Then Bram went upstairs also, and knocked at Mr. Biron’s door.
“I’m going for the doctor now, Mr. Biron,” he called out without entering. “I’ve come up to ask if there’s anything I can get for you before I go.”
“Come in, Elshaw, come in!” cried Theodore, in a voice full of tremulous eagerness. “I want to speak to you.”
Bram obeyed the summons, and found himself for the first time in Mr. Biron’s bedroom, which was the most luxurious room in the house. A bright fire burned in the grate, this being a luxury Theodore always indulged in during the winter; the bed and the windows were hung with handsome tapestry, and there were book-shelves, tables, arm-chairs, everything that a profound study of the art of making oneself comfortable could suggest to the fastidious Theodore.
He himself was sitting, wrapped in a cozy dressing-gown, with his feet on a hassock by the fire. But he looked even more wretched than he had done in his drenched clothes downstairs. There was an unhealthy flush in his face, a feverish glitter in his eyes.
Bram saw something in his face which he had never seen there before, something which suggested that the man had discovered a conscience, and that it was giving him uneasiness.
“Sit down,” said he, pointing to a seat on the other side of the fireplace. Bram wanted to go for the doctor, but the little man was so peremptory that he thought it best to obey. “Elshaw, I think I’m going to die.”
He uttered the words, as was natural in such a man, as if the whole world must be struck into awe by the news. Bram inclined his head in respectful attention, clasping his hands and looking at the fire. He could not make light of this presentiment, which, indeed, he saw reason to think was a well-founded one. Mr. Biron’s never robust frame had been shaken sorely by his own excesses in the first place, by erysipelas and consequent complications, and it was evident that the experiences of this night had tried him very severely. He was still shivering in a sort of ague: his eyes were glassy, his skin was dry. He stood as much in need of a doctor’s aid as did his daughter.
But still Bram waited, struck by the man’s manner, and feeling that at such a moment there was something portentous in his wish to speak. Mr. Biron had something on his mind, on his conscience, of which he wanted to unburden himself.
“Elshaw,” he went on after a long pause, “I’ve been to blame over this—this matter of Claire and—and her cousin Chris.” He stared into Bram’s face as if the young man had been his confessor, and rubbed his little white hands quickly the one over the other while he spoke. “I did it for the best, as I’m sure you will believe; I thought he was an honorable man, who would marry her and make her happy. You believe that, don’t you?”
Up to this moment Bram had believed this of Theodore; now for the first time it flashed through his mind that it was not true. However, he made a vague motion of the head which Theodore took for assent, and the latter went on. He seemed to have become suddenly possessed by a spirit of self-abasement, to feel the need of opening his heart.
“There was no harm in my sending her to meet him—until—last night,” pursued the conscience-stricken man. “I know I did wrong in letting her go then!”
Bram sat up in his chair with horror in his eyes.
“You sent her? Begging, of course, as usual?”
The words were harsh enough, brutal, perhaps, in the circumstances. But Bram’s feeling was too strong for him to be able to choose the expression of it. That this father, knowing what he did know, suspecting what he did suspect, should have sent his daughter to ask Christian for money was so shocking to his feelings that he was perforce frank to the utmost.
“What could I do? How could I help it? One has got to live, Claire as well as I!” muttered Theodore, avoiding Bram’s eyes, and looking at the fire. “Besides, we don’t know anything. We may be doing her wrong in suspecting—what—what we did suspect,” said he earnestly, persuasively. “She never told me that she went away with him, never! I believe it’s a libel to say she did, the mere malicious invention of evilly-disposed persons to harm my child.”
Bram was silent. These words chimed in so well with the hopes he would fain have cherished that, even from the lips of Mr. Biron, they pleased him in spite of his own judgment. Encouraged by the attitude which he was acute enough to perceive in his companion, Theodore went on—
“No, you may blame me as much as you like. You have more to blame me for than you know. I’m going to tell you all about it—yes, all about it.” And he began to play nervously with his handkerchief, and to dart at Bram a succession of quick, restless glances. “But I will hear nothing against my child. It’s not her fault that she’s the daughter of her father, is it? But she’s not a chip of the old block, as you know, Elshaw.”
Bram, who was getting anxious about leaving Claire so long without medical attention, got up from his chair. He did not feel inclined to encourage the evident desire of Mr. Biron for the luxury of confession, of self-abasement. Like most vain persons, Theodore was almost as willing to excite attention by the record of his misdeeds as by any other way. And in the same way, when he felt inclined to write himself down a sinner, nothing would content him but to be the greatest sinner of them all. So he put up an imploring hand to detain Bram.
“Wait,” he said petulantly. “Didn’t I say I had something to tell you? It’s something that concerns Claire, too.”
At the mention of this name Bram, who had moved towards the door, stopped, although he was inclined to think that all this was a mere excuse on the part of Theodore to detain him, and put off the moment when he should be left by himself.
“You remember that a box was sent to you—a chest, by the man at East Grindley who left you his money?”
Bram nodded. His attention was altogether arrested now. Even before Mr. Biron uttered his next words it was clear that he had a real confession to make this time, that he was not merely filling up the time with idle self-accusations.
