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Brownlows

“Are you fond of this sort of thing?” Mr. Brownlow said, coming up. Mr. Brownlow paid him an uneasy sort of attention, which made Powys more uncomfortable than the neglect of the others, for it implied that his host knew he was being neglected and wanted to make it up to him; “but then you should have seen all these places before you can care for them. And you have never been abroad.”

“No, except on the other side of the Atlantic,” said Powys, with colonial pride; “and you don’t seem to think any thing of that.”

“Ah, yes, Canada,” said Mr. Brownlow; and then he was so anxious to keep his young visitor in good-humor that he began to talk solidly and heavily of Canada and its resources and future prospects. Mr. Brownlow was distrait, and not very well informed, and Powys had not the heart to laugh at Sara’s father even when he made mistakes, so that the conversation was not very lively between them. This, however, was all the amusement the stranger got on his first evening at Brownlows. The proposal to go there had thrown him into a kind of ecstasy, but this was all the result. When he got into his own room at night and thought it all over, an impulse of good sense came to his aid. It was folly. In the office at Masterton he was in his fit place, and nobody could object to him; but this was not his fit place. It might be uncivil and bad manners on their part to make him feel it, but yet the party at Brownlows was right. He had nothing to do there. If he could think that Miss Brownlow’s heart had softened a little toward him, it was his duty all the more to deny himself and take himself out of her way. What had love to do between her and him? It was monstrous—not to be thought of. He had been insane when he came, but to-morrow he would go back, and make a stern end of all those dreams. These were Powys’s thoughts within himself. But there was a conversation going on about him down stairs of a very different kind.

When the company had all retired, Jack detained his father and his sister to speak to them. Jack was highly uncomfortable in his mind himself, and naturally he was in a very rampant state of virtue. He could not endure that other people should have their cakes and ale; and he did not like his father’s looks nor Sara’s, and felt as if the honor of his house was menaced somehow. He took Sara’s candle from her after his father had lighted it, and set it down on the table. “The nuisance of having all these people,” said Jack, “is, that one never has a moment to one’s self, and I want to speak to you. I don’t mean to say any thing against Powys, sir—nobody knows any thing about him. Has he told you what he said to Sara when he was last here?”

“Jack! how dare you?” said Sara, turning on her brother; but Jack took no notice of her beautiful blazing eyes.

“Did he tell you, that you are so well informed?” said Mr. Brownlow. If either of his children had been cool enough to observe it, they would have perceived that he was too quiet, and that his calm was unnatural; but they suspected nothing, and consequently they did not observe.

“He told me enough to make me understand,” said Jack; “and I dare say you’ve forgotten how young men think, and don’t suppose it’s of any consequence. Sara knows. If it was a mere nothing, I should not take the trouble,” added the exemplary brother; “but, in the circumstances, it’s my duty to interfere. After what he said, when you bring him here again it is giving him license to speak; it is giving him a kind of tacit consent. She knows,” said Jack, pointing to his sister, who confronted him, growing pale and growing scarlet. “It’s as good as saying you will back him out; and, good heavens, when you consider who he is—”

“Do you know who he is?” said Mr. Brownlow. He was very hard put to it for that moment, and it actually occurred to him to deliver himself of his secret, and throw his burden on their shoulders—the two who, in their ignorance, were thus putting the last touch of exasperation to his ordeal. He realized the blank amazement with which they would turn to him, the indignation, the— Ah, but he could not go any farther. What would have succeeded to the first shock of the news he dared not anticipate—beggary probably, and utter surrender of every thing; therefore Mr. Brownlow held his peace.

“I know he is in the office at Masterton,” said Jack—“I know he is your clerk, and I don’t suppose he is a prince in disguise. If he is honest, and is who he professes to be—I beg your pardon, sir, for saying so—but he ought not to be brought into my sister’s society, and he has no business to be here.”

“Papa!” cried Sara, breathless, “order him to be quiet! Is it supposed that I can’t see any one without being in danger of—of—that any man whom papa chooses to bring is to be kept away for me? I wonder what you think of me? We girls are not such wretched creatures, I can tell you; nor so easily led; nor so wicked and proud—nor— Papa! stop this immediately, and let Jack mind his own affairs.”

