He turned quickly, as if to start in pursuit of Chris, when a low sound, a cry, stopped him, turned him as if into stone.
For, at a little distance from him, between where he stood and the retreating figure half-way down the hill, stood Claire.
An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting towards him.
Dark as the night was, the moon being so thickly obscured by clouds that she never showed her face except through a flying film of vapor, Claire seemed to detect something alarming in Bram’s attitude, something which caused her to pause as she was running up the hill towards him.
At last she stopped altogether, and they stood looking each at the figure of the other, motionless, and without speaking.
As for Bram, he felt that if he tried to utter a single word he should choke. He could not understand or analyze his own feeling; he did not well know whether his faith in her innocence and purity remained intact. All he knew, all he felt, as he looked at the little creature who seemed so pitifully small and slight as she stood alone on the hillside, wrapt tightly in a long cloak, but shivering in the night air, was that his whole heart was sore for her, that he ached for pity and distress, that he did not know what he should say, what he could do, to comfort and console her.
At last she seemed to take courage, and came a few steps nearer.
“Mr. Elshaw!”
“Yes, Miss Claire.”
She started, and no wonder. For his voice was as much changed as were the sentiments he felt for her.
An exclamation escaped his lips. She ran panting towards him.—Page 86.
She came a little nearer still, with hesitating feet, before she spoke again.
“Was that—wasn’t that my cousin, Christian Cornthwaite, who went away when he saw me?”
It was Bram’s turn to start. So that was the reason of the sudden flight of Chris! He had seen and recognized the figure of Claire as she came up the hill behind Bram.
“Yes, Miss Claire.”
Another pause. She was near enough now to peer up into his face with some chance of discerning the expression he wore. It was one of anxiety, of tenderness. She drew back a little.
“I—I heard him call—I heard a voice call out ‘Hallo!’” she explained, “and I jumped up, and looked out of the window, and I saw you, and I saw my cousin following you. And you would not answer him. But he still went on. And—and I was frightened; I thought something dreadful had happened, that you had quarrelled; so I got up and came up after you. And I saw——”
She stopped. Bram said nothing. But he turned his head away, unable to look at her. Her voice, now that she spoke under the influence of some strong emotion, played upon his heartstrings like the wind upon an Æolian harp. He made a movement as if to bid her go on with her story.
“I saw,” she added in a lower voice, “I saw you spring upon him as if you were going to knock him down. You had been quarrelling. I’m sure you had. And I was frightened. I screamed out, but you didn’t hear me, either of you; you were too full of what you were saying to each other. And it was about me; I know it was about me. Now, wasn’t it?”
Bram was astonished.
“What makes you think that, Miss Claire? Did you hear anything?”
“Ah!” cried she quickly. “That’s a confession. It was about me you were quarreling. Can’t you tell me all about it at once?”
But Bram did not dare. He moved restlessly from the one foot to the other, and suddenly said—
“You’re cold; you’re shivering. You’ll catch an awful chill if you stay up here. Just go down back to the farm, Miss Claire, like a good girl”—and unconsciously his tone assumed the caressing accents one uses to a favorite child—“and you shall hear all you want to know in the morning.”
But she stood her ground, making an impatient movement with one foot.
“No, Bram, you must tell me now. What was it all about?”
He hesitated. Even if he were able to put her off now, which seemed unlikely, she must hear the truth some day. It was only selfishness, the horror of himself giving her pain, which urged him to be reticent now. So he said to himself, doggedly preparing for his avowal. His anger against the Cornthwaites, his fear of hurting her, combined to make his tone sullen and almost fierce as he answered—
“Well, Miss Claire, I was angry wi’ him because I thought he hadn’t behaved as he ought.”
There was a pause. It seemed to Bram that she guessed, with feminine quickness, what was coming. She spoke, after another of the short pauses with which their conversation was broken up, in a very low and studiously-restrained tone—
“How? To whom, Bram?”
“To—to you, Miss Claire,” answered Bram with blunt desperation.
Another silence.
“Why, what has he done to me?” asked she at last.
“He has gone and got engaged—to be married—to somebody else; that’s what he’s done, there!”
Bram was fiercer than ever.
“Well, and what of that?”
He could not see her face, and her tone was one of careless bravado. But Bram was not deceived. He clenched his fists till the nails went deep into his flesh. It cut him in the heart to have to tell her this news, to feel what she must be suffering. He answered as quietly as he could.
“Nothing, but that I think he ought—he ought——”
“You think he ought to have told me. Oh, I guessed, I guessed what was going to happen,” replied Claire rapidly in an off-hand tone. “I should have heard it from himself to-morrow. Who—who is it?”
“A Miss Hibbs.”
“Oh, yes, of course. I might have known.”
But her voice trembled, and Bram, turning quickly, saw that the tears were running down her cheeks. She was angry at being thus caught, and she dashed them away impatiently.
“D—— him!” roared Bram, clenching his fists and his teeth.
“Hush, Bram, hush! I’m surprised. I’m ashamed of you! And, besides, what does it matter to you or to me either whom Mr. Cornthwaite marries?”
“It does matter. He ought to have married you, and taken you away out of the place, and away from the life you have to live with that old rascal——”
Bram was beside himself; he did not know what he was saying. Claire stopped him, but very gently, saying—
“Hush, Bram. He’s my father.”
“Well, I know that, but he’s a rascal all the same,” said Bram bluntly. “And Mr. Christian knows it, and he had ought to be glad to have the chance of taking you away, and making you happier. He’s behaved like a fool, too, for the girl his father’s found for him will never get on with him, never make him happy, like you would have done, Miss Claire. He is just made a rod for his own back, and it serves him jolly well right!”
Claire did not interrupt him; she was crying quietly, every tear she let fall increasing Bram’s rage, and throwing fuel on the fire of his indignation. Perhaps his anger soothed her a little, for it was in a very subdued little voice that she presently said—
“Oh, Bram, I don’t think that! I do wish him to be happy! Indeed, indeed I do. And if it wasn’t for one thing I should be very, very glad he’s going to marry somebody else—very, very glad, really!”
Bram had come a little nearer to her; he spoke earnestly, tenderly, with a voice that trembled.
“You’re fond of him?” said he, quickly, imperiously.
