Brownlows

Again Mr. Brownlow groaned within himself, but he could not free himself from this associate. It was one of the consequences of evil-doing, the first obvious one which had come in his way. He had to bear her insults, to put himself on her level, even to be, as she was, without compunction. Their positions were changed, and it was he now who was in the old woman’s power; she had a hundred supposed injuries hoarded up in her mind to avenge upon him, even while she did him substantial service. And she was cruel with the remorseless cold-blooded cruelty of a creature whose powers of thought and sympathy were worn out. He wondered at her as he sat and saw her old eyes glisten with pleasure at the thought of having sent this poor injured robbed woman away. And he was her accomplice, her instigator, and it was for Bessie’s children. The thought made him sick and giddy. It was only with an effort that he recovered himself.

“When a woman comes back after twenty-five years, she does not disappear again,” he said. “I am not blaming you. You did as was natural to you. But tell me everything. It might have been an impostor—you never saw her. How can you be sure it was Phœbe Thomson? If Nancy even had been here—”

“I tell you it was Phœbe Thomson,” said Mrs. Fennell, raising her voice. And then all of a sudden she became silent. Nancy had come quietly up stairs, and had opened the door, and was looking in upon her mistress. She might have heard more, she might not even have heard that. She came in and put down some small purchases on the table. She was quite self-possessed and observant, looking as she always did, showing no signs of excitement. And Mr. Brownlow looked at her steadily. Like Nancy! but Mrs. Powys was not like Nancy. He concluded as this passed through his mind that Mrs. Fennell had named Nancy only as the first person that occurred to her. There was no likeness—not the slightest. It went for nothing, and yet it was a kind of relief to him all the same.

“Why do you come in like that, without knocking, when I’ve got some one with me?” said Mrs. Fennell, with tremulous wrath. “It’s like a common maid-of-all-work, that knows no better. I have told you that before.”

“It’s seldom as one of the family is here,” said Nancy, “or I’d think on’t. When things happen so rare, folks forgets. Often and often I say as you’re left too much alone; but what with the lady yesterday and Mr. Brownlow to-day—”

“What lady yesterday?” cried Mrs. Fennell. “What do you know about a lady yesterday? Who ever said there was a lady yesterday? If you speak up to me bold like that, I’ll send you away.”

“Oh, it’s nothing to me,” said Nancy. “You know as I was out. They most always comes when I’m out. Fine folks is not partial to me; but if you’re a-going to be better looked to, and your own flesh and blood to come and see you, at your age, it will be good news to me.”

“My own flesh and blood don’t think a great deal about an old woman,” said Mrs. Fennell, swallowing the bait. “I’m little good to any body now. I’ve seen the day when it was different. And I can still be of use to them that’s kind to me,” she said, with significance. Mr. Brownlow sat and listened to all this, and it smote him with disgust. He got up, and though it cost him an effort to do so, held out his hand to the old woman in her chair.

“Tell me, or tell Jack, if you want anything,” he said. “I can’t stay now; and if any thing occurs let me know,” he added. He took no notice of the vehement shaking of her hand as she turned toward Nancy. He looked at Nancy again, though he did not like her. She at least was not to be in the conspiracy, and he had a satisfaction in showing that at least he was not afraid of her. “If there is any thing that can make your mistress more comfortable,” he said, sternly, “I have already desired you to let me know; and you understand that she is not to be bullied either by you or any one else—good-day.”

