When Mrs. Preston came to herself, she tried to get up from the sofa, and looked at them all with a piteous look of terror and helplessness. She was a simply uneducated woman, making little distinction between different kinds of crime—and it seemed to her as if a man who had defrauded her (as she thought) all these years, might very well mean to murder her when he was found out. She did not see the difference. She shuddered as she fell back on the cushions unable to rise. “Would you like to kill me?” she said faintly, looking in their faces. She was afraid of them, and she was helpless andalone. She did not feel even as if she had the strength to cry out. And there were three of them—they could put out her feeble flickering flame of life if they pleased. As for the two young people whom she addressed in the first place, they supposed simply that she was raving. But Mr. Brownlow, who was, in his way, as highly strained as she was, caught the words. And the thought flashed through his mind as if some one had held up a picture to him. What would it matter if she were to die? She was old—she had lived long enough—she was not so happy that she should wish to live longer; and her child—others might do better for her child than she could. It was not his fault. It was her words that called up the picture before him, and he made a few steps forward and put his children away, and came up to the sofa and looked at her. An old, faint, feeble, worn-out woman. A touch would do it;—her life was like the last sere leaves fluttering on the end of the branches; a touch would do it. He came and looked at her, not knowing what he did, and put his children away. And there was something in his eyes which made her shrink into the corner of her couch and tremble, and be silent. He was looking to see how it could be done—by some awful unconscious impulse, altogether apart from any will or thought of his. And a touch would do it. This was what was in his eyes when he told his children to go away.
“Go—go to bed,” he said, “I will take care of Mrs. Preston.” There was a horrible appearance of meaning in his voice, but yet he did not know what he meant. He stood and looked down upon her gloomily. Yes, that was all that stood between him and peace; a woman whom any chance touch—any blast bitterer than usual—any accidental fall, might kill. “Go to bed, children,” he repeated harshly. It seemed to him somehow as if it would be better, as if he would be more at liberty, when they were away.
“Oh, no—no,” said Mrs. Preston, moaning. “Don’t leave me—don’t leave me. You wouldn’t see any harm come to me, for my Pamela’s sake!”
And then both his children looked into Mr. Brownlow’s face. I can not tell what they saw there. I doubt whether they could have told themselves; but it was something that thrilled them through and through, which came back to them from time to time all their lives, and which they could never forget. Jack turned away from his father with a kind of horror, and went and placed himself beside Mrs. Preston at the head of the sofa. But Sara, though her dismay was still greater, went up to him and clasped his arm with both her hands. “Papa,” she said, “come away. Come with me. I don’t know what it means, but it is too much for you. Come, papa.”
Mr. Brownlow once more put her away with his hand. “Go to bed, Sara,” he said; and then freeing himself, he went across the room to the curtained windows, and stared out as if they were open, and came back again. The presence of his children was an oppression to him. He wanted them away. And then he stood again by the side of the sofa and looked at his visitor. “We can talk this over best alone,” he said; and at the sound of his voice, and a movement which she thought Jack made to leave her, she gave a sudden cry.
“He will kill me if you go away!” she said. “Oh, don’t leave me to him! I—don’t mean to injure you—I—But you’re in league with him,” she exclaimed rising suddenly with the strength of excitement, and rushing to the other end of the room; “you are all against me. I shall be killed—I shall be killed! Murder! murder!—though I don’t want to hurt you. I want nothing but my rights.”
She got behind the writing-table in her insane terror, and threw herself down there on her knees, propping herself up against it, and watching them as from behind a barricade, with her pallid thin face supported on the table. With her hands she drew a chair to each side of her. She was like a wild creature painfully barricading herself—sheltering her feeble strength within intrenchments, and turning her face to the foe. Mr. Brownlow stood still and looked at her, but this time with a stupefied look which meant nothing; and as for Jack he stood aghast, half frightened, half angry, not knowing if she were mad, or what it was. When either of them moved, she crouched together and cried out, thinking they were about to rush upon her. For the moment she was all but mad—mad with excitement, fright, evil-thinking, and ignorance—ignorance most of all—seeing no reason why, if they had done one wrong, they should not do another. Kill or defraud, which did it matter?—and for the moment she was out of her senses, and knew not what she did or said.
Sara was the only one who retained her wits at this emergency. She stepped behind the screen made by the table without pausing to think about it. “Mrs. Preston,” she said, “I don’t know what is the matter with you. You look as if you had gone mad; but I am not frightened. What do you mean by calling murder here? Come with me to my room and go to bed. It is time every body was in bed. I will take care of you. You are tired to death, and not fit to be up. Come with me.”
“You!” cried Mrs. Preston—“you! You that have had every thing my Pamela ought to have had! You that have been kept like a princess on my money! You!—but don’t let them kill me,” she cried out the next moment, shuddering and turning toward the other woman for protection. “You’re but a girl. Come here and stand by me, and save me, and I’ll stand by you. You shall always have a home. I’ll be as good to you—but save me! don’t let them kill me!” she cried, frantically throwing her arms round Sara’s waist. It was a curious sight. The girl stood erect, her slight figure swaying with the unusual strain upon it, her face lit up with such powerful emotions as she had never known before, looking wistful, alarmed, wondering, proud, upon her father and her brother at the other side, while the old woman clung to her, crouching at her feet, hiding her face in her dress, clasping her waist as for life and death. Sara had accepted the office thrust upon her, whatever it was. She had become responsible for the terrified, exhausted claimant of all Mr. Brownlow’s fortune—and turned round upon the two astonished men with something new to them, something that was almost defiance, in her eyes.
“I don’t know what it means,” she said, layingher long, soft, shapely hand upon Mrs. Preston’s shoulder like the picture of a guardian angel; “but it has gone past your managing, and I must take charge of her. Jack, open the door, and keep out of the way. She must come with me.”
And then, indeed, Mr. Brownlow within himself in the depths of his heart, uttered a groan, which made some outward echo. He was in the last crisis of his fate, and his cherished child forsook him and took his adversary’s part. He withdrew himself and sank down into a chair, clearing the way, as she had bidden. Sara had taken charge of her. Sara had covered the intruder for ever and ever with the shield of her protection; and yet it was for Sara alone that he could have found in his heart to murder this woman, as she said. When Sara stood forth and faced him in her young strength and pride, a sudden Lady of Succor, it cast him to the earth. And he gave that groan, and sank down and put himself aside, as it were. He could not carry on the struggle. When Sara heard it her heart smote her; she turned to him eagerly, not to comfort him but to defend herself.
“Well!” she said, “if it was nothing, you would not have minded. It must be something, or you would not have looked—” And then she stopped and shuddered. “I am going to take charge of her to-night,” she added, low and hurriedly. “I will take her to my room, and stay with her all night. To-morrow, perhaps, we may know what it means. Jack, she can walk, if you will clear the way.”
Then Mr. Brownlow looked up, with an indescribable pang at his heart, and saw his daughter lead, half carrying, his enemy away. “I will take her to my room, and stay with her all night.” He had felt the emphasis and meaning that was in the words, and he had seen Sara’s shudder. Good heavens! what was it for? Was he a man to do murder? What was it his child had read in his eye? In this horrible confusion of thought he sat and watched the stranger out. She had made good her lodgment, not only in the house, but in the innermost chamber, in Sara’s room—in Sara’s protecting presence, where nothing could get near her. And it was against him that his child had taken up this wretched woman’s defense! He neither moved nor spoke for some minutes after they had left the room. The bitterness had all to be tasted and swallowed before his thoughts could go forward to other things, and to the real final question. By degrees, however, as he came to himself, he became aware that he was not yet left free to think about the final question. Jack was still beside him. He did not say any thing, but he was moving and fidgeting about the room with his hands in his pockets in a way which proved that he had something to say. As Mr. Brownlow came to himself he gradually woke to a perception of his son’s restless figure beside him, and knew that he had another explanation to make.
