She was, however, very cheerful and talkative during dinner; and Bram was surprised to see how very attentive Christian, who sat by her side, was to this particularly unattractive young person, who was the antithesis of all he admired.
For Christian’s good nature did not generally go the length of making him more than barely civil to plain women.
Bram found Miss Cornthwaite kind and easy to get on with. She was a straightforward, practical woman, on the far side of thirty, and this grave, simple-mannered young man, with the observant gray eyes, interested and pleased her. She tried to intercept the glances of horror which Mrs. Cornthwaite occasionally threw at him, and the terrible explanations with which the elder lady condescendingly favored him.
Thus, when the Riviera was mentioned, Mrs. Cornthwaite threw him the good-natured aside, audible all over the room—
“The shore of the Mediterranean, you know, the sea that lies between France and Italy, and—and those places!”
And when some one used the word “bizarre,” Mrs. Cornthwaite smiled at Bram again, and again whispered loudly—
“Quaint, odd, you know. It’s a French word.”
“Mamma, you needn’t explain. Mr. Elshaw speaks better French than we do, I’m quite sure,” said Hester good-naturedly enough, though she had better have made no comment.
But Bram said at once, as if grateful to the old lady—
“No, Miss Cornthwaite, I can read and write French pretty well, but I can’t speak it. And when I hear a French word spoken I don’t at once catch its meaning.”
“There, you see, Hester, I was right. I knew Mr. Elshaw would be glad of a little help,” said Mrs. Cornthwaite triumphantly.
“Very glad, indeed,” assented Bram, quickly interposing as Hester was about to continue the argument with her mother.
It was not until the ladies had left the room, and Bram, with an amused glance at Christian, had taken a cigarette, that the real ordeal of the evening came for the young clerk in a shape he had never expected.
“I suppose you hardly know, Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite with a preliminary cough, as if to show that he was about to make an announcement of importance, “why I was so particularly anxious for you to dine with us this evening?” Bram looked interested, as, indeed, he felt. “You are aware, Elshaw, of the enormously high opinion of your talents which my son has always held. He now proposes that you should go to London to represent us in a rather delicate negotiation, in place of himself. And as the reason is that he will himself be occupied with pleasanter matters than those of dry business, I thought it would interest you to be present on the occasion of the first announcement of the pleasanter matter in question. It is not less than a wedding——”
“A wedding, sir?” Bram’s face clouded with perplexity.
“Yes, Elshaw. You have had the honor of being introduced to the young lady this evening. My son has been fortunate enough to obtain the heart and a promise of the hand of Miss Minnie Hibbs.”
Bram looked steadily at Christian. He dared not speak.
Christian Cornthwaite pretended to be occupied in conversation with his future father-in-law, while Mr. Cornthwaite, senior, in his blandest and most good-humored tones, made the announcement of his son’s intended marriage to the astonished Bram.
But Christian’s attention was not so deeply engaged that he could not take note of what was happening, and he noticed the dead silence with which Bram received the announcement, and presently stole a furtive look at the face of the young clerk.
Bram caught the look, and replied to it with a steady stare. Chris turned his eyes away, but that look of Bram’s fascinated him, worried him. In truth, it had been his fear of what Elshaw would say, even more than his own disinclination, which had kept him hovering on the brink of his engagement with Miss Hibbs for so long.
And now he felt that he would have preferred some outbreak on Bram’s part to this stony silence.
“A wedding, Sir?” Bram’s face clouded with perplexity.—Page 70.
Even Josiah Cornthwaite was puzzled by Bram’s reception of the news. The young man seemed absolutely unmoved by the fresh proof of his employer’s confidence given in the information that he was to be sent to London on important business. He grew even uneasy as Bram’s silence continued, or was broken only by the briefest and coldest of answers. He looked from his son to Bram, and perceived that there was some understanding between them. And his fears grew apace. He shortened the stay in the dining-room, therefore, and letting Mr. Hibbs and Chris enter the drawing-room together, he took Bram up the stairs, with the excuse of showing him the view of the town from one of the windows.
Bram was shrewd enough to guess that he was to be “pumped.”
“This news about my son’s intended marriage seems to have taken you by surprise, Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite as they stood together looking out on the blurred lights of the town below.
“Well, sir, it has,” admitted Bram briefly.
“But you know he is twenty-six, an age at which a young man who can afford it ought to be thinking of marrying.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You thought, perhaps, that such a volatile fellow would be scarcely likely to make such a sensible choice as he has done?” went on Josiah with an air of bland indulgence, but with some anxiety in his eyes.
There was a pause.
“That was what you thought, eh?” repeated Mr. Cornthwaite more sharply.
Bram Elshaw frowned.
“Sir, may I speak out?” asked he bluntly.
“Certainly.”
“Well, then, sir, I don’t think it is a wise choice—if it was his choice at all, and not yours, sir?”
Now, Mr. Cornthwaite, while giving his permission to speak out, had not expected such uncompromising frankness as this. He was taken aback. He stammered as he began to answer—
“Why, why, what do you mean? Could there be a more sensible choice than such a lady as Miss Hibbs? A good daughter, not frivolous, or vain, or flighty; a sensible, affectionate girl, devoted to her parents and to good works. Just such a girl, in fact, as can be depended upon to make a thoroughly good, devoted wife.”
“For some sort of men, sir. But not for a man like Mr. Christian,” returned Bram with decision.
His blood was up, and he spoke with as much firmness as, and with more fire than, he had ever before shown to his employer.
Mr. Cornthwaite, who had grounds for feeling uneasy, was lenient, patient, attentive, curious.
“Why, don’t you know, Elshaw,” said he sharply, “that a man should mate with his opposite if he wants to be happy? That grave and serious men like frivolous wives; but that your lively young fellow likes a sober-minded wife to keep his house in order?”
“Sir, if it’s Mr. Christian’s choice, there’s an end of it,” said Bram brusquely.
“Of course it’s his choice, none the less, but rather the more, that it meets not only with my approval, but with that of the ladies of my family,” said Mr. Cornthwaite pompously.
Yet still he was curious, still unsatisfied. And still Bram said nothing.
“Believe me,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on impressively, “a man is none the less amenable to the influence of a good wife for having sown his wild oats first. With a wife like the one I—no, I mean he has chosen,” a faint smile flickered over Bram’s mouth at this correction, “my son will settle down into a model husband and father. You want the two elements, seriousness on the one side, good-humored gayety on the other, to make a happy marriage. Why, I ought to know, for these are exactly the principles on which I married myself.”
