Brownlows

“Dear Sir—It seems strange to write to you thus calmly, at your own table, on your own paper [“Ah! then he felt that!” Mr. Brownlow said to himself], and to say what I am going to say. You have brought me here notwithstanding what I told you, but the time is past when I could come and be like any common acquaintance. I wanted to leave to-day to save my honesty while I could, but you would not let me. I can not be under the same roof with Miss Brownlow, and see her daily, and behave like a stock or stone. I have no right to address her, but she knows, and I can not help myself. I want to lay before you the only claim I have to be looked upon as any thing more than your clerk. It was my hope to work into a higher position by my own exertions, and then to find it out. But in case it should count for any thing with you, I put it before you now. It could not make me her equal; but if by any wonderful chance that should seem possible in your eyes, which to mine seems but the wildest yet dearest dream, I want you to know that perhaps if it could be traced out we are a little less lowly than we seem.

“I enclose my father’s papers, which we have always kept with great care. He took care of them himself, and told me before he died that I ought to find my fortune in them. I never had much hope of that, but I send them to you, for they are all I have. I do not ask you to accept of me, to give me your daughter. I know it looks like insanity. I feel it is insane. But you have been either very, very kind or very cruel to me. You have brought me here—you have made it life or death to me. She has every thing that heart of man can desire. I have—what poor hope there may be in these papers. For God’s sake look at them, and look at me, and tell me if I am mad to hope. Tell me to go or stay, and I will obey you—but let it be clear and definitive, for mercy’s sake.

“C. I. Powys.”

Mr. Brownlow was touched by the letter. He was touched by its earnestness, and he was also touched by its simplicity. He was in so strange a mood that it brought even the moisture to his eye. “To have every thing I possess in the world in his power, and yet to write like this,” he said to himself, and drew a long sigh, which was as much relief as apprehension. “She will still have it all, and he deserves to have her,” Mr. Brownlow thought to himself; and opened up the yellow papers with a strange mixture of pain and satisfaction which even he could not understand.

He was a long time over them. They were letters chiefly, and they took a great many things for granted of which Mr. Brownlow was completely ignorant, and referred to many events altogether unknown to him. He was first puzzled, then almost disappointed, then angry. It seemed like trifling with him. These could not be the papers Powys meant to enclose. There were letters from some distressed mother to a son who had made a foolish marriage, and there were letters from the son, pleading that love might still be left to him, if not any thing else, and that no evil impression might be formed of his Mary. Who was his Mary? Who was the writer? What had he to do with Brownlows and Sara and Phœbe Thomson’s fortune? For a long time Mr. Brownlow toiled on, hoping to come to something which bore upon his own case. The foregone conclusion was so strong in his mind, that he grew angry as he proceeded, and found his search in vain. Powys was trifling with him, putting him off—thrusting this utterly unimportant correspondence into his hands, instead of confiding, as he had thought, his true proofs to him. This distrust, as Mr. Brownlow imagined it, irritated him in the most-curious way. Ask his advice, and not intrust him with the true documents that proved the case! Play with his good sense, and doubt his integrity! It wounded him with a certain keen professional sting. He had worked himself up to the point of defrauding the just heir; but to suspect that the papers would not be safe in his hands was a suggestion that cut him to the heart. He was very angry, and he had so far forgotten the progress of time that, when he rang sharply to summon some one, the bell rang through all the hushed echoes of the house, and a servant—half asleep, and considerably frightened—came gaping, after a long interval, to the library door.

“Where is Mr. Powys?” said Mr. Brownlow. “If he is in the drawing-room give him my compliments, and ask him to be so good as to step down here for a few minutes to me.”

“Mr. Powys, sir?” said the man—“the gentleman as came yesterday, sir? The drawing-room is all shut up, sir, long ago. The ladies is gone to bed, but some of the gentlemen is in the smoking-room, and I can see if he’s there.”