“Bullied!” said Nancy, in consternation; but he did not condescend to look at her again. He went away silently, like a man in a dream. Up to this moment he had been able to doubt. It was poor comfort, yet there was some comfort in it. When the evidence looked the most clear and overwhelming, he had still been able to say to himself that he had no direct proof, that it was not his business, that still it might all be a mistake. Now that last standing-ground was taken from under his feet. Mrs. Thomson’s heir had made herself known, she had told her name and her parentage, and claimed kindred with his mother-in-law, who, if she had been an impostor, could have convicted her; and the old woman, on the contrary, had been convinced. It was a warm summer day, but Mr. Brownlow shivered with cold as he walked along the familiar streets. If she had but come twenty years, five-and-twenty years ago! If he had but followed his own instincts of right and wrong, and left this odious money untouched! It was for Bessie’s sake he had used it, to make his marriage practicable, and now the whirligig of time had brought about its revenges. Bessie’s daughter would have to pay for her mother’s good fortune. He felt himself swing from side to side as he went along, so confused was he with the multitude of his thoughts, and recovered himself only with a violent effort. The decisive moment had come. It had come too soon—before the time was out at which Phœbe Thomson would be harmless. He could not put himself off any longer with the pretext that he was not sure. And young Powys in the office, whom he had taken in, partly in kindness and partly with evil intent, sat under his eyes calculating the amount of that frightful interest which would ruin him. Mr. Brownlow passed several of his acquaintances in the street without noticing them, but not without attracting notice. He was so pale that the strangers who passed turned round to look at him. No farther delay—no putting off—no foolish excuses to himself. Whatever had to be done must be done quickly. Unconsciously he had quickened his pace, and went on at a speed which few men could have kept up with. He was strong, and his excitement gave him new strength. It must be done, one thing or another; there was no way of escaping the alternative now.

There are natures which are driven wild and frantic by a great excitement, and there are others which are calmed and steadied in face of an emergency. Mr. Brownlow entered his private office with the feeling of a man who was about to die there, and might never come out alive. He did not answer any one—even waved Wrinkell away, who was coming to him with a bag of papers. “I have some urgent private business,” he said; “take every thing to my son, and don’t let me be disturbed.” He said this in the office, so that every one heard him; and though he looked at nobody, he could see Powys look up from his calculations, and Jack come in some surprise to the open door of his room. They both heard him, both the young men, and wondered. Jack, too, was dark and self-absorbed, engaged in a struggle with himself. And they looked at the master, the father, and said to themselves, in their youthful folly, that it was easy for him to talk of not being disturbed. What could he have to trouble him—he who could do as he liked, and whom nobody interfered with? Mr. Brownlow, for his part, saw them both without looking at them, and a certain bitter smile at his son’s reserve and silence came to him inwardly. Jack thought it a great matter to be checked in his boyish love-making; while, good heavens! how different were the burdens, how much harder the struggles of which the boy was ignorant! Mr. Brownlow went in and shut the door. He was alone then—shut out from every body. No one could tell or even guess, the conflict in his mind—not even his young adversary outside, who was reckoning up the compound interest. He paused a little, and sat down, and bent his head on his hands. Was he praying? He could not have told what it was. It was not prayer in words. If it had been, it would have been a prayer for strength to do wrong. That was what he was struggling after—strength to shut out all compunctions—to be steadily cruel, steadily false. Could God have granted him that? but his habits were those of a good man all the same. He paused when he was in perplexity, and was silent, and collected his thoughts, not without a kind of mute customary appeal; and then flung his hands away from his face, and started to his feet with a thrill of horror. “Help me to sin!” was that what it had been in his heart to say?

He spent the whole day in the office, busy with very hard and heavy work. He went minutely into all those calculations which he supposed young Powys to be making. And when he had put down the last cipher, he opened all his secret places, took out all his memorandums, every security he possessed, all his notes of investments, the numberless items which composed his fortune. He worked at his task like a clerk making up ordinary accounts, yet there was something in his silent speed, his wrapt attention, the intense exactness of every note, which was very different from the steady indifference of daily work. When he had put every thing down, and made his last calculation, he laid the two papers together on his desk. A little glimmering of hope had, perhaps, awakened in him, from the very fact of doing something. He laid them down side by side, and the little color that had come into his face vanished out of it in an instant. If there had been but a little over! If he could have felt that he had something left, he might still, at the eleventh hour, have had strength to make the sacrifice; but the figures which stared him in the face meant ruin. Restitution would cost him every thing—more than every thing. It would leave him in debt; it would mortgage even that business which the Brownlows of Masterton had maintained so long. It would plunge his children down, down in an instant out of the place they had been educated to fill. It would take from himself the means of being as he was—one of the benefactors of the county, foremost in all good works. Good works! when it was with the inheritance of the widow and the orphans that he did them. All this came before him as clearly as if it had been written in lines of light—an uneducated, imprudent woman—a creature who had run away from her friends, abandoned her mother—a boy who was going to the bad—a family unaccustomed to wealth, who would squander and who would not enjoy it. And, on the other hand, himself who had increased it, used it well, served both God and man with it. The struggle was long, and it was hard, but in the end the natural result came. His half-conscious appeal was answered somehow, though not from on high. The strength came to him which he had asked for—strength to do wrong. But all the clerks started, and Mr. Wrinkell himself took off his spectacles, and seriously considered whether he should send for a doctor, when in the evening, just before the hour for leaving the office, Mr. Brownlow suddenly opened the door and called young Powys into his private room.