Mr. Cornthwaite uttered these words with an air of bland assurance, which, he thought, must carry conviction. But his young hearer, unfortunately, had heard enough about the domestic life at Holme Park to know that the “sensible marriage” on which Mr. Cornthwaite prided himself had by no means resulted in domestic peace. The bickerings of the ill-matched pair were, in fact, a constant source of misery to all the household, and were used freely by Chris as an excuse for his neglect of home.
Bram, therefore, received this information with courtesy, but without comment. Mr. Cornthwaite kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the young man, and found himself at last obliged to put a direct question.
“You had, I suppose, expected him to make a different sort of choice?”
“Very different, sir.”
“Some one, perhaps, whom you would have considered better suited to him?”
“Much better suited, sir.”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face clouded.
“Whom do you mean?”
Bram only hesitated a moment. He could do Christian no harm now by telling the truth; and he had a lingering hope that he might bring old Mr. Cornthwaite to see the matter with his own eyes.
“Sir,” said he, “have you never suspected your son of any attachment, any serious attachment, to a lady as good as Miss Hibbs is said to be, and a great deal more attractive?”
Bram felt as he said this that he had lapsed into the copybook style of conversation which Chris had pointed out as one of his besetting sins. But he could not help it. He felt the need of some dignity in speaking words which he felt to be momentous.
Mr. Cornthwaite looked deeply annoyed.
“I have not,” said he shortly. And again he asked—“Whom do you mean?”
“Miss Claire Biron, sir,” answered Bram.
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face darkened still more.
“What!” cried he in agitation which belied his words. “You believe that my son ever gave that girl a serious thought? And that the daughter of such a father could be a proper match for my son? Absurd! Absurd! Of course, you are a very young man; you have no knowledge of the world. But I should have thought your native shrewdness would have prevented your falling into such a mistake as that.”
Bram said nothing. Mr. Cornthwaite, in spite of the scornful tone he had used, was evidently more anxious than ever to learn whatever Bram had to tell on the subject. After a short silence, therefore, he asked in a quieter tone—
“How came you to get such a notion into your head, Elshaw?”
“I knew that they were fond of each other, sir; and I knew that Miss Biron was a young lady of character, and what you call tact.”
“Tact! Humbug!” said Mr. Cornthwaite shortly. “She is an artful, designing girl, and she and her father have done all in their power to entangle my son. But I foresaw his danger, and now I flatter myself I have saved him. You, I see, have been taken in by the girl’s little mincing ways, just as my son was in danger of being. But I warn you not to have anything to do with them. They are an artful, scheming pair, both father and daughter, and it would be ruin for any man to become connected with them—ruin, I say.”
And he stared anxiously into Bram’s face.
“Has she led you on too?” he asked presently, with great abruptness.
Bram’s face flushed.
“No, sir. She has forbidden me to come to her father’s house.”
“Ah! A ruse, a trick to encourage my son!” cried the old gentleman fiercely. “I wish he were safely married. I shall do all in my power to hurry it on. How often have you seen him about there? You live near, I believe?” said he curtly.
“I have seen him now and then, not so very often lately,” answered Bram.
“Ah, well, you won’t see him there much longer. Miss Hibbs will see to that.”
“Sir, you are wrong,” cried Bram, whose head and heart were on fire at these accusations against Claire. “Miss Hibbs may be a good girl, as girls go. I don’t know” (Bram’s English gave way here) “nothing against her. But I do know you don’t give your son a chance when you make him marry a sack o’ meal like that, and him loving a flesh-and-blood woman like Miss Biron! Why, sir, ask yourself whether it’s in nature that he should settle down to the psalm-singing that would suit her, so as to be happy and satisfied to give up his wild ways? Put it to him point blank, sir, which he’d do of his own free will, and see what answer you’ll get from him!”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Cornthwaite hastily, “and I’m exceedingly sorry to find you so much more gullible than I had expected, Elshaw. Is it possible you didn’t observe how this young woman ran after my son? Coming to this house on every possible occasion with some excuse or other?”
“That was her father’s fault, sir,” retorted Bram hotly.
“Probably he had something to do with it; but she fell in with his wishes with remarkable readiness, readiness which no modest girl would have shown in the circumstances. She must have seen she was not welcomed with any warmth by the heads of the household at least.”
The blood rushed to Bram’s forehead. The idea of poor little Claire creeping unwillingly to the great house on one of her father’s miserable errands, only to be snubbed and coldly received by every one, struck him like a stab.
“Surely, sir, there was no place in the world where she had so good a right to expect to be well received as here?” said he, with difficulty controlling the emotion he felt. “A young girl, doing her best to fulfil every duty, with no friends, no mother, no father worthy of the name. And you are her relations; here there were women, ladies, who knew all about her, and who might be expected to sympathize with her difficulties and her troubles!”
Bram, who spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with nice care, but uttering them with deep feeling, paused, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s face. But there was no mercy in the fiery black eyes, or about the cold, handsome mouth.
“They would have shown her every sympathy,” said he coldly, “if she had not abused the privilege of intimacy by trying to ensnare my son.”
“Mr. Cornthwaite,” interrupted Bram scornfully, “do you really think Mr. Christian ever waited for a girl to run after him? Why, for every time Miss Biron’s been up here—sent here by her father, mind—he’s been three or four or five times down at the farm!”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s eyes blazed. By a quick movement he betrayed that this was just what he had wanted to know. His face clouded more than before.
“Ah!” said he shortly, “that’s what I’ve been told. Well, it’s the girl’s own doing. If she’s got herself into a scrape, she has no one but herself to thank for it, no one. Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?”
He led the way downstairs, and Bram followed in dead silence.
A horrible, sickly fear had seized his heart; he could not but understand the imputation Mr. Cornthwaite had made, accompanied as it was by a look, the significance of which there was no mistaking.
Claire, poor little helpless Claire, the cherished idol of his imagination and of his heart, lay under the most cruel suspicion which can assail a woman, the suspicion of having held her honor too lightly.
Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare mention of this suspicion in connection with the girl he worshipped. The next moment he cast the thought behind him as utterly base, and felt that he had disgraced himself and her by the momentary harboring of it.
But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated the smug, elderly gentleman, who troubled himself not in the least about the helpless, friendless girl who loved his son, and whose only thought was to hurry his son into a heartless marriage in order to “save him from” the danger of his repairing his supposed error.
In these circumstances, Bram lost all self-consciousness, all remembrance of his unaccustomed dress, of his attitudes, of his awkwardness, and entered the drawing-room utterly absorbed in thoughts of Claire. Old Mrs. Cornthwaite, who was fumbling about with a lapful of feminine trifles, smelling-bottle, handkerchief, spectacle-case, dropped one of them, and he hastened to pick it up.
