Miss Biron seemed to feel some slight embarrassment at the sight of him, and received his explanation that he had come to repaint her door with an assumption of surprise. The shrewd young man decided that the young lady had repented her unconventional friendliness of the preceding evening, and was inclined to look upon his visit as an intrusion. His manner, therefore, was studiously distant and respectful as he raised his cap from his head, gave the reason for his coming, and then said that he had brought a note for her from Mr. Christian Cornthwaite.
Claire blushed as she took it. Bram, who had brought his paint can and his brush, took off his coat, and began his task in silence, with just a sidelong look at the girl as she began to read the note.
At that moment the inner door of the kitchen opened, and Mr. Biron entered with a jaunty step, arranging a rosebud in his button-hole in quite a light comedy manner. Catching sight at once of Bram at work on the door, that young man observed that a slight frown crossed his face. After a momentary pause in his walk, he came on, however, as gayly as ever, and peeping over his daughter’s shoulder read the few words the note contained, and said at once—
“Well, you must go, dear; you must go.”
Claire blushed hotly, and crumpled up the note.
“I—I don’t want to. I would rather not,” said she in a low voice.
“Oh, but that’s nonsense,” retorted he good-humoredly. “Chris is a good fellow, a capital fellow. Put on your hat, and don’t be a goose. I’ll see that the young man at the door has his beer.”
Bram heard this, and his face tingled, but he said nothing. He perceived, indeed, from a certain somewhat feminine spitefulness in Mr. Biron’s tone, that the words were said with the intention of annoying him.
Claire appeared to hesitate a moment, then quickly making up her mind she said—“All right, father, I’ll go,” and disappeared through the inner door.
Theodore, without any remark to Bram, followed her.
In a few moments Bram heard a movement in the straw of the farmyard behind him, and looking round saw that Claire was standing behind him with her hat and gloves on, and was apparently debating in her own mind whether she would utter something which was in her thoughts. He saluted her respectfully with a stolid face. Then she began to speak, reddened, stammered, and finally made a dash for it.
“Where do you live?” she asked suddenly. “I mean—is it far from here?”
“No, miss; it’s over yon,” answered Bram mendaciously, nodding in the direction of the cottages on the brow of the hill.
“Then would you very much mind—” and Bram could see that her breast was heaving under the influence of some strong emotion, “keeping your eye upon this place until I come back? You know all about it,” she went on, with a burst of uneasy confidence, “so that it’s no use my minding that. And when my father’s left alone—well, well, you know,” said she, blushing crimson, and keeping her eyes down. “And Joan has to go home to her husband and children at night. And—and I’m afraid when he gets excited, you know, that he’ll set the place on fire. He nearly did last night. You see, my poor father has a great many worries, and a very little affects his head—since that sabre cut in India.”
The humility, nay, the humiliation in her tone, touched Bram to the quick. He promised at once that he would take care that Mr. Biron did no harm either to himself or to the house while she was away, and received her grateful, breathless, little whisper of “Thank you; oh, thank you,” with outward stolidity, but with considerable emotion.
Then she ran off, and he went quietly on with his work.
It took him a very short time to finish putting on the one coat of paint, which was all he could do that night; and then, as Mr. Biron had not appeared again, Bram thought he had better take a look round and see what that gentleman was doing. So he took up his paint-can, and, leaving the door open to dry, made his way round to the front of the house, and peeped cautiously in at the lower windows; and in one of them he saw a couple of empty champagne bottles, with the corks lying beside them, and an overturned glass on the table.
“T’owd rascal hasn’t wasted much time,” thought Bram to himself, as he stared at the evidences of Mr. Biron’s solitary dissipation, and looked about for the toper himself. But Theodore was not in the room. Neither was he in the room on the other side of the front door, as Bram hastened to ascertain. Perhaps he had had sense enough to make his way upstairs to his own room to sleep off the effects of the wine.
This seeming to be a probable explanation of his disappearance, Bram was inclined to trouble himself no further on that head, when a faint noise, which seemed to proceed from the bowels of the earth, attracted his attention. There was a grating under the window of the room which appeared to be the dining-room, and in the cellar which was thus dimly lighted some one appeared to be moving about.
Bram, in his character of sworn guardian of the house, thought it best to investigate, so he ran round to the back, entered by the open door, and found a trap-door in the hall just outside the kitchen door.
A strong smell of paraffin was the first thing he noticed as he looked down the ladder; the next was the sight of Mr. Biron calmly emptying a can of the oil upon the loose straw and firewood which the cellar contained.
Startled by the sudden light and noise above, Mr. Biron dropped the can as the trap-door opened, and then Bram saw that in his left hand he held a box of matches.
“Tha fool, tha drunken fool, coom up wi’ ye!” shouted Elshaw, as he stretched down a strong arm and pulled Theodore up by his coat collar.
Bram had expected his captive to stagger, and so he did. He had expected him to stammer and to stare; and he did these things also. But Bram had seen a good deal of drunkenness in his time, and he was not easy to deceive.
Suddenly holding the slender little man at arm’s length from him, and looking steadily into his eyes with a black frown on his own face, he shouted in a voice which might have roused the village—
“Why, you d——d old rascal, what villainy have you been up to? You’re as sober as I am!”
CHAPTER VI. MR. BIRON’S CONDESCENSION.
When Mr. Theodore Biron found himself pulled up the steps of his cellar, and roughly shaken by the very person who had disarmed him on the previous evening, his rage was such that he lost his usual airy self-possession completely, and betrayed himself in the most unworthy manner.
“Who are you, sir? And how dare you interfere with me in this way?” stammered he, as he tried in vain to release himself from the determined grasp of the young clerk.
“Coom up to t’ light, and then you’ll see who Ah am,” said Bram, as with a strong arm he dragged the little man up the steps, and, shutting the trap-door, folded his arms and turned to look at him.
“Do you dare to justify this outrage, this—this burglarious entry upon my premises? The second in two days? Do you dare to justify it?” said Theodore haughtily.
“Ay,” said Bram surlily, “Ah’m going to give information to t’ police. Ah’m goin’ to tell them to keep an eye upon you, Mr. Biron, and not to be surprised if t’ house is burnt down; since you’ve got odd ways of amusing yourself with matches and paraffin, and with candles left ablaze near light curtains. Ah suppose you’re insured, Mr. Biron?”
“Whatever you suppose has nothing to do with the question,” retorted Mr. Biron, whose little thin cheeks were pink with indignation, and whose light eyes were flashing with annoyance and malignity. “Nobody is likely to pay much attention to the statements of a man who is evidently a loafer and a thief.”
