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Brownlows
“You frightened us dreadfully looking in at the window,” said Pamela. “And mamma has such a bad headache; she has been a good deal—worried. Would you mind coming back another time?—or is it any thing I can say?”
“There’s something coming down the road,” said Nancy; “and I am tired and I can’t walk back. If it’s the carrier I’ll have to go, miss. And I can’t say the half nor the quarter to you. Is it the carrier? Then I’ll have to go. Tell her it was one as knew her when we was both young—knew her right well, and all her ways—knew her mother. And I’ve a deal to say; and my name’s Nancy Christian, if she should ask. If she’s the woman I take her for, she’ll know my name.”
“And you’ll come back?—will you be sure to come back?” asked Pamela, carelessly, yet with a girl’s eagerness for every thing like change and news. The cart had stopped by this time, and Mrs. Swayne had brought forth a chair to aid the stranger in her ascent. The place was roused by the event. Old Betty stood at her cottage, and Swayne had hobbled out from the kitchen, and even Mrs. Preston, forgetting the headache, had stolen to the window, and peeped out through the small Venetian blind which covered the lower part of it to look at and wonder who the figure belonged to which had so strange a likeness to herself. Amid all these spectators Nancy mounted, slowly shaking out once more the dust from her skirts.
“I’ll be late, and she’ll give me an awful talking to,” she said. “No; I can’t stop to-day. But I’ll come again—oh yes, I’ll come again.” She kept looking back as long as she was in sight, peeping round the hood of the wagon, searching them through and through with her anxious gaze; while all the bystanders looked on surprised. What had she to do with them? And then her looks, and her dress, and her black eager eyes, were so like Mrs. Preston’s. Her face bore a very doubtful, uncertain look as she was thus borne solemnly away. “I couldn’t know her after such a long time; and I don’t see as she could have had a child so young,” was what Nancy was saying to herself, shaking her head, and then reassuring herself. This visit made a sensation which almost diverted public attention from Mr. John; and when Nancy’s message was repeated to Mrs. Preston, it was received with an immediate recognition which increased the excitement. “Nancy Christian!” Mrs. Preston repeated all the evening long. She could think of nothing else. It made her head so much worse that she had to go to bed, where Pamela watched her to the exclusion of every other interest. This was Nancy’s first visit. She did not mean, even had she had time, to proceed to any thing more important that day.
CHAPTER XXV.
HOW SARA REGARDED THE MOTE IN HER BROTHER’S EYE
A few days after these events, caprice or curiosity led Sara to Swayne’s cottage. She had very much given up going there—why, she could scarcely have explained. In reality she knew nothing about the relationship between her brother and her friend; but either that, unknown to herself, had exercised some kind of magnetic repulsion upon her, or her own preoccupation had withdrawn Sara from any special approach to her little favorite. She would have said she was as fond of her as ever; but in fact she did not want Pamela as she had wanted her. And the consequence was that they had been much longer apart than either of them, occupied with their own concerns, had been aware. The motive which drew Sara thither after so long an interval was about as mysterious as that which kept her away. She went, but did not know why; perhaps from some impulse of those secret threads of fate which are ever being drawn unconsciously to us into another and another combination; perhaps simply from a girlish yearning toward the pleasant companion of whom for a time she had made so much. Mrs. Preston had not recovered when Sara went to see her daughter—she was still lying on the sofa with one of her nervous attacks, Pamela said—though the fact was that neither mother nor daughter understood what kind of attack it was. Anxiety and excitement and uncertainty had worn poor Mrs. Preston out; and then her headache was so handy—it saved her from making any decision—it excused her to herself for not settling immediately what she ought to do. She was not able to move, and she was thankful for it. She could not undergo the fatigue of finding some other place to live in, of giving Mr. John his final answer. To be sure he knew and she knew that his final answer had been given—that there could be no doubt about it; but still every practical conclusion was postponed by the attack, and in this point of view it was the most fortunate thing which could have occurred.
