Brownlows: A Novel

by Mrs. Oliphant

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Brownlow, from the dog-cart, and he waved his hand, and the mare set off at her usual pace down the avenue, waiting for no one. And Powys was left alone standing on the steps. The young men had gone who might have been in the way, and the ladies had already dispersed from the breakfast-table, some to the morning-room on the other side of the hall, some up stairs for their hats and cloaks, before straying out on their morning perambulations. And Sara, who had her housekeeping to do, save the mark! was the only creature visible to whom he turned as her father drove away. Courtesy required (so she said to herself) that she should go forward into the hall a step or two, and say something good-natured to him. “If you are not of Jack’s party,” she said, “you must go and help to amuse the people who are staying at home; unless you want to write or do any thing, Mr. Powys. The library is on that side; shall I show you the way?”

And a minute after he found himself following her into the room, which was the first room he had ever been in at Brownlows. It was foolish of Sara—it was a little like the way in which she had treated him before. Her own heart was beating more quickly than usual, and yet she was chiefly curious to know what he would do, what he would say. There was something of the eagerness of an experiment in her mind, although she had found it very serious after he left her the last time, and any thing but amusing on the previous night.

“Thanks,” said poor Powys, whose head was turning round and round; “I ought to have gone to the office. I am better there than here.”

“That is not very complimentary to us,” said Sara, with a little nervous laugh.

And then he turned and looked at her. She was making a fool of him, as Jack would have said. She was torturing him, playing with him, making her half-cruel, half-rash experiment. “You should not say so,” he said, with vehemence—“you know better. You should not tempt me to behave like an idiot. You know I am ready enough to do it. If I were not an idiot I should never have come here again.”

“Not when my father brought you?” said Sara—“not when I—but I think you are rude, Mr. Powys; I will leave you to write your letters, and when you have finished you will find us all up stairs.”

With that she vanished, leaving the young man in such a confusion of mind as words would ill describe. He was angry, humiliated, vexed with himself, rapt into a kind of ecstasy. He did not know if he was most wretched or happy. Every thing forbade him saying another word to her; and yet had not her father brought him, as she said? was not she herself surrounding him with subtle sweet temptation? He threw himself down in a chair and tried to think. When that would not do, he got up and began to pace about the room. Then he rushed suddenly to the door, not to fly away from the place, or to throw himself at Sara’s feet, as might have been supposed. What he did was to make a wild dash at his traveling-bag, which had been packed and brought into the hall. It was still standing there, a monument of his irresolution. He plunged at it, seized it, carried it into the library, and there unpacked it again with nervous vehemence. Any one who should have come in and seen his collars and handkerchiefs scattered about on the floor would have thought Powys mad. But at length, when he had got to the bottom of the receptacle, his object became apparent. From thence he produced a bundle of papers, yellow and worn, and tied up with a ribbon. When he had disinterred them, it was not without a blush, though there was nobody to see, that he packed up every thing again in the capacious traveling-bag. He had gone into Mr. Brownlow’s library because Sara took him there, without a thought of any thing to do, but suddenly here was his work ready for him. He sat down in Mr. Brownlow’s chair, and opened out the papers before him, and read and arranged and laid them out in order. When he had settled them according to his satisfaction, he made another pause to think, and then began to write. It was a letter which demanded thought; or at least it appeared so, for he wrote it hotly three times over, and tore it up each time; and on the fourth occasion, which was the last, wrote slowly, pausing over his sentences and biting his nails. The letter which cost all this trouble was not very long. Judging by the size of it, any body might have written it in five minutes; but Powys felt his hand trembling and his brain throbbing with the exertion when he had done. Then he folded it up carefully and put it into an envelope, and addressed it to Mr. Brownlow, leaving it with the bundle of papers on his employer’s writing-table. When he had accomplished this he sat for some time irresolute, contemplating his packet on the table, and pondering what should follow. He had put it to the touch to win or lose, but in the mean time what was he to do? She had said he would find them up stairs. She had implied that he would be expected there; and to spend the day beside her would have been a kind of heaven to him; but that was a paradise which he had himself forfeited. He could not be in her company now as any other man might. He had said too much, had committed himself too deeply. He had betrayed the secret which another man more reticent might have kept, undisclosed in words, and it was impossible for him to be with her as another might. Even she, though she had never said a word to him that could be construed into encouragement, except those half dozen words at the library door, was different toward him and other men. She was conscious too; she remembered what he had said. He and she could not be together without remembering it, without carrying on, articulately or inarticulately, that broken interview. Powys did the only thing that remained to him to do. He did not bound forth in the track of the dog-cart, and follow it to Masterton, though that would not have been difficult to him; but he went out into the park, and roamed all about the house in widening circles, hearing sometimes the crack of the guns in the distance, sometimes in alleys close at hand the sound of voices, sometimes catching, as he thought, the very rustle of Sara’s dress. He avoided them with much care and pains, and yet he would have been glad to meet them; glad to come upon the shooting-party, though he kept far from the spot where he had heard they were to meet some of the ladies and lunch. It was not for him to seek a place among them. Thus he wandered about, not feeling forlorn or disconsolate, as a man might be supposed to do under such circumstances, but, on the contrary, excited and hopeful. He had set forth what he felt was his best claim to consideration before her father. If Mr. Brownlow had not treated him with such inconceivable favor and indulgence, he never would have ventured upon this. But he had been favored,—he had been encouraged. Grace had been shown to him enough to turn any young man’s head, and he knew no reason for it. And at last he had ventured to lay before Mr. Brownlow those distant problematical claims to gentility which were all the inheritance he had, and to tell him what was in his mind. He was not a victim kept out of Paradise. He was a pilgrim of hope, keeping the gates in sight, and feeling, permitting himself to feel, as if they might open any moment and he might be called in.