“I don’t want to trouble you,” said Jack at last, abruptly, “but I should very much like to know, sir, what all this means. If Mrs. Preston is mad—as—God knows I don’t want to think it,” cried the young man, “but one must believe one’s eyes—if she is mad, why did you give in to her, and humor her? Why did not you let me take her away?”
“I don’t think she is mad,” said Mr. Brownlow, slowly.
Upon which Jack came to a dead stop, and stared at his father—“Good heavens, sir,” he said, “what can you mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Brownlow, getting up in his turn. “My head is not quite clear to-night. Leave me now. I’ll tell you after. I’ll tell you—sometime;—I mean in the morning.” Then he walked once more across the room, and threw himself into the big easy-chair by the dying fire. One of the lamps had run down, and was flickering out, throwing strange quivers of light and shade about the room. An indescribable change had come over it; it had been bright, and now it looked desolate; it had been the home of peace, and now the very air was heavy with uncertainty and a kind of hovering horror. Mr. Brownlow threw himself wearily into the big chair, and covered his face with his hands. A moment after he seemed to recollect himself, and looked up and called Jack back. “My boy,” he said, “something has happened to-night which I did not look for. You must consider every thing I said to you before as cancelled. It appears I was premature. I am sorry—for you, Jack.”
“Don’t be sorry for me,” cried Jack, with a generous impulse. “It could not have made much matter anyhow—my life is decided, come what may.”
Then his father looked up at him sharply, but with a quiver in his lip. “Ah!” he said; and Jack perceived somehow, he did not know how, that he had unwittingly inflicted a new wound. “It could not have made much matter—true,” he said, and rose up and bowed to his son as if he had been a stranger. “That being the case, perhaps the less we say to each other the better now—”
“What have I said, sir?” cried Jack in amaze.
“Enough, enough,” said Mr. Brownlow, “enough”—whether it was in answer to his question, or by way of putting an end to the conversation, Jack could not tell; and then his father waved him away, and sat down again, once more burying his face in his hands. Again the iron had entered his soul. Both of them!—all he had in the world—his fortune, his position, his son, his daughter, must all go? It seemed to him now as if the external things were nothing in comparison of these last. Sara, for whose sake alone he feared it—Jack, whom he had not petted—whom perhaps he had crossed a little as fathers will, but whom at bottom—never mind, never mind! he said to himself. It was the way of the world. Sons did not take up their father’s cause nowadays as a matter of course. They had themselves to think of—in fact, it was right they should think of themselves. The world was of much more importance to Jack than it could be to himself, for of course a young man had twice the length of time to provide for that his father could possibly have. Never mind! He said it to himself with his head bowed down in his hands. But he did mind. “It would not make much matter anyhow”—no, not much matter. Jack would have it instead of Sara and Powys. It was the same kind of compromise that he had intended—only that the persons and the motive were changed.
Poor Jack in the mean time went about theroom in a very disconsolate state. He was so startled in every way that he did not know what to think, and yet vague shadows of the truth were flickering about his mind. He knew something vaguely of the origin of his father’s fortune, and nothing but that could explain it; and now he was offended at something. What could it be that he was offended at? It never occurred to Jack that his own words might bear the meaning that was set upon them; he was disconcerted and vexed, and did not know what to do. He went wandering about the room, lifting and replacing the books on the tables, and finally, after a long pause, he went up to his father again.
“I wish you’d have some confidence in me,” he said. “I don’t pretend to be wise, but still—And then if there is any thing hanging over us, it is best that a fellow should know—”
“There is nothing hanging overyou,” said Mr. Brownlow, raising his head, almost with bitterness. “It will not matter much anyhow, you know. Don’t think of waiting for me. I have a good deal to think over. In short, I should be very glad if you would leave me to myself and go—”
“As you please,” said Jack, who was at last offended in his turn; and after he had made a discontented promenade all round the room, he lounged toward the door, still hoping he might be called back again. But he was not called back. On the contrary, his father’s head had sunk again into his hands, and he had evidently retired into himself, beyond the reach of all fellowship or sympathy. Jack veered gradually toward the door and went out of the room, with his hands in his pockets and great trouble and perplexity in his mind. It seemed to him that he saw what the trouble must be, and that of itself was not pleasant. But bad as it might be, it was not so bad as the way his father was taking it. Good heavens, if he should hurt the old woman!—but surely he was not capable of that. And then Jack returned upon his own case and felt wounded and sore. He was not a baby that his father should decline to take him into his confidence. He was not a fool that he should be supposed unequal to the emergency. Sleep was out of the question under the circumstances; and besides he did not want to meet any of the fellows who might have been disturbed by Mrs. Preston’s cry, and might have come to his room for information. “Hang it all!” said Jack, as he threw himself on a sofa in the smoking-room, and lighted a dreary cigar. It was not a very serious malediction, but yet his mind was serious enough. Some terrible crisis in the history of his family was coming on, and he could only guess what it was. Something that involved not only his own prospects, but the prospects of his future wife. And yet nobody would tell him what was the meaning of it. It was hard lines for Jack.
When his son left the room, Mr. Brownlow lifted his head out of his hands. He looked eagerly round the room and made sure he was alone. And then his countenance relaxed a little. He could venture to look as he felt, to throw off every mask when he was alone. Then he got up and walked heavily about. Was it all true? Had she come at the last moment and made her claim? Had she lighted down upon him, tracked him out, just as he was saying, and at last permitting himself to think, that all was over? A strange confusion swept over him as he sat and looked around the empty room. Was it possible that all this had happened since he was last alone in it? It was only a few hours since; and he had been scarcely able to believe that so blessed a state of things could be true. He had sat there and planned every kind of kindness and bounty to every body by way of expressing his gratitude to God. Was it possible? Could every thing since then be so entirely changed? Or had he only dreamt the arrival of the sudden claimant, the striking of the clock too late, all the miseries of the night? As he asked himself these questions, a sudden shuddering came over him. There was one thing which he knew could be no dream. It was the suggestion which had come into his mind as he stood by the sofa. He seemed to see her before him, worn, old, feeble, and involuntarily his thoughts strayed away again to that horrible thought. What was the use of such a woman in the world? She had nothing before her but old age, infirmities, a lingering illness most likely, many sufferings and death—only death at the end; that was the best, the only event awaiting her. To the young, life may blossom out afresh at any moment, but the old can only die—that is all that remains for them. And a touch would do it. It might save her from a great deal of suffering—it would certainly save her from the trial of a new position, the difficult transition from poverty to wealth. If he was himself as old, Mr. Brownlow thought vaguely (all this was very vague—it was not breathed in articulate thought, much less in words) that he would be glad to be put quietly out of the way. Heaven knows he would be grateful enough to any one even at that moment who would put him out of the way.
