For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her without speaking.—Page 52.
“No, papa.”
Claire had risen from her chair, and was standing with her back turned to her father, pretending to be busy sticking the long, black-headed pins into her hat.
“No answer. Oh, well, there was hardly an answer needed. That’s all right.”
From his tone nobody would have guessed that Theodore cared more than his words implied; but Bram, who saw most things, noticed a frown of disappointment and anger on the airy Mr. Biron’s face. After a pause Theodore said—
“I think I shall go down the hill and have a game of billiards. That will fill up the time till you’ve finished your carpentering, Elshaw, and then we’ll finish up with a game of chess.”
And Theodore disappeared. A few moments later they heard him shut himself out by the front door.
Bram after a glance at Claire went on with his sawing, judging it wiser not to attempt to offer the sympathy with which his heart was bursting.
When he had been going on with his work for some minutes, however, Claire came and stood silently beside him. He looked up and smiled.
“Go on with your work,” said she gravely, “just for a few minutes. Then I’m going to send you away.”
“Send me away, Miss Claire? What for?”
“For your own good, Mr. Elshaw.”
Bram suddenly pulled himself upright, and then looked down at her in dismay.
“Mr. Elshaw! I’m getting on in the world then! I used to be only Bram.”
“That’s it,” said Claire in a low voice, looking at the fire. “You used to be only Bram; but you’ve got beyond that now.”
“But I don’t want to get beyond that with you, Miss Claire,” protested he.
“What you want doesn’t matter,” said she decidedly. “You can’t help yourself. I’ve heard something about you to-night. Oh, don’t look like that; it was nothing to your discredit, nothing at all. But you’ve got to give up your carpentering and wood chopping for us, Bram, and you’re not to come here again.” She spoke with much decision, but her sensitive face showed some strange conflict going on within her, in which some of the softer emotions were evidently engaged. Whatever it was that made her turn her humble and useful old friend away, the cause was not ingratitude.
Before he could put another question, being indeed too much moved to be able to frame one speedily, Bram was startled by a tapping at the door. Miss Biron started; Bram almost thought he saw her shiver. She pointed quickly to the inner door.
“Go at once,” said she in an imperious whisper, “and remember you are not to come back; you are never to come back.”
Bram took up his coat, slipped his arms into it, and obeyed without a word. But the look on his face, as Claire caught a glimpse of it, was one which cut her to the quick. She drew a deep breath, and threw out her hands towards him with a piteous cry. Bram stopped, shivered, made one step towards her, when the tap at the door was repeated more sharply.
Claire recovered herself at once, made a gesture to him to go, and opened the one door as he let himself out by the other.
Bram heard the voice of the newcomer. It was Christian Cornthwaite.
Bram left the farmhouse in a tumult of feeling. Why had he been dismissed so abruptly? Why had he been dismissed at all?
It was on Christian’s account apparently. But what objection could Christian have to his visits to the farm?
On the many occasions when the two young men had met there Bram had always been shunted into the background for Christian, and had been left at his modest occupations unheeded, while Claire gave all her attention to her cousin. Bram had looked upon this arrangement as quite natural, and had never so much as winced at it. The idea that Christian Cornthwaite might look upon him as a possible rival being out of the question, again Bram asked himself—What could be the reason of his dismissal?
He did not mean to take it quietly; he had conceit enough to think that Claire would be sorry if he did. He could flatter himself honestly that during the past six months he had become the young lady’s trusted friend, never obtrusive, never demonstrative, but trusted, perhaps appreciated, none the less on that account.
Bram had the excuse of Theodore’s invitation for hanging about the neighborhood until that gentleman’s return. But at the very moment when Mr. Biron’s gay voice, humming to himself as he came up the hill, struck upon Bram’s ear, Christian Cornthwaite came out through the farmyard gate.
“Hallo, Elshaw, is that you?” he asked, as he came out and passed his arm through Bram’s. “I wondered what had become of you when I did not find you in the house this evening. I’d begun to look upon you as one of the fixtures.”
“I was there this evening, Mr. Christian,” replied Bram soberly. “But I got turned out without much ceremony just before you came.”
“Turned out, eh? I didn’t think you ever did anything to deserve such treatment from any one.” And Chris looked curious. “You are what I call a model young man, if anything a little too much like the hero of a religious story for young ladies, written by a young lady.”
Bram was quite acute enough to understand that this was a sneer.
“You mean that I’m what you and your friends call a prig, Mr. Christian?” he said quite unaffectedly, and without any sign of shame or regret. “Well, I suppose I am. But you don’t allow for the difference between us at starting. To get up to where you stand from where I used to be, one must be a bit of a prig, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps so. I think you may be trusted to know your own business, Elshaw. You’re one of the men that get on. It won’t do you any harm on the way up if you leave off chopping firewood in your shirt-sleeves for people who don’t think any the better of you for it.”
Bram, who had let himself be led up the hill, stopped short.
“She doesn’t think any the worse of me for doing any little thing I can to help her,” said he in a muffled voice.
Christian began to laugh.
“She? You mean Claire. Oh, no, no, she does justice to everybody, bless her dear little heart! I was thinking of our rascally friend, her father. You know very well that he uses his daughter as a means for getting all he can out of everybody. I hope you’ve not been had by the old ruffian, Elshaw?”
“No, Mr. Christian; no, I haven’t,” answered Bram hastily. “That is, not to an extent that matters.”
“Ah, ha! That means you have been had for half-crowns, for instance?” As Bram moved uneasily, Chris laughed again. “Of course, it is no affair of mine; I’m quite sure you can see through our frivolous friend as well as anybody else. But if, as you say, you have been dismissed, why, I advise you not to try to get reinstated.”
Now, this advice troubled Bram exceedingly. It was excellent of its kind, no doubt; but he asked himself whether the man who was so keenly alive to the disadvantages of even an acquaintance with the Birons could really be ready to form an alliance which must bring the burden of the needy elderly gentleman upon him for life. His feelings upon the subject were so keen that they would not permit him to temporize and to choose his words and his opportunity. Quite suddenly he blurted out—
“You’re going to marry Miss Claire, aren’t you?”
Christian, who always took things more easily than his deeper-natured companion, looked at the earnest, strongly-cut face with something like amusement. Luckily, it was too dark for Bram to see the full significance of his companion’s expression.
“Marry her? Why, yes, to be sure I hope so. My father is very anxious for me ‘to settle down,’ as he calls it, though I would rather, for my own part, not settle down quite so far as matrimony just yet.”
