Forge and furnace: A novel

by Florence Warden

But he was ill-pleased for all that. The vague hopes he had long ago cherished had become stronger, more definite of late; he had forced himself to be patient, to wait, telling himself that it would be indelicate to intrude upon the grief, the horror of the awful shock from which she must still be suffering.

He had long since heard all the particulars of the terrible death of Chris, and of the manner in which the mistake between Meg and Claire had come to be made. A workman had seen Christian and Claire in earnest conversation not far from the railway line; had seen her give him the note from her father which had brought her down. Christian had spoken kindly to her, had bent over her as if with the intention of kissing her, when suddenly the stalwart figure of Meg, who had followed them from some corner where she had concealed herself in the works, rushed between them, threatening them both with wild words. Claire had crept away in alarm, and Meg had gradually dragged Chris, talking, volubly gesticulating all the time, out upon the railway lines. She must have calculated to a nicety the hour at which the next train might be expected, so the general opinion afterwards ran. At any rate, it was she who was with Christian when the train came by; and as every one believed, as, in fact, poor Chris himself had said, she had flung him of malice prepense down on the line just as the train came up to them.

The workingman who gave Bram most of these details was the person who disabused Mr. Cornthwaite of his idea that the murderess was Claire. He had given his information at the very time that Bram was on his way to Hessel in the company of poor little Claire.

Although Claire herself had not witnessed the catastrophe, she had had the awful shock of coming suddenly, a few minutes later, upon the mangled body of her dying cousin. And Bram felt that he could not in decency approach her with his own hopes on his lips until she had in some measure recovered, not only from that shock, but from her father’s death, and the loss of her beloved home.

The farm now looked dreary in the extreme. April came, and it was still unlet. The grass in the garden had grown high, the crocuses were over, and there was no one to tie up their long, thin, straggling leaves. The tulips were drooping their petals, and the hyacinths were dying. There was nobody now to sow the seeds for the summer.

Bram was on his way back home early one Saturday afternoon, when the sun was shining brightly, showing up the shabby condition of the house and grounds, the absence of paint on doors and shutters, the weeds which were shooting up in the midst of the rubbish with which the farmyard was blocked up.

As he leaned over the garden gate and looked ruefully in, with painful thoughts about the little girl who was forgetting him in the society of the curate, he fancied he heard a slight noise coming from the house itself.

He listened, he looked. Then he started erect. He grew red; his heart began to beat at express speed.

There was some one in the house, stealing from room to room, not making much noise. And from the glimpse he caught of a disappearing figure in its flight from one room to another Bram knew that the intruder was Claire.