BRAM’S DISMISSAL.
It was with some diffidence that Bram presented himself at the
farmhouse door that evening. He went through the farmyard to the back
door, and gave a modest knock. It was Joan, the servant, who opened the
door to him, and Bram, as his own eyes met those of the middle-aged
Yorkshire woman, had a strong sense that she read him, as he would have
expressed it, “like a book.” Indeed Joan could read character in a face
much more easily than she could read a printed page. Having been born
long before the days of School Boards, she had been accustomed from her
early youth to find her entertainment not in cheap fiction, but in the
life around her; so that she was on the whole much better educated
than women of her class are now, having stored her mind with the facts
gained by experience and observation.
She looked at him not unkindly.
“Ah,” she began, with a nod of recognition, as if she had known him
well for a year instead of now speaking to him for the first time, “Ah
thowt it was you. Mister Christian he comes in by t’ front door.”
Bram did not like this comparison. It suggested, in the first place,
that Joan had an instinct that there was some sort of rivalry between
himself and Mr. Christian. It suggested also the basis on which they
respectively stood.
“I’ve brought some things Miss Biron wanted,” he began, forgetting that
he had been commissioned, not by the young lady, but by her father.
Joan smiled a broad smile of shrewd amusement. Bram wished she would
mind her own business.
“Weel, here she be to see them hersen,” said she, as the inner door of
the kitchen opened, and Claire came in.
“Oh, Joan, papa wants you to----” began she.
Then she saw Bram, and stopped.
“I’ve brought the things, Miss Claire,” said he in a shy voice.
Miss Biron had stopped short and changed color. She now came forward
slowly, and passing Joan, held open the door for him to enter.
“Oh, please come in,” she said in a very demure voice, from which it
was impossible to tell whether she was pleased or annoyed, grateful or
the reverse, for his good offices.
Bram entered, and proceeded to place his enormous parcel on the deal
table, and to cut the string. He was passing through the refining
process very rapidly; and, already, in the clothes which he had chosen
under Chris Cornthwaite’s eye, he looked too dignified a person to
engage in the duties of a light porter.
Claire, more demure than ever, spoke as if she was much shocked.
“Oh, have you carried that heavy parcel? Oh, I’m so sorry. It is very,
very kind of you, but----”
She stopped, stammering a little. Joan, who was standing with her hands
on her hips, admiring the scene, laughed scornfully.
“Eh, but it’s a grand thing to be yoong! Ah can’t get no smart yoong
gen’lemen to carry my parcels for me, not if they was to see me
breakin’ ma back.”
“Why, you’ve got a husband to carry them for you,” said Claire quickly,
and not very happily; for Joan laughed again.
“Ay, Miss Claire, but they doan’t do it after they’re married; so do
you make t’ moast o’ your time.”
And Joan, with an easy nod which was meant to include both the young
people, went through into the hall with leisurely steps.
As she had left behind her a slight feeling of awkward reserve, Claire
felt bound to begin with an apology for her.
“She’s rather rough, but, oh, so good,” said she.
“Then if she’s good to you, I can forgive all her roughness,” said Bram.
And the next minute he wished he had not said it.
There was a momentary pause, during which Bram busied himself with
the strings of his parcels. With a rapid eye, Miss Biron ran over the
various things which the outer wrapper had contained. Then, with a
bright flush in her face, she took her purse from her pocket.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked quickly. “Three boxes of candles,
eighteenpence. Two boxes of sardines, two and sixpence. Box of figs,
half-a-crown----”
Bram interrupted her hotly. “One and ninepence, the figs,” cried he,
“and the sardines were only ninepence a tin.”
“Then they are not the best.”
“Yes, they are.”
This colloquy, short and simple as it was, had left the combatants, for
such they seemed, panting with excitement. Miss Biron looked at the
young man narrowly and proceeded in a tone of much haughtiness----
“I must beg you to tell me really what they cost, whatever my father
said. He knows nothing about the price of things, but”--and the young
lady gave him a look which was meant to impress him with her vast
experience in these matters--“I do.”
Bram, afraid of offending her still further, and conscious of the
delicate ground upon which he stood, began submissively to add up the
various items, deducting a few pence where he dared, until the total
of nineteen shillings and fourpence was reached. Miss Biron opened her
purse rather nervously, and took out a small handful of silver, a very
small handful, alas!
“Let me see. Papa gave you five shillings----”
“And then the ten he gave me as I went out by the gate after you’d gone
up,” pursued Bram, imperturbably.
“Ten!” echoed Claire, sharply. “Papa gave you ten shillings more!”
“Half-a-sovereign, yes,” replied Bram, mendaciously. “You said he
hadn’t given me enough, you know, so he gave me the ten shillings. You
ask him.”
Claire shook her head.
“It’s no use asking papa anything,” she said with a sigh. Then she
added, suddenly raising her head and flashing her eyes, “I must trust
to your honor, Mr. Elshaw.”
The sound of his name uttered by her lips gave Bram a ridiculous
thrill of pleasure. He had supposed she only knew him as “Bram,” and
the thought that she had taken the trouble to inquire his name was a
delicious one.
“Yes,” said he simply, in no wise troubled by the doubt she expressed.
“Well, that’s fifteen shillings, and you owe me four shillings and
fourpence.”
