AN ILL-MATCHED PAIR.
Nobody but simple-hearted Bram Elshaw, perhaps, would have been able
to doubt any longer after what he had seen that there was something
stronger than cousinly affection between Christian Cornthwaite and
Claire. But even this wild visit of Chris to his cousin on his very
wedding day did not create more than a momentary doubt, a flying
suspicion, in the heart of the devoted Bram.
Had he not looked into her dark eyes not many days before, and read
there every virtue and every quality which can make womanhood sweet and
noble and dear?
Unluckily, Chris had been seen on this mysterious visit by others
besides Bram.
It was not long after the wedding day that Josiah Cornthwaite found
occasion, when Bram was alone with him in his office, to break out into
invective against the girl who, so he said, was trying to destroy every
chance of happiness for his son. Bram, who could not help knowing to
what girl he referred, made no comment, but waited stolidly for the
information which he saw that Mr. Cornthwaite was anxious to impart.
“I think even you, Elshaw, who advocated this young woman so warmly a
little while ago, will have to alter your opinion now.” As Bram still
looked blank, he went on impatiently--“Don’t pretend to misunderstand.
You know very well whom I mean--Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm.
“It has come to my ears that my son had a meeting with her on his
wedding day----”
Bram’s countenance looked more blank than ever. Mr. Cornthwaite went
on--
“I know what I am talking about, and I speak from the fullest
information. She sent him a note that very morning; everybody knows
about it; my daughter heard her say it was to be given to Mr. Christian
at once, and that it was from his cousin Miss Biron. Is that evidence
enough for you?”
Bram trembled.
“There must be some other explanation than the one you have put upon
it, sir,” said he quietly but decidedly. “Miss Biron often had to write
notes on behalf of her father,” he suggested respectfully.
“Pshaw! Would any message of that sort, a mere begging letter, an
attempt to borrow money, have induced my son to take the singular, the
unprecedented action that he did? Surprising, nay, insulting, his wife
before she had been his wife two hours.”
Bram heard the story with tingling ears and downcast eyes. That
there was some truth in it no one knew better than he. Had he not
the confirmatory evidence of his own eyes? Yet still he persisted in
doggedly doubting the inference Mr. Cornthwaite would have forced upon
him. His employer was waiting in stony silence for some answer, some
comment. So at last he looked up, and spoke out bravely the thoughts
that were in his mind.
“Sir,” said he steadily, “the one thing this visit of Mr. Christian’s
proves beyond any doubt is that he was in love with her at the time you
made him marry another woman. It doesn’t prove anything against Miss
Biron, until you have heard a great deal more than you have done so
far, at least. You must excuse me, sir, for speaking so frankly, but
you insisted on my telling you what I thought.”
Mr. Cornthwaite was displeased. But as he had, indeed, forced the young
man to speak, he could not very well reproach him for obeying. Besides,
he was used to Bram’s uncompromising bluntness, and was prepared to
hear what he really thought from his lips.
“I can’t understand the young men of the present generation,” he said
crossly, with a wave of the hand to intimate to Bram that he had done
with him. “When I was between twenty and thirty, I looked for good
looks in a girl, for a pair of fine eyes, for a fine figure, for a pair
of rosy cheeks. Now it seems that women can dispense with all those
attributes, and bowl the men over like ninepins with nothing but a
little thread of a lisping voice and a trick of casting down a pair of
eyes which are anything but what I should call fine. But I suppose I am
old-fashioned.”
Bram retired respectfully without offering any suggestion as to the
reason of this surprising change of taste.
He was in a tumult of secret anxiety. He felt that he could no longer
keep away from the farm, that he must risk everything to try to get an
explanation from Claire. If she would trust him with the truth, and
he believed her confidence in himself to be great enough for this, he
could, he thought, clear her name in the eyes of the angry Josiah. It
was intolerable to him that the girl he worshipped as devotedly as ever
should lie under a foul suspicion.
So that very evening, as soon as he had left the office, he went
straight to the farm. It was his last day before starting on the
mission with which he was to be intrusted in the place of Chris, who
was on his honeymoon. This was an excellent excuse for a visit, which
might not, he feared, be well received.
He was more struck than ever as he approached the farmyard gate with a
fact which had been patent to all eyes of late. The tenants of Duke’s
Farm had fallen on evil days. Everything about the place betrayed the
fact that a guiding hand was wanting; while Bram had kept an eye on the
farm bailiff things had gone pretty smoothly, fences had been repaired,
the stock had been well looked after. Now there were signs of neglect
upon everything. The wheat was still unstacked; the thatch at one end
of the big barn was broken and defective; a couple of pigs had strayed
from the farmyard into the garden, and were rooting up whatever took
their fancy.