There was a pause. Then Bram said in a dry voice—
“I can’t understand you, Mr. Christian. You seem just as nigh what a man ought to be as a man can be in lots of ways. And I can’t understand how a man like that, that is a man like you, shouldn’t be all on fire to make the girl he loves his wife as quick as he can. Is that a part of my priggishness, Mr. Christian, to wonder at that?”
Christian did not answer at once. They had reached the top of the hill, and were standing by the ruined cottages, which looked more desolate than ever in the darkness of the winter evening. The wind whistled through the broken walls and the decaying rafters.
Bram remembered the evening when he had heard Christian’s laugh in that very pile.
“I suppose it is, Bram,” said Chris at last. “But I rather like it in you, all the same. I can’t help laughing at you, but I think you’re rather a fine fellow. Now, listen to me. You may go on wondering at my behavior as much as you like, but you mustn’t yourself have anything more to do with the Birons. We’ll say I’m jealous, Bram, if you like. I really think it’s true, too,” he added with a flippancy which belied his words.
But Bram shook his head solemnly.
“No, Mr. Christian,” he answered; and in the excitement he felt the strong Yorkshire accent was heard again in his voice. “You’ve no call to be jealous of me, and you know that right well. If I were a gentleman born, like you——”
“Don’t use that expression,‘gentleman born,’ Elshaw,” interrupted Chris lightly. “It means nothing, for one thing. My great-grandfather was a mill hand, or something of that sort, and so were the great-grandfathers of half the men in the House of Lords. And it sounds odd from a man like you, who will be a big pot one of these days.”
“Well, Mr. Christian, if I’d been brought up in a big house, like you, and had had my face kept clean and my hair curled instead of being allowed to make mud-pies in the gutter——”
“I wanted to make mud-pies in the gutter!” interpolated Christian cheerfully.
“Well, you know what I mean, anyhow. If we’d stood just on the same ground——”
“We never should have stood on the same ground, Elshaw,” said Chris with a shrewd smile.
“——And if I hadn’t been beholden to you for the rise I’ve got, I’d have fought you for the place you’ve got with her very likely. But, as it is, I’m nowhere; I don’t count. And you know that, Mr. Christian.”
“Indeed, I’m very glad to hear it, for if there’s one man in the world I should less like to have for a rival than another, in love or in anything else, it’s you, Bram. I know you’re a lamb outside; but I can’t help suspecting that there’s a creature more like a tiger underneath.”
“I’m inclined to think myself, Mr. Christian, that the creature underneath’s more like an ass,” said Bram good-humoredly.
They were standing at the top of the hill; it was a damp, cold night, and Christian shivered.
“You mustn’t stand here talking, Mr. Christian,” said Bram. “You are not so used to strong breezes as me.”
“Well, good-night; I won’t take you any further. You live somewhere about here, I know. But, I say.” He called after Bram, who was turning back. “There’s one thing I want to tell you. Don’t say anything to the guv’nor about meeting me at the farm.”
Bram stared blankly, and Christian laughed.
“My dear fellow, don’t you know that these matters require to be conducted with a little diplomacy? When a man is dependent upon his father, as he always is if he’s a lazy beggar like me, that father has to be humored a little. I must prepare him gradually for the shock, if I’m ever to marry Claire.”
“All right, Mr. Christian. I’ll say nothing, of course. But I shall be glad to hear that matters are straight. It seems hard on the young lady, doesn’t it?”
“Ah, well, life isn’t all beer and skittles for any of us.”
Christian called out these words, turning his head as he walked rapidly away on the road to Holme Park.
Bram had made such astonishing progress in the office since his promotion, not much more than a year before, that nobody but himself was astonished when he was called into the private office of the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, about a fortnight after his talk with Christian, and was formally invited by that gentleman to dine at Holme Park in the course of the following week. Bram’s first impulse was to apologize for declining the invitation, but Mr. Cornthwaite insisted, and with such an air of authority that Bram felt there was no escape for him.
But, meeting Christian later in the day, Bram related the incident rather as if it were a grievance.
“You know, Mr. Christian, it’s not in my line, that sort of thing. Ah shall make a fool o’ myself, Ah know Ah shall.”
And, either accidentally or on purpose, he dropped again into the strong Yorkshire dialect, which since his elevation he had worked successfully to overcome.
But Christian only laughed at his excuses.
“You’d be a fool to refuse,” he said shortly. “I’ll take you round to my tailor’s again, and he’ll measure you for your war-paint.”
Bram’s face fell.
“No, Mr. Christian, no. I’m not going to dress myself up. Mr. Cornthwaite won’t expect it, and what would be the good of my wasting all that money on clothes you’ll never catch me wearing again? And the oaf I should look in ’em too! Why, you’d all be laughin’ at me, an’ not more than I should be laughin’ at myself.”
“Elshaw,” returned Chris gravely, “the one thing which distinguishes you above all the self-made men and born geniuses I’ve ever heard about is that you’ve got too broad a mind to despise trifles. While Sir George Milbrook, who began as a factory hand, and Jeremiah Montcombe of Gray’s Hall, and a lot of other men who’ve got on like them, make a point of dropping their H’s and clipping their words just as they used to do forty years ago, you’ve thought it worth your while to drop your Ah’s and your tha’s, till there’s very little trace of them left already, and there’ll be none in another year. Well, now, there are some more trifles to be mastered, and dressing for dinner is one of them. So buck up, old man, and come along. And by-the-by, as you’ll always take a hint from me, couldn’t you let yourself drop into slang sometimes? Your language is so dreadfully precise, and you use so many words that I have to look out in the dictionary.”
“Do I, Mr. Christian?” asked Bram, surprised. Then he laughed and shook his head. “No, I can’t trust myself as far as the slang yet. It wouldn’t come out right perhaps. I shouldn’t have discrimination enough to choose between the slang that was all right and the slang which would make the ladies look at each other.”
“Well, I suppose I must let you have a few months’ grace. But it’s only on condition that you smoke an occasional cigarette, and that you don’t stick so persistently to soda water and lemonade, when you’re asked to have a drink.”
“But, Mr. Christian, I’m not used to wine and spirits, not even to beer, and if I was to drink them they would get into my head. And as it takes me all my time to speak properly and behave so as to pass muster, as it is, you’d better leave pretty well alone, and let me keep to the soda water.”
