The day of the wedding was a holiday at the works, and Bram, who dared not spend the day at the farm, as he would have liked to do, and who had refused to take any part in the festivities, paid another visit to old Abraham Elshaw at East Grindley as an excuse for staying away.
He returned, however, early in the evening, and was on his way up the hill by way of the fields, when, to hisunbounded amazement, he saw a side-gate in the wall of the farmhouse garden open quickly, and a man steal out, and run hurriedly down across the grass in the direction of the town.
Bram felt sure that there was something wrong, but he had hardly gone a few steps with the intention of intercepting the man, when he stopped short. Something in the man’s walk, even at this distance, struck him. In another moment, in spite of the fact that the stealthy visitor wore a travelling cap well over his eyes, Bram recognized Chris Cornthwaite.
Stupefied with dread, Bram glanced back, and saw Claire standing at the little gate, watching Chris as he ran. Shading her eyes with her hand, for the glare of the setting sun came full upon her face, she waited until he was out of sight behind a stone wall which separated the last of the fields he crossed from the road. Then she shut the gate, locked it, and went indoors.
Bram stared at the farmhouse, the windows of which were shining like jewels in the setting sun. He felt sick and cold.
What was the meaning of this secret visit of Chris Cornthwaite to Claire on his wedding day?
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 daysbefore, 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 downcasteyes. 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 couldtell 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. Thisfulfilment 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 doas 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 inconfidence. 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.
Bram was away much longer than the ten days he had expected. Difficulties arose in the transaction of the affair which had called him to London; he had to take a trip to Brussels, to return to London, and then to visit Brussels again. It was two months after his departure from Sheffield before he came back.
In the meantime old Abraham Elshaw, his namesake, had died. A letter was forwarded to Bram informing him of the fact, and also that by the direction of the deceased the precious box in which the old man had kept his property had been sent to Bram’s address at Hessel.
Bram acknowledged the letter, and sent directions to his landlady for the safe keeping of the box containing his legacy.
When he got back home to his lodging, one cold night at the end of November, Bram received the box, and set about examining its contents. It was a strong oak miniature chest, hinged and padlocked. As there was no key, Bram had to force the padlock. The contents were varied and curious. On the top was a Post Office Savings Bank book, proving the depositor to have had two hundred and thirty-five pounds to his credit. Next came a packet of papers relating to old Elshaw’s transactions with a building society, by the failure of which he appeared to have lost some ninety-six pounds. Then there were some gas shares and some deeds which proved him to have been the owner of certain small house property in the village where he had lived. Next came a silver teapot, containing nothing but some scraps of tissue paper and a button. And at the bottom of the box was a very old-fashioned man’s gold watch, with a chased case, a large oval broochcontaining a woman’s hair arranged in a pattern on a white ground, and a broken gold sleeve-link.
Bram, who, from inquiries he had made, considered himself at liberty to apply all the money to his own uses, the other relations of old Abraham not being near enough or dear enough to have a right to a share, looked thoughtfully at the papers, and then put them carefully away. He knew what the old man had apparently not known, that there were formalities to be gone through before he could claim the house property. He should have to consult a solicitor. There was no doubt that his windfall would prove more valuable than he had expected, and again his thoughts flew to Claire, and he asked himself whether there was a chance that he might be able to devote his little fortune to the building of that palace which his love had already planned—in the air.
He told himself that he was a fool to be so diffident, but he could not drive the feeling away. The truth was that there was still at the bottom of his heart some jealousy left of the lively Chris, some proud doubt whether Claire’s heart was as free as she had declared it to be.
But if, on the one hand, she had spoken compassionately of her erring cousin, there was to be remembered, as a set-off against that, the delicious moment when she had stood contented in the shelter of Bram’s own arms on that memorable evening when he had, for the second time, protected her from the violence of her father.
On the whole, Bram felt that it was time to make the plunge; now, when he had money at his command, when he was in a position to take her right out of her dangers and her difficulties. With Theodore, who was not without intelligence, a bargain could be made, and Bram could not doubt that this moment, when the supplies had been cut off at Holme Park, and the farm was going to ruin, would be a favorable one for his purpose.