And it would be so easy to do it; a touch would do it. The life was fluttering already in her pulses; very likely the first severe cold would bring her down like the leaves off the trees; and in the mean time what a difference her life would make. Mr. Brownlow got up and began to walk about, not able to keep still any longer. The second lamp was now beginning to flicker for want of oil, and the room was darkening, though he did not perceive it. It would be the kindest office that could be done to an old woman; he had often thought so. Suddenly there occurred to him a recollection of certain unhappy creatures in the work-house at Masterton, who were so old that nothing was any pleasure to them. He thought of the life-in-death he had seen among them, the tedious blank, the animal half-existence, the dead, dull doze, out of which only a bad fit of coughing or some other suffering roused them; and of his own passing reflection how kind it would be to mix them a sleeping potion only a little stronger, and let them be gone. It would be the best thing any one could do for them. It would be the best thing any one could do forher; and then all the trouble, all the vexation, all the misery and change that it would save!
As for the child, Mr. Brownlow said to himself that all should go well with the child. He would not interfere. Jack should marry her ifhe pleased—all should go well with her; and she would not have the difficult task of reconciling the world to her mother. In every way it seemed the desirable arrangement. If Providence would but interpose!—but then Providence never did interpose in such emergencies. Mr. Brownlow went slowly up and down the darkening room, and his thoughts, too, went into the darkness. They went on as it were in a whisper and hid themselves, and silence came—hideous silence, in which the heart stood still, the genial breath was interrupted. He did not know what he was doing. He went to the medicine-chest which was in one corner, and opened it and looked at it. He did not even make a pretense of looking for any thing; neither would the light have enabled him to look for any thing. He looked at it and he knew that death was there, but he did not put forth his hand to touch it. At that moment all at once the flickering flame went out—went out just as a life might do, after fluttering and quivering and making wild rallies, again and again. Mr. Brownlow, for his part, was almost glad there was no light. It made him easier—even the lamp had seemed to look at him and see something in his eye!
Five minutes after, he found himself, he could not have told how, at the door of Sara’s room. It was not in his way—he could not make that excuse to himself—to tell the truth he did not make any excuse to himself. His mind was utterly confused, and had stopped thinking. He was there, having come there he did not know how; and being there he opened the door softly and went in. Perhaps, for any thing he could tell, the burden might have been too much for Sara. He went in softly, stealing so as not to disturb any sleeper. The room was dark, but not quite dark. There was a night-light burning, shaded, on the table, and the curtains were drawn at the head of the white bed: nothing stirred in the silence: only the sound of breathing, the irregular disturbed breathing of some one in a troubled sleep. Mr. Brownlow stole farther in, and softly put back one of the curtains of the bed. There she lay, old, pallid, wrinkled, worn out, breathing hard in her sleep, even then unable to forget the struggle she was engaged in, holding the coverlet fast with one old meagre hand, upon which all the veins stood out. What comfort was her life to her? And a touch would do it. He went a step nearer and stooped over her, not knowing what he did, not putting out a finger, incapable of any exertion, yet with an awful curiosity. Then all at once out of the darkness, swift as an angel on noiseless pinions, a white figure rose and rushed at him, carrying him away from the bed out to the door, unwitting, aghast, by the mere impetus of its own sudden motion. When they had got outside it was Sara’s face that was turned upon him, pale as the face of the dead, with her hair hanging about it wildly, and the moisture standing in big beads on her forehead. “What were you going to do?” she seemed to shriek in his ear, though the shriek was only a whisper. He had left his candle outside, and it was by that faint light he could see the whiteness of her face.
“Do?” said Mr. Brownlow, with a strange sense of wonder. “Do?—nothing. What could I do?”
Then Sara threw herself upon him and wept aloud, wept so that the sound ran through the house, sobbing along the long listening passages. “Oh, papa, papa!” she cried, clinging to him. A look as of idiocy had come into his face. He had become totally confused—he did not know what she meant. What could he do? Why was she crying? And it was wrong to make a noise like this, when all the house was hushed and asleep.
“You must be quiet,” he said. “There is no need to be so agitated; and you should have been in bed. It is very late. I am going to my room now.”
“I will go with you,” said Sara, trembling. Already she began to be ashamed of her terror, but her nerves would not calm down all at once. She put her hand on his arm and half led, half followed him through the corridor. “Papa, you did not mean—any thing?” she said, lifting up a face so white and tremulous and shaken with many emotions that it was scarcely possible to recognize it as hers. “You did not mean—any thing?” Her very lips quivered so that she could scarcely speak.
“Mean—what?” he said. “I am a little confused to-night. It was all so sudden. I don’t seem to understand you. And I’m very tired. Things will be clearer to-morrow. Sara, I hope you are going to bed.”
“Yes, papa,” she said, like a child, though her lips quivered. He looked like a man who had fallen into sudden imbecility, comprehending nothing. And Sara’s mind too was beginning to get confused. She could not understand any longer what his looks meant.
“And so am I,” said Mr. Brownlow, with a sigh. Then he stooped and kissed her. “My darling, good-night. Things will be clearer to-morrow,” he said. They had come to his door by this time. And it was there he stooped to kiss her, dismissing her as it seemed. But after she had turned to go back, he came out again and called her. He looked almost as old and as shaken as Mrs. Preston as he called her back: “Don’t forsake me—don’tyouforsake me,” he said hurriedly; “that was all—that was all: good-night.”
And then he went in and shut his door. Sara, left to herself, went back along the corridor, not knowing what to think. Were they all mad, or going mad? What could the shock be which had made Pamela’s humble mother frantic, and confused Mr. Brownlow’s clear intellect? She lay down on her sofa to watch her patient, feeling as if she too was becoming idiotic. She could not sleep, young as she was: the awful shadow that had come across her mind had murdered sleep. She lay and listened to Mrs. Preston’s irregular, interrupted breathing, far into the night. But sleep was not for Sara’s eyes.
Ofall painful things in this world there are few more painful than the feeling of rising up in the morning to a difficulty unsolved, a mysteryunexplained. So long as the darkness is over with the night something can always be done. Calamity can be faced, misfortune met; but to get up in the morning light, and encounter afresh the darkness, and find no clue any more than you had at night, is hard work. This was what Jack felt when he had to face the sunshine, and remembered all that had happened, and the merry party that awaited him down stairs, and that he must amuse his visitors as if this day had been like any other. If he but knew what had really happened! But the utmost he could do was to guess at it, and that in the vaguest way. The young man went down stairs with a load on his mind, not so much of care as of uncertainty. Loss of fortune was a thing that could be met; but if there was loss of honor involved—if his father’s brain was giving way with the pressure—if—Jack would not allow his thoughts to go any farther. He drew himself up with a sudden pull, and stopped short, and went down stairs. At the breakfast-table every thing looked horribly unchanged. The guests, the servants, the routine of the cheerful meal, were just as usual. Mr. Brownlow, too, was at the table, holding his usual place. There was an ashy look about his face, which produced inquiries concerning his health from every new arrival; but his answers were so brief and unencouraging that these questions soon died off into silence. And he ate nothing, and his hand shook as he put his cup of coffee to his pallid lips. All these were symptoms that might be accounted for in the simplest way by a little bodily derangement. But Jack, for his part, was afraid to meet his father’s eye. “Where is Sara?” he asked, as he took his seat. And then he was met—for he was late, and most of the party were down before him—by a flutter of regrets and wonder. Poor Sara had a headache—so bad a headache that she would not even have any one go into her room. “Angelique was keeping the door like a little tiger,” one of the young ladies said, “and would let nobody in.” “And oh, tell me who it was that came so late last night,” cried another. “Youmust know. We are all at such a pitch of curiosity. It must be a foreign prince, or the prime minister, or some great beauty, we can’t make up our minds which; and, of course,itis breakfasting in its own room this morning. Nobody will tell us who it was. Do tell us!—we are all dying to know.”
