CHAPTER VI. MR. BIRON’S CONDESCENSION.
When Mr. Theodore Biron found himself pulled up the steps of his cellar, and roughly shaken by the very person who had disarmed him on the previous evening, his rage was such that he lost his usual airy self-possession completely, and betrayed himself in the most unworthy manner.
“Who are you, sir? And how dare you interfere with me in this way?” stammered he, as he tried in vain to release himself from the determined grasp of the young clerk.
“Coom up to t’ light, and then you’ll see who Ah am,” said Bram, as with a strong arm he dragged the little man up the steps, and, shutting the trap-door, folded his arms and turned to look at him.
“Do you dare to justify this outrage, this—this burglarious entry upon my premises? The second in two days? Do you dare to justify it?” said Theodore haughtily.
“Ay,” said Bram surlily, “Ah’m going to give information to t’ police. Ah’m goin’ to tell them to keep an eye upon you, Mr. Biron, and not to be surprised if t’ house is burnt down; since you’ve got odd ways of amusing yourself with matches and paraffin, and with candles left ablaze near light curtains. Ah suppose you’re insured, Mr. Biron?”
“Whatever you suppose has nothing to do with the question,” retorted Mr. Biron, whose little thin cheeks were pink with indignation, and whose light eyes were flashing with annoyance and malignity. “Nobody is likely to pay much attention to the statements of a man who is evidently a loafer and a thief.”
“A thief!” shouted Bram with a menacing gesture, which had the effect of sending Theodore promptly into the little dining-room behind him. “Well, we’ll see whether t’ word of t’ thief won’t be taken against yours, Mr. Biron.”
There was a pause. Theodore from behind the table in the little dining-room, where he was twirling his moustache with a trembling white hand, looked at him with apprehension, and presently laughed in an attempt to recover his usual light-hearted ease of manner.
“Come, come,” said he, “this is carrying a joke too far, for I suppose it was intended for a joke—this intrusion upon my premises—and that you never had any real thought of carrying anything away. I remember your face now; you are one of the workmen at my cousin’s place, Cornthwaite’s Iron-Works.”
Bram, who was not unwilling to make terms with Miss Biron’s father, stared at him sullenly.
“Ah’m not one of t’ workmen now. Ah’m in t’ office,” said he.
Mr. Biron raised his eyebrows; he did not seem pleased. It had in fact occurred to him that this young man was employed as a sort of spy by the Cornthwaites, with whom he himself was by no means an acceptable person.
He smiled disagreeably.
“One of the clerks, eh? One of the smart young men who nibble pens in the office?”
“Ay, but ma smartness isn’t outside, Mr. Biron.”
“I see. Great genius—disdains mere appearance and all that.”
Bram said nothing. Theodore’s sneers hurt him more than any he had ever been subjected to before. He felt, in spite of his contempt for the airy-mannered scoundrel, that he himself stood at a disadvantage, with his rough speech and awkward movements, with the dapper little man in front of him. The consciousness that he himself would be reckoned of no account compared to Theodore Biron by the very men who despised the latter and respected himself was the strongest spur he had ever felt towards self-improvement.
“And what brings a person of your intellectual calibre into our humble neighborhood?” pursued Theodore in the same tone.
“Ah’m looking for lodgings up this way,” answered Bram shortly.
The idea had come to him that evening that, since he had been told to change his lodgings, he would settle in the neighborhood of Hessel.
As he had expected, Mr. Biron did not look pleased.
“And you are making yourself at home in advance!” suggested he dryly.
“Well, sir, you needn’t see more of me than you feel inclined to,” retorted Bram.
And, with a curt salutation, he turned on his heel and went out of the house by the back way, through the kitchen and the still open outer door.
He went up the hill towards the row of cottages on the summit, and made inquiries which resulted in his finding the two modest rooms he wanted in the end house of all, within a stone’s throw of a ruin so strange-looking that Bram made a tour of inspection of the ramshackle old building before returning to the town.
This ruin had once been a country mansion of fair size and of some importance, but the traces of its architectural beauties were now few and far apart. Of the main building only one side wall retained enough of its old characteristics to claim attention; at the top of the massive stonework a Tudor chimney, of handsome proportions, rose in incongruous stateliness above the decaying roof which had been placed over a row of cottages, which, built up within the old wall, had grown ruinous in their turn, and were now shut up and deserted.
