Brownlows

“Never mind the other fellows,” said Mr. Brownlow, collecting himself; “I mean to make a different use of you. You may be sure that it is not out of goodness I am doing this,” he added, with a strange smile that Powys could not understand—“you may be sure it is because I see in you certain—certain—capabilities—”

Mr. Brownlow paused, for his lips were dry; he was telling the truth, but he did not mean it to be received as truth. This was how he went on from one step to another. To tell a lie, or to tell a truth as if it were a pleasant fiction, which was worst? The lie seemed the most straightforward, the most innocent of the two; and this was why his lips were dry, and he had to make a pause in his speech.

Powys sat down again, and leaned on the table, and looked across at his master, his benefactor. That was how the young man was calling him in his heart. His eyes were shining as eyes only do after they have been moistened by tears. They were soft, tender, eager, moved by those last words into a deeper gratitude still, an emotion which awoke all his faculties. “If I have any capabilities,” he said, “I wish they were a hundred and a hundred times more. I can’t tell you, sir—you can’t imagine—how much you have done for me in a moment. And I was ashamed when you said you had divined! I have been very miserable. I have not known what to do.”

“So that was all,” said Mr. Brownlow, drawing a long breath. “My young friend, I told you you should confide in me. I know sixty pounds a year is very little, and so you must remember is twice sixty pounds a year—”

“Ah, but it is double,” said young Powys, with a tremulous smile. “But I have not worked for it,” he went on, clouding over—“I have not won it, I know I don’t deserve it; only, sir, if you have something special—any thing in this world, I don’t care how hard—that you mean to give me to do—”

“Yes,” said Mr. Brownlow, “I have something very special; I can’t enter upon the details just now. The others in the office are very well; but I want some one I can depend upon, who will be devoted to me.”

Upon this the young man smiled; smiled so that his face lighted up all over—every line in it answering as by an individual ray. “Devoted!” he said, “I should think so indeed—not to the last drop of blood, for that would do you no good—but to the last moment of work, whatever, however, you please—”

“Take care,” said Mr. Brownlow, “you may be too grateful; when a man promises too much he is apt to break down.”

“But I shall not break down,” said the Canadian. “You took me in first when I had nobody to speak for me, and now you save from what is worse than starving—from debt and hopeless struggles. And I was beginning to lose heart; I felt as if we could not live on it, and nobody knew but me. I beg your pardon sir, for speaking so much about myself—”

“No, no; go on about yourself,” said Mr. Brownlow. He was leaning back on his chair like a man who had had a fit and was recovering from it. His whole countenance had relaxed in a manner wonderful to behold. He listened to the young fellow’s open-hearted babble as if it had been celestial music. It was music to his ears. It distilled upon him like the dew, as the Bible says, penetrating through and through, pervading his whole being with a sense of blessed ease, and relief and repose. He lay back in his chair and was content to listen. He did not care to move or think, but only to realize that the crisis had passed over; that for the moment all was still rest and security and peace. It was the best proof how much his nerves had been tried in the former part of the day.

“But you must recollect,” he said at last, “that this great fortune you have come into is, after all, only a hundred and twenty pounds a year; it is a very small income. You will have to be careful; but if you get into any difficulties again, the thing you ought to do is to come to me. I will always be ready to give you my advice, and perhaps help, if you want it. Don’t thank me again; I shall have a great many things for you to do, which will make up.”

“Nothing will ever make up for the kindness,” said young Powys; and then he perceived that his audience was over. Already even the lines were beginning to tighten in Mr. Brownlow’s face. The young man withdrew and went back to his desk, walking on air as he thought. It was a very small matter to be so glad about, but yet there are circumstances in which ten pounds to pay and only five pounds to pay it with will make as much anguish as the loss of a battle or a kingdom—especially to the inexperienced, the sensitive, and proud. This awful position he was suddenly relieved from when he saw no hope. And no wonder that he was elated. It was not a chronic malady to which he had grown accustomed. The truth was he had never been in debt before all his life. This may be accounted for by the fact that he had never had any money to speak of, and that he had been brought up in the backwoods.

