BRAM SHOWS HIMSELF IN A NEW LIGHT.
Now, Christian felt throughout the evening that Bram was avoiding his
eyes, saving himself up, as it were, for an attack of eye and tongue, a
combat in which Chris would have all he could do to hold his own.
Christian was fond of Bram, fonder even, perhaps, than Bram, with his
honest admiration and indulgence, was of him. The steady, earnest
character of the sturdy man of the people, with his straightforward
simplicity, his shrewdness, and his blunt outspokenness when his
opinion was asked, had constant attraction for the less simple, but
more amiable, son of the owner of the works. He wanted to put himself
right with Bram, and to do it in such a way as to put Bram in the wrong.
He tried to get an opportunity of a chat with the sullen-looking young
clerk, who, however, avoided this chance more cleverly than Chris
sought it.
At the close of the evening, when Bram had reeled off without a
mistake the elaborate speech of thanks to Mrs. Cornthwaite which he
had prepared beforehand, he contrived very cleverly to slip out of the
house while Chris was occupied with the perfunctory attentions demanded
by his _fiancée_. And with the start he thus obtained, he contrived to
reach the foot of Hassel Hill before he became aware that he was being
followed.
“Hallo!” cried out a bright voice, which he knew to be that of Chris.
“Hallo!”
Bram did not answer, did not slacken his pace, but went straight on up
the hill, leaving Chris to follow or not as he pleased.
He had reached the outer gate of Duke’s Farm before Chris came in
sight, toiling up the steep road in silence after him. Then the pursuer
called out again. Somebody besides Bram recognized the voice, for a
minute later Bram saw a light struck in an upper window of the farm.
The window was thrown up, and somebody looked out. Bram, however,
stalked upwards in silence still.
He had reached the first of the row of cottages on the top of the hill,
when Chris, making a last spurt, overtook him, and seized him by the
arm.
“Bram, Bram, what’s the matter with you? I’ve been panting and puffing
after you for a thousand miles, and I can’t get you to turn that wooden
head of yours. Come, I know what’s wrong with you, and I mean to have
it out with you at once, and have done with it. So come along.”
He had already hooked his arm within that of the unwilling Bram,
who held himself stiffly, stubbornly, with an air which seemed to
say--“Well, if you want it, you can have it.”
And so, the one eager, defiant, impetuous, the other stolid and
taciturn, the two men walked past the rows of mean cottages, past
Bram’s own lodgings, and up to the very summit of the hill, where the
ruined, patched-up, and re-ruined mansion was, and the disused coal
shaft with its towering chimney.
“And now,” cried Chris, suddenly stopping and swinging Bram round to
face him in the darkness, “we are coming to an understanding.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Now, don’t ‘sir’ me, but tell me if you’re not ashamed of yourself----”
“Me ashamed of myself! I like that!” cried Bram with a short laugh.
“But that’s the way with you gentlemen. If you please, we’ll not have
any talk about this, because honor and honesty don’t mean the same
thing to you as to me.”
“That’s a nasty one,” retorted Chris in his usual airy tone. “Now, look
here, Bram, although you’re so entirely unreasonable that you don’t
deserve it, I’m going to condescend to argue with you, and to prove to
you the absurdity of your conduct in treating me like this.”
“Like what, Mr Christian?”
“Oh, you know. Don’t let’s waste time. You are angry because I’m
marrying Miss Hibbs----”
“No,” said Bram obstinately. “I’m not angry with you for marrying Miss
Hibbs. I’m angry because you’re not marrying the girl you love, the
girl you’ve taught to love you.”
“Same thing, Bram. I can’t marry them both, you know.”
Bram shook his arm free angrily.
“Mr. Christian, we won’t talk about this no more,” said he in a voice
which was hoarse, and strained, and unlike his own. “I might say things
I shouldn’t like to. Let me go, sir; let me go home, and do you go home
and leave me alone.”
“No, I won’t leave you till we’ve threshed the matter out. Be
reasonable, Bram. You know as well as I do that I’m dependent on my
father----”
“You knew that all along. But you said, you told me----”
“I told you that I wanted to marry my cousin Claire. Well, so I did.
But my father wouldn’t hear of it; apart from the objection he has to
the marriage of cousins----”
“That’s new, that is,” put in Bram shortly.
“Apart from that, I say, he wouldn’t have anything to say to the match
for a dozen reasons. You know that. And, knowing how I’m placed, it is
highly ridiculous of you to make all this fuss, especially as you, no
doubt, intend to use the opportunity to cut in yourself.”
His tone changed, and Bram detected real pique, real jealousy in these
last words.