“A thief!” shouted Bram with a menacing gesture, which had the effect of sending Theodore promptly into the little dining-room behind him. “Well, we’ll see whether t’ word of t’ thief won’t be taken against yours, Mr. Biron.”
There was a pause. Theodore from behind the table in the little dining-room, where he was twirling his moustache with a trembling white hand, looked at him with apprehension, and presently laughed in an attempt to recover his usual light-hearted ease of manner.
“Come, come,” said he, “this is carrying a joke too far, for I suppose it was intended for a joke—this intrusion upon my premises—and that you never had any real thought of carrying anything away. I remember your face now; you are one of the workmen at my cousin’s place, Cornthwaite’s Iron-Works.”
Bram, who was not unwilling to make terms with Miss Biron’s father, stared at him sullenly.
“Ah’m not one of t’ workmen now. Ah’m in t’ office,” said he.
Mr. Biron raised his eyebrows; he did not seem pleased. It had in fact occurred to him that this young man was employed as a sort of spy by the Cornthwaites, with whom he himself was by no means an acceptable person.
He smiled disagreeably.
“One of the clerks, eh? One of the smart young men who nibble pens in the office?”
“Ay, but ma smartness isn’t outside, Mr. Biron.”
“I see. Great genius—disdains mere appearance and all that.”
Bram said nothing. Theodore’s sneers hurt him more than any he had ever been subjected to before. He felt, in spite of his contempt for the airy-mannered scoundrel, that he himself stood at a disadvantage, with his rough speech and awkward movements, with the dapper little man in front of him. The consciousness that he himself would be reckoned of no account compared to Theodore Biron by the very men who despised the latter and respected himself was the strongest spur he had ever felt towards self-improvement.
“And what brings a person of your intellectual calibre into our humble neighborhood?” pursued Theodore in the same tone.
“Ah’m looking for lodgings up this way,” answered Bram shortly.
The idea had come to him that evening that, since he had been told to change his lodgings, he would settle in the neighborhood of Hessel.
As he had expected, Mr. Biron did not look pleased.
“And you are making yourself at home in advance!” suggested he dryly.
“Well, sir, you needn’t see more of me than you feel inclined to,” retorted Bram.
And, with a curt salutation, he turned on his heel and went out of the house by the back way, through the kitchen and the still open outer door.
He went up the hill towards the row of cottages on the summit, and made inquiries which resulted in his finding the two modest rooms he wanted in the end house of all, within a stone’s throw of a ruin so strange-looking that Bram made a tour of inspection of the ramshackle old building before returning to the town.
This ruin had once been a country mansion of fair size and of some importance, but the traces of its architectural beauties were now few and far apart. Of the main building only one side wall retained enough of its old characteristics to claim attention; at the top of the massive stonework a Tudor chimney, of handsome proportions, rose in incongruous stateliness above the decaying roof which had been placed over a row of cottages, which, built up within the old wall, had grown ruinous in their turn, and were now shut up and deserted.
At the back of this heterogeneous pile and a little distance away from it, another long and massive stone wall, with a Tudor window out of which once Wolsey had looked, had now become the chief prop and mainstay of another row of buildings, one of which was a school, another a chapel, while a third was a now disused stable.
And in the shelter of these ruins and remains of greatness a tall chimney, a cluster of sheds, and a pile of grass-grown trucks marked the spot where a now disused coal mine added a touch of fantastic desolation to the scene.
Bram went all round the pit-mouth and surveyed the town of Sheffield, with its dead yellow lights and its patches of blackness, like an inky sea bearing a fleet of ill-lighted boats on its breast in a Stygian mist. He thought he should like this evening walk out of the smoke and the lick of the fiery tongues, even without the occasional peeps he should get at Miss Biron.
But he hardly knew, perhaps, how much the thought of her, of her dancing eyes, her rapid movements like the sweep of a bird’s wing, had to do with his feeling.
He went back round the pit’s mouth, making his way with some difficulty in the darkness over the rough stones with which the place was thickly strewn.
And as he came to the remains of the old mansion he heard the laugh of Christian Cornthwaite, a little subdued, but clearly recognizable, not very far from his ears.
Bram straightened himself with a nasty shock. By the direction from which the sound came, he knew that Christian was in the ruin itself; and that he was not there by himself was plain. Who then was with him? Bram did not want to find an answer to this question; at least he told himself that he did not. The dilapidated shell of the old mansion was not the place where a lady would meet her lover. Bram had peeped into one of the deserted cottages on his way to the pit’s mouth, and had seen that, boarded up as doors and windows were, there were ruinous crannies and spaces through which a tramp or vagrant could creep to a precarious shelter.
Christian, who loved an adventure, amorous or otherwise, was evidently pursuing one now.
Bram walked down the hill, passed the cottage where he had engaged his new rooms, whistling to himself, and telling himself persistently that he was not wondering where Miss Biron had gone to that evening. And then he became suddenly mute, for, turning his head at the sound of a light footstep behind him, he saw Claire herself coming down the hill at a breathless rate.
She passed him without seeing him. Her head was bent low, and her feet seemed to fly. Bram’s heart seemed to stop beating as he watched her.
But he would not allow that he suspected her of being the person who had been in the ruined building with Christian Cornthwaite. It was true that Christian had sent her a note in which he had evidently asked her to meet him; it was true that she had acceded to the request, at her father’s instigation.
But although Bram clenched his teeth in thinking of Theodore, and felt a sudden impulse of fierce indignation against that gentleman, he would not acknowledge to himself that it was possible to connect her with an act inconsistent with the modesty of a gentlewoman.
He was not far behind when Theodore, lively, bright, and entirely recovered from the discomposure into which Bram’s unseemly violence had thrown him, came forth from the farmyard to meet his daughter.
“My dear child, I was getting quite anxious about you. Where’s Chris? I thought he would have seen you back home.”
“I left him—at the top of the hill, papa,” answered Claire in a demure voice.
And she ran past Theodore into the house.
Then Theodore, whose eyes were sharp, recognized Bram. And there flashed through his brain, always active on his own behalf, the suspicion that this presumptuous young man might be spying not so much on his employer’s account, as upon his own. The idea struck Theodore as preposterously amusing; but at the same time he thought that something might be made out of the foolish fellow’s infatuation, if it indeed existed.
“Well, and how about the lodgings?” said he with cheerful condescension, as Bram came nearer.
“Ah’ve found some,” replied Bram shortly.
