Brownlows

CHAPTER XXVIII.

DESPAIR

It was nearly two hours after this when Jack Brownlow met Powys at the gate. It was a moonlight night, and the white illumination which fell upon the departing visitor perhaps increased the look of excitement and desperation which might have been apparent even to the most indifferent passer-by. He had been walking very quickly down the avenue; his boots and his dress gleamed in the moonlight as if he had been burying himself among the wet grass and bushes in the park. His hat was over his brows, his face haggard and ghastly. No doubt it was partly the effect of the wan and ghostly moonlight, but still there must have been something more in it, or Jack, who loved him little, would not have stopped as he did to see what was the matter. Jack was all the more bent upon stopping that he could see Powys did not wish it, and all sorts of hopes and suspicions sprang up in his mind. His father had dismissed the intruder, or he had so far forgotten himself as to betray his feelings to Sara, and she had dismissed him. Once more curiosity came in Powys’s way. Jack was so resolute to find out what it was, that, for the first time in his life, he was friendly to his father’s clerk. “Are you walking?” he said; “I’ll go with you a little way. It is a lovely night.”

“Yes,” said Powys; and he restrained his headlong course a little. It was all he could do—that, and to resist the impulse to knock Jack down and be rid of him. It might not have been so very easy, for the two were tolerably well matched; but poor Powys was trembling with the force of passion, and would have been glad of any opportunity to relieve himself either in the way of love or hatred. Nothing of this description, however, seemed practicable to him. The two young men walked down the road together, keeping a little apart, young, strong, tall, full of vigor, and with a certain likeness in right of their youth and strength. There should even have been the sympathy between them which draws like to like. And yet how unlike they were! Jack had taken his fate in his hand, and was contemplating with a cheerful daring, which was half ignorance, a descent to the position in which his companion stood. It would be sweetened in his case by all the ameliorations possible, or so at least he thought; and, after all, what did it matter? Whereas Powys was smarting under the miserable sense of having been placed in a false position in addition to all the pangs of unhappy love, and of having betrayed himself and the confidence put in him, and sacrificed his honor, and cut himself off forever from the delight which still might have been his. All these pains and troubles were struggling together within him. He would have felt more keenly still the betrayal of the trust his employer had placed in him, had he not felt bitterly that Mr. Brownlow had subjected him to temptations which it was not in flesh and blood to bear. Thus every kind of smart was accumulated within the poor young fellow’s spirit—the sense of guilt, the sense of being hardly used, the consciousness of having shut himself out from paradise, the knowledge, beyond all, that his love was hopeless and all the light gone out of his life. It may be supposed how little inclination he had to enter into light conversation, or to satisfy the curiosity of Jack.

They walked on together in complete silence for some minutes, their footsteps ringing in harmony along the level road, but their minds and feelings as much out of harmony as could be conceived. Jack was the first to speak. “It’s pleasant walking to-night,” he said, feeling more conciliatory than he could have thought possible; “how long do you allow yourself from here to Masterton? It is a good even road.”

“Half an hour,” said Powys, carelessly.

“Half an hour! that’s quick work,” said Jack. “I don’t think you’ll manage that to night. I have known that mare of mine do it in twenty minutes; but I don’t think you could match her pace.”

“She goes very well,” said the Canadian, with a moderation which nettled Jack.

“Very well! I never saw any thing go like her,” he said—“that is, with a cart behind her. What kind of cattle have you in Canada? I suppose there’s good sport there of one kind or another. Shouldn’t you like to go back?”

“I am going back,” said Powys. He said it in the depth of his despair, and it startled himself as soon as it was said. Go back? yes! that was the only thing to do—but how?

“Really?” said Jack with surprise and no small relief, and then a certain human sentiment awoke within him. “I hope you haven’t had a row with the governor?” he said; “it always seemed to me he had too great a fancy for you. I beg your pardon for saying so just now, especially if you’re vexed; but look here—I’m not much of a one for a peace-maker; but if you don’t mind telling me what it’s about—”

“I have had no row with Mr. Brownlow; it is worse than that,” said Powys; “it is past talking of; I have been both an ass and a knave, and there’s nothing for me but to take myself out of every body’s way.”

Once more Jack looked at him in the moonlight, and saw that quick heave of his breast which betrayed the effort he was making to keep himself down, and a certain spasmodic quiver in his lip.

“I wouldn’t be too hasty if I were you,” he said. “I don’t think you can have been a knave. We’re all of us ready enough to make fools of ourselves,” the young philosopher added, with a touch of fellow-feeling. “You and I haven’t been over-good friends, you know, but you might as well tell me what it’s all about.”

“You were quite right,” said Powys, hastily. “I ought never to have come up here. And it was not my doing. It was a false position all along. A man oughtn’t to be tempted beyond his strength. Of course I have nobody to blame but myself. I don’t suppose I would be a knave about money or any thing of that sort. But it’s past talking of; and besides I could not, even if it were any good, make a confidant of you.”

It was not difficult for Jack to divine what this despair meant, and he was touched by the delicacy which would not name his sister’s name. “I lay a hundred pounds it’s Sara’s fault,” he said to himself. But he gave no expression to the sentiment. And of course it was utterly beyond hope, and the young fellow in Powys’s position who should yield to such a temptation must indeed have made an ass of himself. But in the circumstances Jack was not affronted at the want of confidence in himself.