“I went to your lodging the day it came, just to see that it was safe. Your landlady had sent to ask me if I could take care of it for you, as it was something of value. But I preferred to leave the responsibility with her. In—in fact, Claire thought it best too.”
Bram read between the lines here, knowing what strong reasons poor Claire would have for taking this view. Mr. Biron went on—
“There was a key sent with it.”
Bram looked up. He had found no key, and had been obliged to force the padlock.
“The key was in a piece of paper. I found it on the mantelpiece. I—I—well, of course, I had no right to do it; but I thought it would be better for me to look over the contents of the chest to make sure they were not tampered with in your absence.”
Bram was attentive enough now.
“So I unlocked the box, and I just glanced through the things it contained. You know what I found; with the exception of this, that there was some loose cash——”
Bram’s face grew red with sudden perception. But he made no remark.
“I forget exactly what it was, something between two and three hundred pounds. Now, I know that in strict propriety,” went on Mr. Biron, in whom the instinct of confession became suddenly tempered with a desire to prove himself to have acted well in the matter, “I ought to have left the money alone. But it was strongly borne in upon me at the moment that my dear daughter was worried because of unpaid bills; and—and that, in short, it would be just what you would wish me to do if you had been here, for me to borrow the loose sovereigns, and apply them to our pressing necessities. I argued with myself that you would even prefer, in your delicacy, that I should not have to ask for them. And—in short, I may have been wrong, but I—borrowed them.”
A strange light had broken on Bram’s face.
“Did Miss Claire know?” he asked suddenly in a ringing voice.
“Well—er—yes, in point of fact she did. She came to look for me, and she, well, she saw me take them. She—in fact—wished me to put them back; and I could not convince her that I was doing what you would have wished.”
Bram’s brain was bursting. His heart was beating fast. He came quickly towards Mr. Biron, and seized him by the wrist. There was no anger in his eyes, nothing but a fierce, hungry hope. For he could not despise Theodore more than he had done before, while the fact of Claire’s shame on meeting himself might now bear a less awful significance then it had seemed to do.
“She knew you had taken it? And you forced her to say nothing?” cried he in passionate eagerness.
Mr. Biron was disconcerted.
“Well, er—I thought that—that perhaps, until I could see my way to paying it back, it would be better——”
But Bram did not wait for more explanations. Indeed, he needed no more. He saw in a flash what the shame was which he had seen in Claire’s eyes when she met him after his return. It was the knowledge that her father was a thief, that he had robbed Bram himself, and that she could neither make restitution nor confession for him.
And with this knowledge there flashed upon him the question—Was this the only shame she had to conceal? He was ready, passionately anxious, to believe that it was.
Mr. Biron was quick to take advantage of this disposition in Bram. His mood of self-abasement seemed to have passed away as rapidly as it had come. Not attempting to draw his hand away from Bram’s grasp, he said buoyantly—
“But I could not let the matter rest. I felt that you might suspect her, my child, of what her father, from mistaken motives perhaps, had done——”
Bram cut him short.
“Oh, no, I shouldn’t have done that, Mr. Biron,” he said rather dryly. “But you were very welcome to the money. And I am glad to think you enjoyed yourself while it lasted.”
This thrust, caused by a sudden remembrance of the hunter and the new clothes in which Theodore had been so smart at his expense, was all the vengeance Bram took. He tore himself away as speedily as possible, and ran off for the doctor with a lighter heart than he had borne for many a day. Might not miracles happen? Might they not? Bram asked himself something like this as he ran through the rain over the sodden ground.
When he returned to the farmhouse with the doctor, Bram received a great shock. For, on entering the kitchen, he found Mr. Cornthwaite himself pacing up and down the room, while Joan watched him with anxious eyes from the scullery doorway.
Josiah stopped short in his walk when the two men entered. He nodded to Bram, and wished the doctor good-evening as the latter passed through, and went upstairs, followed by Joan.
“Will you come through, sir?” said Bram. “There’s a fire in the drawing-room.”
Mr. Cornthwaite, over whom there had passed some great change, followed him with only a curt assent. Bram supposed that even he had been touched to learn that the woman of whom he had come in search was so ill as to be past understanding that her persecution had already begun. He stood in front of the fire, with his hat in one hand and his umbrella in the other, with his back to Bram, in dead silence for some minutes.
Then he turned abruptly, and asked in a stern, cold voice, without looking up from the floor, on which he was following the pattern of the carpet with the point of his umbrella—
“Did that scoundrel Biron get back home all right?”
“He’s got home, sir, but he’s very ill. He’s caught cold, I think.”
“He was not molested, attacked again, by the woman, the woman Tyzack, who threw the vitriol over him before?”
“No, sir. She followed him, but he lost sight of her before he got here.”
Mr. Cornthwaite nodded, and was again silent for some time. Bram was much puzzled. Instead of the fierce resentment, the savage anger which had possessed the bereaved father immediately after the loss of his son there now hung over him a gloomy sadness tempered by an uneasiness and irresolution, which were new attributes in the business-like, strong-natured man.
