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Brownlows
CHAPTER XLII.
A GUARDIAN
It was Jack who hurried his sister down the avenue in obedience to that peremptory summons. The effects of the fresh air and rapid movement roused her, as we have said, and nobody but herself had been aware that her strength had ever failed her. Jack was wound up to the last pitch of suspense and agitation; but he could not say a word to her—would not tell her what she was to do. “How can I tell till I see what is wanted of you?” he said, savagely. She did not know what might be laid upon her, or why she was sent for; but she was left to accept the office alone. He gave her no help except his arm to support her down the avenue—a support which was not of much use to Sara, for her brother walked at such a pace that she was scarcely able to keep up with him. He was walking a great deal more rapidly than he was at all aware. Things had come to a climax in Jack’s mind. He was burning with feverish irritation, anxiety, eagerness, and panic. He had thought that his mind was made up, and that nothing farther would disturb him. But in a moment he had become more disturbed than ever. The end that must decide every thing had come.
There was a certain air of excitement about Swayne’s cottages as they approached. Old Betty’s lodge was closed and vacant for one thing, and the gates set wide open; and the blinds were down in Mrs. Swayne’s windows, and her neighbor stood in the little garden outside watching, with her hand on the door. She was waiting for their coming; and Betty within, who was utterly useless so far as the patient was concerned, flitted up and down stairs looking for the arrival of the visitor who was so anxiously expected. They received Sara with a mixture of eager curiosity and deference. “She’s been a-calling for you, Miss,” said Mrs. Swayne’s neighbor, “as if she would go out of her mind.” “She’s a-calling for you now,” cried old Betty; “she don’t seem to have another thought in her head—and the rector by the bedside all the same, and her so near her latter end!” Even Mr. Swayne himself, with his wife’s shawl round him, had come to the kitchen door to join in the general sentiment. “The Lord be praised as you’ve come, Miss Sara,” he said. “I thought as she’d have driven me wild.” This preface was not of a kind to calm Sara’s nerves. She went up stairs confused with all the salutations addressed to her, and full of awe, almost of fear. To be sent for by a woman on her death-bed was of itself something alarming and awful. And this woman above all.
As for Jack, all that he heard of this babble was the intimation that the rector was there. It added another spark, if that were possible, to the fire in his heart. The doctor knew all about it—now here was another, yet another, to be taken into the dying woman’s confidence. Though nobody asked for him, and though his presence seemed little desirable, he went up after his sister without saying a word to any one. They could hear the voice of the patient as they approached—a voice almost unintelligible, thick and babbling, like the voice of an idiot, and incessant. Mrs. Preston’s eyes still blazing with wild anxiety and suspicion met Sara’s wondering, wistful gaze as she went timidly into the room. Pamela stood by like a ghost with utter weariness and a kind of dull despair in her pallid face. She could not understand what it all meant. To her the mot of the enigma, which had been wanting at the commencement, could now never be supplied, for she was too completely worn out in body and mind to be able to receive a new idea. She beckoned to Sara almost impatiently as she opened the door. “Yes, mamma, she has come—she has come,” said Pamela. Mr. Hardcastle was standing behind her with his prayer-book in his hand, looking concerned and impatient. He was amazed at the neglect with which he was being treated in the first place, and, to do him justice, he also felt strongly that, as Betty said, she was near her latter end, and other interests should be foremost in her mind. Old Betty herself came pressing in after Jack, and Mrs. Swayne followed her a few minutes later, and the neighbor stood outside on the landing. Their curiosity was roused to such a pitch that it eclipsed every other feeling—not that the women were hard-hearted or indifferent to the solemn moment which was at hand, they all wanted to know what she could have to say to Sara, and they were all curious to witness the tragedy about to be enacted and to see whether she made a good end.
“Ah, she’s come,” said Mrs. Preston in her thick voice. “Bring her here to me. Not him—I don’t want him. Sara! come here! It’s you I can speak to—only you. Give me something. I have a dozen words to say, and I must say them strong.”
“Here, mamma,” said Pamela, who watched with a sort of mechanical accuracy every indication of her mother’s will; and she put her soft arm under Mrs. Preston’s head and raised her with a strain of her slight girlish form, which at another moment would have been impossible. Jack made a step forward involuntarily to help her, but stopped short, arrested by the dying woman’s eyes, which she fixed upon him over Pamela’s shoulder as the cordial which was to give her strength to speak was put to her lips. She stopped even at that moment to look at him. “Not you,” she said, hoarsely—“not you.” It was not that he cared what she said, or even understood it, in his own excitement; but Pamela had her back turned upon him as she supported her mother; and Jack felt with a pang of poignant humiliation that there was no place for him there. Even her interests, the charge of her, seemed to be passing out of his hands.