He resolved to go boldly to Claire the very next day.
When the morning broke, a bright, clear morning, with a touch of frost in the air, Bram sprung out of bed with the feeling that there were great things to be done.The sun was bright on the hill when he started, though down far below his feet the town lay buried in a smoky mist. Just before he reached the farmyard gate he paused, looking eagerly for the figure which was generally to be seen busily engaged about the place at this hour of the morning.
But he was disappointed. Claire was nowhere to be seen.
Reluctantly Bram went on his way down the hill, when the chirpy, light voice of Theodore Biron, calling to him from the front of the house, made him stop and turn round. Mr. Biron was in riding costume, with a hunting crop in his hand. He was very neat, very smart, and far more prosperous-looking than he had been for some time. He played with his moustache with one hand, while with the other he jauntily beckoned Bram to come back.
“Hallo!” said Bram, returning readily enough on the chance of seeing Claire. “Where are you off to so early, Mr. Biron? I didn’t think you ever tried to pick up the worm.”
“Going to have a day with the hounds,” replied Theodore cheerfully. “They meet at Clinker’s Cross to-day. I picked up a clever little mare the other day—bought her for a mere song, and I am going to try her at a fence or two. 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.
Bram followed him, but stopped short at the sight which met his eyes.
Springing up with a low cry from a stool by the fire on Bram’s entrance, Claire, with a face so white, so drawn that he hardly knew her, stared at him with a fixed look of horror which seemed to freeze his blood.
“Miss Claire!” he said hoarsely.
She said nothing. With her arms held tightly down by her sides, she continued to stare at him as if at some creature the sight of whom had seized her with unspeakable terror. He came forward, much disturbed, holding out his hand.
“Come, come, Claire, what’s the matter with you? Aren’t you glad to see Bram Elshaw back among us?” said Theodore impatiently.
Still she did not move. Bram, chilled, frightened, did not know what to do. Mr. Biron left the outer door, by which he stood, and advanced petulantly towards his daughter. But before he could reach her she staggered, drew away from him, and with a frightened glance from Bram to him, fled across the room and disappeared.
Bram was thrown into the utmost consternation by this behavior. He had turned to watch the door by which she had made her escape, when Theodore seized him by the arm, and dragged him impatiently towards the outer door.
“Come, come,” said he, “don’t trouble your head about her. She’s not been well lately; she’s been out of sorts. I’ve talked of leaving the place, and she doesn’t like the idea. She’ll soon be herself again. Her cousin Chris has been round two or three times since his return from his honeymoon trying to cheer her up. But she won’t be cheered; I suppose she enjoys being miserable sometimes. Most ladies do.”
Bram, who had followed Mr. Biron with leaden feet across the farmyard towards the stables, felt that a black cloud had suddenly fallen upon his horizon. The mention of Chris filled him with poignant mistrust, with cruel alarm. He felt that calamity was hanging over them all, and that the terrible look he had seen in Claire’s eyes was prophetic of coming evil. He hardly saw the mare ofwhich Theodore was so proud; hardly heard the babble, airily ostentatious, cheerily condescending, which Claire’s father dinned into his dull ears. He was filled with one thought. These new extravagances of Theodore’s, the look in Claire’s face, were all connected with Chris, and with his renewed visits. Bram felt as if he should go mad.
When he reached the office he watched for an opportunity to get speech alone with Christian. But he was unsuccessful. Bram did not even see him until late in the day.
Long before that Bram had had an interview with the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, which only confirmed his fears. He had to give an account to the head of the firm of the business he had transacted while away. He had carried it through with great ability, and Mr. Cornthwaite complimented him highly upon the promptitude, judgment, and energy he had shown in a rather difficult matter.
“My son Christian was perfectly right,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on, “in recommending me to send you away on this affair, Elshaw. You seem to have an old head upon young shoulders. I only hope he may do half as well on the mission with which he himself is to be entrusted.”
Bram looked curious.
“Is Mr. Christian going away again so soon, sir?” asked he.