“As you will all be dreadfully disappointed,” said Jack. “It was neither a prince nor a beauty. As for prime minister I don’t know. Such things have been heard of as that a prime minister should be an old woman—”
“An old woman!” said his innocent interlocutor. “Then it must be Lady Motherwell. Oh, I don’t wonder poor Sara has a headache. But you know you are only joking. Her dear Charley would never let her come storming to any body’s door like that.”
“It was not Lady Motherwell,” said Jack. Heaven knows he was in no mood for jesting; but when it is a matter which is past talking of, what can a man do?
“Oh, then, I know who it must have been!” cried the spokeswoman of the party. She was, however, suddenly interrupted. Mr. Brownlow, who had scarcely said a word as yet to any one, interposed. There was something in his tone which somehow put them all to silence.
“I am sorry to put a stop to your speculations,” he said. “It was only one of my clients on urgent business—that was all; business,” he added, with a curious kind of apology, “which has kept me up half the night.”
“Oh, Mr. Brownlow, I am so sorry. You are tired, and we have been teasing you,” said the lively questioner, with quick compunction.
“No, not teasing me,” he said, gravely. And then a dead silence ensued. It was not any thing in his words. His words were simple enough; and yet every one of his guests instantly began to think that his or her stay had been long enough, and that it was time to go away.
As Mr. Brownlow spoke he met Jack’s eye, and returned his look steadily. So far he was himself again. He was impenetrable, antagonistic, almost defiant. But there was no hovering horror in his look. He was terribly grave, and ashy pale, and bore traces that what had happened was no light master. His look gave his son a sensation of relief, and perhaps encouraged him in levity of expression, though, Heaven knows, there was little levity in his mind.
“I told you,” he said, “it might have been the prime minister, but it certainly was an old woman; and there I stop. I can’t give any farther information; I am not one of the Privy Council.” Then he laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh. It deepened the silence all around, and looked like a family quarrel, and made every body feel ill at ease.
“I don’t think any one here can be much interested in details,” said Mr. Brownlow, coldly; and then he rose to leave the table. It was his habit to leave the table early, and on ordinary occasions his departure made little commotion; but to-day it was different. They all clustered up to their feet as he went out of the room. Nobody knew what should be done that day. The men looked awkwardly at each other; the women tried hard to be the same as before, and failed, having Jack before them, who was far from looking the same. “I suppose, Jack, you will not go out to-day,” one of his companions said, though they had not an idea why.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” said Jack, and then he made a pause; and every body looked at him. “After all,” he continued, “you all know your way about; as Sara has a headache I had better stay;” and he hurried their departure that he might get rid of them. His father had not gone out; the dog-cart had come to the door, but it had been sent off again. He was in the library, Willis said in a whisper; and though he had been so many years with Mr. Brownlow and knew all his ways, Willis was obviously startled too. For one moment Jack thought of cross-questioning the butler to see what light he could throw upon the matter—if he had heard any thing on the previous night, or suspected any thing—but on second thoughts he dismissed the idea. Whatever it was, it was from his father himself that he ought to have the explanation. But though Mr. Brownlow was in the library Jack did not go to him there. He loitered about till his friends were gone, and till the ladies of the party, finding him very impracticableand with no amusement in him, had gone off upon their various ways. He did his best to be civil even playful, poor fellow, being for the moment every body’s representative, both master and mistress of the house. But though there was no absolute deficiency in any thing he said or did, they were all too sharp-witted to be taken in. “He has something on his mind,” one matron of the party said to the other. “They have something on all their minds, my dear,” said the other, solemnly; and they talked very significantly and mysteriously of the Brownlows as they filled Sara’s morning-room with their work and various devices, for it was a foggy, wretched day, and no one cared to venture out. Jack meanwhile drew a long breath of relief when all his guests were thus off his mind. He stood in the hall and hesitated, and saw Willis watching him from a corner with undisguised anxiety. Perhaps but for that he would have gone to his father; but with every body watching him, looking on and speculating what it might be, he could not go. And yet something must be done. At last, after he had watched the last man out and the last lady go away, he turned, and went slowly up stairs to Sara’s door.
When his voice was heard there was a little rush within, and Sara came to him. She was very pale, and had the air of a watcher to whom the past night had brought no sleep. It even seemed to Jack that she was in the same dress that she had worn the previous night, though that was a delusion. As soon as she saw that it was her brother, and that he was alone, she sent the maid away, and taking him by the arm, drew him into the little outer room. There had not been any sentimental fraternity between them in a general way. They were very good friends, and fond of each other, but not given to manifestations of sympathy and devotion. But this time as soon as he was within the door and she had him to herself, Sara threw her arms round Jack, and leaned against him, and went off without any warning into a sudden burst of emotion—not tears exactly. It was rather a struggle against tears. She sobbed and her breast heaved, and she clasped him convulsively. Jack was terribly surprised and shocked, feeling that so unusual an outburst must have a serious cause, and he was very tender with his sister. It did not last more than a minute, but it did more to convince him of the gravity of the crisis than any thing else had done. Sara regained command of herself almost immediately and ceased sobbing, and raised her head from his shoulder. “She is there,” she whispered, pointing to the inner room, and then she turned and went before him leading the way. The white curtains of Sara’s bed were drawn at one side, so as to screen the interior of the chamber. Within that enclosure a fire was burning brightly, and seated by it in an easy-chair, wrapped in one of Sara’s pretty dressing-gowns, with unaccustomed embroideries and soft frills and ribbons enclosing her brown worn hands and meagre throat, Mrs. Preston half sat, half reclined. The fire-light was flickering about her, and she lay back and looked at it and at every thing around her with a certain dreadful satisfaction. She looked round about upon the room and its comforts as people look on a new purchase. Enjoyment—a certain pleasure of possession—was written on her face.
When she saw Jack she moved a little, and drew the muslin wrapper more closely around her throat with a curious instinct of prudish propriety. It was the same woman to whose society he had accustomed himself as Pamela’s mother, and whom he had tutored himself to look upon as a necessary part of his future household, but yet she was a different creature. He did not know her in this new development. He followed Sara into her presence with a new sense of repulsion, a reluctance and dislike which he had never felt before. And Mrs. Preston for her part received him with an air which was utterly inexplicable—an air of patronage which made his blood boil.
“I hope you are better,” he said, not knowing how to begin; and then, after a pause, “Should not I go and tell Pamela that you are here? or would you like me to take you home?”
“I consider myself at home,” said Mrs. Preston, sitting up suddenly and bursting into speech. “I will send for Pamela, when it is all settled, I am very thankful to your sister for taking care of me last night. She shall find that it will be to her advantage. Sit down—I am sorry, Mr. John, that I can not say the same for you.”
“What is it you can not say for me?” said Jack: “I don’t know in the least what you would be at, Mrs. Preston; I suppose there must be some explanation of this strange conduct. What does it mean?”
“You will find that it means a great deal,” said the changed woman. “When you came to me to my poor little place, I did not want to have any thing to say to you; but I never thought of putting any meaning to what you, were doing. I was as innocent as a baby—I thought it was all love to my poor child. That was what I thought. And now you’ve stolen her heart away from me, and I know what it was for—I know what it was for.”
“Then what was it for?” said Jack, abruptly. He was by turns red and pale with anger. He found it very hard to keep his temper now that he was personally assailed.
