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 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
Jack’s favorite, and if he liked to have it he might. Such was the Parthian
arrow which Mr. Brownlow received at the end of the day. Clearly that was
a distant land—a land far removed from the present burden of civilization—
a primitive and blessed state of existence, in which a man could be
permitted to do what he liked with his own.
 CHAPTER XXII.

THE DOWNFALL OF PHILOSOPHY.

Jack Brownlow was having a very hard time of it just at that moment.
There had been a lapse of more than a week, and he had not once seen the
fair little creature of whom every day he had thought more and more. It was
in vain that he looked up at the window—Pamela now was never there. He
never saw her even at a distance—never heard so much as her name. Sara,
who had been ready enough to speak of her friend—even Sara, indiscreet,
and hasty, and imprudent—was silent. Poor Jack knew it was quite right—
he recognized, even though he hated it, the force that was in his father’s
arguments. He knew he had much better never see her—never even speak
of her again. He understood with his intelligence that utter separation
between them was the only prudent and sensible step to be taken; but his
heart objected to understand with a curious persistency which Jack could
scarcely believe of a heart of his. He had found his intellect quite sufficient
to guide him up to this period; and when that other part of him, with which
he was so much less acquainted, fought and struggled to get the reins in
hand, it would be difficult to express the astonishment he felt. And then he
was a young man of the present day, and he was not anxiously desirous to
marry. A house of his own, with all its responsibilities, did not appear to
him the crown of delight which perhaps it ought to have done. He was
content to go on with his life as it had been, without any immediate change.
It still appeared to him, I am sorry to admit, that for a young man, who had
a way to make in the world, a very early marriage was a sort of suicidal step
to take. This was all very well for his mind, which wanted no convincing.
But for his heart it was very different. That newly discovered organ behaved
in the most incomprehensible sort of way. Even though it possibly gave a
grunt of consent to the theory about marriage, it kept on longing and
yearning, driving itself frantic with eagerness just to see her, just to hear
her, just to touch her little hand, just to feel the soft passing rustle of her
dress. That was all. And as for talking reason to it, or representing how
profitless such a gratification would be, he might as well have preached to
the stones. He went back and forward to the office for a whole week with
this conflict going on within him, keeping dutifully to his work, doing more
than he had done for years at Masterton, trying to occupy himself with
former thoughts, and with anticipations of the career he had once shaped
out for himself. He wanted to get away from the office, to get into public
life somehow, to be returned for the borough, and have a seat in Parliament.
Such had been his ambition before this episode in his life. Such surely
ought to be his ambition now; but it was amazing, incredible, how this new
force within him would break through all his more elevated thoughts with a
kind of inarticulate cry for Pamela. She was what he wanted most. He could
put the other things aside, but he could not put her aside. His heart kept
crying out for her, whatever his mind might be trying to think. It was
extraordinary and despicable, and he could not believe it of himself; but this
was how it was. He knew it was best that he should not see her; yet it was
no virtue nor self-denial of his that kept them apart. It was she who would
not be visible. Along the roads, under the trees, at the window, morning or
evening, there was no appearance of her. He thought sometimes she must
have gone away. And his eager inquiries with himself whether this
separation would make her unhappy gradually gave way to irritation and
passionate displeasure. She had gone away, and left no sign; or she was
shutting herself up, and sacrificing all that was pleasant in his existence.
She was leaving him alone to bear the brunt; and he would gladly have
taken it all to spare her—but if he bore it, and was the victim, something at
least he ought to have had for his recompense. A last meeting, a last look,
an explanation, a farewell—at least he had a right to that. And
notwithstanding his anger he wanted her all the same—wanted to see her, to
speak to her, to have her near him, though he was not ready to carry her off
or marry her on the spot, or defy his father and all the world on her account.
This was the painful struggle that poor Jack had to bear as he went back and
forward all those days to Masterton. He held very little communication with
his father, who was the cause of it all. He chose to ride or to walk rather
than have those tête-à-tête drives. He kept his eyes on every turn of the
way, on every tree and hedge which might possibly conceal her; and yet he
knew he must part from her, and in his heart was aware that it was a right
judgment which condemned him to this sacrifice. And it was not in him,
poor fellow, to take it cheerfully or suffer with a good grace. He kept it to
himself, and scorned to betray to his father or sister what he was going
through. But he was not an agreeable companion during this interval,
though the fact was that he gave them very little of his society, and
struggled, mostly by himself, against his hard fate.
And probably he might have been victorious in the struggle. He might
have fought his way back to the high philosophical ground from which he
was wont to preach to his friend Keppel. At the cost of all the first freshness
of his heart, at the cost of many buds of grace that never would have
bloomed again, he might have come out victor, and demonstrated to himself
beyond all dispute that in such matters a strong will is every thing, and that
there is no love or longing that may not be crushed on the threshold of the
mind. All this Jack might have done, and lived to profit by it and smart for
it, but for a chance meeting by which fate, in spite of a thousand
precautions, managed to balk his philosophy. He had gone home early in
the afternoon, and he had been seen by anxious eyes behind the curtains of
Mrs. Swayne’s window—not Pamela’s eyes, but those of her mother—to go
out again dressed, about the time when a man who is going to dinner sets
out to fulfill his engagement. And Jack was going out to dinner; he was
going to Ridley, where the family had just come down from town. But there
had come that day a kind of crisis in his complaint, and when he was half
way to his friend’s house a sudden disgust seized him. Instead of going on
he jumped down from the dog-cart, and tore a leaf out of his pocket-book,
on which he scribbled a hasty word of apology to Keppel. Then, while the
groom went on with his note, he turned and went sauntering home along the
dusty road in his evening coat. Why should he go and eat the fellow’s
dinner? What did he care about it? Go and make an ass of himself, and
laugh and talk when he would much rather run a tilt against all the world!
And what could she mean by shutting herself up like this, and never so
much as saying good-bye? It could harm nobody to say good-bye. Thus
Jack mused in pure despite and contrariety, without any intention of laying
a snare for the object of his thoughts. He had gone a long way on the road
to Ridley before he changed his mind, and consequently it was getting late
when he drew near Brownlows coming back. It was a very quiet country
road, a continuation of that which led to Masterton. Here and there, was a
clump of great trees making it sombre, and then a long stretch of hedgerow
with the fragrant meadow on the other side of it, and the cows lowing to go
home. There was nobody to be seen up or down the road except a late carter
with his horse’s harness on his shoulder, and a boy and a girl driving home
some cows. In the distance stood Swayne’s Cottages, half lost in the
twilight, with two faint curls of smoke going up into the sky. All was full of
that dead calm which chafes the spirit of youth when it is in the midst of its
troubles—that calm which is so soothing and so sweet when life and we
have surmounted the first battles, and come to a moment of truce. But there
was no truce as yet in Jack Brownlow’s thoughts. He wanted to have his
own way and he could not have it; and he knew he ought not to have it, and
he would not give it up. If he could have kicked at the world, and strangled
Nature and made an end of Reason, always without making a fool of
himself, that would have been the course of action most in consonance with
his thoughts.
And it was just then that a certain flutter round the corner of the lane
which led to Dewsbury caught his eye—the flutter of the soft evening air in
a black dress. It was not the “creatura bella vestita in bianca” which comes
up to the ideal of a lover’s fancy. It was a little figure in a black dress, with
a cloak wrapped round her, and a broad hat shading her face, all dark
among the twilight shadows. Jack saw, and his heart sprang up within him
with a violence which took away his breath. He made but one spring across
the road. When they had parted they had not known that they were lovers;
but now they had been a week apart and there was no doubt on the subject.
He made but one spring, and caught her and held her fast. “Pamela!” he
cried out; and though there had been neither asking nor consent, and not
one word of positive love-making between them, and though no
disrespectful or irreverent thought of her had ever entered his mind, poor
Jack, in his ardor and joy and surprise and rage, kissed her suddenly with a
kind of transport. “Now I have you at last!” he cried. And this was in the
open road, where all the world might have seen them; though happily, so far
as was apparent, there was nobody to see.