Mr. Cornthwaite, whose face bore traces of some unaccustomed anxiety, frowned.
“Yes,” he answered shortly. “I am sorry to say that he and his wife don’t yet rub on so well as one could wish together. You see I tell you frankly what the matter is, and you can take what credit you please to yourself for having predicted it. No doubt they will shake down in time, but on all accounts I think it is as well, as there happens to be some business to be done down south, to send him away upon it. He will only be absent a few weeks, and in the meantime any little irritation there may be on both sides will have had time to rub off.”
Bram looked blank indeed.
He was more anxious than ever for a few words alone with Chris, but he was unable to obtain them. When his employer’s son appeared at the office, which was not till late in the day, he carefully avoided the opportunity Bram sought. After shaking hands with him with a dash and an effusion which made it impossible for the other to draw back, even if he had been so inclined, Chris, with a promise of “seeing him presently,” went straight into his father’s private office, and did not reappear in the clerks’ office at all.
In spite of the boisterous warmth of his greeting, Bram had noticed in Christian two things. The first was a certain underlying coldness and reserve, which put off, under an assumption of affectionate familiarity, the confidences which had been the rule between them. The other was the fact that Christian looked thin and worried.
Bram lingered about the office till long after his usual hour of leaving in the hope of catching Christian. And it was at last only by chance that he learnt that Chris had gone some two hours before, and, further, that he was to start for London that very evening.
Now, this discovery worried Bram, and set him thinking. The intercourse between him and Christian had been of so familiar a kind that this abrupt departure, without any sort of leave-taking, could only be the result of some great change in Christian’s feeling towards himself. So strong, although vague, were his fears that Bram when he left the office went straight to the new house in a pretty suburb some distance out of Sheffield, where Christian had settled with his bride. Here, however, he was met with the information that Mr. Christian had already started on his journey, and that he had gone, not from his own, but from his father’s house.
As Bram left the house he saw the face of young Mrs. Christian Cornthwaite at one of the windows. She looked pale, drawn, unhappy, and seemed altogether to have lost the smug look of self-satisfaction which he had disliked in her face on his first meeting with her.
Much disturbed, Bram went away, and returned to hislodging, passing by the farm, where there was no sign of life to induce him to pause. It was nine o’clock, and as there was no light in any of the windows, he concluded that Mr. Biron had gone to bed, tired out with his day’s hunting, and that Claire had followed his example.
He felt so restless, so uneasy, however, that instead of passing on he lingered about, walking up and down, watching the blank, dark windows, almost praying for a flicker of light in any one of them for a sign of the life inside.
After an hour of this unprofitable occupation, he took himself to task for his folly, and went home to bed.
On the following morning, before he was up, there was a loud knocking at the outer door of the cottage where he lived. Bram, with a sense of something wrong, something which concerned himself, ran down himself to open it.
In the middle of the little path stood Theodore Biron, with the same clothes that he had worn on the morning of the previous day, but without the hunting-crop.
He was white, with livid lips, and his limbs trembled.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bram in a muffled voice.
“Claire, my daughter Claire!” stammered Theodore in a voice which sounded shrill with real feeling. All the jauntiness, all the vivacity, had gone out of him. He shivered with something which was keener than cold.
“Well?” said Bram, with a horrible chill at his heart.
“She’s—she’s gone, gone!” said Theodore, reeling back against the fence of the little garden. “She’s run away. She’s run right away. She’s left me, left her poor old father! Don’t you understand? She is gone, man, gone!”
And Mr. Biron, for once roused to genuine emotion, broke into sobs.
Bram stood like a stone.
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 Clairehad 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 franticgesticulations 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 outlong 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 andhis 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 resentfulfeeling, 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 heartwas 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.
The farmhouse looked desolate in the dusk of the November evening when Bram, in fulfilment of his promise to Theodore, crossed the farmyard to the back door and tapped at it lightly.
It was opened by Joan, who looked as if she had been interrupted in the middle of “a good cry.”
“Ay, coom in, sir,” said she, “coom in. But you’ll find no company here now.”
