“And then?—but go on in your own way, I want to hear it all,” said Mr. Brownlow. He was getting more and more excited; and yet somehow it was a kind of pleasure to him to feel that his informant was wasting time upon utterly insignificant details. Surely if the detective suspected nothing, it must be that there was nothing to suspect.
“Yes, sir,” he said, “that’s about where it is; he was one of the Powyses; naturally the children is Powyses too. But he died afore he went up for promotion; and now they’re come a-seeking of their friends. It ain’t no credit to me to be employed on such an easy case. The only thing that would put a little credit in it would be, if you’d give me just a bit of a hint what was wanted. If their friends want ’em I’ll engage to put ’em on the scent. If their friends don’t want ’em—as wouldn’t be no wonder; for folks may have a kindness for a brother or a son as is wild, and yet they mightn’t be best pleased to hear of a widow a-coming with seven children—if they ain’t wanted a word will do it, and no questions asked.”
John Brownlow gave the man a sharp glance, and then he fell a-musing, as if he was considering whether to give him this hint or not. In reality, he was contemplating, with a mixture of impatience and vexation and content, the total misconception of his object which his emissary had taken up. He was exasperated by his stupidity, and yet he felt a kind of gratitude to him, and relief, as if a danger had been escaped.
“And what of the woman herself?” he said, in a tone which, in spite of him trembled a little.
“Oh, the woman,” said the detective, carelessly; “some bit of a girl as he married, and as was pretty, I don’t doubt, in her day. There’s nothing particular about her. She’s very fond of her children, and very free in her talk, like most women when you take ’em the right way. Bless you, sir, when I started her talking of her husband, it was all that I could do to get her to leave off. She don’t think she’s got any thing to hide. He was a gentleman, that’s clear. He wouldn’t have been near so frank about himself, I’ll be bound. She ain’t a lady exactly, but there’s something about her—and awful open in her way, with them front teeth—”
“Hasshegot front teeth?” said Mr. Brownlow, with some eagerness. He pitched upon it as the first personal attribute he had yet heard of, and then he added, with a little confusion, “like the boy—”
“Yes sir—exactly like the young fellow,” said his companion; “but there ain’t nothing about her to interestus. She told me as she once had friends as lived in Masterton; but she’s the sort of woman as don’t mind much about friends as long as her children is well off; and I judge she was of well-to-do folks, that was awful put out about her marriage. A man like that, sir, might be far above her, and have friends that was far above her, and yet it’s far from the kind of marriage as would satisfy well-to-do folks.”
“I thought she came from the Isle of Man,” said Mr. Brownlow, in what he meant for an indifferent way.
“As a child, sir—as a child,” said the detective, with easy carelessness. “Her friends left there when she was but a child, and then they went where there was a garrison, where she met with her good gentleman. She was never in Masterton herself. It was after she was married and gone, and, I rather think, cast off by all belonging to her, that they came to live here.”
Mr. Brownlow sat leaning over the fire, and a heavy moisture began to rise on his forehead. The speaker was so careless, and yet these calm details seemed to him so terrible. Could it be that he was making terrors for himself—that the man experienced in mystery was right in being so certain that there was no mystery here—or must he accept the awful circumstantial evidence of these simple particulars? Could there be more than one family which had left the Isle of Man so long ago, and gone to live where there was a garrison, and abandoned its silly daughter when she married her soldier? Mr. Brownlow was stupefied, and did not know what to think. He sat and listened while this man whom he had called to his assistance went over again all the facts that seemed to point out that the connection of the family with the Powyses of North Wales was the one thing either to be brought forward or got rid of. This was how he had understood his instructions, and he had carried them out so fully that his employer, fully occupied with the incidental information which seemed to prove all he feared, heard his voice run on without remarking it, and would have told him to stop the babble to which he was giving vent, had his thoughts been sufficiently at leisure to care for what he was saying. When he fully perceived this mistake, Mr. Brownlow looked upon it as “providential,” as people say. But, in the mean time, he was not conscious ofany thing, except of a possibility still more clear and possible, and of a ridiculous misconception which still it was not his interest to clear up. He let his detective talk, and then he let him go, but half satisfied, and inclined to think that no confidence was reposed in him. And though it was so late, and the brougham was at the door, and the servants very tired of their unusual detention, Mr. Brownlow went back again to the fire, and bent over it, and stretched out his hands to the blaze, and again tried to think. He went over the same ideas a hundred times, and yet they did not seem to grow any clearer to him. He tried to ask himself what was his duty, but duty slunk away, as it were to the very recesses of his soul, and gave no impulse to his mind, nor so much as showed itself in the darkness. If this should turn out to be true, no doubt there were certain things which he ought to do; and yet, if all this could but be banished for awhile, and the year got over which would bring safety—Mr. Brownlow had never in all his life before done what he knew to be a dishonorable action. He was not openly contemplating such a thing now; only somehow his possessions seemed so much more his than any body else’s; it seemed as if he had so much better right to the good things he had been enjoying for four-and-twenty years than any woman could have who had never possessed them—who knew nothing about them. And then he did not know that it was this woman. He said to himself that he had really no reason to think so. The young man had said nothing about old Mrs. Thomson. The detective had never even suspected any mystery in that quarter, though he was a man of mystery, and it was his business to suspect every thing. This was what he was thinking when he went back to the fire in his office, and stretched his hands over the blaze. Emotion of any kind somehow chills the physical frame; but when one of the detained clerks came to inform him of the patient brougham which waited outside, and which Sara, by reason of the cold, had sent for him, it was the opinion of the young man that Mr. Brownlow was beginning to age rapidly, and that he looked quite old that evening. But he did not look old; he looked, if any one had been there with eyes to see it, like a man for the first time in his life driven to bay. Some men come to that moment in their lives sooner, some later, some never at all. John Brownlow had been more than five-and-fifty years in the world, and yet he had never been driven to bay before. And he was so now; and except to stand out and resist, and keep his face to his enemies, he did not, in the suddenness of the occurrence, see as yet what he was to do.
In the mean time, however, he had to stoop to ordinary necessities and get into his carriage and be driven home, through the white gleaming country which shone under the moonlight, carrying with him a curious perception of how different it would have been had the house in High Street been home—had he had nothing more to do than to go up to the old drawing-room, his mother’s drawing-room, and find Sara there; and eat his dinner where his father had eaten his, instead of this long drive to the great country-house, which was so much more costly and magnificent than any thing his forefathers knew; but then his father, what would he have thought of this complication? What would he have advised, had it been any client of his; nay, what, if it was a client, would Mr. Brownlow himself advise? These thoughts kept turning over in his mind half against his will as he lay back in the corner of the carriage and saw the ghostly trees glimmer past in their coating of snow. He was very late, and Sara was anxious about him; nay, even Jack was anxious, and had come down to the park gates to look out for the carriage, and also to ask how the little invalid was at Mrs. Swayne’s. Jack, having this curiosity in his mind, did not pay much attention to his father’s looks; but Sara, with a girl’s quick perception, saw there was something unusual in his face; and with her usual rapidity she leaped to the conclusion that the bank must have broken or the railway gone wrong of which she had dreamed in the morning. Thus they all met at the table with a great deal on their minds; and this day, which I have recorded with painstaking minuteness, in order that there may be no future doubt as to its importance in the history, came to an end with outward placidity but much internal perturbation—at least came to an end as much as any day can be said to come to an end which rises upon an unsuspecting family big with undeveloped fate.