Pamela, too, gave a cry of surprise and fright and dismay. But she was
not angry, poor child. She did not feel that it was unnatural. Her poor little
heart had not been standing still all this time any more than Jack’s. They
had gone over all those tender, childish, celestial preliminaries while they
were apart; and now there could not be any doubt about the bond that united
them. Neither the one nor the other affected to believe that farther preface
was necessary—circumstances were too pressing for that. He said, “I have
you at last,” with eyes that gleamed with triumph; and she said, “Oh, I
thought I should never, never see you again!” in a voice which left nothing
to be confessed. And for the moment they both forgot every thing—fathers,
mothers, promises, wise intentions, all the secondary lumber that makes up
the world.
When this instant of utter forgetfulness was over, Pamela began to cry,
and Jack’s arm dropped from her waist. It was the next inevitable stage.
They made two or three steps by each other’s side, separate, despairing,
miserable. Then it was the woman’s turn to take the initiative. She was
crying, but she could still speak—indeed, it is possible that her speech
would have been less natural had it been without those breaks in the soft
voice. “I am not angry,” she said, “because it is the last time. I shall never,
never forget you; but oh, it was all a mistake, all from the beginning. We
never—meant—to grow fond of each other,” said Pamela through her sobs;
“it was all—all a mistake.”
“I was fond of you the very first minute I saw you,” said Jack; “I did not
know then, but I know it now. It was no mistake;—that time when I carried
you in out of the snow. I was fond of you then, just as I am now—as I shall
be all my life.”
“No,” said Pamela, “oh no. It is different—every day in your life you see
better people than I am. Don’t say any thing else. It is far better for me to
know. I have been a—a little—contented ever since I thought of that.”
These words once more put Jack’s self-denial all to flight. “Better people
than you are?” he cried. “Oh, Pamela! I never saw any body half as sweet,
half as lovely, all my life.”
“Hush! hush! hush!” said Pamela; they were not so separate now, and
she put her soft little hand up, as if to lay it on his lips. “You think so, but it
is all—all a mistake!”
Then Jack looked into her sweet tearful eyes, nearer, far nearer than he
had ever looked before—and they were eyes that could bear looking into,
and the sweetness and the bitterness filled the young man’s heart. “My little
love!” he cried, “it is not you who are a mistake.” And he clasped her,
almost crushed her waist with his arm in his vehemence. Every thing else
was a mistake—himself, his position, her position, all the circumstances;
but not Pamela. This time she disengaged herself, but very softly, from his
arm.
“I do not mind,” she said, looking at him with an innocent, wistful
tenderness, “because it is the last time. If you had not cared, I should have
been vexed. One can’t help being a little selfish. Last time, if you had said
you were fond of me, I should have been frightened; but now I am glad,
very glad you are fond of me. It will always be something to look back to. I
shall remember every word you said, and how you looked. Mamma says
life is so hard,” said Pamela, faltering a little, and looking far away beyond
her lover, as if she could see into a long stretch of life. So she did; and it
looked a desert, for he was not to be there.
“Don’t speak like that,” cried Jack; “life shall not be hard to you—not
while I live to take care of you—not while I can work—”
“Hush, hush!” said the girl, softly. “I like you to say it, you know. One
feels glad; but I know there must be nothing about that. I never thought of it
when—when we used to see each other so often. I never thought of any
thing. I was only pleased to see you; but mamma has been telling me a great
deal—every thing, indeed: I know better now—”
“What has she been telling you?” said Jack. “She has been telling you
that I would deceive you; that I was not to be trusted. It is because she does
not know me, Pamela. You know me better. I never thought of any thing
either,” he added, driven to simplicity by the force of his emotions, “except
that I could not do without you, and that I was very happy. And Pamela,
whatever it may cost, I can’t live without you now.”
“But you must,” said Pamela: “if you could but hear what mamma says!
She never said you would deceive me. What she said was, that we must not
have our own way. It may break our hearts, but we must give up. It appears
life is like that,” said Pamela, with a deep sigh. “If you like any thing very
much, you must give it up.”
“I am ready to give up every thing else,” said Jack, carried on by the
tide, and forgetting all his reason; “but I will not give you up. My little
darling, you are not to cry—I did not know I was so fond of you till that
day. I didn’t even know it till now,” cried the young man. “You mustn’t turn
away from me, Pamela—give me your hand; and whatever happens to us,
we two will stand by each other all our lives.”
“Ah, no,” said Pamela, drawing away her hand; and then she laid the
same hand which she had refused to give him on his shoulder and looked up
into his face. “I like you to say it all,” she went on—“I do—it is no use
making believe when we are just going to part. I shall remember every
word you say. I shall always be able to think that when I was young I had
some one to say these things to me. If your father were to come now, I
should not be afraid of him; I should just tell him how it was. I am glad of
every word that I can treasure up. Mamma said I was not to see you again;
but I said if we were to meet we had a right to speak to each other. I never
thought I should have seen you to-night. I shouldn’t mind saying to your
father himself that we had a right to speak. If we should both live long and
grow old, and never meet for years and years, don’t you think we shall still
know each other in heaven?”
As for poor Jack, he was driven wild by this, by the sadness of her sweet
eyes, by the soft tenderness of her voice, by the virginal simplicity and
sincerity which breathed out of her. Pamela stood by him with the
consciousness that it was the supreme moment of her existence. She might
have been going to die; such was the feeling in her heart. She was going to
die out of all the sweet hopes, all the dawning joys of her youth; she was
going out into that black desert of life where the law was that if you liked
any thing very much you must give it up. But before she went she had a
right to open her heart, to hear him disclose his. Had it been possible that
their love should have come to any thing, Pamela would have been shy and
shamefaced; but that was not possible. But a minute was theirs, and the dark
world gaped around to swallow them up from each other. Therefore the
words flowed in a flood to Pamela’s lips. She had so many things to say to
him—she wanted to tell him so much; and there was but this minute to
include all. But her very composure—her tender solemnity—the pure little
white martyr that she was, giving up what she most loved, gave to Jack a
wilder thrill, a more headlong impulse. He grasped her two hands, he put
his arm round her in a sudden passion. It seemed to him that he had no
patience with her or any thing—that he must seize upon her and carry her
away.
“Pamela,” he cried, hoarsely, “it is of no use talking—you and I are not
going to part like this. I don’t know any thing about heaven, and I don’t
want to know—not just now. We are not going to part, I tell you. Your
mother may say what she likes, but she can’t be so cruel as to take you from
a man who loves you and can take care of you—and I will take care of you,
by heaven! Nobody shall ever come between us. A fellow may think and
think when he doesn’t know his own mind: and it’s easy for a girl like you
to talk of the last time. I tell you it is not the last time—it is the first time. I
don’t care a straw for any thing else in the world—not in comparison with
you. Pamela, don’t cry; we are going to be together all our life.”
“You say so because you have not thought about it,” said Pamela, with
an ineffable smile; “and I have been thinking of it ever so long—ever so
much. No; but I don’t say you are to go away, not yet. I want to have you as
long as I can; I want to tell you so many things—every thing I have in my
heart.”
“And I will hear nothing,” said Jack—“nothing except that you and I
belong to each other. That’s what you have got to say. Hush, child! do you
think I am a child like you? Pamela, look here—I don’t know when it is to
be, nor how it is to be, but you are going to be my wife.”
“Oh, no, no,” said Pamela, shrinking from him, growing red and
growing pale in the shock of this new suggestion. If this was how it was to
be, her frankness, her sad openness, became a kind of crime. She had
suffered his embrace before, prayed him to speak to her, thought it right to
take full advantage of the last indulgence accorded to them; and now the
tables were turned upon her. She shrank away from him, and stood apart in
the obscure twilight. There had not been a blush on her cheek while she
opened her innocent young heart to him in the solemnity of the supposed
farewell, but now she was overwhelmed with sudden shame.