“Isn’t Mr. Biron back yet?”
“No, sir,” she answered with a sudden change to aggressive sullenness, “and he’s welcome to stay away, he is! If it hadn’t been for that miserable auld rascal, poor Miss Claire ’ud never been took away from us. Ah wouldn’t have on my conscience what yon chap has, no, not for a kingdom.”
Bram, sombre and stern, sat down by the fire, staring at the little wooden stool on which he had so often seen Claire sitting in the opposite corner, with her sewing in her hand. The big chimney-corner which they had both loved—how bare it looked without her! Joan, alone of all the people he had met that day, seemed to understand what had taken place in him, to realize the sudden death, the total, irremediable decay, of what had been the joy of his life. She put down the plate she had been wiping, and she came over to look at him in the firelight. There was no other light in the room.
“Poor lad! Poor chap!” she murmured in accents so tender, so motherly, that her rough voice sounded like most sweet, most touching music in his dull ears.
For the first time since the horrible shock he had received that morning his features quivered, became convulsed, and a look of desperate anguish came into his calm gray eyes.
Her strong right hand came down upon his shoulder with a blow which was meant to be inspiriting in its violent energy.
“Well, lad, ye must bear oop; ye must forget her! Ay, there’s no two ways about it. It’s a sad business, an’ Ah’m broken oop abaht it mysen, but she’s chosen to go, an’ there’s no help for it, an’ no grieving can mend it! It was only you, an’ her liking for you, that stopped her from going before, I reckon. Look at yon auld spend-t’-brass and the life she’s led wi’ him, alwayshaving to beg, beg, beg for him from folks as didn’t pity her as they should!”
Bram moved impatiently.
“Yes, that’s what I cannot forgive him!” growled he.
Joan stared at him in the dusk.
“Have you heard,” said she, peering mysteriously into his face, “if anything ’as happened while you were away?”
Bram shook his head.
“Well, summat did happen. Mr. Biron got money from some one, an’ began to spend it loike one o’clock. You must have heard o’ that?”
Bram nodded, remembering the new hunter and Theodore’s smart appearance.
“Well,” went on Joan, leaning forward, and dropping her voice, “it was summat to do wi’ that as broke oop poor Miss Claire. Ay, lad, don’t shiver an’ start; it’s best you should know all, and forget all if you can. Well, it was after that, after t’ auld man had gotten t’ brass, that I saw a change coom over her. She went abaht loike one as warn’t right, an’ she says to ’im one day—Ah were in t’ kitchen yonder an’ Ah heard her—‘Papa,’ says she, ‘Ah can never look Bram Elshaw in t’ face again.’ That’s what she said, my lad; Ah heard her.”
Bram got up, and began to pace up and down the tiled floor without a word. Joan went on, quickening her pace, a little anxious to get the story over and done with.
“You know his way. But there was summat in her voice told me it were no laughin’ matter wi’ her. An’,” went on the good woman in a voice lower still, “when Mr. Christian coom that evening, says she, says Miss Claire—‘Ah mun see ’im to-neght.’ An’ he came in, an’ they went in through to the best parlor, and they had a long talk together. That were t’ day before yesterday. She must have gone last neght, as soon as Ah left t’ house.”
Still Bram said nothing, pacing up and down, up and down, on the red tiles which he had trodden so often with something like ecstasy in his heart.
Joan was shrewd enough and sympathetic enough tounderstand why he did not speak. She finished her plate-washing, disappeared silently into the outhouse, and presently returned with her bonnet on.
“Are ye going to stay here, sir?” she asked, as she laid her hands on the door to go out.
“Yes; I promised I’d look in.”
“Friendly loike? You aren’t going for to do him any hurt?”
“No, oh, no.”
“Well,” said Joan, as she turned the handle and took her portly person slowly round the door, “if so be you had, you might ha’ done it an’ welcome! Ah wouldn’t have stopped ye. Good-neght, sir.”
“Good-night, Joan.”