CHAPTER XX.

POWYS’S BITS OF PAPER

Mr. Brownlow, perhaps, did not know very well what he meant when he called young Powys into his room. He was in one of those strange states of mental excitement in which a man is at once confused and clear; incapable of seeing before him what he is about to do, yet as prompt and distinct in the doing of it as if it had been premeditated to the last detail. He could not have explained why nor told what it was he proposed to himself; in short, he had in his own mind proposed nothing to himself. He was swayed only by a vague, intense, and overwhelming necessity to have the matter before him set straight somehow, and, confused as his own mind was, and little as he knew of his own intentions, he yet went on, as by the directest inspiration, marching boldly, calmly, yet wildly, in a kind of serious madness, into the darkness of this unknown way. He called the young man to him in sharp, decided tones, as if he knew exactly what he wanted, and was ready to enter fully into it at once; and yet he did not in the least know what he wanted, nor what question he was to ask, nor what he was to say the next moment; the only thing that helped him was, that as he looked out of his office to call Powys, he could see him pick up hastily and put in his pocket the bits of paper all dotted over with calculations, which he had already remarked on the young man’s desk.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow; “I have something to say to you;” and he resumed his own seat at his writing-table as if there had been nothing particular in the conference, and began mechanically to arrange the papers before him: as for Powys, he put his hand upon the back of the chair which stood on the other side of the table, and waited, but did not sit down, being bewildered a little, though not half so much as his employer was, by this sudden summons.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow—“sit down; I want to speak to you: I hope you know that I have always intended to be your friend—”

“Intended! sir,” said Powys; “I know that you have been my friend, and a far better friend than I deserved—” Here he made one of those pauses of embarrassment which sometimes mean so much, and often mean so little. Mr. Brownlow, who knew more than Powys did, took it to signify a great deal, and the idea gave him strength to proceed; and the fact is that for once the two, unknown to each other, were thinking of the same thing—of the bits of paper covered with figures that were in Powys’s pocket—only their thoughts ran in a very different strain.

“That must be decided rather by the future than by the past,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I can say for myself without any doubt thus far, that I have meant to be your friend—but I must have your confidence in return; I do not think you can have any more trustworthy counselor.” As Mr. Brownlow said this, it seemed to him that some one else, some unseen third party, was putting the words into his mouth; and his heart gave a flutter as he said them, though it was little in accordance either with his age or character that the heart should take any such prominent part in his concerns.

As for the young man, there came over his face a quick flush, as of shame. He touched with his hand instinctively, and without knowing it, the breast-pocket in which these papers were—all of which actions were distinct and full of meaning to the anxious eyes that were watching him—and he faltered as he spoke. “I know that you would be my most trustworthy counselor—and I don’t know how to thank you,” he said; but he had lowered his voice and cast down his eyes. He stood holding the back of the chair, and it trembled in his grasp. He could not meet the gaze that was fixed upon him. He stood shuffling his feet, looking down, red with embarrassment, confusion, and shame. Was it that he felt himself a traitor? eating the Brownlow’s bread, receiving their kindness, and plotting against them? It seemed to his companion as clear as day.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow, feeling his advantage; “let us talk of it as friends—” and then he himself made a pause, and clenched his hand unawares, and felt his heart contract as he put the last decisive question. “What are those calculations you have been making all day?”