“And what brings you so far afield?” went on Theodore more urbanely than ever. “May I hazard the conjecture that there’s a lady in the case?”
The young man was quick to seize this suggestion, which he saw might be used most usefully hereafter.
“Ay, sir, that’s about reght,” said he. “But she doan’t live here,” he went on, making up his story with great deliberation as he spoke. “She lives miles away in t’ country; but Ah thought Ah’d better settle out of t’ town myself, before Ah went courting.”
Theodore was disappointed, but he did not show it.
“Well,” said he, “we shall see something of you now and then, I daresay.”
And he nodded good-bye in the most affable manner.
Bram saluted respectfully, but he was too shrewd to be much impressed, in the manner Theodore intended, by this change towards him.
Away from the glamour cast upon him by the fact of Claire’s presence in his vicinity, Bram had sense enough to reflect that the less he saw of Miss Biron and her shifty father the better it would be for him. He did not say this to himself in so many words; but the knowledge was borne strongly in upon him all the same. There were forces in those two persons, differently as he esteemed them, against which he felt that he had no defence ready. Theodore was cunning and grasping; his daughter was, as Bram knew, used by her father as a tool in his unscrupulous hands. Deep as Bram’s compassion for the charming girl was, and his admiration, he had the strength of mind to live for months in her neighborhood without making any attempt to speak to her.
He saw her, indeed, morning after morning, and evening after evening, on his way down to the works and on his way back. For the road from his lodgings lay past the farm, where Miss Biron was always busy with her poultry in the morning, and working in her garden at night.
It was not often that she saw Bram, but when she did she had always a smile and a nod for him; never more than that though, even when he lingered a little, in the hope that she would throw him a word.
Bram saw Theodore sometimes, lounging in a garden chair, with a cigarette in his mouth; and sometimes Chris Cornthwaite would be with him, or walking by Claire’s side round the lawn, chattering to her while she pottered about her late autumn flowers.
This sight always sent a sharp pang through Bram’s heart; for he had conceived the idea that Christian, nice fellow though he was, might be too volatile a person to value Claire’s affection as she deserved.
Claire, on her side, seemed to be happy enough with Christian. Her pretty laugh rang out gayly; and Bram, even while he laughed at himself for a sentimental folly, found himself praying that the poor child might not be deceived in her hopes of happiness with her volatile lover.
For Christian, amiable and devoted as he might be with Claire, had not, as Bram knew, given up his amiability and devotion to other girls; and after the second or third time that Bram had seen him at Hessel Farm, he mentioned casually to the newly promoted clerk that he did not want his father to hear of his visits there.
Whereat Bram looked grave, and foresaw trouble in the near future.
The March winds had begun to blow fiercely on the high ground above Hessel, when Theodore Biron at last discovered a use to which to put his young neighbor. Would Bram do some marketing for him in the town? Bram was rather surprised at the request, for an excuse for going into the town was what Theodore liked to have. But when he found that the task he was expected to undertake was the purchase of one pound’s worth of goods for the sum of five shillings, which was all the cash Theodore trusted him with, Bram, when Theodore had turned his back upon him, stood looking thoughtfully at the two half-crowns in his hand.
And while he was doing so Claire, who had seen the transaction from the window, ran out of the house and came up with him. As usual, the girl’s presence threw a spell upon him, and put to flight all the saner ideas he had conceived as to the desirability of trying to conquer his own infatuation. She came up smiling, but there was anxiety in her face.
“What has papa been saying to you?” she asked imperiously.
“He wants me to get some things for him in the town,” said Bram straightforwardly. “But Ah’m such a bad hand at marketing—that—that Ah’m afraid——”
Claire blushed, and interrupted him impatiently.
“He’s not given you money enough, of course. He never does. He doesn’t understand. Men never do. They think everything can be got for a few pence for the housekeeping, and that one is wasteful and extravagant. Give me the money; I’ll see about the things.”
“No, you won’t, Miss Claire,” said Bram composedly, as he put the two half-crowns in his pocket. “You’ve put me on my mettle. Ah’m going to see what Ah can do, and show you that the men can give the ladies a lesson in marketing, after all.”
But Claire did not reply in the same light tone. She looked up in his face with an expression of shame and alarm in her eyes, which touched him keenly. With a little catch in her breath, she tried to protest, to forbid. Then she read something in Bram’s eyes which stung her, some gleam of pity, of comprehension. She broke off short, burst into tears, and turned abruptly away.
Bram stood by the gate for a few seconds, with his head hung down, and a guilty, miserable look on his face. Then, as nobody came out to him, he slunk quietly away.
CHAPTER VII. BRAM’S DISMISSAL.
It was with some diffidence that Bram presented himself at the farmhouse door that evening. He went through the farmyard to the back door, and gave a modest knock. It was Joan, the servant, who opened the door to him, and Bram, as his own eyes met those of the middle-aged Yorkshire woman, had a strong sense that she read him, as he would have expressed it, “like a book.” Indeed Joan could read character in a face much more easily than she could read a printed page. Having been born long before the days of School Boards, she had been accustomed from her early youth to find her entertainment not in cheap fiction, but in the life around her; so that she was on the whole much better educated than women of her class are now, having stored her mind with the facts gained by experience and observation.
She looked at him not unkindly.
“Ah,” she began, with a nod of recognition, as if she had known him well for a year instead of now speaking to him for the first time, “Ah thowt it was you. Mister Christian he comes in by t’ front door.”
Bram did not like this comparison. It suggested, in the first place, that Joan had an instinct that there was some sort of rivalry between himself and Mr. Christian. It suggested also the basis on which they respectively stood.
“I’ve brought some things Miss Biron wanted,” he began, forgetting that he had been commissioned, not by the young lady, but by her father.
Joan smiled a broad smile of shrewd amusement. Bram wished she would mind her own business.
“Weel, here she be to see them hersen,” said she, as the inner door of the kitchen opened, and Claire came in.
“Oh, Joan, papa wants you to——” began she.
Then she saw Bram, and stopped.
“I’ve brought the things, Miss Claire,” said he in a shy voice.
Miss Biron had stopped short and changed color. She now came forward slowly, and passing Joan, held open the door for him to enter.
“Oh, please come in,” she said in a very demure voice, from which it was impossible to tell whether she was pleased or annoyed, grateful or the reverse, for his good offices.
Bram entered, and proceeded to place his enormous parcel on the deal table, and to cut the string. He was passing through the refining process very rapidly; and, already, in the clothes which he had chosen under Chris Cornthwaite’s eye, he looked too dignified a person to engage in the duties of a light porter.