The silence had lasted some minutes again, when he spoke as sharply as before.
“I came to see the daughter, Claire Biron. But I’m told—the woman tells me—that she is ill, and can’t see any one. Is that true?”
“Yes, sir. She is delirious.”
Mr. Cornthwaite turned away impatiently, and again there was a pause. At last he said in the same sharp tone—
“You brought her back home, I suppose?”
“Yes. At least I followed her, and when she grew too tired to walk alone I caught her up, and helped her along.”
Mr. Cornthwaite looked at him curiously. The little room was ill-lighted, by two candles only and the red glow of the fire. He could see Bram’s face pretty well, but the young man could not see his.
“Still infatuated, I see?” said Josiah in a hard, ironical voice.
Bram made no answer.
“You intend to marry her, I suppose?” went on Mr. Cornthwaite in a harder tone than ever.
Bram stared. But he could see nothing of Mr. Cornthwaite’s features, only the black outline of his figure against the dim candle-light.
“No, sir,” said he steadily. “I only hope to be able to save her life.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“Sir, you know best.”
His voice shook, and he stopped. There was silence between them till they heard the footsteps of the doctor and Joan coming down the stairs. Mr. Cornthwaite opened the door.
“Well, Doctor,” said he, “what of the patients?”
There was more impatience than solicitude in his tone.
“They’re both very ill,” answered the doctor. “They ought each to have a nurse, really.”
“Very well. Can you engage them, Doctor? I’ll undertake to pay all the expenses of their illness.”
The doctor was impressed by this generosity; so was Bram, but in a different way. What was the reason of this sudden consideration, this unexpected liberality to the poor relations whom he detested, and to whom he imputed the death of his son?
“What’s the matter with them?” went on Mr. Cornthwaite in the same hard, perfunctory, if not slightly suspicious tone.
“Pneumonia in Mr. Biron’s case, brought on by exposure to wet and cold, no doubt. He has just had a severe shivering fit, and his pulse is up to a hundred and four. We must do the best we can, but he’s a bad subject for pneumonia, very.”
“And the daughter?”
“Acute congestion of the brain. She’s delirious.”
“Ah!”
Mr. Cornthwaite seemed satisfied now that he had the doctor’s assurance that the illness was genuine. He made no more inquiries, but he followed the medical man into the hall and to the front door. The doctor perceived that it was locked and bolted at the top and bottom.
“All right,” said he, “I’ll go through the other way.”
And he made his way to the kitchen, followed by Mr. Cornthwaite and Bram.
As he opened the door which led into the kitchen, the wind blew strongly in his face from the outer door, which was wide open. The rain was sweeping in, and the tablecloth was blown off into his face as he entered. At the same moment Joan, who had gone into the back kitchen to prepare something the doctor had ordered, made her appearance at the door between the two rooms.
“I shouldn’t leave this door open,” said the doctor as he crossed the room to shut it. “The wind blows through the whole house.”
Joan stared.
“Ah didn’t leave it open, sir,” said she. “Ah’ve only just coom through here, and it were shut then. Some one’s been and opened it.”
Bram gave a glance round the room, and then opened the door through which he and the others had just come to examine the hall.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Cornthwaite sharply. He had bidden the doctor a hasty good-bye, afraid of the condolences which he saw were on the tip of his tongue.
Bram, with a candle in his hand, was peering into the dark corners.
“I was just thinking, sir, that perhaps Meg Tyzack had got in while we were talking in the drawing-room,” said he. “Mr. Biron made me bolt the doors to keep her from getting in. He seemed to be afraid she would follow him into the house.”
The words were hardly uttered, when from the floor above there came a piercing scream, a woman’s scream.
“Claire!” shouted Bram, springing on the stairs.
But before he could mount half a dozen steps a wild figure came out of Claire’s room, and rushed to the head of the staircase in answer to his call. But it was not Claire. It was, as Bram had feared, Meg Tyzack, recognizable only by her deep voice, by her loud, hoarse laugh, for the figure itself looked scarcely human.
Standing at the top of the stairs, with her arms outstretched as if to prevent any one’s passing her on the way up, the gaunt creature seemed to be of gigantic height, and looked, with her loose, disordered hair and the rags which hung down from her arms instead of sleeves, like a witch in the throes of prophecy.
“Stand back! Stand back! Leave her alone!” she cried furiously, as Bram rushed up the stairs, and struggled to get past her. She flung her arms round him, laughing discordantly, and clinging so tightly that without hurting her he would have found it impossible to disengage himself.
“What has she done? What has she done?” asked Mr. Cornthwaite in a loud, hard, angry voice as he came to Bram’s assistance.
At the first sound of Mr. Cornthwaite’s voice, Meg’s rage seemed suddenly to disappear, to give place to a fit of strange gloom, quite as wild, and still more terrible to see. Releasing Bram, who ran past her, she leaned over the banisters, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s haggard face.
“What has she done? What have I done?” said she in a horrible whisper. “Why, I’ve done the best night’s work that’s ever been done on this earth, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve sent the man and the woman I hated both to——. Ha! ha! ha!”