Mr. Brownlowtook his new clerk into his employment next morning. It is true that this was done to fill up a legitimate vacancy, but yet it took every body in the office a little by surprise. The junior clerk had generally been a very junior, taken in rather by way of training than for any positive use. The last one, indeed, whom this new-comer had been taken to replace, was an overgrown boy in jackets, very different, indeed, from the tall, well-developed Canadian whose appearance filled all Mr. Brownlow’s clerks with amazement. All sorts of conjectures about him filled the minds of these young gentlemen. They all spied some unknown motive underneath, and their guesses at it were ludicrously far from the real case. The conveyancing clerk suggested that the young fellow was somebody’s son “that old Brownlow has ruined, you know, in the way of business.” Other suppositions fixed on the fact that he was the son of a widow by whom, perhaps, the governor might have been bewitched, an idea which was speedily adopted as the favorite and most probable explanation, and caused unbounded amusement in the office. They made so merry over it that once or twice awkward consequences had nearly ensued; for the new clerk had quick ears, and was by no means destitute of intelligence, and decidedly more than a match, physically, for the most of his fellows. As for the circumstances of his engagement, they were on this wise.
At the hour which Mr. Brownlow had appointed to see him again, young Powys presented himself punctually in the outer office, where he was made to wait a little, and heard some “chaffing” about the governor’s singular proceedings on the previous day and his interviews with InspectorPollaky, which probably conveyed a certain amount of information to the young man. When he was ushered into Mr. Brownlow’s room, there was, notwithstanding his frank and open countenance, a certain cloud on his brow. He stood stiffly before his future employer, and heard with only a half-satisfied look that the lawyer, having made inquiries, was disposed to take advantage of his services. To this the young backwoodsman assented in a stilted way, very different from his previous frankness; and when all was concluded, he still stood doubtful, with the look upon his face of having something to say.
“I don’t know what more there is to settle, except the time when you enter upon your duties,” said Mr. Brownlow, a little surprised. “You need not begin to-day. Mr. Wrinkell, the head-clerk, will give you all the necessary information about hours, and show you all you will have to do—Is there any thing more you would like to say?”
“Why, yes, sir,” said the youth abruptly, with a mixture of irritation and compunction. “Perhaps what I say may look very ungrateful; but—why did you send a policeman to my mother? That is not the way to inquire about a man if you mean to trust him. I don’t say you have any call to trust me—”
“A policeman!” said Mr. Brownlow, in consternation.
“Well, sir, the fellows there,” cried the energetic young savage, pointing behind him, “call him Inspector. I don’t mean to say you were to take me on my own word; any inquiries you liked to make we were ready to answer; but a policeman—and to my mother?”
Mr. Brownlow laughed, but yet this explosion gave him a certain uneasiness. “Compose yourself,” he said, “the man is not a policeman, but he is a confidential agent, whom when I can’t see about any thing myself—but I hope he did not say any thing or ask any thing that annoyed Mrs.—your mother,” Mr. Brownlow added, hurriedly; and if the jocular youths in the office had seen something like a shade of additional color rise on his elderly cheek, their amusement and their suspicions would have been equally confirmed.
“Well, no,” said young Powys, the compunction gaining ground; “I beg your pardon, sir; you are very kind. I am sure you must think me ungrateful—but—”
“Nonsense!” said Mr. Brownlow; “it is quite right you should stand up for your mother. The man is not a policeman—and I never—intended him—to trouble—your mother,” he added, with hesitation. “He went to make inquiry, and these sort of people take their own way; but he did not annoy her, I hope?”
“Oh, no!” said the youth, recovering his temper altogether. “She took it up as being some inquiry about my father, and she was a little excited, thinking perhaps that his friends—but never mind. I told her it was best we should depend only on ourselves, and I am sure I am right. Thank you; I shall have good news to tell her to-day.”
“Stop a little,” said Mr. Brownlow, feeling a reaction upon himself of the compunction which had passed over his young companion. “She thought it was something about your father? Is there any thing mysterious, then, about your father? I told you there was a Lady Powys who had lived here.”
“I don’t think there is any thing mysterious about him,” said the young man. “I scarcely remember him, though I am the eldest. He died quite young—and my poor mother has always thought that his friends—But I never encouraged her in that idea, for my part.”
“That his friends could do something for you?” said Mr. Brownlow.
“Yes, that is what she thought. I don’t think myself there is any foundation for it; and seeing they have never found us out all these years—five-and-twenty years—”
“Five-and-twenty years!” Mr. Brownlow repeated, with a start—not that the coincidence was any thing, but only that the mere sound of the word startled him, excited as he was.
“Yes, I am as old as that,” said young Powys, with a smile, and then he recollected himself. “I beg your pardon, sir; I am taking up your time, and I hope you don’t think I am ungrateful. Getting this situation so soon is every thing in the world to us.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Mr. Brownlow: and yet he could not but ask himself whether his young visitor laid an emphasis uponthissituation. What wasthissituation more than another? “But the salary is not very large, you know—do you mean to take your mother and her family on your shoulders with sixty pounds a-year!”
“It ismyfamily,” said the young man, growing red. “I have no interest separate from theirs.” Then he paused for a moment, feeling affronted; but he could not bear malice. Next minute he relapsed into the frank and confidential tone that was natural to him. “There are only five of us after all,” he said—“five altogether, and the little sisters don’t cost much; and we have a little money—I think we shall do very well.”
“I hope so,” said Mr. Brownlow; and somehow, notwithstanding that he intended in his heart to do this young fellow a deadly injury, a certain affectionate interest in the lad sprung up within him. He was so honest and open, and had such an innocent confidence in the interest of others. None of his ordinary clerks were thus garrulous to Mr. Brownlow. It never would have occurred to them to confide in the “guv’nor.” He knew them as they came and went, and had a certain knowledge of their belongings—which it was that would have old Robinson’s money, and which that had given his father so much uneasiness; but that was very different from a young fellow that would look into your face and make a confidant of you as to his way of spending his sixty pounds a-year. John Brownlow had possessed a heart ever since he was aware of his own individuality. It was that that made him raise his eyes always, years and years ago, when Bessie Fennell went past his windows. Perhaps it would have been just as well had he not been thus moved; and yet sometimes, when he was all by himself and looked up suddenly and saw any passing figure, the remembrance of those moments when Bessie passed would be as clear upon him as if he were young again. Influenced by this same organ, which had no particular business in the breast of aman of his profession at his years, Mr. Brownlow looked up with eyes that were almost tender upon the young man whom he had just taken into his employment—notwithstanding that, to tell the truth, he meant badly by him, and in one particular at least was far from intending to be his friend.
“I hope so,” he said; “and if you are steady and suit us, there may be means found of increasing a little. I don’t pledge myself to any thing, you know; but we shall see how you get on; and if you have any papers or any thing that may give a clue to your father’s family,” he continued, as he took up his pen, “bring them to me some day and I’ll look over them. That’s all in the way of business to us. We might satisfy your mother after all, and perhaps be of some use to you.”