“If you are going to speak to me—about—any thing,” cried Sara, “I don’t know what it is—nor why you should send for me; but do you want all these people too?”
Mrs. Preston looked at them vaguely—but she took no notice of what Sara said. “I have sent for you,” she cried, uttering two or three words at a time, as if making a last effort to be intelligible, “because you saved me. I leave her to you; you’re only a girl; you will not kill her; for the sake of her money. My mother’s money! And to think we might all have been—comfortable—and happy! and now, I’m going to die!”
“Oh, mamma!” cried Pamela, clasping her hands wildly, “if you would but put away every thing from your mind—if you would but stop, thinking, and do what the doctor says, you might get better yet.”
The dying woman made an attempt as it were to shake her head—she made a dreadful attempt to smile. “Poor child!” she said, and something like a tear got into her dilated eyes, “she don’t know. That’s life; never to know—till the very last—when you might have been happy—and comfortable; and then to die—”
“Mrs. Preston,” cried Sara, going up to the bed, “I don’t know what you mean or what I can do; but, oh, if you will only listen to Pamela! You are strong—you can speak and remember every thing. Oh, can’t you try to live for her sake? We will all pray,” she cried with tears, “every one of us—if you will only try! Oh, Mr. Hardcastle, pray for her—why should she die, and she so strong? and to leave Pamela like this!”
“Hush,” said Mr. Hardcastle, almost sternly, “Sara, you forget there are things more important than life.”
“Not to Pamela!” cried Sara, carried away by the vehemence of her feelings. “Oh, Mrs. Preston, try! You are strong yet—you could live if you were to try.”
A kind of spasm passed over the poor woman’s face. Perhaps a momentary hope of being able to make that effort crossed her mind—perhaps it was only a terrible smile at the vanity of the proposal. But it passed and left her eyes more wild in their passionate entreaty than before, “You don’t—answer,” she said; “you forsake me—like the rest. Sara! Sara! you are killing me. She is killing me. Give me an answer. Oh, my God, she will not speak!”
Sara looked round upon them all in her dismay. “You should have the doctor,” she said: her inexperienced mind had seized upon Pamela’s incoherent remonstrance. “Where is the doctor? Oh, could not something be done for her if he was here?”
Then Pamela gave a low cry. Her mother, who had been motionless for hours, after a wild struggle turned her head round upon the pillow. Her palsied fingers fluttered on the coverlid as if with an attempt to stretch themselves out toward Sara. Her eyes were ready to start from their sockets. “She will not speak to me!” she cried—“although she saved me. I make her guardian of my child. Do you hear?—is there any one to hear me? She is to take care of my Pamela. She is killing me. Sara, Sara! do you hear? I am speaking to you. You are to take care of my Pamela. I leave her to you—”
“Do what she says,” said a low voice at Sara’s shoulder. “Promise any thing—every thing. She must not be thwarted now.”
Sara did not know who it was that spoke. She made a step forward, recovering her native impetuosity. She laid her warm living hand upon the cold half-dead one of the dying woman and left it there, though the touch thrilled to her heart. “I will take care of her,” she said, “I promise, as if she was my sister. Do you hear me now, Mrs. Preston? I promise with all my heart. Oh, Pamela, I don’t think she hears me! I have said it too late—she is going to die.”
The doctor, who had spoken to Sara, came forward and drew her softly from the bedside. “Take her away,” he said to Jack, who all this while had been looking on. “Take them both away—they can do no good here—”
Sara, who was trembling in every limb, fell back upon her brother’s supporting arm; but when Jack held out his other hand to Pamela she made him no reply. She was weaker than Sara, but she was a hundred times stronger. She gave him one pitiful look and returned to her mother. That was her place, come what might; and she was so young, that even now she could not recognize that there was no hope.