At the back of this heterogeneous pile and a little distance away from it, another long and massive stone wall, with a Tudor window out of which once Wolsey had looked, had now become the chief prop and mainstay of another row of buildings, one of which was a school, another a chapel, while a third was a now disused stable.
And in the shelter of these ruins and remains of greatness a tall chimney, a cluster of sheds, and a pile of grass-grown trucks marked the spot where a now disused coal mine added a touch of fantastic desolation to the scene.
Bram went all round the pit-mouth and surveyed the town of Sheffield, with its dead yellow lights and its patches of blackness, like an inky sea bearing a fleet of ill-lighted boats on its breast in a Stygian mist. He thought he should like this evening walk out of the smoke and the lick of the fiery tongues, even without the occasional peeps he should get at Miss Biron.
But he hardly knew, perhaps, how much the thought of her, of her dancing eyes, her rapid movements like the sweep of a bird’s wing, had to do with his feeling.
He went back round the pit’s mouth, making his way with some difficulty in the darkness over the rough stones with which the place was thickly strewn.
And as he came to the remains of the old mansion he heard the laugh of Christian Cornthwaite, a little subdued, but clearly recognizable, not very far from his ears.
Bram straightened himself with a nasty shock. By the direction from which the sound came, he knew that Christian was in the ruin itself; and that he was not there by himself was plain. Who then was with him? Bram did not want to find an answer to this question; at least he told himself that he did not. The dilapidated shell of the old mansion was not the place where a lady would meet her lover. Bram had peeped into one of the deserted cottages on his way to the pit’s mouth, and had seen that, boarded up as doors and windows were, there were ruinous crannies and spaces through which a tramp or vagrant could creep to a precarious shelter.
Christian, who loved an adventure, amorous or otherwise, was evidently pursuing one now.
Bram walked down the hill, passed the cottage where he had engaged his new rooms, whistling to himself, and telling himself persistently that he was not wondering where Miss Biron had gone to that evening. And then he became suddenly mute, for, turning his head at the sound of a light footstep behind him, he saw Claire herself coming down the hill at a breathless rate.
She passed him without seeing him. Her head was bent low, and her feet seemed to fly. Bram’s heart seemed to stop beating as he watched her.
But he would not allow that he suspected her of being the person who had been in the ruined building with Christian Cornthwaite. It was true that Christian had sent her a note in which he had evidently asked her to meet him; it was true that she had acceded to the request, at her father’s instigation.
But although Bram clenched his teeth in thinking of Theodore, and felt a sudden impulse of fierce indignation against that gentleman, he would not acknowledge to himself that it was possible to connect her with an act inconsistent with the modesty of a gentlewoman.
He was not far behind when Theodore, lively, bright, and entirely recovered from the discomposure into which Bram’s unseemly violence had thrown him, came forth from the farmyard to meet his daughter.
“My dear child, I was getting quite anxious about you. Where’s Chris? I thought he would have seen you back home.”
“I left him—at the top of the hill, papa,” answered Claire in a demure voice.
And she ran past Theodore into the house.
Then Theodore, whose eyes were sharp, recognized Bram. And there flashed through his brain, always active on his own behalf, the suspicion that this presumptuous young man might be spying not so much on his employer’s account, as upon his own. The idea struck Theodore as preposterously amusing; but at the same time he thought that something might be made out of the foolish fellow’s infatuation, if it indeed existed.
“Well, and how about the lodgings?” said he with cheerful condescension, as Bram came nearer.
“Ah’ve found some,” replied Bram shortly.
“And what brings you so far afield?” went on Theodore more urbanely than ever. “May I hazard the conjecture that there’s a lady in the case?”
The young man was quick to seize this suggestion, which he saw might be used most usefully hereafter.
“Ay, sir, that’s about reght,” said he. “But she doan’t live here,” he went on, making up his story with great deliberation as he spoke. “She lives miles away in t’ country; but Ah thought Ah’d better settle out of t’ town myself, before Ah went courting.”
