THE FINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX.
Christian Cornthwaite pretended to be occupied in conversation with his
future father-in-law, while Mr. Cornthwaite, senior, in his blandest
and most good-humored tones, made the announcement of his son’s
intended marriage to the astonished Bram.
But Christian’s attention was not so deeply engaged that he could not
take note of what was happening, and he noticed the dead silence with
which Bram received the announcement, and presently stole a furtive
look at the face of the young clerk.
Bram caught the look, and replied to it with a steady stare. Chris
turned his eyes away, but that look of Bram’s fascinated him, worried
him. In truth, it had been his fear of what Elshaw would say, even more
than his own disinclination, which had kept him hovering on the brink
of his engagement with Miss Hibbs for so long.
And now he felt that he would have preferred some outbreak on Bram’s
part to this stony silence.
[Illustration: “A wedding, Sir?” Bram’s face clouded with perplexity.
--_Page 70._]
Even Josiah Cornthwaite was puzzled by Bram’s reception of the news.
The young man seemed absolutely unmoved by the fresh proof of his
employer’s confidence given in the information that he was to be sent
to London on important business. He grew even uneasy as Bram’s silence
continued, or was broken only by the briefest and coldest of answers.
He looked from his son to Bram, and perceived that there was some
understanding between them. And his fears grew apace. He shortened the
stay in the dining-room, therefore, and letting Mr. Hibbs and Chris
enter the drawing-room together, he took Bram up the stairs, with the
excuse of showing him the view of the town from one of the windows.
Bram was shrewd enough to guess that he was to be “pumped.”
“This news about my son’s intended marriage seems to have taken you by
surprise, Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite as they stood together looking
out on the blurred lights of the town below.
“Well, sir, it has,” admitted Bram briefly.
“But you know he is twenty-six, an age at which a young man who can
afford it ought to be thinking of marrying.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You thought, perhaps, that such a volatile fellow would be scarcely
likely to make such a sensible choice as he has done?” went on Josiah
with an air of bland indulgence, but with some anxiety in his eyes.
There was a pause.
“That was what you thought, eh?” repeated Mr. Cornthwaite more sharply.
Bram Elshaw frowned.
“Sir, may I speak out?” asked he bluntly.
“Certainly.”
“Well, then, sir, I don’t think it is a wise choice--if it was his
choice at all, and not yours, sir?”
Now, Mr. Cornthwaite, while giving his permission to speak out, had not
expected such uncompromising frankness as this. He was taken aback. He
stammered as he began to answer--
“Why, why, what do you mean? Could there be a more sensible choice than
such a lady as Miss Hibbs? A good daughter, not frivolous, or vain, or
flighty; a sensible, affectionate girl, devoted to her parents and to
good works. Just such a girl, in fact, as can be depended upon to make
a thoroughly good, devoted wife.”
“For some sort of men, sir. But not for a man like Mr. Christian,”
returned Bram with decision.
His blood was up, and he spoke with as much firmness as, and with more
fire than, he had ever before shown to his employer.
Mr. Cornthwaite, who had grounds for feeling uneasy, was lenient,
patient, attentive, curious.
“Why, don’t you know, Elshaw,” said he sharply, “that a man should
mate with his opposite if he wants to be happy? That grave and serious
men like frivolous wives; but that your lively young fellow likes a
sober-minded wife to keep his house in order?”
“Sir, if it’s Mr. Christian’s choice, there’s an end of it,” said Bram
brusquely.
“Of course it’s his choice, none the less, but rather the more, that
it meets not only with my approval, but with that of the ladies of my
family,” said Mr. Cornthwaite pompously.
Yet still he was curious, still unsatisfied. And still Bram said
nothing.
“Believe me,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on impressively, “a man is none the
less amenable to the influence of a good wife for having sown his wild
oats first. With a wife like the one I--no, I mean he has chosen,” a
faint smile flickered over Bram’s mouth at this correction, “my son
will settle down into a model husband and father. You want the two
elements, seriousness on the one side, good-humored gayety on the
other, to make a happy marriage. Why, I ought to know, for these are
exactly the principles on which I married myself.”
