Brownlows

“But she couldn’t take the law of you?” Mrs. Fennell said, with a gasp. “She wouldn’t know any thing about it. I may talk disagreeable by times, and I own that we never were fond of each other, you and I, John Brownlow; but I’m not the woman that would ever let on to her, to harm my poor Bessie’s children—not I—not if she was to come back this very day.”

It is useless to deny that Mr. Brownlow’s face at that moment looked as if he would have liked to strangle the old woman; but he only made an indignant movement, and looked at her with rage and indignation, which did her no harm. And, poor man, in his excitement perhaps it was not quite true what he himself said—

“If she should come back this very day, it would be your duty to send her to me instantly, that I might give up her mother’s trust into her hands,” he said. “You may be sure I will never permit poor Bessie’s children to enjoy what belongs to another.” And then he made a pause and his voice changed. “After all, I suppose you know just as little of her as I do. Did you ever see her?” he said.

“Well, no; I can’t say I ever did,” said Mrs. Fennell, cowed for the moment.

“Nor Nancy?” said Mr. Brownlow; “you two would be safe guides certainly. And you know of nobody else who left the Isle of Man and married—no relation of Fennell’s or of yours?”

“Nobody I know of,” said the old woman after a pause. “There might be dozens; but us and the Thomsons and all belonging to us, we’ve been out of the Isle of Man for nigh upon fifty years.”

After that Mr. Brownlow went away. He had got no information, no satisfaction, and yet he had made no discovery, which was a kind of negative comfort in its way; but it was clear that his mother-in-law, though she made so much use of Phœbe Thomson’s name, was utterly unable to give him any assistance either in discovering the real Phœbe Thomson or in exposing any false pretender. He went across the market place over the crisp snow in the sunshine with all his faculties, as it were, crisped and sharpened like the air he breathed. This was all the effect as yet which the frosts of age had upon him. He had all his powers unimpaired, and more entirely serviceable and under command than ever they were. He could trust himself not to betray himself, to keep counsel, and act with deliberation, and do nothing hastily. Thus, though his enemies were as yet unknown and unrecognized, and consequently all the more dangerous, he had confidence in his own army of defense, which was a great matter. He returned to his office, and to his business, and was as clearheaded and self-possessed, and capable of paying attention to the affairs of his clients, as if he had nothing particular in his own to occupy him. And the only help he got from circumstances was that which was given him by the frost, which had happily interfered this day of all others to detain Jack. Jack was not his father’s favorite child; he was not, as Sara was, the apple of John Brownlow’s eye; and yet the lawyer appreciated, and did justice to, as well as loved, his son, in a just and natural way. He felt that Jack’s quick eye would have found out that there was something more than usual going on. He knew that his visit to Mrs. Fennell and his unexplained conference with the man of mystery would not have been passed over by Jack without notice; and at the young man’s hasty, impetuous time of life, prudence was not to be expected or even desired. If Jack thought it possible that Phœbe Thomson was to be found within a hundred miles, no doubt he would make off without a moment’s thought and hunt her up, and put his own fortune, and, what was more, Sara’s, eagerly into her hands. This was what Jack would do, and Mr. Brownlow was glad in his heart that Jack would be sure to do it; but yet it might be a very different course which he himself, after much thought and consideration, might think it best to take.

He was long in his office that night, and worked very hard—indeed he would have been almost alone before he left but that one of the clerks had some extra work to do, and another had stayed to keep him company; so that two of them were still there when Inspector Pollaky, as they called him, came back. It was quite late, too late for the ice, or the young men would not have waited—half an hour later at least than the usual time at which Mr. Brownlow left the office. And he closed his door carefully behind his mysterious visitor, and made sure that it was securely shut before he began to talk to him, which naturally was a thing that excited much wondering between the young men.

“Young Jack been a naughty boy?” said one to the other; then they listened, but heard nothing. “More likely some fellow going in for Miss Brownlow, and he wants to pick holes in him,” said the second. But when half an hour passed and every thing continued very undisturbed, they betook themselves to their usual talk. “I suppose it’s about the Worsley case,” they said, and straightway Inspector Pollaky lost interest in their eyes. So long as it was only a client’s business it did not matter. Not for such common place concerns would the young heroes of John Brownlow’s office interrupt the even tenor of their way.

“I suppose you have brought me some news,” said Mr. Brownlow; “come near the fire. Take a chair, it is bitterly cold. I scarcely expected you so soon as to-day.”

