Маргарет Олифант
Brownlows
Five minutes after, he found himself, he could not have told how, at the door of Sara’s room. It was not in his way—he could not make that excuse to himself—to tell the truth he did not make any excuse to himself. His mind was utterly confused, and had stopped thinking. He was there, having come there he did not know how; and being there he opened the door softly and went in. Perhaps, for any thing he could tell, the burden might have been too much for Sara. He went in softly, stealing so as not to disturb any sleeper. The room was dark, but not quite dark. There was a night-light burning, shaded, on the table, and the curtains were drawn at the head of the white bed: nothing stirred in the silence: only the sound of breathing, the irregular disturbed breathing of some one in a troubled sleep. Mr. Brownlow stole farther in, and softly put back one of the curtains of the bed. There she lay, old, pallid, wrinkled, worn out, breathing hard in her sleep, even then unable to forget the struggle she was engaged in, holding the coverlet fast with one old meagre hand, upon which all the veins stood out. What comfort was her life to her? And a touch would do it. He went a step nearer and stooped over her, not knowing what he did, not putting out a finger, incapable of any exertion, yet with an awful curiosity. Then all at once out of the darkness, swift as an angel on noiseless pinions, a white figure rose and rushed at him, carrying him away from the bed out to the door, unwitting, aghast, by the mere impetus of its own sudden motion. When they had got outside it was Sara’s face that was turned upon him, pale as the face of the dead, with her hair hanging about it wildly, and the moisture standing in big beads on her forehead. “What were you going to do?” she seemed to shriek in his ear, though the shriek was only a whisper. He had left his candle outside, and it was by that faint light he could see the whiteness of her face.
“Do?” said Mr. Brownlow, with a strange sense of wonder. “Do?—nothing. What could I do?”
Then Sara threw herself upon him and wept aloud, wept so that the sound ran through the house, sobbing along the long listening passages. “Oh, papa, papa!” she cried, clinging to him. A look as of idiocy had come into his face. He had become totally confused—he did not know what she meant. What could he do? Why was she crying? And it was wrong to make a noise like this, when all the house was hushed and asleep.
“You must be quiet,” he said. “There is no need to be so agitated; and you should have been in bed. It is very late. I am going to my room now.”
“I will go with you,” said Sara, trembling. Already she began to be ashamed of her terror, but her nerves would not calm down all at once. She put her hand on his arm and half led, half followed him through the corridor. “Papa, you did not mean—any thing?” she said, lifting up a face so white and tremulous and shaken with many emotions that it was scarcely possible to recognize it as hers. “You did not mean—any thing?” Her very lips quivered so that she could scarcely speak.
“Mean—what?” he said. “I am a little confused to-night. It was all so sudden. I don’t seem to understand you. And I’m very tired. Things will be clearer to-morrow. Sara, I hope you are going to bed.”
“Yes, papa,” she said, like a child, though her lips quivered. He looked like a man who had fallen into sudden imbecility, comprehending nothing. And Sara’s mind too was beginning to get confused. She could not understand any longer what his looks meant.
“And so am I,” said Mr. Brownlow, with a sigh. Then he stooped and kissed her. “My darling, good-night. Things will be clearer to-morrow,” he said. They had come to his door by this time. And it was there he stooped to kiss her, dismissing her as it seemed. But after she had turned to go back, he came out again and called her. He looked almost as old and as shaken as Mrs. Preston as he called her back: “Don’t forsake me—don’t you forsake me,” he said hurriedly; “that was all—that was all: good-night.”
