“That’s what I don’t know, sir,” said Mrs. Powys, putting her handkerchief to her eyes. “He’s been rummaging among my papers, and he’s may be found something, or he’s heard some talk that has put things in his head. I know he has heard things in this very house—people talking about families, and wills, and all that. His father was of a very good family, Mr. Brownlow. I don’t know them, but I know they’re rich people. May be it’s that, or perhaps—but I don’t know how to account for it. It’s something that is eating into his heart. And he has such a confidence in you! It was you that took him up when we were strangers, and had nobody to look to us. I have a little that my poor husband left me; but it’s very little to keep four upon; and I may say it’s you that gave us bread, for that matter. There’s nothing in this world my boy wouldn’t do for you.”
Then there was a pause. The poor woman had exhausted her words and her self-command and her breath, and stopped perforce, and Mr. Brownlow did not know how to reply. What could he say to her? It was a matter of death and life between him and her boy, instead of the indifferent question she thought. “Would you like me to speak to him?” he said at last, with a little difficulty of utterance; “should I ask him what is occupying his mind? But he might not choose to tell me. What would you wish me to do?”
“Oh, sir, you’re very good,” said Mrs. Powys, melting into gratitude. “I never can thank God enough that my poor boy has met with such a kind friend.”
“Hush!” said Mr. Brownlow, rising from his chair. He could not bear this; thanking God, as if God did not know well enough, too well, how the real state of the matter was! He was not a man used to deception, or who could adapt himself to it readily. He had all the habits of an honest life against him, and that impulse to speak truth and do right which he struggled with as if it were a temptation. Thus his position was awfully the reverse of that of a man tempting and falling. He was doing wrong with all the force of his will, and striving against his own inclination and instinct of uprightness; but here was one thing beyond his strength. To bring God in, and render him, as it were, a party, was more than he could bear. “I am not so kind as you think,” he said hoarsely. “I am not—I mean your son deserves all that I can do.”
“Oh, sir, that’s kind—that’s kindness itself to say so,” cried the poor mother. “Nothing that could be said is so kind as that—and me, that was beginning to lose faith in him! It was to ask you to speak to him, Mr. Brownlow. If you were to ask him, he might open his heart to you. A gentleman is different from a poor woman. Not that any body could feel for him like me, but he would think such a deal of your advice. If you would speak and get him to open his heart. That’s what I wanted to ask you, if it’s not too much. If you would be so kind—and God knows, if ever it was in my power or my children’s, though I’m but a poor creature, to do any thing in this world that would be a service to you—”
God again. What did the woman mean? And she was a widow, one of those that God was said to take special charge of. It was bad enough before without that. John Brownlow had gone to the fireless hearth, and was standing by it leaning his head against the high carved wooden mantel-piece, and looking down upon the cold vacancy where for so many years the fire that warmed his inmost life had blazed and sparkled. He stood thus and listened, and within him the void seemed as cold, and the emptiness as profound. It was his moment of fate. He was going to cast himself off from the life he had lived at that hearth—to make a separation forever and ever between the John Brownlow,honest and generous, who had been trained to manhood within these walls, and had loved and married, and brought his bride to this fireside—and the country gentleman who, in all his great house, would never more find the easy heart and clear conscience which were natural to this atmosphere. He stood there and looked down on the old domestic centre, and asked himself if it was worth the terrible sacrifice; honor and honesty and truth—and all to keep Brownlows for Sara, to preserve the grays, and the flowers, and the park, and Jack’s wonderful mare, and all the superfluities that these young creatures treated so lightly? Was it worth the price? This was the wide fundamental question he was asking himself, while his visitor, in her chair between him and the window, spoke of her gratitude. But there was no trace in his face, even if she could have seen it, that he had descended into the very depths, and was debating with himself a matter of life and death. When her voice ceased, Mr. Brownlow’s self-debate ceased too, coming to a sharp and sudden end, as if it was only under cover of her words that it could pass unnoted. Then he came toward her slowly, and took the chair opposite to her, and met her eye. The color had gone out of his face, but he was too self-possessed and experienced a man to show what the struggle was through which he had just come. And the poor woman thought it so natural that he should be full of thought. Was he not considering, in his wonderful kindness, what he could do for her boy?
“I will do what you ask me,” he said. “It may be difficult, but I will try. Don’t thank me, for you don’t know whether I shall succeed. I will do—what I can. I will speak to your son, perhaps to-morrow—the earliest opportunity I have. You were quite right to come. And—you may—trust him—to me,” said Mr. Brownlow. He did not mean to say these last words. What was it that drew them—dragged them from his lips? “You may trust him to me.” He even repeated it twice, wondering at himself all the while, and not knowing what he meant. As for poor Mrs. Powys, she was overwhelmed by her gratitude.
“Oh, sir, with all my heart,” she cried, “him, and all my hopes in this world!” And then she bade God bless him, who was so good to her and her boy. Yes, that was the worst of it. John Brownlow felt that but too clearly all through. It was hard enough to struggle with himself, with his own conscience and instincts; but behind all that there was another struggle which would be harder still—the struggle with God, to whom this woman would appeal, and who, he was but too clearly aware, knew all about it. But sufficient unto the moment was its own conflict. He took his hat after that, and took his visitor down stairs, and answered the amazed looks of the housekeeper, who came to see what this unusual disturbance meant, with a few words of explanation, and shook hands with Mrs. Powys at the door. The sunset glow had only just gone, so short a time had this conversation really occupied, though it involved so much, and the first magical tone of twilight had fallen into the evening air. When Mr. Brownlow left the office door he went straight on, and did not remember the carriage that was waiting for him. He was so much absorbed by his own affairs, and had so many things to think of, that even the strength of habit failed him. Without knowing, he set out walking upon the well-known way. Probably the mere fact of movement was a solace to him. He went along steadily by the budding hedgerows and the little gardens and the cottage doors, and did not know it. What he was really doing was holding conversations with young Powys, conversations with his children, all mingled and penetrated with one long never-ending conflict with himself. He had been passive hitherto, now he would have to be active. He had contented himself simply with keeping back the knowledge which, after all, it was not his business to give. Now, if he was to gain his object, he must do positively what he had hitherto done negatively. He must mislead—he must contradict—he must lie. The young man’s knowledge of his rights, if they were his rights, must be very imperfect. To confuse him, to deceive him, to destroy all possible evidence, to use every device to lose his time and blind his eyes, was what Mr. Brownlow had now to do.