Mr. Brownlow did not change his position for some time after his clerk had left him. Passion was new to him, though he was on the declining side of life. The sharp tension, the sudden relief, the leap from anxiety, suspicion, and present danger into calm and tranquillity, was new to him. His mind had never been disturbed by such conflicts while he was young, and accordingly they came now in all their freshness, with a power beyond any thing in his experience, to his soul. Thus he continued motionless, leaning back in his chair, taking the good of his respite. He knew it was only a temporary respite; he knew the danger was not past; but withal it was a comfort to him. And then, as he had this time disquieted himself in vain, who could tell if perhaps his other fears might vanish in the same way? God might be favorable to him, even though perhaps his cause was not just such a cause as could with confidence be put into God’s hands. It was not always justice that prevailed in this world; and perhaps—So strangely does personal interest pervert the mind, that this was how John Brownlow, an upright man by nature and by long habit, calculated with himself. It seemed to him natural somehow that God should enter into the conspiracy with him—for he meant no harm even to the people who were to be his victims. Far from that; he meant, on the contrary, bit by bit, to provide for them, to surround them with comforts, to advance and promote in every way the young man whose inheritance he had so long enjoyed. He meant to be as good to him as any father, if only he could be successful in alienating forever and ever his just right from him. Possibly he might still even carry out the plan he had conceived and abandoned, and give the crown of all his possessions, his beautiful child, to the lucky youth. Any thing but justice. As he sat and rested, a certain sense of that satisfaction which arises from happiness conferred came into Mr. Brownlow’s mind. In the mean time, he had been very good to Powys. Poor young fellow! how grateful, how elated, how joyous he was—and all about a hundred and twenty pounds a year! His trouble had involved only a little money, and how easy it was to make an end of that! It was not by a long way the first time in Mr. Brownlow’s life at which this opportunity of bringing light out of darkness had occurred to him. There were other clerks, and other men not clerks, who could, if they would, tell a similar tale. He had never been a hard man; he had been considerate, merciful, lending like the righteous man, and little exacting as to his recompense. He had served many in his day, and though he never boasted of it, he knew it. Was it in reason to give up without a struggle his power of serving his neighbors, all the admirable use he had made of his fortune, when he might keep his fortune, and yet withal do better for the real heir than if he gave it up to him? The sense of coming ruin, and the awful excitement of that conflict for life and death which he had anticipated when he called Powys into his office, had exhausted him so entirely that he allowed himself to be soothed by all those softer thoughts. The danger was not over—he knew that as well as any one; but he had a reprieve. He had time to make of his adversary a devoted friend and vassal, and it was even for his adversary’s good.

Such were the thoughts that went softly, as in a veiled and twilight procession, through his mind. After a while he raised himself up, and gathered together all the calculations at which he had been working so hard, and locked all his private drawers, and put all his memorandums by. As he did so, his halcyon state by degrees began to be invaded by gleams of the every-day day-light. He had doubled Powys’s salary, and he had a right to do so if he pleased; but yet he knew that when he told it to Mr. Wrinkell, that functionary would be much surprised, and that a sense of injury would be visible upon the countenances of the other clerks. Certainly a man has a right to do what he likes with his own, but then every man who does so must make up his mind to certain little penalties. He will always be able to read the grudge of those who have borne the burden and heat of the day in their faces, however silent they may be; and even an emperor, much less a country lawyer, can not fail to be conscious when he is tacitly disapproved of. How was he to tell Wrinkell of it even? how to explain to him why he had taken so unusual a step? The very fact was a kind of confession that something more was in it than met the eye. And Jack—; but Jack and Wrinkell too would have greater cause of astonishment still, which would throw even this into the shade. Mr. Wrinkell knocked at Mr. Brownlow’s door when he had come this length in his thoughts. The manager had not troubled him so long as he had been alone and apparently busy; but after the long audience accorded to young Powys, Mr. Wrinkell did not see how he could be shut out. He came in accordingly, and already Mr. Brownlow saw the disapproval in his eye. He was stately, which was no doubt a deportment becoming a head clerk, but not precisely in the private office of his principal; and he did not waste a single word in what he had to say. He was concise almost to the point of abruptness; all of which particulars of disapprobation Mr. Brownlow perceived at once.

