He took off his overcoat and covered her with it very gently.—Page 156.
He was looking away, through the tall, pointed arches, at the leafless trees beyond. He heard her draw a long breath. Then she asked, in a very low voice:—
“What news, then?”
“Your father wants you back. He’s very ill—very ill. He’s had an accident, and burnt his head and one of his hands badly. You’ve got to come back and nurse him; he doesn’t mind what anybody says, and he does foolish and rash things that only you can save him from. You’ll come back, won’t you?”
There was a pause. Bram looked at her, and she bowed her head in silent assent. She would not meet his eyes; she hung her head, and he saw that she was crying.
“We’d better make haste and get back to Chelmsley,” said he in a robust voice. “I forgot to look out a train; or rather I had hoped to have taken you back last night. But you gave me the slip; I can’t think why. You’ve got nothing but a cold night and perhaps a bad cough by your freak.”
Claire said nothing. She seemed to be petrified with shame, and scarcely to feel the cold without from the suffering within. It was pitiful to see her. Bram, long as he had thought over the poor child and her desolate situation, suffered new agonies on finding how deep her anguish was. A sense of unspeakable degradation seemed to possess her, to make every glance of her eyes furtive, every movement constrained.
“I will come,” she said humbly, in a voice which was hoarse from exposure.
“Of course you will come,” retorted Bram good-humoredly. “And put your best foot foremost too, for——”
She interrupted him hastily, coldly.
“But let me go alone, please. Thank you for coming; it was very good of you. But I want to go alone. And I want you not to come to see us at the farm. If you do——” Her voice grew stronger as Bram tried to protest, and suddenly she raised her head, and looked at him with a flash of excitement in her eyes. “If you do, I shall kill myself!”
“Very well,” said Bram quietly. “Good-bye, then.”
He jumped the stone steps, offering the assistance of his hand, which she declined. And he crossed the rough ground quickly, and went through the roofless church on his way back to Chelmsley.
Perhaps Claire’s heart smote her for her ungraciousness. At any rate, when he glanced back, after climbing over the fence, he saw that she must have followed him very quickly, for she was only a few yards away. There was a look in her eyes, now that she was caught unawares, which was like a stab to his tender heart.
He stopped. She stopped also, and made a movement as if to turn back to run away. He checked her by an imploring gesture.
“You will come, really come; you’ve promised, haven’t you?” said he.
She bowed her head. He dared not hazard another word. So, without so much as another glance from her, he went quickly up the hill on his return to Chelmsley.
What a meeting it had been, after so much anxious waiting! Nothing had been said that might not have been said any day by one casual acquaintance to another. And yet their hearts were nigh to bursting all the time.
Bram went straight to the station, hungry as he was. He thought Claire would tell the old woman a better story than he could make to account for her absence all night. And he thought that the sooner he was out of the place the sooner Claire would follow him back to Hessel. Within an hour and a half he was in the train, returning to Sheffield. He sent a message up to the farm on his arrival to prepare Theodore for his daughter’s return, and then he set his mind to his office work for the remainder of the day.
When he returned to Hessel that evening he ventured to tap at the kitchen window of the farm. Joan came out to him. Yes, Miss Claire had come, the good woman said, wiping her eyes. And she hoped things might go right. But Meg Tyzack had been hanging about the place, and Joan was keeping all the doors locked.
“Ah’m in a terrible way abaht that woman,” said Joan in a deep whisper. “Ah haven’t towd her Miss Claire’s coom back, and Ah hope nobody else will. For Ah don’t think she’s altogether in her roight moind, and Ah wouldn’t have her in t’ house again for summat!”
This was grave news. Bram, feeling that there was nothing he could do for the protection of the threatened household, stared out before him with trouble in his eyes.
“What did Mr. Biron say when he saw his daughter?” asked he.
Joan pursed up her lips.
“He didn’t dare say mooch,” said she, with a comprehensive nod. “He didn’t even say how he’d coom by t’ burns! It was me towd Miss Claire abaht Meg! And she heard me quite solemn, and didn’t ask many questions. And when Ah towd her abaht Mr. Christian’s having t’ fever she joost shivered, and said naught.”
Bram shivered too, and hurried away up the hill to his lodging.
Then there began a strange time of dreary waiting for some crisis which Bram felt was approaching, although he could hardly foreshadow what the nature of it would be.
Things could not go on much longer at Duke’s Farm in the way they had been doing for some time now. With nobody to look after him, the farm bailiff grew daily more neglectful of all business but his own. It went to Bram’s heart to see ruin creeping gradually nearer, while he dared not put out a helping hand to arrest its approach. He did try. He wrote a note to Claire, studiously formal, saying that while her father’s illness continued he should be glad to keep an eye on the management of the farm, as he had done some months ago. But the answer he got was a note still more formal than his own, in which Claire thanked him, but said she thought it better now that affairs had reached their present stage to let them go on as they were. After this to move a step in the direction of helping her would have been unwarrantable interference, which Bram would have undertaken once, when they were friends, but which he could not venture upon now.
Still he tried to perform the office of guardian angel, hampered as he was.
Joan, who was his good friend still, and who went daily to the farm to do the housework as usual, kept him fully acquainted with all that went on there. She told him that Mr. Biron, who was still suffering from erysipelas, which died away and broke out again, was growing more irritable every day, so that it was a marvel how his daughter could treat him with the patience and gentleness she showed. Claire herself, so Joan said, was altogether changed; and indeed Bram, when he caught a glimpse of her at the windows, could see the alteration for himself. She had grown quite white, and the set, hard expression her face wore made it weird and uncanny. All her youthful prettiness seemed to have disappeared; she never smiled, she hardly ever talked. No single word, so far as Joan knew, had passed between father and daughter on the subject of the latter’s disappearance and return. Theodore was glad to get his patient nurse back; glad to have some one to bully, to grumble at, and that seemed to be all.
Claire never went out, and Joan never encouraged her to do so, for Meg Tyzack still hung about the place, Joan having encountered her early in the morning and late in the evening, on her way to and from the farm. Meg, so Joan said, would slink out of the way with a laugh or a jeering question about Claire or her father.
“Ah doan’t believe,” remarked Joan, when she had given Bram the account of one of these meetings, “as the lass is quite right. Yon young spark has a deal to answer for!”
The “young spark” in question, Christian Cornthwaite, was in the meantime doing something to expiate his misdeeds, for his illness was both dangerous and tedious. Day after day, week after week, there came the same bulletin to the many inquirers down at the works—“No change.” Mr. Cornthwaite lost his grave, harassed look. He consulted Bram daily; took him, if possible, more into his confidence than before, over the details of the business; but he never talked about his son. He seemed, Bram thought, to have given up hope in a singularly complete manner; he spoke, he looked, as if Christian were already dead. In the circumstances, Bram found it impossible to bring before the anxious father the subject of Claire, and the distresses of the household at Duke’s Farm.