“Bless you, sir, it’s as easy as easy,” said the mysterious man—“disgusting easy. If there’s any body that I despise in this world, it’s folks that have nothing to conceal. They’re all on the surface, them folks are. You can take and read them clear off, through and through.”

“Well?” said Mr. Brownlow. He turned his face a little away from the light that he might not be spied too closely, though there was not in reality any self-betrayal in his face. His lips were a little white and more compressed than usual, that was all.

“Well, sir, for the first thing, it’s all quite true,” said the man. “There’s seven of a family—the mother comely-like still, but older nor might be expected. Poor, awful poor, but making the best of it—keeping their hearts up as far as I could see. The young fellow helping too, and striving his best. I shouldn’t say as they had much of a dinner to-day; but cheerful as cheerful, and as far as I could see—”

“Was this all you discovered?” said Mr. Brownlow, severely.

“I am coming to the rest, sir,” said the detective, “and you’ll say as I’ve forgotten nothing. The father, which is dead, was once in the Life Guards. He was one of them sprigs as is to be met with there—run away out of a good family. He came from London first as far as she knows; and then they were ordered to Windsor, and then they went to Canada; but I’ve got the thread, Mr. Brownlow—I’ve got the thread. This poor fellow of a soldier got letters regular for a long time from Wales, she says—post-mark was St. Asaphs. Often and often she said as she’d go with him, and see who it was as wrote to him so often. I’ve been thereabouts myself in the way of my business, and I know there’s Powyses as thick as blackberries—that’s point number one. Second point was, he always called himself a Welshman and kept St. David’s Day. If he’d lived longer he’d have been sent up for promotion, and gone out of the ranks.”

“And then?—but go on in your own way, I want to hear it all,” said Mr. Brownlow. He was getting more and more excited; and yet somehow it was a kind of pleasure to him to feel that his informant was wasting time upon utterly insignificant details. Surely if the detective suspected nothing, it must be that there was nothing to suspect.

“Yes, sir,” he said, “that’s about where it is; he was one of the Powyses; naturally the children is Powyses too. But he died afore he went up for promotion; and now they’re come a-seeking of their friends. It ain’t no credit to me to be employed on such an easy case. The only thing that would put a little credit in it would be, if you’d give me just a bit of a hint what was wanted. If their friends want ’em I’ll engage to put ’em on the scent. If their friends don’t want ’em—as wouldn’t be no wonder; for folks may have a kindness for a brother or a son as is wild, and yet they mightn’t be best pleased to hear of a widow a-coming with seven children—if they ain’t wanted a word will do it, and no questions asked.”

John Brownlow gave the man a sharp glance, and then he fell a-musing, as if he was considering whether to give him this hint or not. In reality, he was contemplating, with a mixture of impatience and vexation and content, the total misconception of his object which his emissary had taken up. He was exasperated by his stupidity, and yet he felt a kind of gratitude to him, and relief, as if a danger had been escaped.

“And what of the woman herself?” he said, in a tone which, in spite of him trembled a little.

“Oh, the woman,” said the detective, carelessly; “some bit of a girl as he married, and as was pretty, I don’t doubt, in her day. There’s nothing particular about her. She’s very fond of her children, and very free in her talk, like most women when you take ’em the right way. Bless you, sir, when I started her talking of her husband, it was all that I could do to get her to leave off. She don’t think she’s got any thing to hide. He was a gentleman, that’s clear. He wouldn’t have been near so frank about himself, I’ll be bound. She ain’t a lady exactly, but there’s something about her—and awful open in her way, with them front teeth—”

“Has she got front teeth?” said Mr. Brownlow, with some eagerness. He pitched upon it as the first personal attribute he had yet heard of, and then he added, with a little confusion, “like the boy—”

“Yes sir—exactly like the young fellow,” said his companion; “but there ain’t nothing about her to interest us. She told me as she once had friends as lived in Masterton; but she’s the sort of woman as don’t mind much about friends as long as her children is well off; and I judge she was of well-to-do folks, that was awful put out about her marriage. A man like that, sir, might be far above her, and have friends that was far above her, and yet it’s far from the kind of marriage as would satisfy well-to-do folks.”

“I thought she came from the Isle of Man,” said Mr. Brownlow, in what he meant for an indifferent way.

“As a child, sir—as a child,” said the detective, with easy carelessness. “Her friends left there when she was but a child, and then they went where there was a garrison, where she met with her good gentleman. She was never in Masterton herself. It was after she was married and gone, and, I rather think, cast off by all belonging to her, that they came to live here.”