“I have just one word to say, Jack,” said Mr. Brownlow,—“my darling, be quiet—never mind;—Powys is more important to me than if he were a prince in disguise. I know who he is. I have told your sister that I think nothing in this house too good for him. He is my clerk, and you think he is not as good as you are; but he is very important to me. I give you this explanation, not because I think you have any right to it, after your own proceedings. And as for you, my dear child,” he added, putting his arm round her, with an involuntary melting of his heart, “my pretty Sara! you are only to do what your heart suggests, my darling. I once asked a sacrifice of you, but I have not the heart now. If your heart goes this way, it will be justice. Yes, justice. I know you don’t understand me; but if not, Sara, I will not interfere with you. You are to do according to your own heart.”

“Papa!” said Sara, clinging to him, awed and melted and astonished by the emotion in his eyes.

“Yes,” Mr. Brownlow repeated, taking her face in his hands, and kissing it. If he had been a soft-hearted man he would have been weeping, but there was something in his look beyond tears. “It will be just, and the best way—but only if it’s after your own heart. And I know you don’t understand me. You’ll never understand me, if all goes well; but all the same, remember what I say.”

And then he took up the candle which Jack had taken out of Sara’s hand. “Never understand me—never, if all goes well,” he muttered to himself. He was strained to the last point, and he could not bear any more. Before his children had recovered from their amaze he had gone away, not so much as looking at them again. They might talk or speculate as they would; he could bear no more.

Jack and Sara looked in each other’s faces as he disappeared. They were both startled, but in a different way. Was he mad? his son thought; and Jack grew pale over the possibility: but as for Sara, her life was bound up in it. It was not the blank of dismay and wonder that moved her. She did not speculate on what her father meant by justice. Something else stirred in her heart and veins. As for Jack, he was thunderstruck. “He must be going mad!” he said. “For heaven’s sake, Sara, don’t give any weight to these delusions; he can’t be in his right mind.”

“Do you mean papa?” said Sara, stamping her foot in indignation; “he is a great deal wiser than you will ever be. Jack, I don’t know what you mean; it must be because you are wicked yourself that you think every body else is going wrong; but you shall not speak so to me.”

“Yes; I see you are going to make a fool of yourself,” said Jack, in his superiority. “You are shutting your eyes and taking your own way. When you come to a downfall you will remember what I say. You are trying to make a fool of him, but you won’t succeed—mind I tell you, you won’t succeed. He knows what he is about too well for that.”

“If it is Mr. Powys you are speaking of—” said Sara; but she paused, for the name betrayed her somehow—betrayed her even to herself, bringing the color to her cheeks and a gleam to her eyes. Then she made believe as if she scorned to say more, and held her little head high with lofty contempt, and lighted her candle. “I am sure we should not agree on that subject, and it is better we should not try,” said Sara, and followed her father loftily up stairs, leaving Jack discomfited, with the feeling of a prophet to whom nobody would listen. He said to himself he knew how it would be—his father had got some wild idea in his head! and Sara was as headstrong and fanciful as ever girl was, and would rush to her own destruction. Jack went out with this sense of approaching calamity in his mind, and lighted his cigar, and took a turn down the avenue as far as the gate, where he could see the light in Mrs. Preston’s window. It seemed to him that the world was losing its balance—that only he saw how badly things were turning, and nobody would listen to him. And, strangely enough, his father’s conduct seemed so mad to him altogether that his mind did not fix on the maddest word of it—the word which by this time had got into Sara’s head, and was driving her half wild with wonder. Justice! What did it mean? Sara was thinking in her agitation: but Jack, taking things in general as at their worst, passed over that particular. And thus they all separated and went to bed, as was to be supposed, in the most natural and seemly way. People slept well at Brownlows in general, the air being so good, and all the influences so healthful, after these long days out-of-doors; and nobody was the wiser for it if “the family” were any way disturbed among themselves.