This he said with an almost paternal smile, dismissing his new clerk, who went away in an enthusiasm of gratitude and satisfaction. It is so pleasant to be very kindly used, especially to young people who know no better. It throws a glow of comfort through the internal consciousness. It is so very, very good of your patron, and, in a smaller way, it is good of you too, who are patronized. You are understood, you are appreciated, you are liked. This was the feeling young Powys had. To think that Mr. Brownlow would have been as good to any body would not have been half so satisfactory, and he went off with ringing hasty steps, which in themselves were beating a measure of exhilaration, to tell his mother, who, though ready on the spot to worship Mr. Brownlow, would naturally set this wonderful success down to the score of her boy’s excellencies. As for the lawyer himself, he took his pen in his hand and wrote a few words of the letter which lay unfinished before him while the young man was going out, as if anxious to make up for the time lost in this interview; but as soon as the door was closed John Brownlow laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair. What was it he had done?—taken in a viper to his bosom that would sting him? or received a generous, open, confiding youth, in order to blind and hoodwink and rob him? These were strong—nay, rude and harsh words, and he did not say them even to himself; but a kind of shadow of them rolled through his mind, and gave him a momentary panic. Was this what he was about to do? With a pretense of kindness, even generosity, to take this open-hearted young fellow into his employment, in order to keep him in the dark, and prevent him from finding out that the fortune was his upon which Brownlows and all its grandeur was founded? Was this what he was doing? It seemed to John Brownlow for the moment as if the air of the room was suffocating, or rather as if there was no air at all to breathe, and he plucked at his cravat in the horror of the sensation. But then he came to himself. Perhaps, on the other hand, just as likely, he was taking into his house a secret enemy, who, once posted there, would search and find out every thing. Quite likely, very likely; for what did he mean by the emphasis with which he saidthissituation, and all that about his father, which was throwing dust into Mr. Brownlow’s cautious eyes? Perhaps his mind was a little biased by his profession—perhaps he was moved by something of the curious legal uncertainty which teaches a man to plead “never indebted” in the same breath with “already paid;” for amid the hurry and tumult of these thoughts came another which was of a more comforting tendency. After all, he had no evidence that the boy was that woman’s son. No evidence whatever—not a shadow. And it was not his duty to go out and hunt for her or her son over all the world. Nobody could expect it of him. He had done it once, but to do it over again would be simply absurd. Let them come and make their claim.
Thus the matter was decided, and there could be no doubt that it was with a thrill of very strange and mingled interest that Mr. Brownlow watched young Powys enter upon his duties. He had thought this would be a trouble to him—a constant shadow upon him—a kind of silent threat of misery to come; but the fact was that it did not turn out so. The young fellow was so frank and honest, so far at least as physiognomy went—his very step was so cheerful and active, and rang so lightly on the stones—he was so ready to do any thing, so quick and cordial and workman-like about his work—came in with such a bright face, spoke with such a pleasant respectful confidence, as knowing that some special link existed between his employer and himself; Mr. Brownlow grew absolutely attached to the new clerk, for whom he had so little use, to whom he was so kind and fatherly, and against whom—good heavens! was it possible? he was harboring such dark designs.
As for young Jack, when he came back to the office after a few days on the ice, there being nothing very important in the way of business going on just then, the sight of this new figure took him very much by surprise. He was not very friendly with his father’s clerks on the whole—perhaps because they were too near himself to be looked upon with charitable eyes; too near, and yet as far off, he thought to himself, as if he had been a duke. Not that Jack had those attributes which distinguished the great family of snobs. When he was among educated men he was as unassuming as it is in the nature of a young man to be, and never dreamed of asking what their pedigree was, or what their balance at their banker’s. But the clerks were different—they were natural enemies—fellows that might set themselves up for being as good as he, and yet were not as good as he, however you chose to look at the question. In short, they were cads. This was the all-expressive word in which Jack developed his sentiments. Any addition to the cads was irksome to him; and then he, the young prince, knew nothing about it, which was more irksome still.
“Who is that tall fellow?” he said to Mr. Wrinkell, who was his father’s vizier. “What is he doing here? You don’t mean to say he’sen permanence? Who is he, and what is he doing there?”
“That’s Mr. Powys, Mr. John,” said Mr. Wrinkell, calmly, and with a complacent little nod. The vizier rather liked to snub the heir-apparent when he could, and somehow the Canadian had crept into his good graces too.
“By Jove! and who the deuce is Mr. Powys?” said Jack, with unbecoming impatience, almost loud enough to reach the stranger’s ear.
“Hush,” said Mr. Wrinkell, “he has come inyoung Jones’s place, who left at Michaelmas, you know. I should say he was a decided addition; steady, very steady—punctual in the morning—clever at his work—always up to his hours—”
“Oh, I see, a piece of perfection,” said Jack, with, it must be confessed, a slight sneer. “But I don’t see that he was wanted. Brown was quite able for all the work. I should like to know where you picked that fellow up. It’s very odd that something always happens when I am absent for a single day.”
“The frost has lasted for ten days,” said Mr. Wrinkell, with serious but mild reproof—“not that I think there is any thing in that. We are only young once in this life; and there is nothing particular doing. I am very glad you took advantage of it, Mr. John.”
Now it was one of Jack’s weak points that he hated being called Mr. John, and could not bear to be approved of—two peculiarities of which Mr. Wrinkell was very thoroughly aware. But the vizier had many privileges. He was serious and substantial, and not a man who could be called a cad, as Jack called his own contemporaries in the office. Howsoever tiresome or aggravating he might be, he had to be borne with; and he knew his advantages, and was not always generous in the use he made of them. When the young man went off into his own little private room, Mr. Wrinkell was tempted to give a little inward chuckle. He was a dissenter, and he rather liked to put the young autocrat down. “He has too much of his own way—too much of his own way,” he said to himself, and went against Jack on principle, and for his good, which is a kind of conduct not always appreciated by those for whose good it is kept up.
And from that moment a kind of opposition, not to say enmity, crept up between Jack and the new clerk—a sort of feeling that they were rather too like each other, and were not practicable in the same hemisphere. Jack tried, but found it did not answer, to call the new-comer a cad. He did not, like the others, follow Jack’s own ways at a woful distance, and copy those things for which Jack rather despised himself, as all cads have a way of doing; but had his own way, and was himself, Powys, not the least like the Browns and Robinsons. The very first evening, as they were driving home together, Jack, having spent the day in a close examination of the new-comer, thought it as well to let his father know his opinion on the subject, which he did as they flew along in their dogcart, with the wicked mare which Jack could scarcely hold in, and the sharp wind whizzing past their ears, that were icy cold with speed.
“I see you have got a new fellow in the office,” said Jack. “I hope it’s not my idleness that made it necessary. I should have gone back on Monday; but I thought you said—”
“I am glad you didn’t come,” said Mr. Brownlow, quietly. “I should have told you had there been any occasion. No, it was not for that. You know he came in young Jones’s place.”
“He’s not very much like young Jones,” said Jack—“as old as I am, I should think. How she pulls, to be sure! One would think, to see her go, she hadn’t been out for a week.”
“Older than you are,” said Mr. Brownlow—“five-and-twenty;” and he gave an unconscious sigh—for it was dark, and the wind was sharp, and the mare very fresh; and under such circumstances a man may relieve his mind, at least to the extent of a sigh, without being obliged to render a reason. So, at least, Mr. Brownlow thought.
But Jack heard it, somehow, notwithstanding the ring of the mare’s hoofs and the rush of the wind, and was confounded—as much confounded as he durst venture on being with such a slippery animal to deal with.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” said the groom, “keep her steady, sir; this here is the gate she’s always a-shying at.”
“Oh, confound her!” said Jack—or perhaps it was “confound you”—which would have been more natural; but the little waltz performed by Mrs. Bess at that moment, and the sharp crack of the whip, and the wind that whistled through all, made his adjuration less distinct than it might have been. When, however, the dangerous gate was past, and they were going on again with great speed and moderate steadiness, he resumed—
“I thought you did not mean to have another in young Jones’s place. I should have said Brown could do all the work. When these fellows have too little to do they get into all sorts of mischief.”
“Most fellows do,” said Mr. Brownlow, calmly. “I may as well tell you, Jack, that I wanted young Powys—I know his people; that is to say,” he added hastily, “I don’t know his people. Don’t take it into your head that I do—but still I’ve heard something about them—in a kind of a way; and it’s my special desire to have him there.”
