BRAM’S RISE IN LIFE.
What was there about this little brown-eyed girl that she should
bewitch him like this? Bram, who flattered himself that he had his wits
about him, who had kept himself haughtily free from love entanglements
up to now, could not understand it. And the most amazing part of it
all was that his feelings about her seemed to undergo an entire change
every half-hour or so. At least a dozen times since his infatuation
began he fancied himself quite cured, and able to laugh at himself and
look down upon her. And then some fresh aspect of the little creature
would strike him into fresh ecstasies, and he would find himself as
much under the spell as ever.
Thus the first sight of her that evening in Mr. Cornthwaite’s study had
thrilled him less than the announcement of her name. But, on the other
hand, the touch of her hand so unexpectedly accorded, had quickened his
feelings into a delicious frenzy, which lasted during the whole of his
walk down into the town and out to the one small backroom in a grimy
little red brick house where he lodged.
When Bram tried to think of Miss Biron soberly, to try to come to
some sort of an estimate of her character, he was altogether at a
loss. Her tears, her terrors, her smiles, her little airs, all seemed
to succeed each other as rapidly as if she had been still a child.
No emotion seemed to be able to endure in her volatile nature. He
doubted, considering the matter in cold blood, whether this was a
characteristic he admired; yet there it was, and his infatuation
remained.
With all her limitations, whatever they might be; with all her faults,
whatever they were, Miss Claire Biron had permanently taken her place
in Bram’s narrow life as the nearest thing he had ever seen to an ideal
woman, as the representative, for the time being at least, of that
feminine creature, the necessity for whom he now began to understand,
and who was to come straight into his heart and into his arms some day.
For, with all his ambitions, his reasonable hopes, Bram was as yet too
modest to say to himself that this white-handed lady herself, this
pearl among pebbles, was the prize for which he must strive; no, she
only stood for that prize in his mind, in his heart, or so at least
Bram told himself.
Bram thought about Miss Biron and her bibulous papa all night, for he
scarcely slept, but with the morning light came fresh cares to occupy
his thoughts.
It was his first day at his new employment in the office, and Bram,
though he managed to hide all traces of what he felt under a stolid
and matter-of-fact demeanor, felt by no means at his ease on his first
entrance among the young gentlemen in Mr. Cornthwaite’s office.
He had put on his Sunday clothes, not without a pang at the
extravagance in dress which his rise in life entailed. Nobody in the
office seemed to have heard of his promotion, for the other clerks took
no notice of him on his entrance, evidently supposing that he had been
sent for, as was frequently the case, to take some message or to do
some errand which required a trustworthy messenger.
When, after being called into the inner office, he came out again
and took his place at a desk among the rest there was a burst of
astonishment, amusement, and some contempt at his expense. And when the
truth became known that he had come among them to stay, he straight
from the coalyard and the mill and the shed outside, the feelings
of all the young gentlemen found vent in “chaff” of a particularly
merciless kind.
His accent, his speech, his dress, his look, his walk, his manner, all
formed themes for the very easiest ridicule. Never before had they had
such an opportunity, and they made the most of it. But if they thought
to make life in the office unbearable for Bram they had reckoned
without their host. Bram cased himself in an armor of stolid good
humor, joined in the laugh against himself, and in affecting to try to
assume their modes of speech and manner contrived to burlesque them at
least as well as they had mimicked him.
And the end of it was that the fun languished all too soon for their
wishes, and Bram when he left the office that afternoon, and wiped his
face as he used to do after another sort of fiery ordeal, congratulated
himself on having got through the day better than he had expected.
Christian Cornthwaite ran out after him, and slapped him on the back.
“Well, Elshaw,” cried he, “and how do you feel after it?”
“Much t’ same as Dan’l did when he’d come out of t’ den o’ lions, sir,”
replied Bram grimly. “T’ young gentlemen in there,” and he pointed with
his thumb over his shoulder, “doan’t find me grand enough for’em.”
“And so you want to go back to the works, Bram?”
“No fear, sir,” answered the new clerk dryly. “They’ll get used to me,
or else maybe I shall get used to them. Or wi’ so many fine patterns
round me maybe Ah shall be a polished gentleman myself presently.”