As for Mr. Brownlow, he threw himself down on his bed in a certain lull of despair. He was dead tired. It was pitiful to see him thus worn out, with too little hope to make any exertion, driven to his last resource, thinking of nothing but of how to forget it all for a little and get it out of his mind. He tried to sleep and to be still, and when he found he could not sleep, got up again and took some brandy—a large fiery dose—to keep his thoughts away. He had thought so much that now he loathed thinking. If he could but go on and let fortune bring him what it might; if he could but fall asleep—asleep, and not wake again till all was over—not awake again at all for that matter. There was nothing so delightful in the world that he should wish very much to wake again. Not that the faintest idea of putting an end to himself ever crossed his mind. He was only sick of it all, tired to death, disgusted with every thing—his own actions, and the frivolity and folly of others who interfered with his schemes, and the right that stood in his way, and the wrong that he was trying to do. At that moment he had not heart enough to go on with any thing. Such moments of disgust come even to those who are the most energetic and ready. He seemed to have thrown the guidance of affairs out of his hands, and be trusting to mere blind chance—if any thing is ruled by chance. If this boy and girl should meet, if they should say to each other certain foolish words, if they should be idiots enough, the one and the other, as to commit themselves, and pledge their lives to an act of the maddest absurdity, not unmixed with wickedness—for it would be wicked of Powys, poor as he was, and burdened as he was, to ask Sara to marry him, and it would be insanity on her part to consent—if this mad climax should arrive, then a kind of salvation in ruin, a kind of justice in wrong, would be wrought. And to this chance Mr. Brownlow, after all his plans and schemes, after all his thought and the time he had spent in considering every thing, had come as the sole solution of his difficulties. He had abdicated, as it were, the throne of reason, and left himself to chance and the decision of two ignorant children. What wind might veer their uncertain intentions, or sudden impulse change them, he could not tell. He could not influence them more, could not guide them, any farther. What could he do but sleep? Oh, that he could have but slept, and let the crisis accomplish itself and all be over! Then he put out his light and threw himself upon his bed, and courted slumber like a lover. It was the only one thing in the world Mr. Brownlow could now do, having transferred, as it were, the responsibility and the power of action into other hands.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
AN IMPOSTOR

Next morning Powys was up early, with his wise resolution very strong in his mind. He seemed to see the folly of it all more clearly in the morning light. Such a thing might be possible in Canada; but in this conventional artificial existence there were a hundred things more important than love or happiness. Even that, too, he felt was an artificial way of looking at it; for, after all, let the laws of existence be ever so simple, a man who has already a family to support, and very little to do it on, is mad, and worse than mad, if he tries to drag a girl down into the gulf of poverty with him. And as for Sara having enough for both, Powys himself was not sufficiently unconventional and simple-minded to take up that idea. Accordingly he felt that the only thing to do was to go away; he had been crazy to think of any thing else, but now his sanity had returned to him. He was one of the earliest of the party down stairs, and he did not feel himself so much out of place at the breakfast-table; and when the young men went out, Jack, by way of keeping the dangerous visitor out of his sister’s way, condescended to be civil, and invited him to join the shooting-party. Powys declined the invitation. “I am going to the office with Mr. Brownlow,” he said, a decision which was much more satisfactory to Jack.

“Oh, I thought you had come for a few days,” said Jack. “I beg your pardon; not that the sport is much to offer any one—the birds are getting scarce; but I thought you had come for some days.”

“No, I am going back to-day,” said Powys, not without a strangled inaudible sigh; for the sight of the dogs and the guns went to his heart a little, notwithstanding his love and despair. And Jack’s conscience pricked him that he did not put in a word of remonstrance. He knew well enough that Powys had not meant to go away, and he felt a certain compunction and even sympathy. But he reflected that, after all, it was far best for himself that every pretension should be checked in the bud. Powys stood on the steps looking after them as they went away; and it can not be denied that his feelings were dreary. It seemed hard to be obliged to deny himself every thing, not happiness alone, but even a little innocent amusement, such as reminded him of the freedom of his youth. He was too manly to grumble, but yet he felt it, and could not deny himself the pleasure of wondering how “these fellows” would like the prairies, and whether they would disperse in double-quick time if a bear or a pack of wolves came down upon them in place of their innocent partridges. No doubt “these fellows” would have stood the trial extremely well, and at another moment Powys would not have doubted that; but in the mean time a little sneer was a comfort to him. The dog-cart came up as he waited, and Mr. Brownlow made his appearance in his careful morning-dress, perfectly calm, composed, and steady as usual—a man whose very looks gave consolation to a client in trouble. But yet the lines of his face were a little haggard, if there had been any body there with eyes to see. “What, Powys!” he said, “not gone with the others?” He said it with a smile, and yet it raised a commotion in his mind. If he had not gone with the others, Mr. Brownlow naturally concluded it must be for Sara’s sake, and that the crisis was very near at hand.