“I said nothing against it, sir,” said Jack, displeased. “You are the head, to do whatever you like. I only asked you know.”
“Yes, I know you only asked,” said Mr. Brownlow, with quiet decision. “That is my business; but I’d rather you were civil to him, if it is the same to you.”
“By Jove, I believe she’ll break our necks some day,” said Jack, in his irritation, though the mare was doing nothing particular. “Going as quiet as a lamb,” the groom said afterward in amazement, “when he let out at her enough to make a saint contrairy.” And “contrairy” she was up to the very door of the house, which perhaps, under the circumstances, was just as well.
Perhapsone of the reasons why Jack was out of temper at this particular moment was that Mrs. Swayne had been impertinent to him. Not that he cared in the least for Mrs. Swayne; but naturally he took a little interest in the—child—he supposed she was only a child—a little light thing that felt like a feather when he carried her in out of the snow. Hehadcarried her in, and he “took an interest” in her; and why he should be met with impertinence when he asked how the little creature was, was more than Jack could understand. The very morning of the day on which he saw young Powys first,he had been answered by Mrs. Swayne standing in front of her door, and pulling it close behind her, as if she was afraid of thieves or something. “She’s a-going on as nicely as could be, and there ain’t no cause for anxiety, sir,” Mrs. Swayne said, which was not a very impertinent speech after all.
“Oh, I did not suppose there was,” said Jack. “It was only a sprain, I suppose; but she looked such a delicate little thing. That old woman with her was her mother, eh? What did she mean traveling with a fragile little creature like that in the carrier’s cart?”
“I don’t know about no old woman,” said Mrs. Swayne; “the good lady as has my front parlor is the only female as is here, and they’ve come for quiet, Mr. John, not meaning no offense; and when you’re a bit nervish, as I knows myself by experience, it goes to your heart every time as there comes a knock at the door.”
“You can’t have many knocks at the door here,” said Jack; “as for me, I only wanted to know how the little thing was.”
“Miss is a-doing nicely, sir,” Mrs. Swayne answered, with solemnity; and this was what Jack considered a very impertinent reception of his kind inquiries. He was amused by it, and yet it put him a little out of temper too. “As if I could possibly mean the child any harm,” he said to himself, with a laugh; rather, indeed, insisting on the point that she was a child in all his thoughts on the subject; and then, as has been seen, the sudden introduction of young Powys and Mr. Brownlow’s calm adoption of the sentiment that it washisbusiness to decide who was to be in the office, came a little hard upon Jack, who, after all, notwithstanding his philosophical indifference as to his sister’s heiress-ship, liked to be consulted about matters of business, and did not approve of being put back into a secondary place.
Thus it was with a sense of having done her duty by her new lodgers, that Mrs. Swayne paid her periodical visit in the afternoon to the inmates of the parlor, where the object of Jack Brownlow’s inquiries lay very much covered up on the little horse-hair sofa. She was still suffering from her sprain, and was lying asleep on the narrow couch, wrapped in all the shawls her mother possessed, and with her own pretty red cloak thrown over the heap. It was rather a grim little apartment, with dark-green painted walls, and coarse white curtains drawn over the single window. But the inmates probably were used to no better, and certainly were quite content with their quarters. The girl lay asleep with a flush upon her cheeks, which the long eyelashes seemed to overshadow, and her soft rings of dark hair pushed back in pretty disorder off her soft, full, childlike forehead. She was sleeping that grateful sleep of convalescence, in which life itself seems to come back—a sleep deep and sound and dreamless, and quite undisturbed by the little murmur of voices which went on over the fire. Her mother was a tall, meagre woman, older than the mother of such a girl ought to have been. Save that subtle, indefinable resemblance which is called family likeness, the two did not resemble each other. The elder woman now sitting in the horsehair easy-chair over the fire, was very tall, with long features, and gray cheeks which had never known any roses. She had keen black passionate eyes, looking as young and full of life as if she had been sixteen instead of nearly sixty; and her hair was still as black as it had been in her youth. But somehow the dead darkness of the hair made the gray face underneath look older than if it had been softened by the silvery tones of white that belong to the aged. She was dressed as poor women, who have ceased to care about their appearance, and have no natural instinct that way, so often dress, in every thing most suited to increase her personal deficiencies. She had a little black lace cap over her black hair, and a black gown with a rim of grayish white round the neck, badly made, and which took away any shape that might ever have been in her tall figure. Her hands were hard, and red, and thin, with no sort of softening between them and the harsh black sleeve which clasped her wrists. She was not a lady, that was evident; and yet you would not have said she was a common woman after you had looked into her eyes.
It was very cold, though the thaw had set in, and the snow was gone—raw and damp with a penetrating chill, which is as bad as frost—or worse, some people think. And the new-comer sat over the fire, leaning forward in the high-backed horse-hair chair, and spreading out her hands to the warmth. She had given Mrs. Swayne a general invitation to come in for a chat in the afternoon, not knowing as yet how serious a business that was; and was now making the best of it, interposing a few words now and then, and yet not altogether without comfort in the companionship, the very hum of human speech having something consolatory in it.
“If it’s been a fever, that’s a thing as will mend,” said Mrs. Swayne, “and well over too; and a thing as you don’t have more nor once. When it’shere, and there’s decline in the family—” she added, putting her hand significantly to her breast.
“There’s no decline in my family,” said the lodger, quickly. “It was downright sickness always. No, she’s quite strong in her chest. I’ve always said it was a great blessing that they were all strong in their chests.”
“And yet you have but this one left,” said Mrs. Swayne. “Dear, dear!—when it’s decline, it comes kind of natural, and you get used to it like. An aunt o’ mine had nine, all took one after the other, and she got that used to it, she’d tell you how it would be as soon as e’er a one o’ them began to droop; but when it’s them sort of masterful sicknesses as you can’t do nothing for—Deary me! all strong in their chests, and yet you have had so many and but this one left.”
“Ay,” said the mother, wringing her thin hands with a momentary yet habitual action, “it’s hard when you’ve reared them so far, but you said it was good air here?”
“Beautiful air, that’s what it is,” said Mrs. Swayne, enthusiastically; “and when she gets a bit stronger, and the weather gets milder, and he mends of his rheumatics, Swayne shall drive her out in his spring-cart. It’s a fine way of seeing the country—a deal finer,Ithink, than the gentry in their carriages with a coachman on his box perched up afore them. I ain’t one as holds bymuch doctoring. Doctors and parsons, they’re all alike; and I don’t care if I never saw one o’ them more.”
“Isn’t there a nice clergyman?” said the lodger—“it’s a nice church, for we saw it passing in the cart, and the child took a fancy to it. In the country like this, it’s nice to have a nice clergyman—that’s to say, if you’re church folks.”
“There was nothing but church folks heard tell of where I came from,” said Mrs. Swayne, with a little heat. “Them as says I wasn’t born and bred and confirmed in the church don’t know what they’re talking of; but since we come here, you know, along of Swayne being a Dissenter, and the rector a man as has no sympathy, I’ve give up. It’s the same with the doctors. There ain’t one as I haven’t tried, exceptin’ the homepathic; and I was turning it over in my mind as soon as Swayne had another bad turn to send for him.”