“Gone to bed!” said Mr. Brownlow; “why were they in such a hurry?” and then he looked at his watch and found, to his great surprise, that it was past midnight. A vague wonder struck him once again whether his mind could be getting impaired. The suggestion was like a passing stab in the dark dealt him by an unseen enemy. He kept staring at the astonished servant, and then he continued sharply, “Go and see if he is in the smoking-room, or if not, in his own room. Ask him to come to me.”

Powys had gone up stairs late, and was sitting thinking, unable to rest. He had been near her the whole evening, and though they had not exchanged many words, there had been a certain sense between them that they were not as the others were. Once or twice their eyes had met, and fallen beneath each other’s glance. It was nothing, and yet it was sweeter than any thing certain and definite. And now he sat and thought. The night had crept on, and had become chilly and ghostly, and his mind was in a state of strange excitement. What was to come of it all? What could come of it? When the servant came to his door at that late hour, the young man started with a thrill of apprehension, and followed him down stairs almost trembling, feeling his heart sink within him; for so late and so peremptory a summons seemed an omen of evil. Mr. Brownlow had collected himself before Powys came into the room, and received him with an apology. “I am sorry to disturb you so late. I was not aware it was so late; but I want to understand this—” he said; and then he waited till the servant had left the room, and pointed to a chair on the other side of the table. “Sit down,” he said, “and tell me what this means.”

“What it means?” said Powys taken by surprise.

“Yes, sir, what it means,” said Mr. Brownlow, hoarsely. “I may guess what your case is; but you must know that these are not the papers to support it. Who is the writer of these letters? who is the Mary he talks of? and what has it all to do with you?”

“It has every thing to do with me,” said Powys. “The letters were written by my father—the Mary he speaks of is my mother—”

“Your mother?” said Mr. Brownlow, with a sharp exclamation, which sounded like an oath to the young man’s astonished ears; and then he thrust the papers away with trembling hands, and folded his arms on the table, and looked intently into Powys’s face. “What was your mother’s name?”

“My mother’s name was Mary Christian,” said Powys, wondering; “but the point is—Good heavens! what is the matter? what do you mean?”

His surprise was reasonable enough. Mr. Brownlow had sprung to his feet; he had dashed his two clenched hands through the air, and said, “Impostor!” through his teeth. That was the word—there could be no mistake about it—“Impostor!” upon which Powys too jumped up, and faced him with an expression wavering between resentment and surprise, repeating more loudly in his consternation, “What do you mean?”

But the young man could only stand and look on with increasing wonder when he saw Mr. Brownlow sink into his chair, and bury his face in his hands, and tremble like a palsied old man. Something like a sob even came from his breast. The relief was so amazing, so unlooked for, that at the first touch it was pain. But Powys, standing by, knew nothing of all this. He stood, not knowing whether to be offended, hesitating, looking for some explanation; and no doubt the time seemed longer to him than it really was. When Mr. Brownlow raised his head his face was perfectly colorless, like the face of a man who had passed through some dreadful experiment. He waved his hand to his young companion, and it was a minute before he could speak.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “It is all a mistake—an entire mistake, on my part. I did not know what I was saying. It was a sudden pain. But never mind, I am better. What did you mean me to learn from these papers?” he added, after a pause, with a forced smile.

Then Powys knew his fate. There was a change which could not be described. In an instant, tone, look, manner, every thing was altered. It was his master who said these last words to him; his employer, very kind and just, but unapproachable as a king. One moment before, and Mr. Brownlow had been in his power, he did not know how or why; and in an instant, still without his knowing wherefore, his power had totally departed. Powys saw this in all the darkness of utter ignorance. His consternation was profound and his confusion. In a moment his own presumption, his own hopelessness, the misery of loss and disappointment, overwhelmed him, and yet not a word bearing upon the real matter at issue had been said.

“They are my father’s papers,” said poor Powys. “I thought—that is, I supposed—I hoped there might be some indication in them—I am sorry if I have troubled you unnecessarily. He belonged to a good family, and I imagined I might perhaps have reclaimed—but it doesn’t matter. If that is what you think—”

“Oh yes, I see,” said Mr. Brownlow; “you can leave them, and perhaps another time—But in the mean time, if you feel inclined, my groom can drive you down to-morrow morning. I am not sure that I shall be going myself; and I will not detain you any longer to-night.”

