Brownlows: A Novel

by Mrs. Oliphant

“That may be a matter of arrangement. I suppose it does,” said Mr. Brownlow, with a sigh.

Jack gave vent to his feelings in a low, faint, prolonged whistle. “I’ll go and tell them about the carriage,” he said. This was all the communication that passed between the father and the son; but it was enough to show Mr. Brownlow that Jack was not thinking, as he might very naturally have thought, of his new position as the future son-in-law of the woman who had wrought so much harm. Jack’s demeanor, though he did not say a word of sympathy to his father, was quite the contrary of this. He did not make any professions, but he took up the common family burden upon his shoulders. The fifty thousand pounds was comparatively little. It was a sum which could be measured and come to an end of; but the interest, that was the dreadful thought. Jack was practical, and his mind jumped at it on the moment. It was as a dark shadow which had come over him, and which he could not shake off. Brownlows was none of hers, and yet she might not be wrong after all in thinking that all was hers. The actual claim was heavy enough, but the possible claim was overwhelming. It seemed to Jack to go into the future and overshadow that as it overshadowed the present. No wonder Mr. Brownlow had been in despair—no wonder almost—The young man gave a very heavy sigh as he went into the stable-yard and gave his instructions. He stood and brooded over it with his brow knitted and his hands buried in his pockets, while the horses were put into the carriage. As for such luxuries, they counted for nothing, or at least so he thought for the moment—nothing to him; but a burden that would lie upon them for years—a shadow of debt and difficulty projected into the future—that seemed more than any man could bear. It will be seen from this that the idea of his own relations with Pamela making any difference in the matter had not crossed Jack’s mind. He would have been angry had any one suggested it. Not that he thought of giving up Pamela; but in the mean time the idea of having any thing to do with Mrs. Preston was horrible to him, and he was not a young man who was always reasonable and sensible, and took every thing into consideration, any more than the rest of us. To tell the truth, he had no room in his thoughts for the idea of marriage or of Pamela at that moment. He strode round to the hall door as the coachman got on the box, and went up to Sara’s room without stopping to think. “The carriage is here,” he said, calling to Sara at the door. He would have taken the intruder down stairs, and put her into the carriage as courteously as if she had been a duchess; for, as we have already said, there was a certain fine natural politeness in the Brownlow blood. But when he heard the excited old woman still raving about her rights, and that they wanted to kill her, the young man became impatient. He was weary of her; and when she fell into threats of what she would do, disgust mingled with his impatience. Then all at once, while he waited, a sudden thought struck him of his little love. Poor little Pamela! what could she be thinking all this time? How would she feel when she heard that her mother had become their active enemy? In a moment there flitted before Jack, as he stood at the door, a sudden vision of the little uplifted face, pale as it had grown of late, with the wistful eyes wide open and the red lips apart, and the pretty rings of hair clustering about the forehead. What would Pamela think when she knew? What was to be done, now that this division, worse than any unkind sentence of a rich father, had come between them? It was no fault of hers, no fault of his; fate had come between them in the wildest unlooked-for way. And should they have to yield to it? The thought gave Jack such a sudden twinge in his own heart, that it roused him altogether out of his preoccupation. It roused him to that fine self-regard which is so natural, and which is reckoned a virtue nowadays. What did it matter about an old mother? Such people had had their day, and had no right to control the young whose day was still to come. Pamela’s future and Jack’s future were of more importance than any thing that could happen at the end, as it were, of Mrs. Preston’s life, or even of Mr. Brownlow’s life. This was the consideration that woke Jack up out of the strange maze he had fallen into on the subject of his own concerns. He turned on his heel all at once, and left Mrs. Preston arguing the matter with Sara, and went off down the avenue almost as rapidly as his own mare could have done it. No, by Jove! he was not going to give up. Mrs. Preston might eat her money if she liked—might ruin Brownlows if she liked; but she should not interfere between him and his love. And Jack felt that there was no time to lose, and that Pamela must know how matters stood, and what he expected of her, before her mother went back to poison her mind against him. He took no time to knock even at the door of Mrs. Swayne’s cottage, but went in and took possession like an invading army. Probably, if he had been a young man of very delicate and susceptible mind, the very knowledge that Pamela might now be considered an heiress, and himself a poor man, would have closed up the way to him, and turned his steps forever from the door. But Jack was not of that fine order of humanity. He was a young man who liked his own way, and was determined not to be unhappy if he could help it, and held tenaciously by every thing that belonged to him. Such matter-of-fact natures are seldom moved by the sentimentalisms of self-sacrifice. He had not the smallest idea of sacrificing himself, if the truth must be told. He strode along, rushing like the wind, and went straight in at Mrs. Swayne’s door. Nobody interrupted his passage or stood in his way; nobody even saw him but old Betty, who came out to her door to see who had passed so quickly, and shook her head over him. “He goes there a deal more than is good for him,” Betty said, and then, as it was cold, shut the door.

Pamela had been sitting in the dingy parlor all alone; and, to tell the truth, she had been crying a little. She did not know where her mother was; she did not know when she was coming back. No message had reached her, nor letter, nor any sign of life, and she was frightened and very solitary. Jack, too, since he knew she was alone and could be seen at any hour, did not make so many anxious pilgrimages as he had done when Mrs. Preston was ill and the road was barred against him. She had no one to tell her fears to, no one to encourage and support her, and the poor child had broken down dreadfully. She was sitting at the window trying to read one of Mrs. Swayne’s books, trying not to ask herself who it was that came so late to Brownlows last night? what was her mother doing? what was Jack doing? The book, as may be supposed, had small chance against all these anxieties. It had dropped upon the table before her, and her innocent tears had been dropping on it, when a sudden shadow flitted past the window, and a footstep rang on the steps, and Jack was in the room. The sight of him changed wonderfully the character of Pamela’s tears, but yet it increased her agitation. Nobody in her small circle except herself had any faith in him; and she knew that, at this present moment, he ought not to come.

“No, I am not sorry to see you,” she said, in answer to his accusation. “I am glad; but you should not come. Mamma is away. I am all alone.”

“You have the more need of me,” said Jack. “But listen, Pamela. Your mother is not away. She is here at Brownlows. She is coming directly. I rushed off to see you before she arrived. I must speak to you first. Remember you are mine—whatever happens, you are mine, and you can not forsake me.”

“Forsake you?” cried Pamela, in pitiful accents. “Is it likely? If there is any forsaking, it will be you. You know—oh, you know you have not much to fear.”

“I have every thing to fear,” said Jack, speaking very fast; “your mother is breathing fire and flame against us all. She is coming back our enemy. She will tell you I have had a mercenary meaning from the beginning, and she will order you to give me up. But don’t do it, Pamela. I am not the sort of man to be given up. We were going to be poor, and marry against my father’s will; now we shall be poor, and marry against your mother’s—that is all the difference. You have chosen me, and you must give up her and not me. That is all I have to say.”

“Give up mamma?” cried Pamela, in amazement. “I don’t know what you mean. You promised I was to have her with me, and take care of her always. She would die without me. Oh, Jack, why have you changed so soon?”

“It is not I that have changed,” said Jack; “every thing has changed. This is what it will come to. It will be to give up her or me. I don’t say I will die without you,” said the young man—“no such luck; but—Look here, Pamela, this is what it will come to. You will have to choose between her and me.”

“Oh no, no!” cried Pamela; “no! don’t say so. I am not the one to choose. Don’t turn away from me! don’t look so pale and dreadful it is not me to choose.”