Bram heard this in dead silence.
“You do, eh?” went on Chris more sharply.
“No, Mr. Christian, I do not. I couldn’t come after you in a girl’s
heart.”
“Why not? You are too modest, Bram.”
Perhaps Chris flattered himself that he spoke in his usual tone; but an
unpleasant, jeering note was clearly discernible to Bram Elshaw’s ears.
Christian went on in a more jarring tone than ever.
“Or have you been so far penetrated with the maxims of the
Sunday-school that you would not allow a girl a little harmless
flirtation?”
“Flirtation!” echoed Bram angrily. “It was more than that, Mr.
Christian, more than that--to her!”
“It was nothing more than that,” said Chris emphatically. “I have done
the girl no harm.”
Before the words were out of his mouth Bram had sprung forward with the
savagery of a wild animal. In the obscurity of the cloudy night his
eyes gleamed, and with set teeth and clenched fists he came close to
Christian, staring into his eyes, stammering in his vehemence.
“If you had,” whispered he almost inaudibly, but with passion which
infected Christian and awed him into silence, “If you had done
her--any--harm, I’d ha’ strangled you, Mr. Christian. I’d ha’ gone
down to t’ works, when you was there, and I’d ha’ taken one o’ t’
leather bands o’ t’ wheels, and I’d ha’ twisted it round your neck, Mr.
Christian, and I’d ha’ pulled, and pulled, till I saw t’ eyes start out
o’ your head, and t’ blood come bursting out o’ your mouth. And I’d ha’
held you, and tightened it, and tightened it till the breath was out o’
your body!”
When he had finished, Bram still stood close to Christian, glaring at
him with wild, bloodshot eyes. Christian tried to laugh, but he turned
suddenly away, almost staggering. He felt sick and faint. It was Bram
who recovered himself first. He confronted Chris quickly, looking
ashamed, penitent, abashed.
“Ah shouldn’t ha’ said what Ah did,” said he, just in his old voice,
as if he had been again a mere hand at the works. “It was not for me
to say it, owing what Ah do to you, Mr. Christian. But--by--I meant it
all the same.” And again the strange new Bram flashed out for a moment.
“And I’m thinking, Mr. Christian,” he went on, resuming the more
refined tones of his later development, “that it will be best for me to
leave the works altogether, for it can never be the same for you and me
after to-night. You can’t forgive me for what I’ve said, and--well, I
feel I should be more comfortable away, if it’s the same to you.”
There was a pause, hardly lasting more than a few seconds, and then
Chris spoke, with a hoarse and altered voice, but in nearly his
ordinary tones--
“But it’s not the same to me or to us, not at all the same, Bram. My
delinquencies, real or imaginary, cannot be allowed to come between my
father and the best clerk he ever had, the man who is to make up for
my business shortcomings. So--so if you please, Elshaw, I’ll take my
chance of the strangling, though, mind you, I should have thought you
might have discovered some more refined mode of making away with me,
something just as effective, and--and nicer to look at.”
His voice was tremulous, and he did not look at Bram, though he
succeeded pretty well in maintaining a light tone. Bram laughed shortly.
“My refinement’s only skin deep, you see, Mr. Christian. I told you so.
The raw Sheffielder’s very near the top. And in these fine clothes,
too!”
He glanced down rather scornfully at the brand-new overcoat, and at the
glazed expanse of unaccustomed shirt-front which showed underneath.
There was another pause. Both the young men were trembling violently,
and found it pretty hard to keep up talk at this placid level of
commonplace. Quite suddenly Chris said--“Well, good-night, Elshaw,” and
started on his way back to Holme Park at a good pace.
Bram drew a long breath. He had just gone through an experience so
hideous, so horrible, that he felt as if he had been seared, branded
with a hot iron. For the first time he realized now what he had been
simple enough not to suspect before, that Christian had never for a
moment seriously entertained the idea of marrying Claire.
And yet he was in love with her! Bram, loving Claire himself, was
clear-sighted and not to be deceived on this point. Christian loved her
still enough to be jealous of any other man’s feelings for her. He had
betrayed this fact in every word, in every tone. If, then, he loved her
and did not mean to marry her, he, the irresistible, the spoilt child
of the sex, what right had he to love her, to make her love him? What
motive had he in passing so much of his time at Duke’s Farm?
And there darted into poor Bram’s heart a jealous, mad fear that was
like a poison in his blood. He clenched his teeth, he shook his fists
in the air; again the wild, fierce passion which had swept over him at
Christian’s stabbing words seized him and possessed him.
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.