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[Illustration: “Oh, father, don’t, don’t! You’ll hurt him.”
--_Frontispiece._]
FORGE AND FURNACE
A Novel
BY
FLORENCE WARDEN
AUTHOR OF
“THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “SCHEHERAZADE,” “A PRINCE
OF DARKNESS,” ETC.
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
156 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A Pair of Brown Eyes 5
II. Claire 13
III. Something Wrong at the Farm 18
IV. Claire’s Apology 21
V. Bram’s Rise in Life 31
VI. Mr. Biron’s Condescension 38
VII. Bram’s Dismissal 46
VIII. Another Step Upward 54
IX. A Call and a Dinner Party 61
X. The Fine Eyes of her Cashbox 70
XI. Bram Shows Himself in a New Light 80
XII. A Model Father 86
XIII. An Ill-matched Pair 102
XIV. The Deluge 111
XV. Parent and Lover 118
XVI. The Pangs of Despised Love 126
XVII. Bram Speaks his Mind 134
XVIII. Face to Face 143
XIX. Sanctuary 151
XX. The Furnace Fires 159
XXI. The Fire Goes Out 168
XXII. Claire’s Confession 173
XXIII. Father and Daughter 184
XXIV. Mr. Biron’s Repentance 190
XXV. Meg 200
XXVI. The Goal Reached 206
FORGE AND FURNACE;
THE ROMANCE OF A SHEFFIELD BLADE.
CHAPTER I.
A PAIR OF BROWN EYES.
Thud, thud. Amidst a shower of hot, yellow sparks the steam hammer
came down on the glowing steel, shaking the ground under the feet of
the master of the works and his son, who stood just outside the shed.
In the full blaze of the August sunshine, which was, however, tempered
by such clouds of murky smoke as only Sheffield can boast, old Mr.
Cornthwaite, acclimatized for many a year to heat and to coal dust,
stood quite unconcerned.
Tall, thin, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with a
fresh-colored face which seemed to look the younger and the handsomer
for the silver whiteness of his hair and of his long, silky moustache,
Josiah Cornthwaite’s was a figure which would have arrested attention
anywhere, but which was especially noticeable for the striking contrast
he made to the rough-looking Yorkshiremen at work around him.
Like a swarm of demons on the shores of Styx, they moved about,
haggard, gaunt, uncouth figures, silent amidst the roar of the furnaces
and the whirr of the wheels, lifting the bars of red-hot steel with
long iron rods as easily and unconcernedly as if they had been hot
rolls baked in an infernal oven, heedless of the red-hot sparks which
fell around them in showers as each blow of the steam hammer fell.
Mr. Cornthwaite, whose heart was in his furnaces, his huge revolving
wheels, his rolling mills, and his gigantic presses, watched the work,
familiar as it was to him, with fascinated eyes.
“What day was it last month that Biron turned up here?” he asked his
son with a slight frown.
This frown often crossed old Mr. Cornthwaite’s face when he and his
son were at the works together, for Christian by no means shared his
father’s enthusiasm for the works, and was at small pains to hide the
fact.
“Oh, I’m sure I don’t remember. How should I remember?” said he
carelessly, as he looked down at his hands, and wondered how much more
black coal dust there would be on them by the time the guv’nor would
choose to let him go.
A young workman, with a long, thin, pale, intelligent face, out of
which two deep-set, shrewd, gray eyes looked steadily, glanced up
quickly at Mr. Cornthwaite. He had been standing near enough to hear
the remarks exchanged between father and son.
“Well, Elshaw, what is it?” said the elder Mr. Cornthwaite with an
encouraging smile. “Any more discoveries to-day?”
A little color came into the young man’s face.
“No, sir,” said he shyly in a deep, pleasant voice, speaking with a
broad Yorkshire accent which was not in his mouth unpleasant to the
ear. “Ah heard what you asked Mr. Christian, sir, and remember it was
on the third of the month Mr. Biron came.”
“Thanks. Your memory is always to be trusted. I think you’ve got your
head screwed on the right way, Elshaw.”
“Ah’m sure, Ah hope so, sir,” said the young fellow, smiling in return
for his employer’s smile, and touching his cap as he moved away.
“Smart lad that Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite approvingly. “And steady.
Never drinks, as so many of them do.”
“Can you wonder at their drinking?” broke out Christian with energy,
“when they have to spend their lives at this infernal work? It parches
my throat only to watch them, and I’m sure if I had to pass as many
hours as they do in this awful, grimy hole I should never be sober.”
The elder Mr. Cornthwaite looked undecided whether to frown or to laugh
at this tirade, which had at least the merit of being uttered in all
sincerity by the very person who could least afford to utter it. He
compromised by giving breath to a little sigh.
“It’s very disheartening to me to hear you say so, Chris, when it has
been the aim of my life to bring you up to carry on and build up the
business I have given my life to,” he said.