She went out, and Bram was left alone. The sound of her footsteps died away, until he felt as if he was the only living thing about the farm. Even the noises that usually came across from the sheds and the stables where the animals were kept seemed to be hushed that evening. No sound reached his ears but the moaning of the rising wind, and the scratching of the mice in the old wainscotting.
Never before had he felt so utterly, hopelessly miserable and castdown. In the old days, when he had lived one of a wretched, poverty-stricken family in a squalid mean way, ill-kept, half-starved, he had had his daydreams, his vague ambitions, to gild the sorry present. Now, on the very high-road to the fulfilment of those ambitions, he was suddenly left without a ray of hope, without a rag of comfort, to bear the most unutterable wretchedness, that of shattered ideals.
Not Claire alone, but Chris also had fallen from the place each had held in his imagination, in his heart, and Bram, who hid a spirit-world of his own under a matter-of-fact manner and a blunt directness of speech, suffered untold anguish.
While he watched the embers of the fire in profound melancholy, with his hands on his knees, and his eyes staring dully into the red heart of the dying fire, he heardsomething moving outside. He raised his head, expecting to hear the sound of Mr. Biron’s voice.
But a shadow passed before the window in the faint daylight that was left; and with a wild hope Bram sat up, his heart seeming to cease to beat.
The shadow, the step were those of a woman.
The next moment the door was softly, stealthily opened, and away like a dream went joy and hope again.
The woman was not Claire.
He could see that the visitor was tall, broad-shouldered, of well-developed figure, and that she was of the class that wear shawls round their heads, and clogs on their feet in the daytime.
She stood in the room, just inside the door, and seemed to listen. Then she said in a voice which was coarse and uncultivated, but which was purposely subdued to a pitch of insincere civility, as Bram instantly felt sure—
“Miss Biron! Is Miss Claire Biron here?”
Now, Bram had never, as far as he knew, met this girl before; he did not even know her name. But, with his sense of hearing made sharper, perhaps, by the darkness, he guessed at once something which was very near the truth. He knew that this woman came with hostile intent of some kind or other.
He at once rose from his seat, and said—“No; Miss Biron is not in.”
And he put his hand up to the high chimney-piece, found a box of matches, and lit a candle which was beside it. Meanwhile the visitor stood motionless, and was so standing when the light had grown bright enough for him to see her by. She was a handsome girl, black-haired, blacked-eyed, with cheeks which ought to have been red, but which were now pale and thin, showing a sharp outline of rather high cheek-bone and big jaw. Bram recognized her as a girl whom he had often seen about Hessel, and who lived at a little farm about a mile and a half away. Her name was Meg Tyzack. She was neatly dressed, without any of the flaunting, shabby finery which the factory girls usually affect when they leave their shawland clogs. Her lips were tightly closed, and in her eyes there was an expression of ferocious sullenness which confirmed the idea Bram had conceived at the first sound of her voice. Her black cloth jacket was buttoned only at the throat, and her right hand was thrust underneath it as if she was hiding something.
“Not in, eh?” she asked scoffingly, as she measured Bram from head to foot with a look of ineffable scorn. Then, with a sudden, sharp change of tone to one of passionate anxiety, she asked, “Where’s she gone to then?”
Bram hesitated. This woman’s appearance at the farm, her look, her manner, betrayed to him within a few seconds a fact he had not guessed before, though now a dozen circumstances flashed into his mind to confirm it. This was one of the many girls with whom Chris had had relations of a more or less questionable character. Bram had seen her with him in the lane leading to her home, and on the hill above Holme Park; had seen her waiting about in the town near the works. But to see Chris talking to a good-looking girl was too common a thing for Bram to have given this particular young woman much attention. Now, however, he divined in an instant that it was jealousy which had brought her to the farmhouse, and a feeling of sickening repulsion came over him at the thought of the words which he might have to hear directed by this virago at Claire. If the idol was broken, it was an idol still.
As he did not reply at once, Meg Tyzack stepped quickly across the floor, and glared into his eyes with a look terrible in its fierce eagerness, its deadly anxiety.