And there can be no doubt that, but for the intervention of personal feelings, it would have been an easy thing enough to do. If there had been no right and wrong involved, no personal advantage or loss, how very simple a matter to make this youth, who had such perfect confidence in him, believe as he pleased; and how easy after to make much of young Powys, to advance him, to provide for him—to do a great deal better for him, in short, than he could do for himself with old Mrs. Thomson’s fifty thousand pounds! If there was no right and wrong involved! Mr. Brownlow walked on and on as he thought, and never once observed the length of the way. One thing in the world he could not do—that was, to take away all the sweet indulgences with which he had surrounded her, the delights, the luxuries, the position, from his child. He could not reduce Sara to be Brownlow the solicitor’s daughter in the dark old-fashioned house at Masterton. He went over all her pretty ways to himself as he went on. He saw her gliding about the great house which seemed her natural sphere. He saw her receiving his guests, people who would not have known her, or would at least have patronized her from a very lofty distance, had she been in that house at Masterton; he saw her rolling forth in her pretty carriage with the grays, which were the envy of the county. All these matters were things for which, in his own person, John Brownlow cared not a straw. He did not care even to secure them for his son, who was a man and had his profession, and was no better than himself; but Sara—and then the superb little princess she was to the rest of the world! the devoted little daughter she was to him! Words of hers came somehow dropping into his ears as the twilight breathed around him. How she had once said—Good heavens! what was that she had said?
All at once Mr. Brownlow awoke. He found himself walking on the Dewsbury road, instead of driving, as he ought to have been. He remembered that the dog-cart was waiting for him in the market-place. He became aware that he had forgotten himself, forgotten every thing, in the stress and urgency of his thoughts. What was the galvanic touch that brought him back to consciousness? The recollection of half a dozenwords once spoken by his child—girlish words, perhaps forgotten as soon as uttered; yet when he stopped, and turned round to see how far he had come, though he had been walking very moderately and the evening was not warm, a sudden rush of color, like a girl’s blush, had come to his face. If the mare had been in sight, in her wildest mood, it would have been a relief to him to seize the reins, and fight it out with her, and fly on, at any risk, away from that spot, away from that thought, away from the suggestion so humbling, so saving, so merciful and cruel, which had suddenly entered his mind. But the mare was making every body very uncomfortable in the market-place at Masterton, and could not aid her master to escape from himself. Then he turned again, and went on. It was a seven miles walk, and he had come three parts of the way; but even the distance that remained was long to a man who had suddenly fallen into company with a new idea which he would rather not entertain. He felt the jar in all his limbs from this sudden electric shock. Sara had said it, it was true—she had meant it. He had her young life in his hands, and he could save Brownlows to her, and yet save his soul. Which was the most to be thought of, his soul or her happiness? that was the question. Such was the sudden tumult that ran through John Brownlow’s veins. He seemed to be left there alone in the country quiet, in the soft twilight, under the dropping dew, to consider it, shut out from all counsel or succor of God or man. Man he himself shut out, locking his secret in his own breast—God! whom he knew his last struggle was to be with, whom that woman had insisted on bringing in, a party to the whole matter—was not He standing aside, in a terrible stillness, a spectator, waiting to see what would come of it, refusing all participation? Would God any more than man approve of this way of saving John Brownlow’s soul? But the more he tried to escape from it the more it came back. She had said it, and she had meant it, with a certain sweet scorn of life’s darker chances, and faith unbounded in her father, of all men, who was God’s deputy to the child. Mr. Brownlow quickened his pace, walked faster and faster, till his heart thumped against his breast, and his breath came in gasps; but he could not go so fast as his thoughts, which were always in advance of him. Thus he came to the gate of Brownlows before he knew. It was the prettiest evening scene. Twilight had settled down to the softest night; big stars, lambent and dilating, were coming softly out, as if to look at something out of the sweet blue. And it was no more dark than it was light. Old Betty, on her step, was sitting crooning, with many quavers, one of her old songs. And Pamela, who had just watered her flowers, leaned over the gate, smiling, and listening with eyes that were very like the stars. Somehow this picture went to Mr. Brownlow’s heart. He went up to the child as he passed, and laid a kind hand upon her pretty head, on the soft rings of her dark hair. “Good-night, little one,” he said, quite softly, with that half shame which a man feels when he betrays that he has a heart in him. He had never taken so much notice of her before. It was partly because any thing associated with Sara touched him to the quick at this moment; partly for her own sake, and for the sake of the dews and stars; and partly that his mind was overstrained and tottering. “Poor little thing,” he said to himself, as he went up the avenue, “she is nobody, and she is happy.” With this passing thought, Mr. Brownlow fell once more into the hands of his demon, and, thus agitated and struggling, reached his home.
Nextmorning Mr. Brownlow was not well enough to go to business. He was not ill. He repeated the assurance a score of times to himself and to his children. He had not slept well, that was all—and perhaps a day’s rest, a little quiet and tranquillity, would do him good. He had got up at his usual hour, and was down to breakfast, and read his paper, and every thing went on in its ordinary way; but yet he was indisposed—and a day’s rest would do him good. Young John assented heartily, and was very willing to take his father’s place for the day and manage all his business. It was a bright morning, and the room was full of flowers and the young leaves fluttered at the windows in the earliest green of spring. It was exhilarating to stand in the great recesses of the windows and look out upon the park, all green and budding, and think it was all yours and your children’s—a sort of feeling which had little effect upon the young people, but was sweet yet overwhelming to their father as he stood and looked out in the quiet of the morning. All his—all theirs; yet perhaps—
“I don’t think I shall go down to-day,” he said. “You can tell Wrinkell to send me up the papers in the Wardell case. He knows what I want. He can send the—the new clerk up with them—Powys I mean.”
“Powys?” said Jack.
“Well, yes, Powys. Is there any reason why he should not send Powys?” said Mr. Brownlow peremptorily, feeling hot and conscious, and ready to take offense.
“No, certainly,” said Jack, with some surprise. He did not take to Powys, that was unquestionable; yet the chances are he would never have remarked upon Mr. Brownlow’s choice of him but for the curious impatience and peremptoriness in his father’s tone.
“I like him,” said Mr. Brownlow—“he knows what he has to do and—he does it. I like a man who does that—it gives one confidence for the time to come.”
“Yes,” said Jack. “I never cared for him, sir, as you know. He is not my ideal of a clerk—but that is nothing; only I rather think Wrinkell has changed his opinion lately. The young fellow gets on well enough—but there is a difference. I suppose that sort of extra punctuality and virtue can only last a certain time.”
“I dare say these are very fine notions, Jack,” said his father; “but I am not quite such an accomplished man of the world, I suppose, as if I had been brought up at Eton. I believe in virtue lasting a long time. You must bear with my old-fashioned prejudices.” This Mr. Brownlow said in a way which puzzled Jack, for he was not a man given to sneers.