“It was for this,” cried Pamela’s mother, with a shrill ring in her voice, pointing, as it seemed, to the pretty furniture and pictures round her—“for all this, and the fine house, and the park, and the money—that was what it was for. You thought you’d marry her and keep it all, and that I should never know what was my rights. But now I do know;—and you would have killed me last night!” she cried wildly, drawing back, with renewed passion—“you and your father; you would have killed me; I should have been a dead woman by this time if it had not been for her!”
Jack made a hoarse exclamation in his throat as she spoke. The room seemed to be turning round with him. He seemed to be catching glimpses of her meaning through some wild chaos of misunderstanding and darkness. He himself had never wished her ill, not even when she promised to be a burden on him. “Is she mad?” he said, turning to Sara; but he felt that she was not mad; it was something more serious than that.
“I know my rights,” she said, calming down instantaneously. “It’s my house you’ve beenliving in, and my money that has made you all so fine. You need not start or pretend as if you didn’t know. It was for that you came and beguiled my Pamela. You might have left me my Pamela; house, and money, and every thing, even down to my poor mother’s blessing,” said Mrs. Preston, breaking down pitifully, and falling into a passion of tears. “You have taken them all, you and yours; but you might have left me my child.”
Jack stood aghast while all this was being poured forth upon him; but Sara for her part fell a-crying too. “She has been saying the same all night,” said Sara; “what have we to do with her money or her mother’s blessing? Oh, Jack, what have we to do with them? What does it mean? I don’t understand any thing but about Pamela and you.”
“Nor I,” said Jack, in despair, and he made a little raid through the room in his consternation, that the sight of the two women crying might not make a fool of him; then he came back with the energy of desperation. “Look here, Mrs. Preston,” he said, “there may be some money question between my father and you—I can’t tell; but we have nothing to do with it. I know nothing about it. I think most likely you have been deceived somehow. But, right or wrong, this is not the way to clear it up. Money can not be claimed in this wild way. Get a lawyer who knows what he is doing to see after it for you; and in the mean time go home like a rational creature. You can not be permitted to make a disturbance here.”
“You shall never have a penny of it,” cried Mrs. Preston—“not a penny, if you should be starving—nor Pamela either; I will tell her all—that you wanted her for her money; and she will scorn you as I do—you shall have nothing from her or me.”
“Answer for yourself,” cried Jack, furious, “or be silent. She shall not be brought in. What do I care for your money? Sara, be quiet, and don’t cry. She ought never to have been brought here.”
“No,” cried the old woman, in her passion, “I ought to have been cast out on the roadside, don’t you think, to die if I liked? or I ought to have been killed, as you tried last night. That’s what you would do to me, while you slept soft and lived high. But my time has come. It’s you who must go to the door—the door!—and you need expect no pity from me.”
She sat in her feebleness and poverty as on a throne, and defied them, and they stood together bewildered by their ignorance, and did not know what answer to make her. Though it sounded like madness, it might be true. For any thing they could tell, what she was saying might have some foundation unknown to them. Sara by this time had dried her tears, and indignation had begun to take the place of distress in her mind. She gave her brother an appealing look, and clasped her hands. “Jack, answer her—do you know what to say to her?” she cried, stamping her little foot on the ground with impatience; “somebody must know; are we to stand by and hear it all, and do nothing? Jack, answer her!—unless she is mad—”
“I think she must be partly mad,” said Jack. “But it must be put a stop to somehow. Go and fetch my father. He is in the library. Whatever it may be, let us know at least what it means. I will stay with her here.”
When she heard these words, the strange inmate of Sara’s room came down from her height and relapsed into a feeble old woman. She called Sara not to go, to stay and protect her. She shrank back into her chair, drawing it away into a corner at the farthest distance possible, and sat there watchful and frightened, eying Jack as a hunted creature might eye the tiger which might at any moment spring upon it. Jack, for his part, with an exclamation of impatience, turned on his heel and went away from her, as far as space would permit. Impatience began to swallow up every other sentiment in his mind. He could not put up with it any longer. Whatever the truth might be, it was evident that it must be faced and acknowledged at once. While he kept walking about impatient and exasperated, all his respect for Pamela’s mother died out of his mind; even, it must be owned, in his excitement, the image of Pamela herself went back into the mists. A certain disgust took possession of him. If it was true that his father had schemed and struggled for the possession of this woman’s miserable money—if the threat of claiming it had moved him with some vague but awful temptation, such as Jack shuddered to think of; and if the idea of having rights and possessing something had changed the mild and humble woman who was Pamela’s mother into this frantic and insulting fury, then what was there worth caring for, what was there left to believe in, in this world? Perhaps even Pamela herself had been changed by this terrible test. Jack did not wish for the wings of a dove, being too matter-of-fact for that. But he felt as if he would like to set out for New Zealand without saying a word to any body, without breathing a syllable to a single soul on the way. It seemed as if that would be the only thing to do—he himself might get frantic or desperate too like the others about a little money. The backwoods, sheep-shearing, any thing would be preferable to that.
This pause lasted for some minutes, for Sara did not immediately return. When she came back, however, a heavier footstep accompanied her up the stair. Mr. Brownlow came into the room, and went at once toward the farther corner. He had made up his mind; once more he had become perfectly composed, calm as an attorney watching his client’s case. He called Jack to him, and went and stood by the table, facing Mrs. Preston. “I hear you have sent for me to know the meaning of all this,” he said; “I will tell you, for you have a right to know. Twenty-five years ago, before either of you was born, I had some money left me, which was to be transferred to a woman called Phœbe Thomson, if she could be found out or appeared within twenty-five years. I searched for her everywhere, but I could not find her. Latterly I forgot her existence to a great extent. The five-and-twenty years were out last night, and just before the period ended this—lady—as you both know, appeared. She says she is Phœbe Thomson, the legatee I have told you of. She may be so—I have nothing to say against her; but the proof lies with her, not me. This is all the explanation there is to make.”
When he had said it he drew a long breathof relief. It was the truth. It was not perhaps all the truth; but he had told the secret, which had weighed him down for months, and the burden was off his heart. He felt a little sick and giddy as he stood there before his children. He did not look them in the face. In his heart he knew there were many more particulars to tell. But it was not for them to judge of his heart. “I have told you the secret, so far as there is a secret,” he said, with a faint smile at them, and then sat down suddenly, exhausted with the effort. It was not so difficult after all. Now that it was done, a faint wonder crossed his mind that he had not done it long ago, and saved himself all this trouble. But still he was glad to sit down. Somehow, it took the strength out of him as few things had done before.
“A legatee!” burst forth Sara in amazement, not understanding the word. “Is that all? Papa, she says the house is hers, and every thing is hers. She says we have no right here. Is it true?”
As for Jack, he looked his father steadily in the face, asking, Was it true? more imperiously than Sara’s words did. If this were all, what was the meaning of the almost tragedy last night? They forgot the very existence of the woman who was the cause of it all as they turned upon him. Poverty and wealth were small matters in comparison. He was on his trial at an awful tribunal, before judges too much alarmed, too deeply interested, to be lenient. They turned their backs upon Mrs. Preston, who, notwithstanding her fear and her anxiety, could not bear the neglect. Their disregard of her roused her out of her own self-confidence and certainty, to listen with a certain forlorn eagerness. She had not paid much attention to what Mr. Brownlow said the first time. What did it matter what he said? Did not she know better? But when Jack and Sara turned their backs on her, and fixed their eyes on their father, she woke up with an intense mortification and disappointment at finding herself overlooked, and began to listen too.