With a shrieking laugh she leapt past him to the bottom of the stairs.
Bram Elshaw heard Meg’s wild words as he rushed along the corridor towards the room out of which she had just come—Claire’s room, as he guessed, with a sob of terror rising in his throat.
The door was open. On the floor, just inside, lay what Bram at first thought to be Claire’s lifeless body. Meg had dragged her off the bed, and flung her down in an ecstasy of mad rage.
But even as he raised her in his arms, before the frightened Joan had run up to his aid, Bram was reassured. The girl was unconscious, but she was still breathing. Joan wanted to send him away.
“Leave her to me, sir, leave her to me. You can goa and fetch t’ doctor back,” cried she, as she tried jealously to take Claire out of his arms.
But Bram did not seem to hear her. He was staring into the unconscious face as if this was his last look on earth. He hung over her with all the agony of his long, faithful, unhappy love softening his own rugged face, and shining in his gray eyes.
“Oh, Claire, Claire, my little Claire, my darling, are you going away? Are you going to die?”
The words broke from his lips, hoarse, low, forced up from his heart. He did not know that he had uttered them; did not know that he was not alone with the sick girl. Joan, whose tears were running down her own face, suddenly broke into a loud sob, and shook him roughly by the shoulder.
“Put her down; do ee put her down,” she said peremptorily. “Do ye go for to think as your calling to her will do her any good? Goa ee for t’ doctor. And God forgive me for speaking harsh to ye, sir.”
“Oh Claire, Claire, my little Claire, are you going to die?”—Page 200.
And the good woman, seeing the strange alteration which came over Bram’s face as he raised his eyes from the girl’s face to hers as if he had come back from another world, changed her rough touch to a gentle pat of his shoulder, and turned away sobbing.
Bram lifted Claire from the floor with the easy strength of which his spare, lean frame gave no promise, and placed her tenderly on the bed. Then he held one of her hands for a moment, leaned over her, and kissed her forehead with the lingering but calm tenderness of a mother to her babe.
“A’ reght,” muttered he to Joan, falling once more into the broad Yorkshire he had dropped for so long, “Ah’m going.”
At the foot of the stairs he was brought suddenly to full remembrance of the hard, matter-of-fact world of every day. Mr. Cornthwaite was standing, cold and grave, buttoning up his coat, ready to go.
“Where are you going?” asked he shortly.
“For the doctor again, sir. Meg has nearly done for her, for Miss Claire.”
Mr. Cornthwaite uttered a short exclamation, which might have been meant to express compassion, but which was more like indifference, or even satisfaction. So Bram felt, in a sudden transport of anger.
“And the old man—Mr. Biron, what did she do to him?”
Bram was silent. He remembered Meg’s ferocious words, her triumphant cry that she had killed both the woman and the man she hated; and as the remembrance came back he turned quickly, and went in the direction of Theodore’s room. But Mr. Biron was lying quietly in bed, apparently unaware that anything extraordinary had happened. For when he saw Bram he only asked if he were going to stay with him. Bram excused himself, and left the room.
“Mr. Biron’s all right, sir,” he said to Mr. Cornthwaite, who had by this time reached the door, impatient to get away.
The only answer he got was a nod as Mr. Cornthwaite went out of the house.
Bram had not to go far before he found some one to run his errand for him, so that he was able to return to the house. His mind was full of a strange new thought, one so startling that it took time to assimilate it. He sat for a long time by the kitchen fire, turning the idea over in his mind, until the doctor returned, and went away again, after reporting that Claire was not so much injured by the woman’s violence as might have been feared.
It was very late when a nurse, the only one to be got on the spur of the moment, arrived at the farmhouse. Bram was still sitting by the kitchen fire. When she had been installed upstairs Joan came down for a little while.
“What, you here still, Mr. Elshaw?” cried she.
“Well, you might have known I should be,” he answered with a faint smile. “I’m here till I’m turned out, day and night now!”
“Why, sir, ye’d best goa whoam,” said Joan kindly. “Ye can do no good, and Ah won’t leave her, ye may be sure. Ah’ve sent word whoam as they mun do wi’out me till t’ mornin’.”
“Ah, but I’ve something to say to you, Joan. Look here; doesn’t it seem very strange that Mr. Cornthwaite when he is half-mad with grief at his son’s death, should come all the way out here to see his niece? And that he should say nothing more about—about the death of his son? And that he should give orders for a nurse to come, and undertake to pay all the expenses of her illness? Doesn’t it look as if——”
Joan interrupted him with a profound nod.
“Lawk-a-murcy, ay, sir. Ah’ve thowt o’ that too,” said she in an eager whisper. “And don’t ye think, sir, as it’s a deal more likely that that poor, wild body Meg killed Master Christian wi’ her strong arms and her mad freaks than that our poor little lass oop yonder did it?”
Bram sprang up.
“Joan, that’s what I’ve been thinking myself ever since the woman rushed out from here. She said she’d sent to h—— the woman and the man she hated, didn’t she? Well, if Claire was the woman, surely Mr. Christian must have been the man!”
