Маргарет Олифант
Brownlows
CHAPTER XXVII.
SARA’S OWN AFFAIRS
Sara’s affairs were perhaps not so interesting, as indeed they were far from being so advanced, as those of Jack; but still all this time they were making progress. It was not without cause that the image of Powys stole across her mental vision when Jack warned her to look at the beam in her own eye. There could be little doubt that Mr. Brownlow had encouraged Powys. He had asked him to come generally, and he had added to this many special invitations, and sometimes, indeed, when Jack was not there, had given the young man a seat in the dog-cart, and brought him out. All this was very confusing, not to Sara, who, as she thought, saw into the motives of her father’s conduct, and knew how it was; but to the clerk in Mr. Brownlow’s office, who felt himself thus singled out, and could not but perceive that no one else had the same privilege. It filled him with many wondering and even bewildered thoughts. Perhaps at the beginning it did not strike him so much, semi-republican as he was; but he was quick-witted, and when he looked about him, and saw that his neighbors did not get the same advantages, the young Canadian felt that there must be something in it. He was taken in, as it were, to Mr. Brownlow’s heart and home, and that not without a purpose, as was told him by the angry lines in Jack’s forehead. He was taken in and admitted into the habits of intimacy, and had Sara, as it were, given over to him; and what did it mean? for that it must mean something he could not fail to see.
Thus young Powys’s position was very different from that of Jack. Jack had been led into his scrape unwittingly, having meant nothing. But it would have been impossible for Powys to act in the same way. To him unconsciousness was out of the question. He might make it clear to himself, in a dazzled self-conscious way, that his own excellence could have nothing to do with it; that it must be accident, or good fortune, or something perfectly fortuitous; but yet withal the sense remained that he and no other had been chosen for this privilege, and that it could not be for nothing. He was modest and he had good sense, more than could have been expected from his age and circumstances; but yet every thing conspired to make him forget these sober qualities. He had not permitted himself so much as to think at his first appearance that Miss Brownlow, too, was a young human creature like himself. He had said to himself, on the contrary, that she was of a different species, that she was as much out of his reach as the moon or the stars, and that if he suffered any folly to get into his head, of course he would have to suffer for it. But the folly had got into his head, and he had not suffered. He had been left with her, and she had talked to him, and made every thing very sweet to his soul. She had dropped the magic drop into his cup, which makes the mildest draught intoxicating, and the poor young fellow had felt the subtle charm stealing over him, and had gone on bewildered, justifying himself by the tacit encouragement given him, and not knowing what to think or what to do. He knew that between her and him there was a gulf fixed. He knew that of all men in the world he was the last to conceive any hopes in which such a brilliant little princess as Sara could be involved. It was doubly and trebly out of the question. He was not only a poor clerk, but he was a poor clerk with a family to support. It was all mere madness and irredeemable folly; but still Mr. Brownlow took him out to his house, and still he saw, and was led into intimate companionship with his master’s daughter. And what could it mean, or how could it end? Powys fell into such a maze at last, that he went and came unconsciously in a kind of insanity. Something must come of it one of these days. Something;—a volcanic eruption and wild blazing up of earth and heaven—a sudden plunge into madness or into darkness. It was strange, very strange to him, to think what Mr. Brownlow could mean by it; he was very kind to him—almost paternal—and yet he was exposing him to this trial, which he could neither fly from nor resist. Thus poor Powys pondered to himself many a time, while, with a beating heart, he went along the road to Brownlows. He could have delivered himself, no doubt, if he would, but he did not want to deliver himself. He had let all go in a kind of desperation. It must end, no doubt, in some dreadful sudden downfall of all his hopes. But indeed he had no hopes; he knew it was madness; yet it was a madness he was permitted, even encouraged in; and he gave himself up to it, and let himself float down the stream, and said to himself that he would shut his eyes, and take what happiness he could get in the present moment, and shut out all thoughts of the future. This he was doing with a kind of thrill of prodigal delight, selling his birthright for a mess of pottage, giving up all the freshness of his heart, and all its force of early passion, for what?—for nothing. To throw another flower in the path of a girl who trod upon nothing but flowers; this was what he felt it to be in his saner moments. But the influence of that sanity never stopped him in what he was doing. He had never in his life met with any thing like her, and if she chose to have this supreme luxury of a man’s heart and life offered up to her all for nothing—what then? He was not the man to grudge her that richest and most useless gift. It was not often he went so deep as this, or realized what a wild cause he was embarked on: but when he did, he saw the matter clearly enough, and knew how it must be.
