Маргарет Олифант
Brownlows
CHAPTER XVI
Late in the afternoon Mr. Brownlow did really look as if he were taking a holiday. He came forth into the avenue as Sara was going out, and joined her, and she seized her opportunity, and took his arm, and led him up and down in the afternoon sunshine. It is a pretty sight to see a girl clinging to her father, pouring all her guesses and philosophies into his ears, and claiming his confidence. It is a different kind of intercourse, more picturesque, more amusing, in some ways even more touching, than the intercourse of a mother and daughter, especially when there is, as with these two, no mother in the case, and the one sole parent has both offices to fulfill. Sara clung to her father’s arm, and congratulated herself upon having got him out, and promised herself a good long talk. “For I never see you, papa,” she said; “you know I never see you. You are at that horrid office the whole long day.”
“Only all the mornings and all the evenings,” said Mr. Brownlow, “which is a pretty good proportion, I think, of life.”
“Oh, but there is always Jack or somebody,” said Sara, tightening her clasp on his arm; “and sometimes one wants only you.”
“Have you something to say to me then,” said her father, with a little curiosity, even anxiety,—for of course his own disturbed thoughts accompanied him everywhere, and put meanings into every word that was said.
“Something!” said Sara, with indignation; “heaps of things. I want to tell you and I want to ask you;—but, by-the-by, answer me first, before I forget, is this Mr. Powys very poor?”
“Powys!” said Mr. Brownlow, with a suppressed thrill of excitement. “What of Powys? It seems to me I hear of nothing else. Where has the young fellow gone?”
“I did not do any thing to him,” said Sara, turning her large eyes full of mock reproach upon her father’s face. “You need not ask him from me in that way. I suppose he has gone home—to his mother and his little sisters,” she added, dropping her voice.
“And what do you know about his mother and his little sisters?” said Mr. Brownlow, startled yet amused by her tone.
“Well, he told me he had such people belonging to him, papa,” said Sara; “and he gave me a very grand description before that of what it is to be poor. I want to know if he is very poor? and could I send any thing to them, or do any thing? or are they too grand for that? or couldn’t you raise his salary or something? You ought to do something, since he is a favorite of your own.”
“Did he complain to you?” said Mr. Brownlow, in consternation; “and I trust in goodness, Sara, you did not propose to do any thing for them as you say?”
“No indeed; I had not the courage,” said Sara. “I never have sense enough to do such things. Complain! oh, dear no; he did not complain. But he was so much in earnest about it, you know, apropos of that silly speech I made at luncheon, that he made me quite uncomfortable. Is he a—a gentleman, papa?”
“He is my clerk,” said Mr. Brownlow, shortly; and then the conversation dropped. Sara was not a young woman to be stopped in this way in ordinary cases, though she did stop this time, seeing her father fully meant it; but all the same she did not stop thinking, which indeed, in her case, was a thing very difficult to do.
Then Mr. Brownlow began to nerve himself for a great effort. It excited him as nothing had excited him for many a long year. He drew his child’s arm more closely through his own, and drew her nearer to him. They were going slowly down the avenue, upon which the afternoon sunshine lay warm, all marked and lined across by columns of trees, and the light shadows of the half-developed foliage. “Do you know,” he said, “I have been thinking a great deal lately about a thing you once said to me. I don’t know whether you meant it—”
“I never say any thing I don’t mean,” said Sara, interrupting him; but she too felt that something more than usual was coming, and did not enlarge upon the subject. “What was it, papa?” she said, clinging still closer to his arm.
“You refused Motherwell,” said Mr. Brownlow, “though he could have given you an excellent position, and is, they tell me, a very honest fellow. I told you to consider it, but you refused him, Sara.”
“Well, no,” said Sara, candidly; “refusing people is very clumsy sort of work, unless you want to tell of it after, and that is mean. I did not refuse him. I only contrived, you know, that he should not speak.”