“Thank you,” said she, with a gracious, good-humored smile, “you are more attentive than any of the grand folk.”
“Mamma,” cried Hester in fidgety exasperation. And good-naturedly fearing that he might have been hurt by her mother’s lack of tact, she opened the old-fashioned, but not unhelpful, album of photographs, which lay on a table near her, and asked him if he cared for pictures of Swiss scenery.
“Not much, Miss Hester,” said Bram.
But he went up to the table, encouraged by her kind manners, by the honest look in her eyes, in the hope that he might find a supporter in her of the cause he had at heart.
“But I should like to see some photographs of you and Mr. Christian, if you have any.”
She opened another album, smiling as she did so, and offering him a chair near her, which he immediately took.
“I never show these unless I am asked,” she said. “Family photographs I always think uninteresting, except to the family.”
“And to those interested in the family,” amended Bram. “You see, Miss Hester, there’s hardly another thing in the world I care about so much. That’s only natural, isn’t it, after what I’ve been treated like at their hands.”
He was conscious that his English was getting doubtful under the influence of the emotion which he could not master. But Miss Cornthwaite seemed, of course, not to notice this. She was extremely well disposed towards this frank young man with the earnest eyes, the heavy, obstinate mouth, and the long, straight chin, which gave so much character to his pale face.
“Christian always speaks of you with such boyish delight, as if he had discovered you bound hand and foot in the midst of cannibals who wanted to eat you,” said she laughing.
“So he did, Miss Hester,” answered Bram gravely, almost harshly.
He could not speak, could not think of Chris just now without betraying something of the emotion the name aroused in him. And he glanced angrily across to the corner where Chris was sitting beside prim little Miss Hibbs, who was giggling gently at his remarks, but clasping her hands tightly together, and keeping her arms pinned closely to her sides, as if she felt that she was unbending more than was meet, and that she must atone for a little surface hilarity by this penitential attitude.
Hester Cornthwaite noticed the glance thrown by Bram, and felt curious.
“I am very glad he is going to be married,” she said quickly, with an intuition that he would not agree with her. Bram looked her full in the face in a sudden and aggressive manner.
“Why are you glad?” he asked abruptly.
She was rather disconcerted for a moment.
“Why? Oh, because I think it will be good for him, that he will be happier, that he will settle down,” she answered with a little confusion.
Surely he must know as well as she did that there were many reasons for wishing Chris to grow more steady. A little prim suggestion of this feeling was noticeable in her tone.
“I don’t think he would settle down, if so he was to marry a girl he didn’t care for,” said Bram bluntly. “And I should have thought you would agree with me, understanding Mr. Christian as you do, Miss Hester.”
Miss Cornthwaite drew her lips rather primly together.
“He does care for her, of course,” said she rather tartly, “else why should he marry her?”
Bram smiled, and gave her a glance of something like scorn.
“There are a good many reasons why he should marry to please Mr. Cornthwaite, your father, when he can’t marry to please himself.”
“Why can’t he? Who does he want to marry?” asked Miss Cornthwaite quickly.
“Why, Miss Biron, Miss Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm,” replied honest Bram promptly.
Hester’s thin and rather wizened face flushed. She frowned; she looked annoyed. “Dear me! I never heard anything about it,” she said testily. “And I can hardly think he would wish to do anything so very unwise. Christian isn’t stupid, though he’s rather volatile.”
“Stupid! No, indeed. That he should want to marry Miss Biron is no proof of stupidity. Where could he find a nicer wife? How could you expect him to sit and look contentedly at Miss Hibbs when there is such a girl as Miss Biron within ten miles?”
Hester looked more prim than ever.
“You seem very enthusiastic, Mr. Elshaw. Pray, what have you to say about Mr. Biron?”
“Well, Mr. Christian wouldn’t have to marry him.”
“That is just what he would have to do,” retorted she quickly. “Mr. Biron would take good care of that. Christian would never be able to shake him off.”
“Well,” said Bram, “he can’t shake him off now, can he? So he would be no worse off.”
“Now, seriously, Mr. Elshaw, would you like to have such a father-in-law yourself?”
Bram’s heart leapt up. But he did not tell the young lady that he only wished he had the chance. Instead of that, he answered in a particularly grave and judicial tone—
“If I had, I’d soon bring him to reason. He’s not stupid either, you see. I’d make an arrangement with him, and I’d make him keep to it. And if he didn’t keep to it——”
“And he certainly wouldn’t. What then?”
“Well, then perhaps I’d get rid of him some way, Miss Hester.”
“I certainly shouldn’t advise my brother to run the risk of having to do that, and all for a girl much too volatile to make him a good wife. Why, she is nearly half French.”
Bram looked at her quickly.
“Surely, Miss Hester, you who have travelled and been about the world, don’t think the worse of a lady for that?”
Miss Cornthwaite reddened, but she stuck to her guns.
“I hope I am above any silly insular prejudice,” she said coldly. “But I certainly think the French character too frivolous for an Englishman’s wife. Why, when Claire comes here, though she will sob as if her heart was breaking one moment at the humiliations her father exposes her to, she will be laughing heartily the next.”
“Poor child, poor child! Thank heaven she can,” said Bram with solemn tenderness which made Miss Cornthwaite just a little ashamed of herself. “And don’t you think a temper like that would come in handy for Mr. Christian’s wife, as well as for Mr. Biron’s daughter?”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Miss Cornthwaite very frigidly, as she stretched out her hand quickly for a fresh book to show him.
Poor Claire had no partisan here.
Now, Christian felt throughout the evening that Bram was avoiding his eyes, saving himself up, as it were, for an attack of eye and tongue, a combat in which Chris would have all he could do to hold his own.
Christian was fond of Bram, fonder even, perhaps, than Bram, with his honest admiration and indulgence, was of him. The steady, earnest character of the sturdy man of the people, with his straightforward simplicity, his shrewdness, and his blunt outspokenness when his opinion was asked, had constant attraction for the less simple, but more amiable, son of the owner of the works. He wanted to put himself right with Bram, and to do it in such a way as to put Bram in the wrong.
He tried to get an opportunity of a chat with the sullen-looking young clerk, who, however, avoided this chance more cleverly than Chris sought it.
At the close of the evening, when Bram had reeled off without a mistake the elaborate speech of thanks to Mrs. Cornthwaite which he had prepared beforehand, he contrived very cleverly to slip out of the house while Chris was occupied with the perfunctory attentions demanded by his fiancée. And with the start he thus obtained, he contrived to reach the foot of Hassel Hill before he became aware that he was being followed.