Theodore was disappointed, but he did not show it.
“Well,” said he, “we shall see something of you now and then, I daresay.”
And he nodded good-bye in the most affable manner.
Bram saluted respectfully, but he was too shrewd to be much impressed, in the manner Theodore intended, by this change towards him.
Away from the glamour cast upon him by the fact of Claire’s presence in his vicinity, Bram had sense enough to reflect that the less he saw of Miss Biron and her shifty father the better it would be for him. He did not say this to himself in so many words; but the knowledge was borne strongly in upon him all the same. There were forces in those two persons, differently as he esteemed them, against which he felt that he had no defence ready. Theodore was cunning and grasping; his daughter was, as Bram knew, used by her father as a tool in his unscrupulous hands. Deep as Bram’s compassion for the charming girl was, and his admiration, he had the strength of mind to live for months in her neighborhood without making any attempt to speak to her.
He saw her, indeed, morning after morning, and evening after evening, on his way down to the works and on his way back. For the road from his lodgings lay past the farm, where Miss Biron was always busy with her poultry in the morning, and working in her garden at night.
It was not often that she saw Bram, but when she did she had always a smile and a nod for him; never more than that though, even when he lingered a little, in the hope that she would throw him a word.
Bram saw Theodore sometimes, lounging in a garden chair, with a cigarette in his mouth; and sometimes Chris Cornthwaite would be with him, or walking by Claire’s side round the lawn, chattering to her while she pottered about her late autumn flowers.
This sight always sent a sharp pang through Bram’s heart; for he had conceived the idea that Christian, nice fellow though he was, might be too volatile a person to value Claire’s affection as she deserved.
Claire, on her side, seemed to be happy enough with Christian. Her pretty laugh rang out gayly; and Bram, even while he laughed at himself for a sentimental folly, found himself praying that the poor child might not be deceived in her hopes of happiness with her volatile lover.
For Christian, amiable and devoted as he might be with Claire, had not, as Bram knew, given up his amiability and devotion to other girls; and after the second or third time that Bram had seen him at Hessel Farm, he mentioned casually to the newly promoted clerk that he did not want his father to hear of his visits there.
Whereat Bram looked grave, and foresaw trouble in the near future.
The March winds had begun to blow fiercely on the high ground above Hessel, when Theodore Biron at last discovered a use to which to put his young neighbor. Would Bram do some marketing for him in the town? Bram was rather surprised at the request, for an excuse for going into the town was what Theodore liked to have. But when he found that the task he was expected to undertake was the purchase of one pound’s worth of goods for the sum of five shillings, which was all the cash Theodore trusted him with, Bram, when Theodore had turned his back upon him, stood looking thoughtfully at the two half-crowns in his hand.
And while he was doing so Claire, who had seen the transaction from the window, ran out of the house and came up with him. As usual, the girl’s presence threw a spell upon him, and put to flight all the saner ideas he had conceived as to the desirability of trying to conquer his own infatuation. She came up smiling, but there was anxiety in her face.
“What has papa been saying to you?” she asked imperiously.
“He wants me to get some things for him in the town,” said Bram straightforwardly. “But Ah’m such a bad hand at marketing—that—that Ah’m afraid——”
Claire blushed, and interrupted him impatiently.
“He’s not given you money enough, of course. He never does. He doesn’t understand. Men never do. They think everything can be got for a few pence for the housekeeping, and that one is wasteful and extravagant. Give me the money; I’ll see about the things.”
“No, you won’t, Miss Claire,” said Bram composedly, as he put the two half-crowns in his pocket. “You’ve put me on my mettle. Ah’m going to see what Ah can do, and show you that the men can give the ladies a lesson in marketing, after all.”
But Claire did not reply in the same light tone. She looked up in his face with an expression of shame and alarm in her eyes, which touched him keenly. With a little catch in her breath, she tried to protest, to forbid. Then she read something in Bram’s eyes which stung her, some gleam of pity, of comprehension. She broke off short, burst into tears, and turned abruptly away.
Bram stood by the gate for a few seconds, with his head hung down, and a guilty, miserable look on his face. Then, as nobody came out to him, he slunk quietly away.