“I don’t want to pry into your affairs,” he said. “I don’t like it myself; but I would not do any thing hastily if I were you. A man mayn’t be happy, but, so far as I can see, he must live all the same.”

“Yes, that’s the worst,” said Powys; “a fellow can’t give in and get done with it. Talk is no good; but I shall have to go. I shall speak to your father to-morrow, and then—Good-night. Don’t come any farther. I’ve been all about the place to say good-bye. I am glad to have had this talk with you first. Good-night.”

“Good-night,” said Jack, grasping the hand of his fellow. Their hands had never met in the way of friendship before. Now they clasped each other warmly, closely, with an instinctive sympathy. Powys’s mind was so excited with other things, so full of supreme emotion, that this occurrence, though startling enough, did not have much effect upon him. But it made a very different impression upon Jack, who was full of surprise and compunction, and turned, after he had made a few steps in the direction of Brownlows, with a reluctant idea of “doing something” for the young fellow who was so much less lucky than himself. It was a reluctant idea, for he was prejudiced, and did not like to give up his prejudices, and at the same time he was generous, and could not but feel for a brother in misfortune. But Powys was already far on his way, out of hearing, and almost out of sight. “He will do it in the half-hour,” Jack said to himself, with admiration. “By Jove! how the fellow goes! and I’ll lay you any thing it’s all Sara’s fault.” He was very hard upon Sara in the revulsion of his feelings. Of course she could have done nothing but send her presumptuous admirer away. But, then, had she not led him on and encouraged him? “The little flirt!” Jack said to himself; and just then he was passing Swayne’s cottage, which lay in the deep blackness of the shadow made by the moonlight. He looked up tenderly at the light that burned in the upper window. He had grown foolish about that faint little light, as was only natural. There was one who was no flirt, who never would have tempted any man and drawn him on to the breaking of his heart. From the height of his own good fortune Jack looked down upon poor Powys speeding along with despair in his soul along the Masterton road. Something of that soft remorse which is the purest bloom of personal happiness softened his thoughts. Poor Powys! And there was nothing that could be done for him. He could not compel his fate as Jack himself could do. For him there was nothing in store but the relinquishment of all hope, the giving up of all dreams. The thought made Jack feel almost guilty in his own independence and well-being. Perhaps he could yet do or say something that would smooth the other’s downfall—persuade him to remain at least at Masterton, where he need never come in the way of the little witch who had beguiled him, and afford him his own protection and friendship instead. As Jack thought of the little house that he himself, separated from Brownlows and its comforts, was about to set up at Masterton, his benevolence toward Powys grew still stronger. He was a fellow with whom a man could associate on emergency; and no doubt this was all Sara’s fault. He went home to Brownlows disposed to stand Powys’s friend if there was any question of him. But when Jack reached home there was no question of Powys. On the whole it was not a cheerful house into which he entered. Lights were burning vacantly in the drawing-room, but there was nobody there. Lights were burning dimly down stairs. It looked like a deserted place as he went up and down the great staircase, and through the silent rooms, and found nobody. Mr. Brownlow himself was in the library with the door shut, where, in the present complexion of affairs, Jack did not care to disturb him; and Miss Sara had gone to bed with a headache, he was told, when, after searching for her everywhere, he condescended to inquire. Sara was not given to headaches, and the intimation startled her brother. And he went and sat in the drawing-room alone, and stared at the lights, and contrasted this solitary grandeur with the small house whose image was in his mind. The little cozy, tiny, sunshiny place, where one little bright face would always smile; where there would always be some one ready to listen, ready to be interested, ready to take a share in every thing. The picture looked very charming to him after the dreariness of this great room, and Sara gone to bed, and poor Powys banished and broken-hearted. That was not to be his own fate, and Jack grew pious and tender in his self-gratulations. After all, poor Powys was a very good sort of fellow; but as it happened, it was Jack who had drawn all the prizes of life. He did think at one time of going down stairs notwithstanding the delicate state of his own relations with his father, and making such excuses as were practicable for the unfortunate clerk, who had permitted himself to be led astray in this foolish manner. “Of course it was a great risk bringing him here at all,” Jack thought of saying, that Mr. Brownlow might be brought to a due sense of his own responsibility in the matter; but after long consideration, he wisely reflected that it would be best to wait until the first parties to the transaction had pronounced themselves. If Sara did not mean to say any thing about it, nor Powys, why should he interfere? upon which conclusion, instead of going down stairs, he went to bed, thinking again how cheerless it was for each member of the household to start off like this without a single good-night, and how different it would be in the new household that was to come.

Sara came to breakfast next morning looking very pale. The color had quite gone out of her cheeks, and she had done herself up in a warm velvet jacket, and had the windows closed as soon as she came into the room. “They never will remember that the summer’s over,” she said, with a shiver, as she took her place; but she made no farther sign of any kind. Clearly she had no intention of complaining of her rash lover;—so little, indeed, that when Mr. Brownlow was about to go away, she held out a book to him timidly, with a sudden blush. “Mr. Powys forgot to take this with him last night; would you mind taking it to him, papa?” she said, very meekly; and as Jack looked at her, Sara blushed redder and redder. Not that she had any occasion to blush. It might be meant as an olive-branch or even a pledge of hope; but still it was only a book that Powys had left behind him. Mr. Brownlow accepted the charge with a little surprise, and he, too, looked at her so closely that it was all she could do to restrain a burst of tears.