Young Powys started, and became violently red, and looked up suddenly into his employer’s face. No doubt this was what he had been thinking of; but the question was so sudden, so point-blank, that it dispersed all the involuntary softenings of which he had been conscious, and brought back to him all his youthful pride and amour propre and reserve about his own affairs. He looked Mr. Brownlow full in the face, and his agitation took a different form. “Calculations, sir!” he said, with even a touch of indignation in his voice; and then he too stopped, lest he should be uncourteous to his employer, who he was confident wished him well, though he was so strangely curious. “The only calculations I have made are about my own affairs,” he went on. “They are of no interest to any one. I am sorry you should have thought I was taking up my time—”

“I did not think of your time,” said Mr. Brownlow, with an impatient sigh. “I have seen many young men like you who have—who have—gone wrong—from lack of experience and knowledge of the world. I wish to serve you. Perhaps—it is possible—I may have partly divined what is on your mind. Can’t you see that it would be best in every way to make a confidant of me?”

All this the lawyer said involuntarily, as it were, the words being put into his mouth. They were false words, and yet they were true. He wanted to cheat and ruin the young man before him, and yet he wanted to serve him. He desired his confidence that he might betray it, and yet he felt disposed to guide and counsel him as if he had been his son. The confusion of his mind was such that it became a kind of exaltation. After all he meant him well—what he would do for him would be the best. It might not be justice—justice was one thing; kindness, friendship, bounty, another—and these last he was ready to give. Thus, in the bewilderment of motives and sentiments that existed in his mind, he came to find himself again, as it were, and to feel that he did really mean well to the boy. “I wish to serve you,” he repeated, with a kind of eagerness. Would not this be to serve him better than by giving to his inexperienced hands a fairy fortune of which he would not know how to make use? These thoughts went vaguely but powerfully through Mr. Brownlow’s mind as he spoke. And the result was that he looked up in the young man’s face with a sense of uprightness which had for some time deserted him. It would be best in every way that there should be confidence between them—best for the youth, who, after all, had he ever so good a case, would probably be quite unaware how to manage it—and best, unquestionably best, for himself, as showing at once what he had to hope or fear. Of this there could be no doubt.

As for Powys, he was touched, and at the same time alarmed. It was the same subject which occupied them both, but yet they looked upon it with very different eyes. The Canadian knew what was in those scraps of paper with their lines of figures and awful totals, and it seemed to him that sooner than show them to any one, sooner than make a clean breast of what was in them, he would rather die. Yet the kindness went to his heart, and made him in his own eyes a monster. “Divined!” he said half to himself, with a look of horror. If Mr. Brownlow had divined it, it seemed to Powys that he never could hold up his head before him again. Shame would stand between them, or something he thought shame. He had not done much that was wrong, but he could have shrunk into the very ground at the idea that his thoughts and calculations were known. In spite of himself he cast a piteous glance at the whiteness of his elbows—was that how it came about that Mr. Brownlow divined? Pride, shame, gratitude, compunction, surged up in his mind, into his very eyes and throat, so that he could not speak or look at the patron who was so good to him, yet whom he could not yield to. “Sir,” he stammered, when he had got a little command of himself—“you are mistaken. I—I have nothing on my mind—nothing more than every man has who has a—a—life of his own. Indeed, sir,” the poor youth continued with eagerness, “don’t think I am ungrateful—but I—I—can’t tell you. I can’t tell my own mother. It is my own fault. It is nothing to any other creature. In short,” he added, breaking off with an effort, and forcing a smile, “it is nothing—nothing!—only I suppose that I am unaccustomed to the world—”

“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow; “come nearer to me, and sit down upon this chair. You are very young—”

“I am five-and-twenty,” said Powys. He said it hastily, answering what he thought was a kind of accusation; and the words struck the lawyer like a blow. It was not new to him, and yet the very statement of that momentous number seemed to carry a certain significance. The ill-omened fortune which made these two adversaries had come to the one just when the other was born.