As for Sara, she was very innocent of any such thoughts. She was not the girl to accept such a holocaust. If she had known what was in his heart, possibly she might have scorned him for it; but she never suspected what was passing in his heart. She did not know of that gulf fixed. His real position, that position which was so very true and unquestionable to him, was not real at all to Sara. He was a fairy prince, masquerading under that form for some reason known to himself and Mr. Brownlow; or if not that, then he was the man to whom, according to her father’s will, she was to give herself blindly out of pure filial devotion. Anyhow something secret, mysterious, beyond ordinary ken, was in it; something that gave piquancy to the whole transaction. She was not receiving a lover in a commonplace sort of way when she entertained young Powys, but was instead a party to an important transaction, fulfilling a grand duty, either to her father menaced by some danger, or to a hero transformed whom only the touch of a true maiden could win back to his rightful shape. As it happened, this fine devotion was not disagreeable to her; but Sara felt, no doubt, that she would have done her duty quite as unswervingly had the fairy prince been bewitched into the person of the true Beast of the story instead of that of her father’s clerk.
It was a curious sort of process to note, had there been any spectator by sufficiently at ease to note it; but there was not, unless indeed Mr. Hardcastle and Fanny might have stood in that capacity. As for the rector, he washed his hands of it. He had delivered his own soul just as Mrs. Swayne had delivered hers in respect to the other parties. He had told Mr. Brownlow very plainly what his opinion was. “My dear fellow,” he had said, “you don’t know what you are doing. Be warned in time. You don’t think what kind of creatures girls and boys are at that age. And then you are compromising Sara with the world. Who do you think would care to be the rival of your clerk? It is very unfair to your child. And then Sara is just one of the girls that are most likely to suffer. She is a girl that has fancies of her own. You know I am as fond of her almost as I am of my Fanny, but there could not be a greater difference than between the two. Fanny might come safely through such an ordeal, but Sara is of a different disposition; she is capable of thinking that it doesn’t matter, she is capable, though one does not like even to mention such an idea, of falling in love—”
Mr. Brownlow winced a little at this suggestion. I suppose men don’t like to think of their womenkind falling in love. There is a certain desecration in the idea. “No,” he said, with something in his voice that was half approval and half contempt, “you need not be afraid of Fanny; and as for Sara, I trust Providence will take care of her—as you seem to think she has so poor a guardian in me.”
“Ah, Brownlow, we must both feel what a disadvantage we are at,” said Mr. Hardcastle, with a sigh, “with our motherless girls; and theirs is just the age at which it tells.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Brownlow, shaping his face a little, unawares, into the right look. The rector had had two mothers for Fanny, and was used to this kind of thing; indeed it was never off the cards, as Fanny herself was profoundly aware, that there might be a third; and accordingly he had a right to be effusive about it: whereas Mr. Brownlow had had but one love in his life, and could not talk on the subject. But he knew his duty sufficiently to look solemn, and assent to his pastor’s proposition about the motherless girls.
“On that account, if on no other, we ought to give them our double attention,” the rector continued. “You know I can have but one motive. Take my word for it, it is not fit that your clerk should be brought into your daughter’s society. If any foolish complication should come of it, you would never forgive yourself; and only think of the harm it would do Sara in the world.”
“Softly, Hardcastle,” said Mr. Brownlow, “don’t go too far. Sara and the world have nothing to do with each other. That sort of thing may answer well enough for your hackneyed girls who have gone through a few seasons and are up to every thing; but to the innocent—”
“My dear Brownlow,” said the rector, with a certain tone of patronage and compassion, “I know how much I am inferior to you in true knowledge of the world; but perhaps—let us say—the world of fashion—may be a little better known to me than to you.”