“Of course, if you take it like that, sir, I have not another word to say,” said the young man,and he went away feeling bitterly hostile to Powys, who seemed to be the cause of it all. He said to himself that to be snubbed on account of a clerk was a new experience, and lost himself in conjectures as to the cause of this unexplained partiality—“a fellow who is going to the bad and all,” Jack said to himself; and his feeling was somewhat vindictive, and he did not feel so sorry as he ought to have done that Powys was going to the bad. It seemed on the whole a kind of retribution. Mr. Wrinkell himself had been sent for to Brownlows on various occasions, but it was not an honor that had been accorded to any of the clerks; and now this young fellow, whose appearance and conduct had both begun to be doubtful, was to have the privilege. Jack did not comprehend it; uneasy unexpressed suspicions came into his mind, all utterly wide of the mark, yet not the less uncomfortable. The mare was a comfort to him as she went off in one of her long dashes, without ever taking breath, like an arrow down the avenue; and so was the momentary glimpse of a little face at the window, to which he took off his hat; but notwithstanding these consolations, he was irritated and somewhat disturbed. On account of a cad! He had no right to give such a title to his father’s favorite; but still it must be allowed that it was a little hard.
“Who is Powys?” said Sara, when her brother was gone. “And why are you angry, papa? You are cross, you know, and that is not like you. I am afraid you must be ill.”
“Cross, am I?” said Mr. Brownlow. “I suppose I am not quite well—I told you I had a bad night.”
“Yes—but what has Powys to do with it? and who is he?” said Sara looking into his face.
Then various possibilities rushed into her father’s mind; should he tell her what he was going to ask of her? Should he claim her promise and hold her to her word? Should he make an attempt, the only one possible, to secure for himself a confidante and counselor? Ah, no! that was out of the question. He might sully his own honor, but never, never his child’s. And he felt, even with a certain exultation, that his child would not have yielded to the temptation—that she would balk him instead of obeying him, did she know why. He felt this in his inmost mind, and he was glad. She would do what he asked her, trusting in him, and in her it would be a virtue—only his should be the sin.
“Who is he?” he said, with a doubtful smile which resulted from his own thoughts, and not from her question. “You will know who he is before long. I want to be civil to him, Sara. He is not just like any other clerk. I would bring him, if you would not be shocked—to lunch—”
“Shocked!” said Sara, with one of her princess airs—“I am not a great lady. You are Mr. Brownlow the solicitor, papa—I hope I know my proper place.”
“Yes,” said John Brownlow; but the words brought an uneasy color to his face, and confounded him in the midst of his projects. To keep her from being merely Mr. Brownlow the solicitor’s daughter, he was going to soil his own honor and risk her happiness; and yet it was thus that she asserted her condition whenever she had a chance. He left her as soon as he could, taking no such advantage of his unusual holiday as Sara supposed he would. He left the breakfast-room which was so bright, and wandered away into the library, a room which, busy man as he was, he occupied very seldom. It was of all the rooms in Brownlows the one which had most appearance of having been made by a new proprietor. There were books in it, to be sure, which had belonged to the Brownlows, the solicitors, for generations, but these were not half or quarter part enough to fill the room, which was larger than any two rooms in the High Street—and consequently it had been necessary to fill the vacant space with ranges upon ranges of literature out of the bookseller’s, which had not mellowed on the shelves, nor come to belong to them by nature. Mr. Brownlow did not think of this, but yet he was somehow conscious of it when, with the prospect of a long unoccupied day before him, he went into this room. It was on the other side of the house, turned away from the sunshine, and looking out upon nothing but evergreens, sombre corners of shrubberies, and the paths which led to the kitchen and stables. He went in and sat down by the table, and looked round at all the shelves, and drew a blotting-book toward him mechanically. What did he want with it? he had no letters to write there—nothing to do that belonged to that luxurious leisurely place. If there was work to be done, it was at the office that he ought to do it. He had not the habit of writing here—nor even of reading. The handsome library had nothing to do with his life. This, perhaps, was why he established himself in it on the special day of which we speak. It seemed to him as if any moment his fine house might topple down about his ears like a house of cards. He had thought over it in the High Street till he was sick and his head swam; perhaps some new light might fall on the subject if he were to think of it here. This was why he established himself at the table, making in his leisure a pretense to himself of having something to do. If he had been used to any sort of guile or dishonorable dealing, the chances are it would have been easier for him; but it is hard upon a man to change the habits of his life. John Brownlow had to maintain with himself a fight harder than that which a man ordinarily has to fight against temptation; for the fact was that this was far, very far from being his case. He was not tempted to do wrong. It was the good impulse which in his mind had come to be the thing to be struggled against. What he wanted was to do what was right; but with all the steadiness of a virtuous resolution he had set himself to struggle against his impulse and to do wrong.
Here was the state of the case: He had found, as he undoubtedly believed, the woman whom more than twenty years ago he had given himself so much trouble to find. She was here, a poor woman—to whom old Mrs. Thomson’s fifty thousand pounds would be equal to as many millions—with a son, whose every prospect would be changed, whose life would begin on a totally different level, if his legitimate inheritance came to him as it ought: this was all very distinct and clear. But, on the other hand, to withdraw that fifty thousand pounds from his own affairs at this moment, would be next to ruin to John Brownlow. It would be aloss to him of almost as much more. It would reduce him again hopelessly to the character of the country solicitor—a character which he had not abandoned, which he had, in short, rather prided himself in keeping up, but which was very different, in conjunction with his present standing in the county, from what it would be were he Brownlow the solicitor alone. And then there was the awful question of interest, which ought to have been accumulating all these five-and-twenty years. He thought to himself as he reflected, that his best course would have been to reject young Powys’s application and throw him off, and leave him to find occupation where he could. Then, if the young man had discovered any thing, it would at least have been a fair fight. But he had of his own will entered into relations with him; he had him under his eyes day by day, a standing temptation, a standing reproach; he had kept him close by him to make discoveries that otherwise he probably never would have made; and he had made discoveries. At any moment the demand might come which should change the character of the position altogether. All this was old ground over which he had gone time after time. There was nothing new in it but the sudden remedy which had occurred to him on the previous night as he walked home. He had not as yet confessed to himself that he had accepted that suggestion, and yet only half voluntarily he had taken the first steps to bring it about. It was a remedy almost as bad as the original danger—very unpalatable, very mortifying—but it was better than utter downfall. By moments Mr. Brownlow’s heart revolted altogether against it. It was selling his child, even though it was for her own sake—it was taking advantage of her best instincts, of her rash girlish readiness to put her future in his hands. And there were also other questions involved. When it came to the point, would Sara hold by her promise—had she meant it, in earnest, as a real promise when she made it? And then she was a girl who would do any thing, every thing for her father’s sake, in the way of self-sacrifice, but would she understand sacrificing herself to save, not her father, but Brownlows? All these were very doubtful questions. Mr. Brownlow, who had never before been in any body’s power, who knew nothing about mysteries, found himself now, as it were, in every body’s power, threading a darkling way, from which his own efforts could never deliver him. He was in the power of young Powys, who any day could come to his door and demand—how much? any sum almost—his whole fortune—with no alternative but that of a lawsuit, which would take his good name as well. He was in the power of his son, who, if he heard of it, might simplify matters very summarily, and the chances were would do so; and he was in the power of Sara, who could save him if she would—save him not only from the consequences but from the sin—save his conscience and his credit, and her own position. Why should not she do it? Young Powys was poor, and perhaps not highly educated; but he was pleasanter to look at, more worth talking to, than Sir Charles Motherwell. If he gave his daughter to this youth, John Brownlow felt that he would do more than merely make him amends for having taken his inheritance. It would be restoring the inheritance to him, and giving him over and above it something that was worth more than compound interest. When he had come to this point, however, a revulsion occurred in his thoughts. How could he think of marrying his child, his Sara, she of whom he had made a kind of princess, who might marry any body, as people say—how could he give her to a nameless young man in his office? What would the world say? What inquiries, what suspicions would arise, if he gave up his house and all its advantages to a young fellow without a penny? And then Sara herself, so delicate in all her tastes, so daintily brought up, so difficult to please! If she were so little fastidious at the end, what would be thought of it? She had refused Sir Charles Motherwell, if not actually yet tacitly—and Sir Charles had many advantages, and was very nearly the greatest man in the county—refused him and was going to take her father’s uncultivated clerk. Would she, could she do it? was it a thing he ought to ask of her? or was it not better that he should take it upon his conscience boldly to deceive and wrong the stranger than to put such a burden on the delicate shoulders of his child?
