CHAPTER X. THE FINE EYES OF HER CASH-BOX.
Christian Cornthwaite pretended to be occupied in conversation with his future father-in-law, while Mr. Cornthwaite, senior, in his blandest and most good-humored tones, made the announcement of his son’s intended marriage to the astonished Bram.
But Christian’s attention was not so deeply engaged that he could not take note of what was happening, and he noticed the dead silence with which Bram received the announcement, and presently stole a furtive look at the face of the young clerk.
Bram caught the look, and replied to it with a steady stare. Chris turned his eyes away, but that look of Bram’s fascinated him, worried him. In truth, it had been his fear of what Elshaw would say, even more than his own disinclination, which had kept him hovering on the brink of his engagement with Miss Hibbs for so long.
And now he felt that he would have preferred some outbreak on Bram’s part to this stony silence.
“A wedding, Sir?” Bram’s face clouded with perplexity.—Page 70.
Even Josiah Cornthwaite was puzzled by Bram’s reception of the news. The young man seemed absolutely unmoved by the fresh proof of his employer’s confidence given in the information that he was to be sent to London on important business. He grew even uneasy as Bram’s silence continued, or was broken only by the briefest and coldest of answers. He looked from his son to Bram, and perceived that there was some understanding between them. And his fears grew apace. He shortened the stay in the dining-room, therefore, and letting Mr. Hibbs and Chris enter the drawing-room together, he took Bram up the stairs, with the excuse of showing him the view of the town from one of the windows.
Bram was shrewd enough to guess that he was to be “pumped.”
“This news about my son’s intended marriage seems to have taken you by surprise, Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite as they stood together looking out on the blurred lights of the town below.
“Well, sir, it has,” admitted Bram briefly.
“But you know he is twenty-six, an age at which a young man who can afford it ought to be thinking of marrying.”
“Oh, yes.”
“You thought, perhaps, that such a volatile fellow would be scarcely likely to make such a sensible choice as he has done?” went on Josiah with an air of bland indulgence, but with some anxiety in his eyes.
There was a pause.
“That was what you thought, eh?” repeated Mr. Cornthwaite more sharply.
Bram Elshaw frowned.
“Sir, may I speak out?” asked he bluntly.
“Certainly.”
“Well, then, sir, I don’t think it is a wise choice—if it was his choice at all, and not yours, sir?”
Now, Mr. Cornthwaite, while giving his permission to speak out, had not expected such uncompromising frankness as this. He was taken aback. He stammered as he began to answer—
“Why, why, what do you mean? Could there be a more sensible choice than such a lady as Miss Hibbs? A good daughter, not frivolous, or vain, or flighty; a sensible, affectionate girl, devoted to her parents and to good works. Just such a girl, in fact, as can be depended upon to make a thoroughly good, devoted wife.”
“For some sort of men, sir. But not for a man like Mr. Christian,” returned Bram with decision.
His blood was up, and he spoke with as much firmness as, and with more fire than, he had ever before shown to his employer.
Mr. Cornthwaite, who had grounds for feeling uneasy, was lenient, patient, attentive, curious.
“Why, don’t you know, Elshaw,” said he sharply, “that a man should mate with his opposite if he wants to be happy? That grave and serious men like frivolous wives; but that your lively young fellow likes a sober-minded wife to keep his house in order?”
“Sir, if it’s Mr. Christian’s choice, there’s an end of it,” said Bram brusquely.
“Of course it’s his choice, none the less, but rather the more, that it meets not only with my approval, but with that of the ladies of my family,” said Mr. Cornthwaite pompously.
Yet still he was curious, still unsatisfied. And still Bram said nothing.
“Believe me,” Mr. Cornthwaite went on impressively, “a man is none the less amenable to the influence of a good wife for having sown his wild oats first. With a wife like the one I—no, I mean he has chosen,” a faint smile flickered over Bram’s mouth at this correction, “my son will settle down into a model husband and father. You want the two elements, seriousness on the one side, good-humored gayety on the other, to make a happy marriage. Why, I ought to know, for these are exactly the principles on which I married myself.”
