, a fair face must be put upon it. Powys, though he was a backwoodsman, knew enough of life, or had sufficient instinct of its requirements, to know that. So he went up to the Claude, and looked at it sadly, with a melancholy he could not restrain.

“It is as you once said, Miss Brownlow,” said Powys—“always the same gleam and the same ripples. I can understand your objections to it now.”

“The Claude?” said Sara, with unnecessary vehemence, “I hate it. I think I hate all pictures; they are so everlastingly the same thing. Did Jack go out, Mr. Powys, as you came up stairs?”

“Yes; he went out just after you had left us,” said Powys, glad to find something less suggestive on which to speak.

“Again?” said Sara, plunging at the new subject with an energy which proved it to be a relief to her also. “He is so strange. I don’t know if papa told you; he is giving us a great deal of trouble just now. I am afraid he has got fond of somebody very, very much below him. It will be a dreadful thing for us if it turns out to be true.”

Poor Powys’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He gave a wistful look at his tormentor, full of a kind of dumb entreaty. What did she say it for? was it for him, without even the satisfaction of plain-speaking, to send him away for ever?

“Of course you don’t know the circumstances,” said Sara, “but you can fancy when he is the only son. I don’t think you ever took to Jack; but of course he is a great deal to papa and me.”

“I think it was your brother who never took to me,” said Powys; “he thought I had no business here.”

“He had no right to think so, when papa thought differently,” said Sara; “he was always very disagreeable; and now to think he should be as foolish as any of us.” When she had said this, Sara suddenly recollected herself, and gave a glance up at her companion to see if he had observed her indiscretion. Then she went on hastily with a rising color—“I wish you would tell me, Mr. Powys, how it was that you first came to know papa.”

“It is very easy,” said Powys; but there he too paused, and grew red, and stopped short in his story with a reluctance that had nothing to do with pride. “I went to him seeking employment,” he continued, making an effort, and smiling a sickly smile. He knew she must know that, but yet it cost him a struggle; and somehow every thing seemed to have changed so entirely since those long-distant days.

“And you never knew him before?” said Sara—“nor your father?—nor any body belonging to you?—I do so want to know.”

“You are surprised that he has been so kind to me,” said Powys, with a pang; “and it is natural you should. No, there is no reason for it that I know of, except his own goodness. He meant to be very, very kind to me,” the young fellow added, with a certain pathos. It seemed to him as he spoke that Mr. Brownlow had in reality been very cruel to him, but he did not say it in words. Sara, for her part, gave him a little quick fugitive glance; and it is possible, though no explanation was given, that she understood what he did not speak.

“That was not what I meant,” she said, quickly; “only I thought there was something—and then about your family, Mr. Powys?” she said, looking up into his face with a curiosity she could not restrain. Certainly the more she thought it over the more it amazed her. What could her father mean?

“I have no family that I know of,” said Powys, with a momentary smile, “except my mother and my little sisters. I am poor, Miss Brownlow, and of no account whatever. I never saved Mr. Brownlow’s life, nor did any thing he could be grateful to me for. And I did not know you nor this house,” he went on, “when your father brought me here. I did not know, and I could live without—Don’t ask me any more questions, please; for I fear I don’t know what I am saying to-day.”

Here there was a pause, for Sara, though fearless enough in most cases, was a little alarmed by his suppressed vehemence. She was alarmed, and at the same time she was softened, and her inquisitiveness was stronger than her prudence. His very prayer that she would ask him no more questions quickened her curiosity; and it was not in her to refrain for fear of the danger—in that, as in most other amusements, “the danger’s self was lure alone.”

“But I hope you don’t regret having been brought here,” she said softly, looking up at him. It was a cruel speech, and the look and the tone were more cruel still. If she had meant to bring him to her feet, she could not have done any thing better adapted to her purpose, and she did not mean to bring him to her feet. She did it only out of a little personal feeling and a little sympathy, and the perversity of her heart.

Powys started violently, and gave her a look under which Sara, courageous as she was, actually trembled; and the next thing he did was to turn his back upon her, and look long and intently at the nearest picture. It was not the Claude this time. It was a picture of a woman holding out a piece of bread to a beggar at her door. The wretch, in his misery, was crouching by the wall and holding out his hand for it, and within were the rosy children, well-fed and comfortable, looking large-eyed upon the want without. The young man thought it was symbolical, as he stood looking at it, quivering all over with emotion which he was laboring to shut up in his own breast. She was holding out the bread of life to him, but it would never reach his lips. He stood struggling to command himself, forgetting every thing but the desperation of that struggle, betraying himself more than any words could have done—fighting his fight of honor and truth against temptation. Sara saw all this, and the little temptress was not satisfied. It would be difficult to tell what impulse possessed her. She had driven him very far, but not yet to the farthest point; and she could not give up her experiment at its very height.

