PARENT AND LOVER.
For some minutes after he had made the announcement of his daughter’s
flight Mr. Biron gave himself up openly and without restraint to the
expression of a sorrow which, while it might be selfish, was certainly
profound.
“My daughter! My daughter!” he sobbed. “My little Claire! My little,
bright-faced darling! Oh, I can’t believe it! It must be a dream, a
nightmare! Do you think, Elshaw,” and he suddenly drew himself up, with
a quick change to bright hope, in the midst of his distress, “that she
can have gone up to the Park to stay at her uncle’s for the night?”
But Bram shook his head.
“I don’t think it’s likely,” he said in a hollow voice. “They were none
so kind to her that she should do that.” A pause. “When did you miss
her?”
“This morning when I got back,” replied Theodore, who looked blue with
cold and misery. “I went out with the hounds yesterday as you know. And
we got such a long way out that I couldn’t get back, and I put up at
an inn for the night. Don’t you think,” and again his face brightened
with one of those volatile changes from misery to hope which made him
seem so womanish, “that she may have been afraid to spend a night in
the house by herself, and that she may have gone down to Joan’s place
to sleep? I’ll go there and see. Will you come? Yes, yes, you’d better
come. I don’t care for Joan; she’s a rough, unfeeling sort of person. I
should like you to come with me.”
“I’ll come--in a minute,” said Bram shortly.
He knew very well that there was nothing in Mr. Biron’s idea. He spoke
as if this were the first time that Claire had been left to spend the
night alone in the farmhouse; but, as a matter of fact, Bram knew very
well that it had been Theodore’s frequent custom to spend the night
away from home, and that his daughter was too much used to his vagaries
to trouble herself seriously about his absence.
He went upstairs, finished dressing, came out of the house, and
rejoined Mr. Biron; and that gentleman noticed no change in him,
thought, indeed, that he was taking the matter with heartless coolness.
Certainly, if behavior which contrasted strongly with that of the
injured father gave proof of heartlessness, then Bram was a very stone.
All the way down the hill Mr. Biron lamented and moaned, sobbed, and
even snivelled, loudly cursed the wretches at Holme Park who had made
an outcast of his daughter, and, above all, Chris himself, who had
stolen and ruined his daughter.
But Bram cut him short.
“Hush, Mr. Biron,” said he sternly. “Don’t say words like that till you
are sure. For her sake hold your tongue. It’s not for you to cast the
first stone at her, or even at him.”
Even in his most sincere grief Mr. Biron resented being taken to task
like this; and by Bram, of all people, whom he secretly disliked, as
well as feared, although the young man’s strong character attracted him
instinctively when he was in want of help. He drew himself up with all
his old airy arrogance.
“Do you think I would doubt her for a single moment if I were not
cruelly sure?” cried he indignantly. “My own child, my own darling
little Claire! But I understand it all now. I see how thoroughly I was
deceived in Chris. But he shall smart for it! I’ll thrash him within an
inch of his life! I won’t leave a whole bone in his body! I’ll strangle
him! I’ll tear him limb from limb!”
And Mr. Biron made a gesture more violent with every threat, until at
last it seemed as if his frantic gesticulations must dislocate the
bones in his own slim and fragile little body.
As for Bram, he seemed to be past the stage of acute feeling of any
sort. He was benumbed with the great blow that had fallen upon him;
overwhelmed, in spite of the foreshadowings which had of late broken
his peace. With the fall of his ideal there seemed to have crumbled
away all that was best in his life, leaving only a cold automaton to do
his daily work of head and hand. He was astonished himself, if the pale
feeling could be called astonishment, to find that he could laugh at
the antics of his companion; not openly, of course, but with secret and
bitter gibes at the careless, selfish father, and the frantic gestures
by which he sought to impress his companion.
When Theodore’s energies were exhausted they walked on in silence. And
then Theodore felt hurt at Bram’s blunt, stolid apathy.
“I thought I should find you more sympathetic, Elshaw,” he said in an
offended tone. “You always pretended to think so much of my daughter!”
“It wasn’t pretence,” said Bram shortly. “But I’m thinking, Mr. Biron,
though I don’t like to say it now, that she must have been very unhappy
before she went away like that.”
Quite suddenly his voice broke. Mr. Biron, surprised in the midst
of his theatrical display of emotion into a momentary pang of real
compunction and of real remorse, was for a few moments entirely silent.
Then he said in a quiet voice, more dignified and more touching than
any of his loud outbursts--
“It’s true, I’ve not been a good father to her. But she was such a good
girl--I never guessed it would come to this.”
Bram said nothing. He felt as hard as nails. Theodore was really
suffering now; but it served him right. What had the poor little
creature’s life been but a long and terrible struggle between
temptation on the one side, worry and difficulty on the other? She
had held out long and bravely. She had struggled with a bright face,
bearing her father’s burdens for him, and her own as well. What wonder
that human nature had been too weak to hold out forever?