Bram heard from Joan of the duns whose presence was now daily felt. Some of these he found out and settled with quietly himself; but he did not dare to pursue this course very far, lest Claire’s feminine quickness should find him out.
The subject of ready money was a more delicate one still. Bram began by giving Joan small sums to supply the most pressing needs of the household at the farm, and for a little while she managed to evade Claire’s curious questions, and even to pretend that it was she, Joan, who occasionally lent a few shillings for the daily purchase of necessary food.
But one evening, when Bram, as his custom was, waylaid her as she came from the farm, as soon as she was out of sight of the window, Joan looked at him with eyes full of alarm.
“Eh, but she’s found me aht, Mr. Elshaw, an’ she’s led me a pretty dance for what you’ve done, Ah can tell ye.”
“Why, what’s that, Joan?”
“That there money! She guessed, bless ye! who ’twas as gave it to me. ‘Joan,’ says she, ‘if ye take money from him again, if it’s to keep us from starving, Ah’ll go and throw mysen down t’ pit shaft oop top o’ t’ hill!’ And she means it, she do! Ah doan’t like t’ looks of her. What between her father and t’other one—” and Joan jerked her head in the direction of the works down in the town—“she’s losing her wits too, Mr Elshaw, that’s what she’s doing!”
Bram was silent for some minutes.
“Well, it can’t go on like this,” said he at last. “The creditors will get too clamorous to be put off. If I could see Mr. Biron I should advise him to——”
But Joan cut him short with an emphatic gesture.
“Doan’t you try it on, Mr. Elshaw!” cried she earnestly. “Doan’t you try to get at Mr. Biron. That’s joost what he wants, to get hold of you. Time after time he says to Miss Claire, ‘If Ah could see young Elshaw,’ says he, ‘Ah could settle summat.’ But she won’t have it. It’s t’ one thing she won’t let him have his way abaht. ‘If he cooms in t’ house,’ says she, ‘Ah’ll go aht o’ ’t.’ So now you know how she feels, Mr. Elshaw, and bless her poor little heart, Ah like her t’ better for ’t!”
Bram did not say what he felt about it. He listened to all she had to say, and then with a husky “Good-night, Joan,” he left her and went home. He too liked the spirit Claire showed in avoiding him, in refusing help from the one friend whose hand was always held out to her. But, on the other hand, the impossibility of doing her any good, of even seeing her to exchange the warm handclasp of an old friend, gnawed at his heart, and made him sore and sick.
A dozen times he found himself starting for the farm with the intention of forcing himself upon her, of insisting on being seen by her, so that he might offer the help, the comfort, with which heart and hand were overflowing. But each time he remembered that, brave as he felt before seeing her, in her presence he would be constrained and helpless, easily repelled by the coldness which she knew how to assume, by the look of suffering, only too genuine, he could see in her drawn face.
And so the days grew into weeks, until one day, not long before Christmas, he was crossing from one room to another down at the works with a sheaf of letters in his hand, when he came face to face with Christian.
Bram stopped, almost fell back; but he did not utter a word.
Christian, who was looking pale and very delicate, held out his hand with a smile.
“Well, Bram, glad or sorry to see me back again?”
“Glad, very glad indeed, Mr. Christian,” said Bram.
He wanted to speak rather coldly, but he could not. The sight of his friend, so lately recovered from a dangerous illness, and even now evidently suffering from its effects, was too much for him. Every word of that short speech seemed to bubble up from his heart. Christian, perhaps even more touched than he, and certainly, by reason of his recent illness, less able to conceal his feelings, broke into a sob.
“They told me—my father told me, you wouldn’t be,” said he, trying to laugh. “Said you came up to the house with the intention of punching my head, but that you relented, and consented to put off the gentle chastisement until I was on my feet again. Oh, Bram, Bram, for shame! When you knew I was always a mauvais sujet too, and never pretended to be anything else!”
“But, Mr. Christian,” began Bram, who felt that he was choking, that the passions of love for Claire and loyalty to the friend to whom he owed his rise in life were tearing at his heartstrings, “when a woman——” Chris interrupted him, placing one rather tremulous hand lightly on his shoulder.
“My dear boy, d—— the women! Oh, don’t look shocked when I say d—— the women, because I speak from conviction, and a man’s convictions should be respected, especially when he speaks, as I do, from actual experience. I say d—— the women; and, moreover, I say that until you can say d—— the women too, you are incapable of any friendship that is worthy of the name. There! Now, go home, and ponder those words; for they are words of wisdom!”
And Chris, giving him a familiar, affectionate push towards the door of the room he had been about to enter, passed on.
The news of Christian’s return to the office spread quickly, and was received with great personal satisfaction throughout the works, where the easy, pleasant manners of the “guv’nor’s” son had made him a universal favorite. The tidings flew beyond the works, too, for Joan told Bram that Mr. Biron and his daughter had heard of Christian’s return, and added that the mention of his name had been received by Claire in dead, blank silence.
“Poor lass! She looked that queer when she heard it,” said Joan.
Bram, as usual, said nothing. The conflict between his feeling towards Claire and his feeling towards Christian grew hourly more acute.
“She wouldn’t hear what Mr. Biron had to say,” pursued Joan. “But she joost oop and went to her room, and Ah saw no more of her till Ah coom away. But she were that white! Ah wished she’d talk more, or else cry more; Ah doan’t like them pains as you doan’t hear nothing abaht. They gnaw, they do! It’d be better for her to go abaht calling folks names, like Meg!”
But this reference to Meg Tyzack in the same breath with Claire wounded Bram, who turned away quickly. Surely the life of patient self-sacrifice she was leading in constant attendance upon her selfish father was ample atonement for the error into which she had been driven.
It was a great shock to him when, on the afternoon of the following day, just before the clerks left the office, he heard a rumor that Miss Biron had come down to the works, and was asking to see Mr. Christian. Bram at first refused to believe the report. He went downstairs on purpose to find out the truth for himself, and saw in the yard, to his dismay, the figure of Claire in an angle of the wall. Well as he knew the little figure, he would not even then believe the evidence of his own eyes without further proof. He crossed the yard towards her. Claire ran out, passing close to him, so that he was able to look into her face. It was indeed she, but her face was so much changed, wore an expression so wild, so desperate, that Bram felt his heart stand still.
