CHAPTER VIII. ANOTHER STEP UPWARD.
Bram left the farmhouse in a tumult of feeling. Why had he been dismissed so abruptly? Why had he been dismissed at all?
It was on Christian’s account apparently. But what objection could Christian have to his visits to the farm?
On the many occasions when the two young men had met there Bram had always been shunted into the background for Christian, and had been left at his modest occupations unheeded, while Claire gave all her attention to her cousin. Bram had looked upon this arrangement as quite natural, and had never so much as winced at it. The idea that Christian Cornthwaite might look upon him as a possible rival being out of the question, again Bram asked himself—What could be the reason of his dismissal?
He did not mean to take it quietly; he had conceit enough to think that Claire would be sorry if he did. He could flatter himself honestly that during the past six months he had become the young lady’s trusted friend, never obtrusive, never demonstrative, but trusted, perhaps appreciated, none the less on that account.
Bram had the excuse of Theodore’s invitation for hanging about the neighborhood until that gentleman’s return. But at the very moment when Mr. Biron’s gay voice, humming to himself as he came up the hill, struck upon Bram’s ear, Christian Cornthwaite came out through the farmyard gate.
“Hallo, Elshaw, is that you?” he asked, as he came out and passed his arm through Bram’s. “I wondered what had become of you when I did not find you in the house this evening. I’d begun to look upon you as one of the fixtures.”
“I was there this evening, Mr. Christian,” replied Bram soberly. “But I got turned out without much ceremony just before you came.”
“Turned out, eh? I didn’t think you ever did anything to deserve such treatment from any one.” And Chris looked curious. “You are what I call a model young man, if anything a little too much like the hero of a religious story for young ladies, written by a young lady.”
Bram was quite acute enough to understand that this was a sneer.
“You mean that I’m what you and your friends call a prig, Mr. Christian?” he said quite unaffectedly, and without any sign of shame or regret. “Well, I suppose I am. But you don’t allow for the difference between us at starting. To get up to where you stand from where I used to be, one must be a bit of a prig, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps so. I think you may be trusted to know your own business, Elshaw. You’re one of the men that get on. It won’t do you any harm on the way up if you leave off chopping firewood in your shirt-sleeves for people who don’t think any the better of you for it.”
Bram, who had let himself be led up the hill, stopped short.
“She doesn’t think any the worse of me for doing any little thing I can to help her,” said he in a muffled voice.
Christian began to laugh.
“She? You mean Claire. Oh, no, no, she does justice to everybody, bless her dear little heart! I was thinking of our rascally friend, her father. You know very well that he uses his daughter as a means for getting all he can out of everybody. I hope you’ve not been had by the old ruffian, Elshaw?”
“No, Mr. Christian; no, I haven’t,” answered Bram hastily. “That is, not to an extent that matters.”
“Ah, ha! That means you have been had for half-crowns, for instance?” As Bram moved uneasily, Chris laughed again. “Of course, it is no affair of mine; I’m quite sure you can see through our frivolous friend as well as anybody else. But if, as you say, you have been dismissed, why, I advise you not to try to get reinstated.”
Now, this advice troubled Bram exceedingly. It was excellent of its kind, no doubt; but he asked himself whether the man who was so keenly alive to the disadvantages of even an acquaintance with the Birons could really be ready to form an alliance which must bring the burden of the needy elderly gentleman upon him for life. His feelings upon the subject were so keen that they would not permit him to temporize and to choose his words and his opportunity. Quite suddenly he blurted out—
“You’re going to marry Miss Claire, aren’t you?”
Christian, who always took things more easily than his deeper-natured companion, looked at the earnest, strongly-cut face with something like amusement. Luckily, it was too dark for Bram to see the full significance of his companion’s expression.
“Marry her? Why, yes, to be sure I hope so. My father is very anxious for me ‘to settle down,’ as he calls it, though I would rather, for my own part, not settle down quite so far as matrimony just yet.”
There was a pause. 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. Is that a part of my priggishness, Mr. Christian, to wonder at that?”
Christian did not answer at once. They had reached the top of the hill, and were standing by the ruined cottages, which looked more desolate than ever in the darkness of the winter evening. The wind whistled through the broken walls and the decaying rafters.
Bram remembered the evening when he had heard Christian’s laugh in that very pile.
“I suppose it is, Bram,” said Chris at last. “But I rather like it in you, all the same. I can’t help laughing at you, but I think you’re rather a fine fellow. Now, listen to me. You may go on wondering at my behavior as much as you like, but you mustn’t yourself have anything more to do with the Birons. We’ll say I’m jealous, Bram, if you like. I really think it’s true, too,” he added with a flippancy which belied his words.
But Bram shook his head solemnly.
“No, Mr. Christian,” he answered; and in the excitement he felt the strong Yorkshire accent was heard again in his voice. “You’ve no call to be jealous of me, and you know that right well. If I were a gentleman born, like you——”
“Don’t use that expression,‘gentleman born,’ Elshaw,” interrupted Chris lightly. “It means nothing, for one thing. My great-grandfather was a mill hand, or something of that sort, and so were the great-grandfathers of half the men in the House of Lords. And it sounds odd from a man like you, who will be a big pot one of these days.”