“Well, I suppose that it comes to about the same thing,” said Mr. Brownlow. “What I am going to say now is very serious. You once told me you would marry the man I asked you to marry. Hush, my darling, don’t speak yet. I dare say you never thought I would ask such a proof of confidence from you; but there are strange turns in circumstances. I am not going to be cruel, like a tyrannical father in a book; but if I were to ask you to do such a great thing for me—to do it blindly without asking questions, to try to love and to marry a man, not of your own choice, but mine—Sara, would you do it? Don’t speak yet. I would not bind you. At the last moment you should be free to withdraw from the bargain—”
“Let me speak, papa!” cried Sara. “Do you mean to say that you need this—that you really want it? Is it something that can’t be done any other way? first tell me that.”
“I don’t think it can be done any other way,” said Mr. Brownlow sadly, with a sigh.
“Then of course I will do it,” said Sara. She turned to him as she spoke, and fixed her eyes intently on his face. Her levity, her lightness, her careless freedom were all gone. No doubt she had meant the original promise, as she said, but she had made it with a certain gay bravado, little dreaming of any thing to follow. Now she was suddenly sobered and silenced. There was no mistaking the reality in Mr. Brownlow’s face. Sara was not a careful, thoughtful woman; she was a creature who leaped at conclusions, and would not linger over the most solemn decision. And then she was not old enough to see both sides of a question. She jumped at it, and gave her pledge, and fixed her fate more quickly than another temperament would have chosen a pair of gloves. But for all that she was very grave. She looked up in her father’s face, questioning him with her eyes. She was ready to put her life in his hands, to give him her future, her happiness, as if it had been a flower for his coat. But yet she was sufficiently roused to see that this was no laughing matter. “Of course I will do it,” she repeated without any grandeur of expression; but she never looked so grave, or had been so serious all her life.
As for her father, he looked at her with a gaze that seemed to devour her. He wanted to see into her heart. He wanted to look through and through those two blue spheres into the soul which was below, and he could not do it. He was so intent upon this that he did not even perceive at the first minute that she had consented. Then the words caught his ear and went to his heart—“Of course I will do it.” When he caught the meaning, strangely enough his object went altogether out of his mind, and he thought of nothing but of the half pathetic, unhesitating, magnificent generosity of his child. She had not asked a question, why or wherefore, but had given herself up at once with a kind of prodigal readiness. A sudden gush of tears, such as had not refreshed them for years, came into Mr. Brownlow’s eyes. Not that they ran over, or fell, or displayed themselves in any way, but they came up under the bushy eyebrows like water under reeds, making a certain glimmer in the shade. “My dear child!” he said, with a voice that had a jar in it such as profound emotion gives; and he gathered up her two little hands into his, and pressed them together, holding her fast to him. He was so touched that his impulse was to give her back her word, not to take advantage of it; to let every thing go to ruin if it would, and keep his child safe. But was it not for herself? It was in the moment when this painful sweetness was going to his very heart that he bent over her and kissed her on the forehead. He could not say any thing, but there are many occasions, besides those proper to lovers, when that which is inexpressible may be put into a kiss. The touch of her father’s lips on Sara’s forehead told her a hundred things; love, sorrow, pain, and a certain poignant mixture of joy and humiliation. He could not have uttered a word to save his life. She was willing to do it, with a lavish youthful promptitude; and he, was he to accept the sacrifice? This was what John Brownlow was thinking when he stooped over her and pressed his lips on his child’s brow. She had taken from him the power of speech.
Such a supreme moment can not last. Sara, too, not knowing why, had felt that serrement du cœur, and had been pierced by the same poignant sweetness. But she knew little reason for it, and none in particular why her father should be so moved, and her spirits came back to her long before his did. She walked along by his side in silence, feeling by the close pressure of her hands that he had not quite come to himself for some time after she had come back to herself. With every step she took the impression glided off Sara’s mind; her natural light-heartedness returned to her. Moreover, she was not to be compelled to marry that very day, so there was no need for being miserable about it just yet at least. She was about to speak half a dozen times before she really ventured on utterance; and when at last she took her step out of the solemnity and sublimity of the situation, this was how Sara plunged into it, without any interval of repose.
“I beg your pardon, papa; I would not trouble you if I could help it. But please, now it is all decided, will you just tell me—am I to marry any body that turns up? or is there any one in particular? I beg your pardon, but one likes to know.”
Mr. Brownlow was struck by this demand, as was to be expected. It affected his nerves, though nobody had been aware that he had any nerves. He gave an abrupt, short laugh, which was not very merry, and clasped her hands tighter than ever in his.