He called to her, but she only ran the faster. She disappeared into the building which contained the offices, and quickly as Bram followed he could not track her. When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he could neither see nor hear anything of her.
While he was wondering what would happen, whether she would present herself in the office of old Mr. Cornthwaite himself, and be treated by him with the brutal cynicism he always expressed while speaking of her, or whether she would find her way straight to Christian, he heard footsteps in the corridor above, and a moment later Chris himself, singing softly to himself, and swinging his umbrella as if he had not a care in the world, appeared at the top of the stair.
“Hallo, Bram!” cried he, catching sight of the young fellow, and laughing at him over the iron balustrade. “You look as solemn as a whole bench of judges. What’s the matter?”
Bram hesitated. He did not know whether to tell Christian that Claire was about, or whether to hold his tongue. Doubt was cut short in a couple of seconds, however, when Christian reached the bottom of the staircase. For he came face to face with Claire, who had appeared as quickly and as silently as she had previously disappeared from one of the doors which opened on the ground floor.
Both stared at each other without a word for the space of half a minute. Both were pale as the dead; but while he shook from head to foot she was outwardly quite calm.
“I want—to speak to you,” she said at last.
Her voice sounded hard, unlike her usual tones. There was something in them which sounded in Bram’s ears like a menace.
Christian looked around, as if afraid of being seen.
“Not here,” said he quickly. “In the works. I will go first.”
He disappeared at once, and Claire followed him out through the door and across the first of the yards, where the work was slackening off, and where swarms of dusky, grimy figures, their eyes gleaming white in their smoke and dust-begrimed faces, were hustling each other in their eagerness to be out. Like a flash of lightning there passed through Bram’s mind, brought there by the sudden contact with this black, toiling world from which Christian had rescued him, by the strong well-remembered smell of mingled sweat, coal-dust, and fustian, an overwhelming sense of love and gratitude for Chris, mingled with fear.
Yet what was he afraid of? What made him struggle through the crowd with a white face and laboring breath, in mad anxiety to keep close to the footsteps of the man and the woman? He could not tell. For surely he had no fear of poor, little, helpless Claire, however wild her look might be, however desperate the straits in which she found herself!
He had lost sight of both of them within a few steps of the office doors. They had been swallowed up in the stream of workmen who were pressing out as they went in.
Bram could only go at a venture in one direction through yards and past workshops, without much idea whether he was on the right track or not. He had a fancy that he might perhaps come up with them near the spot where he had first seen them together on that hot August afternoon eighteen months before, when Christian had picked him out for notice to his father, and so laid the foundation of his fortunes.
But when Bram got there, and stood where, rod in hand, he had stood that day, just outside one of the great rolling sheds, wiping the sweat from his forehead, he found the place deserted. The noise of the day had ceased; the steam hammers stood in their places like a row of closed jaws after an infernal meal. A huge iron plate, glowing red under its dusky gray surface in the darkness lay on the ground near Bram’s feet—fiery relic of the labors of the day.
Bram passed on, peering into the sheds, where the machinery was still, and where the great leather bands hung resting on the grinding wheels. Past the huge presses he went, where the glowing plates of steel are curled into shape like wax under the slow descending, crushing weight of iron. Through the great room where the great armor-plates are shaved down, the steel shavings curling up like yards upon yards of silver ribbon under the slow, steady advance of the huge machine.
At last Bram fancied that he caught the sound of voices: the one shrill and vehement, the other deeper, lower, the voice of a man. He hurried on.
Through the heart of the works, which stretched for hundreds of acres on either side of it, ran the railway, at this point a wide network of lines, crossing and recrossing each other, carrying the goods traffic of the busy city. Bram came out upon it as he heard the voices, and looked anxiously, about him.
And at once he discerned, on the other side of the railway line, two figures engaged not merely in the wordy conflict which had already come to his ears, but in an actual physical struggle, the girl clinging, dragging; the man trying to push her off.
Bram’s heart seemed to stand still. For, with a thrill of horror, he saw that a train had suddenly come out from under the bridge on his left, and was rapidly approaching the spot where the two struggling, swaying figures stood. He shouted, and dashed forward across the broad network of lines. Caution was always necessary when these were crossed, but he did not look either to the right or to the left; he could see only those struggling figures and the train bearing down upon them.
But his effort was made in vain. Before he could reach them the train had overtaken them, there was a wild, horrible shriek, and then a deep groan. Bram stood back shaking in every limb, until the train had passed by. Then, sick, blinded, he stared down at the line with a terrible sound in his ears.
On the ground before him lay a bleeding, mangled heap, writhing in agony, uttering the horrible groans and sobs of a man dying in fearful pain.
It was Christian Cornthwaite.
A great sob burst from Bram’s lips as he threw himself down beside Christian, whose moans were terrible to hear. He had been caught by the train, the wheels of the engine having passed over both his legs, crushing and mangling them in the most horrible manner. Bram saw at a glance that there was not the slightest hope of saving his friend’s life, and that there was only the faintest chance of prolonging it for a little while.
Fortunately, help was at hand. A man, one of the hands employed at the works, ran out from the sheds which bordered the railway. He was in a panic of terror, and was at first almost incapable of listening to the directions Bram gave him.
Such first aid as it was possible to give Bram was already giving. But Christian himself shook his head feebly, and made a faint gesture to stop him.
“It’s all of no use, Bram,” said he, in a broken voice. “She’s done for me; she’s had her revenge now. You may just as well leave me alone, and then the next passing train will put me out of my pain. Oh, I would be thankful—thankful——”
Another moan broke from his lips, and his head, which was wet with great beads of agony, fell like lead in Bram’s arms.
“Come, come, we can’t leave you lying here,” said Bram, in a deep, vibrating voice, as he hugged the dying head to his breast.
He had succeeded in getting the poor, wounded, mangled body from the line itself to the comparative safety of the space between that row of metals and the next. More than this he dared not attempt until further help came. He sent the workman to the office with directions that he should send in search of a surgeon the first person he met on the way. He was then to break the news, not to Mr. Cornthwaite himself, if he were still there, but to one of the managers or to one of the older clerks.
The man went away, and Christian, who had lain so still for some seconds that Bram feared he was past help already, opened his eyes.
“Hallo, Bram,” said he, in a very weak, faint, and broken voice, but with something like his old cheerfulness of manner. “It’s odd that I should peg out here, in the very thick of the smoke and the grime I’ve always hated so much, isn’t it?”
Bram could not speak for a minute. When he did, it was in a ferocious growl.
“Don’t talk of pegging out, Mr. Christian,” said he. “You don’t want to give in yet, eh?”