Thus he passed the morning, driven about from one idea to another and feeling little comfort in any, longing for Powys’s arrival, that he might read in his eyes how much he knew, and yet fearing it, lest he might know too much. If any of his clients had come to him in such a state of mind, John Brownlow would have looked upon that man with a certain pity mingled with contempt, and while advising him to his best, would have said to himself, How weak all this shilly-shally is! one way or other let something be decided. But it is a very different matter deciding on one’s own affairs and on the affairs of other people. Even at that moment, notwithstanding his own agitation and mental distress, had he been suddenly called upon for counsel, he could have given it clearly and fully—the thing was, that he could not advise himself.
And to aggravate matters, while he sat thus thinking it all over and waiting for Powys, and working himself up almost to the point of preparing for a personal contest with him, the Rector chanced to call, and was brought triumphantly into the library. “Papa is so seldom at home,” Sara had said, with a certain exultation; “come and see him.” And Mr. Hardcastle was exultant too. “How lucky that I should have come to-day of all others,” he said. “One never sees you by day-light.”
“Well, yes,” said Mr. Brownlow, who was cross and out of temper in spite of himself; “I am visible by day-light to every body on the road between this and Masterton. I don’t think I shut myself up.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said the Rector; “but you have been overdoing it, Brownlow. You’re ill. I always told you you ought to give yourself more leisure. A man at your time of life is not like a young fellow. We can’t do it, my dear sir—we can’t do it. I am up to as much as most men of my age; but it won’t do morning and night—I have found that out.”
“It suits me very well,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I am not ill, thank you. I had a restless night—rather—”
“Ah, that’s just it,” said Mr. Hardcastle. “The brain is fatigued—that is what it is. Andyou ought to take warning. It is the beginning of so many things. For instance, last year when my head was so bad—”
“Don’t speak of it,” said Mr. Brownlow. “My head is not bad; I am all right. I have a—a clerk coming with some papers; that is what I am waiting for. Is Fanny with you to-day?”
“No,” said Mr. Hardcastle. “They have begun to have her up at Ridley more than I care to see her. And there is that young Keppel, you know. Not that he means any thing, I suppose. Indeed, I thought he was devoted to Sara a short time ago. Ah, my dear Brownlow, it is a difficult matter for us, left as we both are with young girls who have never known maternal care—”
It was not a moment when Mr. Brownlow could enter upon such a subject. But he instinctively changed his expression, and looked solemn and serious, as the occasion demanded. Poor Bessie!—he had probably been a truer lover to her than the Rector had been to the two Mrs. Hardcastles, though she had not been in his mind just then; but he felt bound to put on the necessary melancholy look.
“Yes,” he said; “no doubt it is difficult. My clerk is very late. He ought to have been here at twelve. I have a good many pressing matters of business just now—”
“I see, I see; you have no time for private considerations,” said the Rector. “Don’t overdo it, don’t overdo it,—that is all I have got to say. Remember what a condition I was in only two years since—took no pleasure in any thing. Man delighted me not, nor woman either—not even my little Fanny. If ever there was a miserable state on earth, it is that. I see a fine tall young fellow straying about there among the shrubberies. Is that your clerk?”
Mr. Brownlow got up hastily and came to the window, and there beyond all question was Powys, who had lost his way, and had got involved in the maze of paths which divided the evergreens. It was a curious way for him to approach the house, and he was not the man to seek a back entrance, however humble his circumstances had been. But anyhow it was he, and he had got confused, and stood under one of the great laurels, looking at the way to the stables, and the way to the kitchen, feeling that neither way was his way, and not knowing where to turn. Mr. Brownlow opened the window and called to him. Many a day after he thought of it, with that vague wonder which such symbolical circumstances naturally excite. It did not seem important enough to be part of the symbolism of Providence at the moment. Yet it was strange to remember that it was thus the young man was brought into the house. Mr. Brownlow set the window open, and watched him as he came forward, undeniably a fine tall young fellow, as Mr. Hardcastle said. Somehow a kind of pride in his good looks, such as a father might have felt, came into John Brownlow’s mind. Sir Charles, with his black respirator, was not to be named in the same day with young Powys, so far as appearance went. He was looking as he did when he first came to the office, fresh, and frank, and open-hearted. Those appearances which had so troubled the mind of Mr. Wrinkell and alarmed Mr. Brownlow himself, were not visible in his open countenance. He came forward with his firm and rapid step, not the step of a dweller in streets. And Mr. Hardcastle, who had a slight infusion of muscular Christianity in his creed, could not refrain from admiration.
“That is not much like what one looks for in a lawyer’s clerk,” said the Rector. “What a chest that young fellow has got! Who is he, Brownlow?—not a Masterton man, I should think.”
“He is a Canadian,” said Mr. Brownlow, “not very long in the office, but very promising. He has brought me some papers that I must attend to—”
“Yes, yes, I understand,” said Mr. Hardcastle—“always business; but I shall stay to luncheon as you are at home. I suppose you mean to allow yourself some lunch?”
