FORGE AND FURNACE

A Novel

BY FLORENCE WARDEN

AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “SCHEHERAZADE,” “A PRINCE OF DARKNESS,” ETC.

New York NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY 156 FIFTH AVENUE

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Copyright, 1896, BY NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY.

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CONTENTS.

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FORGE AND FURNACE;

THE ROMANCE OF A SHEFFIELD BLADE.

CHAPTER I. A PAIR OF BROWN EYES.

Thud, thud. Amidst a shower of hot, yellow sparks the steam hammer came down on the glowing steel, shaking the ground under the feet of the master of the works and his son, who stood just outside the shed. In the full blaze of the August sunshine, which was, however, tempered by such clouds of murky smoke as only Sheffield can boast, old Mr. Cornthwaite, acclimatized for many a year to heat and to coal dust, stood quite unconcerned.

Tall, thin, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with a fresh-colored face which seemed to look the younger and the handsomer for the silver whiteness of his hair and of his long, silky moustache, Josiah Cornthwaite’s was a figure which would have arrested attention anywhere, but which was especially noticeable for the striking contrast he made to the rough-looking Yorkshiremen at work around him.

Like a swarm of demons on the shores of Styx, they moved about, haggard, gaunt, uncouth figures, silent amidst the roar of the furnaces and the whirr of the wheels, lifting the bars of red-hot steel with long iron rods as easily and unconcernedly as if they had been hot[Pg 6] rolls baked in an infernal oven, heedless of the red-hot sparks which fell around them in showers as each blow of the steam hammer fell.

Mr. Cornthwaite, whose heart was in his furnaces, his huge revolving wheels, his rolling mills, and his gigantic presses, watched the work, familiar as it was to him, with fascinated eyes.

“What day was it last month that Biron turned up here?” he asked his son with a slight frown.

This frown often crossed old Mr. Cornthwaite’s face when he and his son were at the works together, for Christian by no means shared his father’s enthusiasm for the works, and was at small pains to hide the fact.

“Oh, I’m sure I don’t remember. How should I remember?” said he carelessly, as he looked down at his hands, and wondered how much more black coal dust there would be on them by the time the guv’nor would choose to let him go.

A young workman, with a long, thin, pale, intelligent face, out of which two deep-set, shrewd, gray eyes looked steadily, glanced up quickly at Mr. Cornthwaite. He had been standing near enough to hear the remarks exchanged between father and son.

“Well, Elshaw, what is it?” said the elder Mr. Cornthwaite with an encouraging smile. “Any more discoveries to-day?”

A little color came into the young man’s face.

“No, sir,” said he shyly in a deep, pleasant voice, speaking with a broad Yorkshire accent which was not in his mouth unpleasant to the ear. “Ah heard what you asked Mr. Christian, sir, and remember it was on the third of the month Mr. Biron came.”

“Thanks. Your memory is always to be trusted. I think you’ve got your head screwed on the right way, Elshaw.”

“Ah’m sure, Ah hope so, sir,” said the young fellow, smiling in return for his employer’s smile, and touching his cap as he moved away.

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“Smart lad that Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite approvingly. “And steady. Never drinks, as so many of them do.”

“Can you wonder at their drinking?” broke out Christian with energy, “when they have to spend their lives at this infernal work? It parches my throat only to watch them, and I’m sure if I had to pass as many hours as they do in this awful, grimy hole I should never be sober.”

The elder Mr. Cornthwaite looked undecided whether to frown or to laugh at this tirade, which had at least the merit of being uttered in all sincerity by the very person who could least afford to utter it. He compromised by giving breath to a little sigh.

“It’s very disheartening to me to hear you say so, Chris, when it has been the aim of my life to bring you up to carry on and build up the business I have given my life to,” he said.

Christian Cornthwaite’s face was not an expressive one. He was extraordinarily unlike his father in almost every way, having prominent blue eyes, instead of his father’s piercing black ones, a fair complexion, while his father’s was dark, a figure shorter, broader, and less upright, and an easy, happy-go-lucky walk and manner, as different as possible from the erect, military bearing of the head of the firm.

What little expression he could throw into his big blue eyes he threw into them now, as he pulled his long, ragged, tawny moustache and echoed his father’s sigh.

“Well, isn’t it disheartening for me too, sir,” protested he good-humoredly, “to hear you constantly threatening to put me on bread and water for the rest of my life if I don’t settle down in this beastly hole and try to love it?”

“It ought to be natural to you to love what has brought you up in every comfort, educated you like a prince, and made of you——”

Josiah Cornthwaite paused, and a twinkle came into his black eyes.

“Made of you,” he went on thoughtfully, “a selfish,[Pg 8] idle vagabond, with only wit enough to waste the money his father has made.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Chris, quite cheerfully. “If that’s the best the works have done for me, why should I love them?”

At that moment young Elshaw passed before his eyes again, and recalled Christian’s attention to a subject which would, he shrewdly thought, divert the current of his father’s thoughts from his own deficiencies.

“I wonder, sir,” he said, “that you don’t put Bram Elshaw into the office. He’s fit for something better than this sort of thing.”

And he waved his hand in the direction of the group in the middle of which stood Elshaw, rod in hand, with his lean, earnest face intent on his work.

Josiah Cornthwaite’s eyes rested on the young man. Bram was a little above the middle height, thin, sallow, with shoulders somewhat inclined to be narrow and sloping, but with a face which commanded attention. He had short, mouse-colored hair, high cheek bones, a short nose, a straight mouth, and a very long straight chin; altogether an assemblage of features which promised little in the way of attractiveness.

And yet attractive his face certainly was. Intelligence, strength of character, good humor, these were the qualities which even a casual observer could read in the countenance of Bram Elshaw.