Mr. Cornthwaite uttered these words with an air of bland assurance,
which, he thought, must carry conviction. But his young hearer,
unfortunately, had heard enough about the domestic life at Holme Park
to know that the “sensible marriage” on which Mr. Cornthwaite prided
himself had by no means resulted in domestic peace. The bickerings of
the ill-matched pair were, in fact, a constant source of misery to
all the household, and were used freely by Chris as an excuse for his
neglect of home.
Bram, therefore, received this information with courtesy, but without
comment. Mr. Cornthwaite kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the young
man, and found himself at last obliged to put a direct question.
“You had, I suppose, expected him to make a different sort of choice?”
“Very different, sir.”
“Some one, perhaps, whom you would have considered better suited to
him?”
“Much better suited, sir.”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face clouded.
“Whom do you mean?”
Bram only hesitated a moment. He could do Christian no harm now by
telling the truth; and he had a lingering hope that he might bring old
Mr. Cornthwaite to see the matter with his own eyes.
“Sir,” said he, “have you never suspected your son of any attachment,
any serious attachment, to a lady as good as Miss Hibbs is said to be,
and a great deal more attractive?”
Bram felt as he said this that he had lapsed into the copybook style of
conversation which Chris had pointed out as one of his besetting sins.
But he could not help it. He felt the need of some dignity in speaking
words which he felt to be momentous.
Mr. Cornthwaite looked deeply annoyed.
“I have not,” said he shortly. And again he asked--“Whom do you mean?”
“Miss Claire Biron, sir,” answered Bram.
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face darkened still more.
“What!” cried he in agitation which belied his words. “You believe that
my son ever gave that girl a serious thought? And that the daughter of
such a father could be a proper match for my son? Absurd! Absurd! Of
course, you are a very young man; you have no knowledge of the world.
But I should have thought your native shrewdness would have prevented
your falling into such a mistake as that.”
Bram said nothing. Mr. Cornthwaite, in spite of the scornful tone he
had used, was evidently more anxious than ever to learn whatever Bram
had to tell on the subject. After a short silence, therefore, he asked
in a quieter tone--
“How came you to get such a notion into your head, Elshaw?”
“I knew that they were fond of each other, sir; and I knew that Miss
Biron was a young lady of character, and what you call tact.”
“Tact! Humbug!” said Mr. Cornthwaite shortly. “She is an artful,
designing girl, and she and her father have done all in their power to
entangle my son. But I foresaw his danger, and now I flatter myself I
have saved him. You, I see, have been taken in by the girl’s little
mincing ways, just as my son was in danger of being. But I warn you not
to have anything to do with them. They are an artful, scheming pair,
both father and daughter, and it would be ruin for any man to become
connected with them--ruin, I say.”
And he stared anxiously into Bram’s face.
“Has she led you on too?” he asked presently, with great abruptness.
Bram’s face flushed.
“No, sir. She has forbidden me to come to her father’s house.”
“Ah! A ruse, a trick to encourage my son!” cried the old gentleman
fiercely. “I wish he were safely married. I shall do all in my power to
hurry it on. How often have you seen him about there? You live near, I
believe?” said he curtly.
“I have seen him now and then, not so very often lately,” answered
Bram.
“Ah, well, you won’t see him there much longer. Miss Hibbs will see to
that.”
“Sir, you are wrong,” cried Bram, whose head and heart were on fire at
these accusations against Claire. “Miss Hibbs may be a good girl, as
girls go. I don’t know” (Bram’s English gave way here) “nothing against
her. But I do know you don’t give your son a chance when you make him
marry a sack o’ meal like that, and him loving a flesh-and-blood woman
like Miss Biron! Why, sir, ask yourself whether it’s in nature that he
should settle down to the psalm-singing that would suit her, so as to
be happy and satisfied to give up his wild ways? Put it to him point
blank, sir, which he’d do of his own free will, and see what answer
you’ll get from him!”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Cornthwaite hastily, “and
I’m exceedingly sorry to find you so much more gullible than I had
expected, Elshaw. Is it possible you didn’t observe how this young
woman ran after my son? Coming to this house on every possible occasion
with some excuse or other?”
“That was her father’s fault, sir,” retorted Bram hotly.
“Probably he had something to do with it; but she fell in with his
wishes with remarkable readiness, readiness which no modest girl
would have shown in the circumstances. She must have seen she was not
welcomed with any warmth by the heads of the household at least.”