Bram’s heart was like a great open sore. He dared not look within
himself, he dared not think, he dared not even feel. He tried to
stupefy himself to the work of the moment, to stifle all sense but that
of sight, and to fix his eyes upon Joan’s cottage, which they were now
approaching, as if upon the mere reaching of it all his hopes depended.
But if Theodore had found Bram unsympathetic, what must he have thought
of Joan? She heard his inquiries with coldness, and after saying that
Claire had not been with her since she left the farmhouse on the
previous evening, she asked shortly whether she had gone away.
“I--I am afraid so. Oh, my child, my poor child!” cried Theodore.
Joan grew very red, and clapping her hands on her hips, nodded with
compressed lips.
“You’ve got no one but yourself to thank for this, Mr. Biron,” she
said. “T’ poor young lady’s had a cruel time these many months through
yer wicked ways! God help her, poor little lady!”
And the good woman turned sharply away from him, and slamming the door
in his face, disappeared, sobbing bitterly.
Theodore was very white; he trembled from head to foot, and was even
for a little while too angry and too much perturbed to speak.
At last, when Bram had put a hand within his arm to lead him away, he
stammered out--
“You heard that, Elshaw! You heard the woman! That’s what these ----
North country ---- are like; they haven’t a scrap of feeling, even for
the sacred grief of a father! But I don’t care a hang for the whole
---- lot of them! I’ll go up to the Park, and I’ll tell Mr Cornthwaite,
the purse-proud old humbug, who thinks money can buy anything--I’ll
tell him what I think of him and his scoundrel of a son! And then I’ll
go up to town, and I’ll find him out, I’ll hunt out Christian himself,
and I’ll avenge my child.”
Bram said nothing.
“And I’ll make him provide for her. I’ll bring out an action against
him, and make him shell out, him and his skinflint of a father. Chris
is nothing but a chip off the old block, and I’ll make them suffer
together, in the only way they can suffer--through the money-bags.”
Bram was disgusted, sickened. He scented through this new turn of Mr.
Biron’s thoughts that feeling for the main chance which was such a
prominent feature of that gentleman’s character. And quite unexpectedly
he stopped short, and said bluntly--
“That may comfort you, Mr. Biron, but it will never do aught for her!
If--if,” he had to clear his throat to make himself heard at all, “if
she--comes back, she’ll never touch their money! Poor, poor child!”
“You think she’ll come back?” asked Theodore almost wistfully.
But Bram could not answer. He did not know what to think, what to wish.
He shrugged his shoulders without speaking, and with a gesture of
abrupt farewell turned from his companion, who had now nearly reached
his own door, and walked rapidly back in the direction of his lodging.
He could not bear to come near the farm, the place which had been
hallowed in his eyes by thoughts of her who had been his idol.
Theodore called out to him.
“You’ll give me a look in to-night, won’t you, when you come back from
the office? Think how lonely I shall be.”
Bram, without turning round, made a gesture of assent. He felt with
surprise to himself that he was half-drawn to this contemptible
creature by the fact that, underneath all his theatrical demonstrations
of regret and grief, there was some very strong and genuine feeling.
It was chiefly a selfish feeling, as Bram knew; indeed, a resentful
feeling, that Claire had treated him shabbily and ungratefully in
leaving him to shift for himself without any warning, after so many
years of patient slavery, of tender care for him.
But still Bram felt that he had at last some emotion in common with
this man, whom he had so far only despised. Theodore even felt the
disgrace, the moral shame of this awful disaster to his daughter more
keenly than any one would have given him credit for.
As for Bram himself, he went home, he ate his breakfast, he started for
the town almost in his usual manner. No one who passed him detected any
sign in his look or in his manner of the blow which had fallen upon
him. But, for all that, he was suffering so keenly, so bitterly, that
the very intensity of his pain had a numbing effect, reducing him to
the level of a brute which can see, and hear, and taste, and smell, but
in which all sense of anything higher is dead and cold.
It was not until he had nearly passed the garden of the farm, keeping
his eyes carefully turned in the opposite direction, that a bend in the
road caught his eye, where not many evenings before he had seen Claire
standing with a letter in her hand, waiting for some one to pass who
would take it to the post for her.
And his face twitched; from between his closed teeth there came a sort
of strangled sob, the sound which in Theodore had roused his contempt.
He remembered the smile which had come into her eyes when he came by,
the word of thanks with which she had slipped the letter into his hand,
and run indoors. He remembered that a scent of lavender had come to him
as she passed, that he had felt a thrill at the sound, the sight of her
flying skirts as she fled into the house.