“Hallo!” cried out a bright voice, which he knew to be that of Chris. “Hallo!”
Bram did not answer, did not slacken his pace, but went straight on up the hill, leaving Chris to follow or not as he pleased.
He had reached the outer gate of Duke’s Farm before Chris came in sight, toiling up the steep road in silence after him. Then the pursuer called out again. Somebody besides Bram recognized the voice, for a minute later Bram saw a light struck in an upper window of the farm. The window was thrown up, and somebody looked out. Bram, however, stalked upwards in silence still.
He had reached the first of the row of cottages on the top of the hill, when Chris, making a last spurt, overtook him, and seized him by the arm.
“Bram, Bram, what’s the matter with you? I’ve been panting and puffing after you for a thousand miles, and I can’t get you to turn that wooden head of yours. Come, I know what’s wrong with you, and I mean to have it out with you at once, and have done with it. So come along.”
He had already hooked his arm within that of the unwilling Bram, who held himself stiffly, stubbornly, with an air which seemed to say—“Well, if you want it, you can have it.”
And so, the one eager, defiant, impetuous, the other stolid and taciturn, the two men walked past the rows of mean cottages, past Bram’s own lodgings, and up to the very summit of the hill, where the ruined, patched-up, and re-ruined mansion was, and the disused coal shaft with its towering chimney.
“And now,” cried Chris, suddenly stopping and swinging Bram round to face him in the darkness, “we are coming to an understanding.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Now, don’t ‘sir’ me, but tell me if you’re not ashamed of yourself——”
“Me ashamed of myself! I like that!” cried Bram with a short laugh. “But that’s the way with you gentlemen. If you please, we’ll not have any talk about this, because honor and honesty don’t mean the same thing to you as to me.”
“That’s a nasty one,” retorted Chris in his usual airy tone. “Now, look here, Bram, although you’re so entirely unreasonable that you don’t deserve it, I’m going to condescend to argue with you, and to prove to you the absurdity of your conduct in treating me like this.”
“Like what, Mr Christian?”
“Oh, you know. Don’t let’s waste time. You are angry because I’m marrying Miss Hibbs——”
“No,” said Bram obstinately. “I’m not angry with you for marrying Miss Hibbs. I’m angry because you’re not marrying the girl you love, the girl you’ve taught to love you.”
“Same thing, Bram. I can’t marry them both, you know.”
Bram shook his arm free angrily.
“Mr. Christian, we won’t talk about this no more,” said he in a voice which was hoarse, and strained, and unlike his own. “I might say things I shouldn’t like to. Let me go, sir; let me go home, and do you go home and leave me alone.”
“No, I won’t leave you till we’ve threshed the matter out. Be reasonable, Bram. You know as well as I do that I’m dependent on my father——”
“You knew that all along. But you said, you told me——”
“I told you that I wanted to marry my cousin Claire. Well, so I did. But my father wouldn’t hear of it; apart from the objection he has to the marriage of cousins——”
“That’s new, that is,” put in Bram shortly.
“Apart from that, I say, he wouldn’t have anything to say to the match for a dozen reasons. You know that. And, knowing how I’m placed, it is highly ridiculous of you to make all this fuss, especially as you, no doubt, intend to use the opportunity to cut in yourself.”
His tone changed, and Bram detected real pique, real jealousy in these last words.
Bram heard this in dead silence.
“You do, eh?” went on Chris more sharply.
“No, Mr. Christian, I do not. I couldn’t come after you in a girl’s heart.”
“Why not? You are too modest, Bram.”
Perhaps Chris flattered himself that he spoke in his usual tone; but an unpleasant, jeering note was clearly discernible to Bram Elshaw’s ears. Christian went on in a more jarring tone than ever.
“Or have you been so far penetrated with the maxims of the Sunday-school that you would not allow a girl a little harmless flirtation?”
“Flirtation!” echoed Bram angrily. “It was more than that, Mr. Christian, more than that—to her!”
“It was nothing more than that,” said Chris emphatically. “I have done the girl no harm.”
Before the words were out of his mouth Bram had sprung forward with the savagery of a wild animal. In the obscurity of the cloudy night his eyes gleamed, and with set teeth and clenched fists he came close to Christian, staring into his eyes, stammering in his vehemence.
“If you had,” whispered he almost inaudibly, but with passion which infected Christian and awed him into silence, “If you had done her—any—harm, I’d ha’ strangled you, Mr. Christian. I’d ha’ gone down to t’ works, when you was there, and I’d ha’ taken one o’ t’ leather bands o’ t’ wheels, and I’d ha’ twisted it round your neck, Mr. Christian, and I’d ha’ pulled, and pulled, till I saw t’ eyes start out o’ your head, and t’ blood come bursting out o’ your mouth. And I’d ha’ held you, and tightened it, and tightened it till the breath was out o’ your body!”
When he had finished, Bram still stood close to Christian, glaring at him with wild, bloodshot eyes. Christian tried to laugh, but he turned suddenly away, almost staggering. He felt sick and faint. It was Bram who recovered himself first. He confronted Chris quickly, looking ashamed, penitent, abashed.
“Ah shouldn’t ha’ said what Ah did,” said he, just in his old voice, as if he had been again a mere hand at the works. “It was not for me to say it, owing what Ah do to you, Mr. Christian. But—by—I meant it all the same.” And again the strange new Bram flashed out for a moment. “And I’m thinking, Mr. Christian,” he went on, resuming the more refined tones of his later development, “that it will be best for me to leave the works altogether, for it can never be the same for you and me after to-night. You can’t forgive me for what I’ve said, and—well, I feel I should be more comfortable away, if it’s the same to you.”
There was a pause, hardly lasting more than a few seconds, and then Chris spoke, with a hoarse and altered voice, but in nearly his ordinary tones—
“But it’s not the same to me or to us, not at all the same, Bram. My delinquencies, real or imaginary, cannot be allowed to come between my father and the best clerk he ever had, the man who is to make up for my business shortcomings. So—so if you please, Elshaw, I’ll take my chance of the strangling, though, mind you, I should have thought you might have discovered some more refined mode of making away with me, something just as effective, and—and nicer to look at.”
His voice was tremulous, and he did not look at Bram, though he succeeded pretty well in maintaining a light tone. Bram laughed shortly.
“My refinement’s only skin deep, you see, Mr. Christian. I told you so. The raw Sheffielder’s very near the top. And in these fine clothes, too!”