He spoke like this, not that he had the slightest hope left, but because he wished to keep in the flicker of life as long as he could, at least until the father could exchange one last hand-clasp with his dying son. And Bram judged that hope was the best stimulant he could administer. But Chris only smiled ever so faintly.
“Oh, Bram, you don’t really think it would be worth while to rig me up with a pair of wooden legs, do you? I shouldn’t be much like myself, should I? And the guv’nor wouldn’t have to complain of my running after the girls any more, would he?”
Bram shivered. These light words had a terrible import now, and they sent his thoughts back from the sufferer to the author of the outrage. He glanced round instinctively, and an involuntary sound escaped his lips as he saw, standing on the edge of the network of lines, only a few feet from himself and Chris, the figure of Claire.
With head bent and hands clasped, she stood, neither moving nor uttering a sound, but watching the two men with wild eyes, and with a look of unspeakable, stony, horror on her gray white face.
Chris looked up, caught sight of her, and uttered a cry.
“Claire! Claire!” he called, in a voice hoarse and unlike his own.
She did not move, did not seem to hear him.
Then Bram called to her.
“Come. He wants you to come.”
At the sound of Bram’s voice she looked up suddenly, shivered, and came slowly nearer.
“Look out! Take care! Come here between the lines!” said Bram.
She obeyed his directions mechanically, stumbling as she came. When she found herself beside the two men, she fell to trembling violently, but without shedding a single tear.
Chris tried to raise himself, and Bram lifted him up so that he could meet her eyes.
“Claire!” said the dying man in a whisper, “come here. Don’t look down. Look at my face—my face.”
But her eyes had seen enough of the nature of the injuries he had received to render her for a few moments absolutely powerless to move. She seemed not even to hear his voice, but stood beside him without uttering a sound, possessed by a horror unspeakable, indescribable. Christian tried to speak in a louder voice to distract her attention from his injuries, to draw it upon himself.
“Claire,” said he, “remember I haven’t much time. Stoop down, kneel down; listen to what I have to say.”
There was a short silence. At last her eyes moved; she drew a long breath. She looked at his face, and the tears began to stream down her cheeks.
“Oh, Chris, Chris!” she sobbed out in a voice almost inaudible. “It is too awful, too horrible! Oh, won’t you, can’t you—get well?”
“No, no,” said he impatiently. “Surely you can’t wish it! I want to speak to you, Claire; you can’t prevent my saying what I like now, can you?”
She only answered by a sob, as she sank down on her knees beside him. Bram, in an agony of uneasiness—for the space between the lines where they all three were was a narrow one, and another train might pass at any minute, and shake the little life there was remaining in Christian out of his maimed body—kept watch a few feet away. He was afraid of some rash movement on the part of the miserable, grief-stricken girl, whom he believed to be suffering such agonies of remorse as to be incapable of controlling herself if an emergency should arise. He could hear the voice of Christian as he whispered into Claire’s ear; he even caught the sense of what he said, with a terrible sense of gnawing sorrow for the wasted life that was ebbing so fast away.
“I’ve been a fool, Claire, the biggest fool in the world,” said Christian, still in the old easy tones, though his voice was no longer that which had raised the spirits of his friends by the very sound of it. “If I hadn’t been a fool, I should have taken Bram’s advice and married you. I know you didn’t want me; I believe you liked old Bram better; but that wouldn’t have mattered. You’d have had to marry me if I’d made up my mind you should.”
“Oh, Chris, don’t tell me. It’s too horrible!”
“No, it isn’t horrible to talk about it, to me, at least. And you have to let a fellow be selfish when he’s only got a few minutes to live. If I’d married you, I should have been happy, even if you hadn’t been. You’re the only girl I ever really cared about. Claire—yes, you can’t stop me, and it’s no use talking about my wife, because the only consolation I have in this business is the knowledge that I can’t ever see her again! I loathe her! I know I ought to have found it out sooner, but I’ve been punished for that mistake with the rest.”
He stopped, his voice having gradually grown weaker and weaker. Bram turned quickly, and came down to him. But the moment Claire put her hand under his head he raised it again, and a faint tinge of color came into his cheeks.
“Kiss me, Claire,” said he.
For a moment, to the surprise and indignation of Bram, she seemed to hesitate. Then she obeyed, putting her lips to Christian’s forehead, after a vain attempt to check her tears. Then there was a silence. They heard the voices of Mr. Cornthwaite and another man asking—“Where? Where is he?” And Christian opened his eyes.
“Bram,” said he, in a voice which betrayed agitation, “take her away. Don’t let my father see her. Take her away. Never mind leaving me. Quick.”
But there was no time. Mr. Cornthwaite was already close to the group. He touched Claire, and shrank back with an exclamation of horror and disgust. Bram seized her arm, and almost lifted her from the spot where she stood, dazed and incapable of movement. She, however, was evidently unconscious both of Mr. Cornthwaite’s touch and of his utterance. She was like a bewildered child in Bram’s hands, and she allowed him to lead her across the lines, obeying his smallest injunction with perfect, unresisting docility.
When he had brought her to a place of safety within the works, he turned to her.
“I want to go back to him,” he said. “It will only be for a moment, I’m afraid. Then I’ll come back and take you home. Will you wait for me?”
“Yes,” she answered in the same obedient manner, as if his wish were a command.
He looked searchingly into her face. In mercy, it seemed to Bram, a cloud had settled on her mind; the terrible events of the past half-hour had become a blank to her. The little creature, who had been a passionate fury such a short time ago, had changed into the most helpless, the most docile, of living things. Did she understand what it was that she had done? Did she realize that it was her own act which had killed her cousin? Bram could not believe it. He gave one more look into her white face, hardly daring to tell himself what the outcome of this terrible scene would be for her, and then he left her, and went back across the rails to the spot where he had quitted his friend.
They had raised him from the ground in spite of his protests, and were bearing him by his father’s orders into the shelter of the works. When they stopped, and laid him down on a couch which had been hastily made with coats and sacks, he was so much exhausted that it was not until they had forced a few drops of brandy down his throat that he was able to speak again. Then he only uttered one word—
“Bram!”
“Elshaw, he wants you!” cried Mr. Cornthwaite, who was leaning over his son, with haggard eyes.
Bram came forward. Christian put out his right hand very feebly, let it rest for a moment in Bram’s, which he faintly tried to press, and looked into his face with glazing eyes. Bram, holding the hand firmly in a warm, strong grip, knew when the life went out of it. Even before the hand fell back, and the eyes closed, he knew that the fingers he held were those of a dead man.