Mr. Cornthwaite uttered these words with an air of bland assurance, which, he thought, must carry conviction. But his young hearer, unfortunately, had heard enough about the domestic life at Holme Park to know that the “sensible marriage” on which Mr. Cornthwaite prided himself had by no means resulted in domestic peace. The bickerings of the ill-matched pair were, in fact, a constant source of misery to all the household, and were used freely by Chris as an excuse for his neglect of home.
Bram, therefore, received this information with courtesy, but without comment. Mr. Cornthwaite kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the young man, and found himself at last obliged to put a direct question.
“You had, I suppose, expected him to make a different sort of choice?”
“Very different, sir.”
“Some one, perhaps, whom you would have considered better suited to him?”
“Much better suited, sir.”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face clouded.
“Whom do you mean?”
Bram only hesitated a moment. He could do Christian no harm now by telling the truth; and he had a lingering hope that he might bring old Mr. Cornthwaite to see the matter with his own eyes.
“Sir,” said he, “have you never suspected your son of any attachment, any serious attachment, to a lady as good as Miss Hibbs is said to be, and a great deal more attractive?”
Bram felt as he said this that he had lapsed into the copybook style of conversation which Chris had pointed out as one of his besetting sins. But he could not help it. He felt the need of some dignity in speaking words which he felt to be momentous.
Mr. Cornthwaite looked deeply annoyed.
“I have not,” said he shortly. And again he asked—“Whom do you mean?”
“Miss Claire Biron, sir,” answered Bram.
Mr. Cornthwaite’s face darkened still more.
“What!” cried he in agitation which belied his words. “You believe that my son ever gave that girl a serious thought? And that the daughter of such a father could be a proper match for my son? Absurd! Absurd! Of course, you are a very young man; you have no knowledge of the world. But I should have thought your native shrewdness would have prevented your falling into such a mistake as that.”
Bram said nothing. Mr. Cornthwaite, in spite of the scornful tone he had used, was evidently more anxious than ever to learn whatever Bram had to tell on the subject. After a short silence, therefore, he asked in a quieter tone—
“How came you to get such a notion into your head, Elshaw?”
“I knew that they were fond of each other, sir; and I knew that Miss Biron was a young lady of character, and what you call tact.”
“Tact! Humbug!” said Mr. Cornthwaite shortly. “She is an artful, designing girl, and she and her father have done all in their power to entangle my son. But I foresaw his danger, and now I flatter myself I have saved him. You, I see, have been taken in by the girl’s little mincing ways, just as my son was in danger of being. But I warn you not to have anything to do with them. They are an artful, scheming pair, both father and daughter, and it would be ruin for any man to become connected with them—ruin, I say.”
And he stared anxiously into Bram’s face.
“Has she led you on too?” he asked presently, with great abruptness.
Bram’s face flushed.
“No, sir. She has forbidden me to come to her father’s house.”
“Ah! A ruse, a trick to encourage my son!” cried the old gentleman fiercely. “I wish he were safely married. I shall do all in my power to hurry it on. How often have you seen him about there? You live near, I believe?” said he curtly.
“I have seen him now and then, not so very often lately,” answered Bram.
“Ah, well, you won’t see him there much longer. Miss Hibbs will see to that.”
“Sir, you are wrong,” cried Bram, whose head and heart were on fire at these accusations against Claire. “Miss Hibbs may be a good girl, as girls go. I don’t know” (Bram’s English gave way here) “nothing against her. But I do know you don’t give your son a chance when you make him marry a sack o’ meal like that, and him loving a flesh-and-blood woman like Miss Biron! Why, sir, ask yourself whether it’s in nature that he should settle down to the psalm-singing that would suit her, so as to be happy and satisfied to give up his wild ways? Put it to him point blank, sir, which he’d do of his own free will, and see what answer you’ll get from him!”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Cornthwaite hastily, “and I’m exceedingly sorry to find you so much more gullible than I had expected, Elshaw. Is it possible you didn’t observe how this young woman ran after my son? Coming to this house on every possible occasion with some excuse or other?”
“That was her father’s fault, sir,” retorted Bram hotly.
“Probably he had something to do with it; but she fell in with his wishes with remarkable readiness, readiness which no modest girl would have shown in the circumstances. She must have seen she was not welcomed with any warmth by the heads of the household at least.”