He glanced down rather scornfully at the brand-new overcoat, and at the glazed expanse of unaccustomed shirt-front which showed underneath.
There was another pause. Both the young men were trembling violently, and found it pretty hard to keep up talk at this placid level of commonplace. Quite suddenly Chris said—“Well, good-night, Elshaw,” and started on his way back to Holme Park at a good pace.
Bram drew a long breath. He had just gone through an experience so hideous, so horrible, that he felt as if he had been seared, branded with a hot iron. For the first time he realized now what he had been simple enough not to suspect before, that Christian had never for a moment seriously entertained the idea of marrying Claire.
And yet he was in love with her! Bram, loving Claire himself, was clear-sighted and not to be deceived on this point. Christian loved her still enough to be jealous of any other man’s feelings for her. He had betrayed this fact in every word, in every tone. If, then, he loved her and did not mean to marry her, he, the irresistible, the spoilt child of the sex, what right had he to love her, to make her love him? What motive had he in passing so much of his time at Duke’s Farm?
And there darted into poor Bram’s heart a jealous, mad fear that was like a poison in his blood. He clenched his teeth, he shook his fists in the air; again the wild, fierce passion which had swept over him at Christian’s stabbing words seized him and possessed him.
He turned quickly, as if to start in pursuit of Chris, when a low sound, a cry, stopped him, turned him as if into stone.
For, at a little distance from him, between where he stood and the retreating figure half-way down the hill, stood Claire.
An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting towards him.
Dark as the night was, the moon being so thickly obscured by clouds that she never showed her face except through a flying film of vapor, Claire seemed to detect something alarming in Bram’s attitude, something which caused her to pause as she was running up the hill towards him.
At last she stopped altogether, and they stood looking each at the figure of the other, motionless, and without speaking.
As for Bram, he felt that if he tried to utter a single word he should choke. He could not understand or analyze his own feeling; he did not well know whether his faith in her innocence and purity remained intact. All he knew, all he felt, as he looked at the little creature who seemed so pitifully small and slight as she stood alone on the hillside, wrapt tightly in a long cloak, but shivering in the night air, was that his whole heart was sore for her, that he ached for pity and distress, that he did not know what he should say, what he could do, to comfort and console her.
At last she seemed to take courage, and came a few steps nearer.
“Mr. Elshaw!”
“Yes, Miss Claire.”
She started, and no wonder. For his voice was as much changed as were the sentiments he felt for her.
An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting towards him.—Page 86.
She came a little nearer still, with hesitating feet, before she spoke again.
“Was that—wasn’t that my cousin, Christian Cornthwaite, who went away when he saw me?”
It was Bram’s turn to start. So that was the reason of the sudden flight of Chris! He had seen and recognized the figure of Claire as she came up the hill behind Bram.
“Yes, Miss Claire.”
Another pause. She was near enough now to peer up into his face with some chance of discerning the expression he wore. It was one of anxiety, of tenderness. She drew back a little.
“I—I heard him call—I heard a voice call out ‘Hallo!’” she explained, “and I jumped up, and looked out of the window, and I saw you, and I saw my cousin following you. And you would not answer him. But he still went on. And—and I was frightened; I thought something dreadful had happened, that you had quarrelled; so I got up and came up after you. And I saw——”
She stopped. Bram said nothing. But he turned his head away, unable to look at her. Her voice, now that she spoke under the influence of some strong emotion, played upon his heartstrings like the wind upon an Æolian harp. He made a movement as if to bid her go on with her story.
“I saw,” she added in a lower voice, “I saw you spring upon him as if you were going to knock him down. You had been quarrelling. I’m sure you had. And I was frightened. I screamed out, but you didn’t hear me, either of you; you were too full of what you were saying to each other. And it was about me; I know it was about me. Now, wasn’t it?”
Bram was astonished.
“What makes you think that, Miss Claire? Did you hear anything?”
“Ah!” cried she quickly. “That’s a confession. It was about me you were quarreling. Can’t you tell me all about it at once?”
But Bram did not dare. He moved restlessly from the one foot to the other, and suddenly said—
“You’re cold; you’re shivering. You’ll catch an awful chill if you stay up here. Just go down back to the farm, Miss Claire, like a good girl”—and unconsciously his tone assumed the caressing accents one uses to a favorite child—“and you shall hear all you want to know in the morning.”
But she stood her ground, making an impatient movement with one foot.
“No, Bram, you must tell me now. What was it all about?”
He hesitated. Even if he were able to put her off now, which seemed unlikely, she must hear the truth some day. It was only selfishness, the horror of himself giving her pain, which urged him to be reticent now. So he said to himself, doggedly preparing for his avowal. His anger against the Cornthwaites, his fear of hurting her, combined to make his tone sullen and almost fierce as he answered—
“Well, Miss Claire, I was angry wi’ him because I thought he hadn’t behaved as he ought.”
There was a pause. It seemed to Bram that she guessed, with feminine quickness, what was coming. She spoke, after another of the short pauses with which their conversation was broken up, in a very low and studiously-restrained tone—
“How? To whom, Bram?”
“To—to you, Miss Claire,” answered Bram with blunt desperation.
Another silence.
“Why, what has he done to me?” asked she at last.
“He has gone and got engaged—to be married—to somebody else; that’s what he’s done, there!”
Bram was fiercer than ever.
“Well, and what of that?”
He could not see her face, and her tone was one of careless bravado. But Bram was not deceived. He clenched his fists till the nails went deep into his flesh. It cut him in the heart to have to tell her this news, to feel what she must be suffering. He answered as quietly as he could.
“Nothing, but that I think he ought—he ought——”
“You think he ought to have told me. Oh, I guessed, I guessed what was going to happen,” replied Claire rapidly in an off-hand tone. “I should have heard it from himself to-morrow. Who—who is it?”
“A Miss Hibbs.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I might have known.”
But her voice trembled, and Bram, turning quickly, saw that the tears were running down her cheeks. She was angry at being thus caught, and she dashed them away impatiently.
“D—— him!” roared Bram, clenching his fists and his teeth.
“Hush, Bram, hush! I’m surprised. I’m ashamed of you! And, besides, what does it matter to you or to me either whom Mr. Cornthwaite marries?”
“It does matter. He ought to have married you, and taken you away out of the place, and away from the life you have to live with that old rascal——”
Bram was beside himself; he did not know what he was saying. Claire stopped him, but very gently, saying—
“Hush, Bram. He’s my father.”