“Yes, I’m very fond of him. He’s my cousin, and he’s always been kind to me. But I didn’t want to marry him. Oh, I didn’t want to marry him!”
Bram was astonished, incredulous. He spoke brusquely, almost harshly.
“He thought you did. He thought you cared for him. So did I, so did everybody.”
“Yes. I know that. He’s so popular that people take it for granted one must care for him. But I didn’t—in the way you mean.”
Bram was still dubious.
“Then, why,” said he suddenly, “do you take this so much to heart?”
Claire made a valiant attempt to dry her eyes and steady her voice.
“Because,” said she in a hesitating voice, “because of—of—because of papa! He wanted me to marry him; he counted on it; and now—oh, dear, I don’t know what he will do, what he will say. Well, it can’t be helped. I must go back; I must go home. Good-bye; good-night!”
Before Bram could do more than babble out “Good-night, Miss Claire,” she had flown like the wind down the hill towards the farm.
Bram went back to his lodging in a sort of delirium. Was it possible that Claire had spoken the truth to him? That she really cared not a straw for her cousin except in a cousinly way; that all she was troubled about was her father’s displeasure at having missed such a chance of a connection with the family of the long purse.
Bram understood very little about the nature of women. But he had, of course, acquired the usual vague notions concerning the reticence, the ruses of girls in love, and he could not help feeling that in Claire’s denial there was matter for distrust. How, indeed, should she, this little friendless girl who had no other lovers, fail to respond to the affection of a man as attractive, both to men and women, as Chris Cornthwaite? And did not the behavior of Chris himself confirm this view? If Claire had not cared for him, why should he have received Bram’s frowns, his angry reproaches, with something which was almost meekness, if he had felt them to be absolutely undeserved? The more he considered this, the more impossible it seemed that Claire’s lame explanation of her tears, of her distress, could be the true one. It seemed to Bram that Theo Biron, with his shrewdness and his cunning, must have been the very person to feel most sure that Josiah Cornthwaite would never allow the marriage of Chris with Claire.
Again, why, if she had not felt a most deep interest in Chris had she taken such a bold step as to follow him up the hill that night? Surely it must have been in the hope of speaking with him, perhaps of reassuring herself from his own lips on the subject of the rumors of his approaching marriage, which must have reached her? If, too, Chris had had nothing to reproach himself with on her account, why had he fled so quickly, so abruptly, at the first sight of her?
More and more gloomy grew Bram Elshaw’s thoughts as he approached the cottage where he lodged, passed through the little bit of cramped garden, and let himself in. Entering his little sitting-room, and striking a light, he found a note addressed to himself lying on the table. The writing of the envelope was unknown to him, and he opened it with some curiosity. The letter was stamped with this heading—“The Vicarage, East Grindley.”
“Grindley! East Grindley!” thought Bram to himself. “Why, that’s where my father’s people came from!”
And he read the letter with some interest. It was this:
“Dear Sir,—I am sorry to inform you that Mr. Abraham Elshaw, who is some relation of yours, though he hardly seems himself to know in what degree, is very ill, and not expected to live many days. He has desired me to write and ask you if you will make an effort to come and see him without delay. I may tell you that I understand Mr. Elshaw has heard of the rapid manner in which you are getting on in the world; he has, in fact, often spoken of you to us with much pride, and he is anxious to see you about the disposal of the little property of which he is possessed. I need not ask you under the circumstances to come with as little delay as possible.—Yours very truly,
“Bernard G. Thorpe.
“P.S.—Mr Elshaw has been a member of my congregation for many years, and he chose me rather than one of his own relations to open communication with you. I should have preferred his choosing one of them, but he refused, saying they were unknown to you, so that I could not refuse to fulfil his wishes.”
Bram put down the letter with a rather grim smile. He had never seen this namesake of his, but he had heard a good deal about him. An eccentric old fellow, not a rich man by any means, he had saved a few hundred pounds in trade of the smallest and most pettifogging kind, on the strength of which he had given himself great airs for the last quarter of a century among the pit hands and mill hands and grinders who formed his family and acquaintance. A sturdy, stubborn, miserly old man, of whose hard-fistedness and petty money-grabbing Bram had heard many tales. But the family was proud of him, though it loved him not. Bram remembered clearly how, when he was a very small child, his father had gone out on a strike with his mates, and his poor mother, at her wits’ end for a meal, had applied to the great Abraham for a small loan, and how it had been curtly and contemptuously refused.
This was just the man, this hard-fisted, self-helping old saver of halfpence, to bestow upon the successful and prosperous young relation the money of which he would not have lent him a cent if he had been starving. Bram told himself that he must go, of course: and he resolved to do his best with the old man for those unknown relations who might be more in want of the money than he himself was. For he was shrewd enough to foresee that old Abraham’s intention was to make his prosperous young relation heir to what little he possessed. He resolved to ask next morning for a day off, and to go at once to East Grindley.
Bram got the required permission easily enough, and went on the very next day to see his reputed wealthy namesake. East Grindley was a good many miles north of Sheffield and it was late in the day before he returned.
Throughout the whole of the day he had been haunted by thoughts of Claire; and no sooner had he had his tea than he determined to go to the farm, with the excuse of asking if she had caught cold the night before.
He was in a fever of doubt, anxiety, and only half-acknowledged hope. He had wished, honestly wished, when he believed Claire to be as fond of Chris as Chris was of her, that the cousins should marry, that little Claire should be taken right out of her troubles and her difficulties, and set down in a palace of peace and content, of luxury and beauty, with the man of her heart. But if those words of Claire’s uttered to him the night before were really true, might there not be a chance that he might win her himself? That he might be the lucky man who should build her a palace, and lift her from misery into happiness?
Bram knew that Claire liked him; knew that the distance between himself and her, which had seemed immeasurable thirteen months before, had diminished, and was every day diminishing. If, indeed she did not care, had never cared for her cousin with the love Bram wanted, who had a better chance with her than himself, whom she knew so well, and trusted so completely?
Bram with all his humility, was proud in his own way, and exceedingly jealous. If Claire had loved her cousin passionately, and had been jilted by him, as Bram had believed to be the case, he did not feel that he should even have wished to take the vacant place in her heart. No doubt the wish would have come in time, but not at once. If, however, it were true that she had not cared for Chris in the only way of which Bram would have been jealous, why, then, indeed, there was hope of the most brilliant kind.