“Surely,” said Mr. Brownlow; but it was impossible to reply otherwise than coldly. He had wanted no spy upon his actions, nobody to speculate on what he meant in the strange step he was about to take. He could not send his neighbor away; but at the same time he could not be cordial to him as if he desired his company. And then he turned to speak to his clerk, leaving the Rector, who went away in a puzzled state of mind, wondering whether Mr. Brownlow meant to be rude to him. As for young Powys, he came in by the window, taking off his hat, and looking at his employer with an honest mixture of amusement and embarrassment. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said; “I had lost my way; I don’t know where I was going—”
“You were going to the stables,” said Mr. Brownlow, “where I dare say you would have found something much more amusing than with me. Come in. You are later than I expected. How is it you did not come up in the dogcart? My son should have thought of that.”
“He did not say any thing about it,” said Powys, “but I liked the walk. Mr. Wrinkell told me to bring you these, sir. They are the papers in the Wardell case; and he gave me some explanations which I was to repeat to you—some new facts that have just come out—”
“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow. He gave the young man a seat at his table, and resumed his own, and drew the papers to him. But he was not thinking of the papers or of the Wardell case. His attention was fixed upon his young companion. Perhaps it was the walk, perhaps some new discovery, perhaps because he began to see his way to the recovery of that which John Brownlow was determined not to give up, but certainly his eye was as bright and his color as fresh as when he had first come to the office innocent and unsuspecting. He sat down with none of the affectation either of humility or of equality which a Masterton youth of his position would have shown. He was not afraid of his employer, who had been kind to him, and his transatlantic ideas made him feel the difference between them, though great in the mean time, to be rather a difference of time than of class. Such at least was the unconscious feeling in his mind. It is true that he had begun to learn that more things than time, or even industry and brains, are necessary in an old and long-constituted social system, but his new and hardly purchased knowledge had not affected his instincts. He was respectful, but he did not feel himself out of place in Mr. Brownlow’s library.He took his seat, and looked round him with the interest of a man free to observe or even to comment, which, considering that even Mr. Wrinkell was rather disposed at Brownlows to sit on the edge of his chair, was a pleasant variety. Mr. Brownlow drew the papers to him, and bent over them, leaning his head on both his hands; but the fact was, he was looking at Powys from under that cover, fixing his anxious gaze upon him, reading what was in the unsuspicious face—what was in it, and most likely a great deal which was not in it. When he had done this for some minutes he suddenly raised his head, removed his hands from his forehead to his chin, and looked steadily at his young companion.
“I will attend to these by-and-by,” he said, abruptly; “in the mean time, my young friend, I have something to say to you.”
Then Powys, whose eyes had been fixed upon a dark picture over and beyond, at some distance, Mr. Brownlow’s head, came to himself suddenly, and met the look fixed upon him. The elder man thought there was a little defiance in the glance which the younger cast upon him; but this is one of the things in which one sees always what one is prepared to see. Powys, for his part, was not in the least defiant; he was a little surprised, a little curious, eager to hear and reply, but he was utterly unconscious of the sentiments which the other read in his eyes.
“I thought a little while ago,” said Mr. Brownlow, in his excitement going farther than he meant to go, “that I had found in you one of the best clerks that ever I had.”
Here he stopped for a moment, and Powys regarded him open-mouthed, waiting for more. His frank face clouded over a little when he saw that Mr. Brownlow made a pause. “I was going to say Thank you, sir,” said the young man; “and indeed I do say Thank you; but am I to understand that you don’t think so now?”
“I don’t know what to think,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I take more interest in you than—than I am in the habit of taking in a—in a stranger; but they tell me at the office there is a change, and I see there is a change. It has been suggested to me that you were going to the bad, which I don’t believe; and it has been suggested to me that you had something on your mind—”
The young man had changed color, as indeed he could scarcely help doing; hisamour proprewas still as lively and as easily excited as is natural to his age. “If you are speaking of my duties in the office, sir,” he said, “you have a perfect right to speak; but I don’t suppose they could be influenced one way or another by the fact that I had something on my mind—”
“I am not speaking to you so much as your employer as—as your friend,” said Mr. Brownlow. “You know the change has been visible. People have spoken about it to me—not perhaps the people you would imagine to have interfered. And I want to speak to you as an old man may speak to a young man—as I should wish, if the circumstances make it needful, any one would speak to my son. Why do you smile?”
“I beg your pardon, sir; but I could not but smile at the thought of Mr. John—”
“Never mind Mr. John,” said Mr. Brownlow, discomfited. “He has his way, and we have ours. I don’t set up my son as an example. The thing is, that I should be glad if you would take me into your confidence. If any thing is wrong I might be able to help you; and if you have something on your mind—”
“Mr. Brownlow,” said young Powys, with a deep blush, “I am very sorry to seem ungrateful, but a man, if he is good for any thing, must have something he keeps to himself. If it is about my work, I will hear whatever you please to say to me, and make whatever explanations you require. I am not going to the bad; but for any thing else I think I have a right to my own mind.”
“I don’t deny it—I don’t deny it,” said Mr. Brownlow, anxiously. “Don’t think I want to thrust myself into your affairs; but if either advice or help—”
“Thank you,” said the young man. He smiled, and once more Mr. Brownlow, though not imaginative, put a thousand meanings into the smile. “I will be more attentive to my work,” he said; “perhaps I have suffered my own thoughts to interfere with me. Thank you, sir, for your kindness. I am very glad that you have given me this warning.”
“But it does not tempt you to open your heart,” said Mr. Brownlow, smiling too, though not with very pleasurable feelings.
“There is nothing in my heart that is worth opening,” said Powys; “nothing but my own small affairs—thank you heartily all the same.”
This is how Mr. Brownlow was baffled, notwithstanding his superior age and prudence and skill. He sat silent for a time with that curious feeling of humiliation and displeasure which attends a defeat even when nobody is to be blamed for it. Then by way of saving his dignity, he drew once more toward him the Wardell papers, and studied them in silence. As for the young man, he resumed, but with a troubled mind, his examination of the dark old picture. Perhaps his refusal to open his heart arose as much from the fact that he had next to nothing to tell as from any other reason, and the moment the conversation ceased his heart misgave him. Young Powys was not one of the people possessed by a blessed certainty that the course they themselves take is the best. As soon as he had closed his mouth a revulsion of feeling came upon him. He seemed to himself hard-hearted, ungrateful, odious, and sat thinking over all Mr. Brownlow’s kindness to him, and his detestable requital of that kindness, and asking himself how he could recommence the interrupted talk. What could he say to show that he was very grateful, and a devoted servant, notwithstanding that there was a corner of his heart which he could not open up? or must he continue to lie under this sense of having disappointed and refused to confide in so kind a friend? A spectator would have supposed the circumstances unchanged had he seen the lawyer seated calmly at the table looking over his papers, and his clerk at a little distance respectfully waiting his employer’s pleasure; but in the breast of the young man, who was much too young to be sure of himself, there was a wonderful change. He seemed to himself to have made a friend into an enemy; to have lost his vantage ground in Mr. Brownlow’s good opinion, and above all to have been ungrateful and unkind. Thus they sat indead silence till the bell for luncheon—the great bell which amused Pamela, bringing a lively picture before her of all that was going on at the great house—began to sound into the stillness. Then Mr. Brownlow stirred, gathered his papers together, and rose from his chair. Powys sat still, not knowing what to do; and it may be imagined what his feelings were when his employer spoke.