“Oh, well, as long as you’re not moved by conscientious scruples I don’t so much mind. But teetotalism savors rather too much of the Sunday-school and the Anti-Tobacco League. Mind, I don’t want to make you an habitual drunkard, but I should like to feel sure that you understand there is a happy medium.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Bram with a comical look; “but I wish I hadn’t to go up to the Park Thursday week all the same.”
Chris looked at him steadily, and played with his long, tawny moustache for a few moments in silence.
“So do I. I wish you hadn’t got to go too,” said he at last.
But he would not explain why; he turned the subject by remarking that they mustn’t forget the visit to the tailor’s.
It is not to be supposed that Bram had forgotten all about Claire Biron, or that he had not been tempted to break through the command she had imposed upon him. At first he had intended to present himself as usual at the farm on the evening after his summary dismissal, and to brave her possible displeasure. He felt so sure of her kind feeling toward himself that he had very little doubt of overcoming her scruples from whatever cause they arose.
On the very next morning, however, he had come suddenly upon her as he went down the hill towards the town; and Claire had cut him, actually cut him, passing him with her eyes on the ground, at a rapid pace.
Bram was so utterly overwhelmed by this action on her part that he stood stupidly staring at her figure as it went quickly upwards, uncertain what to do, until she turned into the farmyard and disappeared.
He went on to the office with a dull weight at his heart, hoping against hope that she would relent, that she would smile at him with her old friendliness when next they met, but unable to stifle the fear that the pleasant friendship which had been so much to him was now over.
As to her reasons for this new course of treatment he could make no guess which seemed to him at all likely to be the right one. She had heard something about him, that was her excuse, something not to his discredit, but which was, nevertheless, the cause of her sending him away. Now, Bram could think of nobody who was likely to be able to tell Claire the one fact which might have brought about his banishment conceivably, the fact that he loved her. He had kept his secret so well that he might well feel sure it was in his own power, so well that he sometimes honestly doubted whether it was a fact at all.
Besides, even if it had been possible for her to find this out, she would not have dismissed him in this curt, almost brutal, fashion.
The more Bram thought about his banishment, the farther he seemed to get from a sane conclusion; but he could not rest. He could not dismiss the matter from his mind. Full as his new life was of work, of interest, of ambitions, of hopes, the thought of Claire haunted him. He wondered how she was getting on without him, knowing that he had made himself useful to her in a hundred ways, and that if she did not miss him, she must at least miss the work he did for her.
And Christian—he had told Bram in so many words that he meant to marry his cousin; yet his visits had fallen off in frequency, and Bram had an idea that Claire looked unhappy and anxious.
Bram knew very well that he could get an invitation back to the farm at any moment by putting himself in the way of Theodore. But he would not do this; he would not go back without the invitation, or at least the consent of Claire herself.
So he avoided Theodore, and went up and down the hill with an outward air of placid unconcern until the evening before the day when he was to dine at Mr Cornthwaite’s.
It was a pleasant October evening; there was a touch of frost in the air, which was bracing and pleasant after the heavy atmosphere of the town. When he got close to the farmhouse, he saw Claire crossing the farmyard on her way to the kitchen door, with a heavy load of wood in her arms. It seemed to him that her face looked sad and worn, that odd little face which had so little prettiness in repose except for those who knew the possibilities for fun, for tenderness, that lay dormant in her bright brown eyes.
He hesitated a moment, and then went quickly through the gate.
“May I help you, Miss Claire?”
She did not start or pretend to be surprised. She had seen him coming.
She stopped.
“You know what I told you, that you were not to come here again,” she said severely.
But it was severity which did not frighten him.
“Well,” he began humbly, “I’ve kept away nearly a fortnight.”
“But I said you were never to come again.”
“I don’t think you can have meant it though. You would have given me some reason if you had.”
Claire frowned and tapped her little foot impatiently on the ground.
“Oh, you know, you must know. You are not stupid, Mr. Elshaw.”
“I’m beginning to think I am,” said Bram, as he began to take her load from her with gentle insistence.
It amused and touched him to note how glad she was, in spite of her assumed displeasure, to give her work up to him in the old way. He opened the kitchen door, and took the wood into the scullery, where Joan was at work, just as he used to do for her, and then went through the kitchen slowly on his way out again.
Claire was standing by the big deal table.
“Thank you, thank you very much,” said she.
But her tone was not so bright as usual; she was more subdued altogether—a quiet, demure, downcast little girl. Bram, making his way with leaden feet to the outer door, wanted to say something, but hardly knew what. He hoped that she would stop him before he reached the door, but he was disappointed. He put his hand upon the latch and paused. Still she said nothing. He opened the door, and glanced back at her. Although the look she gave him in return had nothing of invitation in it, he felt that there was something in her sad little face which made it impossible to leave her like that.
“Miss Claire,” said he, and he was surprised to find that his voice was husky and not so loud as he expected, “mayn’t I finish the dressing-table?”
“If you like.”
Her voice was as husky as his own.
Without another word he set about the work, found the saw, which, by-the-bye, was his own, the wood, and the rest of the things he wanted, and in less than ten minutes was at work in the old way, and Claire, fetching her needlework, was busy by the fire, just as she used to be. She was too proud to own it; but Bram saw quite plainly that this quiet re-establishment of the old situation made her almost as happy as it did him.
“Things going all right, Miss Claire?” asked he as he took up his plane.
“No, of course they’re not. They’re going all wrong, as usual. More wrong than usual. Johnson takes more advantage than ever of there being nobody to look after him properly.”
Johnson was the farm bailiff, and he had worked all the better for the suggestions sharp-sighted Bram had made to Claire. Since Bram’s banishment Johnson had been rampant again. Claire was quite conscious of this, and she turned to another subject, to allow him no opportunity of applying her comments.
“And you—at least I needn’t ask. You always get on all right, don’t you?”
“I shall come to grief to-morrow,” answered Bram soberly. “I’ve got to go up to the Park to dinner. What do you think of that, Miss Claire? And to wear a black coat and a stiff shirt-front, just like a gentleman! Won’t they all laugh at me when my back’s turned, and talk about daws’ and peacocks’ feathers? It’s all Mr. Christian’s fault, so I suppose you will say it’s all right?”
“It is all right, Bram,” said Claire gravely; “and they won’t laugh at you. They can’t. You’re too modest. And too clever besides.” She paused, dropped her work in her lap, and looked intently at the fire. “Is it true that you’re going to be married, Bram?” she presently asked abruptly.
“Married! Me! Lord, no. Who told you such a thing as that?” And Bram stood up and looked at her, letting his plane lie idle.