Then Jack took his sister down stairs. They went into the little parlor, which was full to his mind of so many associations. Sara had not, like Pamela, the support of intense and overwhelming emotion. She was shaken to the very depths by this extraordinary trial. As soon as it was over she fell into hysterical sobbing like a child. She could not restrain herself. She sunk upon the little black sofa in the parlor, where Mrs. Preston had so often rested, and hid her face in her hands to keep down as far as she could the irrepressible sobs. Jack had begun to walk about the room and seemed to take no notice; but he was thinking in his heart how small a matter it was to her in comparison with what it was to Pamela, though it was she and not Pamela who indulged in this show of sorrow. He was unkind to his sister; he was bitter against her, and against all the world. It was his natural charge that had been transferred to her hands; and who was Sara that she should have such a guardianship given to her? He vowed to himself that it was he and only he who should take care of Pamela. Sara? a girl who knew nothing about it—a child with no power to take care of herself—the woman must be mad. He went to the door with a little excitement as the sound became audible of other people coming down stairs. The spectators who had crowded into Mrs. Preston’s sick room were being sent away, and old Betty, thus deprived of one source of interest, came in courtesying to make herself useful to Sara. “Poor soul, she’s awful bad;” said Betty, “but, Miss Sara, don’t you take on; you’ve been a comfort to her. She’s a deal easier in her mind; she’s found friends for her girl, as was always her great thought. Don’t you take on—”
“Oh, Betty, is she dead?” cried Sara, to whom the sympathy even of this old woman was a consolation, excited as she was.
“No, Miss,” said Betty, shaking her head. “It ain’t so easy getting shut o’ this life. She ain’t dead, nor won’t be not yet awhile—judging by all as I’ve seen in my day.”
“Then she is getting better,” cried Sara, clasping her hands. “Oh, Jack, thank God! she is going to live.”
Old Betty again shook her head. “Miss Sara, you’re young,” she said; “you don’t know no better. She ain’t a-going to live. But them things take more nor a minute. This world had need to be a better place than it is to most on us; for it’s hard work a-getting in and it’s harder work a-getting out. She may lie like that for days and days. Most folks get to be glad at last when it’s over. It’s weary work, both for them as is nursin’ and them as is dyin’; but it’s what we all has to go through,” said Betty, with a conventional sigh.
This time, however, Betty, with all her experience, was not a true prophet. The strength of the dying woman was fictitious. As soon as she had got beyond the point at which her mind could still work, her body went down like so much dead weight; consciousness and intelligence had failed her while Sara was in the act of making her promise, and in a few minutes the rector, excited and rather angry, joined the others down stairs. “You should have waited, Sara,” he said, severely; “no worldly affairs could be so important as to justify—And then what can you do for the poor girl? I would humor the fancies of the dying as much as any one; but if the poor thing is left destitute, unless you take her into your service—”
“Mr. Hardcastle,” exclaimed Jack, furious, “do you know whom you are speaking of? Miss Preston is my betrothed wife.”
The rector fell back in dismay for a moment. Then he recovered himself with a certain dignity. “My dear Jack,” he said, “this is not a moment to discuss any act of youthful folly. Your good father ought to know of this. Don’t, I beg of you, don’t say any thing more to me.”
“And all that we have in the world belongs to Pamela,” said Sara, with a sigh. Mr. Hardcastle looked at the brother and sister, and his usual discrimination forsook him. He thought they were both out of their senses. As there was nobody else to communicate with, he looked round at old Betty, who stood listening eagerly; and Betty, too, elevated her eyebrows, and shook her head. Were they going mad? Was there some idiocy in the air which affected every body? The rector went to the window, and turned his back upon them, and looked out in his bewilderment. He felt very sorry for poor Mr. Brownlow. Then he seemed to get a glimmering of the meaning of it all. It was for Sara’s aid in securing this marriage that the poor creature up stairs had been so anxious. Her mind had been passionately occupied about merely worldly interests to the last; and for this he and his higher consolation had been thrust away. Poor Brownlow! Mr. Hardcastle thought of his own dutiful Fanny, who never gave way to any vagaries. And he buttoned his coat with a friendly instinct. “I am going to see your father, as I can be of no farther use here,” he said; and there was a world of disapproval in his tone.
But just then there were some hurried movements above, and a cry. It was Pamela, who was calling on her mother, appealing to an ear which no longer heard. They all knew instinctively what it meant. Sara started up, trembling and clasping her hands. She had never been in the same house with death before—never that she knew of; and a dreadful sense that Mrs. Preston had suddenly become a spiritual presence, and was everywhere about her, seized upon the girl. “I promise,” she said, wildly, with lips that gave forth very little sound. As for Jack, he too started as if something had struck him. He went up to his sister, though he had been angry with her, and took her into his arms for a moment. “Sara, go to her,” he said. He forgot all about secondary things—his heart bled for his Pamela. “Go to her!” he cried; and something like a sob came from his breast. Not for the poor soul that was gone—not for her to whom at last the trouble and toil were over; for the young creature who remained behind to profit by all the mother’s unrewarded pains—for the living, not for the dead.