“Sara,” he said, “this is not a joke. Do you know there is scarcely any thing I would not have done rather than ask this of you? It is a very serious matter to me.”
“I am sure I am treating it very seriously,” said Sara. “I don’t take it for a joke; but you see, papa, there is a difference. What you care for is that it should be settled. It is not you that have the marrying to do; but for my part it is that that is of the most importance. I should rather like to know who it was, if it would be the same to you.”
Once more Mr. Brownlow pressed in his own the soft, slender hands he held. “You shall know in time—you shall know in good time,” he said, “if it is inevitable;” and he gave a sort of moan over her as a woman might have done. His beautiful2 child! who was fit for a prince’s bride, if any prince were good enough. Perhaps even yet the necessity might be escaped.
“But I should like to know now,” said Sara; and then she gave a little start, and colored suddenly, and looked him quickly, keenly in the face. “Papa!” she said;—“you don’t mean—do you mean—this Mr. Powys, perhaps?”
Mr. Brownlow actually shrank from her eye. He grew pale, almost green; faltered, dropped her hands—“My darling!” he said feebly. He had not once dreamt of making any revelation on this subject. He had not even intended to put it to her at all, had it not come to him, as it were, by necessity; and consequently he was quite unprepared to defend himself. As for Sara, she clung to him closer, and looked him still more keenly in the eyes.
“Tell me,” she said; “I will keep my word all the same. It will make no difference to me. Papa, tell me! it is better I should know at once.”
“You ought not to have asked me that question, Sara,” said Mr. Brownlow, recovering himself; “if I ask such a sacrifice of you, you shall know all about it in good time. I can’t tell; my own scheme does not look so reasonable to me as it did—I may give it up altogether. But in the mean time don’t ask me any more questions. And if you should repent, even at the last moment—”
“But if it is necessary to you, papa?” said Sara, opening her eyes—“if it has to be done, what does it matter whether I repent or not?”
“Nothing is necessary to me that would cost your happiness,” said Mr. Brownlow. And then they went on again for some time in silence. As for Sara, she had no inclination to have the magnificence of her sacrifice thus interfered with. For the moment her feeling was that, on the whole, it would even be better that the marriage to which she devoted herself should be an unhappy and unfit one. If it were happy it would not be a sacrifice; and to be able to repent at the last, like any commonplace young woman following her own inclinations, was not at all according to Sara’s estimation of the contract. She went on by her father’s side, thinking of that and of some other things in silence. Her thoughts were of a very different tenor from his. She was not taking the matter tragically as he supposed—no blank veil had been thrown over Sara’s future by this intimation, though Mr. Brownlow, walking absorbed by her side, was inclined to think so. On the contrary, her imagination had begun to play with the idea lightly, as with a far-off possibility in which there was some excitement, and even some amusement possible. While her father relapsed into painful consideration of the whole subject, Sara went on demurely by his side, not without the dawnings of a smile about the corners of her mouth. There was nothing said between them for a long time. It seemed to Mr. Brownlow as if the conversation had broken off at such a point that it would be hard to recommence it. He seemed to have committed and betrayed himself without doing any good whatever by it; and he was wroth at his own weakness. Softening of the brain! there might be something in what the Rector said. Perhaps it was disease, and not the pressure of circumstances, which had made him take so seriously the first note of alarm. Perhaps his whole scheme to secure Brownlows and his fortune to Sara was premature, if not unnecessary. It was while he was thus opening up anew the whole matter, that Sara at last ventured to betray the tenor of her thoughts.
“Papa,” she said, “I asked you a question just now, and you did not answer me; but answer me now, for I want to know. This—this—gentleman—Mr. Powys. Is he—a gentleman, papa?”
“I told you he was my clerk, Sara,” said Mr. Brownlow, much annoyed by the question.
“I know you did, but that is not quite enough. A man may be a gentleman though he is a clerk. I want a plain answer,” said Sara, looking up again into her father’s face.
And he was not without the common weakness of Englishmen for good connections—very far from that. He would not have minded, to tell the truth, giving a thousand pounds or so on the spot to any known family of Powys which would have adopted the young Canadian into its bosom. “I don’t know what Powys has to do with the matter,” he said; and then unconsciously his tone changed. “It is a good name; and I think—I imagine—he must belong somehow to the Lady Powys who once lived near Masterton. His father was well born, but, I believe,” added Mr. Brownlow, with a slight shiver, “that he married—beneath him. I think so. I can’t say I am quite sure.”