“I say yes, yes, yes,” said Jack vehemently, and he seized upon the hands
that she had clasped together by way of safeguard. He seized upon them
with a kind of violence appropriating what was his own. His mind had been
made up and his fate decided in that half hour. He had been full of doubts
up to this moment; but now he had found out that without Pamela it was not
worth while to live—that Pamela was slipping through his fingers, ready to
escape out of his reach; and after that there was no longer any possibility of
a compromise. He had become utterly indifferent to what was going on
around as he came to this point. He had turned his back on the road, and
could not tell who was coming or going. And thus it was that the sudden
intrusion which occurred to them was entirely unexpected, and took them
both by surprise. All of a sudden, while neither was looking, a substantial
figure was suddenly thrust in between them. It was Mrs. Swayne, who had
been at Dewsbury and was going home. She did not put them aside with her
hands, but she pushed her large person completely between the lovers,
thrusting one to one side and the other to the other. With one of her arms
she caught Pamela’s dress, holding her fast, and with the other she pushed
Jack away. She was flushed with walking and haste, for she had seen the
two figures a long way off, and had divined what sort of meeting it was; and
the sight of her fiery countenance between them startled the two so
completely that they fell back on either side and gazed at her aghast,
without saying a word. Pamela, startled and overcome, hid her face in her
hands, while Jack made a sudden step back, and got very hot and furious,
but for the moment found himself incapable of speech.
“For shame of yourself!” said Mrs. Swayne, panting for breath; “I’ve
a’most killed myself running, but I’ve come in time. What are you a
persuadin’ of her to do, Mr. John? Oh for shame of yourself! Don’t tell me!
I know what young gentlemen like you is. A-enticin’ her and persuadin’ her
and leading her away, to bring her poor mother’s gray hairs with sorrow to
the grave. Oh for shame of yourself! And her mother just as simple and
innocent, as would believe any thing you liked to tell her; and nobody as
can keep this poor thing straight and keep her out o’ trouble but me!”
While she panted out this address, and thrust him away with her
extended hand, Jack stood by in consternation, furious but speechless. What
could he do? He might order her away, but she would not obey him. He
might make his declaration over again in her presence, but she would not
believe him, and he did not much relish the idea; he could not struggle with
this woman for the possession of his love, and at the same time his blood
boiled at her suggestions. If she had been a man he might have knocked her
down quietly, and been free of the obstruction, but women take a shabby
advantage of the fact that they can not be knocked down. As he stood thus
with all his eloquence stopped on his lips, Pamela, from across the bulky
person of her champion, stretched out her little hand to him and interposed.
“Hush,” she said; “we were saying good-bye to each other, Mrs. Swayne.
I told mamma we should say good-bye. Hush, oh hush, she doesn’t
understand; but what does that matter? we must say good-bye all the same.”
“I shall never say good-bye,” said Jack; “you ought to know me better
than that. If you must go home with this woman, go—I am not going to
fight with her. It matters nothing about her understanding; but, Pamela,
remember it is not good-bye. It shall never be good-bye—”
“Understand!” said Mrs. Swayne, whose indignation was furious, “and
why shouldn’t I understand? Thank Providence I’m one as knows what
temptation is. Go along with you home, Mr. John; and she’ll just go with
this woman, she shall. Woman, indeed! And I don’t deny as I’m a woman—
and so was your own mother for all so fine as you are. Don’t you think as
you’ll lay your clutches on this poor lamb, as long as Swayne and me’s to
the fore. I mayn’t understand, and I may be a woman, but—Miss Pamela,
you’ll just come along home.”
“Yes, yes,” said Pamela; and then she held up her hand to him
entreatingly. “Don’t mind what she says—don’t be angry with me; and I
will never, never forget what you have said—and—good-bye,” said the girl,
steadily, holding out her hand to him with a wonderful glistening smile that
shone through two big tears.
As for Jack, he took her hand and gave it an angry loving grasp which
hurt it, and then threw it away. “I am going to see your mother,” he said,
deigning no reply. And then he turned his back on her without another
word, and left her standing in the twilight in the middle of the dusty road,
and went away. He left the two women standing amazed, and went off with
quick determined steps that far outstripped their capabilities. It was the road
to the cottage—the road to Brownlows—the road anywhere or everywhere.
“He’s a-going home, and a blessed riddance,” said Mrs. Swayne, though her
spirit quaked within her. But Pamela said nothing; he was not going home.
The girl stood and watched his quick firm steps and worshiped him in her
heart. To her mother! And was there any thing but one thing that her mother
could say?
 CHAPTER XXIII.

ALL FOR LOVE.

It was almost dark when Jack reached Swayne’s Cottages, and there was
no light in Mrs. Preston’s window to indicate her presence. The only bit of
illumination there was in the dim dewy twilight road, was a gleam from old
Betty’s perennial fire, which shone out as she opened the door to watch the
passage of the dog-cart just then returning from Ridley, where it ought to
have carried Mr. John to dinner. The dog-cart was just returning home, in an
innocent, unconscious way; but how much had happened in the interval! the
thought made Jack’s head whirl a little, and made him half smile; only half
smile—for such a momentous crisis is not amusing. He had not had time to
think whether or not he was rapturously happy, as a young lover ought to
be: on the whole, it was a very serious business. There were a thousand
things to think of, such as take the laughter out of a man; yet he did smile as
it occurred to him in what an ordinary commonplace sort of way the dog-
cart and the mare and the groom had been jogging back along the dusty
roads, while he had been so weightily engaged; and how all those people
had been calmly dining at Ridley—were dining now, no doubt—and
mentally criticising the dishes, and making feeble dinner table-talk, while
he had been settling his fate; in less time than they could have got half
through their dinner—in less time than even the bay mare could devour the
way between the two houses! Jack felt slightly giddy as he thought of it,
and his face grew serious again under his smile. The cottage door stood
innocently open; there was nobody and nothing between him and his
business; he had not even to knock, to be opened to by a curious indifferent
servant, as would have been the case in another kind of house. The little
passage was quite dark, but there was another gleam of fire-light from the
kitchen, where Mr. Swayne sat patient with his rheumatism, and even Mrs.
Preston’s door was ajar. Out of the soft darkness without, into the closer
darkness within, Jack stepped with a beating heart. This was not the
pleasant part of it; this was not like the sudden delight of meeting Pamela—
the sudden passion of laying hold on her and claiming her as his own. He
stopped in the dark passage, where he had scarcely room to turn, and drew
breath a little. He felt within himself that if Mrs. Preston in her black cap
and her black gown fell into his arms and saluted him as her son, that he
would not be so deeply gratified as perhaps he ought to have been. Pamela
was one thing, but her mother was quite another. If mothers, and fathers too
for that matter, could but be done away with when their daughters are old
enough to marry, what a great deal of trouble it would spare in this world!
But that was not to be thought of. He had come to do it, and it had to be
done. While he stood taking breath and collecting himself, Mr. Swayne
feeling that the step which had crossed his threshold was not his wife’s step,
called out to the intruder. “Who are you?” cried the master of the house;
“you wait till my missis comes and finds you there; she don’t hold with no
tramp; and I see her a-coming round the corner,” he continued, in tones in
which exultation had triumphed over fright. No tramp could have been
more moved by the words than was Jack. He resisted the passing impulse
he had to stride into the kitchen and strangle Mr. Swayne in passing; and
then, with one knock by way of preface, he went in without further
introduction into the parlor where Mrs. Preston was alone.
It was almost quite dark—dark with that bewildering summer darkness
which is more confusing than positive night. Something got up hastily from
the sofa at the sight of him, and gave a little suppressed shriek of alarm.
“Don’t be alarmed—it is only I, Mrs. Preston,” said Jack. He made a step
forward and looked at her, as probably she too was looking at him; but they
could not see each other, and it was no comfort to Pamela’s mother to be
told by Jack Brownlow, that it was only I.
“Has any thing happened?” she cried; “what is it? what is it? oh my
child!—for God’s sake, whoever you are, tell me what it is.”
“There is nothing the matter with her,” said Jack, steadily. “I am John
Brownlow, and I have come to speak to you; that is what it is.”
“John Brownlow,” said Mrs. Preston, in consternation—and then her
tone changed. “I am sorry I did not know you,” she said; “but if you have
any business with me, sir, I can soon get a light.”
“Indeed I have the most serious business,” said Jack—it was in his mind
to say that he would prefer being without a light; but there would have been
something too familiar and undignified for the occasion in such a speech as
that.