“No, sir,” said Powys; “in fact I thought of going in with you to the office, if you will take me. It is the fittest place for me.”

Then it occurred to Mr. Brownlow that the young man had spoken and had been rejected, and the thought thrilled him through and through, but still he tried to make light of it. “Nonsense,” he said; “I did not bring you up last night to take you down this morning. You want a holiday. Don’t set up having an old head on young shoulders, but stay and enjoy yourself. I don’t want you at the office to-day.”

“If an old head means a wise one, I can’t much boast of that,” said Powys; and then he saw Sara standing in the door-way of the dining-room looking at him, and his heart melted within him. One more day! he would not say a word, not a word, however he might be tempted; and what harm could it do any one? “I think I ought to go,” he added, faintly; but the resolution had melted out of his words.

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Brownlow, from the dog-cart, and he waved his hand, and the mare set off at her usual pace down the avenue, waiting for no one. And Powys was left alone standing on the steps. The young men had gone who might have been in the way, and the ladies had already dispersed from the breakfast-table, some to the morning-room on the other side of the hall, some up stairs for their hats and cloaks, before straying out on their morning perambulations. And Sara, who had her housekeeping to do, save the mark! was the only creature visible to whom he turned as her father drove away. Courtesy required (so she said to herself) that she should go forward into the hall a step or two, and say something good-natured to him. “If you are not of Jack’s party,” she said, “you must go and help to amuse the people who are staying at home; unless you want to write or do any thing, Mr. Powys. The library is on that side; shall I show you the way?”

And a minute after he found himself following her into the room, which was the first room he had ever been in at Brownlows. It was foolish of Sara—it was a little like the way in which she had treated him before. Her own heart was beating more quickly than usual, and yet she was chiefly curious to know what he would do, what he would say. There was something of the eagerness of an experiment in her mind, although she had found it very serious after he left her the last time, and any thing but amusing on the previous night.

“Thanks,” said poor Powys, whose head was turning round and round; “I ought to have gone to the office. I am better there than here.”

“That is not very complimentary to us,” said Sara, with a little nervous laugh.

And then he turned and looked at her. She was making a fool of him, as Jack would have said. She was torturing him, playing with him, making her half-cruel, half-rash experiment. “You should not say so,” he said, with vehemence—“you know better. You should not tempt me to behave like an idiot. You know I am ready enough to do it. If I were not an idiot I should never have come here again.”

“Not when my father brought you?” said Sara—“not when I—but I think you are rude, Mr. Powys; I will leave you to write your letters, and when you have finished you will find us all up stairs.”