Things were thus with them when Sara, after a long absence, one day suddenly lighted down upon the shady house in the glory of her summer attire, like a white dove lying into the bosom of the clouds. Perhaps it would be wrong to say that Pamela in her black frock stood no chance in the presence of her visitor; but it is certain that when Miss Brownlow came floating in with her light dress, and her bright ribbons and her shining hair, every thing about her gleaming with a certain reflection from the sunshine, Pamela and her mother could neither of them look at any thing else. She dazzled them, and yet drew their eyes to her, as light itself draws every body’s eyes. Pamela shrank a little from her friend’s side with a painful humility, asking herself whether it was possible that this bright creature should ever be her sister; while even Mrs. Preston, though she had all a mother’s admiration for her own child, could not but feel her heart sink as she thought how this splendid princess would ever tolerate so inferior an alliance. This consciousness in their minds made an immediate estrangement between them. Sara was condescending, and she felt she was condescending, and hated herself; and as for the mother and daughter, they were constrained and stricken dumb by the secret in their hearts. And thus there rose a silent offense on both sides. On hers because they were so cold and distant; on theirs because it seemed to them that she had come with the intention of being affable and kind to them, they who could no longer accept patronage. The mother lay on the sofa in the dark corner, and Sara sat on the chair in the window, and between the two points Pamela went straying, ashamed of herself, trying to smooth over her own secret irritation and discontent, trying to keep the peace between the others, and yet at the same time wishing and longing that her once welcome friend would leave them to themselves. The circumstances of their intercourse were changed, and the intercourse itself had to be organized anew. Thus the visit might have passed over, leaving only an impression of pain on their minds, but for an accident which set the matter in a clearer light. Pamela had been seated at the window with her work before Sara entered, and underneath the linen she had been stitching lay an envelope directed to her by Jack Brownlow. Jack had not seen his little love for one entire day, and naturally he had written her a little letter, which was as foolish as if he had not been so sensible a young man. It was only the envelope which lay thus on the table under Pamela’s work. Its enclosure was laid up in quite another sanctuary, but the address was there, unquestionably in Jack’s hand. It lay the other way from Sara’s eyes, tantalizing her with the well-known writing. She tried hard—without betraying herself, in the intervals of the conversation—to read the name on it upside down, and her suspicion had not, as may be supposed, an enlivening effect upon the conversation. Then she stooped and pretended to look at Pamela’s work; then she gave the provoking envelope a little stealthy touch with the end of her parasol. Perhaps scrupulous honor would have forbidden these little attempts to discover the secret; but when a sister perceives her brother’s handwriting on the work-table of her friend, it is hard to resist the inclination to make sure in the first place that it is his, in the second place to whom it is addressed. This was all that Sara was guilty of. She would not have peeped into the note for a kingdom, but she did want to know whom it was written to. Perhaps it was only some old scrap of paper, some passing word about mendings or fittings to Mr. Swayne. Perhaps—and then Sara gave the envelope stealthily that little poke with her parasol.
A few minutes after she got up to go: her complexion had heightened suddenly in the strangest way, her eyes had taken a certain rigid look, which meant excitement and wrath. “Will you come out with me a little way? I want to speak to you,” she said, as Pamela went with her to the door. It was very different from those old beseeching, tender, undeniable invitations which the one had been in the habit of giving to the other; but there was something in it which constrained Pamela, though she trembled to her very heart, to obey. She did not know any thing about the envelope; she had forgotten it—forgotten that she had left it there, and had not perceived Sara’s stealthy exertions to secure a sight of it. But nevertheless she knew there was something coming. She took down her little black hat, trembling, and stole out, a dark little figure, beside Sara, stately in her light flowing draperies. They did not say a word to each other as they crossed the road and entered at the gates and passed Betty’s cottage. Betty came to the door and looked after them with a curiosity so great that she was tempted to follow and creep under the bushes, and listen; but Sara said nothing to betray herself as long as they were within the range of old Betty’s eye. When they had got to the chestnut-trees, to that spot where Mr. Brownlow had come upon his son and his son’s love, and where there was a possibility of escaping from the observation of spectators at the gate, Sara’s composure gave way. All at once she seized Pamela’s arm, who turned round to her with her lips apart and her heart struggling up into her mouth with terror. “Jack has been writing to you,” said Sara; “tell me what it has been about.”
“What it has been about!” said Pamela, with a cry. The poor little girl was so taken by surprise that all her self-possession forsook her. Her knees trembled, her heart beat, fluttering wildly in her ears; she sank down on the grass in her confusion, and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, Miss Brownlow!” was all that she was able to say.