 “Wait a moment,” said Mrs. Preston, and she hastened out, leaving him
in the dark parlor by himself. Of course he knew it was only a pretext—he
knew as well as if she had told him that she had gone to establish a watch
for Pamela to prevent her from coming in while he was there; and this time
he laughed outright. She might have done it an hour ago, fast enough; but
now to keep Pamela from him was more than all the fathers and mothers in
the world could do. He laughed at the vain precaution. It was not that he
had lost all sense of prudence, or that he was not aware how foolish a thing
in many respects he was doing; but notwithstanding, he laughed at the idea
that any thing, stone walls and iron bars, or admonitions, or parental orders,
could keep her from him. It might be very idiotic—and no doubt it was; but
if any body dreamed for a moment that he could be made to give her up! or
that she could be wrested out of his grasp now that he had possession of her
—any deluded individual who might entertain such a notion could certainly
know nothing of Jack.
Mrs. Preston was absent for some minutes, and before she came back
there had been a soft rustle in the passage, a subdued sound of voices, in
one of which, rapidly suppressed and put a stop to, Jack could discern Mrs.
Swayne’s voluble tones. He smiled to himself in the darkness as he stood
and waited; he knew what was going on as well as if he had been outside
and had seen it all. Pamela was being smuggled into the house, being put
somewhere out of his way. Probably her mother was making an attempt to
conceal from her even the fact that he was there, and at this purely futile
attempt Jack again laughed in his heart; then in his impatience he strode to
the window, and looked out at the gates which were indistinctly visible
opposite, and the gleam of Betty’s fire, which was now apparent only
through her window. That was the way it would have been natural for him
to go, not this—there lay his home, wealthy, luxurious, pleasant, with
freedom in it, and every thing that ministered most at once to his comfort
and his ambition: and yet it was not there he had gone, but into this shabby
little dingy parlor, to put his life and all his pleasure in life, and his
prospects and every thing for which he most cared, at the disposal, not of
Pamela, but of her mother. He felt that it was hard. As for her, the little
darling! to have taken her in his arms and carried her off and built a nest for
her would not have been hard—but that it should all rest upon the decision
of her mother! Jack felt at the moment that it was a hard thing that there
should be mothers standing thus in the young people’s way. It might be very
unamiable on his part, but that was unquestionably his feeling: and indeed,
for one second, so terrible did the prospect appear to him, that the idea of
taking offense and running away did once cross his mind. If they chose to
leave him alone like this, waiting, what could they expect? He put his hand
upon the handle of the door, and then withdrew it as if it had burned him. A
minute after Mrs. Preston came back. She carried in her hand a candle,
which threw a bright light upon her worn face, with the black eyes, black
hair, black cap and black dress close round her throat which so much
increased the gauntness of her general appearance. This time her eyes,
though they were old, were very bright—bright with anxiety and alarm—so
bright that for the moment they were like Pamela’s. She came in and set
down her candle on the table, where it shed a strange little pale inquisitive
light, as if, like Jack, it was looking round, half dazzled by the change out
of complete darkness, at the unfamiliar place; and then she drew down the
blind. When she had done this she came to the table near which Jack was
standing. “Mr. Brownlow, you want to speak to me?” she said.
“Yes,” said Jack. Though his forefathers had been Brownlows of
Masterton for generations, which ought to have given him self-possession if
any thing could, and though he had been brought up at a public-school,
which was still more to the purpose, this simple question took away the
power of speech from him as completely as if he had been the merest
clown. He had not felt the least difficulty about what he was going to say,
but all at once to say any thing at all seemed impossible.
“Then tell me what it is,” said Mrs. Preston, sitting down in the black
old-fashioned high-backed easy-chair. Her heart was melting to him more
and more every moment, the sight of his confusion being sweet to her eyes,
but of course he did not know this—neither, it is to be feared, would Jack
have very much cared.
“Yes,” he said again; “the fact was—I—wanted to speak to you—about
your daughter. I suppose this sort of thing is always an awkward business. I
have seen her with—with my sister, you know—we couldn’t help seeing
each other; and the fact is, we’ve—we’ve grown fond of each other without
knowing it: that is about the state of the case.”
“Fond of each other?” said Mrs. Preston, faltering. “Mr. Brownlow, I
don’t think that is how you ought to speak. You mean you have grown fond
of Pamela. I am very, very sorry; but Heaven forbid that my poor girl—”
 “I mean what I say,” said Jack, sturdily—“we’ve grown fond of each
other. If you ask her she will tell you the same. We were not thinking of any
thing of the kind—it came upon us unawares. I tell you the whole truth, that
you may not wonder at me coming so unprepared. I don’t come to you as a
fellow might that had planned it all out and turned it over in his mind, and
could tell you how much he had a year, and what he could settle on his
wife, and all that. I tell you frankly the truth, Mrs. Preston. We were not
thinking of any thing of the kind; but now, you see, we have both of us
found it out.”
“I don’t understand you,” said the astonished mother; “what have you
found out?”
“We’ve found out just what I’ve been telling you,” said Jack—“that
we’re fond of each other. You may say I should have told you first; but the
truth was, I never had the opportunity—not that I would have been sure to
have taken advantage of it if I had. We went on without knowing what we
were doing, and then it came upon us all at once.”
He sat down abruptly as he said this, in an abstracted way; and he
sighed. He had found it out, there could be no doubt of that; and he did not
hide from himself that this discovery was a very serious one. It filled his
mind with a great many thoughts. He was no longer in a position to go on
amusing himself without any thought of the future. Jack was but mortal,
and it is quite possible he might have done so had it been in his power. But
it was not in his power, and his aspect, when he dropped into the chair, and
looked into the vacant air before him and sighed, was rather that of a man
looking anxiously into the future—a future that was certain—than of a lover
waiting for the sentence which (metaphorically) is one of life or death; and
Mrs. Preston, little experienced in such matters, and much agitated by the
information so suddenly conveyed to her, did not know what to think. She
bent forward and looked at him with an eagerness which he never
perceived. She clasped her hands tightly together, and gazed as if she would
read his heart; and then what could she say? He was not asking any thing
from her—he was only intimating to her an unquestionable fact.
“But, Mr. Brownlow,” she said at last, tremulously, “I think—I hope you
may be mistaken. My Pamela is very young—and so are you—very young
for a man. I hope you have made a mistake. At your age it doesn’t matter so
much.”
 “Don’t it, though?” said Jack, with a flash in his eyes. “I can’t, say to
you that’s our business, for I know, of course, that a girl ought to consult
her mother. But don’t let us discuss that, please. A fact can’t be discussed,
you know. It’s either true or it’s false—and we certainly are the only ones
who can know.”
Then there was another pause, during which Jack strayed off again into
calculations about the future—that unforeseen future which had leaped into
existence for him only about an hour ago. He had sat down on the other side
of the table, and was gazing into the blank hearth as if some enlightenment
might have been found there. As for Mrs. Preston, her amazement and
agitation were such that it cost her a great effort to compose herself and not
to give way.
“Is this all you have to say to me?” she said at last, with trembling lips.
Then Jack roused himself up. Suddenly it occurred to him that the poor
woman whom he had been so far from admiring was behaving to him with
a generosity and delicacy very different from his conduct to her; and the
blood rushed to his face at the thought.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I have already explained to you why it is
that I come in such an unprepared way. I met her to-night. Upon my life I
did not lay any trap for her. I was awfully cut up about not seeing her; but
we met by accident. And the fact was, when we met we couldn’t help
showing that we understood each other. After that it was my first duty,” said
Jack, with a thrill of conscious grandeur, “to come to you.”
“But do you mean to say,” said Mrs. Preston, wringing her hands, “that
my Pamela—? Sir, she is only a child. She could not have understood you.
She may like you in a way—”
“She likes me as I like her,” said Jack, stoutly. “It’s no use struggling
against it. It is no use arguing about it. You may think her a child, but she is
not a child; and I can’t do without her, Mrs. Preston. I hope you haven’t any
dislike to me. If you have,” said Jack, warming up, “I will do any thing a
man can do to please you; but you couldn’t have the heart to make her
unhappy, and come between her and me.”
“I make her unhappy?” said Mrs. Preston, with a gasp. She who had no
hope or desire in the world but Pamela’s happiness! “But I don’t even see
how it came about. I—I don’t understand you. I don’t even know what you
want of me.”
 “What I want?” said Jack, turning round upon her with wondering eyes
—“What could I want but one thing? I want Pamela—that’s very clear.