Bram held the hand of his dead friend for some minutes, not daring to tell the father that all was over. But Mr. Cornthwaite suddenly became aware of the truth. He started to his feet with a cry, beckoning to the doctor, who had stepped back a few paces, knowing that he could do nothing more.
“He has fainted again!” cried Mr. Cornthwaite. But Bram knew that the unhappy man was only trying to deceive himself. The doctor’s look, as he knelt down once more by the body of Christian, made Mr. Cornthwaite turn abruptly away. Bram, who had stepped back in his turn, carried that scene in his eyes for weeks afterwards—the shed where they all stood, the silent machinery making odd shapes in the background. The dead body of Christian on the ground, with his face upturned, the crowd of figures around, all very still, very silent, the only two whose movements broke up the picture being Mr. Cornthwaite and the doctor. A flaring gas jet above their heads showed up the white face of the dead man, the grave and anxious countenances of the rest.
Quite suddenly there appeared in the group another figure—that of Claire. They all stared at her in silence. She seemed, Bram thought, to be absolutely unconscious of what had happened until she caught sight of the body of her cousin. Then, with a low cry, like a long sob, she put her hands to her face, covering her eyes, turned quickly, and ran away.
Mr. Cornthwaite, however, had seen her, and, his face darkening with terrible anger, he followed her rapidly with an oath. Anxious and alarmed, Bram followed in his turn. The girl had not much of a start, and although she was fleet of foot, Mr. Cornthwaite, with his superior knowledge of the works, gained upon her rapidly, and would have seized her roughly by the arm if Bram had not interposed his own person between them, giving the girl an opportunity of escape, of which she availed herself with great adroitness.
“Elshaw!” cried Mr. Cornthwaite in astonishment. A moment later he went on in a transport of anger—“How dare you stop me? You have let her get away, you have helped her, the vile wretch who has killed my son! But don’t think that she shall escape punishment. You can’t save her; nobody shall. She has murdered my son, and——”
“Not murdered, sir,” cried Bram quickly. “It was an accident—a ghastly accident. The girl is dazed with what has happened. She hardly knows herself. Pray, don’t speak to her now. It is inhuman—inhuman. She is suffering more than even you can do. Give her a chance to recover herself before you speak to her.”
Mr. Cornthwaite freed himself with a jerk from Bram’s restraining hand. But Claire had disappeared.
“Well, she’s got away this time, but your interference won’t save her much longer. My son—to be killed—by a jade like that! My God! My God!”
He had broken down quite suddenly, overcome by an overwhelming sense of his loss. Although he had never been a very tender or a very indulgent father, he had loved his son more than he himself knew. He recognized, now that Christian lay dead, what hopes, what ambitions had been bound up in him. Even the works, the true darling of his heart, seemed suddenly to become a mere worthless toy when he realized that with himself would die the interest of his family in the enterprise he had founded. He had imagined that he should see his descendants sitting in his own place in the office, carrying on the work he had begun. Now, in one short hour, his hopes and dreams were demolished. Nothing was left to him but revenge upon the woman who had taken the color out of his life by killing his son.
Bram was awed by the depth of his so suddenly manifested despair. He felt with a most true instinct that there were no words in the human tongue which could do any good to the miserable man. He could only stand by, in solemn silence, while Mr. Cornthwaite put his head down between his hands, drawing long sobbing breaths of grief and despair.
But presently the doctor, who was an old friend of Mr. Cornthwaite’s, came in search of him, and put his hand through his arm. Then Bram stole quietly away, and went in search of poor Claire.
He had not to go far. He had not, indeed, walked twenty paces, when, turning a corner among the innumerable buildings which formed the great works, he came upon her, standing, like a lost child, with her arms down at her sides, and her head bent a little downwards. As soon as he appeared she turned to accompany him without a word, much as a dog does that has been waiting for its master.
This change in the spirited girl to such a helpless, docile creature, frightened Bram even more than it touched him. He felt that some great, some awful change, must have taken place in the girl who was too proud to allow him to enter her father’s house. Was it the feeling of the awful thing she had done, of the vengeance she had drawn down upon herself which had brought about the change?
He could not see her face. She walked beside him in silence till they came to the gate of the works, and there she stopped for a moment to look through the door by which Christian had come out with her an hour before. And then in the gaslight Bram saw her face at last, read the very thoughts which were passing in her mind—remembrance, remorse—the horror of it all. But she uttered no word, no cry. With a shudder she passed out, putting her hands up to her eyes as if to shut out the terrible pictures her brain conjured up.
Bram followed her, at first without speaking. She did not seem to know that he was beside her; at least she never looked at him, never spoke to him. He, on his side, while longing to say some kindly word, was afraid of waking her old pride, of being told to go about his business, if he broke the spell of silence which hung over them both.
So, as silent as the dead, they walked on side by side through the crowded streets, with the groups of rough factory hands, of grinders, of lassies with shawls round their heads, extending far over the road. A drizzling rain had begun to fall, and the stones of the streets were slimy, slippery and black. Claire went straight on through the crowds, threading her way deftly enough, but mechanically, and without turning her head. Bram following always. A vivid remembrance flashed into his mind of the previous occasion on which he had followed her, when Mr. Cornthwaite had told him to see her home from Holme Park, and she had dashed out of the house like an arrow to escape the infliction. Unconscious of his proximity she had been then; unconscious she seemed to be now.
When she reached the hill near the summit of which the farmhouse stood, however, her strength seemed suddenly to desert her; the slight, over-taxed frame became momentarily unequal to its task, and she staggered against the stone wall which fenced the field she had to pass through. Then Bram came up, and, after standing beside her a few moments without speaking, and without eliciting a word from her, he drew her hand through his arm, and led her onwards up the hill.
It was now dark, with the pitchy blackness of a wet, moonless night. The ground was slippery with rain, and the ascent would have been toilsome in the extreme to the girl’s weary little body but for Bram’s timely help. So tired was she that before they reached the farmhouse gates Bram put his arm round her waist, and more than half-carried her without a word of protest.
There was no light in the front of the farmhouse; but when they got to the gate of the farmyard, through which it was Claire’s custom to enter, they saw a light in the kitchen window; and when they opened the door Joan jumped up from a seat near the big deal table.
“Eh, Miss Claire, but Ah thowt ye was lost!” cried she. Then at once realizing that something untoward had happened, she glanced at Bram, who shook his head to intimate that she had better ask no questions.
“Where’s my father?” asked Claire at once, drawing her arm away from that of Bram, and stopping short in the middle of the floor at the same time.