And then he went in and shut his door. Sara, left to herself, went back along the corridor, not knowing what to think. Were they all mad, or going mad? What could the shock be which had made Pamela’s humble mother frantic, and confused Mr. Brownlow’s clear intellect? She lay down on her sofa to watch her patient, feeling as if she too was becoming idiotic. She could not sleep, young as she was: the awful shadow that had come across her mind had murdered sleep. She lay and listened to Mrs. Preston’s irregular, interrupted breathing, far into the night. But sleep was not for Sara’s eyes.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE MORNING LIGHT
Of all painful things in this world there are few more painful than the feeling of rising up in the morning to a difficulty unsolved, a mystery unexplained. So long as the darkness is over with the night something can always be done. Calamity can be faced, misfortune met; but to get up in the morning light, and encounter afresh the darkness, and find no clue any more than you had at night, is hard work. This was what Jack felt when he had to face the sunshine, and remembered all that had happened, and the merry party that awaited him down stairs, and that he must amuse his visitors as if this day had been like any other. If he but knew what had really happened! But the utmost he could do was to guess at it, and that in the vaguest way. The young man went down stairs with a load on his mind, not so much of care as of uncertainty. Loss of fortune was a thing that could be met; but if there was loss of honor involved—if his father’s brain was giving way with the pressure—if—Jack would not allow his thoughts to go any farther. He drew himself up with a sudden pull, and stopped short, and went down stairs. At the breakfast-table every thing looked horribly unchanged. The guests, the servants, the routine of the cheerful meal, were just as usual. Mr. Brownlow, too, was at the table, holding his usual place. There was an ashy look about his face, which produced inquiries concerning his health from every new arrival; but his answers were so brief and unencouraging that these questions soon died off into silence. And he ate nothing, and his hand shook as he put his cup of coffee to his pallid lips. All these were symptoms that might be accounted for in the simplest way by a little bodily derangement. But Jack, for his part, was afraid to meet his father’s eye. “Where is Sara?” he asked, as he took his seat. And then he was met—for he was late, and most of the party were down before him—by a flutter of regrets and wonder. Poor Sara had a headache—so bad a headache that she would not even have any one go into her room. “Angelique was keeping the door like a little tiger,” one of the young ladies said, “and would let nobody in.” “And oh, tell me who it was that came so late last night,” cried another. “You must know. We are all at such a pitch of curiosity. It must be a foreign prince, or the prime minister, or some great beauty, we can’t make up our minds which; and, of course, it is breakfasting in its own room this morning. Nobody will tell us who it was. Do tell us!—we are all dying to know.”
“As you will all be dreadfully disappointed,” said Jack. “It was neither a prince nor a beauty. As for prime minister I don’t know. Such things have been heard of as that a prime minister should be an old woman—”
“An old woman!” said his innocent interlocutor. “Then it must be Lady Motherwell. Oh, I don’t wonder poor Sara has a headache. But you know you are only joking. Her dear Charley would never let her come storming to any body’s door like that.”
“It was not Lady Motherwell,” said Jack. Heaven knows he was in no mood for jesting; but when it is a matter which is past talking of, what can a man do?
“Oh, then, I know who it must have been!” cried the spokeswoman of the party. She was, however, suddenly interrupted. Mr. Brownlow, who had scarcely said a word as yet to any one, interposed. There was something in his tone which somehow put them all to silence.
“I am sorry to put a stop to your speculations,” he said. “It was only one of my clients on urgent business—that was all; business,” he added, with a curious kind of apology, “which has kept me up half the night.”
“Oh, Mr. Brownlow, I am so sorry. You are tired, and we have been teasing you,” said the lively questioner, with quick compunction.
“No, not teasing me,” he said, gravely. And then a dead silence ensued. It was not any thing in his words. His words were simple enough; and yet every one of his guests instantly began to think that his or her stay had been long enough, and that it was time to go away.
As Mr. Brownlow spoke he met Jack’s eye, and returned his look steadily. So far he was himself again. He was impenetrable, antagonistic, almost defiant. But there was no hovering horror in his look. He was terribly grave, and ashy pale, and bore traces that what had happened was no light master. His look gave his son a sensation of relief, and perhaps encouraged him in levity of expression, though, Heaven knows, there was little levity in his mind.
“I told you,” he said, “it might have been the prime minister, but it certainly was an old woman; and there I stop. I can’t give any farther information; I am not one of the Privy Council.” Then he laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh. It deepened the silence all around, and looked like a family quarrel, and made every body feel ill at ease.
