Bram said nothing. He felt as hard as nails. Theodore was really suffering now; but it served him right. What had the poor little creature’s life been but a long and terrible struggle between temptation on the one side, worry and difficulty on the other? She had held out long and bravely. She had struggled with a bright face, bearing her father’s burdens for him, and her own as well. What wonder that human nature had been too weak to hold out forever?
Bram’s heart was like a great open sore. He dared not look within himself, he dared not think, he dared not even feel. He tried to stupefy himself to the work of the moment, to stifle all sense but that of sight, and to fix his eyes upon Joan’s cottage, which they were now approaching, as if upon the mere reaching of it all his hopes depended.
But if Theodore had found Bram unsympathetic, what must he have thought of Joan? She heard his inquiries with coldness, and after saying that Claire had not been with her since she left the farmhouse on the previous evening, she asked shortly whether she had gone away.
“I—I am afraid so. Oh, my child, my poor child!” cried Theodore.
Joan grew very red, and clapping her hands on her hips, nodded with compressed lips.
“You’ve got no one but yourself to thank for this, Mr. Biron,” she said. “T’ poor young lady’s had a cruel time these many months through yer wicked ways! God help her, poor little lady!”
And the good woman turned sharply away from him, and slamming the door in his face, disappeared, sobbing bitterly.
Theodore was very white; he trembled from head to foot, and was even for a little while too angry and too much perturbed to speak.
At last, when Bram had put a hand within his arm to lead him away, he stammered out—
“You heard that, Elshaw! You heard the woman! That’s what these —— North country —— are like; they haven’t a scrap of feeling, even for the sacred grief of a father! But I don’t care a hang for the whole ---- lot of them! I’ll go up to the Park, and I’ll tell Mr Cornthwaite, the purse-proud old humbug, who thinks money can buy anything—I’ll tell him what I think of him and his scoundrel of a son! And then I’ll go up to town, and I’ll find him out, I’ll hunt out Christian himself, and I’ll avenge my child.”