Florence Warden

“ In a moment Bram experienced a revulsion of feeling so strong that he felt he could scarcely stand. Christian’s follies, faults, vices, all were forgotten; there lay, dangerously ill, the lovable companion, the staunch friend. In that moment Bram, staring at the man he knew so well, who knew him not, felt that he would have laid down his own life to save that of Christian.
Suddenly he felt a hand laid gently on his arm. Mr. Cornthwaite, who had been watching him narrowly, saw the effect the sight had had upon the young man, and promptly drew him back, and shut the door behind them. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Bram was awed by the depth of his so suddenly manifested despair. He felt with a most true instinct that there were no words in the human tongue which could do any good to the miserable man. He could only stand by, in solemn silence, while Mr. Cornthwaite put his head down between his hands, drawing long sobbing breaths of grief and despair.
But presently the doctor, who was an old friend of Mr. Cornthwaite’s, came in search of him, and put his hand through his arm. Then Bram stole quietly away, and went in search of poor Claire. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ So, at least, the chivalrous man felt now that, by an act of mad, inconceivable folly and rashness, Claire had endangered her own liberty, and perhaps even her life. For that Mr. Cornthwaite would press his conviction that the act was murder Bram could not doubt. Hating the very sound of the girl’s name as he had long done, believing that Christian’s attachment for her had been the cause of his estrangement from his wife, of his entire ruin, it was not likely that he, a hard man naturally, would flinch in his pursuit of the woman to whom he imputed so much evil. ”

“ Since all the noise and commotion he and Theodore Biron had made had not brought a single servant upon the scene, it was natural to infer that Mr. Biron and his daughter had the house to themselves.
And this idea filled Bram with wonder and compassion. What a life for a young girl, who had seemed to rough [Pg 26] Bram the epitome of all womanly beauty and grace and charm, was this which accident had revealed to him. A life full of humiliations, of terrors, of anxieties which would have broken the heart and the spirit of many an older woman. ”

“ Bram, on his way to the farm, began to see in his heart such visions as love only can build and paint, love, too, that has not taken the edge off itself, frittered itself away, on the innumerable flirtations with which his daily companions at the office beguiled the dead monotony of existence. ”

“ Mr. Cornthwaite’s black eyes blazed. He hated even a semblance of contradiction; and Bram’s determined and dogged attitude irritated him beyond measure. He rose from his arm-chair, and clasping his hands behind his back with a loud snap, he assumed towards the young man an air of bland contempt which he had never used to him before.
“Your notions are charming in the abstract, Elshaw. I have no doubt, too, that there are some sections of society where your ideas might be carried out without much harm to anybody. ”

“ As for Claire, she not only looked better dressed than either Mrs. or Miss Cornthwaite, but better dressed than any of the ladies of the neighborhood. And this was not Bram’s fancy only; it was solid fact.
Claire Biron had never been in France, and her mother had been an Englishwoman of Yorkshire descent. But through her father she had inherited from her French ancestors just that touch of feminine genius which makes a woman neat without severity, and smart looking without extravagance. ”

“ A great sob burst from Bram’s lips as he threw himself down beside Christian, whose moans were terrible to hear. He had been caught by the train, the wheels of the engine having passed over both his legs, crushing and mangling them in the most horrible manner. Bram saw at a glance that there was not the slightest hope of saving his friend’s life, and that there was only the faintest chance of prolonging it for a little while.
Fortunately, help was at hand. A man, one of the hands employed at the works, ran out from the sheds which bordered the railway. ”

“ What do you think of that, Miss Claire? And to wear a black coat and a stiff shirt-front, just like a gentleman! Won’t they all laugh at me when my back’s turned, and talk about daws’ and peacocks’ feathers? It’s all Mr. Christian’s fault, so I suppose you will say it’s all right?”
“It is all right, Bram,” said Claire gravely; “and they won’t laugh at you. They can’t. You’re too modest. And too clever besides.” She paused, dropped her work in her lap, and looked intently at the fire. “Is it true that you’re going to be married, Bram?” ”

“ Christian is if he leaves the girl he loves, the girl he’s betrayed, and comes sneaking back at your heels like a cur, when he ought to stand up for the woman who loves him!”
“Upon my word, yours is very singular morality for a young man who goes in for such correctness of conduct as you do. Where does the wife come in, the poor, injured wife, in your new-fangled scheme of right and wrong? Is she to be left out in the cold altogether?”
“Where else can she be left, poor thing?” cried Bram with deep feeling. ”

“ Christian can’t get rid of the responsibility like that, sir,” said Bram, with a note of sombre warning in his voice.
“I take upon myself the responsibility for him,” retorted Mr. Cornthwaite coldly. “My son is dependent upon me, and he can do nothing without my approval. I am certainly going to give him no help towards the maintenance of a baggage like that. You know what my opinion of her always has been. Circumstances have confirmed it most amply. A young man is not much to blame if he gets caught, entangled, by a girl as artful and as designing as she is.” ”

“ Then Bram said in a dry voice—
“I can’t understand you, Mr. Christian. You seem just as nigh what a man ought to be as a man can be in lots of ways. And I can’t understand how a man like that, that is a man like you, shouldn’t be all on fire to make the girl he loves his wife as quick as he can. ”

“ The doctor, a stolid, hard-working country practitioner, with a dull red face and dull black eyes, showed Theodore much less mercy than Bram had done. He knew his patient well, having been called in to him on several occasions when that gentleman’s excesses had brought on the attacks of dyspepsia to which he was subject; and the more he saw of him the less he liked him. Theodore’s anxiety about his appearance he treated with cruel bluntness.
“No, you’ll never be the same man again to look at, Mr. Biron,” he said quite cheerfully. ”

“ Then she gave his hand an affectionate, clinging pressure.
“Never mind, Bram. You needn’t tell me unless you like. I don’t mind anything when you’re here. You won’t go away, will you?”
The loving tone, the caressing manner, stirred his heart to the depths. Surely this tender trust was her own real feeling for him, suddenly revealed, free from all restraints of prudence, of necessary coldness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 [Pg 103] before, and read there every virtue and every quality which can make womanhood sweet and noble and dear? ”

“ Come round and see her. Do you know anything about hunters, Elshaw?”
“No,” replied the astonished Bram, who knew that Mr. Biron’s purse had not lately allowed him to know much about hunters either.
“Ah!” said Theodore, as he opened the garden gate for Bram to enter, and led him into the house. “All the better for you. When you’ve once got to think you know something about horse-flesh, you can’t sit down quietly without a decent nag or two in your stable.”
And Mr. Biron, whose every word caused Bram fresh astonishment, flung back the door of the kitchen with a jaunty hand. ”

“ Meg was erect in a moment, her eyes flashing, her nostrils quivering. With a wild, ironical laugh, she faced about, pointing at his mean little face a scornful finger.
“You!” cried she in a very passion of contempt. “You dare to speak to me! You as would have sold your daughter a dozen times over if t’ price had been good enoof! Why, mon, your hussy of a daughter’s a pearl to you! You’re a rat, a cur! Ah could almost forgive her when Ah look at you! It’s you Ah’ve got to blame for it all, wi’ your black heart an’ your mean, white face! You more’n her, more’n him!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ And he was right in thinking that there was not a man in all that crowd of his rough fellow-workmen who would not have jeered at him and looked down upon him as a hopeless ass if they had known what his thoughts and feelings were. But for all that there was the making in Bram Elshaw, with his dreams and his fancies, of a man who would rise to be master of them all. ”