Mr. Brownlow was roused by this. “I don’t know how it should be so,” he said, looking very steadily at the rector. Mr. Hardcastle had a second cousin who was an Irish peer. That was the chief ground of his social pretensions, and the world of fashion, to tell the truth, had never fallen much in his way; but still a man who has a cousin a lord, when he claims superior knowledge of society to that possessed by another man who has no such distinction, generally, in the country at least, has his claim allowed.
“You think not?” he said, stammering and growing red. “Oh, ah—well—of course—in that case I can’t be of any use. I am sorry to have thrust my opinion on you. If you feel yourself so thoroughly qualified—”
“Don’t take offense,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I have no such high opinion of my qualifications. I don’t think we are, either of us, men of fashion to speak of, but, as it happens, I know my own business. It suits me to have my clerk at hand—and he is not just an ordinary clerk; and I hope Sara is not the sort of girl to lose her head and go off into silly romances. I have confidence in her, you see, as you have in Fanny—though perhaps it may not be so perfectly justified,” Mr. Brownlow added, with a smile. Fanny was known within her own circle to be a very prudent little woman, almost too prudent, and this was a point which the rector always felt.
“Well, I hope you will find it has been for the best,” Mr. Hardcastle answered, and he sighed in reply to his friend’s smile: evidently he did not expect it would turn out for the best—but at all events he had delivered his soul.
And Fanny, in the mean time, was delivering her little lecture to Sara. They had been dining at Brownlows, and there were no other guests, and the two girls were alone in the drawing-room, in that little half-hour which the gentlemen spent over their temperate glass of claret. It is an hour much bemoaned by fast young women, but, as the silent majority are aware, it is not an unpleasant hour. Fanny Hardcastle and Sara Brownlow were great friends in their way. They were in the habit of seeing each other continually, of going to the same places, of meeting the same people. It was not exactly a friendship of natural affinity, but rather of proximity, which answers very well in many cases. Probably Fanny, for her part, was not capable of any thing more enthusiastic. They told each other every thing—that is, they each told the other as much as that other could understand. Fanny, by instinct, refrained from putting before Sara all the prudences and sensible restrictions that existed in her own thoughts; and Sara, equally by instinct, was dumb about her own personal feelings and fancies, except now and then when carried away by their vehemence. “She would not understand me, you know,” both of them would have said. But to-night Fanny had taken upon herself the prophetic office. She, too, had her burden of warning to deliver, and to free her own soul from all responsibility in her neighbor’s fate.
“Sara,” she said, “I saw you the other day when you did not see me. You were in the park—down there, look, under that tree; and that Mr. Powys was with you. You know I once saw him here.”
“I do not call that the park—I call that the avenue,” said Sara; but she saw that her companion spoke with intention, and a certain quickening of color came to her face.
“You may call it any thing you please, but I am sure it is the park,” said Fanny, “and I want to speak to you about it. I am sure I don’t know who Mr. Powys is—I dare say he is very nice—but do you think it is quite right walking about with him like that? You told me yourself he was in your papa’s office. You know Sara, dear, I wouldn’t say a word to you if it wasn’t for your good.”
“What is for my good?” said Sara—“walking in the park? or having you to speak to me? As for Mr. Powys, I don’t suppose you know any thing about him, so of course you can’t have any thing to say.”
“I wish you would not gallop on like that and take away one’s breath,” said Fanny. “Of course I don’t know any thing about him. He may be very nice—I am sure I can’t say; or he may be very amusing—they often are,” Fanny added, with a sigh, “when they are no good. But don’t go walking and talking with him, Sara; don’t, there’s a dear; people will talk; you know how they talk. And if he is only in your papa’s office—”
“I don’t see what difference that can possibly make,” said Sara with a little vehemence.
“But it does make a difference,” said Fanny, once more with a sigh. “If he were ever so nice, it could be no good. Mr. Brownlow may be very kind to him, but he would never let you marry him, Sara. Yes, of course, that is what it must come to. A girl should not stray about in the park with a man unless he was a man that she could marry if he asked her. I don’t mean to say that she would marry, but at least that she could. And, besides, a girl owes a duty to herself even if her father would consent. You, in your position, ought to make a very different match.”