“Papa said he thought you were. He said you were engaged to a girl who lived in the country. You never told me about her.”
“And is that why you sent me away?”
At his tone of dismay Claire burst out laughing with her old hilarity.
“Oh, no, oh, no. I sent you away, if you must know, because I had heard that you were to go up and dine at Holme Park, and because I knew that it would be better for you to be able to say there that you didn’t visit us.”
“Is that what you call a reason?” asked Bram scornfully, angrily.
“Yes, that’s one reason.”
“Well, well, haven’t you any better ones?”
“Perhaps. But I shan’t tell you any more, so you need not ask me for them. I want to know something about this girl you’re engaged to.”
“Not engaged,” said Bram stolidly.
“Well, in love with then? I want to know something about her. I think it very strange that I never heard anything about her before. What is she like?”
“Well, she’s like other girls,” said Bram. “She is much like nine out of every ten girls you meet.”
“Really? I shouldn’t have thought you’d care for a girl like that, Bram.”
“You must care for what you can get in this world,” said Bram sententiously.
“Well, tell me something more. Is she tall or short, fair or dark? Has she blue eyes, or gray ones, or brown?”
Bram looked thoughtful.
“Well, she’s neither tall nor short. She’s not very dark, nor yet very fair. And her eyes are a sort of drab color, I think.”
“You don’t mean it, Bram? I suppose you think it’s no business of mine?”
“That’s it, Miss Claire.”
“I don’t believe in the existence of this girl with the drab-colored eyes, Bram.”
Claire had jumped up, and darted across to the table in her old impulsive way; and now she stood, her eyes dancing with suppressed mirth, just as she used to stand in the good old days before the rupture of her own making.
Bram was delighted at the change.
“Well, I won’t say whether she exists or not,” replied he with a smile lurking about his own mouth; “and I don’t choose to have my love affairs pried into by anybody, I don’t care who. How would you like people to pry into yours?”
She grew suddenly grave, and he wished he had not said it.
“There’s no concealment about mine, Bram,” she said quietly.
“You’re going to marry Mr. Christian?”
“I suppose so.”
Why did she speak so quietly, so wistfully? The question troubled Bram, who did not dare to say any more upon a subject which she seemed anxious to avoid as much as she could. And the talk languished until Claire heard her father’s footsteps coming down the stairs.
“Now go,” said she imperiously. “I don’t want you to meet papa. And you mustn’t come again. And you mustn’t tell them up at Holme Park that you were here this evening.”
Bram frowned.
“Miss Claire,” said he, “I am a deal prouder of coming here than I am of going up to t’ Park. And if I’m to choose between here and t’ Park, I choose to come here. But I shall be let to do as I please, I can promise you. But, of course, if you don’t want me here, I won’t come.”
“Good-night,” said she for answer.
And she hurried him out of the house, and shut the door upon him in time to prevent her father, who was in the passage outside, from meeting him.
Bram went up to the Park on the following evening in much better spirits than if he had not had that reassuring interview with Claire. He still felt rather troubled as to the prospects of the marriage between her and her cousin, but he hoped that he might hear something about it in the family circle at Holme Park.
The ordeal of the evening proved less trying than the promoted clerk had expected—up to the certain point.
With the ladies of the family he had already become acquainted. Mrs. Cornthwaite was a tiresome elderly lady of small mental capacity and extremely conservative notions, who alternately patronized Bram and betrayed her horror at the recollection of his former station. The good lady was a perpetual thorn in the side of her husband, whom she irritated by silly interruptions and sillier comments on his remarks, and to her daughter, who had to be ever on the alert to ward off the effects of her mother’s imbecility.
The daughter, Hester, was a thoroughly good creature, who had been worried into a pessimistic view of life, and into a belief that much “good” could be done in the world by speaking her mind with frank rudeness upon all occasions. The consequence of these peculiarities in the ladies of the household was that to spend an evening in their society was a torture from which all but the bravest shrank, although every one acknowledged that they were the best-intentioned people in the world.
The only guests besides Bram were Mr. and Mrs. Hibbs and their only daughter, whom Bram knew already by name and by sight.
Mr. Hibbs was a coal-owner, a man of large means, and a great light in evangelical circles. He was a tall, sallow man, with thin whiskers and a deliberate manner of speaking, as if he were always in the reading-desk, where on Sundays he often read the lessons for the day. His wife was a comfortable-looking creature, with a round face and a round figure, and a habit of gently nodding her head after any remark of her husband’s, as if to emphasize its wisdom.
As for Minnie, it struck Bram, as he made her the bow he had been practising, that she exactly answered to the description he had given Claire of the supposed lady of his heart. There was only this difference, that she was distinguished from most young women of her age by the exceedingly light color of her eyebrows and eyelashes. She appeared to have none until you had the opportunity for a very close inspection.
She had quite a reputation for saintliness, which had reached even Bram’s ears. Her whole delight was in Sunday-school work and in district visiting, and the dissipations connected with these occupations.
She was, however, very cheerful and talkative during dinner; and Bram was surprised to see how very attentive Christian, who sat by her side, was to this particularly unattractive young person, who was the antithesis of all he admired.
For Christian’s good nature did not generally go the length of making him more than barely civil to plain women.
Bram found Miss Cornthwaite kind and easy to get on with. She was a straightforward, practical woman, on the far side of thirty, and this grave, simple-mannered young man, with the observant gray eyes, interested and pleased her. She tried to intercept the glances of horror which Mrs. Cornthwaite occasionally threw at him, and the terrible explanations with which the elder lady condescendingly favored him.
Thus, when the Riviera was mentioned, Mrs. Cornthwaite threw him the good-natured aside, audible all over the room—
“The shore of the Mediterranean, you know, the sea that lies between France and Italy, and—and those places!”
And when some one used the word “bizarre,” Mrs. Cornthwaite smiled at Bram again, and again whispered loudly—
“Quaint, odd, you know. It’s a French word.”
“Mamma, you needn’t explain. Mr. Elshaw speaks better French than we do, I’m quite sure,” said Hester good-naturedly enough, though she had better have made no comment.
But Bram said at once, as if grateful to the old lady—
“No, Miss Cornthwaite, I can read and write French pretty well, but I can’t speak it. And when I hear a French word spoken I don’t at once catch its meaning.”
“There, you see, Hester, I was right. I knew Mr. Elshaw would be glad of a little help,” said Mrs. Cornthwaite triumphantly.
“Very glad, indeed,” assented Bram, quickly interposing as Hester was about to continue the argument with her mother.