Bram, on his way to the farm, began to see in his heart such visions as love only can build and paint, love, too, that has not taken the edge off itself, frittered itself away, on the innumerable flirtations with which his daily companions at the office beguiled the dead monotony of existence.
In his new life, as in his old, it was Bram’s lot to be “chaffed” daily on his unimpressionability, on the stolid, matter-of-fact way in which he went about his daily work, “as if,” as the other clerks said, “his eyes could see nothing better in the world than paper and ink, print and figures.”
Bram on these occasions was accustomed to put on an air of extra stolidity, and to shake his head, and declare that he had no time to think of anything but his work. And all the time he wondered to himself at the ease with which they could chatter of their affection for this girl and that, and enjoy the jokes which were levelled at them, and wear their heart upon their sleeve with ill-concealed delight.
And he smiled to himself at their mistake, and went on nourishing his heart with its own chosen food in secret, with raptures that nobody guessed.
And now the thought that his dreamy hopes might grow into realities brought the color to his pale cheeks and new lustre to his steady gray eyes, as he walked soberly down the hill, and entered the farmyard in the yellow sunlight of the end of a fine day in September.
He knocked at the kitchen door, and nobody answered. He knocked more loudly, fancying that he heard voices inside the house. But again without result. So he opened the door, and peeped in. A small fire was burning in the big grate, but there was nobody in the room. With the door open, however, the voices he had faintly heard became louder, and he became aware that an altercation was going on between Claire and her father in the front part of the house.
He was on the point of retiring, therefore, with a sigh for the poor little girl, when a cry, uttered by her in a wailing tone, reached his ears, and acted upon his startled senses like flaming pitch on tow.
“Oh, papa, don’t, don’t hurt me!”
The next moment Bram had burst the opposite door open, and saw Theodore, his little, mean face wrinkled up with malice, strike Claire’s face sharply with his open hand. This was in the hall, outside the dining-room door.
No sooner was the blow given than Bram seized Theodore, lifted him into the air, and flung him down against the door of the dining-room with such force that it burst open, and Mr. Biron lay sprawling just inside the room.
Claire, her cheek still white from the blow, her eyes full of tears of shame, rushed forward, ready to champion her father.
“Go away,” she said in a strangled, breathless voice. “Go away. How dare you hurt my father? You have no right to come here. Go away.”
She tried to speak severely, harshly, but the tears were running down her face; she was heart-broken, miserable, full of such deep humiliation that she could scarcely meet his eyes. But Bram did not heed her, did not hear her perhaps. He was himself trembling with emotion, and his eyes shone with that liquid lustre, that yearning of long-repressed passion, which no words can explain away, no eyewitness can mistake.
He stretched out his hand, without a single word, and took both hers in one strong clasp. And the moment she felt his touch her voice failed, died away; she bent down her head, and burst into a fit of weeping more passionate than ever.
“Hush, my dear; hush! Don’t cry. Remember, it’s only me; it’s only Bram.”
He had bent his head too, and was leaning over her with such tender yearning, such undisguised affection, in look, manner, voice, that no girl could have doubted what feeling it was which animated him. With his disengaged hand he softly touched her hair, every nerve in his own body thrilling with a sensation he had never known before.
“Hush, hush!”
The whisper was a confession. It seemed to tell what love he had cherished for her during all these months; a love which gave him now not only the duty, but the right of comforting her, of soothing the poor little bruised heart, of calming the weary spirit.
“Hush, dear, hush!”
Whether it was a minute, whether it was an hour, that they stood like this in the little stone-flagged hall in the cool light of the dying September evening, Bram did not know. He was intoxicated, mad. It was only by strong self-control that he refrained from pressing her to his breast. He had to tell himself that he must not take advantage of her weakness, he must not extort from her while she was crushed, broken, a word, a promise, an assurance, which her stronger, her real self would shudder at or regret. She must feel, she must know, that he, Bram, was her comforter, the tender guardian who asked no price, who was ready to soothe, to champion, and to wait.
Meanwhile the strong man found in his own sensation reward enough and to spare. Here, with her heart beating very near his, was the only woman who had ever lit in him the fiery light of passion; her little hands trembled in his, the tender flesh pressing his own hard palm with a convulsive touch which set his veins tingling. The scent of her hair was an intoxicating perfume in his nostrils. Every sobbing breath she drew seemed to sound a new note of sweetest music in his heart.
At last, when he had been silent for some seconds, she suddenly drew herself back, with a face red with shame; with eyes which dared not meet his. Reluctantly he let her drag her hands away from him, and watched her wipe her wet eyes.
“Papa! Where is he?” asked she quickly.
Staggering, unsteady, hardly knowing where he went, or what he did, Bram crossed the hall, and looked into the dining-room. But the lively Theodore was not there. He turned and came face to face with Claire, who was redder than ever, the place where her father had struck her glowing with vivid crimson which put the other cheek to shame.
She moved back a step, looking about also. Then she went quickly out of the room, and recrossed the hall to the drawing-room. But her father was not there either. Back in the hall again, she met Bram, and they glanced shyly each into the face of the other.
Both felt that the fact of their having let Mr. Biron disappear without having noticed him was a mutual confession. Claire looked troubled, frightened.
“I wonder,” said she in a low voice, “where he has gone?”
But Bram did not share her anxiety. There was no fear that Mr. Biron would let either rage or despair carry him to the point of doing anything rash or dangerous to himself.
“He’ll turn up presently,” said he, with a scornful movement of the head, “never fear, Miss Claire. Have you got anything for me to do this evening? You’re running short of wood, I think.”
He walked back into the kitchen, which, being the least frequented by the fastidious Theodore, was Bram’s favorite part of the house. In a few moments Claire came softly in after him. She seemed rather constrained, rather stiff, and this made Bram very careful, very subdued. But there was a delicious peace, a new hope in his own heart; she had rested within the shelter of his arms; she had been comforted there.
“You ought not to have come this evening, Bram,” she said with studied primness. “You know, I told you that before. It only makes things worse for me, it does really.”
“Now, how can you make that out?” asked Bram bluntly.