“He’s gone oop to t’ Park,” said Joan, with a look at Bram as much as to say there was no help for it, and the truth must come out.
Claire, sinking on the nearest chair, uttered a short, hollow laugh.
Joan, who had been waiting with her bonnet on for Claire’s return, hardly knew what to do. She saw that the young girl was ill and desperately tired, and, on the other hand, she was anxious to get back to her own good-man and to her little ones. In her perplexity she looked at Bram, the faithful friend, whom she was heartily glad to see admitted again.
“Ah doan’t suppose Mr. Biron’ll be long coming back,” she said. “If Ah was to make ye both a coop o’ tea, Mr. Elshaw, and then run back to my home for an hour, would you stay here till Ah coom back? Ah’d give a look in to see all was reght. She doan’t look as if she ought to spend t’ neght by herself.”
This was said in a low voice to Bram, whom she had beckoned to the door of the back kitchen, while Claire remained in the same attitude of deep depression at the table.
“No,” said he at once. “She mustn’t be left alone to-night. I’ll stay till you come back, whether her father comes back before then or not. She’s had a great shock—an awful shock. But,” and he glanced back at the motionless girl, “I won’t tell you about it now. And you can go now. You needn’t trouble about the tea; I’ll make it.”
Joan looked at him, and then at Claire with round, apprehensive eyes.
“Will she let ye stay?” she asked, in a dubious whisper.
“Poor child, yes. She’s almost forgotten who I am.”
But Claire had lifted up her head, and was rising to come towards them. Bram dismissed Joan by a look, and she slipped out by the back way, and left the two together.
Claire followed Joan with dull eyes as the good woman, with a series of affectionate little smiles and nods, went out, shutting the door behind her. Then she remained staring at the closed door, while Bram, without taking any notice of her, went quietly across to the cupboard where the tea was kept, took out the tea-caddy, and put the kettle on the fire to boil. She did not interrupt him, and when he glanced at her again he saw that she had sunk down again in her chair, and had dropped her head heavily upon her hands, leaning on the table drowsily.
Presently she made a little moaning noise, and began to move her head restlessly from side to side. Bram put a cup of tea down in front of her, and said gently—
“Got a headache, Miss Claire?”
She raised her head as if it was a weight too heavy for her to lift without difficulty.
“Oh, Bram, it’s so bad, worse than I’ve ever had before,” said she plaintively.
In her eyes there was no longer any grief; only a dull sense of great physical pain. She seemed to have forgotten everything but that burning, leaden weight at her own temples.
“Will you drink this, and then lie down for a little while?” asked he.
With the same absolute docility that she had shown to him all the evening, she took the cup from his hands, and tried to drink. But she seemed unable to swallow, and in a few moments he had to take it from her, lest her trembling hands should let it drop on the floor.
“Now, you had better lie down,” said he. “Come into the drawing-room; there’s a fire there. I saw it flickering as we came along. If you lie down on the sofa till Joan comes back, she’ll take you upstairs and put you to bed.”
He saw that she had no strength left to do anything for herself. She got up as obediently as ever; but when she reached the door a fit of shivering seized her. She staggered, fell back, and whispered as Bram caught her—
“No. Don’t make me go in there. Let me stay here.”
There was an old broken-down horsehair covered sofa against the wall in the big kitchen, and Bram hastened to make it as comfortable as he could by bringing the cushions from the drawing-room. Before he had finished his preparations she complained of feeling giddy; and no longer doubting that she was on the verge of being seriously ill, Bram led her to the sofa, and going quickly to the outer door looked out in hope of finding some one whom he could send for the doctor. He was unsuccessful, however; the rain was coming down more heavily than ever, and there was not a living creature in sight. The farm hands lived in the cottages at the top of the hill, and Bram did not dare to leave Claire by herself now that the torpor in which she had come home was beginning to give place to a feverish restlessness. So he shut the door, and seeing that Claire’s eyes were closed, he began to hope that she had fallen asleep, and crossed the floor with very soft steps to his old place by the fire.
A strange vigil this! By the side of the woman who had been so much to him, who, even now that she had lost the lofty place she had once held in his imagination, seemed to have crept in so doing even closer into his heart. So, at least, the chivalrous man felt now that, by an act of mad, inconceivable folly and rashness, Claire had endangered her own liberty, and perhaps even her life. For that Mr. Cornthwaite would press his conviction that the act was murder Bram could not doubt. Hating the very sound of the girl’s name as he had long done, believing that Christian’s attachment for her had been the cause of his estrangement from his wife, of his entire ruin, it was not likely that he, a hard man naturally, would flinch in his pursuit of the woman to whom he imputed so much evil.
And Bram hardly blamed him for it. He would not have had him feel the loss of his son one whit less than he did; he knew what pangs those must be which pierced the heart of the bereaved father. Bram himself felt for both of them; for Mr. Cornthwaite and for Claire. Her he excused in the full belief that her sufferings had brought on an attack of frenzy in which she was wholly unaccountable for her actions. How else was it possible to explain the bewildered horror of her look and attitude when called to Christian’s side by the dying man himself? And had not Chris, in his words, in his manner to her, absolved her from all blame? Not one word of reproach had he uttered, even while he lay dying a fearful death as the result of her frenzied attack! Surely there was exoneration of her in this fact? Bram felt that this was the point he must press upon the aggrieved father.
As this thought passed through his mind, and instantly became a resolve, Bram raised his head quickly, and was struck with something like horror to find that Claire was sitting up, resting her whole body on her arms, and staring at him with glittering eyes.
As these met his own astonished look, she smiled at him with a strange sweetness which made him suddenly want to spring up and take her in his arms. Instead of that, he rose slowly, and advancing towards the sofa with a hesitating, creeping step, asked gently if she wanted anything.
She shook her head, smiling still; and then she put out one hand to him. He took it; the skin was hot and dry. Her lips, he now perceived, looked dry and parched.
“Bram,” she said in her old voice, bright and soft and clear, “I forget. What day is it we are to be married?”
Bram stood beside her, holding her hand, such a terrible rush of mingled feelings thronging, surging into his heart that he was as incapable of speech as if he had been a dumb man. She looked at him with the same gentle smile, inquiringly. Presently, as he still kept silence, she said—
“It seems a strange thing to have forgotten. But was it Tuesday?”
Bram nodded slowly, as if the head he bent had been weighted with lead. Then she drew her hand out of his with a contented sigh, and fell back on the couch. Again she closed her eyes, and again Bram, who was in a tumult of feelings he could not have described, of which the dominant was pain, cruel, inextinguishable pain, hoped that she was asleep. He sat down on a chair near her, and watched her face. It was perfectly calm, peaceful, and sweet for some minutes. Then a slight look of trouble came over it, and she opened her eyes again.