Good heavens, you are not going to be ill, are you? Shall I call somebody? I
know it’s awfully sudden,” said the young fellow ruefully. Nobody could be
more sensible of that than he was. He got up in his dismay and went to a
side-table where there stood a carafe of water and brought her some. It was
the first act of human fellowship, as it were, that had passed between the
two, and somehow it brought them together. Mrs. Preston took the water
with that strange half-sacramental feeling with which a soul in extremity
receives the refreshment which brings it back to life. Was it her friend, her
son, or her enemy that thus ministered to her? Oh, if she could only have
seen into his heart! She had no interest in the world but Pamela, and now
the matter in hand was the decision for good or for evil of Pamela’s fate.
“I am better, thank you,” she said faintly. “I am not very strong, and it
startled me. Sit down, Mr. Brownlow, and let us talk it over. I knew this was
what it would have come to if it had gone on; but I have been talking a great
deal to my child, and keeping her under my eye—”
“Yes,” said Jack, with some indignation, “keeping her out of my way. I
knew you were doing that.”
“It was the only thing I could do,” said Mrs. Preston. “I did try to find
another means, but it did not succeed. When I asked you what you wanted
of me, I was not doubting your honor. But things are not so easy as you
young people think. Your father never will consent.”
“I don’t think things are easy,” said Jack. “I see they are as crooked and
hard as possible. I don’t pretend to think it’s all plain sailing. I believe he
won’t consent. It might have been all very well to consider that three
months ago, but you see we never thought of it then. We must just do
without his consent now.”
“And there is more than that,” said Mrs. Preston. “It would not be right
for him to consent, nor for me either. If you only found it out so suddenly,
how can you be sure of your own mind, Mr. John—and you so young? I
don’t say any thing of my own child. I don’t mean to say in my heart that I
think you too grand for her. I know if ever there was a lady born it’s—; but
that’s not the question,” she continued, nervously wringing her hands again.
“If she was a princess, she’s been brought up different from you. I did think
once there might have been a way of getting over that; but I know better
now; and you’re very young; and from what you say,” said Pamela’s
mother, who, after all, was a woman, a little romantic and very proud, “I
don’t think you’re one that would be content to give up every thing for
love.”
Jack had been listening calmly enough, not making much in his own
mind of her objections; but the last words did strike home. He started, and
he felt in his heart a certain puncture, as if the needle in Mrs. Preston’s
work, which lay on the table, had gone into him. This at least was true. He
looked at her with a certain defiance, and yet with respect. “For love—no,”
said Jack half fiercely, stirred, like a mere male creature as he was, by the
prick of opposition; and then a softening came over his eyes, and a gleam
came into them which, even by the light of the one pale candle, made itself
apparent; “but for Pamela—yes. I’ll tell you one thing, Mrs. Preston,” he
added, quickly, “I should not call it giving up. I don’t mean to give up. As
for my father, I don’t see what he has to do with it. I can work for my wife
as well as any other fellow could. If I were to say it didn’t matter, you might
mistrust me; but when a man knows it does matter,” said Jack, again
warming with his subject, “when a man sees it’s serious, and not a thing to
be done without thinking, you can surely rely upon him more than if he
went at it blindly? I think so at least.”
So saying, Jack stopped, feeling a little sore and incompris. If he had
made a fool of himself, no doubt the woman would have believed in him;
but because he saw the gravity of what he was about to do, and felt its
importance, a kind of doubt was in his hearer’s heart. “They not only expect
a man to be foolish, but they expect him to forget his own nature,” Jack said
to himself, which certainly was hard.
“I don’t mistrust you,” said Mrs. Preston, but her voice faltered, and did
not quite carry out her words; “only, you know, Mr. John, you are very
young. Pamela is very young, but you are even younger than she is—I
mean, you know, because you are a man; and how can you tell that you
know your own mind? It was only to-day that you found it out, and to-
morrow you might find something else out—”
Here she stopped half frightened, for Jack had risen up, and was looking
at her over the light of the candle, looking pale and somewhat threatening.
He was not in a sentimental attitude, neither was there any thing about him
that breathed the tender romance for which in her heart Mrs. Preston sighed,
and without which it cost her an effort to believe in his sincerity. He was
standing with his hands thrust down to the bottom of his pockets, his brow a
little knitted, his face pale, his expression worried and impatient. “What is
the use of beginning over and over again?” said Jack. “Do you think I could
have found out like this a thing that hadn’t been in existence for months and
months? Why, the first time I saw you in Hobson’s cart—the time I carried
her in out of the snow—” When he had got this length, he walked away to
the window and stood looking out, though the blind was down, with his
back turned upon her—“with her little red cloak, and her pretty hair,” said
Jack, with a curious sound which would not bear classification. It might
have been a laugh, or a sob, or a snort—and it was neither; anyhow, it
expressed the emotion within him better than half a hundred fine speeches.
“And you don’t believe in me after all that!” he said, coming back again
and looking at her once more over the light of the candle. Perhaps it was
something in Jack’s eyes, either light or moisture, it would be difficult to
tell which, that overpowered Mrs. Preston, for the poor woman faltered and
began to cry.
“I do believe in you,” she said. “I do—and I love you for saying it; but
oh, Mr. John, what am I to do? I can’t let you ruin yourself with your father.
I can’t encourage you when I know what it will cost you; and then, my own
child—”
“That’s it,” said Jack, drawing his chair over to her side of the table, with
his first attempt at diplomacy—“that’s what we’ve got to think of. It doesn’t
matter for a fellow like me. If I got disappointed and cut up I should have to
bear it; but as for Pamela, you know—dear little soul! You may think it
strange, but,” said Jack, with a little affected laugh, full of that supreme
vanity and self-satisfaction with which a man recognizes such a fact, “she is
fond of me; and if she were disappointed and put out, you know—why, it
might make her ill—it might do her no end of harm—it might—Seriously,
you know,” said Jack, looking in Mrs. Preston’s face, and giving another
and another hitch to his chair. Though her sense of humor was not lively,
she dried her eyes and looked at him with a little bewilderment, wondering
was he really in earnest? did he mean it? or what did he mean?
“She is very young,” said Mrs. Preston; “no doubt it would do her harm;
but I should be there to nurse her—and—and—she is so young.”
 “It might kill her,” said Jack, impressively; “and then whom would you
have to blame? Not my father, for he has nothing to do with it; but yourself,
Mrs. Preston—that’s how it would be. Just look at what a little delicate
darling she is—a little bit of a thing that one could carry away in one’s
arms,” he went on, growing more and more animated—“a little face like a
flower; and after the bad illness she had. I would not take such a
responsibility for any thing in the world,” he added, with severe and
indignant virtue. As for poor Mrs. Preston, she did not know what to do.
She wrung her hands; she looked at him beseechingly, begging him with her
eyes to cease. Every feature of the picture came home to her with a much
deeper force than it did to her mentor. Jack no more believed in any danger
to Pamela than he did in his own ultimate rejection; but the poor mother
beheld her daughter pining, dying, breaking her heart, and trembled to her
very soul.
“Oh, Mr. John,” she cried, with tears, “don’t break my heart! What am I
to do? If I must either ruin you with your father—”
“Or kill your child,” said Jack, looking at her solemnly till his victim
shuddered. “Your child is more to you than my father: besides,” said the
young man, unbending a little, “it would not ruin me with my father. He
might be angry. He might make himself disagreeable; but he’s not a muff to
bear malice. My father,” continued Jack, with emphasis, feeling that he
owed his parent some reparation, and doing it magnificently when he was
about it, “is as true a gentleman as I know. He’s not the man to ruin a
fellow. You think of Pamela, and never mind me.”
But it took a long time and much reiteration to convince Mrs. Preston.
“If I could but see Mr. Brownlow, I could tell him something that would
perhaps soften his heart,” she said; but this was far from being a pleasant
suggestion to Jack. He put it down summarily, not even asking in his
youthful impatience what the something was. He had no desire to know. He
did not want his father’s heart to be softened. In short, being as yet
unaccustomed to the idea, he did not feel any particular delight in the
thought of presenting Pamela’s mother to the world as belonging to himself.