“You little worldly-minded wretch,” cried Sara, “have you nearly done?”
“Any body would tell you so as well as me,” said Fanny. “You might have had that big Sir Charles if you had liked. Papa is only a poor clergyman, and we have not the place in society we might have; but you can go everywhere, you who are so rich. And then the gentlemen always like you. If you were to make a poor marriage it would be a shame.”
“When did you learn all that?” said Fanny’s hearer, aghast. “I never thought you were half so wise.”
“I always knew it, dear,” said little Fanny, with complacency. “I used to be too frightened to speak, and then you always talked so much quicker and went on so. But when I was at my aunt’s in spring—”
“I shall always hate your aunt;” cried Sara—“I did before by instinct: did she put it all into your head about matches and things? You were ten thousand times better when you had only me. As if I would marry a man because he would be a good marriage! I wonder what you take me for, that you speak so to me!”
“Then what should you marry him for!” said little Fanny, with a toss of her pretty head.
“For!” cried Sara, “not for any thing! for nothing at all! I hate marrying. To think a girl can not live in this world without having that thrust into her face! What should I marry any body for? But I shall do what I like, and walk when I like, and talk to any body that pleases me,” cried the impetuous young woman. Her vehemence brought a flush to her face and something like tears into her eyes; and Fanny, for her part, looked on very gravely at an appearance of feeling of which she entirely disapproved.
“I dare say you will take your own way,” she said—“you always did take your own way; but at least you can’t say I did not warn you; and I hope you will never be sorry for not having listened to me, Sara. I love you all the same,” said Fanny, giving her friend a soft little kiss. Sara did not return this salutation with the warmth it deserved. She was flushed and angry and impatient, and yet disposed to laugh.
“You don’t hope any thing of the sort,” she said; “you hope I shall live to be very sorry—and I hate your aunt.” This was how the warning ended in the drawing-room. It was more elegantly expressed than it had been by Mrs. Swayne and old Betty; but yet the burden of the prophecy was in some respects the same.
When Sara thought over it at a later period of the night, she laughed a little in her own mind at poor Fanny’s ignorance. Could she but know that the poor clerk was an enchanted prince! Could she but guess that it was in pure obedience to her father’s wishes that she had given him such a reception! When he appeared in his true shape, whatever that might be, how uncomfortable little Fanny would feel at the recollection of what she had said! And then Sara took to guessing and wondering what his true shape might be. She was not romantic to speak of in general. She was only romantic in her own special case; and when she came to think of it seriously, her good sense came to her aid—or rather not to her aid—to her hindrance and confusion and bewilderment. Sara knew very well that in those days people were not often found out to be princes in disguise. She knew even that for a clerk in her father’s office to turn out the heir to a peerage or even somebody’s son would be so unusual as to be almost incredible. And what, then, could her father mean? Neither was Mr. Brownlow the sort of man to pledge his soul on his daughter in any personal emergency. Yet some cause there must be. When she had come this length, a new sense seemed suddenly to wake up in Sara’s bosom, perhaps only the result of her own thoughts, perhaps suggested, though she would not have allowed that, by Fanny Hardcastle’s advice—a sudden sense that she had been coming down from her natural sphere, and that her father’s clerk was not a fit mate for her. She was very generous, and hasty, and high-flown, and fond of her father, and fond of amusement—and moved by all these qualities and affections together she had jumped at the suggestion of Mr. Brownlow’s plan; but perhaps she had never thought seriously of it as it affected herself that night. Now it suddenly occurred to her how people might talk. Strangely enough, the same thought which had been bitterness to her father, stung her also, as soon as her eyes were opened. Miss Brownlow of Brownlows, who had refused, or the same thing as refused, Sir Charles Motherwell—whom young Keppel had regarded afar off as utterly beyond his reach—the daughter of the richest man, and herself one of the most popular (Sara did not even to herself say the prettiest; she might have had an inkling of that too, but certainly she did not put it into articulate thought) girls in the county—she bending from her high estate to the level of a lawyer’s clerk; she going back to the hereditary position, reminding every body that she was the daughter of the Masterton attorney, showing the low tastes which one generation of higher culture could not be supposed to have effaced! How could she do it? If she had been a duke’s daughter it would not have mattered. In such a case nobody could have thought of