It was not until the ladies had left the room, and Bram, with an amused glance at Christian, had taken a cigarette, that the real ordeal of the evening came for the young clerk in a shape he had never expected.
“I suppose you hardly know, Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite with a preliminary cough, as if to show that he was about to make an announcement of importance, “why I was so particularly anxious for you to dine with us this evening?” Bram looked interested, as, indeed, he felt. “You are aware, Elshaw, of the enormously high opinion of your talents which my son has always held. He now proposes that you should go to London to represent us in a rather delicate negotiation, in place of himself. And as the reason is that he will himself be occupied with pleasanter matters than those of dry business, I thought it would interest you to be present on the occasion of the first announcement of the pleasanter matter in question. It is not less than a wedding——”
“A wedding, sir?” Bram’s face clouded with perplexity.
“Yes, Elshaw. You have had the honor of being introduced to the young lady this evening. My son has been fortunate enough to obtain the heart and a promise of the hand of Miss Minnie Hibbs.”
Bram looked steadily at Christian. He dared not speak.
Christian Cornthwaite pretended to be occupied in conversation with his future father-in-law, while Mr. Cornthwaite, senior, in his blandest and most good-humored tones, made the announcement of his son’s intended marriage to the astonished Bram.
But Christian’s attention was not so deeply engaged that he could not take note of what was happening, and he noticed the dead silence with which Bram received the announcement, and presently stole a furtive look at the face of the young clerk.
Bram caught the look, and replied to it with a steady stare. Chris turned his eyes away, but that look of Bram’s fascinated him, worried him. In truth, it had been his fear of what Elshaw would say, even more than his own disinclination, which had kept him hovering on the brink of his engagement with Miss Hibbs for so long.
And now he felt that he would have preferred some outbreak on Bram’s part to this stony silence.
“A wedding, Sir?” Bram’s face clouded with perplexity.—Page 70.
Even Josiah Cornthwaite was puzzled by Bram’s reception of the news. The young man seemed absolutely unmoved by the fresh proof of his employer’s confidence given in the information that he was to be sent to London on important business. He grew even uneasy as Bram’s silence continued, or was broken only by the briefest and coldest of answers. He looked from his son to Bram, and perceived that there was some understanding between them. And his fears grew apace. He shortened the stay in the dining-room, therefore, and letting Mr. Hibbs and Chris enter the drawing-room together, he took Bram up the stairs, with the excuse of showing him the view of the town from one of the windows.
Bram was shrewd enough to guess that he was to be “pumped.”
“This news about my son’s intended marriage seems to have taken you by surprise, Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite as they stood together looking out on the blurred lights of the town below.
“Well, sir, it has,” admitted Bram briefly.
“But you know he is twenty-six, an age at which a young man who can afford it ought to be thinking of marrying.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You thought, perhaps, that such a volatile fellow would be scarcely likely to make such a sensible choice as he has done?” went on Josiah with an air of bland indulgence, but with some anxiety in his eyes.
There was a pause.
“That was what you thought, eh?” repeated Mr. Cornthwaite more sharply.
Bram Elshaw frowned.
“Sir, may I speak out?” asked he bluntly.
“Certainly.”
“Well, then, sir, I don’t think it is a wise choice—if it was his choice at all, and not yours, sir?”
Now, Mr. Cornthwaite, while giving his permission to speak out, had not expected such uncompromising frankness as this. He was taken aback. He stammered as he began to answer—
“Why, why, what do you mean? Could there be a more sensible choice than such a lady as Miss Hibbs? A good daughter, not frivolous, or vain, or flighty; a sensible, affectionate girl, devoted to her parents and to good works. Just such a girl, in fact, as can be depended upon to make a thoroughly good, devoted wife.”
“For some sort of men, sir. But not for a man like Mr. Christian,” returned Bram with decision.
His blood was up, and he spoke with as much firmness as, and with more fire than, he had ever before shown to his employer.
Mr. Cornthwaite, who had grounds for feeling uneasy, was lenient, patient, attentive, curious.
“Why, don’t you know, Elshaw,” said he sharply, “that a man should mate with his opposite if he wants to be happy? That grave and serious men like frivolous wives; but that your lively young fellow likes a sober-minded wife to keep his house in order?”
“Sir, if it’s Mr. Christian’s choice, there’s an end of it,” said Bram brusquely.
“Of course it’s his choice, none the less, but rather the more, that it meets not only with my approval, but with that of the ladies of my family,” said Mr. Cornthwaite pompously.
Yet still he was curious, still unsatisfied. And still Bram said nothing.
“Believe me,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on impressively, “a man is none the less amenable to the influence of a good wife for having sown his wild oats first. With a wife like the one I—no, I mean he has chosen,” a faint smile flickered over Bram’s mouth at this correction, “my son will settle down into a model husband and father. You want the two elements, seriousness on the one side, good-humored gayety on the other, to make a happy marriage. Why, I ought to know, for these are exactly the principles on which I married myself.”
Mr. Cornthwaite uttered these words with an air of bland assurance, which, he thought, must carry conviction. But his young hearer, unfortunately, had heard enough about the domestic life at Holme Park to know that the “sensible marriage” on which Mr. Cornthwaite prided himself had by no means resulted in domestic peace. The bickerings of the ill-matched pair were, in fact, a constant source of misery to all the household, and were used freely by Chris as an excuse for his neglect of home.
Bram, therefore, received this information with courtesy, but without comment. Mr. Cornthwaite kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the young man, and found himself at last obliged to put a direct question.
“You had, I suppose, expected him to make a different sort of choice?”
“Very different, sir.”
“Some one, perhaps, whom you would have considered better suited to him?”
“Much better suited, sir.”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face clouded.
“Whom do you mean?”
Bram only hesitated a moment. He could do Christian no harm now by telling the truth; and he had a lingering hope that he might bring old Mr. Cornthwaite to see the matter with his own eyes.
“Sir,” said he, “have you never suspected your son of any attachment, any serious attachment, to a lady as good as Miss Hibbs is said to be, and a great deal more attractive?”
Bram felt as he said this that he had lapsed into the copybook style of conversation which Chris had pointed out as one of his besetting sins. But he could not help it. He felt the need of some dignity in speaking words which he felt to be momentous.
Mr. Cornthwaite looked deeply annoyed.
“I have not,” said he shortly. And again he asked—“Whom do you mean?”
“Miss Claire Biron, sir,” answered Bram.
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face darkened still more.