“But you do not answer my question,” she said, very softly. The words were scarcely out of her lips, the tingle of compunction had not begun in her heart, when her victim’s strength gave way. He turned round upon her with a wild breathlessness that struck Sara dumb. She had seen more than one man who supposed he was “in love” with her; but she had never seen passion before.

“I would regret it,” he said, “if I had any sense or spirit left; but I have not, and I don’t regret. Take it all—take it!—and then scorn it. I know you will. What could you do but scorn it? It is only my heart and my life; and I am young and shall have to live on hundreds of years, and never see your sweetest face again.”

“Mr. Powys!” said Sara in consternation, turning very pale.

“Yes,” he said, melting out of the momentary swell of excitement, “I think I am mad to say so. I don’t grudge it. It is no better than a flower that you will put your foot on; and now that I have told you, I know it is all over. But I don’t grudge it. It was not your doing; and I would rather give it to you to be flung away than to any other woman. Don’t be angry with me—I shall never see you again.”

“Why?” said Sara, not knowing what she said—“what is it?—what have I done? Mr. Powys, I don’t think you—either of us—know what you mean. Let us forget all about it. You said you did not know what you were saying to-day.”

“But I have said it,” said the young man in his excitement. “I did not mean to betray myself, but now it is all over. I can never come here again. I can never dare look at you again. And it is best so; every day was making it worse. God bless you, though you have made me miserable. I shall never see your face again.”

“Mr. Powys!” cried Sara, faintly. But he was gone beyond hearing of her voice. He had not sought even to kiss her hand, as a despairing lover has a prescriptive right to do, much less the hem of her robe, as they do in romances. He was gone in a whirlwind of wild haste, and misery, and passion. She sat still, with her lips apart, her eyes very wide open, her face very white, and listened to his hasty steps going away into the outside world. He was gone—quite gone, and Sara sat aghast. She could not cry; she could not speak; she could but listen to his departing steps, which echoed upon her heart as it seemed. Was it all over? Would he never see her face again, as he said? Had she made him miserable? Sara’s face grew whiter and whiter as she asked herself these questions. Of one thing there could be no doubt, that it was she who had drawn this explanation from him. He had not wished to speak, and she had made him speak. And this was the end. If a sudden thunder-bolt had fallen before her, she could not have been more startled and dismayed. She never stirred for an hour or more after he had left her. She let the evening darken round her, and never asked for lights. Every thing was perfectly still, yet she was deafened by the noises in her ears, her heart beating, and voices rising and contending in it which she had never heard before. And was this the end? She was sitting still in the window like a thing in white marble when the servant came in with the lamp, and he had almost stumbled against her as he went to shut the window, and yelled with terror, thinking it was a ghost. It was only then that Sara regained command of herself. Was it all over from to-night?

CHAPTER XXVIII.

DESPAIR

It was nearly two hours after this when Jack Brownlow met Powys at the gate. It was a moonlight night, and the white illumination which fell upon the departing visitor perhaps increased the look of excitement and desperation which might have been apparent even to the most indifferent passer-by. He had been walking very quickly down the avenue; his boots and his dress gleamed in the moonlight as if he had been burying himself among the wet grass and bushes in the park. His hat was over his brows, his face haggard and ghastly. No doubt it was partly the effect of the wan and ghostly moonlight, but still there must have been something more in it, or Jack, who loved him little, would not have stopped as he did to see what was the matter. Jack was all the more bent upon stopping that he could see Powys did not wish it, and all sorts of hopes and suspicions sprang up in his mind. His father had dismissed the intruder, or he had so far forgotten himself as to betray his feelings to Sara, and she had dismissed him. Once more curiosity came in Powys’s way. Jack was so resolute to find out what it was, that, for the first time in his life, he was friendly to his father’s clerk. “Are you walking?” he said; “I’ll go with you a little way. It is a lovely night.”