Claire, more demure than ever, spoke as if she was much shocked.
“Oh, have you carried that heavy parcel? Oh, I’m so sorry. It is very, very kind of you, but——”
She stopped, stammering a little. Joan, who was standing with her hands on her hips, admiring the scene, laughed scornfully.
“Eh, but it’s a grand thing to be yoong! Ah can’t get no smart yoong gen’lemen to carry my parcels for me, not if they was to see me breakin’ ma back.”
“Why, you’ve got a husband to carry them for you,” said Claire quickly, and not very happily; for Joan laughed again.
“Ay, Miss Claire, but they doan’t do it after they’re married; so do you make t’ moast o’ your time.”
And Joan, with an easy nod which was meant to include both the young people, went through into the hall with leisurely steps.
As she had left behind her a slight feeling of awkward reserve, Claire felt bound to begin with an apology for her.
“She’s rather rough, but, oh, so good,” said she.
“Then if she’s good to you, I can forgive all her roughness,” said Bram.
And the next minute he wished he had not said it.
There was a momentary pause, during which Bram busied himself with the strings of his parcels. With a rapid eye, Miss Biron ran over the various things which the outer wrapper had contained. Then, with a bright flush in her face, she took her purse from her pocket.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked quickly. “Three boxes of candles, eighteenpence. Two boxes of sardines, two and sixpence. Box of figs, half-a-crown——”
Bram interrupted her hotly. “One and ninepence, the figs,” cried he, “and the sardines were only ninepence a tin.”
“Then they are not the best.”
“Yes, they are.”
This colloquy, short and simple as it was, had left the combatants, for such they seemed, panting with excitement. Miss Biron looked at the young man narrowly and proceeded in a tone of much haughtiness——
“I must beg you to tell me really what they cost, whatever my father said. He knows nothing about the price of things, but”—and the young lady gave him a look which was meant to impress him with her vast experience in these matters—“I do.”
Bram, afraid of offending her still further, and conscious of the delicate ground upon which he stood, began submissively to add up the various items, deducting a few pence where he dared, until the total of nineteen shillings and fourpence was reached. Miss Biron opened her purse rather nervously, and took out a small handful of silver, a very small handful, alas!
“Let me see. Papa gave you five shillings——”
“And then the ten he gave me as I went out by the gate after you’d gone up,” pursued Bram, imperturbably.
“Ten!” echoed Claire, sharply. “Papa gave you ten shillings more!”
“Half-a-sovereign, yes,” replied Bram, mendaciously. “You said he hadn’t given me enough, you know, so he gave me the ten shillings. You ask him.”
Claire shook her head.
“It’s no use asking papa anything,” she said with a sigh. Then she added, suddenly raising her head and flashing her eyes, “I must trust to your honor, Mr. Elshaw.”
The sound of his name uttered by her lips gave Bram a ridiculous thrill of pleasure. He had supposed she only knew him as “Bram,” and the thought that she had taken the trouble to inquire his name was a delicious one.
“Yes,” said he simply, in no wise troubled by the doubt she expressed. “Well, that’s fifteen shillings, and you owe me four shillings and fourpence.”
She gave him a quick glance of suspicion, and then counted out her poor little hoard of sixpences and coppers. She had only three shillings and sevenpence.
“I owe you,” said she, as she put the money into his hand, “ninepence, which I must pay you next week. But, please, I want you to promise,” she earnestly went on, “not to do any more shopping for papa. He is so extravagant,” and she tried to laugh merrily, “that I have to keep some check upon him, or we should soon be ruined.”
“All right, Miss Claire, I’ll do just as you wish, of course. But it’s a great pleasure to me to be able to do any little thing for you. You know, for one thing,” he added quickly, fancying that she might think this presumptuous, “that Mr. Christian was the person who got me moved up out of the works, so I am doubly glad to do anything for—for anybody he takes an interest in.”
Over Claire’s sensitive face there passed a shadow at the mention of Christian’s name.
“Christian Cornthwaite is my cousin, you know,” said she. “He often talks of you. He says you are very clever, and he is very proud of having discovered you, as he calls it.”
“It was very good of him,” said Bram. “I’m afraid I don’t do him much credit; I’m such a rough sort of chap.”
Miss Biron looked at him rather shyly, and laughed.
“Well, you were, just a little. But you are—are——”
“A little bit better now?” suggested Bram modestly.
“Well, I was going to say a great deal better, only I was afraid it sounded rather rude. What I meant was that—that——”
“Well, I should like to hear what it was you meant.”
“Well, that you speak differently, for one thing.”
“But I slip back sometimes,” said Bram, laughing and blushing, just as she laughed and blushed. “It’s so hard not to say ‘Ah’ when I ought to say ‘I.’ I’m getting on, I know, but it’s like walking on eggs all the time.”
Then they both laughed again, and at this point the door opened and Mr. Biron came in.
He was very amiable, and insisted on Bram’s coming into the dining-room with him. As Bram neither smoked nor drank, however, Theodore’s offer of whisky and cigars was thrown away. But Bram sat down and made a very good audience, laughing at his host’s stories and jokes, so that he found himself forced into accepting an invitation to come in again on the following evening.
By Theodore’s wish it became Bram’s frequent custom to spend an hour at the farmhouse in the evening; and the young man soon availed himself of the intimacy thus begun to make himself useful to Claire in a hundred ways. He would chop wood in the yard, mend broken furniture, fetch things from the town, and bargain for her for her poultry, suggest and help to carry out reformations in her management of the dairy—doing everything unobtrusively, but making his shrewd common sense manifest in a hundred practical ways.
And Claire was grateful, rather shy of taking advantage of his kindness, but giving him such reward of smiles and thanks as more than repaid him for labor which was pleasure indeed.
Sometimes Christian Cornthwaite would be at the farm, and on these occasions Bram saw little of Claire, who was always monopolized by her cousin. Christian was as devoted as Bram could have wished; but, if Theodore thought that the young man delayed his coming, he did not scruple to send his daughter on some excuse to call at Holme Park, always refusing Bram’s humble offers to take the message or to escort Claire.
The one thing Bram could have wished about Claire was that she should be less submissive to her unscrupulous father in matters like this. He would have had her refuse to go up to Holme Park, where she was always received, as Bram knew, with the coldness which ought to have been reserved for Theodore. And especially did Bram feel this now that he knew, from Theodore’s own lips, that the notes he sent by his daughter’s hand to Josiah Cornthwaite were seldom answered. It made Bram’s blood boil to know this, and that in the face of this fact Theodore continued to send his daughter up to his rich cousin’s house on begging errands.