“What!” cried he in agitation which belied his words. “You believe that my son ever gave that girl a serious thought? And that the daughter of such a father could be a proper match for my son? Absurd! Absurd! Of course, you are a very young man; you have no knowledge of the world. But I should have thought your native shrewdness would have prevented your falling into such a mistake as that.”
Bram said nothing. Mr. Cornthwaite, in spite of the scornful tone he had used, was evidently more anxious than ever to learn whatever Bram had to tell on the subject. After a short silence, therefore, he asked in a quieter tone—
“How came you to get such a notion into your head, Elshaw?”
“I knew that they were fond of each other, sir; and I knew that Miss Biron was a young lady of character, and what you call tact.”
“Tact! Humbug!” said Mr. Cornthwaite shortly. “She is an artful, designing girl, and she and her father have done all in their power to entangle my son. But I foresaw his danger, and now I flatter myself I have saved him. You, I see, have been taken in by the girl’s little mincing ways, just as my son was in danger of being. But I warn you not to have anything to do with them. They are an artful, scheming pair, both father and daughter, and it would be ruin for any man to become connected with them—ruin, I say.”
And he stared anxiously into Bram’s face.
“Has she led you on too?” he asked presently, with great abruptness.
Bram’s face flushed.
“No, sir. She has forbidden me to come to her father’s house.”
“Ah! A ruse, a trick to encourage my son!” cried the old gentleman fiercely. “I wish he were safely married. I shall do all in my power to hurry it on. How often have you seen him about there? You live near, I believe?” said he curtly.
“I have seen him now and then, not so very often lately,” answered Bram.
“Ah, well, you won’t see him there much longer. Miss Hibbs will see to that.”
“Sir, you are wrong,” cried Bram, whose head and heart were on fire at these accusations against Claire. “Miss Hibbs may be a good girl, as girls go. I don’t know” (Bram’s English gave way here) “nothing against her. But I do know you don’t give your son a chance when you make him marry a sack o’ meal like that, and him loving a flesh-and-blood woman like Miss Biron! Why, sir, ask yourself whether it’s in nature that he should settle down to the psalm-singing that would suit her, so as to be happy and satisfied to give up his wild ways? Put it to him point blank, sir, which he’d do of his own free will, and see what answer you’ll get from him!”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Cornthwaite hastily, “and I’m exceedingly sorry to find you so much more gullible than I had expected, Elshaw. Is it possible you didn’t observe how this young woman ran after my son? Coming to this house on every possible occasion with some excuse or other?”
“That was her father’s fault, sir,” retorted Bram hotly.
“Probably he had something to do with it; but she fell in with his wishes with remarkable readiness, readiness which no modest girl would have shown in the circumstances. She must have seen she was not welcomed with any warmth by the heads of the household at least.”
The blood rushed to Bram’s forehead. The idea of poor little Claire creeping unwillingly to the great house on one of her father’s miserable errands, only to be snubbed and coldly received by every one, struck him like a stab.
“Surely, sir, there was no place in the world where she had so good a right to expect to be well received as here?” said he, with difficulty controlling the emotion he felt. “A young girl, doing her best to fulfil every duty, with no friends, no mother, no father worthy of the name. And you are her relations; here there were women, ladies, who knew all about her, and who might be expected to sympathize with her difficulties and her troubles!”
Bram, who spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with nice care, but uttering them with deep feeling, paused, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s face. But there was no mercy in the fiery black eyes, or about the cold, handsome mouth.
“They would have shown her every sympathy,” said he coldly, “if she had not abused the privilege of intimacy by trying to ensnare my son.”
“Mr. Cornthwaite,” interrupted Bram scornfully, “do you really think Mr. Christian ever waited for a girl to run after him? Why, for every time Miss Biron’s been up here—sent here by her father, mind—he’s been three or four or five times down at the farm!”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s eyes blazed. By a quick movement he betrayed that this was just what he had wanted to know. His face clouded more than before.
“Ah!” said he shortly, “that’s what I’ve been told. Well, it’s the girl’s own doing. If she’s got herself into a scrape, she has no one but herself to thank for it, no one. Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?”
He led the way downstairs, and Bram followed in dead silence.
A horrible, sickly fear had seized his heart; he could not but understand the imputation Mr. Cornthwaite had made, accompanied as it was by a look, the significance of which there was no mistaking.
Claire, poor little helpless Claire, the cherished idol of his imagination and of his heart, lay under the most cruel suspicion which can assail a woman, the suspicion of having held her honor too lightly.
Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare mention of this suspicion in connection with the girl he worshipped. The next moment he cast the thought behind him as utterly base, and felt that he had disgraced himself and her by the momentary harboring of it.
But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated the smug, elderly gentleman, who troubled himself not in the least about the helpless, friendless girl who loved his son, and whose only thought was to hurry his son into a heartless marriage in order to “save him from” the danger of his repairing his supposed error.
In these circumstances, Bram lost all self-consciousness, all remembrance of his unaccustomed dress, of his attitudes, of his awkwardness, and entered the drawing-room utterly absorbed in thoughts of Claire. Old Mrs. Cornthwaite, who was fumbling about with a lapful of feminine trifles, smelling-bottle, handkerchief, spectacle-case, dropped one of them, and he hastened to pick it up.
“Thank you,” said she, with a gracious, good-humored smile, “you are more attentive than any of the grand folk.”
“Mamma,” cried Hester in fidgety exasperation. And good-naturedly fearing that he might have been hurt by her mother’s lack of tact, she opened the old-fashioned, but not unhelpful, album of photographs, which lay on a table near her, and asked him if he cared for pictures of Swiss scenery.
“Not much, Miss Hester,” said Bram.
But he went up to the table, encouraged by her kind manners, by the honest look in her eyes, in the hope that he might find a supporter in her of the cause he had at heart.
“But I should like to see some photographs of you and Mr. Christian, if you have any.”
She opened another album, smiling as she did so, and offering him a chair near her, which he immediately took.
“I never show these unless I am asked,” she said. “Family photographs I always think uninteresting, except to the family.”
“And to those interested in the family,” amended Bram. “You see, Miss Hester, there’s hardly another thing in the world I care about so much. That’s only natural, isn’t it, after what I’ve been treated like at their hands.”
He was conscious that his English was getting doubtful under the influence of the emotion which he could not master. But Miss Cornthwaite seemed, of course, not to notice this. She was extremely well disposed towards this frank young man with the earnest eyes, the heavy, obstinate mouth, and the long, straight chin, which gave so much character to his pale face.