“Very well, sir,” said Powys. He stood for a moment looking for something more—for some possible softening; but not one word of kindness came except an abrupt good-night. Good-night—yes, good-night to every thing—hope, love, happiness, fortune. Farewell to them all; and Sara, she who had almost seemed to belong to him. It seemed to Powys as if he was walking on his own heart as he left the room, trampling on it, stamping it down, crying fool, fool! Poor fellow, no doubt he had been a fool; but it was a hard awakening, and the fault, after all, was not his own.

Mr. Brownlow, however, was too much occupied with his own deliverance to think of Powys. He said that new name over to himself again and again, to realize what had happened. Mary Christian—Mary Christian—surely he had heard it before; but so long as it was not Phœbe Thomson, what did it matter who was his mother? Not Phœbe Thomson. She was dead perhaps—dead, and in a day or two more it would not matter. Two days, that was all—for it was now October. She might turn up a week hence if she would; but now he was free—free, quite free; without any wrong-doing or harm to any body; Brownlows and every thing else his own. Could it be true? Mary Christian—that was the name. And she came from the Isle of Man. But there was plenty of time to inquire into all that. The thing in the mean time was that he was released. When he got up and roused himself he found he could scarcely stand. He had been steady enough during all the time of his trial; but the sudden relief took all his forces from him. He shook from head to foot, and had to hold by the tables and chairs as he went out. And he left the lamp burning in forlorn dreariness on the library-table. The exertion of walking up stairs was almost too much for him. He had no attention to give to the common things surrounding him. All his powers, all his senses were absorbed in the one sensation of being free. Only once as he went up stairs did his ordinary faculties return to him, as it were, for a moment. It was when he was passing the great window in the staircase, and glancing out saw the white moonlight glimmering over all the park, and felt the cold of the night. Then it occurred to him to wonder if the pale old woman whom he had seen getting into the carrier’s cart could be traveling through this cold night. Poor old soul! He could not but think for the moment how chilly and frozen it would be. And then he bethought himself that he was safe, might go where he liked, do what he liked, had nobody menacing him, no enemy looking on to watch an opportunity—and no harm done! Thus Mr. Brownlow paused in the weakness of deliverance, and his heart melted within him. He made not vows to the saints of new churches or big tapers, but secret, tender resolutions in his heart. For this awful danger escaped, how should he show his gratitude to God? He was himself delivered, and goodness seemed to come back to him, his natural impulse. He had been saved from doing wrong, and without doing wrong all he wanted had been secured to him. What reason had not he to be good to every body; to praise God by serving his neighbor? This was the offering of thanksgiving he proposed to render. He did not at the moment think of young Powys sitting at his window looking out on the same moonlight, very dumb and motionless and heart-stricken, thinking life henceforward a dreary desert. No harm was done, and Mr. Brownlow was glad. But it did not occur to him to offer any healing in Powys’s case. If there was to be a victim at all, it was best that he should be the victim. Had he not brought it on himself?

CHAPTER XXXV.

AN UNLOOKED-FOR VISITOR

Powys was proud, and his pride was up in arms. He slept little that night, and while he sat and brooded over it all, the hopelessness and folly of his hope struck him with tenfold distinctness. Early next morning, before any one was up, he came down the great silent staircase, and left the house in the morning sunshine. The distance to Masterton was nothing to him. It was the second time he had left the house with despair in his heart. It would be the last time, he said to himself as he paused to look up at the closed windows; he would never suffer himself to be deluded—never be led away by deceptive hopes again; and he went away, not without bitterness, yet with a certain stern sense of the inevitable which calmed down his passion. Whenever he had been in his right senses, he had felt that this must be the end; and the thing for him now was to bear it with such courage and steadiness as he could muster to face the emergency. It was all over at least. There were no intermediary tortures to go through, and there was always some comfort in that.

