“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.