“Yes,” said Powys; and he restrained his headlong course a little. It was all he could do—that, and to resist the impulse to knock Jack down and be rid of him. It might not have been so very easy, for the two were tolerably well matched; but poor Powys was trembling with the force of passion, and would have been glad of any opportunity to relieve himself either in the way of love or hatred. Nothing of this description, however, seemed practicable to him. The two young men walked down the road together, keeping a little apart, young, strong, tall, full of vigor, and with a certain likeness in right of their youth and strength. There should even have been the sympathy between them which draws like to like. And yet how unlike they were! Jack had taken his fate in his hand, and was contemplating with a cheerful daring, which was half ignorance, a descent to the position in which his companion stood. It would be sweetened in his case by all the ameliorations possible, or so at least he thought; and, after all, what did it matter? Whereas Powys was smarting under the miserable sense of having been placed in a false position in addition to all the pangs of unhappy love, and of having betrayed himself and the confidence put in him, and sacrificed his honor, and cut himself off forever from the delight which still might have been his. All these pains and troubles were struggling together within him. He would have felt more keenly still the betrayal of the trust his employer had placed in him, had he not felt bitterly that Mr. Brownlow had subjected him to temptations which it was not in flesh and blood to bear. Thus every kind of smart was accumulated within the poor young fellow’s spirit—the sense of guilt, the sense of being hardly used, the consciousness of having shut himself out from paradise, the knowledge, beyond all, that his love was hopeless and all the light gone out of his life. It may be supposed how little inclination he had to enter into light conversation, or to satisfy the curiosity of Jack.

They walked on together in complete silence for some minutes, their footsteps ringing in harmony along the level road, but their minds and feelings as much out of harmony as could be conceived. Jack was the first to speak. “It’s pleasant walking to-night,” he said, feeling more conciliatory than he could have thought possible; “how long do you allow yourself from here to Masterton? It is a good even road.”

“Half an hour,” said Powys, carelessly.

“Half an hour! that’s quick work,” said Jack. “I don’t think you’ll manage that to night. I have known that mare of mine do it in twenty minutes; but I don’t think you could match her pace.”

“She goes very well,” said the Canadian, with a moderation which nettled Jack.

“Very well! I never saw any thing go like her,” he said—“that is, with a cart behind her. What kind of cattle have you in Canada? I suppose there’s good sport there of one kind or another. Shouldn’t you like to go back?”

“I am going back,” said Powys. He said it in the depth of his despair, and it startled himself as soon as it was said. Go back? yes! that was the only thing to do—but how?

“Really?” said Jack with surprise and no small relief, and then a certain human sentiment awoke within him. “I hope you haven’t had a row with the governor?” he said; “it always seemed to me he had too great a fancy for you. I beg your pardon for saying so just now, especially if you’re vexed; but look here—I’m not much of a one for a peace-maker; but if you don’t mind telling me what it’s about—”

“I have had no row with Mr. Brownlow; it is worse than that,” said Powys; “it is past talking of; I have been both an ass and a knave, and there’s nothing for me but to take myself out of every body’s way.”

Once more Jack looked at him in the moonlight, and saw that quick heave of his breast which betrayed the effort he was making to keep himself down, and a certain spasmodic quiver in his lip.

“I wouldn’t be too hasty if I were you,” he said. “I don’t think you can have been a knave. We’re all of us ready enough to make fools of ourselves,” the young philosopher added, with a touch of fellow-feeling. “You and I haven’t been over-good friends, you know, but you might as well tell me what it’s all about.”

“You were quite right,” said Powys, hastily. “I ought never to have come up here. And it was not my doing. It was a false position all along. A man oughtn’t to be tempted beyond his strength. Of course I have nobody to blame but myself. I don’t suppose I would be a knave about money or any thing of that sort. But it’s past talking of; and besides I could not, even if it were any good, make a confidant of you.”

It was not difficult for Jack to divine what this despair meant, and he was touched by the delicacy which would not name his sister’s name. “I lay a hundred pounds it’s Sara’s fault,” he said to himself. But he gave no expression to the sentiment. And of course it was utterly beyond hope, and the young fellow in Powys’s position who should yield to such a temptation must indeed have made an ass of himself. But in the circumstances Jack was not affronted at the want of confidence in himself.

“I don’t want to pry into your affairs,” he said. “I don’t like it myself; but I would not do any thing hastily if I were you. A man mayn’t be happy, but, so far as I can see, he must live all the same.”