They stared each into the face of the other, full of strong excitement, each deriving fresh hope from the hope each saw in the wide eyes of the other. At last Joan seized his hand, and wrung it in her own strong fingers with a pressure which brought the water to his eyes.
“You’ve got it, Mr. Bram, you’ve got it, Ah believe!” cried she in a tumult of feeling. “Oh, for sure that’s reght; and our poor little lass is as innocent of it as t’ new-born babe!”
Full of this idea, Bram conceived the thought of making inquiries at Meg’s own home, and he started at once with this object.
It was now very late, past eleven o’clock; but his uneasiness was too great to allow him to leave the matter till the morning. So, at the risk of reaching the farmhouse, where Meg’s parents lived, when everybody was in bed, he took a short cut across the wet, muddy fields, and arrived at his destination within an hour.
The rain had ceased by this time, and the moon peeped out from time to time, and from behind a mass of straggling clouds. The little farm lay in a nook between two hills, and as Bram drew near he saw that a light was still burning within. In getting over a gate he made a little noise, and the next moment he saw a woman’s figure come quickly out of the farmhouse.
“Meg, is that you, Meg?” asked a woman’s voice anxiously.
“No,” said Bram, “it isn’t Meg, ma’am. It’s me, from Hessel, come to ask if she’d got safe home.”
She came nearer, and peered into his face.
“And who be you?”
“My name’s Bram Elshaw. I’m a friend of the Birons at Duke’s Farm.”
“Ah!”
There was a world of sorrow, of significance, in the exclamation. After a pause, she said, not angrily, but despondently—
“Then maybe you know all about it? Maybe you can tell me more than I know myself? Have you seen anything of Meg—she’s my daughter—this evening?”
Bram hesitated. The woman went on—
“Oh, don’t be afraid to speak out, sir, if it’s bad news. We’ve been used to that of late; ever since our girl took up with t’ gentleman that has treated her so bad. It’s no use for to try to hide it; t’ poor lass herself has spread t’ news about. She’s gone right out of her mind, I do believe, sir. She wanders about, so I often have to sit up half t’ night for her, and she never gives me a hand now with t’ farm work. And as neat a hand in t’ dairy as she used to be! Well, sir, what is it? Has she made away with herself?”
“She came to Duke’s Farm to-night, and attacked Miss Biron,” said Bram.
“Well, she was jealous,” said Meg’s mother, who seemed to be less afflicted with sentiment concerning her daughter than with vexation at the loss of her services. “The lass found it hard she should lose her character, and then t’ young gentleman care more for his cousin all t’ time. Not but what Meg was to blame. She used to meet him when she knew he was going to Duke’s Farm, up in t’ ruined cottages on top of t’ hill at Hessel. So I’ve learnt since. Folks tell you these things when it’s too late to stop them!”
Bram remembered the night on which he had heard the voices in the dismantled cottages, and he remembered also with shame that he had conceived the idea that Christian’s companion might be his cousin.
“Did she tell you where she was going when she went out to-night?” asked Bram.
“She hasn’t been home since this afternoon,” replied Meg’s mother. “She went out before tea, muttering in her usual way threats against him and her,—always him and her. She never says any different. I’ve got used to her ravings; I don’t think she’d do any real harm unless to herself, poor lass!”
“I’m afraid she has this time,” said Bram gravely. “I don’t know anything more than I’ve told you; but I’m afraid you must be prepared for worse news in the morning.”
Startled, the woman pressed for an explanation. Bram, having really nothing but suspicion to go upon, could tell her nothing definite. But his suspicion was so strong that he felt no diffidence about preparing Meg’s mother for a dreadful shock. On the other hand, he was able to assure her that, whatever she might have done, her manifestly disordered state of mind would be considered in the view taken of her actions.
Then he returned to Hessel, tried the door of Duke’s Farm, and found it locked for the night. He went round to the front, looked up at the dim light burning in Claire’s room with a fervent prayer on his lips, and then climbed the hill to his own lodging.
On inquiry at the farm next morning on his way to his work Bram learnt from the nurse, who was the only person he could see, that while Mr. Biron had had a very bad night, Claire was as well as could be expected. No decided improvement could be reported as yet, nor could it indeed be expected. But she was quieter, and her temperature had gone down, temporarily at least.
He went on his way feeling a little more hopeful, after impressing upon the nurse to keep the doors locked for fear of any further incursions from poor, crazy Meg Tyzack.
On arriving at the works, he saw, as was to be expected after the tragedy of the preceding evening, an unusual stir among the workmen, who were standing about the entrance, talking in eager and excited tones. One of the workmen saluted Bram, and asked him if he had “heard t’ fresh news.”
“What’s that?” asked Bram.
“Coom this weay, sir; Ah’ll show ye.”
Bram, with a sick terror at his heart, asking himself what new horror he should be called upon to witness, followed the man through the works. The rain had come on again, a drizzling, light rain, which was already turning the morning’s dust into a thick, black paste. They passed across the yards and through the sheds, until again they reached the spot where the railway divided the works into two parts.