“Come along, Powys,” said Mr. Brownlow,—“you have had a long walk, and you must be hungry—come and have some lunch.”
Itwas like a dream to the young Canadian when he followed the master of the house into the dining-room;—not thatthat, or any other social privilege, would have struck the youth with astonishment or exultation as it would have done a young man from Masterton: but because he had just behaved so ungratefully and ungraciously, and had no right to any such recompense. He had heard enough in the office about Brownlows to know that it was an unprecedented honor that was being paid him; but it was the coals of fire thus heaped upon his head which he principally felt. Sara was already at the head of the table in all that perfection of dainty apparel which dazzles the eyes of people unused to it. Naturally the stranger knew nothing about any one particular of her dress, but he felt without knowing how, the difference between that costly simplicity and all the finery of the women he was accustomed to see. It was a different sphere and atmosphere altogether from any he had ever entered; and the only advantage he had over any of his fellow-clerks who might have been introduced in the same way was, that he had mastered the first grand rule of good-breeding, and had forgotten himself. He had no time to think how he ought to behave in his own person. His mind was too much occupied by the novelty of the sphere into which he was thus suddenly brought. Sara inclined her head graciously as he was brought in, and was not surprised; but as for Mr. Hardcastle, whose seat was just opposite that of young Powys, words could not express his consternation. One of the clerks! Mr. Brownlow the solicitor was not such a great man himself that he should feel justified in introducing his clerks at his table; and after that, what next? A rapid calculation passed through Mr. Hardcastle’s mind as he stared at the new-comer. If this sort of thing was to go on, it would have to be looked to. If Mr. Brownlow thought it right for Sara, he certainly should not think it right for his Fanny. Jack Brownlow himself, with Brownlows perhaps, and at least a large share of his father’s fortune, was not to be despised; but the clerks! The Rector even felt himself injured—though to be sure, young Powys or any other clerk could not have dreamed of paying addresses to him. And it must be admitted that the conversation was not lively at table. Mr. Brownlow was embarrassed as knowing his own intentions, which, of course, nobody else did. Mr. Hardcastle was astonished and partially affronted. And Powys kept silence. Thus there was only Sara to keep up a little appearance of animation at the table. It is at such moments that the true superiority of womankind really shows itself. She was not embarrassed—the social difference which, as she thought, existed between her and her father’s clerk was so great and complete that Sara felt herself as fully at liberty to be gracious to him, as if he had been his own mother or sister. “If Mr. Powys walked all the way he must want his luncheon, papa,” she said. “Don’t you think it is a pretty road? Of course it is not grand like your scenery in Canada. We don’t have any Niagaras in England; but it is pleasant, don’t you think?”
“It is very pleasant,” said young Powys; “but there are more things in Canada than Niagara.”
“I suppose so,” said Sara, who was rather of opinion that he ought to have been much flattered by her allusion to Canada; “and there are prettier places in England than Dewsbury—but still people who belong to it are fond of it all the same. Mr. Hardcastle, this is the dish you are so fond of—are you ill, like papa, that you don’t eat to-day?”
“Not ill, my dear,” said the Rector, with meaning—“only like your papa, a little out of sorts.”
“I don’t know why people should be out of sorts who have every thing they can possibly want,” said Sara. “I think it is wicked both of papa and you. If you were poor men in the village, with not enough for your children to eat, you would know better than to be out of sorts. I am sure it would do us all a great deal of good if we were suddenly ruined,” the young woman continued, looking her father, as it happened, full in the face. Of course she did not mean any thing. It came into her head all at once to say this, and she said it; but equally of course it fell with a very different significance on her father’s ears. He changed color in spite of himself—he dropped on his plate a morsel he was carrying to his mouth. A sick sensation came over him. Sara did not know very much about the foundation of his fortune, but still she knew something; and she was just as likely as not to let fall some word which would throw final illumination upon the mind of the young stranger. Mr. Brownlow smiled a sickly sort of smile at her from the other end of the table.
“Don’t use such strong language,” he said. “Being ruined means with Sara going to live in a cottage covered with roses, and taking care of one’s aged father; but, my darling, your father is not yet old enough to give in to being ruined, even should such a chance happen to us. So you must make up your mind to do without the cottage. The roses you can have, as many as you like.”
“Sara means by ruin, that is to say,” said the Rector, “something rather better than the best that I have been able to struggle into, and nothing to do for it. I should accept her ruin with all my heart.”
“You are laughing at me,” said Sara, “both of you. Fanny would know if she were here. You understand, don’t you, Mr. Powys? What do I care for cottages or roses? but if one were suddenly brought face to face with the realities of life—”
“You have got that out of a book, Sara,” said the Rector.
“And if I have, Mr. Hardcastle?” said Sara. “I hope some books are true. I know what I mean, whether you know it or not. And so does Mr. Powys,” she added, suddenly meeting the stranger’s eye.
This appeal was unlucky, for it neutralized the amusement of the two elder gentlemen, and brought them back to their starting-point. It was a mistake in every way, for Powys, though he was looking on with interest and wonder, did not understand what Sara meant. He looked at her when she spoke, and reddened, and faltered something, and then betook himself to his plate with great assiduity, to hide his perplexity. He had never known any thing but the realities of life. He had known them in their most primitive shape, and he was beginning to become acquainted with them still more bitterly in the shape they take in the midst of civilization, when poverty has to contend with more than the primitive necessities. And to think of this dainty creature, whose very air that she breathed seemed different from that of his world, desiring to be brought face to face with such realities! He had been looking at her with great reverence, but now there mingled with his reverence just that shade of conscious superiority which a man likes to feel. He was not good, sweet, delightsome, celestial, as she was, but he knew better—precious distinction between the woman and the man.
But Sara, always thinking of him as so different from herself that she could use freedom with him, was not satisfied. “You understand me?” she said, repeating her appeal.