Bram leaned on the gate, and looked sorrowfully around.
Was it by chance that the back door opened, and Joan, the good-humored
Yorkshire servant, peeped out? She looked at him for a few minutes very
steadily, and then she beckoned him with a brawny arm. He came across
the yard at once.
“Look here, mister,” said she in her broadly familiar manner, “what
have ye been away so long for? Do ye think there’s nought to be done
here now? Or have ye grown too grand for us poor folks?”
He laughed rather bitterly.
“No, Joan, I’ve only kept away because I’m not wanted.”
“Hark to him!” she cried ironically, as she planted her hands on her
hips, and glanced up at him with a shrewd look in her gray-green clever
eyes. “He wants to be pressed now, when he used to be glad enoof to
sneak in and take his chance of a welcome! Well, Ah could tell a tale
if Ah liked, and put the poor, modest fellow at his ease, that Ah
could!”
Bram’s face flushed.
“Do you mean she wants me?” he asked so simply that Joan burst into a
good-humored laugh.
“Go ye in and see,” said she with a stupendous nod. “And if ye get the
chuck aht, blame it on to me!”
Bram took the hint, and went in. Joan followed, and pointed to a chair
by the table, where Claire sat bending over some work by the light of
a candle. The evening was a gray one, and the light was already dim in
the big farm kitchen.
“Here’s a friend coom to see ye who doan’t coom so often as he might,”
cried Joan, following close on the visitor’s heels. Claire was looking
up with eyes in which Bram, with a pang, noted a new look of fear and
dismay. For the first time within his recent memory she did not seem
glad to see him. He stopped.
“I’ve only come, Miss Claire,” said he in a very modest voice, “to tell
you I’m going to London to-morrow on business for the firm. I shall
be away ten days or a fortnight; and I came to know whether there was
anything I could do for you, either before I go or while I’m there. But
if there’s nothing, or if I’m in the way----”
“You’re never in anybody’s way, Mr. Elshaw,” said she quite cordially,
but without the hearty ring there used to be in her welcome. “Please,
sit down.”
She offered him a chair, and he took it, while Joan, round about whose
wide mouth a malicious smile was playing, disappeared into her own
precincts of scullery and back-kitchen.
For some minutes there was dead silence, not the happy silence of two
friends so secure in their friendship that they need not talk--the
old-time silence which they had both loved, but a constrained,
uncomfortable taciturnity, a leaden, speechless pause, during which
Bram watched with feverish eyes the little face as it bent over her
work, and noted that the outline of her cheek had grown sharper.
He tried to speak, to break the horrid silence which weighed upon them
both. But he could not. It seemed to him that there was something
different about this meeting from any they had ever had, that the air
was heavy with impending disaster.
He spoke suddenly at last in a husky voice.
“Miss Claire, I want you to tell me something.”
She looked up quickly, with anxiety in her eyes. But she said nothing.
“I want you to tell me,” he went on, assuming a tone which was almost
bullying in his excitement, “why Mr. Christian came to see you the day
he was married?”
To his horror she stood up, pushing back her chair, moving as if with
no other object than to hide the frantic emotion she was seized with
at these words. There passed over her face a look of anguish which he
never forgot as she answered in a low, breathless voice.
“Hush, I cannot tell you. You must not ask. You must never ask. And you
must never speak about it again, never, never!”
Bram leaned over the table, and looked straight into her eyes. In every
line of her face he read the truth.
“He asked you to--to go away with him!” he growled, hardly above his
breath.
“Hush!” cried she. “Hush! I don’t know how you know; I hope, oh, I pray
that nobody else knows. I want to forget it! I will forget it! If I had
to go through it again it would kill me!”
And, dry-eyed, she fell into a violent fit of shuddering, and sank down
in her chair with her head in her hands.
“The scoundrel!” said Bram in a terrible whisper.
And there came into his face that look, that fierce peep out of the
primitive north country savage, which had startled Chris himself one
memorable night.
Claire saw it, and she grew white as the dead.
“Bram,” cried she hoarsely, “don’t look like that; don’t speak like
that. You frighten me!”
But he looked at her with eyes which did not see. This fulfilment of
his fears, of his doubts of Chris, was a shock she could not understand.
There was a pause before he was able to speak. Then he repeated
vaguely--
“Frightened you, Miss Claire! I didn’t mean to do that!”