An exclamation broke from Bram’s lips.
“Not another—accident—here?”
For there was quite a large throng of workmen scattered over the lines on the opposite side, and culminating in one dense group not far from the spot where he had found Christian on the previous night.
“Ay, sir, it’s a woman this time.” And his voice suddenly fell to a hoarse whisper. “T’ woman as killed Mr. Christian! T’ poor creature was crazed, for sure! She got in here, nobody knows how, this morning; an’ she must ha’ throwed herself down on t’ line pretty nigh t’ place where she throwed him down last neght. She must ha’ waited for t’ mornin’ oop train. Anyway, we fahnd her lyin’ there this mornin’, poor lass!”
Bram had reached the group. He forced his way through, and looked down at the burden the men were carrying towards the very shed under the roof of which Chris had died.
The mutilated body, which had been decapitated by the heavy wheels of the train, was only recognizable by the torn and stained clothing as that of Meg Tyzack.
Bram staggered away, with his hand over his eyes.
No sooner had Bram recovered himself, and gone to the office without another question to any one, avoiding the group and the sickening sight they surrounded, than he found one of the servants from Holme Park with a letter from Mr. Cornthwaite, asking him to come up to the house at once.
He found his employer sitting in the study alone, in the very seat, the very attitude, he had seen him in so often. While outside the house looked mournful in the extreme with its drawn blinds; while the servants moved about with silent step and scared faces, the master sat, apparently as unchanged as a rock after a storm.
It was not until a change of position on the part of Mr. Cornthwaite suddenly revealed to Bram the fact that the lines in his face had deepened, the white patches in his hair grown wider, that the young man recognized that the tragedy had left its outward mark on him also. He had summoned Bram to talk about business. And this he did with as clear a head, as deep an apparent interest as ever. Even the necessary reference to his lost son he made with scarcely a break in his voice.
“I shall only have the works shut on one day, the day of the funeral, Elshaw,” said he. “But in the meantime I shan’t be down there myself. I—I——” At last his voice faltered. “I should like to be at work again myself—to give me something to think about, instead of thinking always on the same unhappy subject. But I couldn’t go down there so soon after—after what I saw there.”
Bram could not answer. The remembrance was too fresh in his own mind.
“So I want you to take my place as far as you can. You can telephone through to me if you want to know anything. You have to fill your own place now, you know Elshaw, and—another’s.”
Bram bowed his head, deeply touched.
“Now you can go. If you want to see—him, one of the servants will take you up. And the ladies, poor things, are sure to be about. They bear up beautifully, beautifully. His wife bears up a little too well for my taste. But—perhaps—we must forgive her!”
He shook Bram by the hand, and the young man went out.
In the death-chamber upstairs he found Mrs. Christian, dry-eyed, on her knees beside the bed. She sprang up on Bram’s entrance, and remained beside him, without speaking a word, while he looked long and earnestly at the placid face, looking handsomer in death than it had ever looked in life, the waxen mask, refined and delicate beyond expression, the long golden moustache, the fair hair, silkier, smoother than Bram had ever seen them.
And presently a mist came before his eyes, and he went hastily out.
He found Mrs. Christian still beside him. She was very pale, but quite calm.
“I am glad you are come. You were poor Christian’s great friend, were you not?” said she.
“Yes, madam,” said Bram rather stiffly.
Her little chirping voice irritated him. Although he understood that the neglected, unloved wife could not be expected to feel Christian’s death as those did who had loved and been loved by him, he wished she would not bear up quite so well, just as Mr. Cornthwaite had done.
But she insisted on following him downstairs, and then she opened the door of the morning-room, and asked him to come in. She would take no excuses; she would not keep him a moment.
“I wish to ask you about Miss Biron,” said she, to Bram’s great surprise, when she had shut the door of the room, and found herself alone with him. “Oh, yes,” she went on with a little nod, as she noticed his astonished look, “I bear her no malice because my husband loved her better than he did me. I only wish he had married her! I do sincerely hope and pray that I nourish no unchristian feelings against anybody, even the poor, mad girl who killed him, and who has since made away with herself in such a dreadful manner!”
She had heard of it already then! Bram was appalled by the manner in which she dismissed such an awful occurrence in a few rapid words.
“And, of course,” she went on, “I cannot feel that I have any right to blame Miss Biron, since we know that she did not run away with Christian, as we had supposed.”
Bram was overwhelmed with relief unspeakable. This was the first time he had heard anything more than doubt expressed as to Claire’s guilt in this matter. He had, indeed, entertained hopes, especially since last night, that Claire had been wrongfully accused. But what was the strongest hope compared with this authoritative confirmation of it? He was shrewd enough, strongly moved though he was, to control the emotion he felt, and to put this question—
“Did Mr. Cornthwaite—did his father—did Mr. Cornthwaite know that he had done his son and Miss Biron—an injustice, thinking what he did?”
“Why, of course he knew,” replied Mrs. Christian promptly. “When he found Christian in London he accused him at once, and, of course, Christian told him—indeed, he could see for himself—he was wrong. Christian knew no more where his cousin had gone to than anybody else did.”