The blood rushed to Bram’s forehead. The idea of poor little Claire
creeping unwillingly to the great house on one of her father’s
miserable errands, only to be snubbed and coldly received by every one,
struck him like a stab.
“Surely, sir, there was no place in the world where she had so good a
right to expect to be well received as here?” said he, with difficulty
controlling the emotion he felt. “A young girl, doing her best to
fulfil every duty, with no friends, no mother, no father worthy of the
name. And you are her relations; here there were women, ladies, who
knew all about her, and who might be expected to sympathize with her
difficulties and her troubles!”
Bram, who spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with nice
care, but uttering them with deep feeling, paused, and looked straight
into Mr. Cornthwaite’s face. But there was no mercy in the fiery black
eyes, or about the cold, handsome mouth.
“They would have shown her every sympathy,” said he coldly, “if she had
not abused the privilege of intimacy by trying to ensnare my son.”
“Mr. Cornthwaite,” interrupted Bram scornfully, “do you really think
Mr. Christian ever waited for a girl to run after him? Why, for every
time Miss Biron’s been up here--sent here by her father, mind--he’s
been three or four or five times down at the farm!”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s eyes blazed. By a quick movement he betrayed that
this was just what he had wanted to know. His face clouded more than
before.
“Ah!” said he shortly, “that’s what I’ve been told. Well, it’s the
girl’s own doing. If she’s got herself into a scrape, she has no one
but herself to thank for it, no one. Shall we join the ladies in the
drawing-room?”
He led the way downstairs, and Bram followed in dead silence.
A horrible, sickly fear had seized his heart; he could not but
understand the imputation Mr. Cornthwaite had made, accompanied as it
was by a look, the significance of which there was no mistaking.
Claire, poor little helpless Claire, the cherished idol of his
imagination and of his heart, lay under the most cruel suspicion which
can assail a woman, the suspicion of having held her honor too lightly.
Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare mention of this
suspicion in connection with the girl he worshipped. The next moment
he cast the thought behind him as utterly base, and felt that he had
disgraced himself and her by the momentary harboring of it.
But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated the smug, elderly
gentleman, who troubled himself not in the least about the helpless,
friendless girl who loved his son, and whose only thought was to hurry
his son into a heartless marriage in order to “save him from” the
danger of his repairing his supposed error.
In these circumstances, Bram lost all self-consciousness, all
remembrance of his unaccustomed dress, of his attitudes, of his
awkwardness, and entered the drawing-room utterly absorbed in thoughts
of Claire. Old Mrs. Cornthwaite, who was fumbling about with a lapful
of feminine trifles, smelling-bottle, handkerchief, spectacle-case,
dropped one of them, and he hastened to pick it up.
“Thank you,” said she, with a gracious, good-humored smile, “you are
more attentive than any of the grand folk.”
“Mamma,” cried Hester in fidgety exasperation. And good-naturedly
fearing that he might have been hurt by her mother’s lack of tact, she
opened the old-fashioned, but not unhelpful, album of photographs,
which lay on a table near her, and asked him if he cared for pictures
of Swiss scenery.
“Not much, Miss Hester,” said Bram.
But he went up to the table, encouraged by her kind manners, by the
honest look in her eyes, in the hope that he might find a supporter in
her of the cause he had at heart.
“But I should like to see some photographs of you and Mr. Christian, if
you have any.”
She opened another album, smiling as she did so, and offering him a
chair near her, which he immediately took.
“I never show these unless I am asked,” she said. “Family photographs I
always think uninteresting, except to the family.”
“And to those interested in the family,” amended Bram. “You see, Miss
Hester, there’s hardly another thing in the world I care about so much.
That’s only natural, isn’t it, after what I’ve been treated like at
their hands.”
He was conscious that his English was getting doubtful under the
influence of the emotion which he could not master. But Miss
Cornthwaite seemed, of course, not to notice this. She was extremely
well disposed towards this frank young man with the earnest eyes, the
heavy, obstinate mouth, and the long, straight chin, which gave so much
character to his pale face.
“Christian always speaks of you with such boyish delight, as if he had
discovered you bound hand and foot in the midst of cannibals who wanted
to eat you,” said she laughing.