Oh! it was not possible that she could have done this thing, she who
was so proud, so pure, so tender to her friends!
And Bram stopped in the middle of the road, with an upward bound of the
heart, and told himself that the thing was a lie.
What a base wretch he was to have harbored such a thought of her!
She was gone; but what proof had they but their own mean and base
suspicions that she had not gone alone?
And Bram by a strong effort threw off the dark cloud which was pressing
down upon his soul, or at least lifted one corner of it, and strode
down towards the office resolved to trust, to hope, in spite of
everything.
At the office everything was reassuringly normal in the daily routine.
And, by a great and unceasing effort, Bram had really got himself to
hold his opinions on the one great subject in suspense, when a carriage
drove up to the door, and a few minutes later young Mrs. Christian,
with a face which betrayed that she was suffering from acute distress,
came into the office.
As soon as she saw Bram, she stopped on her way through.
“No,” she said quickly to the clerk who was leading her through to the
private office of Mr. Cornthwaite, “it is Mr. Elshaw I want to see.
Please, can I speak to you?”
Bram felt the heavy weight settling at once on his heart again. He
followed her in silence into the office. Mr. Cornthwaite had not yet
arrived.
As soon as the door was shut, and they were alone, she broke out in a
tremulous voice, not free from pettishness--
“Mr. Elshaw, I wanted to see you because I feel sure you will not
deceive me. And all the rest try to. Mr. and Mrs. Cornthwaite, and my
sister-in-law, and my own people, and everybody. You live near Duke’s
Farm? Tell me, is Miss Claire Biron at home with her father, or--or has
she gone away?”
“I believe, Mrs. Christian, she has gone away.”
The young wife did not cry; she frowned.
“I knew it!” she said sharply. “They pretended they did not know; but
I knew it, I felt sure of it. Mr. Elshaw, she has gone away with my
husband!”
“Oh, but how can you be sure? How----”
“Mr. Elshaw, don’t trifle with me. You know the truth as well as I do.
Not one day has passed since our marriage without Christian’s flaunting
this girl and her perfections in my face; not one day has passed since
our return from abroad without his either seeing her or making an
effort to see her. Oh, I daresay you will say it was mean; but I have
had him watched, and he has been at the farm at Hessel every day!”
“But what of that? He is her cousin, you know. He has always been used
to see a great deal of her and of her father.”
“Oh, I know all about her father!” snapped Minnie. “And I know how
likely any of the family are to go out to Hessel to see him! Don’t
prevaricate, Mr. Elshaw. I had understood you never did anything of the
kind. Can you pretend to doubt that they have gone away together?”
Bram was silent. He hung his head as if he had been the guilty person.
“Of course, you cannot,” went on the lady triumphantly. “Where has she
got to go to? What friends has she to stay with? Who would she leave
her father for except Christian? It seems she has never had the decency
to hide that she was fond of him!”
“Don’t say that,” protested Bram gently. “Why should she hide it in the
old days before he was married? There was no reason why she should.
They were cousins; they were believed to be engaged. They would have
been married if Mr. Cornthwaite had allowed it. Didn’t you know that?”
“Not in the way I’ve known it since, of course,” said Minnie bitterly.
“Everything was kept from me. I heard of a boy-and-girl affection;
that was all. The whole family are deceitful and untrustworthy. And
Christian is the worst of them all. He doesn’t care for me a bit; he
never, never did!”
And here at last she broke down, and began to cry piteously.
Bram, usually so tender-hearted, felt as if his heart was scorched up
within him. He looked at her; he tried to speak kindly, tried to say
reassuring things, to express a doubt, a hope, which he did not feel.
But she stopped him imperiously, snappishly.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Mr. Elshaw, please. And don’t say you are sorry.
For I know you are sorry for nobody but her. Miss Biron is one of those
persons who attract sympathy; I am not. But you can spare yourself the
trouble of pretending.” She drew herself up, and hastily wiped her
eyes. “I know what to do. I shall go back to my father’s house, and
I shall have nothing more to do with him. I am not going to break my
heart over an unprincipled man, or over a creature like this Claire
Biron.”
Bram offered no remonstrance. He knew that he ought to be sorry for
this poor little woman, whose only and most venial fault had been
a conviction that she possessed the power to “reform” the man she
married. Unhappily, it was true, as she said, that she was not one of
those persons who attract sympathy. Her hard, dry, snappish manner,
the shrewish light in her blue eyes, repelled him as they had repelled
Christian himself. And Bram, though far from excusing or forgiving
Christian, felt that he understood how impossible it would have
been for a man of his easy, genial temperament to be even fairly,
conventionally happy with a nature so antipathetic to his own.
In silence, in sorrow, he withdrew, with an added burden to bear, the
burden of what was near to absolute certainty, of extinguished hope.