Bram was silent. He resented Mr. Cornthwaite’s behavior in leaving him in ignorance of such a fact. But his resentment was swallowed up in ineffable joy.
“What I wanted to learn was whether Miss Biron has all the nursing she wants,” chirped in little Mrs. Christian, “because I should be quite glad to do anything I could for her out of Christian charity. I have done a good deal of sick nursing, and I like it,” pursued the poor, little woman. “And I should be really glad of something to occupy my thoughts now in this dreadful time. I have been living with my parents, you know, since this misunderstanding first came about. His father brought Christian here, and when he got well he showed no wish to come back. But when I heard late last night of what had happened, of course I came here at once. And you will ask Miss Biron if she will have me, won’t you? I would nurse her well. And, indeed, they are not very kind to me here.”
Over the round, pale, freckled face there passed a quiver of feeling which awoke Bram’s sympathy at last. The unattractive little woman had been rather cruelly treated from first to last in this affair of Christian’s marriage. The Cornthwaites, one and all, had thought much of him and little of her from the beginning to the end of the matter. And the offer to tend the girl Christian had loved so much better than herself had in it something touching, even noble, in Bram’s eyes.
He stammered out that he would ask; that she was very good; that he thanked her heartily. Then, exchanging with her a hand-pressure which was warm on both sides, he left her, and went out of the gloomy house.
Of course, Joan would not hear of accepting the kindly-offered services of poor Mrs. Christian. But when she heard of the welcome information which Bram had obtained from her she went half-mad with a delight which found expression in clumsy leaps and twirls and hand-clappings, and even tears.
“And so it’s all reght, all reght, as we might ha’ knowed from t’ first. Oh, we ought to die o’ shame to think as we ever thowt anything different! Oh, sir, an’ now ye can marry her reght off, an’ we can all be happy as long as we live! Oh, sir, this is a happy day!”
Bram tried to silence her, tried at least to check this confident expression of her hopes for the future. Not that his own heart did not beat high: if she was happy in this newly-acquired knowledge, he was happier still. The idol was restored to its pedestal. It was he now, and not she, who had a shameful secret—the secret of his past doubts of her.
Bram could not forgive himself for these, could not now conceive that they had been natural, justifiable. He had doubted her, the purest of creatures, as she was the noblest, the sweetest. He felt almost that he had sinned beyond forgiveness, that he should never dare to meet her frank eyes again.
In the meantime, as day after day passed slowly by, the news he got of her grew better, while that he received of her father grew worse.
At last, two days after the funeral of Christian, he learnt, when he made his usual morning inquiry at the farm on his way down to the works, that Mr. Biron had passed away quietly during the night.
His last words, uttered at half-past two in the morning, had been a characteristic request that somebody would go up immediately to Holme Park with a note to Mr. Cornthwaite.
Bram heard from Joan that they tried to keep the intelligence of her father’s death from Claire, who was now much better, but who was still by the doctor’s orders kept very quiet. But she guessed something from the looks and sounds she heard, and before the day was over she had learnt the fact they tried to conceal; and then she spent the rest of the day in tears.
Mrs. Cornthwaite and Hester visited her on the following day, and begged her to come back with them. But Claire refused very courteously, but without being quite able to hide her feeling that their offers of kindness and of sympathy came too late.
As, however, the farm and everything Mr. Biron had left were to be sold, it was necessary that she should go somewhere. So, on the day after the funeral, Claire returned to the cottage of the old housekeeper at Chelmsley, who had written inviting her most warmly to return.
Bram, who had not dared to ask to see her, feeling more diffidence in approaching her than he had ever done before, felt a pang whenever he passed the desolate farmhouse on his way to and from his work. All the news he got of Claire was through Joan, who received from the grateful and affectionate girl letters which she could not answer without great difficulty and many appeals to her children, who had had the advantage of the School Board.
Joan gradually became sceptical as the time went on as to the fulfilment of her old wish that Bram should marry Claire. Winter melted into spring, and yet he made no effort to see her; he sent her no messages, and she, on her side, said very little about him in her letters. Indeed, as the leaves began to peep out on the trees, there cropped up occasional references in those same letters of hers to the kindness of a curate, who was teaching her to sketch, and encouraging her to take such simple pleasures as came in her way.
Joan spelt out one of the letters which referred to these occupations to Bram on the next occasion of their meeting. Then she looked up with a broad smile, and gave him a huge nod.
“Ye’ll get left in the lurch, Mr. Elshaw, that’ll be t’ end of it!” she said, with great emphasis.
“Well,” said Bram with apparent composure, “if she takes him, it will be because she likes him. And if she likes him, why shouldn’t she have him?”
But he was ill-pleased for all that. The vague hopes he had long ago cherished had become stronger, more definite of late; he had forced himself to be patient, to wait, telling himself that it would be indelicate to intrude upon the grief, the horror of the awful shock from which she must still be suffering.