“So he did, Miss Hester,” answered Bram gravely, almost harshly.
He could not speak, could not think of Chris just now without betraying
something of the emotion the name aroused in him. And he glanced
angrily across to the corner where Chris was sitting beside prim little
Miss Hibbs, who was giggling gently at his remarks, but clasping her
hands tightly together, and keeping her arms pinned closely to her
sides, as if she felt that she was unbending more than was meet, and
that she must atone for a little surface hilarity by this penitential
attitude.
Hester Cornthwaite noticed the glance thrown by Bram, and felt curious.
“I am very glad he is going to be married,” she said quickly, with an
intuition that he would not agree with her. Bram looked her full in the
face in a sudden and aggressive manner.
“Why are you glad?” he asked abruptly.
She was rather disconcerted for a moment.
“Why? Oh, because I think it will be good for him, that he will
be happier, that he will settle down,” she answered with a little
confusion.
Surely he must know as well as she did that there were many reasons for
wishing Chris to grow more steady. A little prim suggestion of this
feeling was noticeable in her tone.
“I don’t think he would settle down, if so he was to marry a girl
he didn’t care for,” said Bram bluntly. “And I should have thought
you would agree with me, understanding Mr. Christian as you do, Miss
Hester.”
Miss Cornthwaite drew her lips rather primly together.
“He does care for her, of course,” said she rather tartly, “else why
should he marry her?”
Bram smiled, and gave her a glance of something like scorn.
“There are a good many reasons why he should marry to please Mr.
Cornthwaite, your father, when he can’t marry to please himself.”
“Why can’t he? Who does he want to marry?” asked Miss Cornthwaite
quickly.
“Why, Miss Biron, Miss Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm,” replied honest
Bram promptly.
Hester’s thin and rather wizened face flushed. She frowned; she looked
annoyed. “Dear me! I never heard anything about it,” she said testily.
“And I can hardly think he would wish to do anything so very unwise.
Christian isn’t stupid, though he’s rather volatile.”
“Stupid! No, indeed. That he should want to marry Miss Biron is no
proof of stupidity. Where could he find a nicer wife? How could you
expect him to sit and look contentedly at Miss Hibbs when there is such
a girl as Miss Biron within ten miles?”
Hester looked more prim than ever.
“You seem very enthusiastic, Mr. Elshaw. Pray, what have you to say
about Mr. Biron?”
“Well, Mr. Christian wouldn’t have to marry him.”
“That is just what he would have to do,” retorted she quickly. “Mr.
Biron would take good care of that. Christian would never be able to
shake him off.”
“Well,” said Bram, “he can’t shake him off now, can he? So he would be
no worse off.”
“Now, seriously, Mr. Elshaw, would you like to have such a
father-in-law yourself?”
Bram’s heart leapt up. But he did not tell the young lady that he
only wished he had the chance. Instead of that, he answered in a
particularly grave and judicial tone--
“If I had, I’d soon bring him to reason. He’s not stupid either, you
see. I’d make an arrangement with him, and I’d make him keep to it.
And if he didn’t keep to it----”
“And he certainly wouldn’t. What then?”
“Well, then perhaps I’d get rid of him some way, Miss Hester.”
“I certainly shouldn’t advise my brother to run the risk of having to
do that, and all for a girl much too volatile to make him a good wife.
Why, she is nearly half French.”
Bram looked at her quickly.
“Surely, Miss Hester, you who have travelled and been about the world,
don’t think the worse of a lady for that?”
Miss Cornthwaite reddened, but she stuck to her guns.
“I hope I am above any silly insular prejudice,” she said coldly.
“But I certainly think the French character too frivolous for an
Englishman’s wife. Why, when Claire comes here, though she will sob as
if her heart was breaking one moment at the humiliations her father
exposes her to, she will be laughing heartily the next.”
“Poor child, poor child! Thank heaven she can,” said Bram with solemn
tenderness which made Miss Cornthwaite just a little ashamed of
herself. “And don’t you think a temper like that would come in handy
for Mr. Christian’s wife, as well as for Mr. Biron’s daughter?”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Miss Cornthwaite very frigidly, as she stretched
out her hand quickly for a fresh book to show him.
Poor Claire had no partisan here.