“Well, I know that, but he’s a rascal all the same,” said Bram bluntly. “And Mr. Christian knows it, and he had ought to be glad to have the chance of taking you away, and making you happier. He’s behaved like a fool, too, for the girl his father’s found for him will never get on with him, never make him happy, like you would have done, Miss Claire. He is just made a rod for his own back, and it serves him jolly well right!”
Claire did not interrupt him; she was crying quietly, every tear she let fall increasing Bram’s rage, and throwing fuel on the fire of his indignation. Perhaps his anger soothed her a little, for it was in a very subdued little voice that she presently said—
“Oh, Bram, I don’t think that! I do wish him to be happy! Indeed, indeed I do. And if it wasn’t for one thing I should be very, very glad he’s going to marry somebody else—very, very glad, really!”
Bram had come a little nearer to her; he spoke earnestly, tenderly, with a voice that trembled.
“You’re fond of him?” said he, quickly, imperiously.
“Yes, I’m very fond of him. He’s my cousin, and he’s always been kind to me. But I didn’t want to marry him. Oh, I didn’t want to marry him!”
Bram was astonished, incredulous. He spoke brusquely, almost harshly.
“He thought you did. He thought you cared for him. So did I, so did everybody.”
“Yes. I know that. He’s so popular that people take it for granted one must care for him. But I didn’t—in the way you mean.”
Bram was still dubious.
“Then, why,” said he suddenly, “do you take this so much to heart?”
Claire made a valiant attempt to dry her eyes and steady her voice.
“Because,” said she in a hesitating voice, “because of—of—because of papa! He wanted me to marry him; he counted on it; and now—oh, dear, I don’t know what he will do, what he will say. Well, it can’t be helped. I must go back; I must go home. Good-bye; good-night!”
Before Bram could do more than babble out “Good-night, Miss Claire,” she had flown like the wind down the hill towards the farm.
Bram went back to his lodging in a sort of delirium. Was it possible that Claire had spoken the truth to him? That she really cared not a straw for her cousin except in a cousinly way; that all she was troubled about was her father’s displeasure at having missed such a chance of a connection with the family of the long purse.
Bram understood very little about the nature of women. But he had, of course, acquired the usual vague notions concerning the reticence, the ruses of girls in love, and he could not help feeling that in Claire’s denial there was matter for distrust. How, indeed, should she, this little friendless girl who had no other lovers, fail to respond to the affection of a man as attractive, both to men and women, as Chris Cornthwaite? And did not the behavior of Chris himself confirm this view? If Claire had not cared for him, why should he have received Bram’s frowns, his angry reproaches, with something which was almost meekness, if he had felt them to be absolutely undeserved? The more he considered this, the more impossible it seemed that Claire’s lame explanation of her tears, of her distress, could be the true one. It seemed to Bram that Theo Biron, with his shrewdness and his cunning, must have been the very person to feel most sure that Josiah Cornthwaite would never allow the marriage of Chris with Claire.
Again, why, if she had not felt a most deep interest in Chris had she taken such a bold step as to follow him up the hill that night? Surely it must have been in the hope of speaking with him, perhaps of reassuring herself from his own lips on the subject of the rumors of his approaching marriage, which must have reached her? If, too, Chris had had nothing to reproach himself with on her account, why had he fled so quickly, so abruptly, at the first sight of her?
More and more gloomy grew Bram Elshaw’s thoughts as he approached the cottage where he lodged, passed through the little bit of cramped garden, and let himself in. Entering his little sitting-room, and striking a light, he found a note addressed to himself lying on the table. The writing of the envelope was unknown to him, and he opened it with some curiosity. The letter was stamped with this heading—“The Vicarage, East Grindley.”
“Grindley! East Grindley!” thought Bram to himself. “Why, that’s where my father’s people came from!”
And he read the letter with some interest. It was this:
“Dear Sir,—I am sorry to inform you that Mr. Abraham Elshaw, who is some relation of yours, though he hardly seems himself to know in what degree, is very ill, and not expected to live many days. He has desired me to write and ask you if you will make an effort to come and see him without delay. I may tell you that I understand Mr. Elshaw has heard of the rapid manner in which you are getting on in the world; he has, in fact, often spoken of you to us with much pride, and he is anxious to see you about the disposal of the little property of which he is possessed. I need not ask you under the circumstances to come with as little delay as possible.—Yours very truly,
“Bernard G. Thorpe.
“P.S.—Mr Elshaw has been a member of my congregation for many years, and he chose me rather than one of his own relations to open communication with you. I should have preferred his choosing one of them, but he refused, saying they were unknown to you, so that I could not refuse to fulfil his wishes.”
Bram put down the letter with a rather grim smile. He had never seen this namesake of his, but he had heard a good deal about him. An eccentric old fellow, not a rich man by any means, he had saved a few hundred pounds in trade of the smallest and most pettifogging kind, on the strength of which he had given himself great airs for the last quarter of a century among the pit hands and mill hands and grinders who formed his family and acquaintance. A sturdy, stubborn, miserly old man, of whose hard-fistedness and petty money-grabbing Bram had heard many tales. But the family was proud of him, though it loved him not. Bram remembered clearly how, when he was a very small child, his father had gone out on a strike with his mates, and his poor mother, at her wits’ end for a meal, had applied to the great Abraham for a small loan, and how it had been curtly and contemptuously refused.
This was just the man, this hard-fisted, self-helping old saver of halfpence, to bestow upon the successful and prosperous young relation the money of which he would not have lent him a cent if he had been starving. Bram told himself that he must go, of course: and he resolved to do his best with the old man for those unknown relations who might be more in want of the money than he himself was. For he was shrewd enough to foresee that old Abraham’s intention was to make his prosperous young relation heir to what little he possessed. He resolved to ask next morning for a day off, and to go at once to East Grindley.
Bram got the required permission easily enough, and went on the very next day to see his reputed wealthy namesake. East Grindley was a good many miles north of Sheffield and it was late in the day before he returned.
Throughout the whole of the day he had been haunted by thoughts of Claire; and no sooner had he had his tea than he determined to go to the farm, with the excuse of asking if she had caught cold the night before.
He was in a fever of doubt, anxiety, and only half-acknowledged hope. He had wished, honestly wished, when he believed Claire to be as fond of Chris as Chris was of her, that the cousins should marry, that little Claire should be taken right out of her troubles and her difficulties, and set down in a palace of peace and content, of luxury and beauty, with the man of her heart. But if those words of Claire’s uttered to him the night before were really true, might there not be a chance that he might win her himself? That he might be the lucky man who should build her a palace, and lift her from misery into happiness?