“I hope we shan’t want any more doctors,” said the mother, once more softly wringing her hands. “But for Pamela’s sake—”
“Is that her name?” said Mrs, Swayne; “I never knew one of that name afore; but folks is all for new-fashioned names nowadays. The Pollys and Betsys as used to be in my young days, I never hear tell of them now; but the girls ain’t no nicer nor no better behaved as I can see. It’s along o’ the story-books and things. There’s Miss Sairah as is always a-lending books—”
“Is Miss Sairah the young lady in the great house?” asked the stranger, looking up.
Mrs. Swayne assented with a little reluctance. “Oh! yes, sure enough; but they ain’t the real old Squires. Not as the old Squires was much to brag of; they was awful poor, and there never was nothing to be made out of them, neither by honest trade-folks nor cottagers, nor nobody; but him as has it now is nothing but a lawyer out of Masterton. He’s made it all, I shouldn’t wonder, by cheating poor folks out of their own; but there he is as grand as a prince, and Miss Sairah dressed up like a little peacock, and her carriage and her riding-horse, and her school, as if she was real old gentry. It was Mr. John as carried your girl indoors that time when she fell; and a rare troublesome one he can be when he gets it in his head, a-calling at my house, and knocking at the knocker when, for any thing he could tell, Swayne might ha’ been in one of his bad turns, or your little maid a-snatching a bit of sleep.”
“But why does he come?” said the lodger, once more looking up; “is it to ask after Mr. Swayne?”
Mr. Swayne’s spouse gave a great many shakes of her head over this question. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “there’s a deal of folks thinks if Swayne hadn’t a good wife behind him as kept all straight, his bad turns would come very different. That’s all as a woman gets for slaving and toiling and understanding the business as well as e’er a man. No; it was not for my husband. I haven’t got nothing to say against Mr. John. He’s not one of the sort as leads poor girls astray and breaks their hearts; but I wouldn’t have him about here, not too often, if I was you. He was a-asking after your girl.”
“Pamela?” said the mother, with surprise and almost amusement in her tone, and she looked back to the sofa where her daughter was lying with a flush too pink and roselike for health upon her cheek. “Poor little thing; it is too early for that—she is only a child.”
“I don’t put no faith in them being only children,” said Mrs. Swayne. “It comes terrible soon, does that sort of thing; and a gentleman has nice ways with him. When she’s once had one of that sort a-running after her, a girl don’t take to an honest man as talks plain and straightforward. That’s my opinion; and, thank Providence, I’ve been in the way of temptation myself, and I know what it all means.”
Mrs. Swayne’s lodger did not seem at all delighted by these commentaries. A little flush of pride or pain came over her colorless cheek; and she kept glancing back at the sofa on which her daughter lay. “My Pamela is a little lady, if ever there was a lady,” she said, in a nervous undertone; but it was evidently a question she did not mean to discuss with her landlady; and thus the conversation came to a pause.
Mrs. Swayne, however, was not easily subdued; and curiosity urged her even beyond her wont. “I think you said as you had friends here?” she said, making a new start.
“No, no friends. We’re alone in the world, she and I,” said the woman, hastily. “We’ve been long away, and every body is dead that ever belonged to us. She hasn’t a soul but me, poor dear, and I’m old. It’s dreadful to be old and have a young child. If I was to die—but we’re not badly off,” she continued, with a faint smile in answer to an alarmed glance all around the room from Mrs. Swayne, “and I’m saving up every penny for her. If I could only see her as well and rosy as she used to be!”
“That will come in time,” said the landlady. “Don’t you be afeard. It’s beautiful air; and what with fresh milk and new-laid eggs, she’ll come round as fast as the grass grows. You’ll see she will—they always does here. Miss Sairah herself was as puny a bit of a child as ever you set eyes on, and she’s a fine tall lass with a color like a rose—I will say that for her—now.”
“And I think you said she was about my child’s age,” said the mother, with a certain wistful glance out of the window. “Perhaps she and my Pamela—But of course a young lady like that has plenty of friends. Pamela will never be tall—she’s done growing. She takes after her father’s side, you see,” the poor woman added, with a sigh, looking round once more to the sofa where her child lay.
“And it ain’t long, perhaps, since you lost your good gentleman?” said Mrs. Swayne, curiosity giving a certain brevity to her speech.
“He was in the army,” said the lodger, passing by the direct question, “and it’s a wandering sort of life. Now I’ve come back, all are gone that ever belonged to me, or so much as knew me. It feels dreary like. I don’t mind for myself, if I could but find some kind friends for my child.”
“Don’t you fret,” said Mrs. Swayne, rising. “She’ll find friends, no fear; and its ridiklus to hear you talk like an old woman, and not a gray hair on your head—But I hear Swayne a-grumbling, Mrs. Preston. He’s no better nor an old washerwoman, that man isn’t, for his tea.”
When the conversation ended thus, the lodgerrose, partly in civility, and stood before the fire, looking into the dark little mirror over the mantle-shelf when her visitor was gone. It was not vanity that moved her to look at herself. “Threescore and ten!” she was saying softly—“threescore and ten! She’d be near thirty by then, and able to take care of herself.” It was a sombre thought enough, but it was all the comfort she could take. “The child” all this time had to all appearance lain fast asleep under her wraps, with the red cloak laid over her, a childlike, fragile creature. She began to stir at this moment, and her mother’s face cleared as if by magic. She went up to the little hard couch, and murmured her inquiries over it with that indescribable voice which belongs only to doves, and mothers croodling over their sick children. Pamela considered it the most ordinary utterance in the world, and never found out that it was totally unlike the usually almost harsh tones of the same voice when addressing other people. The girl threw off her coverings with a little impatience, and came with tottering steps to the big black easy-chair. The limpid eyes which had struck Jack Brownlow when they gazed wistfully out of the carrier’s cart, were almost too bright, as her color was almost too warm, for the moment; but it was the flush of weakness and sleep, not of fever. She too, like her mother, wore rusty black; but neither that poor and melancholy garb, nor any other disadvantageous circumstance, could impair the sweetness of the young tender face. It was lovely with the sweetness of spring as are the primroses and anemones; dew, and fragrance, and growth, and all the possibilities of expansion, were in her lovely looks. You could not have told what she might not grow to. Seeing her, it was possible to understand the eagerness with which the poor old mother, verging on threescore, counted her chances of a dozen years longer in this life. These dozen years might make all the difference to Pamela; and Pamela was all that she had in the world.
“You have had a long sleep, my darling. I am sure you feel better,” she said.
“I feel quite well, mamma,” said the girl; and she sat down and held out her hands to the fire. Then the mother began to talk, and give an account of the conversation she had been holding. She altered it a little, it must be acknowledged. She omitted all Mrs. Swayne’s anxieties about Jack Brownlow, and put various orthodox sentiments into her mouth instead. When she had gone on so for some ten minutes, Pamela, who had been making evident efforts to restrain herself, suddenly opened her red lips with a burst of soft ringing laughter, so that the mother stopped confused.
“I am afraid it was very naughty,” said the girl; “but I woke up, and I did not want to disturb you, and I could not help listening. Oh, mamma, how clever you are to make up conversation like that. When you know Mrs. Swayne was talking of Mr. John, and was such fun! Why shouldn’t I hear about Mr. John? Because one has been ill, is one never to have any more fun? You don’t expect me to die now?”
“God forbid!” said the mother. “But what do you know about Mr. John? Mrs. Swayne said nothing—”
“She said he came a-knocking at the knocker,” Pamela said, with a merry little conscious laugh; “and you asked if he came to ask for Mr. Swayne. I thought I should have laughed out and betrayed myself then.”
“But, my dear,” said Mrs. Preston, steadily, “why shouldn’t he have come to ask for Mr. Swayne?”