“That is no answer,” said Sara, with all her natural vehemence. “Pamela, get up, and answer me like a sensible creature. I don’t mean to say it is your fault. A man might write to you and you might not be to blame. Tell me only what it means. What did he write to you about?”
Then Pamela bethought herself that she too had a certain dignity to preserve; not her own so much as that which belonged to her in right of her betrothed. She got up hastily, blushing scarlet, and though she did not meet Sara’s angry questioning eyes, she turned her downcast face toward her with a certain steadfastness. “It is not any harm,” she said, softly, “and, Miss Brownlow, you are no—no—older than me.”
“I am two years older than you,” said Sara, “and I know the world, and you don’t; and I am his sister. Oh, you foolish little thing! don’t you know it is wicked? If you had told me, I never, never would have let him trouble you. I never thought Jack would have done any thing so dreadful. It’s because you don’t know.”
“Mamma knows,” said Pamela, with a certain self-assertion; and then her courage once more failed her. “I tried to stop him,” she said with the tears coming to her eyes, “and so did mamma. But I could not force him; not when he—he—would not. What I think of,” cried Pamela, “is him, not myself; but if he won’t, what can I do?”
“If he won’t what?” said Sara, in her amazement and wrath.
But Pamela could make no answer; half with the bitterness of it, half with the sweetness of it, her heart was full. It was hard to be questioned and taken to task thus by her own friend; but it was sweet to know that what she could do was nothing, that her efforts had been vain, that he would not give up. All this produced such a confusion in her that she could not say another word. She turned away, and once more covered her face with her hand; not that she was at all miserable—or if indeed it was a kind of misery, misery itself is sometimes sweet.
As for Sara, she blazed upon her little companion with an indignation which was splendid to behold. “Your mamma knows,” she said, “and permits it! Oh, Pamela! that I should have been so fond of you, and that you should treat me like this!”
“I am not treating you badly—it is you,” said Pamela, with a sob which she could not restrain, “who are cruel to me.”
“If you think so, we had better part,” said Sara, with tragic grandeur. “We had better part, and forget that we ever knew each other. I could have borne any thing from you but being false. Oh, Pamela! how could you do it? To be treacherous to me who have always loved you, and to correspond with Jack!”
“I—don’t—correspond—with Jack,” cried Pamela, the words being wrung out of her; and then she stopped short, and dried her eyes, and grew red, and looked Sara in the face. It was true, and yet it was false; and the consciousness of this falsehood in the spirit made her cheeks burn, and yet startled her into composure. She stood upright for the first time, and eyed her questioner, but it was with the self-possession not of innocence but of guilt.
“I am very glad to hear it,” said Sara—“very glad; but you let him write to you. And when I see his handwriting on your table, what am I to think? I will speak to him about it to-night; I will not have him tease you. Pamela, if you will trust in me, I will bring you through it safe. Surely it would be better for you to have me for a friend than Jack?”
Poor Pamela’s eyes sank to the ground as this question was addressed to her. Her blush, which had begun to fade, returned with double violence. Such a torrent of crimson rushed to her face and throat that even Sara took note of it. Pamela could not tell a lie—not another lie, as she said to herself in her heart; for the fact was she did prefer Jack—preferred him infinitely and beyond all question; and such being the case, could not so much as look at her questioner, much less breathe a word of assent. Sara marked the silence, the overwhelming blush, the look which suddenly fell beneath her own, with the consternation of utter astonishment. In that moment a renewed storm of indignation swept over her. She stamped her foot upon the grass in the impatience of her thoughts.
“You prefer Jack,” she cried, in horror—“you prefer Jack! Oh, heaven! but in that case,” she added, gathering up her long dress in her arms, and turning away with a grandeur of disdain which made an end of Pamela, “it is evident that we had better part. I do not know that there is any thing more I can say. I have thought more of you than I ought to have done,” said Sara, making a few steps forward and then turning half round with the air of an injured princess, “but now it is better that we should part.”