Bram knew that Claire liked him; knew that the distance between himself and her, which had seemed immeasurable thirteen months before, had diminished, and was every day diminishing. If, indeed she did not care, had never cared for her cousin with the love Bram wanted, who had a better chance with her than himself, whom she knew so well, and trusted so completely?
Bram with all his humility, was proud in his own way, and exceedingly jealous. If Claire had loved her cousin passionately, and had been jilted by him, as Bram had believed to be the case, he did not feel that he should even have wished to take the vacant place in her heart. No doubt the wish would have come in time, but not at once. If, however, it were true that she had not cared for Chris in the only way of which Bram would have been jealous, why, then, indeed, there was hope of the most brilliant kind.
Bram, on his way to the farm, began to see in his heart such visions as love only can build and paint, love, too, that has not taken the edge off itself, frittered itself away, on the innumerable flirtations with which his daily companions at the office beguiled the dead monotony of existence.
In his new life, as in his old, it was Bram’s lot to be “chaffed” daily on his unimpressionability, on the stolid, matter-of-fact way in which he went about his daily work, “as if,” as the other clerks said, “his eyes could see nothing better in the world than paper and ink, print and figures.”
Bram on these occasions was accustomed to put on an air of extra stolidity, and to shake his head, and declare that he had no time to think of anything but his work. And all the time he wondered to himself at the ease with which they could chatter of their affection for this girl and that, and enjoy the jokes which were levelled at them, and wear their heart upon their sleeve with ill-concealed delight.
And he smiled to himself at their mistake, and went on nourishing his heart with its own chosen food in secret, with raptures that nobody guessed.
And now the thought that his dreamy hopes might grow into realities brought the color to his pale cheeks and new lustre to his steady gray eyes, as he walked soberly down the hill, and entered the farmyard in the yellow sunlight of the end of a fine day in September.
He knocked at the kitchen door, and nobody answered. He knocked more loudly, fancying that he heard voices inside the house. But again without result. So he opened the door, and peeped in. A small fire was burning in the big grate, but there was nobody in the room. With the door open, however, the voices he had faintly heard became louder, and he became aware that an altercation was going on between Claire and her father in the front part of the house.
He was on the point of retiring, therefore, with a sigh for the poor little girl, when a cry, uttered by her in a wailing tone, reached his ears, and acted upon his startled senses like flaming pitch on tow.
“Oh, papa, don’t, don’t hurt me!”
The next moment Bram had burst the opposite door open, and saw Theodore, his little, mean face wrinkled up with malice, strike Claire’s face sharply with his open hand. This was in the hall, outside the dining-room door.
No sooner was the blow given than Bram seized Theodore, lifted him into the air, and flung him down against the door of the dining-room with such force that it burst open, and Mr. Biron lay sprawling just inside the room.
Claire, her cheek still white from the blow, her eyes full of tears of shame, rushed forward, ready to champion her father.
“Go away,” she said in a strangled, breathless voice. “Go away. How dare you hurt my father? You have no right to come here. Go away.”
She tried to speak severely, harshly, but the tears were running down her face; she was heart-broken, miserable, full of such deep humiliation that she could scarcely meet his eyes. But Bram did not heed her, did not hear her perhaps. He was himself trembling with emotion, and his eyes shone with that liquid lustre, that yearning of long-repressed passion, which no words can explain away, no eyewitness can mistake.
He stretched out his hand, without a single word, and took both hers in one strong clasp. And the moment she felt his touch her voice failed, died away; she bent down her head, and burst into a fit of weeping more passionate than ever.
“Hush, my dear; hush! Don’t cry. Remember, it’s only me; it’s only Bram.”
He had bent his head too, and was leaning over her with such tender yearning, such undisguised affection, in look, manner, voice, that no girl could have doubted what feeling it was which animated him. With his disengaged hand he softly touched her hair, every nerve in his own body thrilling with a sensation he had never known before.
“Hush, hush!”
The whisper was a confession. It seemed to tell what love he had cherished for her during all these months; a love which gave him now not only the duty, but the right of comforting her, of soothing the poor little bruised heart, of calming the weary spirit.
“Hush, dear, hush!”
Whether it was a minute, whether it was an hour, that they stood like this in the little stone-flagged hall in the cool light of the dying September evening, Bram did not know. He was intoxicated, mad. It was only by strong self-control that he refrained from pressing her to his breast. He had to tell himself that he must not take advantage of her weakness, he must not extort from her while she was crushed, broken, a word, a promise, an assurance, which her stronger, her real self would shudder at or regret. She must feel, she must know, that he, Bram, was her comforter, the tender guardian who asked no price, who was ready to soothe, to champion, and to wait.
Meanwhile the strong man found in his own sensation reward enough and to spare. Here, with her heart beating very near his, was the only woman who had ever lit in him the fiery light of passion; her little hands trembled in his, the tender flesh pressing his own hard palm with a convulsive touch which set his veins tingling. The scent of her hair was an intoxicating perfume in his nostrils. Every sobbing breath she drew seemed to sound a new note of sweetest music in his heart.
At last, when he had been silent for some seconds, she suddenly drew herself back, with a face red with shame; with eyes which dared not meet his. Reluctantly he let her drag her hands away from him, and watched her wipe her wet eyes.
“Papa! Where is he?” asked she quickly.
Staggering, unsteady, hardly knowing where he went, or what he did, Bram crossed the hall, and looked into the dining-room. But the lively Theodore was not there. He turned and came face to face with Claire, who was redder than ever, the place where her father had struck her glowing with vivid crimson which put the other cheek to shame.
She moved back a step, looking about also. Then she went quickly out of the room, and recrossed the hall to the drawing-room. But her father was not there either. Back in the hall again, she met Bram, and they glanced shyly each into the face of the other.
Both felt that the fact of their having let Mr. Biron disappear without having noticed him was a mutual confession. Claire looked troubled, frightened.
“I wonder,” said she in a low voice, “where he has gone?”
But Bram did not share her anxiety. There was no fear that Mr. Biron would let either rage or despair carry him to the point of doing anything rash or dangerous to himself.
“He’ll turn up presently,” said he, with a scornful movement of the head, “never fear, Miss Claire. Have you got anything for me to do this evening? You’re running short of wood, I think.”
He walked back into the kitchen, which, being the least frequented by the fastidious Theodore, was Bram’s favorite part of the house. In a few moments Claire came softly in after him. She seemed rather constrained, rather stiff, and this made Bram very careful, very subdued. But there was a delicious peace, a new hope in his own heart; she had rested within the shelter of his arms; she had been comforted there.