Mr. Brownlow sat leaning over the fire, and a heavy moisture began to rise on his forehead. The speaker was so careless, and yet these calm details seemed to him so terrible. Could it be that he was making terrors for himself—that the man experienced in mystery was right in being so certain that there was no mystery here—or must he accept the awful circumstantial evidence of these simple particulars? Could there be more than one family which had left the Isle of Man so long ago, and gone to live where there was a garrison, and abandoned its silly daughter when she married her soldier? Mr. Brownlow was stupefied, and did not know what to think. He sat and listened while this man whom he had called to his assistance went over again all the facts that seemed to point out that the connection of the family with the Powyses of North Wales was the one thing either to be brought forward or got rid of. This was how he had understood his instructions, and he had carried them out so fully that his employer, fully occupied with the incidental information which seemed to prove all he feared, heard his voice run on without remarking it, and would have told him to stop the babble to which he was giving vent, had his thoughts been sufficiently at leisure to care for what he was saying. When he fully perceived this mistake, Mr. Brownlow looked upon it as “providential,” as people say. But, in the mean time, he was not conscious of any thing, except of a possibility still more clear and possible, and of a ridiculous misconception which still it was not his interest to clear up. He let his detective talk, and then he let him go, but half satisfied, and inclined to think that no confidence was reposed in him. And though it was so late, and the brougham was at the door, and the servants very tired of their unusual detention, Mr. Brownlow went back again to the fire, and bent over it, and stretched out his hands to the blaze, and again tried to think. He went over the same ideas a hundred times, and yet they did not seem to grow any clearer to him. He tried to ask himself what was his duty, but duty slunk away, as it were to the very recesses of his soul, and gave no impulse to his mind, nor so much as showed itself in the darkness. If this should turn out to be true, no doubt there were certain things which he ought to do; and yet, if all this could but be banished for awhile, and the year got over which would bring safety—Mr. Brownlow had never in all his life before done what he knew to be a dishonorable action. He was not openly contemplating such a thing now; only somehow his possessions seemed so much more his than any body else’s; it seemed as if he had so much better right to the good things he had been enjoying for four-and-twenty years than any woman could have who had never possessed them—who knew nothing about them. And then he did not know that it was this woman. He said to himself that he had really no reason to think so. The young man had said nothing about old Mrs. Thomson. The detective had never even suspected any mystery in that quarter, though he was a man of mystery, and it was his business to suspect every thing. This was what he was thinking when he went back to the fire in his office, and stretched his hands over the blaze. Emotion of any kind somehow chills the physical frame; but when one of the detained clerks came to inform him of the patient brougham which waited outside, and which Sara, by reason of the cold, had sent for him, it was the opinion of the young man that Mr. Brownlow was beginning to age rapidly, and that he looked quite old that evening. But he did not look old; he looked, if any one had been there with eyes to see it, like a man for the first time in his life driven to bay. Some men come to that moment in their lives sooner, some later, some never at all. John Brownlow had been more than five-and-fifty years in the world, and yet he had never been driven to bay before. And he was so now; and except to stand out and resist, and keep his face to his enemies, he did not, in the suddenness of the occurrence, see as yet what he was to do.

In the mean time, however, he had to stoop to ordinary necessities and get into his carriage and be driven home, through the white gleaming country which shone under the moonlight, carrying with him a curious perception of how different it would have been had the house in High Street been home—had he had nothing more to do than to go up to the old drawing-room, his mother’s drawing-room, and find Sara there; and eat his dinner where his father had eaten his, instead of this long drive to the great country-house, which was so much more costly and magnificent than any thing his forefathers knew; but then his father, what would he have thought of this complication? What would he have advised, had it been any client of his; nay, what, if it was a client, would Mr. Brownlow himself advise? These thoughts kept turning over in his mind half against his will as he lay back in the corner of the carriage and saw the ghostly trees glimmer past in their coating of snow. He was very late, and Sara was anxious about him; nay, even Jack was anxious, and had come down to the park gates to look out for the carriage, and also to ask how the little invalid was at Mrs. Swayne’s. Jack, having this curiosity in his mind, did not pay much attention to his father’s looks; but Sara, with a girl’s quick perception, saw there was something unusual in his face; and with her usual rapidity she leaped to the conclusion that the bank must have broken or the railway gone wrong of which she had dreamed in the morning. Thus they all met at the table with a great deal on their minds; and this day, which I have recorded with painstaking minuteness, in order that there may be no future doubt as to its importance in the history, came to an end with outward placidity but much internal perturbation—at least came to an end as much as any day can be said to come to an end which rises upon an unsuspecting family big with undeveloped fate.