His absence was not taken any notice of at the breakfast-table, though Sara gave many a wondering glance at the door, and had a puzzled, half-irritated look upon her face, which some of her friends perceived, though her father did not observe it. He, for his part, came down radiant. He looked weary, and explained that he had not slept very well; but he had never been in more genial spirits, never more affectionate or full of schemes for every body’s pleasure. He called Jack apart, to tell him that, after looking over matters, he found he could let him have the hunter he wanted, a horse upon which his heart was set. When they were all talking at the table in the usual morning flutter of letters and mutual bits of news, Mr. Brownlow intimated that he had thoughts of taking Sara to Italy, where she had so long desired to go; “making up a party, and enjoying ourselves,” he said. Sara looked up with a gleam of delight, but her eyes were immediately after diverted to the door, where somebody was coming in—somebody, but not the person she was looking for. As for Jack, he received the intimation of his father’s liberality in perplexed silence; for if he was to marry, and sink into the position of a clerk in Masterton, hunters would be little in his way. But their father was too much absorbed in his own satisfaction to remark particularly how they both took his proposed kindness. He was overflowing to every body. Though he was always kind, that morning he was kinder than ever; and the whole party brightened up under his influence, notwithstanding Jack’s perplexity, and Sara’s wondering impatient glances at the door. Nobody asked what had become of the stranger. Mr. Brownlow’s guests were free to come to breakfast when they liked, and no notice was taken of the defaulters. The meal, however, was so merry and friendly, that every body sat longer over it than usual. Several of the visitors were going away, and the sportsmen had laid aside their guns for the day to join the ladies in an excursion. There was plenty of time for every thing; pleasant bustle, pleasant idleness, no “wretched business,” as Sara said, to quicken their steps; and she was, perhaps, the only one in the party who was ill at ease. She could not make out how it was that Powys did not come. She sat and joined with forced gayety in the general conversation, and she had not courage to ask frankly what had become of him. When they all began at last to disperse from the table, she made one feeble effort to satisfy herself. “Mr. Powys has never come down to breakfast,” she said to Jack, avoiding his eye; “had not you better see if there is any reason?”

“If he is ill, perhaps, poor dear?” said Jack, with scorn. “Don’t be afraid—probably he went out early; he is not the sort of fellow to fall ill.”

“Probably some of you have insulted him!” said Sara, hotly, under her breath; but either Jack did not or would not hear. And she could not trust herself to look up in the face of the assembled company and ask. So she had to get up with all the rest, and go reluctantly away from the table, with a certain sense of impending misfortune upon her. A few minutes after, when she was sent for to go to her father in the library, Sara’s courage failed her altogether. She felt he must have something important to say to her, something that could not be postponed. And her heart beat loudly as she went to him. When she entered the room Mr. Brownlow came forward to meet her. It struck her for the first time as he advanced that his face had changed; something that had been weighing upon him had passed away. The lines of his mouth had relaxed and softened; he was like what he used to be. It was almost the first time she fully realized that for some time past he had not been like himself. He came forward, and before she had fully mastered her first impression, took her into his arms.

“My dear child,” he said, “I have sent for you to tell you that a great burden that has been upon my mind for some time has just been taken off. You have been very good to me, Sara, very patient and obedient and sweet; and though I never told you about it in so many words, I want you to be the first to know that it has passed away.”

“Thank you, papa,” said Sara, looking wistfully in his face. “I am sure I am very glad, though I don’t know what you mean. Is it any thing about—? Am I to know what it was?” And she stopped, standing so close with his arm round her, and gave him an appealing look—a look that asked far more than her words—that seemed even to see into him, and divine; but that could not be.

“It is not worth while now,” he said, smoothing her hair with his hand. “It is all over; and, my darling, I want you to know also that I set you free.”

“Set me free?” said Sara, in a whisper; and in spite of herself she turned very pale.

“Yes, Sara, quite free. I ask no sacrifice of you now,” said Mr. Brownlow, pressing her close with his arm. “Forgive me that I ever thought of it. Even at the worst, you know I told you to consult your own heart; and now you are free, quite free. All that is at an end.”