Bram was in the big farm kitchen by himself one cool September evening, busily engaged in making a new dressing-table for Claire out of some old boxes. He had his coat off, and was sawing away, humming to himself as he did so, when, turning to look for something he wanted, he found, to his surprise, that Claire, whom he had not seen that evening, was sitting in the room.
She had taken her hat off, and was sitting with it in her lap, so silently, so sadly, that Bram, who was not used to this mood in the volatile girl, was struck with astonishment.
For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her without speaking.
“Miss Claire!” exclaimed he at last.
“Well?”
“When did you come in? I never saw you come in!”
“No. I didn’t want you to see me. I don’t want any one to see me. So I can’t go in because papa has the door open, and he would catch me on the way upstairs.”
“What’s wrong with you, Miss Claire?”
Bram had come over to her and was leaning on the table and speaking with so much kindness in his voice that the girl’s eyes, after glancing up quickly and meeting his, filled with tears.
“Oh, everything. One feels like that sometimes. Everybody does, I suppose.”
Bram’s heart ached for the girl. He guessed that she had been to Holme Park on the usual errand, and that she had been coldly received. He could hear Theodore strumming on the piano in the drawing-room. The piano was so placed that the player had a good view of the open door, and Bram knew that Theodore had chosen this method of filling up the time till his daughter’s return. Apparently he had now caught with his sharp ears the sound of voices in the kitchen, for the playing ceased, and a moment later he presented himself at the door with a smiling face.
“Good-evening, Elshaw. Heard you sawing away, but didn’t like to disturb you till I heard another voice, and guessed that I might. Any answer to my note, Claire?”
For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her without speaking.—Page 52.
“No, papa.”
Claire had risen from her chair, and was standing with her back turned to her father, pretending to be busy sticking the long, black-headed pins into her hat.
“No answer. Oh, well, there was hardly an answer needed. That’s all right.”
From his tone nobody would have guessed that Theodore cared more than his words implied; but Bram, who saw most things, noticed a frown of disappointment and anger on the airy Mr. Biron’s face. After a pause Theodore said—
“I think I shall go down the hill and have a game of billiards. That will fill up the time till you’ve finished your carpentering, Elshaw, and then we’ll finish up with a game of chess.”
And Theodore disappeared. A few moments later they heard him shut himself out by the front door.
Bram after a glance at Claire went on with his sawing, judging it wiser not to attempt to offer the sympathy with which his heart was bursting.
When he had been going on with his work for some minutes, however, Claire came and stood silently beside him. He looked up and smiled.
“Go on with your work,” said she gravely, “just for a few minutes. Then I’m going to send you away.”
“Send me away, Miss Claire? What for?”
“For your own good, Mr. Elshaw.”
Bram suddenly pulled himself upright, and then looked down at her in dismay.
“Mr. Elshaw! I’m getting on in the world then! I used to be only Bram.”
“That’s it,” said Claire in a low voice, looking at the fire. “You used to be only Bram; but you’ve got beyond that now.”
“But I don’t want to get beyond that with you, Miss Claire,” protested he.
“What you want doesn’t matter,” said she decidedly. “You can’t help yourself. I’ve heard something about you to-night. Oh, don’t look like that; it was nothing to your discredit, nothing at all. But you’ve got to give up your carpentering and wood chopping for us, Bram, and you’re not to come here again.” She spoke with much decision, but her sensitive face showed some strange conflict going on within her, in which some of the softer emotions were evidently engaged. Whatever it was that made her turn her humble and useful old friend away, the cause was not ingratitude.
Before he could put another question, being indeed too much moved to be able to frame one speedily, Bram was startled by a tapping at the door. Miss Biron started; Bram almost thought he saw her shiver. She pointed quickly to the inner door.
“Go at once,” said she in an imperious whisper, “and remember you are not to come back; you are never to come back.”
Bram took up his coat, slipped his arms into it, and obeyed without a word. But the look on his face, as Claire caught a glimpse of it, was one which cut her to the quick. She drew a deep breath, and threw out her hands towards him with a piteous cry. Bram stopped, shivered, made one step towards her, when the tap at the door was repeated more sharply.
Claire recovered herself at once, made a gesture to him to go, and opened the one door as he let himself out by the other.
Bram heard the voice of the newcomer. It was Christian Cornthwaite.
CHAPTER VIII. ANOTHER STEP UPWARD.
Bram left the farmhouse in a tumult of feeling. Why had he been dismissed so abruptly? Why had he been dismissed at all?
It was on Christian’s account apparently. But what objection could Christian have to his visits to the farm?
On the many occasions when the two young men had met there Bram had always been shunted into the background for Christian, and had been left at his modest occupations unheeded, while Claire gave all her attention to her cousin. Bram had looked upon this arrangement as quite natural, and had never so much as winced at it. The idea that Christian Cornthwaite might look upon him as a possible rival being out of the question, again Bram asked himself—What could be the reason of his dismissal?
He did not mean to take it quietly; he had conceit enough to think that Claire would be sorry if he did. He could flatter himself honestly that during the past six months he had become the young lady’s trusted friend, never obtrusive, never demonstrative, but trusted, perhaps appreciated, none the less on that account.
Bram had the excuse of Theodore’s invitation for hanging about the neighborhood until that gentleman’s return. But at the very moment when Mr. Biron’s gay voice, humming to himself as he came up the hill, struck upon Bram’s ear, Christian Cornthwaite came out through the farmyard gate.
“Hallo, Elshaw, is that you?” he asked, as he came out and passed his arm through Bram’s. “I wondered what had become of you when I did not find you in the house this evening. I’d begun to look upon you as one of the fixtures.”
“I was there this evening, Mr. Christian,” replied Bram soberly. “But I got turned out without much ceremony just before you came.”
“Turned out, eh? I didn’t think you ever did anything to deserve such treatment from any one.” And Chris looked curious. “You are what I call a model young man, if anything a little too much like the hero of a religious story for young ladies, written by a young lady.”
Bram was quite acute enough to understand that this was a sneer.
“You mean that I’m what you and your friends call a prig, Mr. Christian?” he said quite unaffectedly, and without any sign of shame or regret. “Well, I suppose I am. But you don’t allow for the difference between us at starting. To get up to where you stand from where I used to be, one must be a bit of a prig, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps so. I think you may be trusted to know your own business, Elshaw. You’re one of the men that get on. It won’t do you any harm on the way up if you leave off chopping firewood in your shirt-sleeves for people who don’t think any the better of you for it.”