Mr. Brownlow rose up as a man naturally does who has to plead guilty or not guilty for his life. He stood before them, putting his hand on the table to support himself. “It is not true,” he said, “I do not deny that I have been thinking a great deal about this. If I had but known, I should have told you; but these are the real facts. If she is Phœbe Thomson, as she says—though of that we have no proof—she is entitled to fifty thousand pounds which her mother left her. That is the whole. To pay her her legacy may force me to leave this house, and change our mode of living; but she has nothing to do with the house—nothing here is hers, absolutely nothing. She has no more to do with Brownlows than your baker has, or your dress-maker. If she is Phœbe Thomson, I shall owe her money—nothing more. I might have told you, if I had but known.”
What Mr. Brownlow meant was, that he would have told them had he known, after all, how little it would cost to tell it. After all, there was nothing disgraceful in the tale, notwithstanding the terrible shifts to which he had put himself to conceal it. He had spoken it out, and now his mind was free. If he had but known what a relief it would be! But he sat down as soon as he had finished speaking; and he did not feel as if he could pay much attention to any thing else. His mind was in a state of confusion about what had happened the previous night. It seemed to him that he had said or done something he ought not to have done or said. But now he had made his supreme disclosure, and given up the struggle. It did not much matter what occurred besides.
Mrs. Preston, however, who had been listening eagerly, and whom nobody regarded for the moment, rose up and made a step forward among them. “He may deny it,” she said, trembling; “but I know he’s known it all this time, and kept us out of our rights. Fifty pound—fifty thousand pound—what does he say? I know better. It is all mine, every penny, and he’s been keeping us out of our rights. You’ve been all fed and nourished on what was mine—your horses and your carriages, and all your grandeur; and he says it’s but fifty pounds! Don’t you remember that there’s One that protects the fatherless?” she cried out, almost screaming. The very sight of his composure made her wild and desperate. “You make no account of me,” she cried—“no more than if I was the dust under your feet, and I’m the mistress of all—of all; and if it had not been for her you would have killed me last night.”
These words penetrated even Mr. Brownlow’s stupor; he gave a shudder as if with the cold.
“I was very hard driven last night,” he said, as if to himself—“very hard put to it. I don’t know what I may have said.” Then he made a pause, and rose and went to his enemy, who fell back into the chair, and took fright as he approached her, putting out her two feeble hands to defend herself. “If you are Phœbe Thomson,” he said, “you shall have your rights. I know nothing about you—I never thought of you. This house is mine, and you have nothing to do here. All you have any right to is your money, and you shall have your money when you prove your identity. But I can not leave you here to distress my child. If you are able to think at all, you must see that you ought to go home. Send for the carriage to take her home,” Mr. Brownlow added, turning to his children. “If she is the person she calls herself, she is a relation of your mother’s; and anyhow, she is weak and old. Take care of her. Sara, my darling, you are not to stay here with her, nor let her vex you; but I leave her in your hands.”
“I will do what you tell me, papa,” said Sara; and then he stood for a moment and looked at them wistfully. They had forsaken him last night; both of them—or at least so he fancied—had gone over to the enemy; and that had cut him to the heart. Now he turned to them wistfully, looking for a little support and comfort. It would not be so hard after all if his children went with him into captivity. They had both been so startled and excited that but for this look, and the lingering, expectant pause he made, neither would have thought of their father’s feelings. But it was impossible to misunderstand him now. Sara, in her impulsive way, went up to him and put her arms round his neck. “Papa, it is we who have been hard upon you,” she said; and as for Jack, who could not show his feelings by an embrace, healso made a kind ofamendein an ungracious masculine way. He said, “I’m coming with you, sir. I’ll see after the carriage,” and marched off behind his father to the door. Neither of them took any farther notice of Mrs. Preston. It seemed to her as if they did not care. They were not afraid of her; they did not come obsequiously to her feet, as she had thought they would. On the contrary, they were banding together among themselves against her, making a league among themselves, taking no notice of her. And her own child was not there to comfort her heart. It was a great shock and downfall to the unhappy woman. She had been a good woman so long as she was untempted. But it had seemed to her, in the wonderful prospect of a great fortune, that every body would fall at her feet; that she would be able to do what she pleased—to deal with all her surroundings as she pleased. When she saw she could not do so, her mind grew confused—fifty pound, fifty thousand pound, which was it? And she was alone, and they were all banding themselves against her. Money seemed nothing in comparison to the elevation, the supremacy she had dreamed of. And they did not even take the trouble to look at her as they went away!
Jackfollowed his father down stairs, and did not say a word. It had been an exciting morning; and now that he knew all, though the excitement had not as yet begun to flag, care came along with it. Suspense and mystery were hard, and yet at the same time easier to bear than reality. The calamity might have loomed larger while it was unknown, but at least it was unaccompanied by those real details from which there is no escape. When Mr. Brownlow and his son reached the bottom of the stair, they stopped, and turned and looked at each other. A certain shade of apology was in Mr. Brownlow’s tone. “I thought it was all over last night,” he said; “I thought you were all safe. You know my meaning now.”
“Safe, sir, safe!” said Jack, “with this always hanging over our heads? I don’t understand why we were not allowed to know; but never mind. I am glad it has come, and there is nothing more to look for. It bears interest, I suppose.”
“That may be a matter of arrangement. I suppose it does,” said Mr. Brownlow, with a sigh.