“Why, papa will be all the angrier with me afterwards. As for—for what you saw him do, I don’t care a bit. It makes me angry for the time, and just gives me spirit enough to hold out when he wants me to do anything I won’t do, I can’t do.”
“What was it he wanted you to do?” asked Bram, grinding his teeth.
Claire hesitated. She grew crimson again, and the tears rushed once more to her eyes.
“I’d rather not tell you.” Then as she noticed the expression on Bram’s face grow darker and more menacing, she went on quickly—“Well, it was only that he wanted me to go up to Holme Park again to-night—with a note—the usual note. And that I can’t—now!”
Bram’s heart sank. Of course, she meant that it was the engagement of Chris which made this difference. But why should this be, if she did not care for him? Bram came nearer to her, leaned on the table, and looked into her face. What an endless fascination the little features had for him. When she looked down, as she did now, he never knew what would be the expression of her brown eyes when she looked up, whether they would dance with fun, or touch him by a queer, dreamy, expression, or whether there would be in them such infinite sadness that he would be forced into silent sympathy. Bram waited impatiently for her to look up.
As he came nearer and nearer, she still looking down, but conscious of his approach, a new thought came into his mind, a cruel, a bitter thought. Suddenly he stood up, still leaning over the corner of the table.
“Are you what they call a coquette, Miss Claire?” he asked with blunt earnestness.
She looked up quickly then, with a restless, defiant sparkle in her eyes.
“Perhaps I am. French people, French women, are all supposed to be, aren’t they? And my grandmother was French. Why do you ask me?”
“Because I don’t understand you,” answered Bram in a low, thick voice. “Because you tell me you don’t care for Mr. Christian, and I should like to believe you. But you tell me to keep away, and yet—and yet—whenever I come you make me think you want me to come again, though you tell me to go. But surely, surely, you wouldn’t play with me; you wouldn’t condescend to do that, would you? Now, would you?”
She looked up again, stepping back a little as she did so; and there was in her eyes such a look of beautiful confidence, of kindness, of sweet, girlish affection, that Bram’s heart leapt up. He had promptly sat down again on the table, and was bending towards her with passion in his eyes, when there stole round the half-open door the little, mean, fair face of Theodore.
Bram sprang up, and stood at once in an attitude of angry defiance.
But Theodore, quite unabashed, was in the room in half a second, holding out his pretty white hand with a smile which was meant to be frankness itself.
“Mr. Elshaw,” said he, “we must shake hands. I won’t allow you to refuse. I owe you no grudge for the way you treated me a short time ago; on the contrary, I thank you for it. I thank you——”
“Papa!” cried poor Claire.
He waved her into silence.
“I thank you,” he persisted obstinately, “for reminding me that I was treating my darling daughter too harshly, much too harshly. Claire, I am sorry. You will forgive me, won’t you?”
And he put his hand on her shoulder, and imprinted delicately on her forehead a butterfly kiss. Claire said nothing at all. She had become quite pale, and stood with a face of cold gravity, with her eyes cast down, while her father talked.
Bram felt that he should have liked to kick him. Instead of that he had to give his reluctant hand to the airy Mr. Biron, an act which he performed with the worst possible grace.
“You must stay to supper,” said Theodore. “Oh, yes; I want a talk with you. About this marriage of my young kinsman, Chris Cornthwaite. Frankly, I think the match a most ill-chosen one. He would have done much better to marry my little girl here——”
“Papa!” cried Claire angrily, impatiently.
“Only, unfortunately for him, she didn’t care enough about him.”
Claire drew a long breath. Bram looked up. Theodore, in his hurry to secure for his daughter another eligible suitor whom he saw to be well disposed for the position, was showing his hand a trifle too plainly. Bram grew restless. Claire said sharply that they could not ask Mr. Elshaw to supper, as she had nothing to offer him. She was almost rude; but Bram, whose heart ached for the poor child, gave her a glance which was forgiveness, tenderness itself. He said he could not stay, and explained that he had been out all day on an errand, which had tired him. To fill up a pause, he told the story of his eccentric kinsman.
“And he means to leave me all his money, whatever it is,” went on Bram. “He showed me the box he keeps it in, and told me in so many words that it would be mine within a few days. And all because he thinks I’ve got on. If I’d been still a hand at the works down there, and hard up for the price of a pair of boots, I shouldn’t have had a penny.”
“Ah, well, it will be none the less welcome when it comes,” said Mr. Biron brightly. “What is the amount of your fortune? Something handsome, I hope.”
“I don’t know yet, Mr. Biron. Not enough to call a fortune, I expect.”
“Well, you must come and tell us about it when it’s all settled. There’s nobody who takes more interest in you and your affairs than my daughter and I—eh, Claire?”
But Claire affected to be too busy to hear; she was engaged in making the fire burn up, and at the first opportunity she stole out of the room, unseen by her father. So that Bram, who soon after took his departure, did not see her again.
He went back to his lodging in a fever. This new turn of affairs, this anxiety of Theodore’s to make him come forward in the place of Christian, filled him with dismay. On the very first signs of this disposition in her father Claire had shrunk back into herself and had refused to give him so much as another look. But then that was only the natural resentment of a modest girl; it proved, it disproved nothing but that she refused to be thrown at any man’s head. That look she had given him just before her father’s entrance, on the other hand, had been eloquent enough to set him on fire with something more definite than dreamy hope. If it had not betrayed the very love and trust for which he was longing, it had expressed something very near akin to that feeling. Bram lived that night in alternate states of fever and frost.
He dared not, however, for fear of giving pain to Claire, go to the farm again for the next fortnight. He would linger about the farmyard gate, and sometimes he would catch sight of Claire. But on these occasions she turned her back upon him with so cold and decided a snub that it was impossible for him to advance in face of a repulse so marked. And even when Theodore lay in wait for him, and tried to induce him to go home with him, Bram had to refuse for the sake of the very girl he was longing to see.
Meanwhile the date of Christian’s marriage with Miss Hibbs was rapidly approaching. Chris maintained an easy demeanor with Bram, but that young man was stiff, reserved, and shy, and received the confidences, real or pretended, of the other without comment or sympathy. When Chris lamented that he could not make a match to please himself, Bram looked in front of him, and said nothing. When he made attempts to sound Bram on the subject of Claire, the young clerk parried his questions with perfect stolidity.