“I don’t think any one here can be much interested in details,” said Mr. Brownlow, coldly; and then he rose to leave the table. It was his habit to leave the table early, and on ordinary occasions his departure made little commotion; but to-day it was different. They all clustered up to their feet as he went out of the room. Nobody knew what should be done that day. The men looked awkwardly at each other; the women tried hard to be the same as before, and failed, having Jack before them, who was far from looking the same. “I suppose, Jack, you will not go out to-day,” one of his companions said, though they had not an idea why.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” said Jack, and then he made a pause; and every body looked at him. “After all,” he continued, “you all know your way about; as Sara has a headache I had better stay;” and he hurried their departure that he might get rid of them. His father had not gone out; the dog-cart had come to the door, but it had been sent off again. He was in the library, Willis said in a whisper; and though he had been so many years with Mr. Brownlow and knew all his ways, Willis was obviously startled too. For one moment Jack thought of cross-questioning the butler to see what light he could throw upon the matter—if he had heard any thing on the previous night, or suspected any thing—but on second thoughts he dismissed the idea. Whatever it was, it was from his father himself that he ought to have the explanation. But though Mr. Brownlow was in the library Jack did not go to him there. He loitered about till his friends were gone, and till the ladies of the party, finding him very impracticable and with no amusement in him, had gone off upon their various ways. He did his best to be civil even playful, poor fellow, being for the moment every body’s representative, both master and mistress of the house. But though there was no absolute deficiency in any thing he said or did, they were all too sharp-witted to be taken in. “He has something on his mind,” one matron of the party said to the other. “They have something on all their minds, my dear,” said the other, solemnly; and they talked very significantly and mysteriously of the Brownlows as they filled Sara’s morning-room with their work and various devices, for it was a foggy, wretched day, and no one cared to venture out. Jack meanwhile drew a long breath of relief when all his guests were thus off his mind. He stood in the hall and hesitated, and saw Willis watching him from a corner with undisguised anxiety. Perhaps but for that he would have gone to his father; but with every body watching him, looking on and speculating what it might be, he could not go. And yet something must be done. At last, after he had watched the last man out and the last lady go away, he turned, and went slowly up stairs to Sara’s door.
When his voice was heard there was a little rush within, and Sara came to him. She was very pale, and had the air of a watcher to whom the past night had brought no sleep. It even seemed to Jack that she was in the same dress that she had worn the previous night, though that was a delusion. As soon as she saw that it was her brother, and that he was alone, she sent the maid away, and taking him by the arm, drew him into the little outer room. There had not been any sentimental fraternity between them in a general way. They were very good friends, and fond of each other, but not given to manifestations of sympathy and devotion. But this time as soon as he was within the door and she had him to herself, Sara threw her arms round Jack, and leaned against him, and went off without any warning into a sudden burst of emotion—not tears exactly. It was rather a struggle against tears. She sobbed and her breast heaved, and she clasped him convulsively. Jack was terribly surprised and shocked, feeling that so unusual an outburst must have a serious cause, and he was very tender with his sister. It did not last more than a minute, but it did more to convince him of the gravity of the crisis than any thing else had done. Sara regained command of herself almost immediately and ceased sobbing, and raised her head from his shoulder. “She is there,” she whispered, pointing to the inner room, and then she turned and went before him leading the way. The white curtains of Sara’s bed were drawn at one side, so as to screen the interior of the chamber. Within that enclosure a fire was burning brightly, and seated by it in an easy-chair, wrapped in one of Sara’s pretty dressing-gowns, with unaccustomed embroideries and soft frills and ribbons enclosing her brown worn hands and meagre throat, Mrs. Preston half sat, half reclined. The fire-light was flickering about her, and she lay back and looked at it and at every thing around her with a certain dreadful satisfaction. She looked round about upon the room and its comforts as people look on a new purchase. Enjoyment—a certain pleasure of possession—was written on her face.
When she saw Jack she moved a little, and drew the muslin wrapper more closely around her throat with a curious instinct of prudish propriety. It was the same woman to whose society he had accustomed himself as Pamela’s mother, and whom he had tutored himself to look upon as a necessary part of his future household, but yet she was a different creature. He did not know her in this new development. He followed Sara into her presence with a new sense of repulsion, a reluctance and dislike which he had never felt before. And Mrs. Preston for her part received him with an air which was utterly inexplicable—an air of patronage which made his blood boil.
“I hope you are better,” he said, not knowing how to begin; and then, after a pause, “Should not I go and tell Pamela that you are here? or would you like me to take you home?”
“I consider myself at home,” said Mrs. Preston, sitting up suddenly and bursting into speech. “I will send for Pamela, when it is all settled, I am very thankful to your sister for taking care of me last night. She shall find that it will be to her advantage. Sit down—I am sorry, Mr. John, that I can not say the same for you.”