“I should have thought you would have known every thing,” said Sara. “Of course, papa, you know I am dying to ask you a hundred questions, but I won’t, if you will only just tell me one thing. A girl may promise to accept any one—whom—whom her people wish her to have; but is it as certain,” said Sara, solemnly, “that he—will have me?”
Then Mr. Brownlow stood still for a moment, looking with wonder, incomprehension, and a certain mixture of awe and dismay upon his child. Sara, obeying his movement, stood still also with her eyes cast down, and just showing a glimmer of malice under their lids, with the color glowing softly in her cheeks, with the ghost of a smile coming and going round her pretty mouth. “Oh child, child!” was all Mr. Brownlow said. He was moved to smile in spite of himself, but he was more moved to wonder. After all, she was making a joke of it—or was it really possible that, in this careless smiling way, the young creature, who had thrust her life into his hands like a flower, to be disposed of as he would, was going forward to meet all unknown evils and dangers? The sober, steady, calculating man could understand a great many things more abstruse, but he could not understand this.
This, however, was about the end of their conference, for they had reached old Betty’s cottage by this time, who came out, ungrateful old woman as she was, to courtesy as humbly to Mr. Brownlow as if he had been twenty old squires, and to ask after his health. And Sara had occasion to speak to her friend Pamela on the other side of the way. It was not consistent with the father’s dignity, of course, to go with her to visit those humble neighbors, but he stood at the gate with old Betty behind in a whirl of courtesies, watching while Sara’s tall, straight, graceful figure went across the road, and Pamela with her little, fresh, bright, dewy face, like an April morning, came running out to meet her. “Poor little thing!” Mr. Brownlow said to himself—though he could not have explained why he was sorry for Pamela; and then he turned back slowly and went home, crossing the long shadows of the trees. He was not satisfied with himself or with his day’s work. He was like a doctor accustomed to regard with a cool and impartial eye the diseases of others, but much at a loss when he had his own personal pains in hand. He was uneasy and ashamed when he was alone, and reminded himself that he had managed very badly. What was he to do? Was he to act as a doctor would, and put his domestic malady into the hands of a brother practitioner? But this was a suggestion at which he shuddered. Was he to take Jack into his counsel and get the aid of his judgment?—but Jack was worse, a thousand times worse, than a stranger. He had all his life been considered a very clever lawyer, and he knew it; he had got scores of people out of scrapes, and, one way or other, half the county was beholden to him; and he could do nothing but get himself deeper and deeper into his own miserable scrape. Faint thoughts of making it into “a case” and taking opinions on it—taking Wrinkell’s opinion, for instance, quietly, his old friend who had a clear head and a great deal of experience—came into his mind. He had made a muddle of it himself. And then the Rector’s question recurred to him with still greater force—could it be softening of the brain? Perhaps it would be best to speak to the doctor first of all.
Meanwhile Sara had gone into Mrs. Swayne’s little dark parlor, out of the sunshine, and had seated herself at Pamela’s post in the window, very dreamy and full of thought. She did not even speak for a long time, but let her little friend prattle to her. “I saw you and Mr. Brownlow coming down the avenue,” said Pamela; “what a long time you were, and how strange it looked! Sometimes you had a great deal to say, and then for a long time you would walk on and on, and never look at each other. Was he scolding you? Sometimes I thought he was.”
Sara made no answer to this question; she only uttered a long, somewhat demonstrative sigh, and then went off upon a way of her own. “I wonder how it would have felt to have had a mother?” she said, and sighed again, to her companion’s great dismay.
“How it would have felt!” said Pamela; “that is just the one thing that makes me feel I don’t envy you. You have quantities and quantities of fine things, but I have mamma.”
“And I have papa,” said Sara, quickly, not disposed to be set at a disadvantage; “that was not what I meant. Sometimes, though you may think it very wicked, I feel as if I was rather glad; for, of course, if mamma had been living it would have been very different for me; and then sometimes I think I would give a great deal—Look here. I don’t like talking of such things; but did you ever think what you would do if you were married? Fanny Hardcastle likes talking of it. How do you think you should feel? to the gentleman, you know?”