“Bram,” she called out in a voice of alarm. Then perceiving him close to her, she drew a breath of relief, and stretched out her hand to him. “It’s so strange,” she went on, with glittering eyes. “Whenever I shut my eyes I have horrible dreams of papa, always papa! Where is he? Is he here? Is he safe?”
Bram patted her hot, twitching hand reassuringly.
“He is quite safe, I’ve no doubt,” he said. “He’s gone out, and he hasn’t come back yet.”
Claire stared at him inquiringly, and frowned as if in perplexity.
“But what has happened?” she asked. “Why does everything seem so strange? Your voice, and the ticking of the clock, and my own voice too—they sound quite different! And my head—oh, it aches so! Have I been ill? Where’s Joan?”
She wandered on thus so quickly from one subject to another that Bram was saved the trouble of finding answers to any of her questions except the last.
“Joan will be back in a little while,” said he. “She’s gone home to see to her children. But she won’t be long.”
“Is she coming back to-night? Why is she coming back to-night?”
“Well, to look after you.”
“Then I have been ill?”
“You’re not very well now,” said Bram gently.
“Why not? Something has happened? Won’t you tell me what it is?”
There was a pause. Then she gave his hand an affectionate, clinging pressure.
“Never mind, Bram. You needn’t tell me unless you like. I don’t mind anything when you’re here. You won’t go away, will you?”
The loving tone, the caressing manner, stirred his heart to the depths. Surely this tender trust was her own real feeling for him, suddenly revealed, free from all restraints of prudence, of necessary coldness. What did it mean? Was this the woman who had ruined her life for another man, this girl who looked at him with innocent eyes full of love, who seemed to be thrilled with pleasure at the touch of his fingers? Was this the woman who had struggled with Christian in the shadow of the great works two hours before, whose mad passion of hate and revenge had given her fragile limbs power to fling him down on the railway line? Bram sat in a state of wild revolt from the terrible ideas, which had, indeed, till that moment seemed real, inevitable enough. What was the miracle that had happened? What was the explanation of it all? While he still asked himself those questions, with his head on fire, his heart nigh to bursting, the soft, girlish voice spoke again.
“Bram, what was the difficulty? There was a difficulty, wasn’t there? Only I can’t remember what it was. Why was it that you stayed away? That you didn’t come here as you used to? You don’t know what a long time it seemed, and how I used to long for you to come back again! Why, I used to watch for you when I knew it was time for you to go past, and I used to kiss my hand to you behind the curtains, so that you couldn’t see me! But why—why didn’t I want you to see me, Bram? I can’t remember.”
“Oh, my darling!” burst from Bram’s lips in spite of himself.
That one word was answer enough for her. She smiled happily up into his face, and closed her eyes, as if it hurt her to keep them open, the lids falling heavily. Bram wished—he almost prayed—that they could both die that moment; that neither might ever have to live through the terrible time which was in store for them. The delirium which had so mercifully descended upon her overwrought mind had shut out the horrible secrets of the past from Claire.
As Bram sat, as still as a statue lest he should disturb her by a movement, he heard the sound of footsteps outside, and a moment later the door was burst open, and Mr. Biron, pale, haggard, dripping with rain, begrimed with mud, a horrible spectacle of fear and terror, stole into the room, and shutting the door, bolted it, and then sank in a heap on the floor, with his eyes turned in a ghastly panic of alarm towards the window.
Bram was struck by the entire change which had taken place in Theodore Biron, a change which had, indeed, been creeping over him ever since Meg’s attack, and his consequent disfigurement, but which seemed to have culminated to-night in what was almost a transformation.
As he crouched on the floor, and looked anxiously up at the window, there was no trace in the cowering, shrivelled figure, in the scarred, inflamed face, out of which the bloodshot eyes peered in terror, of the gay, easy-mannered country gentleman en amateur, who had impressed Bram so strongly with his airy lightness of heart only sixteen months before.
“Lock the door, Bram,” said he, presently, in a hoarse voice when he suddenly became conscious of the young man’s presence. “Lock the door!”
Bram hastened to do so. He wanted to open it first to look out and see who it was that had inspired Mr. Biron with so much alarm. But Theodore restrained him by a violent gesture.
“Lock it, lock it!” repeated he, as, evidently relieved to find a man in the house, he got up from the floor, and went with shivering limbs and chattering teeth towards the fire. “And now bolt the shutters—quick—and then on the other side!”
He indicated with a nod the front of the house, but when Bram walked towards the door he shuffled after him, as if afraid of being left alone. Bram turned to cast a glance at the sofa and its occupant before leaving the room. Theodore, in a state of nervous alarm which made him watch every look, glanced back also. On seeing his daughter lying back with closed eyes on the cushions, he uttered a cry.
“Claire, oh, oh, what will become of her? What will become of me?”
And, utterly broken down, he covered his face with his shivering hands, and sobbed loudly.
Bram wondered if he had heard all.
“Come, come, be a man, Mr. Biron,” said he. “What is it you’re afraid of?”
“That sh—she—devil who—who half-blinded me, who threw that stuff over me!” sobbed Theodore. “She’s followed me—from Holme Park—I managed to dodge her among the trees of the park; but she knows where I live. She’ll come here, I know she will.” Suddenly he drew himself up, in another spasm of fear. “See that the door is locked in the front, and the windows—see to them!” cried he, with a burst of energy.
“All right,” said Bram. “I’ll see to that. You stay here with her,” and he indicated Claire with a movement of the head.
But Mr. Biron shrank into himself, and tried to follow Bram out.
“I’m afraid of her! She’s gone mad; I know she has,” whispered he. “Haven’t you heard what she did to-night—down at the works?”
And Theodore, whose face had in a moment gone ashy white, all but the inflamed patch on the left side, which had become a livid blue, crept closer still to Bram. But the young man’s face as he again looked towards the unconscious girl wore nothing but infinite pity, infinite tenderness.
“You’re right, Mr. Biron. The poor child is mad, I believe,” he said gravely. “And, thank God, she hasn’t come to herself yet. One could almost wish,” he added, more to himself than to his companion, “that she never may.”
Mr. Biron shuddered.
“Do you mean that she is ill?” he asked querulously.
“Yes, she’s very ill—delirious.”
Mr. Biron shot right out of the room into the hall with all his old agility. He was evidently as much afraid of his unhappy daughter as he was of Meg herself.
“Oh, these women, these women! They never can keep their heads!” moaned he. “And just when I’m as ill as I can be myself! I’ve been shivering all the way home, I have, indeed, Elshaw.”