The doctor came down stairs shortly after; and though he was grave, there was a professional tone about him which dispelled the awe of the group below. “It is all over,” he said, “and a very good thing too for that poor girl. She could not have stood it much longer. I am very glad Miss Brownlow has gone to her. It’s excessively good of your sister. I was obliged to interfere, you know. Nobody need hold themselves bound, unless they please, by a promise extorted like that; but in such a case one never can tell what might have happened. The patient must be humored. I feared—”
“No more,” said Jack—“don’t say any more; you did what was quite right. It is Miss Preston who must be considered now. Could she be removed at once? Would it be safe to take her away at once? for my sister, of course, I mean.”
“Miss Preston?” said the doctor, a little puzzled. “Oh, the daughter, you mean, poor thing! It would be the very best plan to take her away; but she is a good little thing, and she wouldn’t go.”
“Never mind your opinion of her,” cried Jack, keeping his temper with difficulty. “Tell me if we can take her away?”
“She will not go,” said the doctor, offended in his turn. “As for opinions, I have a right to my opinion if she was the queen. She’s not the sort of girl to be taken away. After the funeral it may be done, perhaps. Good-morning. I shall see her to-morrow. Mr. Hardcastle, if you like I can set you down at the rectory—I am going that way.”
“Thanks, I have to go somewhere else first,” said the rector; and the other parish functionary departed accordingly, going softly for the first dozen steps out of respect for the dead. Then Mr. Hardcastle put on his hat, and looked at Jack.
“I am going to Brownlows,” he said. “I am very sorry to have such an office to fulfill; but your father must know, Jack, what has been going on here to-day.”
Jack was in no merry mood, but he was unable to retain a short hard laugh which relieved him as well as any other expression of feeling. “Yes, you are free to tell him,” he said, and he felt disposed to laugh again loudly when he looked at the rector’s severe and disapproving face. It gave him a certain cynical and grim amusement to see it. How blind and stupid every body was! What immovable, shallow dolts, to look on at all those mysteries of death and ruin, and never to be a whit the wiser! He could have laughed, but his laughter, such as it was, was internal—that too might be misunderstood. He waved old Betty impatiently away, and he turned his back on Mr. Hardcastle who was going. When he turned round again both were gone. He even paused to think they were not so unlike each other; Betty perhaps on the whole had most understanding of the two. He went to the window and watched the old woman cross reluctantly to the lodge, and the rector enter the avenue. Betty, however, could not stay away. She came stealing back again, not perceiving Jack, looking cautiously round to make sure that both the rector and the doctor were out of sight. She stopped to speak to the neighbor who was at her door, and they shook their heads over the sad story, and then Betty crept into Mrs. Swayne’s cottage and stole up stairs. Jack took the pains to watch all this, but it was not because he was interested in old Betty. He was reluctant to go back to his own thoughts—to face the situation in which he found himself. When he could delay no longer, he sat down at the table as if he had work to do, and buried his head in his hands. Yes, she was dead, poor woman! The fortune which had excited her almost to madness, which had changed her from an humble, tender creature anxious to serve every body, into an elated tyrant eager to tramp the world under foot, had never reached her grasp. Poor soul! At the very last moment of her life to undergo this awful temptation and to fall under it, and give the lie to all her dutiful and pious existence! Instead of pondering over his own difficulty, these were the reflections in which Jack’s mind plunged itself. She had gone where money could do her no good, and yet at the very end she had agitated and even stained her spotless life for it, leaving painful recollections behind her, though she had been a good woman, perhaps even shortening her own days. What a hard fate it was! how cruel to have had the irresistible temptation so late, and to have no time left her to efface the recollection of her momentary frenzy. Jack’s heart grew soft toward her as it all came before him. Poor soul! Poor woman! no time even to say her prayers and ask God’s pardon before she died; perhaps, however, on the whole, though Mr. Hardcastle might be of a different opinion, God, who knew all, was less likely to be deceived by that ebullition than man. When he tried to think of his own course of action at this difficult moment, his mind went off at a tangent. It was in vain that he attempted to consider what he was to do. The quiet of death had fallen over the agitated house in which he sat, and his own agitation died out in that chilly calm. Then he got up with a kind of dull composure in his mind to go home. Every thing must be postponed now until the few first days of darkness were over. It was the only tribute that could be paid to the dead.
Before he went away Sara came to him for a moment. Her eyes were red with crying, but she had recovered herself. “Tell papa I must stay with her,” said Sara. “I can not leave her. I don’t think she could have borne it much longer; and there is only me to take care of her now.”