He had long since heard all the particulars of the terrible death of Chris, and of the manner in which the mistake between Meg and Claire had come to be made. A workman had seen Christian and Claire in earnest conversation not far from the railway line; had seen her give him the note from her father which had brought her down. Christian had spoken kindly to her, had bent over her as if with the intention of kissing her, when suddenly the stalwart figure of Meg, who had followed them from some corner where she had concealed herself in the works, rushed between them, threatening them both with wild words. Claire had crept away in alarm, and Meg had gradually dragged Chris, talking, volubly gesticulating all the time, out upon the railway lines. She must have calculated to a nicety the hour at which the next train might be expected, so the general opinion afterwards ran. At any rate, it was she who was with Christian when the train came by; and as every one believed, as, in fact, poor Chris himself had said, she had flung him of malice prepense down on the line just as the train came up to them.
The workingman who gave Bram most of these details was the person who disabused Mr. Cornthwaite of his idea that the murderess was Claire. He had given his information at the very time that Bram was on his way to Hessel in the company of poor little Claire.
Although Claire herself had not witnessed the catastrophe, she had had the awful shock of coming suddenly, a few minutes later, upon the mangled body of her dying cousin. And Bram felt that he could not in decency approach her with his own hopes on his lips until she had in some measure recovered, not only from that shock, but from her father’s death, and the loss of her beloved home.
The farm now looked dreary in the extreme. April came, and it was still unlet. The grass in the garden had grown high, the crocuses were over, and there was no one to tie up their long, thin, straggling leaves. The tulips were drooping their petals, and the hyacinths were dying. There was nobody now to sow the seeds for the summer.
Bram was on his way back home early one Saturday afternoon, when the sun was shining brightly, showing up the shabby condition of the house and grounds, the absence of paint on doors and shutters, the weeds which were shooting up in the midst of the rubbish with which the farmyard was blocked up.
As he leaned over the garden gate and looked ruefully in, with painful thoughts about the little girl who was forgetting him in the society of the curate, he fancied he heard a slight noise coming from the house itself.
He listened, he looked. Then he started erect. He grew red; his heart began to beat at express speed.
There was some one in the house, stealing from room to room, not making much noise. And from the glimpse he caught of a disappearing figure in its flight from one room to another Bram knew that the intruder was Claire.
He stole round to the back of the house with his heart on fire.
The door was locked; she had not got in that way. Bram had never given up the workman’s habit of carrying a few handy tools in a huge knife in his pocket, and in a few seconds he had taken one of the outside kitchen shutters off its hinges, and shot back the window-catch.
The next moment he was in the room.
But what a different room! The deal table where he had so often done odd jobs of carpentering for Claire; the old sofa on which she had lain on the night of Christian’s death while she uttered those precious words of love for himself, which he had treasured in his heart all through the dark winter; the three-legged stool on which she used to sit by the fire; the square, high one he used to occupy on the other side—all these things were gone, and there was nothing in the bare and dirty apartment but some odds and ends of sacking and a broken packing case.
Suddenly Bram conceived an idea. He dragged the packing case over the floor, taking care not to make much noise, put it in the place of his old stool, and sat down on it, bending over the dusty ashes which had been left in the fireplace just as he used to do over the fire on a cold evening.
And presently the door opened softly, and Claire came in.
He did not look round. He was satisfied to know that she was there, there, almost within reach of his arm. And still he bent over the ashes.
A slight sob at last made him look up.
Oh, what a sight for him! The little girl, looking smaller than ever in her black frock and bonnet, was standing in the full sunlight, smiling through her tears; smiling with such unspeakable peace and happiness in her eyes, such a glint of joy illuminating her whole face, that as he got up he staggered back, and cried—
“Eh, Miss Claire, you’re more like a sunbeam than ever!”
She did not answer at first. She only clasped her small hands and stared at him, with her lips parted, and the tears springing to her eyes. But then she saw something in his face which brought the blood to hers; and she turned quickly away, and pretended to find a difficulty in making her way through the rubbish on the floor.
“Miss Claire!” said he. “Oh, Miss Claire!”
That was the sum and substance of the eloquence he had been teaching himself; of the elaborate and carefully-chosen words which he had so often prepared to meet her with, words which should be respectful and yet affectionate, sufficiently distant, yet not too cold. It had all resolved itself into this hapless, helpless exclamation—
“Miss Claire! Oh, Miss Claire!”
“I’m not surprised to find you here, Bram,” said she with a little touch of growing reserve. “When I heard a noise in here I knew I should find you—just the same.”
There was a very short pause. Then Bram said breathlessly—
“Yes, Miss Claire, you’ll always find me just the same.”
The words, the tone, summed up all the kindness he had ever shown her; all the patient tenderness, the unspeakable, modest goodness she knew so well. Claire’s face quivered all over. Then she burst into a torrent of tears. Bram watched her for a minute in dead silence. Then, not daring so much as to come a step nearer, he whispered hoarsely—
“May I comfort you, Miss Claire, may I dare?”
“Oh, Bram—dear Bram—if you don’t—I shall die!”
Which, when you come to think of it, was a very pretty invitation.
And Bram accepted it.
And they were married, and they were happy ever afterwards, though, in these despondent days, it hardly does to say so.
THE END.