Bram, who had left the door of the kitchen open so that he might be within hearing of a possible call or cry from Claire, was locking the front door and barring the shutters of the windows in deference to Mr. Biron’s wish.
He was too much used to Theodore’s utter selfishness to feel more than a momentary pang of disgust at this most recent manifestation of it. He was sorry for the poor wretch, whose prospects were certainly now as gloomy as he deserved. He recommended him to go upstairs and change his wet things, promising to come up and see him as soon as Joan arrived. And Mr. Biron, though at first exceedingly reluctant to move a step by himself, ended by preferring this alternative to returning to the room where his unconscious daughter lay.
He detained Bram for a few moments, however, to tell him of his adventures at Holme Park.
“When I got there, Bram, I was told that my brother-in-law was out. But as I had very particular business with him, I said I would wait. Well, you may hardly believe it, but they didn’t want even to let me do that. But I insisted; a desperate man will do much, and I made such a noise that Hester came out, and told the wretched creature who was refusing me admittance that I was to be let in. Well, I was wet through then, and they left me in a room with hardly any fire. And, would you believe it, the wretched man had the impudence to lock up my brother-in-law’s desk before my eyes! It was an intentional insult, Elshaw, inflicted upon me just because I am not able to keep up a big establishment of useless, insolent creatures like himself! But these people never will understand that there is anything in the world to be respected except money! And, after all, can one blame them when their masters and mistresses are no better? It’s all money, money, with Josiah Cornthwaite!”
Bram, who was anxious to get back to the kitchen that he might keep watch over Claire, cut him short.
“Well, and Mr. Cornthwaite? He arrived at last?”
Theodore’s face fell at the remembrance.
“Ye-es, and I shall never forget what he did, what he said. He came into the room with glaring eyes—’pon my soul, I thought he had been bitten by a mad dog, Elshaw! He flew at me, showing his teeth. He shook me till my teeth chattered; he called me all the names he could think of that had anything brutal and opprobrious in the sound. He told me my daughter had killed his son, murdered him; and he said that he would get her penal servitude if they didn’t bring it in what it was—murder! What do you think of that? What do you think of that? And I, in my weak state, to hear it! I give you my word, Elshaw, I never thought I should get home alive!”
There was a pause. Mr. Biron wiped his face. His hands were shaking; his voice was tremulous and hoarse. He looked as pitiful a wretch as it was possible to imagine.
“Did he tell you—how it happened?” asked Bram in a low voice.
He was hoping, always hoping against hope, that some new fact would come to light which would shift the blame of the awful catastrophe from Claire’s poor little shoulders. But Mr. Biron had no comfort for him.
“Yes,” sobbed he. “He told me she had gone down to the works to see her cousin——”
“Ah, if she had only not done that! Not been forced to do that,” broke from Bram’s lips.
Theodore grew suddenly quiet, and stared at him apprehensively.
“How was she forced to do it?” he asked querulously.
But Bram did not answer.
“Well, yes. What else did Mr. Cornthwaite say?” asked he.
“And that they quarrelled close to the railway line. And that she—she—’pon my soul, I can’t see how it’s possible—a little bit of a girl like that! He says she dragged Christian down, and flung him in front of a train that was coming along! Of course, we know that woman is an incomprehensible creature; but how one of only five feet high could throw down a young man of stoutish build like Christian is more than even I, with all my experience of the sex, can understand!”
Bram was frowning, deep in thought. Again he did not make any answer.
“That’s all I heard. Have you learnt any more particulars yourself, Elshaw?”
“I was there,” replied Bram simply.
This gave Mr. Biron a great shock. He began to shiver again, and subsided from the buoyant manner he had begun to assume into the terror-stricken attitude of a few minutes before. He turned to clutch the banisters to help him upstairs.
“Well,” said he in a complaining voice, as he began to drag himself up, “if she did it, that’s no reason why everybody should be down upon me! Meg Tyzack, too! A fury like that! What right has she to follow me, to persecute me?”
“The poor creature’s had her brain turned, I think, by—by the treatment she’s received,” said Bram.
“But I had no hand in the treatment! She has no right to visit Christian’s follies and vices upon me! Me! And yet, when I came out of the house at Holme Park, and I came upon her on her way up to it, she turned out of her way to go shrieking after me! There’s no reason in such behavior, even if she is off her head!”
“Well, there’s just this, Mr. Biron, that she knows you used to encourage Christian to come to your house, and to urge Claire to go and meet him,” said Bram sturdily, disgusted with the airs of martyrdom which the worst of fathers was assuming. “And there’s enough of a thread of reason in that, especially for one whose mind is not at its best.”
To Bram’s great surprise, these words had such an effect upon Theodore that he said nothing in reply, but with an unintelligible murmur shuffled upstairs at once.
Bram felt rather remorseful when he saw how the little man took his words to heart, and wondered whether he was less easy in his mind than he affected to be. He returned to the kitchen, where Claire was sitting up on the sofa listening intently.
“Who’s that?” she said in a husky voice of alarm.
Bram, who had heard nothing, listened too. And then he found that her ears were keener than his own, for in another moment there came Joan’s heavy rap-tap-tap on the door.
He let her in, and saw at once that she had heard something of the occurrences of the evening. Her good-natured face was pale and alarmed; she looked at Claire with eloquent eyes.
“Oh, sir, do you think it’s true?” she asked in an agitated whisper. “That she did it, that our poor, little Miss Claire killed him, killed Mr. Chris?”
“Don’t let us think about it,” said he quickly. “It was nothing but a shocking accident, if she did; of that you may be sure.”
“But will they be able to prove that?” asked the good woman anxiously.
“We’ll hope they may,” said he gravely. “In the meantime she’s so ill that she can tell us nothing; she’s forgotten all about it. You must get her upstairs.”
Joan set about this task with only the delay caused by the necessity of lighting a fire in the invalid’s bedroom. Claire meanwhile remained silent, keeping her eyes fixed upon Bram with an intent gaze which touched him by its pathetic lack of meaning.
Not until Joan came back and put strong arms round the little creature to carry her upstairs did some ray of intelligence flash out from the black eyes.
“No, don’t take me away,” she said. “I want to stay here to talk to Bram.”
And she stretched out feebly over Joan’s shoulder two little hands towards him.
He took them in his, and pressed upon each of them a long, passionate kiss.
“No, dear. It will be better for you,” he said simply.
And then, with a sudden return to the extreme docility she had shown to him all the evening, she smiled, and let her hands and her head fall as Joan started with her burden on the way upstairs.