“What is it you can not say for me?” said Jack: “I don’t know in the least what you would be at, Mrs. Preston; I suppose there must be some explanation of this strange conduct. What does it mean?”
“You will find that it means a great deal,” said the changed woman. “When you came to me to my poor little place, I did not want to have any thing to say to you; but I never thought of putting any meaning to what you, were doing. I was as innocent as a baby—I thought it was all love to my poor child. That was what I thought. And now you’ve stolen her heart away from me, and I know what it was for—I know what it was for.”
“Then what was it for?” said Jack, abruptly. He was by turns red and pale with anger. He found it very hard to keep his temper now that he was personally assailed.
“It was for this,” cried Pamela’s mother, with a shrill ring in her voice, pointing, as it seemed, to the pretty furniture and pictures round her—“for all this, and the fine house, and the park, and the money—that was what it was for. You thought you’d marry her and keep it all, and that I should never know what was my rights. But now I do know;—and you would have killed me last night!” she cried wildly, drawing back, with renewed passion—“you and your father; you would have killed me; I should have been a dead woman by this time if it had not been for her!”
Jack made a hoarse exclamation in his throat as she spoke. The room seemed to be turning round with him. He seemed to be catching glimpses of her meaning through some wild chaos of misunderstanding and darkness. He himself had never wished her ill, not even when she promised to be a burden on him. “Is she mad?” he said, turning to Sara; but he felt that she was not mad; it was something more serious than that.
“I know my rights,” she said, calming down instantaneously. “It’s my house you’ve been living in, and my money that has made you all so fine. You need not start or pretend as if you didn’t know. It was for that you came and beguiled my Pamela. You might have left me my Pamela; house, and money, and every thing, even down to my poor mother’s blessing,” said Mrs. Preston, breaking down pitifully, and falling into a passion of tears. “You have taken them all, you and yours; but you might have left me my child.”
Jack stood aghast while all this was being poured forth upon him; but Sara for her part fell a-crying too. “She has been saying the same all night,” said Sara; “what have we to do with her money or her mother’s blessing? Oh, Jack, what have we to do with them? What does it mean? I don’t understand any thing but about Pamela and you.”
“Nor I,” said Jack, in despair, and he made a little raid through the room in his consternation, that the sight of the two women crying might not make a fool of him; then he came back with the energy of desperation. “Look here, Mrs. Preston,” he said, “there may be some money question between my father and you—I can’t tell; but we have nothing to do with it. I know nothing about it. I think most likely you have been deceived somehow. But, right or wrong, this is not the way to clear it up. Money can not be claimed in this wild way. Get a lawyer who knows what he is doing to see after it for you; and in the mean time go home like a rational creature. You can not be permitted to make a disturbance here.”
“You shall never have a penny of it,” cried Mrs. Preston—“not a penny, if you should be starving—nor Pamela either; I will tell her all—that you wanted her for her money; and she will scorn you as I do—you shall have nothing from her or me.”
“Answer for yourself,” cried Jack, furious, “or be silent. She shall not be brought in. What do I care for your money? Sara, be quiet, and don’t cry. She ought never to have been brought here.”
“No,” cried the old woman, in her passion, “I ought to have been cast out on the roadside, don’t you think, to die if I liked? or I ought to have been killed, as you tried last night. That’s what you would do to me, while you slept soft and lived high. But my time has come. It’s you who must go to the door—the door!—and you need expect no pity from me.”
She sat in her feebleness and poverty as on a throne, and defied them, and they stood together bewildered by their ignorance, and did not know what answer to make her. Though it sounded like madness, it might be true. For any thing they could tell, what she was saying might have some foundation unknown to them. Sara by this time had dried her tears, and indignation had begun to take the place of distress in her mind. She gave her brother an appealing look, and clasped her hands. “Jack, answer her—do you know what to say to her?” she cried, stamping her little foot on the ground with impatience; “somebody must know; are we to stand by and hear it all, and do nothing? Jack, answer her!—unless she is mad—”
“I think she must be partly mad,” said Jack. “But it must be put a stop to somehow. Go and fetch my father. He is in the library. Whatever it may be, let us know at least what it means. I will stay with her here.”