“Where has she gone? Ye can’t keep t’ truth from me.” Then, as he was still silent, she burst out with an overwhelming torrent of passion. “Ah know what they say! Ah know they say he’s taken her away wi’ him, Mr. Christian of t’ works, Cornthwaite’s works. But it’s a lie. Ah know it’s a lie. He’d never take her wi’ him; he’d never dare take any one but me. He care for her? Not enoof for that! She’s here, Ah know she is; only she’s afraid to coom out, afraid to meet me! But Ah’llfind her; Ah’ll have her aht. What ’ud you be doin’ here if she wasn’t here? Oh, Ah know who Christian was jealous of; Ah know she was artful enough to keep the two of ye on. Ah know it was her fault he used to coom here and——” Her eyes flashed, and her voice suddenly dropped to a fierce whisper. “Ah mean to have her aht.”
As she suddenly swung round and made for the inner door leading into the hall, Bram saw that she held under her jacket a bottle. There was mischief in the woman’s eyes, worse mischief even than was boded by her tongue. For one moment, as he sprang after her, Bram felt glad that Claire was not there. Meg laughed hoarsely in his face as she eluded him, and disappeared into the hall, slamming the door.
Bram did not follow her. Claire being gone, she could do little harm. He opened the outer door, and went out into the farmyard. In a few minutes he saw a light flickering in room after room upstairs. Meg Tyzack was searching, hunting in every nook and every corner, searching for her rival with savage, despairing eagerness. Bram shivered. It was a relief to him when he heard footsteps approaching the farm, and a few moments later the voice of Theodore calling to him.
“Yes, Mr. Biron, it’s me.”
“Then who’s that in the house? Is it Joan?” asked Theodore fretfully, testily.
He was dispirited, dejected; evidently he had met with neither comfort nor sympathy at Holme Park. He had been trying to comfort himself on the way back, as Bram discovered by his unsteady gait and husky utterance.
“It’s a girl, Meg Tyzack,” answered Bram.
Mr. Biron started.
“That vixen!” cried he. “That horrible virago! Why did you let her get in?”
“I couldn’t help it,” replied Bram simply.
“What is she up to?”
“She’s looking for Miss Claire,” said Bram in a low voice.
Theodore made no answer. But he shuddered, and leaning against the wall of the farmyard began to cry.
“Come, Mr. Biron,” said Bram impatiently, “it’s no use giving way like that. It’s just something to be thankful for that this mad woman can’t get hold of her.”
Mr. Biron did not answer. A moment later, attracted probably by the voices, Meg came rushing out of the house like a fury, and made straight for the two men.
“Ah!” cried she shrilly, when she made out who the newcomer was, thrusting her angry face close to his in the gloom. “So it’s you, is it? You, the father of that——”
“Hold your tongue.”
“Hush!” cried Bram, seizing her arm.
There was a sound so impressive in his voice, short and blunt as his speech was, that the woman turned upon him sharply, but for a moment was silent. Then she said with coarse bravado—
“And who are you to talk to me? Why, t’ very mon as ought to take my part, if you had any spirit? But you leave it to me to pay out t’ pair on ’em. An’ Ah’ll do it. Ah’ll made ’em both smart for it, if Ah swing for it! Ah’ll show him the price he has to pay for treatin’ a woman like me the way he’s done. When Ah loved him so! Ay, ten times more’n than that little hussy could! Oh, my God, my God!”
Bram, child of the people that he was, was moved in the utmost depths of his heart by the woman’s mad, passionate despair. He felt for her as he could never feel for the cool, prim, little wife Christian had served so ill. He would have comforted her if he could. But as no words strong enough or suitable enough to the occasion came to his lips, he just put a gentle hand upon the woman’s shoulder as she bowed herself down and sobbed.
But Mr. Biron’s refinement was shocked by this scene. Seeing the woman less ferocious, now that she was more absorbed in her grief, he ventured to come a little nearer, and to say snappishly—
“But, my good woman, though we may be sorry foryou, you have no right to force yourself into my house. Nor have you any right to speak in such terms of my daughter.”
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!”
With a sudden impulse of indomitable rage, she stepped back, and raising her right hand quickly, flung something at his face.