hereditary low tastes; but now—As Sara mused, the color grew hotter and hotter in her cheeks. To think that it was only now, so late in the day, that this occurred to her, after she had gone so far in the way of carrying out her father’s wishes! To think that he could have imposed such a sacrifice upon her! Sara’s heart smarted and stung her in her breast as she thought of that. And then there suddenly came up a big indignant blob of warm dew in either eye, which was not for her father nor for her own dignity, but for something else about which she could not parley with herself. And then she rushed at her candles and put them out, and threw herself down on her bed. The fact was that she did sleep in half an hour at the farthest, though she did not mean to, and thus escaped from her thoughts; but that was not what she calculated upon. She calculated on lying awake all night and saying many very pointed and grievous things to her father when in the morning he should ask her the meaning of her pale face and heavy eyes; but unfortunately her cheeks were as fresh as the morning when the morning duly came, and her eyes as bright, and Mr. Brownlow, seeing no occasion for it, asked no questions, but had himself to submit to inquiries and condolences touching a bad night and a pale face. He too had been moved by Mr. Hardcastle’s warning—moved, not of course to any sort of acceptance of the rector’s advice, but only to the length of being uncomfortable, while he took his own way, which is at all times the only one certain result of good advice. And he was depressed too about Jack’s communication which had been made to him only two nights before, and of which he had spoken to nobody. The thought of it was a humiliation to him. His two children whom he had brought up so carefully, his only ones, in whom he had expected his family to make a new beginning—and yet they both meant to descend far below the ancestral level which he had hoped to see them leave utterly behind! He was not what is called a proud man, and he had never been ashamed of his origin or of his business. But yet, two such marriages in one family, and one generation—! It was a bitter thought.
As for Sara, she would have said, had she been questioned, that she thought of nothing else all day; and in fact it was her prevailing pre-occupation. All the humiliations involved in it came gleaming across her mind by intervals. Her pride rose up in arms. She did not know as yet about the repetition or rather anticipation of her case which her brother had been guilty of. But she did ponder over the probable consequences. The hardest thing of all was that they would say it was the fault of her race, that she was only returning to her natural level, and that it was not wealth nor even admiration which could make true gentlefolks; all which were sentiments to which Sara would have subscribed willingly in any but her own case. When Powys arrived with Mr. Brownlow in the evening, she received him with a stateliness that chilled the poor young fellow to his heart. And he too had so many thoughts, and just at that moment was wondering with an intensity which put all the others to shame how it could possibly end, and what his honor required of him, and what sort of a grey and weary desert life would be after this dream was over. It seemed to him absolutely as if the dream was coming to an end that night. Jack, who was never very courteous to the visitor, left them immediately after dinner, and Mr. Brownlow retired to the library for some time, and Powys had no choice but to go where his heart had gone before him, up to the drawing-room where Sara sat alone. Of course she ought to have had a chaperone; but then this young man, being only a clerk from the office, did not count.
She was seated in the window, close to the Claude, which had been the first thing that brought these two together; but to-night she was in no meditative mood. She had provided herself with work, and was laboring at it fiercely in a way which Powys had never seen before. And he did not know that her heart too was beating very fast, and that she had been wondering and wondering whether he would have the courage to come up stairs. He had really had that courage, but now that he was there, he did not know what to do. He came up to her at first, but she kept on working and did not take any notice of him, she who up to this moment had always been so sweet. The poor young fellow was cast down to the very depths; he thought they had but taken him up and played upon him for their amusement, and that now the end had come. And he tried, but ineffectually, to comfort himself with the thought that he had always known it must come to an end. Almost, when he saw her silence, her absorbed looks, the constrained little glance she gave him as he came into the room, it came into his mind that Sara herself would say something to bring the dream to a distinct conclusion. If she had told him that she divined his presumption, and that he was never more to enter that room again, he would not have been surprised. It had been a false position throughout—he knew that, and he knew that it must come to an end.
