“Where else can she be left, poor thing?” cried Bram with deep feeling. “Do you think if you brought Mr. Christian back ‘by the scruff of the neck,’ as you say, that you’d ever be able to patch matters up between ’em so as to make ’em live anything but a cat-and-dog’s-life? No, Mr. Cornthwaite, you couldn’t. The wife won’t come to so much hurt; she wouldn’t have come to none if you hadn’t forced on this cursed marriage. Let her get free, and make him free; and let Mr. Christian put the wrong right as far as he can by marrying the girl he wants, the girl who knows how to make him happy!”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s black eyes blazed. He hated even a semblance of contradiction; and Bram’s determined and dogged attitude irritated him beyond measure. He rose from his arm-chair, and clasping his hands behind his back with a loud snap, he assumed towards the young man an air of bland contempt which he had never used to him before.
“Your notions are charming in the abstract, Elshaw. I have no doubt, too, that there are some sections of society where your ideas might be carried out without much harm to anybody. But not in that in which we move. If my son were to commit such an unheard-of folly as you suggest I would let him shift for himself for the rest of his days. And perhaps you know enough of Christian to tell whether he would find life with any young woman agreeable under those conditions.”
Bram remained silent. There was a pause, rather a long one. Then Mr. Cornthwaite spoke again——
“Of course, you are sensible enough to understand that this is my business, and my son’s; that it is a family matter, a difficulty in which I have to act for the best. And I hope,” he went on in a different tone, “for your own sake, more than for mine, that you will not take any step so rash as leaving this office would be. Without notice, too!”
“As to that, sir, you had better let me go—and without notice,” said Bram with a sullen note in his voice which made Mr. Cornthwaite look at him with some anxiety, “if it’s true that you’re going to make Mr. Christian leave Miss Claire in the lurch. For I tell you, sir,” and again he looked up, with a steely flash in his gray eyes and a look of stubborn ferocity about his long upper lip and straight mouth, “if I was to come face to face wi’ him after he’d done that thing I couldn’t keep my fists off him; Ah couldn’t, sir. That’s what comes of my being born in a different section of society, sir, I suppose. And so, as Ah’ve loved Mr. Christian, and as Ah’ve had much to thank you and him for, sir, you’d best let me go back—to my own section of society, where a man has to stand by his own deeds, like a man!”
Mr. Cornthwaite’s attitude, his tone, changed insensibly as he looked and listened to the man who told him his views so honestly, and stood by them so firmly. He saw that Bram was in earnest, and he began to walk up and down the room, thinking, planning, considering. He did not want to lose this clever young man; he could not afford to do so. Bram had something like a genius for the details of business, and was besides as honest as the day; not a too common combination.
The young man waited, but at last, as Mr. Cornthwaite made no sign of addressing him, he turned to touch the handle of the door. Then Mr. Cornthwaite suddenly stopped in his walk, and made a sign to him to stay.
“Well, Elshaw,” said he in a more genial tone, “will you, if you must go, promise me one thing? Will you see Mr. Christian in my presence first, and hear what he has to say for himself?”