“Think,” said Pamela; “does one need to think about it? love him, to be sure.” And this she said with a rising color, and with two rays of new light waking up in her eyes.
“Ah, love him,” said Sara; “it is very easy to talk; but how are you to love him? that does not come of itself just when it is told, you know; at least I suppose it doesn’t—I am sure I never tried.”
“But if you did not love him, of course you would not marry him,” said Pamela, getting confused.
“Yes—that is just one of the things it is so easy to say,” said Sara; “and I suppose at your age you don’t know any better. Don’t you know that people have to marry, whether they like it or not? and when they never, never would have thought of it themselves? I suppose,” said Sara, in the strength of her superior knowledge, “that most of us are married like that. Because it suits our people, or because— I don’t know what—any thing but one’s own will.” And this little speech the young martyr again rounded with a sigh.
“Are you going to be married?” said Pamela, drawing a footstool close to her friend’s feet, and looking up with awe into her face. “I wish you would tell me. Mamma has gone to Dewsbury, and she will not be back for an hour. Oh, do tell me—I will never repeat it to any body. And, dear Miss Brownlow, if you don’t love him—”
“Hush,” said Sara; “I never said any thing about a him. It is you who are such a romantic little girl. What I was speaking of was one’s duty; one has to do one’s duty, whether one likes it or not.”
This oracular speech was very disappointing to Pamela. She looked up eagerly with her bright eyes, trying to make out the romance which she had no doubt existed. “I can fancy,” she said, softly, “why you wanted your mother;” and her little hand stole into Sara’s, which lay on her knee. Sara did not resist the soft caress. She took the hand, and pressed it close between her own, which were longer, and not so rounded and childlike; and then, being a girl of uncertain disposition, she laughed, to Pamela’s great surprise and dismay.
“I think, perhaps, I like to be my own mistress best,” she said; “if mamma had lived she never would have let me do any thing I wanted to do—and then most likely she would not have known what I meant. It is Jack, you know, who is most like mamma.”
“But he is very nice,” said Pamela, quickly; and then she bent down her head as quickly, feeling the hot crimson rushing to her face, though she did not well know why. Sara took no notice of it—never observed it, indeed—and kept smoothing down in her own her little neighbor’s soft small hand.
“Oh yes,” she said, “and I am very fond of my brother; only he and I are not alike, you know. I wonder who Jack will marry, if he ever marries; but it is very fine to hear him talk of that—perhaps he never did to you. He is so scornful of every body who falls in love, and calls them asses, and all sorts of things. I should just like to see him fall in love himself. If he were to make a very foolish marriage it would be fun. They say those dreadfully wise people always do.”
“Do they?” said Pamela; and she bent down to look at the border of her little black silk apron, and to set it to rights, very energetically, with her unoccupied hand. But she did not ask any farther question; and so the two girls sat together for a few minutes, hand clasped in hand, the head of the one almost touching the other, yet each far afield in her own thoughts; of which, to tell the truth, though she was so much the elder and the wiser, Sara’s thoughts were the least painful, the least heavy, of the two.
“You don’t give me any advice, Pamela,” she said at last. “Come up the avenue with me at least. Papa has gone home, and it is quite dark here out of the sun. Put on your hat and come with me. I like the light when it slants so, and falls in long lines. I think you have a headache to-day, and a walk will do you good.”
“Yes, I think I have a little headache,” said Pamela, softly; and she put on her hat and followed her companion out. The sunshine had passed beyond Betty’s cottage, and cut the avenue obliquely in two—the one end all light, the other all gloom. The two young creatures ran lightly across the shady end, Sara, as always, leading the way. Her mind, it is true, was as full as it could be of her father’s communication, but the burden sat lightly on her. Now and then a word or two would tingle, as it were, in her ears; now and then it would occur to her that her fate was sealed, as she said, and a sigh, half false half true, would come to her lips, but in the mean time she was more amused by the novelty of the position than discouraged by the approach of fate.
“What are you thinking of?” she said, when they came into the tender light in the farther part of the avenue; for the two, by this time, had slackened their pace, and drawn close together, as is the wont of girls, though they did not speak.