“Christian always speaks of you with such boyish delight, as if he had discovered you bound hand and foot in the midst of cannibals who wanted to eat you,” said she laughing.
“So he did, Miss Hester,” answered Bram gravely, almost harshly.
He could not speak, could not think of Chris just now without betraying something of the emotion the name aroused in him. And he glanced angrily across to the corner where Chris was sitting beside prim little Miss Hibbs, who was giggling gently at his remarks, but clasping her hands tightly together, and keeping her arms pinned closely to her sides, as if she felt that she was unbending more than was meet, and that she must atone for a little surface hilarity by this penitential attitude.
Hester Cornthwaite noticed the glance thrown by Bram, and felt curious.
“I am very glad he is going to be married,” she said quickly, with an intuition that he would not agree with her. Bram looked her full in the face in a sudden and aggressive manner.
“Why are you glad?” he asked abruptly.
She was rather disconcerted for a moment.
“Why? Oh, because I think it will be good for him, that he will be happier, that he will settle down,” she answered with a little confusion.
Surely he must know as well as she did that there were many reasons for wishing Chris to grow more steady. A little prim suggestion of this feeling was noticeable in her tone.
“I don’t think he would settle down, if so he was to marry a girl he didn’t care for,” said Bram bluntly. “And I should have thought you would agree with me, understanding Mr. Christian as you do, Miss Hester.”
Miss Cornthwaite drew her lips rather primly together.
“He does care for her, of course,” said she rather tartly, “else why should he marry her?”
Bram smiled, and gave her a glance of something like scorn.
“There are a good many reasons why he should marry to please Mr. Cornthwaite, your father, when he can’t marry to please himself.”
“Why can’t he? Who does he want to marry?” asked Miss Cornthwaite quickly.
“Why, Miss Biron, Miss Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm,” replied honest Bram promptly.
Hester’s thin and rather wizened face flushed. She frowned; she looked annoyed. “Dear me! I never heard anything about it,” she said testily. “And I can hardly think he would wish to do anything so very unwise. Christian isn’t stupid, though he’s rather volatile.”
“Stupid! No, indeed. That he should want to marry Miss Biron is no proof of stupidity. Where could he find a nicer wife? How could you expect him to sit and look contentedly at Miss Hibbs when there is such a girl as Miss Biron within ten miles?”
Hester looked more prim than ever.
“You seem very enthusiastic, Mr. Elshaw. Pray, what have you to say about Mr. Biron?”
“Well, Mr. Christian wouldn’t have to marry him.”
“That is just what he would have to do,” retorted she quickly. “Mr. Biron would take good care of that. Christian would never be able to shake him off.”
“Well,” said Bram, “he can’t shake him off now, can he? So he would be no worse off.”
“Now, seriously, Mr. Elshaw, would you like to have such a father-in-law yourself?”
Bram’s heart leapt up. But he did not tell the young lady that he only wished he had the chance. Instead of that, he answered in a particularly grave and judicial tone—
“If I had, I’d soon bring him to reason. He’s not stupid either, you see. I’d make an arrangement with him, and I’d make him keep to it. And if he didn’t keep to it——”
“And he certainly wouldn’t. What then?”
“Well, then perhaps I’d get rid of him some way, Miss Hester.”
“I certainly shouldn’t advise my brother to run the risk of having to do that, and all for a girl much too volatile to make him a good wife. Why, she is nearly half French.”
Bram looked at her quickly.
“Surely, Miss Hester, you who have travelled and been about the world, don’t think the worse of a lady for that?”
Miss Cornthwaite reddened, but she stuck to her guns.
“I hope I am above any silly insular prejudice,” she said coldly. “But I certainly think the French character too frivolous for an Englishman’s wife. Why, when Claire comes here, though she will sob as if her heart was breaking one moment at the humiliations her father exposes her to, she will be laughing heartily the next.”
“Poor child, poor child! Thank heaven she can,” said Bram with solemn tenderness which made Miss Cornthwaite just a little ashamed of herself. “And don’t you think a temper like that would come in handy for Mr. Christian’s wife, as well as for Mr. Biron’s daughter?”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Miss Cornthwaite very frigidly, as she stretched out her hand quickly for a fresh book to show him.
Poor Claire had no partisan here.
Now, Christian felt throughout the evening that Bram was avoiding his eyes, saving himself up, as it were, for an attack of eye and tongue, a combat in which Chris would have all he could do to hold his own.
Christian was fond of Bram, fonder even, perhaps, than Bram, with his honest admiration and indulgence, was of him. The steady, earnest character of the sturdy man of the people, with his straightforward simplicity, his shrewdness, and his blunt outspokenness when his opinion was asked, had constant attraction for the less simple, but more amiable, son of the owner of the works. He wanted to put himself right with Bram, and to do it in such a way as to put Bram in the wrong.
He tried to get an opportunity of a chat with the sullen-looking young clerk, who, however, avoided this chance more cleverly than Chris sought it.
At the close of the evening, when Bram had reeled off without a mistake the elaborate speech of thanks to Mrs. Cornthwaite which he had prepared beforehand, he contrived very cleverly to slip out of the house while Chris was occupied with the perfunctory attentions demanded by his fiancée. And with the start he thus obtained, he contrived to reach the foot of Hassel Hill before he became aware that he was being followed.
“Hallo!” cried out a bright voice, which he knew to be that of Chris. “Hallo!”
Bram did not answer, did not slacken his pace, but went straight on up the hill, leaving Chris to follow or not as he pleased.
He had reached the outer gate of Duke’s Farm before Chris came in sight, toiling up the steep road in silence after him. Then the pursuer called out again. Somebody besides Bram recognized the voice, for a minute later Bram saw a light struck in an upper window of the farm. The window was thrown up, and somebody looked out. Bram, however, stalked upwards in silence still.
He had reached the first of the row of cottages on the top of the hill, when Chris, making a last spurt, overtook him, and seized him by the arm.
“Bram, Bram, what’s the matter with you? I’ve been panting and puffing after you for a thousand miles, and I can’t get you to turn that wooden head of yours. Come, I know what’s wrong with you, and I mean to have it out with you at once, and have done with it. So come along.”
He had already hooked his arm within that of the unwilling Bram, who held himself stiffly, stubbornly, with an air which seemed to say—“Well, if you want it, you can have it.”