“Wrinkell,” he said, when they had dismissed in this succinct way the immediate business in hand, “I want to speak to you about young Powys. I am interested in that young fellow. I want to raise his salary. But I should like to know first what you have got to say.”

It was a hypocritical speech, but Mr. Wrinkell happily was not aware of that; he pursed up his lips and screwed them tight together, as if, in the first place, he did not mean to say any thing, but relented after a moment’s pause.

“At the present moment, sir,” said Mr. Wrinkell, “I am doubtful what to say. Had you asked me three months since, I should have answered, ‘By all means.’ If you had asked me one month since, I should have said, ‘Certainly not.’ Now, I avow my penetration is baffled, and I don’t know what to say.”

“You mean he is not doing so well as he did at first?” said Mr. Brownlow. “Nobody ever does that I know of. And better than he did later? Is that what you mean to say?”

“Being very concise,” said Mr. Wrinkell, slowly, “I should say that was a sort of a summary. When he came first he was the best beginner I ever had in hand; and I did not leave him without signs of my approval. I had him to my ’umble ’ome, Mr. Brownlow, as perhaps you are aware, and gave him the opportunity of going to chapel with us. I don’t hesitate to avow,” said Mr. Wrinkell, with a little solemnity, “that I had begun to regard him as a kind of son of my own.”

“And then there was a change?” said the lawyer, with a smile.

“There was a great change,” said Mr. Wrinkell. “It was no more the same young man—a cheerful bright young fellow that could laugh over his tea of a Sunday, and walk steadily to chapel after with Mrs. Wrinkell and myself. We are not of those Christians who think a little cheerfulness out of season of a Sunday. But he changed of that. He would have no tea, which is a bad sign in a young man. He yawned in my very pew by Mrs. Wrinkell’s side. It grieved me, sir, as if he had been my own flesh and blood; but of course we had to give up. The last few weeks he has been steadier,” Mr. Wrinkell added, quickly; “there can’t be any doubt about that.”

“But he might decline tea and yawn over a sermon without going to the bad,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I hope so at least, for they are two things I often do myself.”

“Excuse me,” said Mr. Wrinkell, who liked now and then to take high ground. “There is all the difference. I fully admit the right of private judgment. You judge for yourself; but a young man who has kind friends anxious to serve him—there is all the difference. But he has been steady of late,” the head clerk added, with candor; “I gladly acknowledge that.”

“Perhaps he had something on his mind,” said Mr. Brownlow. “At all events, I don’t think much harm has come of it. I take an interest in that young fellow. You will double his salary, Mr. Wrinkell, next quarter-day.”

“Double it!” said Mr. Wrinkell, with a gasp. He fell back from his position by the side of the table, and grew pale with horror. “Double it?” he added, after a pause, inquiringly. “Did I understand, sir? was that what you said?”

“That was what I said,” said Mr. Brownlow; and, after the habit of guilty men, he began immediately to defend himself. “I trust,” he said, unconsciously following the old precedent, “that I have a right to do what I like with my own.”

“Certainly—certainly,” said Mr. Wrinkell; and then there was a pause. “I shall put these settlements in hand at once,” he resumed, with what the lawyer felt was something like eagerness to escape the subject. “Mr. Robinson is waiting for the instructions you have just given me. And the Wardell case is nearly ready for your revision—and—May I ask if the—the—increase you mention in Mr. Powys’s salary is to begin from next quarter-day, or from the last?”

“From the last,” said Mr. Brownlow, with stern brevity.

“Very well, sir,” said Mr. Wrinkell. “I can not conceal from you that it may have a bad effect—a painful effect.”

“Upon whom?” said Mr, Brownlow.

“Upon the other clerks. They are pretty steady—neither very good nor very bad; and he has been both good and bad,” said Mr. Wrinkell, stoutly. “It will have an unpleasant effect. They will say we make favorites, Mr. Brownlow. They have already said as much in respect to myself.”

“They had better mind their own affairs,” was all Mr. Brownlow said; but, nevertheless, when he went out into the office afterward, he imagined (prematurely, for it had not yet been communicated to them) that he read disgust in the eyes of his clerks; and he was not unmoved by it, any more than General Haman was by the contempt of the old man who sat in the gate.

