All this the lawyer said involuntarily, as it were, the words being put into his mouth. They were false words, and yet they were true. He wanted to cheat and ruin the young man before him, and yet he wanted to serve him. He desired his confidence that he might betray it, and yet he felt disposed to guide and counsel him as if he had been his son. The confusion of his mind was such that it became a kind of exaltation. After all he meant him well—what he would do for him would be the best. It might not be justice—justice was one thing; kindness, friendship, bounty, another—and these last he was ready to give. Thus, in the bewilderment of motives and sentiments that existed in his mind, he came to find himself again, as it were, and to feel that he did really mean well to the boy. “I wish to serve you,” he repeated, with a kind of eagerness. Would not this be to serve him better than by giving to his inexperienced hands a fairy fortune of which he would not know how to make use? These thoughts went vaguely but powerfully through Mr. Brownlow’s mind as he spoke. And the result was that he looked up in the young man’s face with a sense of uprightness which had for some time deserted him. It would be best in every way that there should be confidence between them—best for the youth, who, after all, had he ever so good a case, would probably be quite unaware how to manage it—and best, unquestionably best, for himself, as showing at once what he had to hope or fear. Of this there could be no doubt.
As for Powys, he was touched, and at the same time alarmed. It was the same subject which occupied them both, but yet they looked upon it with very different eyes. The Canadian knew what was in those scraps of paper with their lines of figures and awful totals, and it seemed to him that sooner than show them to any one, sooner than make a clean breast of what was in them, he would rather die. Yet the kindness went to his heart, and made him in his own eyes a monster. “Divined!” he said half to himself, with a look of horror. If Mr. Brownlow had divined it, it seemed to Powys that he never could hold up his head before him again. Shame would stand between them, or something he thought shame. He had not done much that was wrong, but he could have shrunk into the very ground at the idea that his thoughts and calculations were known. In spite of himself he cast a piteous glance at the whiteness of his elbows—was that how it came about that Mr. Brownlow divined? Pride, shame, gratitude, compunction, surged up in his mind, into his very eyes and throat, so that he could not speak or look at the patron who was so good to him, yet whom he could not yield to. “Sir,” he stammered, when he had got a little command of himself—“you are mistaken. I—I have nothing on my mind—nothing more than every man has who has a—a—life of his own. Indeed, sir,” the poor youth continued with eagerness, “don’t think I am ungrateful—but I—I—can’t tell you. I can’t tell my own mother. It is my own fault. It is nothing to any other creature. In short,” he added, breaking off with an effort, and forcing a smile, “it is nothing—nothing!—only I suppose that I am unaccustomed to the world—”
“Sit down,” said Mr. Brownlow; “come nearer to me, and sit down upon this chair. You are very young—”
“I am five-and-twenty,” said Powys. He said it hastily, answering what he thought was a kind of accusation; and the words struck the lawyer like a blow. It was not new to him, and yet the very statement of that momentous number seemed to carry a certain significance. The ill-omened fortune which made these two adversaries had come to the one just when the other was born.
“Well,” said Mr. Brownlow, who felt his utterance stopped by these innocent words, “it does not matter. Sit down; I have still a great deal to say—”
And then he stopped with a gasp, and there was a pause like a pause in the midst of a battle. If Powys had not been preoccupied by the subject which to him was so absorbing, though he denied its interest to any other, he could not have failed to be struck by the earnestness, and suppressed excitement, and eager baffled looks of his employer. But he was blinded by his own anxieties, and by that unconscious self-importance of youth which sees nothing wonderful in the fact of other people’s interest in its own fortunes. He thought Mr. Brownlow was kind; it did not occur to him that a stronger motive was necessary for these persistent questions and for this intense interest. He was not vain—but yet it came natural to receive such attention, and his mind was not sufficiently disengaged to be surprised.
As for the lawyer, he paused and took breath, and looked into the frank yet clouded face which was so open and communicative, and yet would not, could not, reveal to him the secret he wanted to seize. It was not skill, it was not cunning, that preserved the young man’s secret—was it innocence? Had he been mistaken? was there really in Powys’s consciousness at least no such secret, but only some youthful trouble, some boyish indiscretion, that was “on his mind.” As Mr. Brownlow paused, and looked at his young companion, this thought gradually shaped itself within him, and for the moment it gave him a strange relief. He too was absorbed and preoccupied, and thrust out of the region of such light as might have been thrown on the subject by the whiteness of the seams of the young fellow’s coat; and then he had come to be in such deadly earnest that any lighter commonplace explanation would have seemed an insult to him. Yet he paused, and after a few moments felt as if a truce had been proclaimed. It had not come yet to the last struggle for death or life. There was still time to carry on negotiations, to make terms, to convert the enemy into a firm friend and supporter. This conviction brought comfort to his mind, notwithstanding that half an hour before he had started up in the temerity of despair, and vowed to himself that, for good or evil, the decisive step must be taken at once. Now the clouds of battle rolled back, and a soft sensation of peace fell upon Mr. Brownlow’s soul—peace at least for a time. It melted his heart in spite of himself. It made him think of his home, and his child, and the gentle evening that awaited him after the excitement of the day; and then his eye fell upon Powys again.
“I have still a great deal to say,” he went on—and his voice had changed and softened beyond all doubt, and Powys, himself surprised, had perceived the change, though he had not an idea what it meant—“I have been pleased with you, Powys. I am not sure that you have quite kept up during the last few weeks; but you began very well, and if you choose to steady yourself, and put away any delusion that may haunt you”—here Mr. Brownlow made a little pause to give force to his words—“you may be of great service to me. I took you only on trial, you know, and you had the junior clerk’s place; but now I think I am justified in treating you better—after this your salary shall be double—”
Powys gave a great start in his seat, and looked at Mr. Brownlow with a look of stupefaction. “Double!” he cried, with an almost hysterical gasp. He thought his ears or his imagination were deceiving him. His wonder took all the expression, almost all the intelligence, out of his face. He sat gazing with his mouth open, waiting to hear what it could mean.
“I will double your salary from the present time,” said Mr. Brownlow, smiling in spite of himself.