The blood rushed to Bram’s forehead. The idea of poor little Claire creeping unwillingly to the great house on one of her father’s miserable errands, only to be snubbed and coldly received by every one, struck him like a stab.
“Surely, sir, there was no place in the world where she had so good a right to expect to be well received as here?” said he, with difficulty controlling the emotion he felt. “A young girl, doing her best to fulfil every duty, with no friends, no mother, no father worthy of the name. And you are her relations; here there were women, ladies, who knew all about her, and who might be expected to sympathize with her difficulties and her troubles!”
Bram, who spoke slowly, deliberately, choosing his words with nice care, but uttering them with deep feeling, paused, and looked straight into Mr. Cornthwaite’s face. But there was no mercy in the fiery black eyes, or about the cold, handsome mouth.
“They would have shown her every sympathy,” said he coldly, “if she had not abused the privilege of intimacy by trying to ensnare my son.”
“Mr. Cornthwaite,” interrupted Bram scornfully, “do you really think Mr. Christian ever waited for a girl to run after him? Why, for every time Miss Biron’s been up here—sent here by her father, mind—he’s been three or four or five times down at the farm!”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s eyes blazed. By a quick movement he betrayed that this was just what he had wanted to know. His face clouded more than before.
“Ah!” said he shortly, “that’s what I’ve been told. Well, it’s the girl’s own doing. If she’s got herself into a scrape, she has no one but herself to thank for it, no one. Shall we join the ladies in the drawing-room?”
He led the way downstairs, and Bram followed in dead silence.
A horrible, sickly fear had seized his heart; he could not but understand the imputation Mr. Cornthwaite had made, accompanied as it was by a look, the significance of which there was no mistaking.
Claire, poor little helpless Claire, the cherished idol of his imagination and of his heart, lay under the most cruel suspicion which can assail a woman, the suspicion of having held her honor too lightly.
Bram, shocked beyond measure, recoiled at the bare mention of this suspicion in connection with the girl he worshipped. The next moment he cast the thought behind him as utterly base, and felt that he had disgraced himself and her by the momentary harboring of it.
But as for Mr. Cornthwaite, Bram felt that he hated the smug, elderly gentleman, who troubled himself not in the least about the helpless, friendless girl who loved his son, and whose only thought was to hurry his son into a heartless marriage in order to “save him from” the danger of his repairing his supposed error.
In these circumstances, Bram lost all self-consciousness, all remembrance of his unaccustomed dress, of his attitudes, of his awkwardness, and entered the drawing-room utterly absorbed in thoughts of Claire. Old Mrs. Cornthwaite, who was fumbling about with a lapful of feminine trifles, smelling-bottle, handkerchief, spectacle-case, dropped one of them, and he hastened to pick it up.
“Thank you,” said she, with a gracious, good-humored smile, “you are more attentive than any of the grand folk.”
“Mamma,” cried Hester in fidgety exasperation. And good-naturedly fearing that he might have been hurt by her mother’s lack of tact, she opened the old-fashioned, but not unhelpful, album of photographs, which lay on a table near her, and asked him if he cared for pictures of Swiss scenery.
“Not much, Miss Hester,” said Bram.
But he went up to the table, encouraged by her kind manners, by the honest look in her eyes, in the hope that he might find a supporter in her of the cause he had at heart.
“But I should like to see some photographs of you and Mr. Christian, if you have any.”
She opened another album, smiling as she did so, and offering him a chair near her, which he immediately took.
“I never show these unless I am asked,” she said. “Family photographs I always think uninteresting, except to the family.”
“And to those interested in the family,” amended Bram. “You see, Miss Hester, there’s hardly another thing in the world I care about so much. That’s only natural, isn’t it, after what I’ve been treated like at their hands.”
He was conscious that his English was getting doubtful under the influence of the emotion which he could not master. But Miss Cornthwaite seemed, of course, not to notice this. She was extremely well disposed towards this frank young man with the earnest eyes, the heavy, obstinate mouth, and the long, straight chin, which gave so much character to his pale face.
“Christian always speaks of you with such boyish delight, as if he had discovered you bound hand and foot in the midst of cannibals who wanted to eat you,” said she laughing.