With that she vanished, leaving the young man in such a confusion of mind as words would ill describe. He was angry, humiliated, vexed with himself, rapt into a kind of ecstasy. He did not know if he was most wretched or happy. Every thing forbade him saying another word to her; and yet had not her father brought him, as she said? was not she herself surrounding him with subtle sweet temptation? He threw himself down in a chair and tried to think. When that would not do, he got up and began to pace about the room. Then he rushed suddenly to the door, not to fly away from the place, or to throw himself at Sara’s feet, as might have been supposed. What he did was to make a wild dash at his traveling-bag, which had been packed and brought into the hall. It was still standing there, a monument of his irresolution. He plunged at it, seized it, carried it into the library, and there unpacked it again with nervous vehemence. Any one who should have come in and seen his collars and handkerchiefs scattered about on the floor would have thought Powys mad. But at length, when he had got to the bottom of the receptacle, his object became apparent. From thence he produced a bundle of papers, yellow and worn, and tied up with a ribbon. When he had disinterred them, it was not without a blush, though there was nobody to see, that he packed up every thing again in the capacious traveling-bag. He had gone into Mr. Brownlow’s library because Sara took him there, without a thought of any thing to do, but suddenly here was his work ready for him. He sat down in Mr. Brownlow’s chair, and opened out the papers before him, and read and arranged and laid them out in order. When he had settled them according to his satisfaction, he made another pause to think, and then began to write. It was a letter which demanded thought; or at least it appeared so, for he wrote it hotly three times over, and tore it up each time; and on the fourth occasion, which was the last, wrote slowly, pausing over his sentences and biting his nails. The letter which cost all this trouble was not very long. Judging by the size of it, any body might have written it in five minutes; but Powys felt his hand trembling and his brain throbbing with the exertion when he had done. Then he folded it up carefully and put it into an envelope, and addressed it to Mr. Brownlow, leaving it with the bundle of papers on his employer’s writing-table. When he had accomplished this he sat for some time irresolute, contemplating his packet on the table, and pondering what should follow. He had put it to the touch to win or lose, but in the mean time what was he to do? She had said he would find them up stairs. She had implied that he would be expected there; and to spend the day beside her would have been a kind of heaven to him; but that was a paradise which he had himself forfeited. He could not be in her company now as any other man might. He had said too much, had committed himself too deeply. He had betrayed the secret which another man more reticent might have kept, undisclosed in words, and it was impossible for him to be with her as another might. Even she, though she had never said a word to him that could be construed into encouragement, except those half dozen words at the library door, was different toward him and other men. She was conscious too; she remembered what he had said. He and she could not be together without remembering it, without carrying on, articulately or inarticulately, that broken interview. Powys did the only thing that remained to him to do. He did not bound forth in the track of the dog-cart, and follow it to Masterton, though that would not have been difficult to him; but he went out into the park, and roamed all about the house in widening circles, hearing sometimes the crack of the guns in the distance, sometimes in alleys close at hand the sound of voices, sometimes catching, as he thought, the very rustle of Sara’s dress. He avoided them with much care and pains, and yet he would have been glad to meet them; glad to come upon the shooting-party, though he kept far from the spot where he had heard they were to meet some of the ladies and lunch. It was not for him to seek a place among them. Thus he wandered about, not feeling forlorn or disconsolate, as a man might be supposed to do under such circumstances, but, on the contrary, excited and hopeful. He had set forth what he felt was his best claim to consideration before her father. If Mr. Brownlow had not treated him with such inconceivable favor and indulgence, he never would have ventured upon this. But he had been favored,—he had been encouraged. Grace had been shown to him enough to turn any young man’s head, and he knew no reason for it. And at last he had ventured to lay before Mr. Brownlow those distant problematical claims to gentility which were all the inheritance he had, and to tell him what was in his mind. He was not a victim kept out of Paradise. He was a pilgrim of hope, keeping the gates in sight, and feeling, permitting himself to feel, as if they might open any moment and he might be called in.

While this was going on it happened to him, as it happens so often, to come direct in the way of the very meeting which he had so carefully avoided. Turning round the corner of a great old yew, hanging rich with scarlet berries, he came all of a sudden, and without any warning, upon Sara herself, walking quickly from the village with a little basket in her hand. If it was difficult to meet her with a body-guard of ladies in the shelter of her father’s house, it may be supposed what it was to meet her in the silence, without another soul in sight, her face flaming with sudden recognition and confusion. Powys stood still, and for a moment speculated whether he should not fly; but it was only that moment of consideration that fled, and he found himself turning by her side, and taking her basket from her hand. She was no more mistress of the situation than he was: she was taken by surprise. The calm with which she had led the way into the library that morning, secure in her office of mistress of the house, had vanished away. She began hurriedly, eagerly, to say where she had been, and how it happened that she was returning alone. “The rest went off to the rectory,” she said. “Have you seen it? I think it is such a pretty house. They went to see Fanny Hardcastle. You have met her—I know you have, or I would not have mentioned her,” said Sara, with a breathless desire to hear her own voice, which was unlike her. The sound of it gave her a little courage, and perhaps if she spoke a little loud and fast, it might attract some stray member of the party who might be wandering near. But no one came; and there were the two together, alone, in the position of all others most difficult in the circumstances—the green, silent park around them, not an eye to see nor an ear to hear; the red October sunshine slanting across their young figures, catching the ripple in Sara’s hair as it had done that day, never to be forgotten, on which he first saw her. This was how fate or fortune, or some good angel or some wicked fairy, defeated Powys’s prudent intention of keeping out of harm’s way.