“All what?” asked Sara, under her breath; and she turned her head away from him, resisting the effort he made to look at her. “What is it you set me free from?” she continued, in a petulant tone. “If you don’t tell me in words, how am I to know?”

Mr. Brownlow was startled and checked in his effusiveness, but he could not be angry with her at such a moment. “Hush,” he said, still smoothing her pretty hair, “we have never had many words about it. It is all at an end. I thought it would be a relief to you to hear.”

“To hear what?” cried the girl, sharply, with her head averted; and then, to her father’s utter consternation, she withdrew as far as she could from his arm, and suddenly burst into tears.

Mr. Brownlow was totally taken by surprise. He had not been able to read what was going on in his daughter’s heart. He could not believe now that she understood him. He put his hand upon her arm and drew her back. “You mistake me, my darling,” he said; “I mean that you are quite free, Sara—quite free. It was wrong of me to ask any promise from you, and it was foolish of you to give it. But Providence, thank God, has settled that. It is all over. There is no more necessity. Can’t you forgive me? You have not suffered so much from it as I have done. Before I could have come to the point of sacrificing you—”

“Sacrificing me!” cried Sara, suddenly, flashing back upon him in a storm of passion and indignation, her cheeks scorching yet wet with tears, her big eyes swimming. “Is that all you think of? You had a right to sacrifice me if you liked—nobody would have said a word. They did it in the Bible. You might have cut me into little pieces if you liked. But oh, what right had you, how dared you to make a sacrifice of him?”

“Him!” cried Mr. Brownlow, and he took a step back in consternation and gazed at his child, who was transfigured, and a different creature. Her cheeks blazed under her tears, but she did not shrink. Weeping, blushing, wounded, ashamed, she still confronted him in the strength of some new feeling of which he had never dreamed.

“You never say a word about him!” cried Sara. “You speak of me, and you had a right to do whatever you like with me; but it is him whom you have sacrificed. He never would have thought of it but for you. He never would have come back after that time but for you. And then you expect me to think only of myself, and to be glad when you say I am free! How can I be free? I led him on and made him speak when he knew better. Oh, papa, you are cruel, cruel! He was doing you no harm, and you have made him wretched; and now you think it doesn’t matter; but that is not the way with me!”

“Sara, are you mad?” cried Mr. Brownlow in his dismay; but Sara made him no answer. She sat down on the nearest chair, and turning round away from him, leaned her arms on the back of it, and put down her head on her arms. He could see that she was crying, but that was all; and nothing he could say, neither consolations, nor excuses, nor reproofs, would induce her to raise her head. It was the first quarrel she had ever had with the father who had been father and mother both to her; and the acuteness of her first disappointment, the first cross in her pleasant life, the unexpected humiliating end of her first dreams, roused a wild rebellion in her heart. She was wroth, and her heart was sore, and outraged. When he was called away by Willis about some business, he left her there, still twisted round upon her chair, with her face upon her folded arms, spending her very soul in tears. But the moment he was gone she sprang up and fled to the shelter of her own room. “They shall find that it is not the way with me!” she said to herself, and gave herself up willfully to thoughts of the banished lover who had been treated so cruelly. On that day at least, Sara avenged poor Powys’s wrongs upon the company in general. She had a headache, and could not join in their excursion. And her eyes were still red with crying when next she was seen down stairs. Mr. Brownlow tried to persuade himself it was too violent to last, and thought it prudent to take no more notice, but was very obsequious and conciliatory all the evening to his naughty child. Even when it was thus brought before him, he did not make much account of the sacrifice of Powys. And he thought Sara would come round and see things by and by in their true light. But all the same the shock had a great effect upon him, and damped him strangely in the first effusion of his joy.

But he was kind, kinder to every body in his gratitude to Providence. Except that he had no pity for Powys, who seemed to him to have been all this time a kind of impostor, his good fortune softened his heart to every other creature. When he met Pamela on the road, though Pamela was the one other individual in the world with whom Jack’s father was not in perfect charity, he yet stopped kindly to speak to her. “I hope your mother has not gone upon a long journey. I hope she is coming back,” he said in a fatherly way. “She should not have left you by yourself alone.”