Brownlows: A Novel

by Mrs. Oliphant

“You were going to the stables,” said Mr. Brownlow, “where I dare say you would have found something much more amusing than with me. Come in. You are later than I expected. How is it you did not come up in the dogcart? My son should have thought of that.”

“He did not say any thing about it,” said Powys, “but I liked the walk. Mr. Wrinkell told me to bring you these, sir. They are the papers in the Wardell case; and he gave me some explanations which I was to repeat to you—some new facts that have just come out—”

“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow. He gave the young man a seat at his table, and resumed his own, and drew the papers to him. But he was not thinking of the papers or of the Wardell case. His attention was fixed upon his young companion. Perhaps it was the walk, perhaps some new discovery, perhaps because he began to see his way to the recovery of that which John Brownlow was determined not to give up, but certainly his eye was as bright and his color as fresh as when he had first come to the office innocent and unsuspecting. He sat down with none of the affectation either of humility or of equality which a Masterton youth of his position would have shown. He was not afraid of his employer, who had been kind to him, and his transatlantic ideas made him feel the difference between them, though great in the mean time, to be rather a difference of time than of class. Such at least was the unconscious feeling in his mind. It is true that he had begun to learn that more things than time, or even industry and brains, are necessary in an old and long-constituted social system, but his new and hardly purchased knowledge had not affected his instincts. He was respectful, but he did not feel himself out of place in Mr. Brownlow’s library. He took his seat, and looked round him with the interest of a man free to observe or even to comment, which, considering that even Mr. Wrinkell was rather disposed at Brownlows to sit on the edge of his chair, was a pleasant variety. Mr. Brownlow drew the papers to him, and bent over them, leaning his head on both his hands; but the fact was, he was looking at Powys from under that cover, fixing his anxious gaze upon him, reading what was in the unsuspicious face—what was in it, and most likely a great deal which was not in it. When he had done this for some minutes he suddenly raised his head, removed his hands from his forehead to his chin, and looked steadily at his young companion.

“I will attend to these by-and-by,” he said, abruptly; “in the mean time, my young friend, I have something to say to you.”

Then Powys, whose eyes had been fixed upon a dark picture over and beyond, at some distance, Mr. Brownlow’s head, came to himself suddenly, and met the look fixed upon him. The elder man thought there was a little defiance in the glance which the younger cast upon him; but this is one of the things in which one sees always what one is prepared to see. Powys, for his part, was not in the least defiant; he was a little surprised, a little curious, eager to hear and reply, but he was utterly unconscious of the sentiments which the other read in his eyes.

“I thought a little while ago,” said Mr. Brownlow, in his excitement going farther than he meant to go, “that I had found in you one of the best clerks that ever I had.”

Here he stopped for a moment, and Powys regarded him open-mouthed, waiting for more. His frank face clouded over a little when he saw that Mr. Brownlow made a pause. “I was going to say Thank you, sir,” said the young man; “and indeed I do say Thank you; but am I to understand that you don’t think so now?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Mr. Brownlow. “I take more interest in you than—than I am in the habit of taking in a—in a stranger; but they tell me at the office there is a change, and I see there is a change. It has been suggested to me that you were going to the bad, which I don’t believe; and it has been suggested to me that you had something on your mind—”

The young man had changed color, as indeed he could scarcely help doing; his amour propre was still as lively and as easily excited as is natural to his age. “If you are speaking of my duties in the office, sir,” he said, “you have a perfect right to speak; but I don’t suppose they could be influenced one way or another by the fact that I had something on my mind—”

“I am not speaking to you so much as your employer as—as your friend,” said Mr. Brownlow. “You know the change has been visible. People have spoken about it to me—not perhaps the people you would imagine to have interfered. And I want to speak to you as an old man may speak to a young man—as I should wish, if the circumstances make it needful, any one would speak to my son. Why do you smile?”