Jack gave vent to his feelings in a low, faint, prolonged whistle. “I’ll go and tell them about the carriage,” he said. This was all the communication that passed between the father and the son; but it was enough to show Mr. Brownlow that Jack was not thinking, as he might very naturally have thought, of his new position as the future son-in-law of the woman who had wrought so much harm. Jack’s demeanor, though he did not say a word of sympathy to his father, was quite the contrary of this. He did not make any professions, but he took up the common family burden upon his shoulders. The fifty thousand pounds was comparatively little. It was a sum which could be measured and come to an end of; but the interest, that was the dreadful thought. Jack was practical, and his mind jumped at it on the moment. It was as a dark shadow which had come over him, and which he could not shake off. Brownlows was none of hers, and yet she might not be wrong after all in thinking that all was hers. The actual claim was heavy enough, but the possible claim was overwhelming. It seemed to Jack to go into the future and overshadow that as it overshadowed the present. No wonder Mr. Brownlow had been in despair—no wonder almost—The young man gave a very heavy sigh as he went into the stable-yard and gave his instructions. He stood and brooded over it with his brow knitted and his hands buried in his pockets, while the horses were put into the carriage. As for such luxuries, they counted for nothing, or at least so he thought for the moment—nothing tohim; but a burden that would lie upon them for years—a shadow of debt and difficulty projected into the future—that seemed more than any man could bear. It will be seen from this that the idea of his own relations with Pamela making any difference in the matter had not crossed Jack’s mind. He would have been angry had any one suggested it. Not that he thought of giving up Pamela; but in the mean time the idea of having any thing to do with Mrs. Preston was horrible to him, and he was not a young man who was always reasonable and sensible, and took every thing into consideration, any more than the rest of us. To tell the truth, he had no room in his thoughts for the idea of marriage or of Pamela at that moment. He strode round to the hall door as the coachman got on the box, and went up to Sara’s room without stopping to think. “The carriage is here,” he said, calling to Sara at the door. He would have taken the intruder down stairs, and put her into the carriage as courteously as if she had been a duchess; for, as we have already said, there was a certain fine natural politeness in the Brownlow blood. But when he heard the excited old woman still raving about her rights, and that they wanted to kill her, the young man became impatient. He was weary of her; and when she fell into threats of what she would do, disgust mingled with his impatience. Then all at once, while he waited, a sudden thought struck him of his little love. Poor little Pamela! what could she be thinking all this time? How would she feel when she heard that her mother had become their active enemy? In a moment there flitted before Jack, as he stood at the door, a sudden vision of the little uplifted face, pale as it had grown of late, with the wistful eyes wide open and the red lips apart, and the pretty rings of hair clustering about the forehead. What would Pamela think when she knew? What was to be done, now that this division, worse than any unkind sentence of a rich father, had come between them? It was no fault of hers, no fault of his; fate had come between them in the wildest unlooked-for way. And should they have to yield to it? The thought gave Jack such a sudden twinge in his own heart, that it roused him altogether out of his preoccupation. It roused him to that fine self-regard which is so natural, and which is reckoned a virtue nowadays. What did it matter about an old mother? Such people had had their day, and had no right to control theyoung whose day was still to come. Pamela’s future and Jack’s future were of more importance than any thing that could happen at the end, as it were, of Mrs. Preston’s life, or even of Mr. Brownlow’s life. This was the consideration that woke Jack up out of the strange maze he had fallen into on the subject of his own concerns. He turned on his heel all at once, and left Mrs. Preston arguing the matter with Sara, and went off down the avenue almost as rapidly as his own mare could have done it. No, by Jove! he was not going to give up. Mrs. Preston might eat her money if she liked—might ruin Brownlows if she liked; but she should not interfere between him and his love. And Jack felt that there was no time to lose, and that Pamela must know how matters stood, and what he expected of her, before her mother went back to poison her mind against him. He took no time to knock even at the door of Mrs. Swayne’s cottage, but went in and took possession like an invading army. Probably, if he had been a young man of very delicate and susceptible mind, the very knowledge that Pamela might now be considered an heiress, and himself a poor man, would have closed up the way to him, and turned his steps forever from the door. But Jack was not of that fine order of humanity. He was a young man who liked his own way, and was determined not to be unhappy if he could help it, and held tenaciously by every thing that belonged to him. Such matter-of-fact natures are seldom moved by the sentimentalisms of self-sacrifice. He had not the smallest idea of sacrificing himself, if the truth must be told. He strode along, rushing like the wind, and went straight in at Mrs. Swayne’s door. Nobody interrupted his passage or stood in his way; nobody even saw him but old Betty, who came out to her door to see who had passed so quickly, and shook her head over him. “He goes there a deal more than is good for him,” Betty said, and then, as it was cold, shut the door.
Pamela had been sitting in the dingy parlor all alone; and, to tell the truth, she had been crying a little. She did not know where her mother was; she did not know when she was coming back. No message had reached her, nor letter, nor any sign of life, and she was frightened and very solitary. Jack, too, since he knew she was alone and could be seen at any hour, did not make so many anxious pilgrimages as he had done when Mrs. Preston was ill and the road was barred against him. She had no one to tell her fears to, no one to encourage and support her, and the poor child had broken down dreadfully. She was sitting at the window trying to read one of Mrs. Swayne’s books, trying not to ask herself who it was that came so late to Brownlows last night? what was her mother doing? what was Jack doing? The book, as may be supposed, had small chance against all these anxieties. It had dropped upon the table before her, and her innocent tears had been dropping on it, when a sudden shadow flitted past the window, and a footstep rang on the steps, and Jack was in the room. The sight of him changed wonderfully the character of Pamela’s tears, but yet it increased her agitation. Nobody in her small circle except herself had any faith in him; and she knew that, at this present moment, he ought not to come.
“No, I am not sorry to see you,” she said, in answer to his accusation. “I am glad; but you should not come. Mamma is away. I am all alone.”
“You have the more need of me,” said Jack. “But listen, Pamela. Your mother is not away. She is here at Brownlows. She is coming directly. I rushed off to see you before she arrived. I must speak to you first. Remember you are mine—whatever happens, you are mine, and you can not forsake me.”
“Forsake you?” cried Pamela, in pitiful accents. “Is it likely? If there is any forsaking, it will be you. You know—oh, you know you have not much to fear.”
“I have every thing to fear,” said Jack, speaking very fast; “your mother is breathing fire and flame against us all. She is coming back our enemy. She will tell you I have had a mercenary meaning from the beginning, and she will order you to give me up. But don’t do it, Pamela. I am not the sort of man to be given up. We were going to be poor, and marry against my father’s will; now we shall be poor, and marry against your mother’s—that is all the difference. You have chosen me, and you must give up her and not me. That is all I have to say.”
“Give up mamma?” cried Pamela, in amazement. “I don’t know what you mean. You promised I was to have her with me, and take care of her always. She would die without me. Oh, Jack, why have you changed so soon?”
“It is not I that have changed,” said Jack; “every thing has changed. This is what it will come to. It will be to give up her or me. I don’t say I will die without you,” said the young man—“no such luck; but—Look here, Pamela, this is what it will come to. You will have to choose between her and me.”
“Oh no, no!” cried Pamela; “no! don’t say so. I am not the one to choose. Don’t turn away from me! don’t look so pale and dreadful it is not me to choose.”
“But it is you, by heavens!” cried Jack, in desperation. “Here she is coming! It is not your old mother who was to live with us—it is a different woman—here she is. Is it to be her or me?”
“Oh, Jack!” Pamela cried, thinking he was mad; and she submitted to his fierce embrace in utter bewilderment, not knowing what to imagine. To see the Brownlows carriage dash down the avenue and wheel round at the door and open to let Mrs. Preston forth was as great a wonder as if the earth had opened. She could not tell what was going to happen. It was a relief to her to be held fast and kept back—her consternation took her strength from her. She was actually unable to follow her first impulse and rush to the door.
Mrs. Preston came in by herself, quiet but tremulous. Her head shook a little, but there was no sign of weakness about her now. She had been defeated, but she had got over the bitterness of her defeat and was prepared for a struggle. Jack felt the difference when he looked at her. He had been contemptuous of her weak passion and repetition about her rights; but he saw the change in a moment, and he met her, standing up, holding Pamela fast, with his arm round her. Mrs. Preston had carried the warinto her enemy’s camp, and gone to his house to demand, as she thought, every thing he had in the world. These were Jack’s reprisals—he came to her citadel and claimed every thingshehad in the world. It was his, and, more than that, it was already given to him—his claim was allowed.
“You are here!” cried Mrs. Preston, passionately. “I thought you would be here! you have come before me to steal her from me. I knew how it would be!”
“I have come to claim what is mine,” said Jack, “before you interfere. I know you will try to step between us; but you are not to step between us—do what you like, she is mine.”
“Pamela,” said Mrs. Preston, still, notwithstanding her late defeat, believing somehow strangely in the potency of the new fortune for which she felt every body should fall at her feet, “things have changed. Stand away from him, and listen to me. We’re rich now—we shall have everything that heart ever desired; there is not a thing you can think of but what I can give it you. You’ve thought I was hard upon you, dear, but it was all for your sake. What do I care for money, but for your sake?—Every thing you can think of, Pamela—it will be like a fairy tale.”
Pamela stood still for one moment, looking at her mother and her lover. She had disengaged herself from him, and stood, unrestrained, to make her election. “If it is so, mamma,” she said, “I don’t know what you mean—you know I don’t understand; but if it is, there’s no more difficulty. It does not matter so much whether Mr. Brownlow consents or not.”