And so, the one eager, defiant, impetuous, the other stolid and taciturn, the two men walked past the rows of mean cottages, past Bram’s own lodgings, and up to the very summit of the hill, where the ruined, patched-up, and re-ruined mansion was, and the disused coal shaft with its towering chimney.
“And now,” cried Chris, suddenly stopping and swinging Bram round to face him in the darkness, “we are coming to an understanding.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Now, don’t ‘sir’ me, but tell me if you’re not ashamed of yourself——”
“Me ashamed of myself! I like that!” cried Bram with a short laugh. “But that’s the way with you gentlemen. If you please, we’ll not have any talk about this, because honor and honesty don’t mean the same thing to you as to me.”
“That’s a nasty one,” retorted Chris in his usual airy tone. “Now, look here, Bram, although you’re so entirely unreasonable that you don’t deserve it, I’m going to condescend to argue with you, and to prove to you the absurdity of your conduct in treating me like this.”
“Like what, Mr Christian?”
“Oh, you know. Don’t let’s waste time. You are angry because I’m marrying Miss Hibbs——”
“No,” said Bram obstinately. “I’m not angry with you for marrying Miss Hibbs. I’m angry because you’re not marrying the girl you love, the girl you’ve taught to love you.”
“Same thing, Bram. I can’t marry them both, you know.”
Bram shook his arm free angrily.
“Mr. Christian, we won’t talk about this no more,” said he in a voice which was hoarse, and strained, and unlike his own. “I might say things I shouldn’t like to. Let me go, sir; let me go home, and do you go home and leave me alone.”
“No, I won’t leave you till we’ve threshed the matter out. Be reasonable, Bram. You know as well as I do that I’m dependent on my father——”
“You knew that all along. But you said, you told me——”
“I told you that I wanted to marry my cousin Claire. Well, so I did. But my father wouldn’t hear of it; apart from the objection he has to the marriage of cousins——”
“That’s new, that is,” put in Bram shortly.
“Apart from that, I say, he wouldn’t have anything to say to the match for a dozen reasons. You know that. And, knowing how I’m placed, it is highly ridiculous of you to make all this fuss, especially as you, no doubt, intend to use the opportunity to cut in yourself.”
His tone changed, and Bram detected real pique, real jealousy in these last words.
Bram heard this in dead silence.
“You do, eh?” went on Chris more sharply.
“No, Mr. Christian, I do not. I couldn’t come after you in a girl’s heart.”
“Why not? You are too modest, Bram.”
Perhaps Chris flattered himself that he spoke in his usual tone; but an unpleasant, jeering note was clearly discernible to Bram Elshaw’s ears. Christian went on in a more jarring tone than ever.
“Or have you been so far penetrated with the maxims of the Sunday-school that you would not allow a girl a little harmless flirtation?”
“Flirtation!” echoed Bram angrily. “It was more than that, Mr. Christian, more than that—to her!”
“It was nothing more than that,” said Chris emphatically. “I have done the girl no harm.”
Before the words were out of his mouth Bram had sprung forward with the savagery of a wild animal. In the obscurity of the cloudy night his eyes gleamed, and with set teeth and clenched fists he came close to Christian, staring into his eyes, stammering in his vehemence.
“If you had,” whispered he almost inaudibly, but with passion which infected Christian and awed him into silence, “If you had done her—any—harm, I’d ha’ strangled you, Mr. Christian. I’d ha’ gone down to t’ works, when you was there, and I’d ha’ taken one o’ t’ leather bands o’ t’ wheels, and I’d ha’ twisted it round your neck, Mr. Christian, and I’d ha’ pulled, and pulled, till I saw t’ eyes start out o’ your head, and t’ blood come bursting out o’ your mouth. And I’d ha’ held you, and tightened it, and tightened it till the breath was out o’ your body!”
When he had finished, Bram still stood close to Christian, glaring at him with wild, bloodshot eyes. Christian tried to laugh, but he turned suddenly away, almost staggering. He felt sick and faint. It was Bram who recovered himself first. He confronted Chris quickly, looking ashamed, penitent, abashed.
“Ah shouldn’t ha’ said what Ah did,” said he, just in his old voice, as if he had been again a mere hand at the works. “It was not for me to say it, owing what Ah do to you, Mr. Christian. But—by—I meant it all the same.” And again the strange new Bram flashed out for a moment. “And I’m thinking, Mr. Christian,” he went on, resuming the more refined tones of his later development, “that it will be best for me to leave the works altogether, for it can never be the same for you and me after to-night. You can’t forgive me for what I’ve said, and—well, I feel I should be more comfortable away, if it’s the same to you.”
There was a pause, hardly lasting more than a few seconds, and then Chris spoke, with a hoarse and altered voice, but in nearly his ordinary tones—
“But it’s not the same to me or to us, not at all the same, Bram. My delinquencies, real or imaginary, cannot be allowed to come between my father and the best clerk he ever had, the man who is to make up for my business shortcomings. So—so if you please, Elshaw, I’ll take my chance of the strangling, though, mind you, I should have thought you might have discovered some more refined mode of making away with me, something just as effective, and—and nicer to look at.”
His voice was tremulous, and he did not look at Bram, though he succeeded pretty well in maintaining a light tone. Bram laughed shortly.
“My refinement’s only skin deep, you see, Mr. Christian. I told you so. The raw Sheffielder’s very near the top. And in these fine clothes, too!”
He glanced down rather scornfully at the brand-new overcoat, and at the glazed expanse of unaccustomed shirt-front which showed underneath.
There was another pause. Both the young men were trembling violently, and found it pretty hard to keep up talk at this placid level of commonplace. Quite suddenly Chris said—“Well, good-night, Elshaw,” and started on his way back to Holme Park at a good pace.
Bram drew a long breath. He had just gone through an experience so hideous, so horrible, that he felt as if he had been seared, branded with a hot iron. For the first time he realized now what he had been simple enough not to suspect before, that Christian had never for a moment seriously entertained the idea of marrying Claire.
And yet he was in love with her! Bram, loving Claire himself, was clear-sighted and not to be deceived on this point. Christian loved her still enough to be jealous of any other man’s feelings for her. He had betrayed this fact in every word, in every tone. If, then, he loved her and did not mean to marry her, he, the irresistible, the spoilt child of the sex, what right had he to love her, to make her love him? What motive had he in passing so much of his time at Duke’s Farm?
And there darted into poor Bram’s heart a jealous, mad fear that was like a poison in his blood. He clenched his teeth, he shook his fists in the air; again the wild, fierce passion which had swept over him at Christian’s stabbing words seized him and possessed him.