And yet this same talk had made a wonderful difference in his feeling
toward Pamela’s mother. The thought of the explanation he had to make to
her was repugnant to him when he came in. He had all but run away from it
when he was left to wait alone. And now, in less than an hour, it seemed so
natural to enter into every thing. Even if she had bestowed a maternal
embrace upon him, Jack did not feel as if he would have resisted; but she
gave him no motherly kiss. She was still half frightened at him, half
disposed to believe that to get rid of him would be the best thing; and Jack
had no mind to be got rid of. Neither of them could have told very exactly
what was the understanding upon which they parted. There was an
understanding, that was certain—an arrangement, tacit, inexpressible,
which, however, was not hostile. He was not permitted in so many words to
come again; but neither was he sent away. When he had the assurance to
ask to see Pamela before he left, Mrs. Preston went nervously through the
passage before him and opened the door, opening up the house and their
discussion as she did so, to the big outside world and wakeful sky, with all
its stars, which seemed to stoop and look in. Poor little Pamela was in the
room up stairs, speechless, motionless, holding her breath, fixed as it were
to the window from which she must see him go out; hearing the indistinct
hum of voices underneath, and wondering what her mother was saying to
him. When the parlor door opened, her heart leaped up in her breast. She
could hear his voice, and distinguish, as she thought, every tone of it, but
she could not hear what he said. For an instant it occurred to her too that she
might be called down stairs. But then the next moment the outer door
opened, a breath of fresh air stole into the house, and she knew he was
dismissed. How had he been dismissed? For the moment? for the night? or
forever? The window was open to which Pamela clung in the darkness, and
she could hear his step going out. And as he went he spoke out loud enough
to be heard up stairs, to be heard by any body on the road, and almost for
that matter to be heard at Betty’s cottage. “If I must not see her,” he said,
“give her my dear love.” What did it mean. Was his dear love his last
message of farewell? or was it only the first public indication that she
belonged to him? Pamela sank down on her knees by the window, noiseless,
with her heart beating so in her ears that she felt as if he must hear it
outside. The whole room, the whole house, the whole air, seemed to her full
of that throbbing. His dear love! It seemed to come in to her with the fresh
air—to drop down upon her from the big stars as they leaned out of heaven
and looked down; and yet she could not tell if it meant death or life. And
Mrs. Preston was not young, and could not fly, but came so slowly, so
slowly, up the creaking wooden stair!
Poor Mrs. Preston went slowly, not only because of her age, but because
of her burden of thoughts. She could not have told any one whether she was
very happy or deadly sad. Her heart was not fluttering in her ears like
Pamela, but beating out hard throbs of excitement. He was good, he was
true; her heart accepted him. Perhaps he was the friend she had so much
longed for, who would guard Pamela when she was gone. At present,
however, she was not gone; and yet her sceptre was passing away out of her
hands, and her crown from her head. Anyhow, for good or for evil, this
meant change; the sweet sceptre of love, the crown of natural authority and
duty, such as are the glory of a woman who is a mother, were passing away
from her. She did not grudge it. She would not have grudged life, nor any
thing dearer than life, for Pamela; but she felt that there was change
coming: and it made her sick—sick and cold and shivering, as if she was
going to have a fever. She would have been glad to have had wings and
flown to carry joy to her child; but she could not go fast for the burden and
heaviness of her thoughts.
Meanwhile Jack crossed the road briskly, and went up the avenue under
the big soft lambent stars. If it was at him in his character of lover that they
were looking, they might have saved themselves the trouble, for he took no
notice whatever of these sentimental spectators. He went home, not in a
lingering meditative way, but like a man who has made up his mind. He had
no sort of doubt or disquietude for his part about the acceptance of his love.
He knew that Pamela was his, though her mother would not let him see her.
He knew he should see her, and that she belonged to him, and nobody on
earth could come between them. He had known all this from the first
moment when the simple little girl had told him that life was hard; and as
for her mother or his father, Jack did not in his mind make much account of
the opposition of these venerable personages—such being his nature. What
remained now was to clear a way into the future, to dig out a passage, and
make it as smooth as possible for these tremulous little feet. Such were the
thoughts he was busy with as he went home—not even musing about his
little love. He had mused about her often enough before. Now his practical
nature resumed the sway. How a household could be kept up, when it
should be established, by what means it was to be provided, was the subject
of Jack’s thoughts. He went straight to the point without any
circumlocution. As it was to be done, it would be best to be done quickly.
And he did not disguise from himself the change it would make. He knew
well enough that he could not live as he had lived in his father’s house. He
would have to go into lodgings, or to a little house; to have one or two
indifferent servants—perhaps a “child-wife”—perhaps a resident mother-in-
law. All this Jack calmly faced and foresaw. It could not come on him
unawares, for he considered the chances, and saw that all these things were
possible. There are people who will think the worse of him for this; but it
was not Jack’s fault—it was his constitution. He might be foolish like his
neighbors on one point, but on all other points he was sane. He did not
expect that Pamela, if he translated her at once into a house of her own,
should be able to govern him and it on the spot by natural intuition. He
knew there would be, as he himself expressed it, many “hitches” in the
establishment, and he knew that he would have to give up a great many
indulgences. This was why he took no notice of the stars, and even knitted
his brows as he walked on. The romantic part of the matter was over. It was
now pure reality, and that of the most serious kind, that he had in hand.
 CHAPTER XXIV.

A NEW CONSPIRATOR.

“I don’t say as you’re to take my advice,” said Mrs. Swayne. “I’m not
one as puts myself forward to give advice where it ain’t wanted. Ask any
one as knows. You as is church folks, if I was you, I’d send for the rector; or
speak to your friends. There ain’t one living creature with a morsel of sense
as won’t say to you just what I’m saying now.”
“Oh please go away—please go away,” said Pamela, who was standing
with crimson cheeks between Mrs. Preston and her would-be counselor;
“don’t you see mamma is ill?”
“She’ll be a deal worse afore all’s done, if she don’t listen in time; and
you too, Miss Pamela, for all so angry as you are,” said Mrs. Swayne. “It
ain’t nothing to me. If you like it, it don’t do me no harm; contrairaways,
it’s my interest to keep you quiet here, for you’re good lodgers—I don’t
deny it—and ain’t folks as give trouble. But I was once a pretty lass
myself,” she added, with a sigh; “and I knows what it is.”
Pamela turned with unfeigned amazement and gazed upon the big figure
that stood in the door-way. Once a pretty lass herself! Was this what pretty
lasses came to? Mrs. Swayne, however, did not pause to inquire what were
the thoughts that were passing through the girl’s mind; she took a step or
two farther into the room, nearer the sofa on which Mrs. Preston lay. She
was possessed with that missionary zeal for other people’s service, that
determination to do as much as lay in her power to keep her neighbors from
having their own way, or to make them very uncomfortable in the
enjoyment of the luxury, which is so common a development of virtue. Her
conscience was weighted with her responsibility: when she had warned
them what they were coming to, then at least she would have delivered her
own soul.
“I don’t want to make myself disagreeable,” said Mrs. Swayne; “it ain’t
my way; but, Mrs. Preston, if you go on having folks about, it’s right you
should hear what them as knows thinks of it. I ain’t a-blaming you. You’ve
lived in foreign parts, and you’re that silly about your child that you can’t a-
bear to cross her. I’m one as can make allowance for that. But I just ask you
what can the likes of that young fellow want here? He don’t come for no
good. Poor folks has a deal of things to put up with in this world, and
women folks most of all. I don’t make no doubt Miss Pamela is pleased to
have a gentleman a-dancing after her. I don’t know one on us as wouldn’t
be pleased; but them as has respect for their character and for their peace o’
mind—”
“Mrs. Swayne, you must not speak like this to me,” said Mrs. Preston,
feebly, from the sofa. “I have a bad headache, and I can’t argue with you;
but you may be sure, though I don’t say much, I know how to take care of
my own child. No, Pamela dear, don’t cry; and you’ll please not to say
another word to me on this subject—not another word, or I shall have to go
away.”
“To go away!” said Mrs. Swayne, crimson with indignation. But this
sudden impulse of self-defense in so mild a creature struck her dumb. “Go
away!—and welcome to!” she added; but her consternation was such that
she could say no more. She stood in the middle of the little dark parlor, in a
partial trance of astonishment. Public opinion itself had been defied in her
person. “When it comes to what it’s sure to come to, then you’ll remember
as I warned you,” she said, and rushed forth from the room, closing the door
with a clang which made poor Mrs. Preston jump on her sofa. Her visit left
a sense of trouble and dismay on both their minds, for they were not
superior women, nor sufficiently strong-minded to laugh at such a monitor.