Bram, who had let himself be led up the hill, stopped short.
“She doesn’t think any the worse of me for doing any little thing I can to help her,” said he in a muffled voice.
Christian began to laugh.
“She? You mean Claire. Oh, no, no, she does justice to everybody, bless her dear little heart! I was thinking of our rascally friend, her father. You know very well that he uses his daughter as a means for getting all he can out of everybody. I hope you’ve not been had by the old ruffian, Elshaw?”
“No, Mr. Christian; no, I haven’t,” answered Bram hastily. “That is, not to an extent that matters.”
“Ah, ha! That means you have been had for half-crowns, for instance?” As Bram moved uneasily, Chris laughed again. “Of course, it is no affair of mine; I’m quite sure you can see through our frivolous friend as well as anybody else. But if, as you say, you have been dismissed, why, I advise you not to try to get reinstated.”
Now, this advice troubled Bram exceedingly. It was excellent of its kind, no doubt; but he asked himself whether the man who was so keenly alive to the disadvantages of even an acquaintance with the Birons could really be ready to form an alliance which must bring the burden of the needy elderly gentleman upon him for life. His feelings upon the subject were so keen that they would not permit him to temporize and to choose his words and his opportunity. Quite suddenly he blurted out—
“You’re going to marry Miss Claire, aren’t you?”
Christian, who always took things more easily than his deeper-natured companion, looked at the earnest, strongly-cut face with something like amusement. Luckily, it was too dark for Bram to see the full significance of his companion’s expression.
“Marry her? Why, yes, to be sure I hope so. My father is very anxious for me ‘to settle down,’ as he calls it, though I would rather, for my own part, not settle down quite so far as matrimony just yet.”
There was a pause. Then Bram said in a dry voice—
“I can’t understand you, Mr. Christian. You seem just as nigh what a man ought to be as a man can be in lots of ways. And I can’t understand how a man like that, that is a man like you, shouldn’t be all on fire to make the girl he loves his wife as quick as he can. Is that a part of my priggishness, Mr. Christian, to wonder at that?”
Christian did not answer at once. They had reached the top of the hill, and were standing by the ruined cottages, which looked more desolate than ever in the darkness of the winter evening. The wind whistled through the broken walls and the decaying rafters.
Bram remembered the evening when he had heard Christian’s laugh in that very pile.
“I suppose it is, Bram,” said Chris at last. “But I rather like it in you, all the same. I can’t help laughing at you, but I think you’re rather a fine fellow. Now, listen to me. You may go on wondering at my behavior as much as you like, but you mustn’t yourself have anything more to do with the Birons. We’ll say I’m jealous, Bram, if you like. I really think it’s true, too,” he added with a flippancy which belied his words.
But Bram shook his head solemnly.
“No, Mr. Christian,” he answered; and in the excitement he felt the strong Yorkshire accent was heard again in his voice. “You’ve no call to be jealous of me, and you know that right well. If I were a gentleman born, like you——”
“Don’t use that expression,‘gentleman born,’ Elshaw,” interrupted Chris lightly. “It means nothing, for one thing. My great-grandfather was a mill hand, or something of that sort, and so were the great-grandfathers of half the men in the House of Lords. And it sounds odd from a man like you, who will be a big pot one of these days.”
“Well, Mr. Christian, if I’d been brought up in a big house, like you, and had had my face kept clean and my hair curled instead of being allowed to make mud-pies in the gutter——”
“I wanted to make mud-pies in the gutter!” interpolated Christian cheerfully.
“Well, you know what I mean, anyhow. If we’d stood just on the same ground——”
“We never should have stood on the same ground, Elshaw,” said Chris with a shrewd smile.
“——And if I hadn’t been beholden to you for the rise I’ve got, I’d have fought you for the place you’ve got with her very likely. But, as it is, I’m nowhere; I don’t count. And you know that, Mr. Christian.”
“Indeed, I’m very glad to hear it, for if there’s one man in the world I should less like to have for a rival than another, in love or in anything else, it’s you, Bram. I know you’re a lamb outside; but I can’t help suspecting that there’s a creature more like a tiger underneath.”
“I’m inclined to think myself, Mr. Christian, that the creature underneath’s more like an ass,” said Bram good-humoredly.
They were standing at the top of the hill; it was a damp, cold night, and Christian shivered.
“You mustn’t stand here talking, Mr. Christian,” said Bram. “You are not so used to strong breezes as me.”
“Well, good-night; I won’t take you any further. You live somewhere about here, I know. But, I say.” He called after Bram, who was turning back. “There’s one thing I want to tell you. Don’t say anything to the guv’nor about meeting me at the farm.”
Bram stared blankly, and Christian laughed.
“My dear fellow, don’t you know that these matters require to be conducted with a little diplomacy? When a man is dependent upon his father, as he always is if he’s a lazy beggar like me, that father has to be humored a little. I must prepare him gradually for the shock, if I’m ever to marry Claire.”
“All right, Mr. Christian. I’ll say nothing, of course. But I shall be glad to hear that matters are straight. It seems hard on the young lady, doesn’t it?”
“Ah, well, life isn’t all beer and skittles for any of us.”
Christian called out these words, turning his head as he walked rapidly away on the road to Holme Park.
Bram had made such astonishing progress in the office since his promotion, not much more than a year before, that nobody but himself was astonished when he was called into the private office of the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, about a fortnight after his talk with Christian, and was formally invited by that gentleman to dine at Holme Park in the course of the following week. Bram’s first impulse was to apologize for declining the invitation, but Mr. Cornthwaite insisted, and with such an air of authority that Bram felt there was no escape for him.
But, meeting Christian later in the day, Bram related the incident rather as if it were a grievance.
“You know, Mr. Christian, it’s not in my line, that sort of thing. Ah shall make a fool o’ myself, Ah know Ah shall.”
And, either accidentally or on purpose, he dropped again into the strong Yorkshire dialect, which since his elevation he had worked successfully to overcome.
But Christian only laughed at his excuses.
“You’d be a fool to refuse,” he said shortly. “I’ll take you round to my tailor’s again, and he’ll measure you for your war-paint.”
Bram’s face fell.
“No, Mr. Christian, no. I’m not going to dress myself up. Mr. Cornthwaite won’t expect it, and what would be the good of my wasting all that money on clothes you’ll never catch me wearing again? And the oaf I should look in ’em too! Why, you’d all be laughin’ at me, an’ not more than I should be laughin’ at myself.”