CHAPTER XXI.

HOW A MAN CAN DO WHAT HE LIKES WITH HIS OWN

It was not for some days that the clerks in Mr. Brownlow’s office found out the enormity of which their employer had been guilty—which was almost unfortunate, for he gave them full credit for their disapproval all the time. As it was, Mr. Wrinkell embodied within his own person all the disapprobation on a grand scale. It was not that he disapproved of Powys’s advancement. Without being overwhelmingly clever or fascinating, the young Canadian was one of those open-hearted open-eyed souls who find favor with most good people. There was no malice nor envy nor uncharitableness about him; he was ready to acknowledge every body’s good qualities, ready to appreciate whatever kindness might be offered to him, open to see all that was noble or pleasant or of good report—which is the quality of all others most generally wanting in a limited community, from an office up to—even a University. Mr. Wrinkell was a head clerk and a Dissenter, and not a tolerant man to speak of, but he liked the more generous breadth of nature without very well knowing why; and he was glad in his heart that the young fellow had “got on.” But still, for all that, he disapproved—not of Powys, but of Mr. Brownlow. It was caprice, and caprice was not to be supported—or it was from consideration of capability, apart from all question of standing in the office, which was, it must be allowed, more insupportable still. Mr. Wrinkell reflected that he had himself been nearly forty years in the employment of the Brownlows of Masterton without once having his salary doubled. And he felt that if such a dangerous precedent were once established, the consequences might be tremendous. Such a boy, for example, if he but happened to be clever and useful, might be put over every body’s head, before any body was aware. Mr. Wrinkell, who was grand vizier, was not afraid for his own place, but he felt that it was an example to be summarily discouraged. After all, when a man is not clever it is not his fault; whereas, when he is respectable and steady, the virtue and praise is purely his own. “It’s revolutionary,” he said to his wife. “There is Brown, who has been years and years in the office—there never was a steadier fellow. I don’t remember that he ever lost a day—except when he had that fever, you know; but twenty pound a year increase was as much as ever was given to him.”

“When he had the fever they were very kind to him,” said Mrs. Wrinkell; “and, after all, Mr. Brownlow has a right to do what he likes with his own.”

“He may have a right,” said Mr. Wrinkell, doubtfully, “but it’s a thing that always makes a heart-burning, and always will.”

“Well, William, we may be thankful it can’t make any difference to us,” said his wife. This was the sum of the good woman’s philosophy, but it answered very well. It was always her conviction that there will be peace in our day.

As for Brown, when he first heard the news, he went home to the bosom of his family with bitterness in his heart. “I can’t call to mind a single day I ever missed, except that fever, and the day Billy was born,” he said to Mrs. Brown, despondingly; “and here’s this young fellow that’s been six months in the office—”

“It’s a shame,” said that injured woman; “it’s a black burning shame. A bit of a lad picked up in the streets that don’t know what money is; and you a married man with six—not to say the faithful servant you have been. I wonder for my part how Mr. Brownlow dares to look you in the face.”

“He don’t mind much about that. What he thinks is, that the money’s his own,” said poor Brown, with a sigh.

“But it ain’t his own,” said the higher spirited wife. “I would just like to know who works hardest for it, him or you. If I saw him every day as you do, I would soon give him a piece of my mind.”

“And lose my place altogether,” said the husband. But, notwithstanding, though he did not give Mr. Brownlow a piece of his mind, Brown did not hesitate to express his feelings a little in the tone of his voice, and the disapproval in his eye.