Pamela threw herself down on her knees by her mother’s side and cried—
not because of Mrs. Swayne, but because the fright and the novelty
overwhelmed her, not to speak of the lively anger and disgust and
impatience of her youth.
“Oh, mamma, if we had only some friends!” said Pamela; “everybody
except us seems to have friends. Had I never any uncles nor any thing? It is
hard to be left just you and me in the world.”
“You had brothers once,” said Mrs. Preston, with a sigh. Then there was
a pause, for poor Pamela knew and could not help knowing that her
brothers, had they been living, would not have improved her position now.
She kept kneeling by her mother’s side, but though there was no change in
her position, her heart went away from her involuntarily—went away to
think that the time perhaps had come when she would never more want a
friend—when somebody would always be at hand to advise her what to do,
and when no such complications could arise. She kept the gravity, even
sadness of her aspect, with the innocent hypocrisy which is possible at her
age; but her little heart went out like a bird into the sunny world outside. A
passing tremor might cross her, ghosts might glide for a moment across the
way, but it was only for a moment, and she knew they were only ghosts.
Her mother was in a very different case. Mrs. Preston had a headache,
partly because of the shock of last night, partly because a headache was to
her, as to so many women, a kind of little feminine chapel, into which she
could retire to gain time when she had any thing on her mind. The course of
individual history stops when those headaches come on, and the subject of
them has a blessed moment to think. Nothing could be done, nothing could
be said, till Mrs. Preston’s head was better. It was but a small matter had it
been searched to its depths, but it was enough to arrest the wheels of fate.
“Pamela,” she said, after a while, “we must be doubly wise because we
have no friends. I can’t ask any body’s advice, as Mrs. Swayne told me to
do. I am not going to open up our private affairs to strangers: but we must
be wise. I think we must go away.”
“Go away!” said Pamela, looking up with a face of despair—“away!
Mamma, you don’t think of—of—him as she does? You know what he is.
Go away! and perhaps never, never see him again. Oh, mamma!”
“I did not mean that,” said Mrs. Preston; “but we can’t stop here, and
live at his father’s very door, and have him coming under their eyes to vex
them. No, my darling; that would be cruel, and it would not be wise.”
“Do you think they will mind so very much?” said Pamela, looking
wistfully in her mother’s face. “What should I do if they hated me? Miss
Brownlow, you know—Sara—she always wanted me to call her Sara—she
would never turn against me. I know her too well for that.”
“She has not been here for a long time,” said Mrs. Preston; “you have
not noticed it, but I have, Pamela. She has never come since that day her
father spoke to you. There is a great difference, my darling, between the
sister’s little friend and the brother’s betrothed.”
“Mamma, you seem to know all about those wretched things,” cried
Pamela, impulsively. “Why did you never tell me before? I never, never
would have spoken to him—if I had known.”
 “How was I to know, Pamela?” said Mrs. Preston. “It appears you did
not know yourselves. And then, when you told me what Mr. Brownlow
said, I thought I might find you a friend. I think yet, if I could but see him;
but when I spoke last night of seeing Mr. Brownlow, he would not hear of
it. It is very hard to know what to do.”
Then there ensued another pause—a long pause, during which the
mother, engaged with many thoughts, did not look at her child. Pamela, too,
was thinking; she had taken her mother’s long thin hand into her own, and
was smoothing it softly with her soft fingers; her head was bent over it, her
eyes cast down; now and then a sudden heaving, as of a sob about to come,
moved her pretty shoulders. And her voice was very tuneless and rigid
when she spoke. “Mamma,” she said, “speak to me honestly, once for all.
Ought I to give it all up? I don’t mean to say it would be easy. I never knew
a—a—any one before—never any body was like that to me. You don’t
know—oh, you don’t know how he can talk, mamma. And then it was not
like any thing new—it felt natural, as if we had always belonged to each
other. I know it’s no use talking. Tell me, mamma, once for all, would it
really be better for him and—every body, if I were to give him quite up?”
Pamela held herself upright and rigid as she asked the question. She held
her mother’s hand fast, and kept stroking it in an intermittent way. When
she had finished she gave her an appealing look—a look which did not ask
advice. It was not advice she wanted, poor child: she wanted to be told to do
what she longed to do—to be assured that that was the best; therefore she
looked not like a creature wavering between two opinions, but like a culprit
at the bar, awaiting her sentence. As for Mrs. Preston, she only shook her
head.
“It would not do any good,” she said. “You might give him up over and
over, but you would never get him to give you up, Pamela. He is that sort of
a young man; he would not have taken a refusal from me. It would be of no
use, my dear.”
“Are you sure?—are you quite sure?” cried Pamela, throwing her arms
round her mother’s neck, and giving her a shower of kisses. “Oh you dear,
dear mamma. Are you sure, you are quite sure?”
“You are kissing me for his sake,” said Mrs. Preston, with a little pang;
and then she smiled at herself. “I never was jealous before,” she said. “I
don’t mean to be jealous. No, he will never give in, Pamela; we shall have
to make the best of it; and perhaps,” she continued, after a pause, “perhaps
this was the friend I was always praying for to take care of my child before
I die.”
“Oh, mamma,” said Pamela, “how can you talk of dying at such a time
as this? when, perhaps, we’re going to have—every thing we want in the
world; when, perhaps, we are going to be—as happy as the day is long!”
she said, once more kissing the worn old face which lay turned toward her,
in a kind of sweet enthusiasm. The one looked so young and the other so
old; the one so sure of life and happiness, the other so nearly done with
both. Mrs. Preston took the kiss and the clasp, and smiled at her radiant
child; and then she closed her eyes, and retreated into her headache. She
was not going to have every thing she wanted in the world, or to be as
happy as the day was long; so she retreated and took to her handy domestic
little malady. The child could not conceive that there were still a thousand
things to be thought over, and difficulties without number to be overcome.
As for Pamela, she sprang to her feet lightly, and went off to make the
precious cup of tea which is good for every feminine trouble. As she went
she fell into song, not knowing it. She was as near dancing as decorum
would permit. She went into the kitchen where Mr. Swayne was, and
cheered him up more effectually than if he had been well for a week. She
made him laugh, though he was in low spirits. She promised him that he
should be quite well in three months. “Ready to dance if there was any
thing to dance at,” was what Pamela said.
“At your wedding, Miss Pamela,” said poor Swayne, with his shrill little
chuckle. And Pamela too laughed with a laugh that was like a song. She
stood by the fire while the kettle boiled, with the fire-light glimmering in
her pretty eyes, and reddening her white forehead under the rings of her
hair. Should she have to boil the kettle, to spread the homely table for him?
or would he take her to Brownlows, or some other such house, and make
her a great little lady like Sara? On the whole Pamela thought she would
like the first best. She made the tea before the bright fire in such perfection
as it never was made at Brownlows, and poured it out hot and fragrant, like
one who knew what she was about. But the tea was not so great a cordial as
the sight of her own face. She had come clear out of all her perplexities.
There was no longer even a call upon that anxious faculty for self-sacrifice
which belongs to youth. In short, self-sacrifice would do no good—the idol
would simply decline to receive the costly offering. It was in his hands, and
nothing that she could do would make any difference. Perhaps, if Pamela
had been a self-asserting young woman, her pride would have suffered from
this thought; but she was only a little girl of seventeen, and it made her as
light as a bird. No dreadful responsibility rested on her soft shoulders—no
awful question of what was best remained for her to consider. What use
could there be in giving up when he would not be given up? What end
would it serve to refuse a man who would not take a refusal? She had made
her tragic little effort in all sincerity, and it had come to the sweetest and
most complete failure. And now her part had been done, and no farther
perplexity could overwhelm her. So she thought, flitting out and in upon a
hundred errands, and thinking tenderly in her heart that her mother’s
headache and serious looks and grave way of looking at every thing was not
so much because there was any thing serious in the emergency, as because
the dear mother was old—a fault of nature, not of circumstances, to be
mended by love and smiles, and all manner of tender services on the part of
the happy creature who was young.