“Elshaw,” returned Chris gravely, “the one thing which distinguishes you above all the self-made men and born geniuses I’ve ever heard about is that you’ve got too broad a mind to despise trifles. While Sir George Milbrook, who began as a factory hand, and Jeremiah Montcombe of Gray’s Hall, and a lot of other men who’ve got on like them, make a point of dropping their H’s and clipping their words just as they used to do forty years ago, you’ve thought it worth your while to drop your Ah’s and your tha’s, till there’s very little trace of them left already, and there’ll be none in another year. Well, now, there are some more trifles to be mastered, and dressing for dinner is one of them. So buck up, old man, and come along. And by-the-by, as you’ll always take a hint from me, couldn’t you let yourself drop into slang sometimes? Your language is so dreadfully precise, and you use so many words that I have to look out in the dictionary.”
“Do I, Mr. Christian?” asked Bram, surprised. Then he laughed and shook his head. “No, I can’t trust myself as far as the slang yet. It wouldn’t come out right perhaps. I shouldn’t have discrimination enough to choose between the slang that was all right and the slang which would make the ladies look at each other.”
“Well, I suppose I must let you have a few months’ grace. But it’s only on condition that you smoke an occasional cigarette, and that you don’t stick so persistently to soda water and lemonade, when you’re asked to have a drink.”
“But, Mr. Christian, I’m not used to wine and spirits, not even to beer, and if I was to drink them they would get into my head. And as it takes me all my time to speak properly and behave so as to pass muster, as it is, you’d better leave pretty well alone, and let me keep to the soda water.”
“Oh, well, as long as you’re not moved by conscientious scruples I don’t so much mind. But teetotalism savors rather too much of the Sunday-school and the Anti-Tobacco League. Mind, I don’t want to make you an habitual drunkard, but I should like to feel sure that you understand there is a happy medium.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Bram with a comical look; “but I wish I hadn’t to go up to the Park Thursday week all the same.”
Chris looked at him steadily, and played with his long, tawny moustache for a few moments in silence.
“So do I. I wish you hadn’t got to go too,” said he at last.
But he would not explain why; he turned the subject by remarking that they mustn’t forget the visit to the tailor’s.
CHAPTER IX. A CALL AND A DINNER PARTY.
It is not to be supposed that Bram had forgotten all about Claire Biron, or that he had not been tempted to break through the command she had imposed upon him. At first he had intended to present himself as usual at the farm on the evening after his summary dismissal, and to brave her possible displeasure. He felt so sure of her kind feeling toward himself that he had very little doubt of overcoming her scruples from whatever cause they arose.
On the very next morning, however, he had come suddenly upon her as he went down the hill towards the town; and Claire had cut him, actually cut him, passing him with her eyes on the ground, at a rapid pace.
Bram was so utterly overwhelmed by this action on her part that he stood stupidly staring at her figure as it went quickly upwards, uncertain what to do, until she turned into the farmyard and disappeared.
He went on to the office with a dull weight at his heart, hoping against hope that she would relent, that she would smile at him with her old friendliness when next they met, but unable to stifle the fear that the pleasant friendship which had been so much to him was now over.
As to her reasons for this new course of treatment he could make no guess which seemed to him at all likely to be the right one. She had heard something about him, that was her excuse, something not to his discredit, but which was, nevertheless, the cause of her sending him away. Now, Bram could think of nobody who was likely to be able to tell Claire the one fact which might have brought about his banishment conceivably, the fact that he loved her. He had kept his secret so well that he might well feel sure it was in his own power, so well that he sometimes honestly doubted whether it was a fact at all.
Besides, even if it had been possible for her to find this out, she would not have dismissed him in this curt, almost brutal, fashion.
The more Bram thought about his banishment, the farther he seemed to get from a sane conclusion; but he could not rest. He could not dismiss the matter from his mind. Full as his new life was of work, of interest, of ambitions, of hopes, the thought of Claire haunted him. He wondered how she was getting on without him, knowing that he had made himself useful to her in a hundred ways, and that if she did not miss him, she must at least miss the work he did for her.
And Christian—he had told Bram in so many words that he meant to marry his cousin; yet his visits had fallen off in frequency, and Bram had an idea that Claire looked unhappy and anxious.
Bram knew very well that he could get an invitation back to the farm at any moment by putting himself in the way of Theodore. But he would not do this; he would not go back without the invitation, or at least the consent of Claire herself.
So he avoided Theodore, and went up and down the hill with an outward air of placid unconcern until the evening before the day when he was to dine at Mr Cornthwaite’s.
It was a pleasant October evening; there was a touch of frost in the air, which was bracing and pleasant after the heavy atmosphere of the town. When he got close to the farmhouse, he saw Claire crossing the farmyard on her way to the kitchen door, with a heavy load of wood in her arms. It seemed to him that her face looked sad and worn, that odd little face which had so little prettiness in repose except for those who knew the possibilities for fun, for tenderness, that lay dormant in her bright brown eyes.
He hesitated a moment, and then went quickly through the gate.
“May I help you, Miss Claire?”
She did not start or pretend to be surprised. She had seen him coming.
She stopped.
“You know what I told you, that you were not to come here again,” she said severely.
But it was severity which did not frighten him.
“Well,” he began humbly, “I’ve kept away nearly a fortnight.”
“But I said you were never to come again.”
“I don’t think you can have meant it though. You would have given me some reason if you had.”
Claire frowned and tapped her little foot impatiently on the ground.
“Oh, you know, you must know. You are not stupid, Mr. Elshaw.”
“I’m beginning to think I am,” said Bram, as he began to take her load from her with gentle insistence.
It amused and touched him to note how glad she was, in spite of her assumed displeasure, to give her work up to him in the old way. He opened the kitchen door, and took the wood into the scullery, where Joan was at work, just as he used to do for her, and then went through the kitchen slowly on his way out again.
Claire was standing by the big deal table.
“Thank you, thank you very much,” said she.
But her tone was not so bright as usual; she was more subdued altogether—a quiet, demure, downcast little girl. Bram, making his way with leaden feet to the outer door, wanted to say something, but hardly knew what. He hoped that she would stop him before he reached the door, but he was disappointed. He put his hand upon the latch and paused. Still she said nothing. He opened the door, and glanced back at her. Although the look she gave him in return had nothing of invitation in it, he felt that there was something in her sad little face which made it impossible to leave her like that.
“Miss Claire,” said he, and he was surprised to find that his voice was husky and not so loud as he expected, “mayn’t I finish the dressing-table?”
“If you like.”
Her voice was as husky as his own.