“Yes, that’s the worst,” said Powys; “a fellow can’t give in and get done with it. Talk is no good; but I shall have to go. I shall speak to your father to-morrow, and then—Good-night. Don’t come any farther. I’ve been all about the place to say good-bye. I am glad to have had this talk with you first. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” said Jack, grasping the hand of his fellow. Their hands had never met in the way of friendship before. Now they clasped each other warmly, closely, with an instinctive sympathy. Powys’s mind was so excited with other things, so full of supreme emotion, that this occurrence, though startling enough, did not have much effect upon him. But it made a very different impression upon Jack, who was full of surprise and compunction, and turned, after he had made a few steps in the direction of Brownlows, with a reluctant idea of “doing something” for the young fellow who was so much less lucky than himself. It was a reluctant idea, for he was prejudiced, and did not like to give up his prejudices, and at the same time he was generous, and could not but feel for a brother in misfortune. But Powys was already far on his way, out of hearing, and almost out of sight. “He will do it in the half-hour,” Jack said to himself, with admiration. “By Jove! how the fellow goes! and I’ll lay you any thing it’s all Sara’s fault.” He was very hard upon Sara in the revulsion of his feelings. Of course she could have done nothing but send her presumptuous admirer away. But, then, had she not led him on and encouraged him? “The little flirt!” Jack said to himself; and just then he was passing Swayne’s cottage, which lay in the deep blackness of the shadow made by the moonlight. He looked up tenderly at the light that burned in the upper window. He had grown foolish about that faint little light, as was only natural. There was one who was no flirt, who never would have tempted any man and drawn him on to the breaking of his heart. From the height of his own good fortune Jack looked down upon poor Powys speeding along with despair in his soul along the Masterton road. Something of that soft remorse which is the purest bloom of personal happiness softened his thoughts. Poor Powys! And there was nothing that could be done for him. He could not compel his fate as Jack himself could do. For him there was nothing in store but the relinquishment of all hope, the giving up of all dreams. The thought made Jack feel almost guilty in his own independence and well-being. Perhaps he could yet do or say something that would smooth the other’s downfall—persuade him to remain at least at Masterton, where he need never come in the way of the little witch who had beguiled him, and afford him his own protection and friendship instead. As Jack thought of the little house that he himself, separated from Brownlows and its comforts, was about to set up at Masterton, his benevolence toward Powys grew still stronger. He was a fellow with whom a man could associate on emergency; and no doubt this was all Sara’s fault. He went home to Brownlows disposed to stand Powys’s friend if there was any question of him. But when Jack reached home there was no question of Powys. On the whole it was not a cheerful house into which he entered. Lights were burning vacantly in the drawing-room, but there was nobody there. Lights were burning dimly down stairs. It looked like a deserted place as he went up and down the great staircase, and through the silent rooms, and found nobody. Mr. Brownlow himself was in the library with the door shut, where, in the present complexion of affairs, Jack did not care to disturb him; and Miss Sara had gone to bed with a headache, he was told, when, after searching for her everywhere, he condescended to inquire. Sara was not given to headaches, and the intimation startled her brother. And he went and sat in the drawing-room alone, and stared at the lights, and contrasted this solitary grandeur with the small house whose image was in his mind. The little cozy, tiny, sunshiny place, where one little bright face would always smile; where there would always be some one ready to listen, ready to be interested, ready to take a share in every thing. The picture looked very charming to him after the dreariness of this great room, and Sara gone to bed, and poor Powys banished and broken-hearted. That was not to be his own fate, and Jack grew pious and tender in his self-gratulations. After all, poor Powys was a very good sort of fellow; but as it happened, it was Jack who had drawn all the prizes of life. He did think at one time of going down stairs notwithstanding the delicate state of his own relations with his father, and making such excuses as were practicable for the unfortunate clerk, who had permitted himself to be led astray in this foolish manner. “Of course it was a great risk bringing him here at all,” Jack thought of saying, that Mr. Brownlow might be brought to a due sense of his own responsibility in the matter; but after long consideration, he wisely reflected that it would be best to wait until the first parties to the transaction had pronounced themselves. If Sara did not mean to say any thing about it, nor Powys, why should he interfere? upon which conclusion, instead of going down stairs, he went to bed, thinking again how cheerless it was for each member of the household to start off like this without a single good-night, and how different it would be in the new household that was to come.

Sara came to breakfast next morning looking very pale. The color had quite gone out of her cheeks, and she had done herself up in a warm velvet jacket, and had the windows closed as soon as she came into the room. “They never will remember that the summer’s over,” she said, with a shiver, as she took her place; but she made no farther sign of any kind. Clearly she had no intention of complaining of her rash lover;—so little, indeed, that when Mr. Brownlow was about to go away, she held out a book to him timidly, with a sudden blush. “Mr. Powys forgot to take this with him last night; would you mind taking it to him, papa?” she said, very meekly; and as Jack looked at her, Sara blushed redder and redder. Not that she had any occasion to blush. It might be meant as an olive-branch or even a pledge of hope; but still it was only a book that Powys had left behind him. Mr. Brownlow accepted the charge with a little surprise, and he, too, looked at her so closely that it was all she could do to restrain a burst of tears.