“No,” said young Powys; “at least if it is real poverty she speaks of, I don’t think Miss Brownlow can know what it means.” He turned to her father as he spoke with the instinct of natural good-breeding. And thereupon there occurred a curious change. The two gentlemen began to approve of the stranger. Sara, who up to this moment had been so gracious, approved of him no more.
“You are quite right,” said the Rector; “what Miss Brownlow is thinking of is an imaginary poverty which exists no longer—if it ever existed. If your father had ever been a poor curate, my dear Sara, like myself, for instance—”
“Oh, if you are all going to turn against me—” said Sara, with a little shrug of her shoulders. And she turned away as much as she could do it without rudeness from the side of the table at which young Powys sat, and began in revenge to talk society. “So Fanny is at Ridley,” she said; “what does she mean by always being at Ridley? The Keppels are very well, but they are not so charming as that comes to. Is there any one nice staying there just now?”
“Perhaps you and I should not agree about niceness,” said the Rector. “There are several people down for Easter. There is Sir Joseph Scrape, for instance, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer once, before you were born. I am very fond of him, but you would prefer his grandson, Sara, if he happened to have a grandson.”
“On the contrary, I like old gentlemen,” said Sara. “I never see any thing else, for one thing. There is yourself, Mr. Hardcastle, and papa—”
“Well, I suppose I am an old gentleman,” said the Rector, ruefully; “at least to babies like you. That is how things go in this world—one shifts the burden on to one’s neighbor. Probably Sir Joseph is of my mind, and thinks somebody else old. And then, in revenge, we have nothing to do but to call you young creatures babies, though you have the world in your hands,” Mr. Hardcastle added, with a sigh; for he was a vigorous man, and a widower, and had been already twice married, and saw no reason why he should not take that step again. And it was hard upon him to be called an old gentleman in this unabashed and open way.
“Well, they have the world before them,” said Mr. Brownlow; “but I am not so sure that they have it in their hands.”
“We have nothing in our hands,” said Sara, indignantly—“even I, though papa is awfully good to me. I don’t mean to speak slang, but he isawfullygood, you know; and what does it matter? I daren’t go anywhere by myself, or do any thing that every body else doesn’t do. And as for Fanny, she would not so much as take a walk if she thought you did not like it.”
“Fanny is a very good girl,” said Mr. Hardcastle, with a certain melting in his voice.
“We are all very good girls,” said Sara; “but what is the use of it? We have to do every thing we are told just the same; and have old Lady Motherwell, for example, sitting upon one, whenever she has a chance. And then you say we have the world in our hands! If you were to let us do a little as we pleased, and be happy our own way—”
“Then you have changed your mind,” said Mr. Brownlow. He was smiling, but yet underneath that he was very serious, not able to refrain from giving in his mind a thousand times more weight than they deserved to his daughter’s light and random words, though he knew well enough they were random and light. “I thought you were a dutiful child, who would do what I asked you, even in the most important transaction of your life—so you said once, at least.”
“Any thing you asked me, papa?” cried Sara, with a sudden change of countenance. “Yes, to be sure! any thing! Not because I am dutiful, but because—you are surely all very stupid to-day—because— Don’t you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said young Powys, who all this time had not spoken a word. Perhaps in her impatience her eye had fallen upon him; perhaps it was because he could not help it; but however that might be, the monosyllable sent a little electric shock round the table. As for the speaker himself, he had no sooner uttered it than he reddened like a girl up to his very hair. Sara started a little, and became suddenly silent, looking at the unexpected interpreter she had got; and as for the Rector, he stared with the air of a man who asks himself, What next?
The sudden pause thus made in the conversation by his inadvertent reply, confused the young man most of all. He felt it down to the very tips of his fingers. It went tingling through him, as if he were the centre of the electricity—as indeed he was. His first impulse, to get up and run away, of course could not be yielded to; and as luncheon was over by this time, and the servants gone, and the business of the meal over, it was harder than ever to find any shelter to retire behind. Despair at last, however, gave him a little courage. “I think, sir,” he said, turning toMr. Brownlow, “if you have no commands for me, that I had better go. Mr. Wrinkell will want to know your opinion; unless, indeed—”
“I am not well enough for work,” said Mr. Brownlow, “and you may as well take a holiday as you are here. It will do you good. Go and look at the horses, and take a stroll in the park. Of course you are fond of the country. I don’t think there is much to see in the house—”
“If Mr. Powys would like to see the Claude, I will take him into the drawing-room,” said Sara, with all her original benignity. Powys, to tell the truth, did not very well know whether he was standing on his head, or on the other and more ordinary extremity. He was confounded by the grace showed to him. And being a backwoodsman by nature, and knowing not much more than Masterton in the civilized world, the fact is that at first, before he considered the matter, he had not an idea what a Claude was. But that made no difference; he was ready to have gone to Pandemonium if the same offer had been made to show the way. Not that he had fallen in love at first sight with the young mistress of Brownlows. He was too much dazzled, too much surprised for that; but he had understood what she meant, and the finest little delicate thread ofrapporthad come into existence between them. As for Sara’s condescension and benignity, he liked it. Her brother would have driven him frantic with a tithe of the affability which Sara thought her duty under the circumstances; but from her it was what it ought to be. The young man did not think it was possible that such a privilege was to be accorded to him, but he looked at her gratefully, thanking her with his eyes. And Sara looked at him, and for an instant saw into those eyes, and became suddenly sensible that it was not her father’s clerk, but a man, a young man, to whom she had made this obliging offer. It was not an idea that had entered her head before; he was a clerk whom Mr. Brownlow chose to bring in to luncheon. He might have been a hundred for any thing Sara cared. Now, all at once it dawned upon her that the clerk was a man, and young, and also well-looking, a discovery which filled her with a certain mixture of horror and amusement. “Well, how was I to know?” she said to herself, although, to be sure, she had been sitting at the same table with him for about an hour.
“Certainly, if Powys likes, let him see the Claude; but I should think he would prefer the horses,” said Mr. Brownlow; and then Sara rose and shook out her long skirt, and made a little sign to the stranger to follow her. When the two young creatures disappeared, Mr. Hardcastle, who had been staring at them, open-mouthed, turned round aghast and pale with consternation upon his friend.
“Brownlow, are you mad?” he said; “good heavens! if it was any body but you I should think it was softening of the brain.”
“It may be softening of the brain,” said Mr. Brownlow, cheerfully; “I don’t know what the symptoms are. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” said the Rector—he had to stop and pour himself out a glass of wine to collect his faculties—“why, it looks as if you meant it. Send your clerk off with your child, a young fellow like that, as if they were equals! Yourclerk! I should not permit it with my Fanny, I can tell you that.”
“Do you think Sara will run away with him?” said Mr. Brownlow, smiling. “I feel sure I can trusthimnot to do it. Why, what nonsense you are speaking! If you have no more confidence in my little friend Fanny, I have.Shewould be in no danger from my clerk if she were to see him every day, and show him all the pictures in the world.”