“But I wonder you did not go with Jack,” Sara resumed. “I should, if I had been you. Not that I should care to kill the poor birds—but it seems to come natural at this time of the year. Did you have much sport in Canada? or do you think it stupid when people talk to you of Canada? Every body does, I know, as soon as they hear you have been there.”

“You never could say any thing that was stupid,” said Powys, and then he paused, for he did not mean to get upon dangerous ground—honestly, he did not mean it, if circumstances had not been too strong for him. “Canada is a kind of common ground,” he said. “It is a good thing to begin conversation on. It is not easy to exhaust it; but people are sadly ignorant,” he added, with lively colonial feeling. He was scornful, in short, of the ignorance he met with. Even Mr. Brownlow talked, he could not but recollect, like a charity-school boy on this subject, and he took refuge in his nationality as a kind of safeguard.

“Yes, I know I am very ignorant,” said Sara, with humility. “Tell me about Canada. I should like to learn.”

These words shook Powys sadly. It did not occur to him that she was as glad as he was to plunge into a foreign subject. There sounded something soft and confiding in the tone, and his heart gave a leap, as it were, toward her. “And I should like to teach you,” he said, a little too warmly, and then stopped short, and then began hastily again. “Miss Brownlow, I think I will carry your basket home and leave you by yourself. I can not be near without remembering things, and saying things. Don’t despise me—I could nor bear to think you despised me.” He said this with growing agitation, but he did not quicken his steps or make any attempt to leave her; he only looked at her piteously, clasping the slender handle of her little basket in both his hands.

“Why should I despise you, Mr. Powys? I don’t like Americans,” said Sara, demurely; “but you are not American—you are English, like all the rest of us. Tell me about Niagara and the Indians, and the backwoods and the skating and the snow. You see I am not quite so ignorant. And then your little sisters and your mother, do they like being at home? Tell me their names and how old they are,” said Sara, herself becoming a little tremulous. “I am fond of little girls.”

And then there ensued a breathless, tremendous pause. He would have fled if he could, but there was no possibility of flight; and in a moment there flashed before him all the evidences of Mr. Brownlow’s favor. Would he refuse him this supreme gift and blessing? Why had he brought him here if he would refuse him? Thus Powys broke down again, and finally. He poured out his heart, giving up all attempt at self-control when the tide had set in. He told how he had been keeping out of the way—the way of temptation. He described to her how he had been trying to command himself. He told her the ground she trod on was fairy-land: the air she breathed musical and celestial; the place she lived in, paradise; that he hoped nothing, asked for nothing, but only to be allowed to tell her that she was—not an angel—for he was too much in earnest to think of hackneyed expressions—but the only creature in the world for whom he had either eyes or thoughts. All this poured upon Sara as she walked softly, with downcast eyes, along the grassy path. It poured upon her, a perfect flood of adulation, sweet flattery, folly, and delirium—insane and yet quite true. And she listened, and had not a word to say. Indeed he did not ask for a word; he made her no petition; he emptied out his heart before her like a libation poured to the gods; and then suddenly became silent, tremulous, and hoarse as his passion worked itself out.

It was all so sudden, and the passion was so real, that they were both rapt by it, and went on in the silence after he had ceased, without knowing, until the impetus and rush of the outburst had in a measure worn out. Then Sara woke up. She had been quite quiet, pale, half frightened, wholly entranced. When she woke up she grew scarlet with sudden blushes; and they both raised their eyes at the same moment and found that, unawares, they had come in sight of the house. Powys fell back at the sight with a pang of dismay and consternation; but it gave Sara courage. They were no longer entirely alone, and she regained her self-command.