“Yes, why indeed?” said Pamela, with another merry peal of laughter, which made her mother’s face relax, though she was not herself very sensible wherein the joke lay.
“Well,” she said, “if he did, or if he didn’t, it does not matter very much to us. We know nothing about Mr. John.”
“Oh, but I do,” said Pamela; “it was he that was standing by that lady’s chair on the ice—I saw him as plain as possible. I knew him in a minute when he carried me in. Wasn’t it nice and kind of him? and he knew—us;—I am sure he did. Why shouldn’t he come and ask for me? I think it is the most natural thing in the world.”
“How could he know us?” said Mrs. Preston, wondering. “My darling, now you are growing older you must not think so much about fun. I don’t say it is wrong, but—For you see, you have grown quite a woman now. It would be nice if you could know Miss Sara,” she added, melting; “but she is a little great lady, and you are but a poor little girl—”
“I must know Miss Sara,” cried Pamela. “We shall see her every day. I want to know them both. We shall be always seeing them any time they go out. I wonder if she is pretty. The lady was, that was in the chair.”
“How can you see every thing like that, Pamela?” said her mother, with mild reproof. “I don’t remember any lady in a chair.”
“ButI’ve got a pair of eyes,” said Pamela, with a laugh. She was not thinking that they were pretty eyes, but she certainly had a pleasant feeling that they were clear and sharp, and saw every thing and every body within her range of vision. “I like traveling in that cart,” she said, after a moment, “if it were not so cold. It would be pleasant in summer to go jogging along and see every thing—but then, to be sure, in summer there’s no ice, and no nice bright fires shining through the windows. But mamma, please,” the little thing added, with a doubtful look that might be saucy or sad as occasion required, “why are you so dreadfully anxious to find me kind friends?”
This was said with a little laugh, though her eyes were not laughing; but when she saw the serious look her mother cast upon her, she got up hastily and threw herself down, weak as she was, at the old woman’s knee.
“Don’t you think if we were to live both as long as we could and then to die both together!” cried the changeable girl, with a sudden sob. “Oh, mamma, why didn’t you have me when you were young, when you had Florry, that we might have lived ever so long, ever so long together? Would it be wrong for me to die when you die? why should it be wrong? God would know what we meant by it. He would know it wasn’t for wickedness. And it would make your mind easy whatever should happen,” cried the child, burying her pretty face in her mother’s lap. Thus the two desolate creatures clung together,the old woman yearning to live, the young creature quite ready at any word of command that might reach her to give up her short existence. They had nobody in the world belonging to them that they knew of, and in the course of nature their companionship could only be so short, so short! And it was not as if God saw only the outside like men. He would know what they meant by it; that was what poor little Pamela thought.
But she was as lively as a little bird half an hour after, being a creature of a variable mind. Not a magnificent little princess, self-possessed and reflective, like Sara over the way—a little soul full of fancies, and passions, and sudden impulses of every kind—a kitten for fun, a heroine for any thing tragic, such as she, not feared, but hoped, might perhaps fall in her way. And the mother, who understood the passion, did not know very much about either the fun or the fancy, and was puzzled by times, and even vexed when she had no need to be vexed. Mrs. Preston was greatly perplexed even that night after this embrace and the wild suggestion that accompanied it to see how swiftly and fully Pamela’s light heart came back to her. She could not comprehend such a proposal of despair; but how the despair should suddenly flit off and leave the sweetest fair skies of delight and hope below was more than the poor woman could understand. However, the fact was that hope and despair were quite capable of living next door in Pamela’s fully occupied mind, and that despair itself was but another kind of hope when it got into those soft quarters where the air was full of the chirping of birds and the odors of the spring. She could not sing, to call singing, but yet she went on singing all the evening long over her bits of work, and planned drives in Mr. Swayne’s spring-cart, and even in the carrier’s wagon, much more joyfully than Sara ever anticipated the use of her grays. Yet she had but one life, one worn existence, old and shattered by much suffering, between her and utter solitude and destitution. No wonder her mother looked at her with silent wonder, she who could never get this woful possibility out of her mind.
Itwas not to be expected that Sara could be long unconscious of her humble neighbors. She, too, as well as Jack, had seen them in the carrier’s cart; and though Jack had kept his little adventure to himself, Sara had no reason to omit due notice of her encounter. It was quite a new sensation to her when she saw for the first time the little face with its dewy eyes peeping out at Mrs. Swayne’s window. And the ticket which offended Sara’s sight had been promptly taken down, not by Mrs. Swayne, but by her lodgers themselves. Sara’s impulse was to go over immediately and thank them for this good office; but, on second thoughts, she decided to wait another opportunity. They might not be “nice,”—or they might be ladies, and require more ceremonious treatment, notwithstanding the carrier’s wagon. The face that peeped from Mrs. Swayne’s window might have belonged to a little princess in disguise for any thing that could be said to the contrary. And Sara was still of the age which believes in disguised princesses, at least in theory. She talked about them, however, continually; putting Jack to many hypocritical devices to conceal that he too had seen the little stranger. Though why he should keep that fact secret, nobody, not even himself could tell. And he had confided it to young Keppel, though he did not think of telling the story at home. “I don’t know if you would call her pretty, but her eyes are like two stars,” was what Jack said; and he was more angry at Keppel’s jocular response than was at all needful. But, as for Sara, she was far more eloquent. “She is not pretty,” that authority said; “all girls are pretty, I suppose, in a kind of a way—I and Fanny Hardcastle and every body—I despise that. She’slovely; one would like to take and kiss her. I don’t in the least care whether I am speaking grammar or not; but I want to know her, and I’ve made up my mind I’ll have her here.”
“Softly, Sara,” said Mr. Brownlow, with that indulgent look which Sara alone called into his eyes.
“Oh yes, papa, as softly as you please; but I shall never be like her if I were to live a hundred years. I’d like to cut all my hair off, and wear it like that; but what’s the use, with this odious light hair?”
“I thought it was golden and Titianesque, and all sorts of fine things,” said Jack, “besides being fashionable. I’ve heard Keppel say—”
“Don’t, please; Mr. Keppel is so stupid,” and she took in her hand a certain curl she had, which was her favorite curl in a general way, and looked at it with something like disgust.
“It isn’t even the right color for the fashion,” she said, contemptuously. This was at breakfast, before the gentlemen went to business, which was a favorite hour with all of them, when their minds were free, and the day had not as yet produced its vexations. Mr. Brownlow, for his part, had quite got over any symptoms of discomposure that his children might have perceived on his face. Every thing was going on well again. Young Powys was safely settled in the office, and his employer already had got used to him, and nothing seemed to be coming of it: and every day was helping on the year, the one remaining year of uncertainty. He was very anxious, but still he was not such a novice in life but that he could keep his anxiety to himself.
“Don’t forget to make every thing comfortable for your visitors,” was what he said, as he drove away; and the fact was, that even Mr. Brownlow cast a glance over at Mrs. Swayne’s windows; and that Jack brought the mare almost on her haunches, by way of showing his skill, as she dashed out at the gates. And poor little Pamela had limped to the window, for she had not much to amuse her, and the passing of Mr. Brownlow’s dog-cart was an event. “Is that the girl?” said Mr. Brownlow; “why she is like your sister, Jack.”
“Like Sara!” Jack gasped in dismay. He was so amazed that he could say nothing more for a full minute. “I suppose you think every thing that’s pretty is like Sara,” he said, when he had recovered his breath.
“Well, perhaps,” said the father; “but there’s something more there—and yet she’s not like Sara either for the matter of that.”
“Not the least bit in the world,” said Jack, decisively; at which Mr. Brownlow only smiled, making no other reply.