Christian Cornthwaite’s face was not an expressive one. He was
extraordinarily unlike his father in almost every way, having prominent
blue eyes, instead of his father’s piercing black ones, a fair
complexion, while his father’s was dark, a figure shorter, broader, and
less upright, and an easy, happy-go-lucky walk and manner, as different
as possible from the erect, military bearing of the head of the firm.
What little expression he could throw into his big blue eyes he threw
into them now, as he pulled his long, ragged, tawny moustache and
echoed his father’s sigh.
“Well, isn’t it disheartening for me too, sir,” protested he
good-humoredly, “to hear you constantly threatening to put me on bread
and water for the rest of my life if I don’t settle down in this
beastly hole and try to love it?”
“It ought to be natural to you to love what has brought you up in every
comfort, educated you like a prince, and made of you----”
Josiah Cornthwaite paused, and a twinkle came into his black eyes.
“Made of you,” he went on thoughtfully, “a selfish, idle vagabond,
with only wit enough to waste the money his father has made.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Chris, quite cheerfully. “If that’s the best the
works have done for me, why should I love them?”
At that moment young Elshaw passed before his eyes again, and recalled
Christian’s attention to a subject which would, he shrewdly thought,
divert the current of his father’s thoughts from his own deficiencies.
“I wonder, sir,” he said, “that you don’t put Bram Elshaw into the
office. He’s fit for something better than this sort of thing.”
And he waved his hand in the direction of the group in the middle of
which stood Elshaw, rod in hand, with his lean, earnest face intent on
his work.
Josiah Cornthwaite’s eyes rested on the young man. Bram was a little
above the middle height, thin, sallow, with shoulders somewhat inclined
to be narrow and sloping, but with a face which commanded attention.
He had short, mouse-colored hair, high cheek bones, a short nose, a
straight mouth, and a very long straight chin; altogether an assemblage
of features which promised little in the way of attractiveness.
And yet attractive his face certainly was. Intelligence, strength of
character, good humor, these were the qualities which even a casual
observer could read in the countenance of Bram Elshaw.
But the lad had more in him than that. He had ambition, vague as yet,
dogged tenacity of purpose, imagination, feeling, fire. There was the
stuff; of a man of no common kind in the young workman.
Josiah Cornthwaite looked at him long and critically before answering
his son’s remark.
“Yes,” said he at last slowly, “I daresay he’s fit for something
better--indeed, I’m sure of it. But it doesn’t do to bring these young
fellows on too fast. If he gets too much encouragement he will turn
into an inventor (you know the sort of chap that’s the common pest of
a manufacturing town, always worrying about some precious ‘invention’
that turns out to have been invented long ago, or to be utterly
worthless), and never do a stroke of honest work again.”
“Now, I don’t think Elshaw’s that sort of chap,” said Chris, who looked
upon Bram as in some sort his protégé, whose merit would be reflected
on himself. “Anyhow, I think it would be worth your while to give him a
trial, sir.”
“But he would never go back to this work afterwards if he proved a
failure in the office.”
“Not here, certainly.”
“And we should lose a very good workman,” persisted Mr. Cornthwaite,
who had conservative notions upon the subject of promotion from the
ranks.
“Well, I believe it would turn out all right,” said Chris.
His father was about to reply when his attention was diverted by the
sudden appearance, at the extreme end of the long avenue of sheds and
workshops, of two persons who, to judge by the frown which instantly
clouded his face, were very unwelcome.
“That old rascal again! That old rascal Theodore Biron! Come to borrow
again, of course! But I won’t see him. I won’t----”
“But, Claire, don’t be too hard on the old sinner, for the girl’s sake,
sir,” said Chris hastily, cutting short his protests.
Mr. Cornthwaite turned sharply upon his son.
“Yes, the old fox is artful enough for that. He uses his daughter to
get himself received where he himself wouldn’t be tolerated for two
minutes. And I’ve no doubt the little minx is up to every move on the
board too.”
“Oh, come, sir, you’re too hard,” protested Chris with real warmth, and
with more earnestness than he had shown on the subject either of his
own career or of Bram’s. “I’d stake my head for what it’s worth, and I
suppose you’d say that isn’t much, on the girl’s being all right.”
But this championship did not please his father at all. Josiah
Cornthwaite’s bushy white eyebrows met over his black eyes, and his
handsome, ruddy-complexioned face lost its color. Chris was astonished,
and regretted his own warmth, as his father answered in the tones he
could remember dreading when he was a small boy--
“Whether she’s all right or all wrong, I warn you not to trouble your
head about her. You may rely upon my doing the best I can for her, on
account of my relationship to her mother. But I would never countenance
an alliance between the family of that old reprobate and mine.”
But to this Chris responded with convincing alacrity--
“An alliance! Good heavens, no, sir! We suffer quite enough at the
hands of the old nuisance already. And I have no idea, I assure you, of
throwing myself away.”
