CHAPTER III. SOMETHING WRONG AT THE FARM.
It is certain that Bram Elshaw was still thinking more of Miss Biron than of the communication which Mr. Cornthwaite was to make to him when he presented himself at the back door of his employer’s residence on the following Thursday evening.
Holme Park was on the side of one of the hills which surround the city of Sheffield, and was a steep, charmingly-wooded piece of grass and from a small plateau in which the red brick house looked down at the rows of new red brick cottages, at the factory chimneys, and the smoke clouds of the hive below.
Bram had always taken his messages to the back door of the house, but he was shrewd enough to guess, from the altered manner of the servant who now let him in and conducted him at once to the library, that this was the last time he should have to enter by that way.
And he was right. Mr Cornthwaite was as precise in manner, as business-like as usual, but his tone was also a little different, as he told Bram that his obvious abilities were thrown away on his present occupation, and that he was willing to take him into his office, if he cared to come, without any premium.
Bram thanked him, and accepted the offer, but he showed no more than conventional gratitude. The shrewd young Yorkshireman was really more grateful than he seemed, but he saw that his employer was acting in his own interest rather than from benevolence, and, although he made no objections to the smallness of the salary he was to receive, he modestly but firmly refused to bind himself for any fixed period.
“Ah may be a failure, sir,” he objected quietly, “and Ah should like to be free to goa back to ma auld work if Ah was.”
So the bargain was struck on his own terms, and he retired respectfully just as a servant entered the library to announce that Miss Biron wished to see Mr. Cornthwaite. And at the same moment the young girl herself tripped into the room, with a worried and anxious look on her face.
Mr. Cornthwaite rose from his chair with a frown of annoyance.
“My dear Claire, your father really should not allow you to come this long way by yourself—at night, too. It is neither proper nor safe. By the time dinner is over it will be dark, and you have a long way to go.”
“Oh, but I am going back at once, as soon as you have read this,” said Claire, putting a little note fastened up into a cocked hat like a lady’s, into his unwilling hand. “And perhaps Christian would see me as far as the town, if you think I ought not to go alone.”
But this suggestion evidently met with no approval from Mr. Cornthwaite, who shook his head, signed to Bram to remain in the room and began to read the note, all at the same time.
“My dear,” said he shortly, as he finished reading and crumpled it up, “Christian is engaged at present. But young Elshaw here will show you into your tram, won’t you, Elshaw?”
“Certainly, sir.” Bram, who had the handle of the door in his hand, saluted his employer, and retreated into the hall before Claire, who had not recognized him in his best clothes, had time to look at him again.
“A most respectable young fellow, my dear, though a little rough. One of my clerks,” Bram heard Mr. Cornthwaite explain rapidly to Miss Biron as he shut himself out into the hall and waited.
Bram was divided between delight that he was to have the precious privilege of accompanying Miss Biron on her journey home, and a sense of humiliation caused by the shrewd suspicion that she would not like this arrangement.
But when a few minutes later Claire came out of the library all his thoughts were turned to compassion for the poor girl, who had evidently received a heavy blow, and who had difficulty in keeping back her tears. She dashed past him out of the house, and he followed at a distance, perceiving that she had forgotten him, and that his duty would be limited to seeing without her knowledge that she got safely home.
So when she got into a tram car at the bottom of the hill outside the park he got on the top. When she got out at St. Paul’s Church, and darted away through the crowded streets in the direction of the Corn Exchange, he followed. Treading through the crowds of people who filled the roadway as well as the pavement, she fled along at such a pace that Bram had difficulty in keeping her little figure in view. She drew away at last from the heart of the town, and began the ascent of one of the stony streets, lined with squalid, cold-looking cottages, that fringe the smoke-wreathed city on its north-eastern side.
Bram followed.
Once out of the town, and still going upwards, Claire Biron fled like a hare up a steep lane, turned sharply to the left, and plunged into a narrow passage, with a broken stone wall on each side, which ran between two open fields. This passage gave place to a rough footpath, and at this point the girl stood still, her gaze arrested by a strange sight on the higher ground on the right.
It was dark by this time, and the outline of the hill above, broken by a few cottages, a solitary tall chimney at the mouth of a disused coal pit, and a group of irregular farm buildings, was soft and blurred.
But the windows of the farmhouse were all ablaze with light. A long, plain stone building very near the summit of the hill, and holding a commanding situation above a sudden dip into green pasture land, the unpretending homestead dominated the landscape and blinked fiery eyes at Claire, who uttered a low cry, and then dashed away from the footpath by a short cut across the fields, making straight for the house.
All the blinds were up, and groups of candles could be seen on the tables within, all flickering in the draught, while the muslin curtains in the lower rooms were blown by the evening wind into dangerous proximity to the lights.
And in all the house there was not a trace of a living creature to be seen, although from where Bram stood he could see into every room.
He followed still, uneasy and curious, as Claire climbed the garden wall with the agility of a boy, and ran up to the house door.
It was locked. Nothing daunted, she mounted on the ledge of the nearest window, which was open only at the top, threw up the sash, and got into the room.
A moment later she had blown out all the candles. Then she ran from room to room, extinguishing the lights, all in full view of the wondering Bram, who stood watching her movements from the lawn, until the whole front of the house was in complete darkness.
Then she disappeared, and for a few minutes Bram could see nothing, hear nothing.
But presently from the back part of the rooms, there came to his listening ears a long, shrill cry.