But the look on his face had not changed. Claire leaned across the
table, touched his sleeve impatiently, timidly.
“Bram,” said she in a shrill voice, sharpened by alarm, “you are to
forget it too! Do you hear?”
He turned upon her suddenly.
“No,” said he, “you can’t make me do that!”
“But I say you must, you shall. Oh, Bram, if you had been here, if you
had heard him, you would have been sorry for him, you would have pitied
him, as I did!”
Bram leaped up from his chair. All the fury in his eyes seemed now to
be concentrated upon her.
“You pitied him! You were sorry for him! For a black-hearted rascal
like that!”
“Oh, Bram, Bram, don’t you know that those are only words! When you see
a man you’ve always liked, been fond of, who has always been happy and
bright, and full of fun and liveliness, quite suddenly changed, and
broken down, and wretched, you don’t stop to ask yourself whether he’s
a good man or a bad one. Now, do you, Bram?”
“You ought to!” rejoined Bram in fierce Puritanism militant. “You ought
to have used your chance of showing him what a wicked thing he was
doing to his poor wife as well as you!”
“Oh, Bram, I did. I said what I could!”
“Not half enough, I’ll warrant!” retorted he, clenching his fist. “You
didn’t tell him he was a blackguard who ought to be kicked from one end
of the county to the other! And that you’d never speak to him again as
long as you lived!”
“No, I certainly didn’t.”
“Then,” almost shouted Bram, bringing his fist down on the table with
a threatening, sounding thump, “you ought to be ashamed of yourself!
You good women do as much harm as the bad ones, for you are just as
tender and sweet to men when they do wrong as when they do right. You
encourage them in their wicked ways, when you should be stand-off and
proud. I do believe, God forgive me for saying so, you care more for
Mr. Chris now than you did before!”
Claire, who was very white, waited a moment when he had come to the end
of his accusation. Then she said in a weak, timid, little voice, but
with steadiness--
“It is true, I believe, that I like him better than I did before. You
are too hard, Bram; you make no allowance for anything.”
“There are some things no allowance should be made for.”
“Well, there’s one thing you forget, and that is that I’ve not been
used to good people, so that I am not so hard as you are. I’ve never
known a good man except you, Bram, but then I’ve never known one so
severe upon others either.”
“You shouldn’t say that, Miss Claire; I’m not hard.”
“Oh!”
“Or if I am, it’s only so as I shouldn’t be too soft!” cried he,
suddenly breaking down into gentleness, and forgetting his grammar at
the same time. “It’s only because you’ve got nobody to take care of
you, nobody to keep harm away from you, that I want you to be harder
yourself!”
There was a pause. Claire was evidently touched by his solicitude.
Presently she spoke, persuasively, affectionately, but with caution.
“Bram, if I promise to be hard, very hard, will you give me a promise
back?”
“What’s that?”
“Will you promise me that you will forget”--Bram shook his head,
and at once began a fierce, angry protest--“well, that you will say
nothing about this. Come, you are bound in honor, because I told you in
confidence----”
“No, you didn’t; I found out!”
“You can’t deny that I have told you some things in confidence. Now,
listen. You can do no good, and you may do harm by speaking about this.
You must behave to Christian as if you knew nothing. It is of no use
for you to shake your head. I insist. And remember, it is the only way
you have of proving to me that you are not hard. Why, what about the
poor wife you pretended to be so anxious about just now? Isn’t it for
her advantage as well as mine that this awful, dreadful mistake should
be forgotten?”
There was no denying this. Bram hung his head. At last he looked up,
and said shortly--
“If I promise to behave as if I hadn’t heard will you promise me not to
see Mr. Christian again?”
Claire flushed proudly. But when she answered it was in a gentle, kind
voice.
“You won’t trust me, Bram?”
“I think it will be better for the wife, for you, for him, for
everybody, if you promise.”
“Very well. I promise to do my best not to see him again.”
She was looking very grave. Bram stared at her anxiously. She got up
suddenly, and looked at him as if in dismissal. He held out his hand.
“Good-bye, Miss Claire. You forgive my rough manners, don’t you? If
only you had somebody better than me to take care of you, I wouldn’t be
so meddlesome. Good-bye. God bless you!”
He wanted to say a great deal more; he wanted to know a great deal
more; but he dared not risk another word. Giving her hand a quick, firm
pressure, which she returned without looking up, and with a restraint
and reserve which warned him to be careful, he hurried out of the house.