The day of the wedding was a holiday at the works, and Bram, who dared not spend the day at the farm, as he would have liked to do, and who had refused to take any part in the festivities, paid another visit to old Abraham Elshaw at East Grindley as an excuse for staying away.
He returned, however, early in the evening, and was on his way up the hill by way of the fields, when, to his unbounded amazement, he saw a side-gate in the wall of the farmhouse garden open quickly, and a man steal out, and run hurriedly down across the grass in the direction of the town.
Bram felt sure that there was something wrong, but he had hardly gone a few steps with the intention of intercepting the man, when he stopped short. Something in the man’s walk, even at this distance, struck him. In another moment, in spite of the fact that the stealthy visitor wore a travelling cap well over his eyes, Bram recognized Chris Cornthwaite.
Stupefied with dread, Bram glanced back, and saw Claire standing at the little gate, watching Chris as he ran. Shading her eyes with her hand, for the glare of the setting sun came full upon her face, she waited until he was out of sight behind a stone wall which separated the last of the fields he crossed from the road. Then she shut the gate, locked it, and went indoors.
Bram stared at the farmhouse, the windows of which were shining like jewels in the setting sun. He felt sick and cold.
What was the meaning of this secret visit of Chris Cornthwaite to Claire on his wedding day?
Nobody but simple-hearted Bram Elshaw, perhaps, would have been able to doubt any longer after what he had seen that there was something stronger than cousinly affection between Christian Cornthwaite and Claire. But even this wild visit of Chris to his cousin on his very wedding day did not create more than a momentary doubt, a flying suspicion, in the heart of the devoted Bram.
Had he not looked into her dark eyes not many days before, and read there every virtue and every quality which can make womanhood sweet and noble and dear?
Unluckily, Chris had been seen on this mysterious visit by others besides Bram.
It was not long after the wedding day that Josiah Cornthwaite found occasion, when Bram was alone with him in his office, to break out into invective against the girl who, so he said, was trying to destroy every chance of happiness for his son. Bram, who could not help knowing to what girl he referred, made no comment, but waited stolidly for the information which he saw that Mr. Cornthwaite was anxious to impart.
“I think even you, Elshaw, who advocated this young woman so warmly a little while ago, will have to alter your opinion now.” As Bram still looked blank, he went on impatiently—“Don’t pretend to misunderstand. You know very well whom I mean—Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm.
“It has come to my ears that my son had a meeting with her on his wedding day——”
Bram’s countenance looked more blank than ever. Mr. Cornthwaite went on—
“I know what I am talking about, and I speak from the fullest information. She sent him a note that very morning; everybody knows about it; my daughter heard her say it was to be given to Mr. Christian at once, and that it was from his cousin Miss Biron. Is that evidence enough for you?”
Bram trembled.
“There must be some other explanation than the one you have put upon it, sir,” said he quietly but decidedly. “Miss Biron often had to write notes on behalf of her father,” he suggested respectfully.
“Pshaw! Would any message of that sort, a mere begging letter, an attempt to borrow money, have induced my son to take the singular, the unprecedented action that he did? Surprising, nay, insulting, his wife before she had been his wife two hours.”
Bram heard the story with tingling ears and downcast eyes. That there was some truth in it no one knew better than he. Had he not the confirmatory evidence of his own eyes? Yet still he persisted in doggedly doubting the inference Mr. Cornthwaite would have forced upon him. His employer was waiting in stony silence for some answer, some comment. So at last he looked up, and spoke out bravely the thoughts that were in his mind.
“Sir,” said he steadily, “the one thing this visit of Mr. Christian’s proves beyond any doubt is that he was in love with her at the time you made him marry another woman. It doesn’t prove anything against Miss Biron, until you have heard a great deal more than you have done so far, at least. You must excuse me, sir, for speaking so frankly, but you insisted on my telling you what I thought.”
Mr. Cornthwaite was displeased. But as he had, indeed, forced the young man to speak, he could not very well reproach him for obeying. Besides, he was used to Bram’s uncompromising bluntness, and was prepared to hear what he really thought from his lips.
“I can’t understand the young men of the present generation,” he said crossly, with a wave of the hand to intimate to Bram that he had done with him. “When I was between twenty and thirty, I looked for good looks in a girl, for a pair of fine eyes, for a fine figure, for a pair of rosy cheeks. Now it seems that women can dispense with all those attributes, and bowl the men over like ninepins with nothing but a little thread of a lisping voice and a trick of casting down a pair of eyes which are anything but what I should call fine. But I suppose I am old-fashioned.”
Bram retired respectfully without offering any suggestion as to the reason of this surprising change of taste.
He was in a tumult of secret anxiety. He felt that he could no longer keep away from the farm, that he must risk everything to try to get an explanation from Claire. If she would trust him with the truth, and he believed her confidence in himself to be great enough for this, he could, he thought, clear her name in the eyes of the angry Josiah. It was intolerable to him that the girl he worshipped as devotedly as ever should lie under a foul suspicion.
So that very evening, as soon as he had left the office, he went straight to the farm. It was his last day before starting on the mission with which he was to be intrusted in the place of Chris, who was on his honeymoon. This was an excellent excuse for a visit, which might not, he feared, be well received.
He was more struck than ever as he approached the farmyard gate with a fact which had been patent to all eyes of late. The tenants of Duke’s Farm had fallen on evil days. Everything about the place betrayed the fact that a guiding hand was wanting; while Bram had kept an eye on the farm bailiff things had gone pretty smoothly, fences had been repaired, the stock had been well looked after. Now there were signs of neglect upon everything. The wheat was still unstacked; the thatch at one end of the big barn was broken and defective; a couple of pigs had strayed from the farmyard into the garden, and were rooting up whatever took their fancy.
Bram leaned on the gate, and looked sorrowfully around.
Was it by chance that the back door opened, and Joan, the good-humored Yorkshire servant, peeped out? She looked at him for a few minutes very steadily, and then she beckoned him with a brawny arm. He came across the yard at once.
“Look here, mister,” said she in her broadly familiar manner, “what have ye been away so long for? Do ye think there’s nought to be done here now? Or have ye grown too grand for us poor folks?”