She gave him a quick glance of suspicion, and then counted out her poor
little hoard of sixpences and coppers. She had only three shillings and
sevenpence.
“I owe you,” said she, as she put the money into his hand, “ninepence,
which I must pay you next week. But, please, I want you to promise,”
she earnestly went on, “not to do any more shopping for papa. He is so
extravagant,” and she tried to laugh merrily, “that I have to keep some
check upon him, or we should soon be ruined.”
“All right, Miss Claire, I’ll do just as you wish, of course. But it’s
a great pleasure to me to be able to do any little thing for you.
You know, for one thing,” he added quickly, fancying that she might
think this presumptuous, “that Mr. Christian was the person who got me
moved up out of the works, so I am doubly glad to do anything for--for
anybody he takes an interest in.”
Over Claire’s sensitive face there passed a shadow at the mention of
Christian’s name.
“Christian Cornthwaite is my cousin, you know,” said she. “He often
talks of you. He says you are very clever, and he is very proud of
having discovered you, as he calls it.”
“It was very good of him,” said Bram. “I’m afraid I don’t do him much
credit; I’m such a rough sort of chap.”
Miss Biron looked at him rather shyly, and laughed.
“Well, you were, just a little. But you are--are----”
“A little bit better now?” suggested Bram modestly.
“Well, I was going to say a great deal better, only I was afraid it
sounded rather rude. What I meant was that--that----”
“Well, I should like to hear what it was you meant.”
“Well, that you speak differently, for one thing.”
“But I slip back sometimes,” said Bram, laughing and blushing, just as
she laughed and blushed. “It’s so hard not to say ‘Ah’ when I ought to
say ‘I.’ I’m getting on, I know, but it’s like walking on eggs all the
time.”
Then they both laughed again, and at this point the door opened and Mr.
Biron came in.
He was very amiable, and insisted on Bram’s coming into the dining-room
with him. As Bram neither smoked nor drank, however, Theodore’s offer
of whisky and cigars was thrown away. But Bram sat down and made a
very good audience, laughing at his host’s stories and jokes, so that
he found himself forced into accepting an invitation to come in again
on the following evening.
By Theodore’s wish it became Bram’s frequent custom to spend an hour at
the farmhouse in the evening; and the young man soon availed himself of
the intimacy thus begun to make himself useful to Claire in a hundred
ways. He would chop wood in the yard, mend broken furniture, fetch
things from the town, and bargain for her for her poultry, suggest and
help to carry out reformations in her management of the dairy--doing
everything unobtrusively, but making his shrewd common sense manifest
in a hundred practical ways.
And Claire was grateful, rather shy of taking advantage of his
kindness, but giving him such reward of smiles and thanks as more than
repaid him for labor which was pleasure indeed.
Sometimes Christian Cornthwaite would be at the farm, and on these
occasions Bram saw little of Claire, who was always monopolized by
her cousin. Christian was as devoted as Bram could have wished; but,
if Theodore thought that the young man delayed his coming, he did not
scruple to send his daughter on some excuse to call at Holme Park,
always refusing Bram’s humble offers to take the message or to escort
Claire.
The one thing Bram could have wished about Claire was that she should
be less submissive to her unscrupulous father in matters like this.
He would have had her refuse to go up to Holme Park, where she was
always received, as Bram knew, with the coldness which ought to have
been reserved for Theodore. And especially did Bram feel this now
that he knew, from Theodore’s own lips, that the notes he sent by his
daughter’s hand to Josiah Cornthwaite were seldom answered. It made
Bram’s blood boil to know this, and that in the face of this fact
Theodore continued to send his daughter up to his rich cousin’s house
on begging errands.
Bram was in the big farm kitchen by himself one cool September
evening, busily engaged in making a new dressing-table for Claire out
of some old boxes. He had his coat off, and was sawing away, humming to
himself as he did so, when, turning to look for something he wanted, he
found, to his surprise, that Claire, whom he had not seen that evening,
was sitting in the room.
She had taken her hat off, and was sitting with it in her lap, so
silently, so sadly, that Bram, who was not used to this mood in the
volatile girl, was struck with astonishment.
For a moment he stood, saw in hand, looking at her without speaking.
“Miss Claire!” exclaimed he at last.
“Well?”
“When did you come in? I never saw you come in!”
“No. I didn’t want you to see me. I don’t want any one to see me. So I
can’t go in because papa has the door open, and he would catch me on
the way upstairs.”
“What’s wrong with you, Miss Claire?”
Bram had come over to her and was leaning on the table and speaking
with so much kindness in his voice that the girl’s eyes, after glancing
up quickly and meeting his, filled with tears.
“Oh, everything. One feels like that sometimes. Everybody does, I
suppose.”
Bram’s heart ached for the girl. He guessed that she had been to Holme
Park on the usual errand, and that she had been coldly received. He
could hear Theodore strumming on the piano in the drawing-room. The
piano was so placed that the player had a good view of the open door,
and Bram knew that Theodore had chosen this method of filling up the
time till his daughter’s return. Apparently he had now caught with his
sharp ears the sound of voices in the kitchen, for the playing ceased,
and a moment later he presented himself at the door with a smiling face.
“Good-evening, Elshaw. Heard you sawing away, but didn’t like to
disturb you till I heard another voice, and guessed that I might. Any
answer to my note, Claire?”
[Illustration: 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.