“Well, Mr. Christian, if I’d been brought up in a big house, like you, and had had my face kept clean and my hair curled instead of being allowed to make mud-pies in the gutter——”
“I wanted to make mud-pies in the gutter!” interpolated Christian cheerfully.
“Well, you know what I mean, anyhow. If we’d stood just on the same ground——”
“We never should have stood on the same ground, Elshaw,” said Chris with a shrewd smile.
“——And if I hadn’t been beholden to you for the rise I’ve got, I’d have fought you for the place you’ve got with her very likely. But, as it is, I’m nowhere; I don’t count. And you know that, Mr. Christian.”
“Indeed, I’m very glad to hear it, for if there’s one man in the world I should less like to have for a rival than another, in love or in anything else, it’s you, Bram. I know you’re a lamb outside; but I can’t help suspecting that there’s a creature more like a tiger underneath.”
“I’m inclined to think myself, Mr. Christian, that the creature underneath’s more like an ass,” said Bram good-humoredly.
They were standing at the top of the hill; it was a damp, cold night, and Christian shivered.
“You mustn’t stand here talking, Mr. Christian,” said Bram. “You are not so used to strong breezes as me.”
“Well, good-night; I won’t take you any further. You live somewhere about here, I know. But, I say.” He called after Bram, who was turning back. “There’s one thing I want to tell you. Don’t say anything to the guv’nor about meeting me at the farm.”
Bram stared blankly, and Christian laughed.
“My dear fellow, don’t you know that these matters require to be conducted with a little diplomacy? When a man is dependent upon his father, as he always is if he’s a lazy beggar like me, that father has to be humored a little. I must prepare him gradually for the shock, if I’m ever to marry Claire.”
“All right, Mr. Christian. I’ll say nothing, of course. But I shall be glad to hear that matters are straight. It seems hard on the young lady, doesn’t it?”
“Ah, well, life isn’t all beer and skittles for any of us.”
Christian called out these words, turning his head as he walked rapidly away on the road to Holme Park.
Bram had made such astonishing progress in the office since his promotion, not much more than a year before, that nobody but himself was astonished when he was called into the private office of the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, about a fortnight after his talk with Christian, and was formally invited by that gentleman to dine at Holme Park in the course of the following week. Bram’s first impulse was to apologize for declining the invitation, but Mr. Cornthwaite insisted, and with such an air of authority that Bram felt there was no escape for him.
But, meeting Christian later in the day, Bram related the incident rather as if it were a grievance.
“You know, Mr. Christian, it’s not in my line, that sort of thing. Ah shall make a fool o’ myself, Ah know Ah shall.”
And, either accidentally or on purpose, he dropped again into the strong Yorkshire dialect, which since his elevation he had worked successfully to overcome.
But Christian only laughed at his excuses.
“You’d be a fool to refuse,” he said shortly. “I’ll take you round to my tailor’s again, and he’ll measure you for your war-paint.”
Bram’s face fell.
“No, Mr. Christian, no. I’m not going to dress myself up. Mr. Cornthwaite won’t expect it, and what would be the good of my wasting all that money on clothes you’ll never catch me wearing again? And the oaf I should look in ’em too! Why, you’d all be laughin’ at me, an’ not more than I should be laughin’ at myself.”
“Elshaw,” returned Chris gravely, “the one thing which distinguishes you above all the self-made men and born geniuses I’ve ever heard about is that you’ve got too broad a mind to despise trifles. While Sir George Milbrook, who began as a factory hand, and Jeremiah Montcombe of Gray’s Hall, and a lot of other men who’ve got on like them, make a point of dropping their H’s and clipping their words just as they used to do forty years ago, you’ve thought it worth your while to drop your Ah’s and your tha’s, till there’s very little trace of them left already, and there’ll be none in another year. Well, now, there are some more trifles to be mastered, and dressing for dinner is one of them. So buck up, old man, and come along. And by-the-by, as you’ll always take a hint from me, couldn’t you let yourself drop into slang sometimes? Your language is so dreadfully precise, and you use so many words that I have to look out in the dictionary.”
“Do I, Mr. Christian?” asked Bram, surprised. Then he laughed and shook his head. “No, I can’t trust myself as far as the slang yet. It wouldn’t come out right perhaps. I shouldn’t have discrimination enough to choose between the slang that was all right and the slang which would make the ladies look at each other.”
“Well, I suppose I must let you have a few months’ grace. But it’s only on condition that you smoke an occasional cigarette, and that you don’t stick so persistently to soda water and lemonade, when you’re asked to have a drink.”
“But, Mr. Christian, I’m not used to wine and spirits, not even to beer, and if I was to drink them they would get into my head. And as it takes me all my time to speak properly and behave so as to pass muster, as it is, you’d better leave pretty well alone, and let me keep to the soda water.”
“Oh, well, as long as you’re not moved by conscientious scruples I don’t so much mind. But teetotalism savors rather too much of the Sunday-school and the Anti-Tobacco League. Mind, I don’t want to make you an habitual drunkard, but I should like to feel sure that you understand there is a happy medium.”
“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Bram with a comical look; “but I wish I hadn’t to go up to the Park Thursday week all the same.”
Chris looked at him steadily, and played with his long, tawny moustache for a few moments in silence.
“So do I. I wish you hadn’t got to go too,” said he at last.
But he would not explain why; he turned the subject by remarking that they mustn’t forget the visit to the tailor’s.