He laughed rather bitterly.
“No, Joan, I’ve only kept away because I’m not wanted.”
“Hark to him!” she cried ironically, as she planted her hands on her hips, and glanced up at him with a shrewd look in her gray-green clever eyes. “He wants to be pressed now, when he used to be glad enoof to sneak in and take his chance of a welcome! Well, Ah could tell a tale if Ah liked, and put the poor, modest fellow at his ease, that Ah could!”
Bram’s face flushed.
“Do you mean she wants me?” he asked so simply that Joan burst into a good-humored laugh.
“Go ye in and see,” said she with a stupendous nod. “And if ye get the chuck aht, blame it on to me!”
Bram took the hint, and went in. Joan followed, and pointed to a chair by the table, where Claire sat bending over some work by the light of a candle. The evening was a gray one, and the light was already dim in the big farm kitchen.
“Here’s a friend coom to see ye who doan’t coom so often as he might,” cried Joan, following close on the visitor’s heels. Claire was looking up with eyes in which Bram, with a pang, noted a new look of fear and dismay. For the first time within his recent memory she did not seem glad to see him. He stopped.
“I’ve only come, Miss Claire,” said he in a very modest voice, “to tell you I’m going to London to-morrow on business for the firm. I shall be away ten days or a fortnight; and I came to know whether there was anything I could do for you, either before I go or while I’m there. But if there’s nothing, or if I’m in the way——”
“You’re never in anybody’s way, Mr. Elshaw,” said she quite cordially, but without the hearty ring there used to be in her welcome. “Please, sit down.”
She offered him a chair, and he took it, while Joan, round about whose wide mouth a malicious smile was playing, disappeared into her own precincts of scullery and back-kitchen.
For some minutes there was dead silence, not the happy silence of two friends so secure in their friendship that they need not talk—the old-time silence which they had both loved, but a constrained, uncomfortable taciturnity, a leaden, speechless pause, during which Bram watched with feverish eyes the little face as it bent over her work, and noted that the outline of her cheek had grown sharper.
He tried to speak, to break the horrid silence which weighed upon them both. But he could not. It seemed to him that there was something different about this meeting from any they had ever had, that the air was heavy with impending disaster.
He spoke suddenly at last in a husky voice.
“Miss Claire, I want you to tell me something.”
She looked up quickly, with anxiety in her eyes. But she said nothing.
“I want you to tell me,” he went on, assuming a tone which was almost bullying in his excitement, “why Mr. Christian came to see you the day he was married?”
To his horror she stood up, pushing back her chair, moving as if with no other object than to hide the frantic emotion she was seized with at these words. There passed over her face a look of anguish which he never forgot as she answered in a low, breathless voice.
“Hush, I cannot tell you. You must not ask. You must never ask. And you must never speak about it again, never, never!”
Bram leaned over the table, and looked straight into her eyes. In every line of her face he read the truth.
“He asked you to—to go away with him!” he growled, hardly above his breath.
“Hush!” cried she. “Hush! I don’t know how you know; I hope, oh, I pray that nobody else knows. I want to forget it! I will forget it! If I had to go through it again it would kill me!”
And, dry-eyed, she fell into a violent fit of shuddering, and sank down in her chair with her head in her hands.
“The scoundrel!” said Bram in a terrible whisper.
And there came into his face that look, that fierce peep out of the primitive north country savage, which had startled Chris himself one memorable night.
Claire saw it, and she grew white as the dead.
“Bram,” cried she hoarsely, “don’t look like that; don’t speak like that. You frighten me!”
But he looked at her with eyes which did not see. This fulfilment of his fears, of his doubts of Chris, was a shock she could not understand.
There was a pause before he was able to speak. Then he repeated vaguely—
“Frightened you, Miss Claire! I didn’t mean to do that!”
But the look on his face had not changed. Claire leaned across the table, touched his sleeve impatiently, timidly.
“Bram,” said she in a shrill voice, sharpened by alarm, “you are to forget it too! Do you hear?”
He turned upon her suddenly.
“No,” said he, “you can’t make me do that!”
“But I say you must, you shall. Oh, Bram, if you had been here, if you had heard him, you would have been sorry for him, you would have pitied him, as I did!”
Bram leaped up from his chair. All the fury in his eyes seemed now to be concentrated upon her.
“You pitied him! You were sorry for him! For a black-hearted rascal like that!”
“Oh, Bram, Bram, don’t you know that those are only words! When you see a man you’ve always liked, been fond of, who has always been happy and bright, and full of fun and liveliness, quite suddenly changed, and broken down, and wretched, you don’t stop to ask yourself whether he’s a good man or a bad one. Now, do you, Bram?”
“You ought to!” rejoined Bram in fierce Puritanism militant. “You ought to have used your chance of showing him what a wicked thing he was doing to his poor wife as well as you!”
“Oh, Bram, I did. I said what I could!”
“Not half enough, I’ll warrant!” retorted he, clenching his fist. “You didn’t tell him he was a blackguard who ought to be kicked from one end of the county to the other! And that you’d never speak to him again as long as you lived!”
“No, I certainly didn’t.”
“Then,” almost shouted Bram, bringing his fist down on the table with a threatening, sounding thump, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself! You good women do as much harm as the bad ones, for you are just as tender and sweet to men when they do wrong as when they do right. You encourage them in their wicked ways, when you should be stand-off and proud. I do believe, God forgive me for saying so, you care more for Mr. Chris now than you did before!”
Claire, who was very white, waited a moment when he had come to the end of his accusation. Then she said in a weak, timid, little voice, but with steadiness—
“It is true, I believe, that I like him better than I did before. You are too hard, Bram; you make no allowance for anything.”
“There are some things no allowance should be made for.”
“Well, there’s one thing you forget, and that is that I’ve not been used to good people, so that I am not so hard as you are. I’ve never known a good man except you, Bram, but then I’ve never known one so severe upon others either.”
“You shouldn’t say that, Miss Claire; I’m not hard.”
“Oh!”
“Or if I am, it’s only so as I shouldn’t be too soft!” cried he, suddenly breaking down into gentleness, and forgetting his grammar at the same time. “It’s only because you’ve got nobody to take care of you, nobody to keep harm away from you, that I want you to be harder yourself!”