All this, however, was as nothing to the judgment which Mr. Brownlow brought upon himself on the following Sunday. The fact that his father had doubled any clerk’s salary was a matter of great indifference to Jack. He smiled in an uncomfortable sort of way when he heard it was young Powys on whom this benefit had fallen; but otherwise it did not affect him. On Sunday, however, as it happened, something occurred that brought Mr. Brownlow’s favoritism—his extraordinary forgetfulness of his position and of what was due to his children—home in the most striking way to his son. It was a thing that required all Mr. Brownlow’s courage; and it can not be said that he was quite comfortable about it. He had done what never had been done before to any clerk since the days of Brownlows began. He had invited young Powys to dinner. He had even done more than that—he had invited him to come early, to ramble about the park, as if he had been an intimate. It was not unpleasant to him to give the invitation, but there is no doubt that the thought of how he was to communicate the fact to his children, and prepare them for their visitor, did give him a little trouble. Of course it was his own house. He was free to ask any one he liked to it. The choice lay entirely with himself; but yet—He said nothing about it until the very day for which his invitation had been given—not that he had forgotten the fact, but somehow a certain constraint came over him whenever he so much as approached the subject. It was only Thursday when he asked young Powys to come, and he had it on his mind all that evening, all Friday and Saturday, and did not venture to make a clean breast of it. Even when Jack was out of the way, it seemed to the father impossible to look into Sara’s face, and tell her of the coming guest. Sunday was very bright—a midsummer day in all its green and flowery glory. Jack had come to the age when a young man is often a little uncertain about his religious duties. He did not care to go and hear Mr. Hardcastle preach. So he said; though the Rector, good man, was very merciful, and inflicted only fifteen minutes of sermon; and then he was very unhappy, and restless, and uneasy about his own concerns; and he was misanthropical for the moment, and disliked the sight and presence of his fellow-creatures. So Jack did not go to church. And Sara and her father did, walking across the beautiful summer park, under the shady trees, through the paths all flecked with sunshine. Sara’s white figure gave a centre to the landscape. She was not angelic, notwithstanding her white robes, but she was royal in her way—a young princess moving through a realm that belonged to her, used to homage, used to admiration, used to know herself the first. Though she was as sweet and as gracious as the morning, all this was written in her face; for she was still very young, and had not reached the maturer dignity of unconsciousness. Mr. Brownlow, as he went with her, was but the first subject in her kingdom. Nobody admired her as he did. Nobody set her up above every competitor with the perfect faith of her father; and to see her clinging to his arm, lifting up her fresh face to him, displaying all her philosophies and caprices for his benefit, was a pretty sight. But yet, all through that long walk to Dewsbury and back, he never ventured to disclose his secret to her. All the time it lay on his heart, but he could not bring himself to say it. It was only when they were all leaving the table, after luncheon, that Mr. Brownlow unburdened himself. “By the way,” he said suddenly, as he rose from his chair, “there is some one coming out to dinner from Masterton. Oh, not any body that makes much difference—a young fellow—”

“Some young fellows make a great deal of difference,” said Sara. “Who is it, papa?”

“Well—at present he is—only one of my clerks,” said Mr. Brownlow, with an uneasy and, to tell the truth, rather humble and deprecating smile—“one you have seen before—he was out here that day I was ill.”

“Oh, Mr. Powys,” said Sara; and in a moment, before another word was spoken, her sublime indifference changed into the brightest gleam of malice, of mischief, of curiosity, that ever shone out of two blue eyes. “I remember him perfectly well—all about him,” she said, with a touch of emphasis that was not lost on her father. “Is there any body else, papa?”

“Powys!” said Jack, turning back in amaze. He had been going out not thinking of any thing; but this intimation, coming just after the news of the office about Powys’s increase of salary, roused his curiosity, and called him back to hear.

“Yes, Powys,” said Mr. Brownlow, standing on his defense like a guilty man. “I hope you have not any objection.”

“Objection, sir?” said Jack; “I don’t know what you mean. It is your house, to ask any body you like. I never should have thought of making any objection.”

“Yes, it is my own house,” said Mr. Brownlow. It made him feel a little sore to have the plea about doing what he liked with his own thus taken, as it were, out of his very mouth.

“But I don’t remember that you ever asked any of the clerks before,” said Jack. It was not that he cared much about the invitation to the clerk; it was rather because he was disagreeable himself, and could not resist the chance of being disagreeable to others, being in a highly uncomfortable state of mind.

“I don’t regard Powys as a mere clerk—there are circumstances,” said Mr. Brownlow. “It is useless to explain at this moment; but I don’t put him on the same level with Brown and Robinson. I should be glad if you could manage to be civil to him, Jack.”