“Oh, Fanny,—that is not the question,” said the Rector, half suspicious of the praise, and half pleased. “It was Sara we were talking of. I don’t believe she would care if a man was a chimney-sweep. You have inoculated her with your dreadful Radical ideas—”
“I? I am not a Radical,” said Mr. Brownlow; and he still smiled, though he entered into no farther explanation. As for the Rector, he gulped down his wine, and subsided into his neck-cloth, as he did when he was disturbed in his mind. He had no parallel in his experience to this amazing indiscretion. Fanny?—no; to be sure Fanny was a very good girl, and knew her place better—she would not have offered to show the Claude, though it had been the finest Claude in the world, even to a curate, much less to a clerk. And then it seemed to Mr. Hardcastle that Mr. Brownlow’s eyes looked very heavy, and that there were many tokens half visible about him of softening of the brain.
Meanwhile Sara went sweeping along the great wide fresh airy passages, and through the hall, and up the grand stair-case. Her dress was of silk, and rustled—not a vulgar rustle, like that which announces some women offensively wherever they go, but a soft satiny silvery ripple of sound, which harmonized her going like a low accompaniment. Young Powys had only seen her for the first time that day, and he was a reasonable young fellow, and had not a thought of love or love-making in his mind. Love! as if any thing so preposterous could ever arise between this young princess and a poor lawyer’s clerk, maintaining his mother and his little sisters on sixty pounds a year. But yet, he was a young man, and she was a girl; and following after her as he did, it was not in human nature not to behold and note the fair creature, with her glistening robes and her shining hair. Now and then, when she passed through a patch of sunshine from one of the windows, she seemed to light up all over, and reflect it back again, and send forth soft rays of responsive light. Though she was so slender and slight, her step was as steady and free as his own, Canadian and backwoodsman as he was; and yet, as she moved, her pretty head swayed by times like the head of a tall lily upon the breeze, not with weakness, but with the flexile grace that belonged to her nature. Powys saw all this, and it bewitched him, though she was altogether out of his sphere. Something in the atmosphere about her went to his head. It was the most delicate intoxication that ever man felt, and yet it was intoxication in a way. He went up stairs after her, feeling like a man in a dream, not knowing what fairy palace, what new event she might be leading him to; but quite willing and ready, under her guidance, to meet any destiny that might await him. The Claude was so placed in the great drawing-room, that the actual landscape, so far as the mild greenness of thepark could be called landscape, met your eye as you turned from the immortal landscape of the picture. Sara went straight up to it without a pause, and showed her companion where he was to stand. “This is the Claude,” she said, with a majestic little wave of her hand by way of introduction. And the young man stood and looked at the picture, with her dress almost touching him. If he did not know much about the Claude at the commencement, he knew still less now. But he looked into the clear depths of the picture with the most devout attention. There was a ripple of water, and a straight line of light gleaming down into it, penetrating the stream, and casting up all the crisp cool glistening wavelets against its own glow. But as for the young spectator, who was not a connoisseur, his head got confused somehow between the sun on Claude’s ripples of water, and the sun as it had fallen in the hall upon Sara’s hair and her dress.
“It is very lovely,” he said, rather more because he thought it was the thing he ought to say than from any other cause.
“Yes,” said Sara; “we are very proud of our Claude; but I should like to know why active men like papa should like those sort of pictures; he prefers landscapes to every thing else—whereas they make me impatient. I want something that lives and breathes. I like pictures of life—not that one everlasting line of light fixed down upon the canvas with no possibility of change.”
“I don’t know much about pictures,” said Powys—“but yet—don’t you think it is less natural still to see one everlasting attitude—like that, for instance, on the other wall? people don’t keep doing one particular thing all their lives.”
“I should like to be a policeman and tell them to move on,” said Sara. “That woman there, who is giving the bread to the beggar—she has been the vexation of my life; why can’t she give it and have done with it? I think I hate pictures—I don’t see what we want with them. I always want to know what happened next.”
“But nothing need happen at all here,” said Powys, with unconscious comprehension, turning to the Claude again. He was a little out of his depth, and not used to this kind of talk, but more and more it was going to his head, and that intoxication carried him on.
“That is the worst of all,” said Sara. “Why doesn’t there come a storm?—what is the good of every thing always being the same? That was what I meant down stairs when you pretended you did not understand.”
What was the poor young fellow to say? He was penetrated to his very heart by the sweet poison of this unprecedented flattery—for it was flattery, though Sara meant nothing more than the freemasonry of youth. She had forgotten he was a clerk, standing there before the Claude; she had even forgotten her own horror at the discovery that he was a man. He was young, like herself, willing to follow her lead, and he “understood;” which after all, though Sara was not particularly wise, is the true test of social capabilities. He did know what she meant, though in that one case he had not responded; and Sara, like every body else of quick intelligence and rapid mind, met with a great many people who stared and did not know what she meant. This was why she did the stranger the honor of a half reproach;—it brought the poor youth’s intoxication to its height.
“But I don’t think you understand,” he said, ruefully, apologetically, pathetically, laying himself down at her feet as it were, to be trod upon if she pleased. “You don’t know how hard it is to be poor; so long as it was only one’s self, perhaps, or so long as it was mere hardship; but there is worse than that; you have to feel yourself mean and sordid—you have to do shabby things. You have to put yourself under galling obligations; but I ought not to speak to you like this—that is what it really is to be poor.”
Sara stood and looked at him, opening her eyes wider and wider. This was not in the least like the cottage with the roses, but she had forgotten all about that; what she was thinking of now was whether he was referring to his own case—whether his life was like that—whether her father could not do something for him; but for the natural grace of sympathy which restrained her, she would have said so right out; but in her simplicity she said something very near as bad. “Mr. Powys,” she said, quite earnestly, “do you live in Masterton all alone?”
Then he woke up and came to himself. It was like falling from a great height, and finding one’s feet, in a very confused, sheepish sort of way, on the common ground. And the thought crossed his mind, also, that she might think he was referring to himself, and made him still more sheepish and confused. But yet, now that he was roused, he was able to answer for himself. “No, Miss Brownlow,” he said; “my mother and my little sisters are with me. I don’t live alone.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Sara, whose turn it now was to blush. “I hope you like Masterton?” This very faltering and uncomfortable question was the end of the interview; for it was very clear no answer was required. And then she showed him the way down stairs, and he went his way by himself, retracing the very steps which he had taken when he was following her. He felt, poor fellow, as if he had made a mistake somehow, and done something wrong, and went out very rueful into the park, as he would have gone to his desk, in strict obedience to his employer’s commands.