Sara, of course, knew nothing of this; and notwithstanding her admiration for the stranger, it is doubtful whether she would have been flattered by the suggestion. She made great preparations for her visitors. There was to be a dinner-party, and old Lady Motherwell and her son Sir Charles were to stay for a day or two—partly because it was too far for the old lady to drive back that night, and partly, perhaps, for other reasons, which nobody was supposed to know any thing about. In her own mind, however, Sara was not quite unaware of these other reasons. The girl was so unfortunate as to be aware that she was considered a good match in the county, and she knew very well what Sir Charles meant when he came and mounted guard over her at county gatherings. It was commonly reported of Sir Charles Motherwell that he was not bright—but he was utterly opaque to Sara when he came and stood over her and shut out other people who might have been amusing; though, to tell the truth, Miss Brownlow was in a cynical state of mind altogether about amusing people. She thought they were an extinct species, like mastodons, and the other sort of brutes that lived before the creation. Fanny Hardcastle began to unfold her dress as soon as breakfast was over, and to look out her gloves and her shoes and all her little ornaments, and was in a flutter all day about the dinner at Brownlows. But as for Sara, she was not excited. By way of making up to herself for what she might have to suffer in the evening, she went out for a ride, a pleasure of which she had been debarred for some time by the frost; and little Pamela came again to the window and watched—oh, with what delight and envy and admiration!—the slender-limbed chestnut and the pretty creature he carried, as they came down all the length of the avenue.
“Oh, mamma, make haste—make haste! it is a prettier sight than Mr. John,” cried the little girl at Mrs. Swayne’s window, her cheeks glowing and her eyes shining; “what fun it is to live here and see them all passing!” Probably she enjoyed it quite as much as Sara did. When she had watched the pretty rider as far as that was possible, she sat down by the window to wait till she came back—wondering where she was going—following her as she went cantering along the sunny long stretches of road which Pamela remembered watching from the carrier’s cart. What a strange kind of celestial life it must be to be always riding down stately avenues and playing golden-stringed harps, and walking about in glorious silken robes that swept the ground! Pamela laughed to herself at those splendid images—she enjoyed it more than Sara did, though Sara found all these good things wonderfully pleasant too.
“What are you laughing at?” said her mother, who was working at a table at the other end of the room.
“What fun it is to live here!” repeated Pamela. “It is as good as a play; don’t you like to see them all riding out and in, and the horses prancing, and the shadows coming down the avenue?—it was the greatest luck in the world to come here.”
“Put up your foot, my dear,” said her mother, “and don’t catch cold at that window. I’ve seen somebody very like that young lady, but I can’t remember where.”
“That was Miss Sara, I suppose,” said Pamela, with a little awe; and she put up her weak foot, and kept her post till the chestnut and his mistress came back, when the excitement was renewed; and Mrs. Preston herself took another look, and wondered where she had seen some one like that. Thus the life of Brownlows became entangled, as it were, in that of the humble dwellers at their gate, before either were aware.
Lady Motherwell arrived in a very solid family coach, just as the winter twilight set in; and undoubtedly, on this occasion at least, it was Pamela who had the best of it. Sara awaited the old lady in the drawing-room, ready to administer to her the indispensable cup of tea; and Sir Charles followed his mother, a tall fellow with a mustache which looked like a respirator. As for Lady Motherwell, she was not a pleasant visitor to Sara; but that was for reasons which I have already stated. In herself she was not a disagreeable old woman. She had even a certainesprit du corpswhich made it evident to her that thus to come in force upon a girl who was alone, was a violent proceeding, and apt to drive the quarry prematurely to bay. So she did her best to conciliate the young mistress of the house, even before she had received her cup of tea.
“Charley doesn’t take tea,” she said. “I think we’ll send him off, my dear, to look at the stables, or something. I hate to have a man poking about the room when I want a comfortable chat; and in this nice cozy firelight, too, when they look like tall ghosts about a place. You may go and have your cigar, Charley. Sara and I have a hundred things to say.”
Sir Charles was understood to murmur through his respirator that it was awful hard upon a fellow to be banished like this; but nevertheless, being in excellent training, and knowing it to be for his good, he went. Then Lady Motherwell took Sara in her arms for the second time, and gave her a maternal kiss.
“My love, you’re looking lovely,” she said. “I’m sorry for poor Charley, to tell the truth; but I knew you’d have enough of him to-night. Now tell me how you are, and all about yourself. I have not seen you for an age.”
“Oh, thank you, I’m just as well as ever,” said Sara. “Sit down in this nice low chair, and let me give you some tea.”
“Thank you,” said Lady Motherwell. “And how is Jack and the good papa? Jack is a gay deceiver; he is not like my boy. You should have seen him driving the girls about the ice in that chair. I am not sure that I think it very nice, do you know, unless it was a very old friend or—somebodyveryparticular. I was so sorry I could not come for you—”
“Oh, it did not matter,” said Sara; “I was there three days. I got on very well; and then I have more things to do than most girls have. I don’t care so very much for amusements. I have a great many things to do.”
“Quite a little housekeeper,” said Lady Motherwell. “You girls don’t like to have such things said to you nowadays; but I’m an old-fashioned old woman, and I must say what I think. What a nice little wife you will make one of these days! That used to be the highest compliment that could be paid to us when I was your age.”
“Oh, I don’t mind it at all,” said Sara; “I suppose that is what one must come to. It is no good worrying one’s self about it. I am rather fond of housekeeping. Are you going to be one of the patronesses for the Masterton ball, Lady Motherwell? Do you think one should go?”
“No, I don’t think one should go,” said the old lady, not without a very clear recollection that she was speaking to John Brownlow the solicitor’s daughter; “but I think a dozen may go, and you shall come with me. I am going to make up a party—yourself and the two Keppels—”
“No,” said Sara, “I am a Masterton girl, and I ought not to go with you grand county folks—oh no, papa must take me; but thank you very much all the same.”
“You are an odd girl,” said Lady Motherwell. “You forget your papa is one of the very richest of the county folks, as you call us. I think Brownlows is the finest place within twenty miles, and you that have all the charge of it—”
“Don’t laugh at me, please—I don’t like being laughed at. It makes me feel like a cat,” said Sara; and she clasped her soft hands together, and sat back in her soft velvet chair out of the firelight, and sheathed her claws as it were; not feeling sure any moment that she might not be tempted to make a spring upon her flattering foe.
“Well, my dear, if you want to spit and scratch, let Charley be the victim, please,” said the old lady. “I think he would rather like it. And I am not laughing in the least, I assure you. I think a great deal of good housekeeping. We used to be brought up to see after every thing when I was young; and really, you know, when you have a large establishment, and feel that your husband looks to you for every thing—”
“We have not all husbands, thank heaven,” said Sara, spitefully; “and I am sure I don’t want a situation as a man’s housekeeper. It is all very well when it’s papa.”
“You will not always think so,” said Lady Motherwell, laughing; “that is a thing a girl always changes her mind about. Of course you will marry some day, as every body does.”
“I don’t see,” said Sara, very decidedly, “why it should be of course. If there was any body that papa had set his heart on, and wanted me to marry—or anygoodreason—of course I would do what ever was my duty. But I don’t think papa is a likely sort of man to stake me at cards, or get into any body’s power, or any thing of that sort.”
“Sara, you are the most frightful little cynic,” cried Lady Motherwell, laughing; “don’t you believe that girls sometimes fall in love?”
“Oh yes, all the silly ones,” said Sara, calmly, out of her corner. She was not saying any thing that she did not to a certain extent feel; but there is no doubt that she had a special intention at the moment in what she said.