Josiah Cornthwaite still kept his shrewd black eyes fixed upon his
son, and he seemed to be satisfied with what he read in the face of
the latter, for he presently turned away with a nod of satisfaction
as Theodore Biron and his daughter, who had perhaps been lingering a
little until the great man’s first annoyance at the sight of them had
blown over, came near enough for a meeting.
“Ah, Mr. Cornthwaite, surely there’s no sight in the world to beat
this,” began the dapper little man airily as he held out a small,
slender, and remarkably well-shaped hand with a flourish, and kept
his eyes all the time upon the men at work in the nearest shed as
if the sight had too much fascination for him to be able readily to
withdraw his eyes. “This,” he went on, apparently not noticing that
Mr. Cornthwaite’s handshake was none of the warmest, “of a whole
community immersed in the noblest of all occupations, the turning of
the innocent, lifeless substances of the earth into tool and wheel,
ship and carriage! I must say that this place has a charm for me
which I have never found in the fairest spots of Switzerland; that
after seeing whatever was to be seen in California, the States, the
Himalayas, Russia, and the rest of it, I have always been ready to say,
not exactly with the poet, but with a full heart, ‘Give me Sheffield!’
And to-day, when I came to have a look at the works,” he wound up in a
less lofty tone, “I thought I would bring my little Claire to have a
peep too.”
[Illustration: “Ah, Mr. Cornthwaite, surely there’s no sight in the
world to beat this.”--_Page 10._]
In spite of the absurdity of his harangue, Theodore Biron knew how
to throw into his voice and manner so much fervor. He spoke, he
gesticulated with so much buoyancy and effect, that his hearers were
amused and interested in spite of themselves, and were carried away,
for the time at least, into believing, or half-believing, that he was
in earnest.
Josiah Cornthwaite, always accessible to flattery on the matter of “the
works,” as the artful Theodore knew, suffered himself to smile a little
as he turned to Claire.
“And so you have to be sacrificed, and must consent to be bored to
please papa?”
“Oh, I shan’t be bored. I shall like it,” said Claire.
She spoke in a little thread of a musical, almost childish, voice,
and very shyly. But as she did so, uttering only these simple words,
a great change took place in her. Before she spoke no one would have
said more of her than that she was a quiet, modest-looking, perhaps
rather insignificant, little girl, and that her gray frock was neat and
well-fitting.
But no sooner did she open her mouth to speak or to smile than the
little olive-skinned face broke into all sorts of pretty dimples. The
black eyes made up for what they lacked in size by their sparkle and
brilliancy, and the two rows of little ivory teeth helped the dazzling
effect.
Then Claire Biron was charming. Then even Josiah Cornthwaite forgot
to ask himself whether she was not cunning. Then Chris stroked his
mustache, and told himself with complacency that he had done a good
deed in standing up for the poor, little thing.
But rough Bram Elshaw, whom Chris had beckoned to come forward, and who
stood respectfully in the background, waiting to know for what he was
wanted, felt as if he had received an electric shock.
Bram was held very unsusceptible to feminine influences. He was what
the factory and shop lasses of the town called a hard nut to crack, a
close-fisted customer, and other terms of a like opprobrious nature.
Occupied with his books, those everlasting books, and with his vague
dreams of something indefinite and as yet far out of his reach, he
had, at this ripe age of twenty, looked down upon such members of the
frivolous sex as came in his way, and dreamed of something fairer in
the shape of womanhood, something to which a pretty young actress whom
he had seen at one of the theatres in the part of “Lady Betty Noel,”
had given more definite form.
And now quite suddenly, in the broad light of an August morning, with
nothing more romantic than the rolling mill for a background, there had
broken in upon his startled imagination the creature the sight of whom
he seemed to have been waiting for. As he stood there motionless, his
eyes riveted, his ears tingling with the very sound of her voice, he
felt that a revelation had been made to him.
As if revealed in one magnetic flash, he saw in a moment what it was
that woman meant to man; saw the attraction that the rough lads of his
acquaintance found in the slovenly, noisy girls of their own courts and
alleys; stood transfixed, coarse-handed son of toil that he was, under
the spell of love.
The voice of Chris Cornthwaite close to his ear startled him out of a
stupor of intoxication.
“What’s the matter with you, Bram? You look as if you’d been struck by
lightning. You are to go round the works with Miss Biron and explain
things, you know. And listen” (he might well have to recall Bram’s
wandering attention, for this command had thrown the lad into a sort of
frenzy, on which he found it difficult enough to suppress all outward
signs), “I have something much more important to tell you than that.”
But Bram’s face was a blank. “You are to come up to the Park next
Thursday evening, and I think you’ll find my father has something to
say to you that you’ll be glad to hear. And mind this, Bram, it was I
who put him up to it. It’s me you’ve got to thank.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Bram, touching his cap respectfully, and trying
to speak as if he felt grateful.
But he was not. He felt no emotion whatever. He was stupefied by the
knowledge that he was to go round the works with Miss Biron.