“I was only looking at our shadows going before us,” said Pamela, and this time the little girl echoed very softly Sara’s sigh.
“They are not at all beautiful to look at; they are shadows on stilts,” said Sara; “you might think of something more interesting than that.”
“But I wish something did go before us like that to show the way,” said Pamela. “I wish it was true about guardian angels—if we could only see them, that is to say; and then it is so difficult to know—”
“What?” said Sara; “you are too young to want a guardian angel; you are not much more than a little angel yourself. When one has begun to go daily farther from the cast, one knows the good of being quite a child.”
“But I am not quite a child,” said Pamela, under her breath.
“Oh yes, you are. But look, here Jack must be coming; don’t you hear the wheels? I did not know it was so late. Shall you mind going back alone, for I must run and dress? And please come to me in the morning as soon as ever they are gone, I have such heaps of things to say.”
Saying this, Sara ran off, flying along under the trees, she and her shadow; and poor little Pamela, not so much distressed as perhaps she ought to have been to be left alone, turned back toward the house. The dog-cart was audible before it dashed through the gate, and Pamela’s heart beat, keeping time with the ringing of the mare’s feet and the sound of the wheels. But it stopped before Betty’s door, and some one jumped down, and the mare and the dog-cart and the groom dashed past Pamela in a kind of whirlwind. Mr. John had keen eyes, and saw something before him in the avenue; and he was quick-witted, and timed his inquiries after Betty in the most prudent way. Before Pamela, whose heart beat louder than ever, was half way down the avenue, he had joined her, evidently, whatever Betty or Mrs. Swayne might say to the contrary, in the most purely accidental way.
“This is luck,” said Jack; “I have not seen you for two whole days, except at the window, which doesn’t count. I don’t know how we managed to endure the dullness before that window came to be inhabited. Come this way a little, under the chestnuts—you have the sun in your eyes.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Pamela, “and I must not wait; I am going home.”
“I suppose you have been walking with Sara, and she has left you to go home alone,” said Jack; “it is like her. She never thinks of any thing. But tell me what you have been doing these two frightfully long days?”
From which it will be seen that Mr. John, as well as his sister, had made a little progress toward intimacy since he became first acquainted with the lodgers at Mrs. Swayne’s.
“I don’t think they have been frightfully long days,” said Pamela, making the least little timid response to his emphasis and to his eyes—wrong, no doubt, but almost inevitable. “I have been doing nothing more than usual; mamma has wanted me, that’s all.”
“Then it is too bad of mamma,” said Jack; “you know you ought to be out every day. I must come and talk to her about it—air and exercise, you know.”
“But you are not a doctor,” said Pamela, with a soft ring of laughter—not that he was witty, but that the poor child was happy, and showed it in spite of herself; for Mr. John had turned, and was walking down the avenue, very slowly, pausing almost every minute, and not at all like a man who was going home to dinner. He was still young. I suppose that was why he preferred Pamela to the more momentous fact which was in course of preparation at the great house.
“I am a little of every thing,” he said; “I should like to go out to Australia, and get a farm, and keep sheep. Don’t you like the old stories and the old pictures with the shepherdesses? If you had a little hut all covered with flowers, and a crook with ribbons—”
“Oh, but I should not like to be a shepherdess,” cried Pamela, in haste.
“Shouldn’t you? Well, I did not mean that; but to go out into the bush, or the backwoods, or whatever they call it, and do every thing and get every thing for one’s self. Shouldn’t you like that? Better than all the nonsense and all the ceremony here,” said Jack, bending down to see under the shade of her hat, which as it happened was difficult enough.
“We don’t have much ceremony,” said Pamela, “but if I was a lady like your sister—”
“Like Sara!” said Jack, and he nodded his head with a little brotherly contempt. “Don’t be any thing different from what you are, please. I should like people to wear always the same dress, and keep exactly as they were when—the first time, you know. I like you, for instance, in your red cloak. I never see a red cloak without thinking of you. I hope you will keep that one forever and ever,” said the philosophical youth. As for Pamela, she could not but feel a little confused, wondering whether this, or Sara’s description of her brother, was the reality. And she should not have known what to answer but that the bell at the house interfered in her behalf, and began to send forth its touching call—a sound which could not be gainsayed.