“No doubt of it, Bram. But you’ve been rather roughly treated. It ought
to have been managed gradually, bit by bit, and then at last, when
you took your place in the office, I ought to have sent you to my own
tailor first, and had you properly rigged out.”
Bram looked down ruefully at his Sunday clothes.
“Ah felt a prince in these last evening,” he expostulated.
Christian laughed heartily.
“Well, they couldn’t beat you at the main things, Elshaw, at writing
and spelling and calculating, eh?”
“No,” answered Bram complacently. “Ah could beat most of ’em there.”
As a matter of fact, Bram’s self-teaching, with the additional help of
the night school in the winter, had so developed his natural capacity
that he was as far ahead of his new companions intellectually as he was
behind them in externals. Christian, who knew this, felt proud of his
protégé.
“There are some more hints I want to give you,” said he, as he put his
arm through that of his rough companion and walked with him up the
street, with the good-natured familiarity which made him popular with
everybody, but in the exercise of which he was very discriminating.
“You will have to leave William Henry Street, or wherever it is you
hang out, and take a room in a better neighborhood. And I will show you
where you can go and dine. Look here,” he went on, stopping abruptly,
“come up to me this evening, and we’ll have a talk over a pipe. You
smoke, I suppose?”
“No, sir,” said Bram. “Ah don’t smoke. It’s too expensive. And Ah thank
you kindly, but Ah’ve got a job out Hessel way this evening, and--”
Christian interrupted him with sudden interest.
“Out Hessel way? Why, that’s near Duke’s Farm. Will you take a note
up for me to Miss Biron? She lives there. You can find the house easy
enough.”
Bram, who had listened to these words with emotions he dared not
express, agreed to take the note, but did not mention that it was to
the farmhouse that his own errand took him.
All the happiness he had felt over the anticipated walk to Hessel
evaporated as he watched Christian tear a leaf out of a note-book,
scribble hastily on it in pencil, fold and addressed it to “Miss Claire
Biron.”
But what a poor fool he was to be jealous? Could there be a question
but that Mr. Christian Cornthwaite, with his good looks and his gayety,
his position and his fortune, would make her a splendid mate?
Something like this Bram carefully dinned into himself as he took the
note, and went home to his tea.
But for all that, he felt restless, dissatisfied, and unhappy as he set
out after tea on his walk up to Hessel with that note from Christian
Cornthwaite to Miss Biron in his pocket.
Although it was a hot evening, and the walk was uphill all the way,
Bram got to the farm by half-past six, and came up to the door just as
a woman, whom he decided must be the servant, came out of it.
She was about forty years of age, a little under the middle height,
thickset of figure, and sallow of skin. But in her light gray eyes
there was a shrewd but kindly twinkle; there was a promise of humor
about her mouth and her sharply-pointed nose which made the countenance
a decidedly attractive one.
She made no remark to Bram, but she turned and watched him as he
approached the back door, and did not resume her walk until he had
knocked and been admitted by Claire herself.
Miss Biron seemed to feel some slight embarrassment at the sight of
him, and received his explanation that he had come to repaint her
door with an assumption of surprise. The shrewd young man decided
that the young lady had repented her unconventional friendliness of
the preceding evening, and was inclined to look upon his visit as an
intrusion. His manner, therefore, was studiously distant and respectful
as he raised his cap from his head, gave the reason for his coming,
and then said that he had brought a note for her from Mr. Christian
Cornthwaite.
Claire blushed as she took it. Bram, who had brought his paint can and
his brush, took off his coat, and began his task in silence, with just
a sidelong look at the girl as she began to read the note.
At that moment the inner door of the kitchen opened, and Mr. Biron
entered with a jaunty step, arranging a rosebud in his button-hole in
quite a light comedy manner. Catching sight at once of Bram at work
on the door, that young man observed that a slight frown crossed his
face. After a momentary pause in his walk, he came on, however, as
gayly as ever, and peeping over his daughter’s shoulder read the few
words the note contained, and said at once--
“Well, you must go, dear; you must go.”
Claire blushed hotly, and crumpled up the note.
“I--I don’t want to. I would rather not,” said she in a low voice.