When she heard these words, the strange inmate of Sara’s room came down from her height and relapsed into a feeble old woman. She called Sara not to go, to stay and protect her. She shrank back into her chair, drawing it away into a corner at the farthest distance possible, and sat there watchful and frightened, eying Jack as a hunted creature might eye the tiger which might at any moment spring upon it. Jack, for his part, with an exclamation of impatience, turned on his heel and went away from her, as far as space would permit. Impatience began to swallow up every other sentiment in his mind. He could not put up with it any longer. Whatever the truth might be, it was evident that it must be faced and acknowledged at once. While he kept walking about impatient and exasperated, all his respect for Pamela’s mother died out of his mind; even, it must be owned, in his excitement, the image of Pamela herself went back into the mists. A certain disgust took possession of him. If it was true that his father had schemed and struggled for the possession of this woman’s miserable money—if the threat of claiming it had moved him with some vague but awful temptation, such as Jack shuddered to think of; and if the idea of having rights and possessing something had changed the mild and humble woman who was Pamela’s mother into this frantic and insulting fury, then what was there worth caring for, what was there left to believe in, in this world? Perhaps even Pamela herself had been changed by this terrible test. Jack did not wish for the wings of a dove, being too matter-of-fact for that. But he felt as if he would like to set out for New Zealand without saying a word to any body, without breathing a syllable to a single soul on the way. It seemed as if that would be the only thing to do—he himself might get frantic or desperate too like the others about a little money. The backwoods, sheep-shearing, any thing would be preferable to that.
This pause lasted for some minutes, for Sara did not immediately return. When she came back, however, a heavier footstep accompanied her up the stair. Mr. Brownlow came into the room, and went at once toward the farther corner. He had made up his mind; once more he had become perfectly composed, calm as an attorney watching his client’s case. He called Jack to him, and went and stood by the table, facing Mrs. Preston. “I hear you have sent for me to know the meaning of all this,” he said; “I will tell you, for you have a right to know. Twenty-five years ago, before either of you was born, I had some money left me, which was to be transferred to a woman called Phœbe Thomson, if she could be found out or appeared within twenty-five years. I searched for her everywhere, but I could not find her. Latterly I forgot her existence to a great extent. The five-and-twenty years were out last night, and just before the period ended this—lady—as you both know, appeared. She says she is Phœbe Thomson, the legatee I have told you of. She may be so—I have nothing to say against her; but the proof lies with her, not me. This is all the explanation there is to make.”
When he had said it he drew a long breath of relief. It was the truth. It was not perhaps all the truth; but he had told the secret, which had weighed him down for months, and the burden was off his heart. He felt a little sick and giddy as he stood there before his children. He did not look them in the face. In his heart he knew there were many more particulars to tell. But it was not for them to judge of his heart. “I have told you the secret, so far as there is a secret,” he said, with a faint smile at them, and then sat down suddenly, exhausted with the effort. It was not so difficult after all. Now that it was done, a faint wonder crossed his mind that he had not done it long ago, and saved himself all this trouble. But still he was glad to sit down. Somehow, it took the strength out of him as few things had done before.
“A legatee!” burst forth Sara in amazement, not understanding the word. “Is that all? Papa, she says the house is hers, and every thing is hers. She says we have no right here. Is it true?”
As for Jack, he looked his father steadily in the face, asking, Was it true? more imperiously than Sara’s words did. If this were all, what was the meaning of the almost tragedy last night? They forgot the very existence of the woman who was the cause of it all as they turned upon him. Poverty and wealth were small matters in comparison. He was on his trial at an awful tribunal, before judges too much alarmed, too deeply interested, to be lenient. They turned their backs upon Mrs. Preston, who, notwithstanding her fear and her anxiety, could not bear the neglect. Their disregard of her roused her out of her own self-confidence and certainty, to listen with a certain forlorn eagerness. She had not paid much attention to what Mr. Brownlow said the first time. What did it matter what he said? Did not she know better? But when Jack and Sara turned their backs on her, and fixed their eyes on their father, she woke up with an intense mortification and disappointment at finding herself overlooked, and began to listen too.