While this was going on it happened to him, as it happens so often, to come direct in the way of the very meeting which he had so carefully avoided. Turning round the corner of a great old yew, hanging rich with scarlet berries, he came all of a sudden, and without any warning, upon Sara herself, walking quickly from the village with a little basket in her hand. If it was difficult to meet her with a body-guard of ladies in the shelter of her father’s house, it may be supposed what it was to meet her in the silence, without another soul in sight, her face flaming with sudden recognition and confusion. Powys stood still, and for a moment speculated whether he should not fly; but it was only that moment of consideration that fled, and he found himself turning by her side, and taking her basket from her hand. She was no more mistress of the situation than he was: she was taken by surprise. The calm with which she had led the way into the library that morning, secure in her office of mistress of the house, had vanished away. She began hurriedly, eagerly, to say where she had been, and how it happened that she was returning alone. “The rest went off to the rectory,” she said. “Have you seen it? I think it is such a pretty house. They went to see Fanny Hardcastle. You have met her—I know you have, or I would not have mentioned her,” said Sara, with a breathless desire to hear her own voice, which was unlike her. The sound of it gave her a little courage, and perhaps if she spoke a little loud and fast, it might attract some stray member of the party who might be wandering near. But no one came; and there were the two together, alone, in the position of all others most difficult in the circumstances—the green, silent park around them, not an eye to see nor an ear to hear; the red October sunshine slanting across their young figures, catching the ripple in Sara’s hair as it had done that day, never to be forgotten, on which he first saw her. This was how fate or fortune, or some good angel or some wicked fairy, defeated Powys’s prudent intention of keeping out of harm’s way.

“But I wonder you did not go with Jack,” Sara resumed. “I should, if I had been you. Not that I should care to kill the poor birds—but it seems to come natural at this time of the year. Did you have much sport in Canada? or do you think it stupid when people talk to you of Canada? Every body does, I know, as soon as they hear you have been there.”

“You never could say any thing that was stupid,” said Powys, and then he paused, for he did not mean to get upon dangerous ground—honestly, he did not mean it, if circumstances had not been too strong for him. “Canada is a kind of common ground,” he said. “It is a good thing to begin conversation on. It is not easy to exhaust it; but people are sadly ignorant,” he added, with lively colonial feeling. He was scornful, in short, of the ignorance he met with. Even Mr. Brownlow talked, he could not but recollect, like a charity-school boy on this subject, and he took refuge in his nationality as a kind of safeguard.