“Oh, but that’s nonsense,” retorted he good-humoredly. “Chris is a good
fellow, a capital fellow. Put on your hat, and don’t be a goose. I’ll
see that the young man at the door has his beer.”
Bram heard this, and his face tingled, but he said nothing. He
perceived, indeed, from a certain somewhat feminine spitefulness in Mr.
Biron’s tone, that the words were said with the intention of annoying
him.
Claire appeared to hesitate a moment, then quickly making up her mind
she said--“All right, father, I’ll go,” and disappeared through the
inner door.
Theodore, without any remark to Bram, followed her.
In a few moments Bram heard a movement in the straw of the farmyard
behind him, and looking round saw that Claire was standing behind him
with her hat and gloves on, and was apparently debating in her own mind
whether she would utter something which was in her thoughts. He saluted
her respectfully with a stolid face. Then she began to speak, reddened,
stammered, and finally made a dash for it.
“Where do you live?” she asked suddenly. “I mean--is it far from here?”
“No, miss; it’s over yon,” answered Bram mendaciously, nodding in the
direction of the cottages on the brow of the hill.
“Then would you very much mind--” and Bram could see that her breast
was heaving under the influence of some strong emotion, “keeping your
eye upon this place until I come back? You know all about it,” she went
on, with a burst of uneasy confidence, “so that it’s no use my minding
that. And when my father’s left alone--well, well, you know,” said
she, blushing crimson, and keeping her eyes down. “And Joan has to go
home to her husband and children at night. And--and I’m afraid when he
gets excited, you know, that he’ll set the place on fire. He nearly did
last night. You see, my poor father has a great many worries, and a
very little affects his head--since that sabre cut in India.”
The humility, nay, the humiliation in her tone, touched Bram to the
quick. He promised at once that he would take care that Mr. Biron did
no harm either to himself or to the house while she was away, and
received her grateful, breathless, little whisper of “Thank you; oh,
thank you,” with outward stolidity, but with considerable emotion.
Then she ran off, and he went quietly on with his work.
It took him a very short time to finish putting on the one coat of
paint, which was all he could do that night; and then, as Mr. Biron had
not appeared again, Bram thought he had better take a look round and
see what that gentleman was doing. So he took up his paint-can, and,
leaving the door open to dry, made his way round to the front of the
house, and peeped cautiously in at the lower windows; and in one of
them he saw a couple of empty champagne bottles, with the corks lying
beside them, and an overturned glass on the table.
“T’owd rascal hasn’t wasted much time,” thought Bram to himself, as
he stared at the evidences of Mr. Biron’s solitary dissipation, and
looked about for the toper himself. But Theodore was not in the room.
Neither was he in the room on the other side of the front door, as Bram
hastened to ascertain. Perhaps he had had sense enough to make his way
upstairs to his own room to sleep off the effects of the wine.
This seeming to be a probable explanation of his disappearance, Bram
was inclined to trouble himself no further on that head, when a faint
noise, which seemed to proceed from the bowels of the earth, attracted
his attention. There was a grating under the window of the room which
appeared to be the dining-room, and in the cellar which was thus dimly
lighted some one appeared to be moving about.
Bram, in his character of sworn guardian of the house, thought it best
to investigate, so he ran round to the back, entered by the open door,
and found a trap-door in the hall just outside the kitchen door.
A strong smell of paraffin was the first thing he noticed as he looked
down the ladder; the next was the sight of Mr. Biron calmly emptying
a can of the oil upon the loose straw and firewood which the cellar
contained.
Startled by the sudden light and noise above, Mr. Biron dropped the can
as the trap-door opened, and then Bram saw that in his left hand he
held a box of matches.
“Tha fool, tha drunken fool, coom up wi’ ye!” shouted Elshaw, as he
stretched down a strong arm and pulled Theodore up by his coat collar.
Bram had expected his captive to stagger, and so he did. He had
expected him to stammer and to stare; and he did these things also. But
Bram had seen a good deal of drunkenness in his time, and he was not
easy to deceive.
Suddenly holding the slender little man at arm’s length from him, and
looking steadily into his eyes with a black frown on his own face, he
shouted in a voice which might have roused the village--
“Why, you d----d old rascal, what villainy have you been up to? You’re
as sober as I am!”