There was a pause. Claire was evidently touched by his solicitude. Presently she spoke, persuasively, affectionately, but with caution.
“Bram, if I promise to be hard, very hard, will you give me a promise back?”
“What’s that?”
“Will you promise me that you will forget”—Bram shook his head, and at once began a fierce, angry protest—“well, that you will say nothing about this. Come, you are bound in honor, because I told you in confidence——”
“No, you didn’t; I found out!”
“You can’t deny that I have told you some things in confidence. Now, listen. You can do no good, and you may do harm by speaking about this. You must behave to Christian as if you knew nothing. It is of no use for you to shake your head. I insist. And remember, it is the only way you have of proving to me that you are not hard. Why, what about the poor wife you pretended to be so anxious about just now? Isn’t it for her advantage as well as mine that this awful, dreadful mistake should be forgotten?”
There was no denying this. Bram hung his head. At last he looked up, and said shortly—
“If I promise to behave as if I hadn’t heard will you promise me not to see Mr. Christian again?”
Claire flushed proudly. But when she answered it was in a gentle, kind voice.
“You won’t trust me, Bram?”
“I think it will be better for the wife, for you, for him, for everybody, if you promise.”
“Very well. I promise to do my best not to see him again.”
She was looking very grave. Bram stared at her anxiously. She got up suddenly, and looked at him as if in dismissal. He held out his hand.
“Good-bye, Miss Claire. You forgive my rough manners, don’t you? If only you had somebody better than me to take care of you, I wouldn’t be so meddlesome. Good-bye. God bless you!”
He wanted to say a great deal more; he wanted to know a great deal more; but he dared not risk another word. Giving her hand a quick, firm pressure, which she returned without looking up, and with a restraint and reserve which warned him to be careful, he hurried out of the house.
Bram was away much longer than the ten days he had expected. Difficulties arose in the transaction of the affair which had called him to London; he had to take a trip to Brussels, to return to London, and then to visit Brussels again. It was two months after his departure from Sheffield before he came back.
In the meantime old Abraham Elshaw, his namesake, had died. A letter was forwarded to Bram informing him of the fact, and also that by the direction of the deceased the precious box in which the old man had kept his property had been sent to Bram’s address at Hessel.
Bram acknowledged the letter, and sent directions to his landlady for the safe keeping of the box containing his legacy.
When he got back home to his lodging, one cold night at the end of November, Bram received the box, and set about examining its contents. It was a strong oak miniature chest, hinged and padlocked. As there was no key, Bram had to force the padlock. The contents were varied and curious. On the top was a Post Office Savings Bank book, proving the depositor to have had two hundred and thirty-five pounds to his credit. Next came a packet of papers relating to old Elshaw’s transactions with a building society, by the failure of which he appeared to have lost some ninety-six pounds. Then there were some gas shares and some deeds which proved him to have been the owner of certain small house property in the village where he had lived. Next came a silver teapot, containing nothing but some scraps of tissue paper and a button. And at the bottom of the box was a very old-fashioned man’s gold watch, with a chased case, a large oval brooch containing a woman’s hair arranged in a pattern on a white ground, and a broken gold sleeve-link.
Bram, who, from inquiries he had made, considered himself at liberty to apply all the money to his own uses, the other relations of old Abraham not being near enough or dear enough to have a right to a share, looked thoughtfully at the papers, and then put them carefully away. He knew what the old man had apparently not known, that there were formalities to be gone through before he could claim the house property. He should have to consult a solicitor. There was no doubt that his windfall would prove more valuable than he had expected, and again his thoughts flew to Claire, and he asked himself whether there was a chance that he might be able to devote his little fortune to the building of that palace which his love had already planned—in the air.
He told himself that he was a fool to be so diffident, but he could not drive the feeling away. The truth was that there was still at the bottom of his heart some jealousy left of the lively Chris, some proud doubt whether Claire’s heart was as free as she had declared it to be.
But if, on the one hand, she had spoken compassionately of her erring cousin, there was to be remembered, as a set-off against that, the delicious moment when she had stood contented in the shelter of Bram’s own arms on that memorable evening when he had, for the second time, protected her from the violence of her father.
On the whole, Bram felt that it was time to make the plunge; now, when he had money at his command, when he was in a position to take her right out of her dangers and her difficulties. With Theodore, who was not without intelligence, a bargain could be made, and Bram could not doubt that this moment, when the supplies had been cut off at Holme Park, and the farm was going to ruin, would be a favorable one for his purpose.
He resolved to go boldly to Claire the very next day.
When the morning broke, a bright, clear morning, with a touch of frost in the air, Bram sprung out of bed with the feeling that there were great things to be done. The sun was bright on the hill when he started, though down far below his feet the town lay buried in a smoky mist. Just before he reached the farmyard gate he paused, looking eagerly for the figure which was generally to be seen busily engaged about the place at this hour of the morning.
But he was disappointed. Claire was nowhere to be seen.
Reluctantly Bram went on his way down the hill, when the chirpy, light voice of Theodore Biron, calling to him from the front of the house, made him stop and turn round. Mr. Biron was in riding costume, with a hunting crop in his hand. He was very neat, very smart, and far more prosperous-looking than he had been for some time. He played with his moustache with one hand, while with the other he jauntily beckoned Bram to come back.
“Hallo!” said Bram, returning readily enough on the chance of seeing Claire. “Where are you off to so early, Mr. Biron? I didn’t think you ever tried to pick up the worm.”
“Going to have a day with the hounds,” replied Theodore cheerfully. “They meet at Clinker’s Cross to-day. I picked up a clever little mare the other day—bought her for a mere song, and I am going to try her at a fence or two. Come round and see her. Do you know anything about hunters, Elshaw?”
“No,” replied the astonished Bram, who knew that Mr. Biron’s purse had not lately allowed him to know much about hunters either.
“Ah!” said Theodore, as he opened the garden gate for Bram to enter, and led him into the house. “All the better for you. When you’ve once got to think you know something about horse-flesh, you can’t sit down quietly without a decent nag or two in your stable.”
And Mr. Biron, whose every word caused Bram fresh astonishment, flung back the door of the kitchen with a jaunty hand.
Bram followed him, but stopped short at the sight which met his eyes.