Lady Motherwell had another laugh, for she was amused, and not nearly so much alarmed for the consequences as the young speaker intended she should be. “If all girls had such sentiments, what would become of the world?” she said. “The world would come to an end.”
“I wish it would,” said Sara. “Why shouldn’t it come to an end? It would be easy to make a nicer world. People are very aggravating in this one. I am sure I don’t see why we should make ourselves unhappy about its coming to an end. It would always be a change if it did. And some of the poor people might have better luck. Doyouthink it is such a very nice world?”
“My dear, don’t be profane,” said Lady Motherwell. “I never did think Mr. Hardcastle was very settled in his principles. I declare you frighten me, Sara, sitting and talking in that sceptical way, in the dark.”
“Oh, I can ring for lights,” said Sara; “but that isn’t sceptical. It’s sceptical to go on wishing to live forever, and to make the world last forever, as if we mightn’t have something better. At least so I think. And as for Mr. Hardcastle, I don’t know what he has to do with it—he never said a word on the subject to me.”
“Yes, my dear, but there is a general looseness,” said the old lady. “I know the sort of thing. He lets you think whatever you like, and never impresses any doctrines on you as he ought. We are not in Dewsbury parish, you know, and I feel I ought to speak. There are such differences in clergymen. Our vicar is very pointed, and makes you really feel as if you knew what you believed. And that is such a comfort, my dear. Though, to be sure, you are very young, and you don’t feel it now.”
“No, I don’t feel it at all,” said Sara; “but, Lady Motherwell, perhaps you would like to go to your room. I think I hear papa’s cart coming up the avenue—will you wait and see him before you go?”
Thus the conversation came to an end, though Lady Motherwell elected to wait, and was as gracious to Mr. Brownlow as if he had been twenty county people. Even if Sara did not have Brownlows, as everybody supposed, still she would be rich and bring money enough with her to do a vast deal of good at Motherwell, where the family for a long time had not been rich. Sir Charles’s father, old Sir Charles, had not done his duty by the property. Instead of marrying somebody with a fortune, which was clearly the object for which he had been brought into the world, he had married to please a fancy of his own in a very reprehensible way. His wife herself felt that he had failed to do his duty, though it was for her sake; and she was naturally all the more anxious that her son should fulfill this natural responsibility. Sir Charles was not handsome, nor was he bright, nor even so young as he might have been; but all this, if it made the sacrifice less, made the necessity more, and accordingly Lady Motherwell was extremely friendly to Mr. Brownlow. When she came down for dinner she took a sort of natural protecting place, as if she had been Sara’s aunt, or bland, flattering, uninterfering mother-in-law. She called the young mistress of the house to her side, and held her hand, and patted it and caressed it. She told Mr. Brownlow how pleasedshe was to see how the dear child had developed. “You will not be allowed to keep her long,” she said, with tender meaning; “I think if she were mine I would go and hide her up so that nobody might see her. But one has to make up one’s mind to part with them all the same.”
“Not sooner than one can help,” said Mr. Brownlow, looking not at Lady Motherwell, but at his child, who was the subject of discourse. He knew what the old lady meant as well as Sara did, and he had been in the way of smiling at it, wondering how any body could imagine he would give his child to a good-tempered idiot; but this night another kind of idea came into his mind. The man was stupid, but he was a gentleman of long-established lineage, and he could secure to Sara all the advantages of which she had so precarious a tenure here. He could give her even a kind of title, so far as that went, though Mr. Brownlow was not much moved by a baronet’s title; and if any thing should happen to endanger Brownlows, it would not matter much to Jack or himself. They could return to the house in Masterton, and make themselves as comfortable as life, without Sara, could be anywhere. This was the thought that was passing through Mr. Brownlow’s mind when he said, “Not sooner than one can help.” He was thinking for the first time that such a bestowal of his child might not be so impossible after all.
Beside her, in the seat she had taken when she escaped from Lady Motherwell, Sir Charles had already taken up his position. He was talking to her through his hard little black mustache—not that he said a great deal. He was a tall man, and she was seated in a low chair, with the usual billows of white on the carpet all round her, so that he could not even approach very near; and she had to look up at him and strain her ear when he spoke, if she wanted to hear—which was a trouble Sara did not choose to take. So she said, “What?” in her indifferent way, playing with her fan, and secretly doing all she could to extend the white billows round her; while he, poor man, bent forward at a right angle till he was extremely uncomfortable, and repeated his very trivial observations with a vain attempt to reach her ear.
“I think I am growing deaf,” said Sara; “perhaps it was that dreadful frost—I don’t think I have ever got quite thawed yet. When I do, all you have been saying will peal out of the trumpet like Baron Munchausen, you know. So you didn’t go to the stables? Wasn’t that rather naughty? I am sure it was to the stables your mamma sent you when you went away.”
“Tell you what, Miss Brownlow,” said Sir Charles, “you are making game of me.”
“Oh, no,” said Sara; “or did you go to the gate and see such a pretty girl in the cottage opposite? I don’t know whether you would fall in love with her, but I have; I never saw any one look so sweet. She has such pretty dark little curls, and yet not curls—something prettier—and such eyes—”
“Little women with black hair are frights,” said Sir Charles—“always thought so, and more than ever now.”
“Why more than ever now?” said Sara, with the precision of contempt; and then she went on—“If you don’t care either for pretty horses or pretty girls, we shan’t know how to amuse you. Perhaps you are fond of reading; I think we have a good many nice books.”
Sir Charles said something to his mustache, which was evidently an expletive of some kind. He was not the sort of man to swear by Jove, or even by George, much less by any thing more tangible; but still he did utter something in an inarticulate exclamatory way. “A man would be difficult to please if he didn’t get plenty to amuse him here,” was how it ended. “I’m not afraid—”
“It is very kind of you to say so,” said Sara, so very politely that Sir Charles did not venture upon any more efforts, but stood bending down uneasily, looking at her, and pulling at his respirator in an embarrassed way; not that he was remarkable in this, for certainly the moment before dinner is not favorable to animated or genial conversation. And it was not much better at dinner. Sara had Mr. Keppel of Ridley, the eldest brother, at her other side, who talked better than Sir Charles did. His mother kept her eye upon them as well as that was possible from the other end of the table, and she was rather hard upon him afterward for the small share he had taken in the conversation. “You should have amused her and made her talk, and drawn her out,” said the old lady. “Oh, she talked plenty,” Sir Charles said, in a discomfited tone; and he did not make much more of it in the evening, when young Mrs. Keppel and her sister-in-law, and Fanny Hardcastle, all gathered in a knot round the young mistress of the house. It was a pretty group, and the hum of talk that issued from it attracted even the old people to linger and listen, though doubtless their own conversation would have been much more worth listening to. There was Sara reclining upon the cushions of a great round ottoman, with Fanny Hardcastle by her, making one mass of the white billows; and opposite, Mrs. Keppel, who was a pretty little woman, lay back in a low deep round chair, and Mary Keppel, who was a little fond of attitudes, sat on a stool, leaning her head upon her hands, in the centre. Sometimes they talked all together, so that you could not tell what they said; and they discussed every thing that ought to be discussed in heaven and earth, and occasionally something that ought not; and there was a dark fringe of men round about them, joining in the babble. But as for Sir Charles, he knew hisconsigne, and stood at his post, and did not attempt to talk. It was an exercise that was seldom delightful to him; and then he was puzzled, and could not make out whether, as he himself said, it was chaff or serious. But he could always stand over the mistress of his affections, and do a sentinel’s duty, and keep other people away from her. That was amétierhe understood.