“You ought not to have come this evening, Bram,” she said with studied primness. “You know, I told you that before. It only makes things worse for me, it does really.”
“Now, how can you make that out?” asked Bram bluntly.
“Why, papa will be all the angrier with me afterwards. As for—for what you saw him do, I don’t care a bit. It makes me angry for the time, and just gives me spirit enough to hold out when he wants me to do anything I won’t do, I can’t do.”
“What was it he wanted you to do?” asked Bram, grinding his teeth.
Claire hesitated. She grew crimson again, and the tears rushed once more to her eyes.
“I’d rather not tell you.” Then as she noticed the expression on Bram’s face grow darker and more menacing, she went on quickly—“Well, it was only that he wanted me to go up to Holme Park again to-night—with a note—the usual note. And that I can’t—now!”
Bram’s heart sank. Of course, she meant that it was the engagement of Chris which made this difference. But why should this be, if she did not care for him? Bram came nearer to her, leaned on the table, and looked into her face. What an endless fascination the little features had for him. When she looked down, as she did now, he never knew what would be the expression of her brown eyes when she looked up, whether they would dance with fun, or touch him by a queer, dreamy, expression, or whether there would be in them such infinite sadness that he would be forced into silent sympathy. Bram waited impatiently for her to look up.
As he came nearer and nearer, she still looking down, but conscious of his approach, a new thought came into his mind, a cruel, a bitter thought. Suddenly he stood up, still leaning over the corner of the table.
“Are you what they call a coquette, Miss Claire?” he asked with blunt earnestness.
She looked up quickly then, with a restless, defiant sparkle in her eyes.
“Perhaps I am. French people, French women, are all supposed to be, aren’t they? And my grandmother was French. Why do you ask me?”
“Because I don’t understand you,” answered Bram in a low, thick voice. “Because you tell me you don’t care for Mr. Christian, and I should like to believe you. But you tell me to keep away, and yet—and yet—whenever I come you make me think you want me to come again, though you tell me to go. But surely, surely, you wouldn’t play with me; you wouldn’t condescend to do that, would you? Now, would you?”
She looked up again, stepping back a little as she did so; and there was in her eyes such a look of beautiful confidence, of kindness, of sweet, girlish affection, that Bram’s heart leapt up. He had promptly sat down again on the table, and was bending towards her with passion in his eyes, when there stole round the half-open door the little, mean, fair face of Theodore.
Bram sprang up, and stood at once in an attitude of angry defiance.
But Theodore, quite unabashed, was in the room in half a second, holding out his pretty white hand with a smile which was meant to be frankness itself.
“Mr. Elshaw,” said he, “we must shake hands. I won’t allow you to refuse. I owe you no grudge for the way you treated me a short time ago; on the contrary, I thank you for it. I thank you——”
“Papa!” cried poor Claire.
He waved her into silence.
“I thank you,” he persisted obstinately, “for reminding me that I was treating my darling daughter too harshly, much too harshly. Claire, I am sorry. You will forgive me, won’t you?”
And he put his hand on her shoulder, and imprinted delicately on her forehead a butterfly kiss. Claire said nothing at all. She had become quite pale, and stood with a face of cold gravity, with her eyes cast down, while her father talked.
Bram felt that he should have liked to kick him. Instead of that he had to give his reluctant hand to the airy Mr. Biron, an act which he performed with the worst possible grace.
“You must stay to supper,” said Theodore. “Oh, yes; I want a talk with you. About this marriage of my young kinsman, Chris Cornthwaite. Frankly, I think the match a most ill-chosen one. He would have done much better to marry my little girl here——”
“Papa!” cried Claire angrily, impatiently.
“Only, unfortunately for him, she didn’t care enough about him.”
Claire drew a long breath. Bram looked up. Theodore, in his hurry to secure for his daughter another eligible suitor whom he saw to be well disposed for the position, was showing his hand a trifle too plainly. Bram grew restless. Claire said sharply that they could not ask Mr. Elshaw to supper, as she had nothing to offer him. She was almost rude; but Bram, whose heart ached for the poor child, gave her a glance which was forgiveness, tenderness itself. He said he could not stay, and explained that he had been out all day on an errand, which had tired him. To fill up a pause, he told the story of his eccentric kinsman.
“And he means to leave me all his money, whatever it is,” went on Bram. “He showed me the box he keeps it in, and told me in so many words that it would be mine within a few days. And all because he thinks I’ve got on. If I’d been still a hand at the works down there, and hard up for the price of a pair of boots, I shouldn’t have had a penny.”
“Ah, well, it will be none the less welcome when it comes,” said Mr. Biron brightly. “What is the amount of your fortune? Something handsome, I hope.”
“I don’t know yet, Mr. Biron. Not enough to call a fortune, I expect.”
“Well, you must come and tell us about it when it’s all settled. There’s nobody who takes more interest in you and your affairs than my daughter and I—eh, Claire?”
But Claire affected to be too busy to hear; she was engaged in making the fire burn up, and at the first opportunity she stole out of the room, unseen by her father. So that Bram, who soon after took his departure, did not see her again.
He went back to his lodging in a fever. This new turn of affairs, this anxiety of Theodore’s to make him come forward in the place of Christian, filled him with dismay. On the very first signs of this disposition in her father Claire had shrunk back into herself and had refused to give him so much as another look. But then that was only the natural resentment of a modest girl; it proved, it disproved nothing but that she refused to be thrown at any man’s head. That look she had given him just before her father’s entrance, on the other hand, had been eloquent enough to set him on fire with something more definite than dreamy hope. If it had not betrayed the very love and trust for which he was longing, it had expressed something very near akin to that feeling. Bram lived that night in alternate states of fever and frost.
He dared not, however, for fear of giving pain to Claire, go to the farm again for the next fortnight. He would linger about the farmyard gate, and sometimes he would catch sight of Claire. But on these occasions she turned her back upon him with so cold and decided a snub that it was impossible for him to advance in face of a repulse so marked. And even when Theodore lay in wait for him, and tried to induce him to go home with him, Bram had to refuse for the sake of the very girl he was longing to see.
Meanwhile the date of Christian’s marriage with Miss Hibbs was rapidly approaching. Chris maintained an easy demeanor with Bram, but that young man was stiff, reserved, and shy, and received the confidences, real or pretended, of the other without comment or sympathy. When Chris lamented that he could not make a match to please himself, Bram looked in front of him, and said nothing. When he made attempts to sound Bram on the subject of Claire, the young clerk parried his questions with perfect stolidity.