Mr. Brownlow rose up as a man naturally does who has to plead guilty or not guilty for his life. He stood before them, putting his hand on the table to support himself. “It is not true,” he said, “I do not deny that I have been thinking a great deal about this. If I had but known, I should have told you; but these are the real facts. If she is Phœbe Thomson, as she says—though of that we have no proof—she is entitled to fifty thousand pounds which her mother left her. That is the whole. To pay her her legacy may force me to leave this house, and change our mode of living; but she has nothing to do with the house—nothing here is hers, absolutely nothing. She has no more to do with Brownlows than your baker has, or your dress-maker. If she is Phœbe Thomson, I shall owe her money—nothing more. I might have told you, if I had but known.”
What Mr. Brownlow meant was, that he would have told them had he known, after all, how little it would cost to tell it. After all, there was nothing disgraceful in the tale, notwithstanding the terrible shifts to which he had put himself to conceal it. He had spoken it out, and now his mind was free. If he had but known what a relief it would be! But he sat down as soon as he had finished speaking; and he did not feel as if he could pay much attention to any thing else. His mind was in a state of confusion about what had happened the previous night. It seemed to him that he had said or done something he ought not to have done or said. But now he had made his supreme disclosure, and given up the struggle. It did not much matter what occurred besides.
Mrs. Preston, however, who had been listening eagerly, and whom nobody regarded for the moment, rose up and made a step forward among them. “He may deny it,” she said, trembling; “but I know he’s known it all this time, and kept us out of our rights. Fifty pound—fifty thousand pound—what does he say? I know better. It is all mine, every penny, and he’s been keeping us out of our rights. You’ve been all fed and nourished on what was mine—your horses and your carriages, and all your grandeur; and he says it’s but fifty pounds! Don’t you remember that there’s One that protects the fatherless?” she cried out, almost screaming. The very sight of his composure made her wild and desperate. “You make no account of me,” she cried—“no more than if I was the dust under your feet, and I’m the mistress of all—of all; and if it had not been for her you would have killed me last night.”
These words penetrated even Mr. Brownlow’s stupor; he gave a shudder as if with the cold.
“I was very hard driven last night,” he said, as if to himself—“very hard put to it. I don’t know what I may have said.” Then he made a pause, and rose and went to his enemy, who fell back into the chair, and took fright as he approached her, putting out her two feeble hands to defend herself. “If you are Phœbe Thomson,” he said, “you shall have your rights. I know nothing about you—I never thought of you. This house is mine, and you have nothing to do here. All you have any right to is your money, and you shall have your money when you prove your identity. But I can not leave you here to distress my child. If you are able to think at all, you must see that you ought to go home. Send for the carriage to take her home,” Mr. Brownlow added, turning to his children. “If she is the person she calls herself, she is a relation of your mother’s; and anyhow, she is weak and old. Take care of her. Sara, my darling, you are not to stay here with her, nor let her vex you; but I leave her in your hands.”
“I will do what you tell me, papa,” said Sara; and then he stood for a moment and looked at them wistfully. They had forsaken him last night; both of them—or at least so he fancied—had gone over to the enemy; and that had cut him to the heart. Now he turned to them wistfully, looking for a little support and comfort. It would not be so hard after all if his children went with him into captivity. They had both been so startled and excited that but for this look, and the lingering, expectant pause he made, neither would have thought of their father’s feelings. But it was impossible to misunderstand him now. Sara, in her impulsive way, went up to him and put her arms round his neck. “Papa, it is we who have been hard upon you,” she said; and as for Jack, who could not show his feelings by an embrace, he also made a kind of amende in an ungracious masculine way. He said, “I’m coming with you, sir. I’ll see after the carriage,” and marched off behind his father to the door. Neither of them took any farther notice of Mrs. Preston. It seemed to her as if they did not care. They were not afraid of her; they did not come obsequiously to her feet, as she had thought they would. On the contrary, they were banding together among themselves against her, making a league among themselves, taking no notice of her. And her own child was not there to comfort her heart. It was a great shock and downfall to the unhappy woman. She had been a good woman so long as she was untempted. But it had seemed to her, in the wonderful prospect of a great fortune, that every body would fall at her feet; that she would be able to do what she pleased—to deal with all her surroundings as she pleased. When she saw she could not do so, her mind grew confused—fifty pound, fifty thousand pound, which was it? And she was alone, and they were all banding themselves against her. Money seemed nothing in comparison to the elevation, the supremacy she had dreamed of. And they did not even take the trouble to look at her as they went away!