“So he did, Miss Hester,” answered Bram gravely, almost harshly.
He could not speak, could not think of Chris just now without betraying something of the emotion the name aroused in him. And he glanced angrily across to the corner where Chris was sitting beside prim little Miss Hibbs, who was giggling gently at his remarks, but clasping her hands tightly together, and keeping her arms pinned closely to her sides, as if she felt that she was unbending more than was meet, and that she must atone for a little surface hilarity by this penitential attitude.
Hester Cornthwaite noticed the glance thrown by Bram, and felt curious.
“I am very glad he is going to be married,” she said quickly, with an intuition that he would not agree with her. Bram looked her full in the face in a sudden and aggressive manner.
“Why are you glad?” he asked abruptly.
She was rather disconcerted for a moment.
“Why? Oh, because I think it will be good for him, that he will be happier, that he will settle down,” she answered with a little confusion.
Surely he must know as well as she did that there were many reasons for wishing Chris to grow more steady. A little prim suggestion of this feeling was noticeable in her tone.
“I don’t think he would settle down, if so he was to marry a girl he didn’t care for,” said Bram bluntly. “And I should have thought you would agree with me, understanding Mr. Christian as you do, Miss Hester.”
Miss Cornthwaite drew her lips rather primly together.
“He does care for her, of course,” said she rather tartly, “else why should he marry her?”
Bram smiled, and gave her a glance of something like scorn.
“There are a good many reasons why he should marry to please Mr. Cornthwaite, your father, when he can’t marry to please himself.”
“Why can’t he? Who does he want to marry?” asked Miss Cornthwaite quickly.
“Why, Miss Biron, Miss Claire Biron, of Duke’s Farm,” replied honest Bram promptly.
Hester’s thin and rather wizened face flushed. She frowned; she looked annoyed. “Dear me! I never heard anything about it,” she said testily. “And I can hardly think he would wish to do anything so very unwise. Christian isn’t stupid, though he’s rather volatile.”
“Stupid! No, indeed. That he should want to marry Miss Biron is no proof of stupidity. Where could he find a nicer wife? How could you expect him to sit and look contentedly at Miss Hibbs when there is such a girl as Miss Biron within ten miles?”
Hester looked more prim than ever.
“You seem very enthusiastic, Mr. Elshaw. Pray, what have you to say about Mr. Biron?”
“Well, Mr. Christian wouldn’t have to marry him.”
“That is just what he would have to do,” retorted she quickly. “Mr. Biron would take good care of that. Christian would never be able to shake him off.”
“Well,” said Bram, “he can’t shake him off now, can he? So he would be no worse off.”
“Now, seriously, Mr. Elshaw, would you like to have such a father-in-law yourself?”
Bram’s heart leapt up. But he did not tell the young lady that he only wished he had the chance. Instead of that, he answered in a particularly grave and judicial tone—
“If I had, I’d soon bring him to reason. He’s not stupid either, you see. I’d make an arrangement with him, and I’d make him keep to it. And if he didn’t keep to it——”
“And he certainly wouldn’t. What then?”
“Well, then perhaps I’d get rid of him some way, Miss Hester.”
“I certainly shouldn’t advise my brother to run the risk of having to do that, and all for a girl much too volatile to make him a good wife. Why, she is nearly half French.”
Bram looked at her quickly.
“Surely, Miss Hester, you who have travelled and been about the world, don’t think the worse of a lady for that?”
Miss Cornthwaite reddened, but she stuck to her guns.
“I hope I am above any silly insular prejudice,” she said coldly. “But I certainly think the French character too frivolous for an Englishman’s wife. Why, when Claire comes here, though she will sob as if her heart was breaking one moment at the humiliations her father exposes her to, she will be laughing heartily the next.”
“Poor child, poor child! Thank heaven she can,” said Bram with solemn tenderness which made Miss Cornthwaite just a little ashamed of herself. “And don’t you think a temper like that would come in handy for Mr. Christian’s wife, as well as for Mr. Biron’s daughter?”
“Oh, perhaps,” said Miss Cornthwaite very frigidly, as she stretched out her hand quickly for a fresh book to show him.
Poor Claire had no partisan here.