With this she waved her hand and turned away. It was in her heart to have turned and gone back five-and-twenty times before she reached the straight line of the avenue from which they had strayed. Before she got to the first laurel in the shrubberies her heart had given her fifty pricks on the subject of her cruelty; but Sara was not actually so moved by these admonitions as to go back. As for Pamela, she stood for a long time where her friend had left her, motionless under the chestnut-trees, with tears dropping slowly from her downcast eyes, and a speechless yet sweet anguish in her heart. Her mother had been right. The sister’s little friend and the brother’s betrothed were two different things. This was how she was to be received by those who were nearest in the world to him; and yet he was a man, and his own master; all she could do was in vain, and he could not be forced to give up. Pamela stood still until his sister’s light steps began to sound on the gravel; and when it was evident the parting had been final, and that Sara did not mean to come back, the poor child relieved her bosom by a long sob, and then went home very humbly by the broad sunny avenue. She went and poured her troubles into her mother’s bosom, which naturally was so much the worse for Mrs. Preston’s headache. It was very hard to bear, and yet there was one thing which gave a little comfort; Jack was his own master, and giving him up, as every body else adjured her to do, would be a thing entirely without effect.
The dinner-table at Brownlows was very grave that night. Mr. Brownlow, it is true, was much as usual, and so was Jack; they were very much as they always were, notwithstanding that very grave complications surrounded the footsteps of both. But as for Sara, her aspect was solemnity itself; she spoke in monosyllables only; she ate little, and that little in a pathetic way; when her father or her brother addressed her she took out her finest manners and extinguished them. Altogether she was a very imposing and majestic sight; and after a few attempts at ordinary conversation, the two gentlemen, feeling themselves very trifling and insignificant personages indeed, gave in, and struggled no longer against an influence which was too much for them. There was something, too, in her manner—something imperceptible to Mr. Brownlow, perceptible only to Jack—which made it clear to the latter that it was on his account his sister was so profoundly disturbed. He said “Pshaw!” to himself at first, and tried to think himself quite indifferent; but the fact was he was not indifferent. When she left the room at last, Jack had no heart for a chat with his father over the claret. He too felt his secret on his mind, and became uncomfortable when he was drawn at all into a confidential attitude; and to-day, in addition to this, there was in his heart a prick of alarm. Did Sara know? was that what she meant? Jack knew very well that sooner or later every body must know; but at the present moment a mingled sense of shame and pride and independence kept him silent. Even supposing it was the most prudent marriage he could make, why should a fellow go and tell every body like a girl? It might be well enough for a girl to do it—a girl had to get every body’s consent, and ask every body’s advice, whereas he required neither advice nor consent. And so he had not felt himself called upon to say any thing about it; but it is nervous work, when you have a secret on your mind, to be left alone with your nearest relative, the person who has the best right to know, and who in a way possesses your natural confidence and has done nothing to forfeit it. So Jack escaped five minutes after Sara, and hastened to the drawing-room looking for her. Perhaps she had expected it—at all events she was there waiting for him, still as solemn, pathetic and important as it is possible to conceive. She had some work in her hands which of itself was highly significant. Jack went up to her, and she looked at him, but took no farther notice. After that one glance she looked down again, and went on with her work—things were too serious for speech.
“What’s the matter?” said Jack. “Why are you making such a tragedy-queen of yourself? What has every body done? My opinion is you have frightened my father to death.”
“I should be very sorry if I had frightened papa,” said Sara, meekly; and then she broke forth with vehemence, “Oh, how can you, Jack? Don’t you feel ashamed to look me in the face?”
“I ashamed to look you in the face?” cried Jack, in utter bewilderment; and he retired a step, but yet stared at her with the most straightforward stare. His eyes did not fall under the scrutiny of hers, but gradually as he looked there began to steal up among his whiskers an increasing heat. He grew red, though there was no visible cause for it. “I should like to know what I have done,” he said, with an affected laugh. “Anyhow, you take high ground.”
“I couldn’t take too high ground,” said Sara solemnly. “Oh, Jack! how could you think of meddling with that innocent little thing? To see her about so pretty and sweet as she was, and then to go and worry her and tease her to death!”
“Worry and tease—whom?” cried Jack in amaze. This was certainly not the accusation he expected to hear.
