Jack once more thrust his hands into the depths of his pockets, and gloom and darkness came into his heart. Was it the voice of the tempter that was addressing him? But then, had he not already gone over all that ground?—the loss of all comforts and advantages, the clerk’s income, the little house in Masterton. “I have already thought of all that,” he said, “as you suggest; but it does not make any difference to me.” Then he stopped and made a long pause. “If this is all you have to say to me, sir, perhaps it will be best to stop here,” said Jack; and he made a pause and turned back again with a certain determination toward the house.
“It is all I have to say,” said Mr. Brownlow, gravely; and he too turned round, and the two made a solemn march homeward, with scarcely any talk. This is how Jack’s story was told. He had not thought of doing it, and he had found little comfort and encouragement in the disclosure; but still it was made, and that was so much gained. The lights were beginning to be extinguished in the windows, so late and long had been their discussion. But as they came up, Sara became visible at the window of her own room, which opened upon a balcony. She had come to look for them in her pretty white dressing-gown, with all her wealth of hair streaming over her shoulders. It was a very familiar sort of apparel, but still, to be sure, it was only her father and her brother who were witnesses of her little exhibition. “Papa, I could not wait for you,” she cried, leaning over the balcony, “I couldn’t keep Angelique sitting up. Come and say good-night.” When Mr. Brownlow went in to obey her, Jack stood still and pondered. There was a difference. Sara would be permitted to make any marriage she pleased—even with a clerk in his father’s office; whereas her brother, who ought to have been the principal—However, to do him justice, there was no grudge in Jack’s heart. He scorned to be envious of his sister. “Sara will have it all her own way,” he said to himself a little ruefully, as he lighted his candle and went up the great staircase; and then it occurred to him to wonder what she would do about Pamela. Already he felt himself superseded. It was his to take the clerk’s income and subside into inferiority, and Sara was to be the queen of Brownlows—as indeed she had always been.
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.”