“Well,” said Mr. Brownlow, who felt his utterance stopped by these innocent words, “it does not matter. Sit down; I have still a great deal to say—”

And then he stopped with a gasp, and there was a pause like a pause in the midst of a battle. If Powys had not been preoccupied by the subject which to him was so absorbing, though he denied its interest to any other, he could not have failed to be struck by the earnestness, and suppressed excitement, and eager baffled looks of his employer. But he was blinded by his own anxieties, and by that unconscious self-importance of youth which sees nothing wonderful in the fact of other people’s interest in its own fortunes. He thought Mr. Brownlow was kind; it did not occur to him that a stronger motive was necessary for these persistent questions and for this intense interest. He was not vain—but yet it came natural to receive such attention, and his mind was not sufficiently disengaged to be surprised.

As for the lawyer, he paused and took breath, and looked into the frank yet clouded face which was so open and communicative, and yet would not, could not, reveal to him the secret he wanted to seize. It was not skill, it was not cunning, that preserved the young man’s secret—was it innocence? Had he been mistaken? was there really in Powys’s consciousness at least no such secret, but only some youthful trouble, some boyish indiscretion, that was “on his mind.” As Mr. Brownlow paused, and looked at his young companion, this thought gradually shaped itself within him, and for the moment it gave him a strange relief. He too was absorbed and preoccupied, and thrust out of the region of such light as might have been thrown on the subject by the whiteness of the seams of the young fellow’s coat; and then he had come to be in such deadly earnest that any lighter commonplace explanation would have seemed an insult to him. Yet he paused, and after a few moments felt as if a truce had been proclaimed. It had not come yet to the last struggle for death or life. There was still time to carry on negotiations, to make terms, to convert the enemy into a firm friend and supporter. This conviction brought comfort to his mind, notwithstanding that half an hour before he had started up in the temerity of despair, and vowed to himself that, for good or evil, the decisive step must be taken at once. Now the clouds of battle rolled back, and a soft sensation of peace fell upon Mr. Brownlow’s soul—peace at least for a time. It melted his heart in spite of himself. It made him think of his home, and his child, and the gentle evening that awaited him after the excitement of the day; and then his eye fell upon Powys again.

“I have still a great deal to say,” he went on—and his voice had changed and softened beyond all doubt, and Powys, himself surprised, had perceived the change, though he had not an idea what it meant—“I have been pleased with you, Powys. I am not sure that you have quite kept up during the last few weeks; but you began very well, and if you choose to steady yourself, and put away any delusion that may haunt you”—here Mr. Brownlow made a little pause to give force to his words—“you may be of great service to me. I took you only on trial, you know, and you had the junior clerk’s place; but now I think I am justified in treating you better—after this your salary shall be double—”

Powys gave a great start in his seat, and looked at Mr. Brownlow with a look of stupefaction. “Double!” he cried, with an almost hysterical gasp. He thought his ears or his imagination were deceiving him. His wonder took all the expression, almost all the intelligence, out of his face. He sat gazing with his mouth open, waiting to hear what it could mean.

“I will double your salary from the present time,” said Mr. Brownlow, smiling in spite of himself.

Then the young man rose up. His face became the color of fire. The tears sprang into his eyes. “This was why you said you divined!” he said, with a voice that was full of tears and an ineffable softness. His gratitude was beyond words. His eyes seemed to shoot arrows into Mr. Brownlow’s very soul—arrows of sharp thanks, and praise, and grateful applause, which the lawyer could not bear. The words made him start, too, and threw a sudden flood of light upon the whole subject; but Mr. Brownlow could not get the good of this, for he was abashed and shame-struck by the tender, undoubting, half-filial gratitude in the young man’s eyes.

“But I don’t deserve it,” cried Powys, in his eagerness—“I don’t deserve it, though you are so good. I have not been doing my work as I ought—I know I have not. These bills have been going between me and my wits. I have not known what I was doing sometimes. Oh! sir, forgive me; I don’t know what to say to you, but I don’t deserve it—the other fellows deserve it better than I.”