“As if you did not know whom I mean!” said his sister. “Wasn’t it throwing themselves on our kindness when they came here? And to make her that she dares not walk about or come out anywhere—to tease her with letters even! I think you are the last man in the world from whom I should have expected that.”
Jack had taken to bite his nails, not well knowing what else to do. But he made no direct reply even to the solemnity of this appeal. A flush of anger sprang up over his face, and yet he was amused. “Has she been complaining to you?” he said.
“Complaining,” said Sara. “Poor little thing! No, indeed. She never said a word. I found it out all by myself.”
“Then I advise you to keep it all to yourself,” said her brother. “She don’t want you to interfere, nor I either. We can manage our own affairs; and I think, Sara,” he added, with an almost equal grandeur, “if I were you I would not notice the mote in my brother’s eye till I had looked after the beam in my own.”
The beam in her own! what did he mean? But Jack went off in a lofty way, contenting himself with this Parthian arrow, and declining to explain. The insinuation, however, disturbed Sara. What was the beam in her own? Somehow, while she was puzzling about it, a vision of young Powys crossed her mind, papa’s friend, who began to come so often. When she thought of that, she smiled at her brother’s delusion. Poor Jack! he did not know that it was in discharge of her most sacred duty that she was civil to Powys. She had been very civil to him. She had taken his part against Jack’s own refined rudeness, and delivered him even from the perplexed affabilities of her father, though he was her father’s friend. Both Mr. Brownlow and Jack were preoccupied, and Sara had been the only one to entertain the stranger. And she had done it so as to make the entertainment very amusing and pleasant to herself. But what had that to do with a beam in her eye? She had made a vow, and she was performing her vow. And he was her father’s friend; and if all other arguments should be exhausted, still the case was no parallel to that of Pamela. He was not a poor man dwelling at the gate. He was a fairy prince, whom some enchantment had transformed into his present shape. The case was utterly different. Thus it was with a certain magnificent superiority over her brother’s weakness that Sara smiled to herself at his delusion. And yet she was grieved to think that he should take refuge in such a delusion, and did not show any symptom of real sorrow for his own sin.
Jack had hardly gone when Mr. Brownlow came up stairs. And he too asked Sara why it was that she sat apart in such melancholy majesty. When he had heard the cause, he was more disturbed than either of his children had been. Sara had supposed that Jack might be trifling with her poor little friend—she thought that he might carry the flirtation so far as to break poor Pamela’s heart, perhaps. But Mr. Brownlow knew that there were sometimes consequences more serious than even the breaking of hearts. To be sure he judged, not with the awful severity of a woman, but with the leniency of a man of the world; but yet it seemed to him that worse things might happen to poor Pamela than an innocent heart-break, and his soul was disturbed within him by the thought. He had warned his son, with all the gravity which the occasion required; but Jack was young, and no doubt the warning had been ineffectual. Mr. Brownlow was grieved to his soul; and, what was strange enough, it never occurred to him that his son could have behaved as he had done, like a Paladin. Jack’s philosophy, which had so little effect upon himself, had deceived his father. Mr. Brownlow felt that Jack was not the man to sacrifice his position and prospects and ambitions to an early marriage, and the only alternative was one at which he shuddered. For the truth was, his eye had been much attracted by the bright little face at the gate. It recalled some other face to him—he could not recall whose face. He had thought she was like Sara at first, but it was not Sara. And to think of that fresh sweet blossoming creature all trodden down into dust and ruin! The thought made Mr. Brownlow’s heart contract with positive pain. He went down into the avenue, and walked about there for hours waiting for his son. It must not be, he said to himself—it must not be! And all this time Jack, not knowing what was in store for him, was hearing over and over again, with much repetition, the story of the envelope and Sara’s visit, and was drying Pamela’s tears, and laughing at her fright, and asking her gloriously what any body could do to separate them?—what could any body do? A girl might be subject to her parents; but who was there who could take away his free will from a Man? This was the scope of Jack’s conversation, and it was very charming to his hearer. What could any one do against that magnificent force of resolution? Of course his allowance might be taken from him; but he could work. They had it all their own way in Mrs. Swayne’s parlor, though Mrs. Swayne herself did not hesitate to express her disapproval; but as yet Mr. John knew nothing about the anxious parent who walked up and down waiting for him on the other side of the gate.