When Mrs. Swayne left the parlor in the manner which we have already
related, she rushed out, partly to be relieved of her wrath, partly to pour her
prophecies of evil into the ears of the other Cassandra on the other side of
the road, old Betty of the Gates. The old woman was sitting before her fire
when her neighbor went in upon her. To be sure it was summer, but Betty’s
fire was eternal, and burned without intermission on the sacred hearth. She
was mending one of her gowns, and had a whole bundle of bits of colored
print—“patches,” for which some of the little girls in Miss Brownlow’s
school would have given their ears—spread out upon the table before her.
Bits of all Betty’s old gowns were there. It was a parti-colored historical
record of her life, from the gay calicoes of her youth down to the sober
browns and olives of declining years. With such a gay centre the little room
looked very bright. There was a geranium in the window, ruby and emerald.
There were all manner of pretty confused cross-lights from the open door
and the latticed window in the other corner and the bright fire; and the little
old face in its white cap was as brown and as red as a winter apple. Mrs.
Swayne was a different sort of person. She came in, filling the room with
shadows, and put herself away in a big elbow-chair, with blue and white
cushions, which was Betty’s winter throne, but now stood pushed into a
corner out of reach of the fire. She uttered a sigh which blew away some of
the patches on the table, and swayed the ruby blossoms of the big geranium.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve done my best—I can say I’ve done my best. If the
worst comes to the worst, there’s none as can blame me.”
“What is it?—what is it, Mrs. Swayne?” said Betty, eagerly, dropping
her work, “though I’ve something as tells me it’s about that poor child and
our Mr. John.”
“I wash my hands of them,” said the visitor, doing so in a moist and
demonstrative way. “I’ve done all as an honest woman can do. Speak o’
mothers!—mothers is a pack o’ fools. I’d think o’ that child’s interest if it
was me. I’d think what was best for her character, and for keeping her out
o’ mischief. As for cryin’, and that sort, they all cry—it don’t do them no
harm. If you or me had set our hearts on marryin’ the first gentleman as ever
was civil, what would ha’ become of us? Oh the fools as some folks is! It’s
enough to send a woman with a bit of sense out o’ her mind.”
“Marryin’?” said Betty, with a little shriek; “you don’t mean to say as
they’ve gone as far as that.”
“If they don’t go farther afore all’s done, it’ll be a wonder to me,” said
Mrs. Swayne; “things is always like that. I don’t mean to take no particular
credit to myself; but if she had been mine, I’d have done my best for her—
that’s one thing as I can say. She’d not have got into no trouble if she had
been mine. I’d have watched her night and day. I know what the gentlemen
is. But that’s allays the way with Providence. A woman like me as has a bit
of experience has none to be the better of it; and the likes of an old stupid as
don’t know her right hand from her left, it’s her as has the children. I’d have
settled all that different if it had been me. Last night as ever was, I found the
two in the open road—in the road, I give you my word. It’s over all the
parish by this, as sure as sure; and after that what does my gentleman do but
come to the house as bold as brass. It turns a body sick—that’s what it does;
but you might as well preach to a stone wall as make ’em hear reason; and
that’s what you call a mother! much a poor girl’s the better of a mother like
that.”
“All mothers is not the same,” said Betty, who held that rank herself.
“For one as don’t know her duty, there’s dozens and dozens—”
“Don’t speak to me,” said Mrs. Swayne, “I know ’em—as stuck up as if
it was any virtue in them, and a shuttin’ their ears to every one as gives
them good advice. Oh, if that girl was but mine! I’d keep her as snug as if
she was in a box, I would. Ne’er a gentleman should get a chance of so
much as a look at her. It’s ten times worse when a girl is pretty; but, thank
heaven, I know what the gentlemen is.”
“But if he comed to the house, he must have made some excuse,” said
Betty. “I see him. He come by himself, as if it was to see your good
gentleman, Mrs. Swayne. Knowing as Miss Pamela was out, I don’t deny as
that was my thought. And he must have made some excuse.”
“Oh, they find excuses ready enough—don’t you be afeard,” said Mrs.
Swayne; “they’re plenty ready with their tongues, and don’t stick at what
they promise neither. It’s all as innocent as innocent if you was to believe
them; and them as believes comes to their ruin. I tell you it’s their ruin—
that and no less; but I may speak till I’m hoarse,” said Cassandra, with
melancholy emphasis—“nobody pays no attention to me.”
“You must have knowed a deal of them to be so earnest,” said old Betty,
with the deepest interest in her eyes.
“I was a pretty lass mysel’,” said Mrs. Swayne; and then she paused;
“but you’re not to think as I ever give in to them. I wasn’t that sort; and I
had folks as looked after me. I don’t say as Swayne is much to look at, after
all as was in my power; but if Miss Pamela don’t mind, she’ll be real
thankful afore she’s half my age to take up with a deal worse than Swayne;
and that’s my last word, if I was never to draw a breath more.”
“Husht!” said Betty. “Don’t take on like that. There’s somebody a-
coming. Husht! It’s just like as if it was a child of your own.”
“And so I feel,” said Mrs. Swayne; “worse luck for her, poor lass. If she
was mine—”
“Husht!” said Betty again; and then the approaching steps which they
had heard for the last minute reached the threshold, and a woman presented
herself at the door. She was not a woman that either of them knew. She was
old, very tall, very thin, and very dusty with walking. “I’m most dead with
tiredness. May I come in and rest a bit?” she said. She had a pair of keen
black eyes, which gleamed out below her poke bonnet, and took in every
thing, and did not look excessively tired; but her scanty black gown was
white with dust. Old Betty, for her own part, did not admire the stranger’s
looks, but she consented to let her come in, “manners” forbidding any
inhospitality, and placed her a chair as near as possible to the door.
“I come like a stranger,” said the woman, “but I’m not to call a stranger
neither. I’m Nancy as lives with old Mrs. Fennell, them young folks’
grandmamma. I had summat to do nigh here, and I thought as I’d like to see
the place. It’s a fine place for one as was nothing but an attorney once. I
allays wonder if they’re good folks to live under, such folks as these.”
“So you’re Nancy!” said the old woman of the lodge. “I’ve heard tell of
you. I heard of you along of Stevens as you recommended here. I haven’t
got nothing to say against the masters; they’re well and well enough; Miss
Sara, she’s hasty, but she’s a good heart.”
“She don’t show it to her own flesh and blood,” said Nancy,
significantly. “Is this lady one as lives about here?”
Then it was explained to the stranger who Mrs. Swayne was. “Mr.
Swayne built them cottages,” said Betty; “they’re his own, and as nice a
well-furnished house and as comfortable; and his good lady ain’t one of
them that wastes or wants. She has a lodger in the front parlor, and keeps
’em as nice as it’s a picture to see, and as respected in the whole parish—”
“Don’t you go on a-praising me before my face,” said Mrs. Swayne,
modestly; “we’re folks as are neither rich nor poor, and can give our
neighbors a hand by times and times. You’re a stranger, as is well seen, or
you wouldn’t be cur’ous about Swayne and me.”
“I’m a stranger sure enough,” said Nancy. “We’re poor relations, that’s
what we are; and the likes of us is not wanted here. If I was them I’d take
more notice o’ my own flesh and blood, and one as can serve them yet, like
she can. It ain’t what you call a desirable place,” said Nancy; “she’s awful
aggravating sometimes, like the most of old women; but all the same
they’re her children’s children, and I’d allays let that count if it was me.”
“That’s old Mrs. Fennell?” said Betty; “she never was here as I can think
on but once. Miss Sara isn’t one that can stand being interfered with; but
they sends her an immensity of game, and vegetables, and flowers, and such
things, and I’ve always heard as the master gives her an allowance. I don’t
see as she’s any reason to complain.”
“A woman as knows as much as she does,” said Nancy, solemnly, “she
ought to be better looked to;” and then she changed her tone. “I’ve walked
all this long way, and I have got to get back again, and she’ll be as cross as
cross if I’m long. And I don’t suppose there’s no omnibus or nothing going
my way. If it was but a cart—”
“There’s a carrier’s cart,” said Betty; “but Mrs. Swayne could tell you
most about that. Her two lodgers come in it, and Mrs. Preston, that time she
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