“Mr. Brownlow!” cried her mother; “Mr. Brownlow has been your enemy, child, since long before you were born. He has taken your money to bring up his own fine lady upon. He has sent his son here when he can’t do any better, to marry you and keep the money. Sir, go away from my child. It’s your money he wants; your money, not you.”
Pamela turned round with surprise and terror in her face, and looked at Jack; then she smiled softly and shook her head. “Mamma, you are mistaken,” she said in her soft little voice, and held out her hand to him. Mrs. Preston threw up her arms above her head wildly, and gave an exceeding bitter cry.
“I am her mother,” she cried out, “her own mother, that have nursed her and watched over her, and given up every thing to her—and she chooses him rather than me—him that she has not known a year—that wants her for her money, or for her pretty face. She chooses him before me!”
She stood up alone, calling upon heaven and earth, as it were, to see; while the two clung together dismayed and pitiful, yet holding fast by each other still. It was the everlasting struggle so continually repeated; the past against the present and the future—the old love against the new—and not any question of worldly interest. It was the tragic figure of disappointment and desolation and age in face of hope and love and joy. What she had been doing was poor and mean enough. She had been intoxicated by the vision of sudden wealth, and had expected every body to be abject before her; but now a deeper element had come in. She forgot the fortune, the money, though it was still on her lips, and cried out, in the depth of her despair, over the loss of the only real wealth she had in the world. No tears came to her old eyes—her old meagre arms rose rigid, yet trembling. “She chooses him before me!” she said, with a cry of despair, which came from the bottom of her heart.
“Mamma,” cried poor little Pamela, tearing her hand from that of her lover, and coming doubtfully into the midst between the two, “I don’t choose! oh, mamma, how can I choose? I never was away from you in my life—he promised we never were to be parted. How am I to give him up? Oh, why, why should you ask me to give him up?” cried the poor child. Floods of tears came to her aid. She put her pretty hands together like a child at prayer—every line in her sweet face was in itself a supplication. Jack, behind her, stood and watched and said nothing. Perhaps he saw, notwithstanding, that it was against his interests—and in his heart had a certain mournful pity for the despair in the old woman’s terrible face.
“But I expect you to choose,” she said wildly; “things have come to that. It must be him or me—him or me; there’s no midway between us. I am your old mother, your poor old mother, that would pluck my heart out of my breast to give it you. I’ve survived them all, and done without them all, and lived for your sake. And he is a young man that was taken with your pretty face—say it was your pretty face—say the best that can be said. If you were like death—if you lost all your beauty and your pretty ways—if you were ugly and ailing and miserable,—it would be all the same to me; I would love you all the more—all the more; and he—he would never look at you again. That’s nature. I require you to choose. It must be him or me.”
As she stood listening, a change came over Pamela’s face. Her first appeal to her mother had been full of emotion, but of a gentle, hopeful, almost superficial kind. She had taken tears to her aid, and pleading looks, and believed in their success now as always. But as Mrs. Preston spoke, Pamela’s little innocent soul was shaken as by an earthquake. She woke up and opened her eyes, and found that she was in a world new to her—a world no longer of prayers, and tears, and sweet yielding, and tender affection. It was not tender affection she had to do with now; it was fierce love, desperate and ruthless, ready to tear her asunder. Her tears dried up, her pretty checks grew pale as death, she looked from one to the other with a wild look of wonder, asking if it was true. When her mother’s voice ceased, it seemed to Pamela that the world stood still for the moment, and every thing in heaven and earth held its breath. She looked at Jack; he stood motionless, with his face clouded over, and made no answer to her pitiful appeal. She looked at Mrs. Preston, and saw her mother’s eager face hollow and excited, her eyes blazing, her cheeks burning with a strange hectic heat. For one moment she stood irresolute. Then she made one tottering step to her mother’s side, and turned round and looked at her lover. Once more she clasped her hands, though she had no longer any hope in pleading. “I must stayhere,” she said, with a long-drawn sobbing sigh—“I must stay here, if I should die.”
They stood thus and looked at each other for one of those moments which is as long as an age. The mother would have taken her child to her arms, but Pamela would not. “Not now, not now!” she said, putting back the embrace. Jack, for his part, stood and watched with an intensity of perception he had never exercised before—all power of speech seemed to have been taken from him. The struggle had ascended into a higher region of passion than he knew of. He turned and went to the door, with the intention, so far as he had any intention, of retiring for the moment from the contest. Then he came back again. Whatever the pressure on him might be, he could not leave Pamela so.
“Look here,” he said abruptly; “I am going away. But if you think I accept this as a choice or decision, you are much mistaken. You force her to give in to you, and then you think I am to accept it! I’ll do no such thing. She could not say any thing else, or do any thing else—but all the same, she is mine. You can’t touch that, do what you like. Pamela, darling, don’t lose heart; it’s only for a little while.”
He did not stop to listen to what her mother said; he turned at once and went out, unconsciously, in his excitement, thrusting Mrs. Swayne out of his way, who was in the passage. He went off up the avenue at a stretch without ever drawing breath. A hundred wild thoughts rose in his mind; her mother! what was her mother to him? He was ready to vow with Hamlet, that twenty thousand mothers could not have filled up his sum of love; and yet he was not blaming his Pamela. She could not have done otherwise. Why had he never been told? why had not he known that this downfall was hanging over him? Why had he been such a fool as to give in at all to the sweet temptation? Now, of course, when things had come this length, he would as soon have cut his own throat as given Pamela up. And what with love and rage, and the sudden calamity, and the gradual exasperation, he was beside himself, and did not well know what he was about. He was almost too much absorbed in his own affairs to be able to understand Sara, who came to him as he entered the house, and drew him aside into the dining-room to speak to him. Sara was pale enough to justify her pretext of headache, but otherwise she was full of energy and spirit, and met the emergency with a courageous heart.
“We must face it out as well as we can, Jack,” she said, with her eyes shining out large and full from her white face. “We must keep up before all these people. They must not be able to go away and say that something went terribly wrong at Brownlows. We must keep it up to the last.”
“Pshaw! what does it matter what they think or what they say?” said Jack, sitting down with a sigh of weariness. As for Sara, who was not tired, nor had any personal complication to bow her down, she blazed up at his indifference.
“It matters every thing!” she cried. “We may not be a county family any more, nor fine people, but we are always the Brownlows of Masterton. Nobody must have a word to say about it—for papa’s sake.”
“Every body will soon be at liberty to say what they please about it,” said Jack. “Where is he? I had better go and talk to him, I suppose?”
“Papa is in the library,” said Sara. “Jack, he wants our support. He wants us to stand by him—or, I mean, he wants you; as for me,” she continued, with a flash of mingled softness and defiance, “he knowsIwould not forsake him; he wants you.”
“Why shouldn’t you forsake him?” said Jack, with a momentary growl; “and why should he be doubtful of me?”
But he did not wait for any answer. He took the decanter of sherry from the sideboard, and swallowed he did not know how much; and then he went off to the library to seek out his father. There was a certain stealthiness about the house—a feeling that the people belonging to it were having interviews in corners, that they were consulting each other, making solemn decisions, and that their guests were much in the way. Though Sara rushed away immediately to the room where her friends were, after waylaying her brother, her appearance did not alter the strong sense every body had of the state of affairs. The very servants slunk out of Jack’s way, and stood aside in corners to watch him going into the library. He called the footman out of his hiding-place as he passed, and swore at him for an impertinent fool. The man had been doing nothing that was impertinent, and yet he did not feel that there was injustice in the accusation. Something very serious had happened, and the consciousness of it had gone all through the house.