CHAPTER XVI. THE PANGS OF DESPISED LOVE.
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, always having 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 to understand 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 heard something 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 shawl and 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’ll find 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 for you, 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.
With a sudden impulse of indomitable rage, she stepped back, and
raising her right hand quickly, flung something at his face.—Page 134.
Mr. Biron uttered a piercing shriek, as shrill as a woman’s.
“Fiend! She-devil! She’s killed me! Help! Oh, I’m on fire!”
Bram, who hardly knew what had happened, caught Theodore as the latter fell shrieking into his arms. Meg, with a wild laugh, picked up the remains of her broken bottle, and ran out of the farmyard.