Without another word he set about the work, found the saw, which, by-the-bye, was his own, the wood, and the rest of the things he wanted, and in less than ten minutes was at work in the old way, and Claire, fetching her needlework, was busy by the fire, just as she used to be. She was too proud to own it; but Bram saw quite plainly that this quiet re-establishment of the old situation made her almost as happy as it did him.
“Things going all right, Miss Claire?” asked he as he took up his plane.
“No, of course they’re not. They’re going all wrong, as usual. More wrong than usual. Johnson takes more advantage than ever of there being nobody to look after him properly.”
Johnson was the farm bailiff, and he had worked all the better for the suggestions sharp-sighted Bram had made to Claire. Since Bram’s banishment Johnson had been rampant again. Claire was quite conscious of this, and she turned to another subject, to allow him no opportunity of applying her comments.
“And you—at least I needn’t ask. You always get on all right, don’t you?”
“I shall come to grief to-morrow,” answered Bram soberly. “I’ve got to go up to the Park to dinner. What do you think of that, Miss Claire? And to wear a black coat and a stiff shirt-front, just like a gentleman! Won’t they all laugh at me when my back’s turned, and talk about daws’ and peacocks’ feathers? It’s all Mr. Christian’s fault, so I suppose you will say it’s all right?”
“It is all right, Bram,” said Claire gravely; “and they won’t laugh at you. They can’t. You’re too modest. And too clever besides.” She paused, dropped her work in her lap, and looked intently at the fire. “Is it true that you’re going to be married, Bram?” she presently asked abruptly.
“Married! Me! Lord, no. Who told you such a thing as that?” And Bram stood up and looked at her, letting his plane lie idle.
“Papa said he thought you were. He said you were engaged to a girl who lived in the country. You never told me about her.”
“And is that why you sent me away?”
At his tone of dismay Claire burst out laughing with her old hilarity.
“Oh, no, oh, no. I sent you away, if you must know, because I had heard that you were to go up and dine at Holme Park, and because I knew that it would be better for you to be able to say there that you didn’t visit us.”
“Is that what you call a reason?” asked Bram scornfully, angrily.
“Yes, that’s one reason.”
“Well, well, haven’t you any better ones?”
“Perhaps. But I shan’t tell you any more, so you need not ask me for them. I want to know something about this girl you’re engaged to.”
“Not engaged,” said Bram stolidly.
“Well, in love with then? I want to know something about her. I think it very strange that I never heard anything about her before. What is she like?”
“Well, she’s like other girls,” said Bram. “She is much like nine out of every ten girls you meet.”
“Really? I shouldn’t have thought you’d care for a girl like that, Bram.”
“You must care for what you can get in this world,” said Bram sententiously.
“Well, tell me something more. Is she tall or short, fair or dark? Has she blue eyes, or gray ones, or brown?”
Bram looked thoughtful.
“Well, she’s neither tall nor short. She’s not very dark, nor yet very fair. And her eyes are a sort of drab color, I think.”
“You don’t mean it, Bram? I suppose you think it’s no business of mine?”
“That’s it, Miss Claire.”
“I don’t believe in the existence of this girl with the drab-colored eyes, Bram.”
Claire had jumped up, and darted across to the table in her old impulsive way; and now she stood, her eyes dancing with suppressed mirth, just as she used to stand in the good old days before the rupture of her own making.
Bram was delighted at the change.
“Well, I won’t say whether she exists or not,” replied he with a smile lurking about his own mouth; “and I don’t choose to have my love affairs pried into by anybody, I don’t care who. How would you like people to pry into yours?”
She grew suddenly grave, and he wished he had not said it.
“There’s no concealment about mine, Bram,” she said quietly.
“You’re going to marry Mr. Christian?”
“I suppose so.”
Why did she speak so quietly, so wistfully? The question troubled Bram, who did not dare to say any more upon a subject which she seemed anxious to avoid as much as she could. And the talk languished until Claire heard her father’s footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Now go,” said she imperiously. “I don’t want you to meet papa. And you mustn’t come again. And you mustn’t tell them up at Holme Park that you were here this evening.”
Bram frowned.
“Miss Claire,” said he, “I am a deal prouder of coming here than I am of going up to t’ Park. And if I’m to choose between here and t’ Park, I choose to come here. But I shall be let to do as I please, I can promise you. But, of course, if you don’t want me here, I won’t come.”
“Good-night,” said she for answer.
And she hurried him out of the house, and shut the door upon him in time to prevent her father, who was in the passage outside, from meeting him.
Bram went up to the Park on the following evening in much better spirits than if he had not had that reassuring interview with Claire. He still felt rather troubled as to the prospects of the marriage between her and her cousin, but he hoped that he might hear something about it in the family circle at Holme Park.
The ordeal of the evening proved less trying than the promoted clerk had expected—up to the certain point.
With the ladies of the family he had already become acquainted. Mrs. Cornthwaite was a tiresome elderly lady of small mental capacity and extremely conservative notions, who alternately patronized Bram and betrayed her horror at the recollection of his former station. The good lady was a perpetual thorn in the side of her husband, whom she irritated by silly interruptions and sillier comments on his remarks, and to her daughter, who had to be ever on the alert to ward off the effects of her mother’s imbecility.
The daughter, Hester, was a thoroughly good creature, who had been worried into a pessimistic view of life, and into a belief that much “good” could be done in the world by speaking her mind with frank rudeness upon all occasions. The consequence of these peculiarities in the ladies of the household was that to spend an evening in their society was a torture from which all but the bravest shrank, although every one acknowledged that they were the best-intentioned people in the world.
The only guests besides Bram were Mr. and Mrs. Hibbs and their only daughter, whom Bram knew already by name and by sight.
Mr. Hibbs was a coal-owner, a man of large means, and a great light in evangelical circles. He was a tall, sallow man, with thin whiskers and a deliberate manner of speaking, as if he were always in the reading-desk, where on Sundays he often read the lessons for the day. His wife was a comfortable-looking creature, with a round face and a round figure, and a habit of gently nodding her head after any remark of her husband’s, as if to emphasize its wisdom.
As for Minnie, it struck Bram, as he made her the bow he had been practising, that she exactly answered to the description he had given Claire of the supposed lady of his heart. There was only this difference, that she was distinguished from most young women of her age by the exceedingly light color of her eyebrows and eyelashes. She appeared to have none until you had the opportunity for a very close inspection.
She had quite a reputation for saintliness, which had reached even Bram’s ears. Her whole delight was in Sunday-school work and in district visiting, and the dissipations connected with these occupations.