But, in the mean time, a fair face must be put upon it. Powys, though he was a backwoodsman, knew enough of life, or had sufficient instinct of its requirements, to know that. So he went up to the Claude, and looked at it sadly, with a melancholy he could not restrain.
“It is as you once said, Miss Brownlow,” said Powys—“always the same gleam and the same ripples. I can understand your objections to it now.”
“The Claude?” said Sara, with unnecessary vehemence, “I hate it. I think I hate all pictures; they are so everlastingly the same thing. Did Jack go out, Mr. Powys, as you came up stairs?”
“Yes; he went out just after you had left us,” said Powys, glad to find something less suggestive on which to speak.
“Again?” said Sara, plunging at the new subject with an energy which proved it to be a relief to her also. “He is so strange. I don’t know if papa told you; he is giving us a great deal of trouble just now. I am afraid he has got fond of somebody very, very much below him. It will be a dreadful thing for us if it turns out to be true.”
Poor Powys’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He gave a wistful look at his tormentor, full of a kind of dumb entreaty. What did she say it for? was it for him, without even the satisfaction of plain-speaking, to send him away for ever?
“Of course you don’t know the circumstances,” said Sara, “but you can fancy when he is the only son. I don’t think you ever took to Jack; but of course he is a great deal to papa and me.”
“I think it was your brother who never took to me,” said Powys; “he thought I had no business here.”
“He had no right to think so, when papa thought differently,” said Sara; “he was always very disagreeable; and now to think he should be as foolish as any of us.” When she had said this, Sara suddenly recollected herself, and gave a glance up at her companion to see if he had observed her indiscretion. Then she went on hastily with a rising color—“I wish you would tell me, Mr. Powys, how it was that you first came to know papa.”
“It is very easy,” said Powys; but there he too paused, and grew red, and stopped short in his story with a reluctance that had nothing to do with pride. “I went to him seeking employment,” he continued, making an effort, and smiling a sickly smile. He knew she must know that, but yet it cost him a struggle; and somehow every thing seemed to have changed so entirely since those long-distant days.
“And you never knew him before?” said Sara—“nor your father?—nor any body belonging to you?—I do so want to know.”
“You are surprised that he has been so kind to me,” said Powys, with a pang; “and it is natural you should. No, there is no reason for it that I know of, except his own goodness. He meant to be very, very kind to me,” the young fellow added, with a certain pathos. It seemed to him as he spoke that Mr. Brownlow had in reality been very cruel to him, but he did not say it in words. Sara, for her part, gave him a little quick fugitive glance; and it is possible, though no explanation was given, that she understood what he did not speak.
“That was not what I meant,” she said, quickly; “only I thought there was something—and then about your family, Mr. Powys?” she said, looking up into his face with a curiosity she could not restrain. Certainly the more she thought it over the more it amazed her. What could her father mean?
“I have no family that I know of,” said Powys, with a momentary smile, “except my mother and my little sisters. I am poor, Miss Brownlow, and of no account whatever. I never saved Mr. Brownlow’s life, nor did any thing he could be grateful to me for. And I did not know you nor this house,” he went on, “when your father brought me here. I did not know, and I could live without—Don’t ask me any more questions, please; for I fear I don’t know what I am saying to-day.”
Here there was a pause, for Sara, though fearless enough in most cases, was a little alarmed by his suppressed vehemence. She was alarmed, and at the same time she was softened, and her inquisitiveness was stronger than her prudence. His very prayer that she would ask him no more questions quickened her curiosity; and it was not in her to refrain for fear of the danger—in that, as in most other amusements, “the danger’s self was lure alone.”
“But I hope you don’t regret having been brought here,” she said softly, looking up at him. It was a cruel speech, and the look and the tone were more cruel still. If she had meant to bring him to her feet, she could not have done any thing better adapted to her purpose, and she did not mean to bring him to her feet. She did it only out of a little personal feeling and a little sympathy, and the perversity of her heart.