Springing up with a low cry from a stool by the fire on Bram’s entrance, Claire, with a face so white, so drawn that he hardly knew her, stared at him with a fixed look of horror which seemed to freeze his blood.
“Miss Claire!” he said hoarsely.
She said nothing. With her arms held tightly down by her sides, she continued to stare at him as if at some creature the sight of whom had seized her with unspeakable terror. He came forward, much disturbed, holding out his hand.
“Come, come, Claire, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you glad to see Bram Elshaw back among us?” said Theodore impatiently.
Still she did not move. Bram, chilled, frightened, did not know what to do. Mr. Biron left the outer door, by which he stood, and advanced petulantly towards his daughter. But before he could reach her she staggered, drew away from him, and with a frightened glance from Bram to him, fled across the room and disappeared.
Bram was thrown into the utmost consternation by this behavior. He had turned to watch the door by which she had made her escape, when Theodore seized him by the arm, and dragged him impatiently towards the outer door.
“Come, come,” said he, “don’t trouble your head about her. She’s not been well lately; she’s been out of sorts. I’ve talked of leaving the place, and she doesn’t like the idea. She’ll soon be herself again. Her cousin Chris has been round two or three times since his return from his honeymoon trying to cheer her up. But she won’t be cheered; I suppose she enjoys being miserable sometimes. Most ladies do.”
Bram, who had followed Mr. Biron with leaden feet across the farmyard towards the stables, felt that a black cloud had suddenly fallen upon his horizon. The mention of Chris filled him with poignant mistrust, with cruel alarm. He felt that calamity was hanging over them all, and that the terrible look he had seen in Claire’s eyes was prophetic of coming evil. He hardly saw the mare of which Theodore was so proud; hardly heard the babble, airily ostentatious, cheerily condescending, which Claire’s father dinned into his dull ears. He was filled with one thought. These new extravagances of Theodore’s, the look in Claire’s face, were all connected with Chris, and with his renewed visits. Bram felt as if he should go mad.
When he reached the office he watched for an opportunity to get speech alone with Christian. But he was unsuccessful. Bram did not even see him until late in the day.
Long before that Bram had had an interview with the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, which only confirmed his fears. He had to give an account to the head of the firm of the business he had transacted while away. He had carried it through with great ability, and Mr. Cornthwaite complimented him highly upon the promptitude, judgment, and energy he had shown in a rather difficult matter.
“My son Christian was perfectly right,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on, “in recommending me to send you away on this affair, Elshaw. You seem to have an old head upon young shoulders. I only hope he may do half as well on the mission with which he himself is to be entrusted.”
Bram looked curious.
“Is Mr. Christian going away again so soon, sir?” asked he.
Mr. Cornthwaite, whose face bore traces of some unaccustomed anxiety, frowned.
“Yes,” he answered shortly. “I am sorry to say that he and his wife don’t yet rub on so well as one could wish together. You see I tell you frankly what the matter is, and you can take what credit you please to yourself for having predicted it. No doubt they will shake down in time, but on all accounts I think it is as well, as there happens to be some business to be done down south, to send him away upon it. He will only be absent a few weeks, and in the meantime any little irritation there may be on both sides will have had time to rub off.”
Bram looked blank indeed.
He was more anxious than ever for a few words alone with Chris, but he was unable to obtain them. When his employer’s son appeared at the office, which was not till late in the day, he carefully avoided the opportunity Bram sought. After shaking hands with him with a dash and an effusion which made it impossible for the other to draw back, even if he had been so inclined, Chris, with a promise of “seeing him presently,” went straight into his father’s private office, and did not reappear in the clerks’ office at all.
In spite of the boisterous warmth of his greeting, Bram had noticed in Christian two things. The first was a certain underlying coldness and reserve, which put off, under an assumption of affectionate familiarity, the confidences which had been the rule between them. The other was the fact that Christian looked thin and worried.
Bram lingered about the office till long after his usual hour of leaving in the hope of catching Christian. And it was at last only by chance that he learnt that Chris had gone some two hours before, and, further, that he was to start for London that very evening.
Now, this discovery worried Bram, and set him thinking. The intercourse between him and Christian had been of so familiar a kind that this abrupt departure, without any sort of leave-taking, could only be the result of some great change in Christian’s feeling towards himself. So strong, although vague, were his fears that Bram when he left the office went straight to the new house in a pretty suburb some distance out of Sheffield, where Christian had settled with his bride. Here, however, he was met with the information that Mr. Christian had already started on his journey, and that he had gone, not from his own, but from his father’s house.
As Bram left the house he saw the face of young Mrs. Christian Cornthwaite at one of the windows. She looked pale, drawn, unhappy, and seemed altogether to have lost the smug look of self-satisfaction which he had disliked in her face on his first meeting with her.
Much disturbed, Bram went away, and returned to his lodging, passing by the farm, where there was no sign of life to induce him to pause. It was nine o’clock, and as there was no light in any of the windows, he concluded that Mr. Biron had gone to bed, tired out with his day’s hunting, and that Claire had followed his example.
He felt so restless, so uneasy, however, that instead of passing on he lingered about, walking up and down, watching the blank, dark windows, almost praying for a flicker of light in any one of them for a sign of the life inside.
After an hour of this unprofitable occupation, he took himself to task for his folly, and went home to bed.
On the following morning, before he was up, there was a loud knocking at the outer door of the cottage where he lived. Bram, with a sense of something wrong, something which concerned himself, ran down himself to open it.
In the middle of the little path stood Theodore Biron, with the same clothes that he had worn on the morning of the previous day, but without the hunting-crop.
He was white, with livid lips, and his limbs trembled.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bram in a muffled voice.
“Claire, my daughter Claire!” stammered Theodore in a voice which sounded shrill with real feeling. All the jauntiness, all the vivacity, had gone out of him. He shivered with something which was keener than cold.
“Well?” said Bram, with a horrible chill at his heart.
“She’s—she’s gone, gone!” said Theodore, reeling back against the fence of the little garden. “She’s run away. She’s run right away. She’s left me, left her poor old father! Don’t you understand? She is gone, man, gone!”
And Mr. Biron, for once roused to genuine emotion, broke into sobs.
Bram stood like a stone.