“You? to take care of her?” cried Jack. “How long is this folly to last? Am not I to see her?” and then his flash of resentment died away. “Sara, if you are not good to her, tender to her!” he said with tears coming into his eyes in spite of him. “And she so young! not much more than a child. Why can’t I bring down the carriage for her, and take her home?”
“And leave her mother here!” said Sara, turning away with the impatience of excitement. As for Jack, he was walking about in the passage while she spoke to him from the stair. He could have cried like one of the girls—he could have taken his sister in his arms, or have stormed at her. A hundred contradictory contending feelings were in his heart.
“Her mother is dead,” he said. “What good can she do here now? why can’t you show her the reason of it? she would be much better at Brownlows. The doctor said so. She will come with you.”
“Never while her mother lies there,” cried Sara—“her poor mother who loved her so! I know what is in her heart; and she shall do as she pleases. Tell papa, unless he wants me, that I must stay here.”
And she stayed, and Jack went up the avenue alone. He met two carriages coming down, and had to stop and tell why he had not been present to say good-bye, and what had detained Sara. The ladies in the carriages stared very strangely at his few brief words of apology. And they gazed at each other in consternation as they passed on. It might be very good of Sara to go and watch by a sick-bed, but to leave her guests for it, to let them all depart without a word as if it had been a hotel—altogether it was a strange family. Mr. Brownlow had told them he expected to be ruined, though there was no visible appearance of it. And Sara had rushed away from them, from the head of the table without a word, on the very last day, to attend a poor woman’s death-bed. Not very much like Sara, they said; and they began to give each other significant looks and to ask if the Brownlows had “any thing wrong” in their blood. They were so new as a county family. People had no information about their grandfathers and grandmothers; but they looked as if they were all mad—that was the fact. It was the strangest way to treat their guests.
And there were some of the guests, as Jack found on returning to the house, who were not going to leave till the next day. They were sulky and offended, as was natural. To make arrangements for a pleasant visit, and to be all but turned out before the time you had yourself fixed—and then to have your mind confused by vague stories about ruin and loss, and somebody who was dying! It was not to be supposed that any one could be pleased. Mr. Hardcastle had been there, and he had not mended matters. He had told one or two men how sorry he was for poor Brownlow—how he feared Jack had got entangled somehow, and had been so foolish as to involve his sister—and how things were in a bad way. All sorts of vague rumors were floating about the house—the servants were prepared for any thing, from the reduction of their wages to the arrest of their master. They watched the door anxiously, and cast furtive looks down the avenue, that they might not be taken unprepared; and Mr. Willis secretly removed a good deal of the plate into a dark corner of the wine cellar. “Master might want it,” he said to himself—judging it not off the cards that master might be obliged to run away, and might be glad of a silver tea-pot or so to pay his expenses.
How they could have got through the evening it is impossible to tell, had not Sara appeared before dinner, very pale, with red eyes, and a melancholy face. Every body rushed at her when she appeared—in a kind of consternation. And for a moment it seemed to both her father and brother that their adversary had come alive, and that the struggle was to begin again. Sara’s explanation, however, was the simple one that Pamela had fallen asleep, and that she had thought they would want her at home for dinner. So she went and dressed herself, like a martyr, and carried them through the embarrassed meal. It was she upon whom the chief burden fell, and she took up the weight and carried it without flinching. So the long confused eventful day came to an end. When it was late and all the bewildered people had retired to their rooms, Mr. Brownlow and Jack took her down the avenue, guarding her tenderly, one on either side. There was little said between them, but their hearts were full—a kind of gratitude, a kind of sorrow, a certain pervading sense of union and sympathy had come into their minds; and the two men regarded with a half wondering, half pitying enthusiasm, a waking up of all the springs of natural love, the soft creature between them, the indulged, petted, faulty girl who now had every thing to do. They both kissed her when they left her, with an overflowing of their hearts, and stood and looked at the dark cottage with the faint lights in its windows, saying nothing. In the upper window was the dim glow of the light in the chamber of the dead—the needless pathetic glimmer which shone faintly over the covered face and closed eyes; below, in the little parlor, where a bed had been hastily prepared for her, Pamela was sleeping in her profound exhaustion, almost as pale as her mother, shaded from the dim candlelight. The father and son did not speak, but they grasped each other’s hands closely as they looked at the house, and turned away and walked home in silence. A certain confusion, consolation, and calm, all mingled with wonder and suspense, had come over them—words were of no use at that moment. And Sara went in and took up her guardianship—and slept and waked and watched all night long in the weakness and strength of her youth.