But the lad had more in him than that. He had ambition, vague as yet, dogged tenacity of purpose, imagination, feeling, fire. There was the stuff; of a man of no common kind in the young workman.

Josiah Cornthwaite looked at him long and critically before answering his son’s remark.

“Yes,” said he at last slowly, “I daresay he’s fit for something better—indeed, I’m sure of it. But it doesn’t do to bring these young fellows on too fast. If he gets too much encouragement he will turn into an inventor (you know the sort of chap that’s the common pest of a manufacturing town, always worrying about some [Pg 9]precious ‘invention’ that turns out to have been invented long ago, or to be utterly worthless), and never do a stroke of honest work again.”

“Now, I don’t think Elshaw’s that sort of chap,” said Chris, who looked upon Bram as in some sort his protégé, whose merit would be reflected on himself. “Anyhow, I think it would be worth your while to give him a trial, sir.”

“But he would never go back to this work afterwards if he proved a failure in the office.”

“Not here, certainly.”

“And we should lose a very good workman,” persisted Mr. Cornthwaite, who had conservative notions upon the subject of promotion from the ranks.

“Well, I believe it would turn out all right,” said Chris.

His father was about to reply when his attention was diverted by the sudden appearance, at the extreme end of the long avenue of sheds and workshops, of two persons who, to judge by the frown which instantly clouded his face, were very unwelcome.

“That old rascal again! That old rascal Theodore Biron! Come to borrow again, of course! But I won’t see him. I won’t——”

“But, Claire, don’t be too hard on the old sinner, for the girl’s sake, sir,” said Chris hastily, cutting short his protests.

Mr. Cornthwaite turned sharply upon his son.

“Yes, the old fox is artful enough for that. He uses his daughter to get himself received where he himself wouldn’t be tolerated for two minutes. And I’ve no doubt the little minx is up to every move on the board too.”

“Oh, come, sir, you’re too hard,” protested Chris with real warmth, and with more earnestness than he had shown on the subject either of his own career or of Bram’s. “I’d stake my head for what it’s worth, and I suppose you’d say that isn’t much, on the girl’s being all right.”

But this championship did not please his father at all.[Pg 10] Josiah Cornthwaite’s bushy white eyebrows met over his black eyes, and his handsome, ruddy-complexioned face lost its color. Chris was astonished, and regretted his own warmth, as his father answered in the tones he could remember dreading when he was a small boy—

“Whether she’s all right or all wrong, I warn you not to trouble your head about her. You may rely upon my doing the best I can for her, on account of my relationship to her mother. But I would never countenance an alliance between the family of that old reprobate and mine.”

But to this Chris responded with convincing alacrity—

“An alliance! Good heavens, no, sir! We suffer quite enough at the hands of the old nuisance already. And I have no idea, I assure you, of throwing myself away.”

Josiah Cornthwaite still kept his shrewd black eyes fixed upon his son, and he seemed to be satisfied with what he read in the face of the latter, for he presently turned away with a nod of satisfaction as Theodore Biron and his daughter, who had perhaps been lingering a little until the great man’s first annoyance at the sight of them had blown over, came near enough for a meeting.

“Ah, Mr. Cornthwaite, surely there’s no sight in the world to beat this,” began the dapper little man airily as he held out a small, slender, and remarkably well-shaped hand with a flourish, and kept his eyes all the time upon the men at work in the nearest shed as if the sight had too much fascination for him to be able readily to withdraw his eyes. “This,” he went on, apparently not noticing that Mr. Cornthwaite’s handshake was none of the warmest, “of a whole community immersed in the noblest of all occupations, the turning of the innocent, lifeless substances of the earth into tool and wheel, ship and carriage! I must say that this place has a charm for me which I have never found in the fairest spots of Switzerland; that after seeing whatever was to be seen in California, the States, the Himalayas, Russia, and the rest of it, I have always been ready to say, not exactly[Pg 11] with the poet, but with a full heart, ‘Give me Sheffield!’ And to-day, when I came to have a look at the works,” he wound up in a

less lofty tone, “I thought I would bring my little Claire to have a peep too.”

“Ah, Mr. Cornthwaite, surely there’s no sight in the world to beat this.”—Page 10.

In spite of the absurdity of his harangue, Theodore Biron knew how to throw into his voice and manner so much fervor. He spoke, he gesticulated with so much buoyancy and effect, that his hearers were amused and interested in spite of themselves, and were carried away, for the time at least, into believing, or half-believing, that he was in earnest.

Josiah Cornthwaite, always accessible to flattery on the matter of “the works,” as the artful Theodore knew, suffered himself to smile a little as he turned to Claire.

“And so you have to be sacrificed, and must consent to be bored to please papa?”

“Oh, I shan’t be bored. I shall like it,” said Claire.

She spoke in a little thread of a musical, almost childish, voice, and very shyly. But as she did so, uttering only these simple words, a great change took place in her. Before she spoke no one would have said more of her than that she was a quiet, modest-looking, perhaps rather insignificant, little girl, and that her gray frock was neat and well-fitting.

But no sooner did she open her mouth to speak or to smile than the little olive-skinned face broke into all sorts of pretty dimples. The black eyes made up for what they lacked in size by their sparkle and brilliancy, and the two rows of little ivory teeth helped the dazzling effect.

Then Claire Biron was charming. Then even Josiah Cornthwaite forgot to ask himself whether she was not cunning. Then Chris stroked his mustache, and told himself with complacency that he had done a good deed in standing up for the poor, little thing.

But rough Bram Elshaw, whom Chris had beckoned to come forward, and who stood respectfully in the background, waiting to know for what he was wanted, felt as if he had received an electric shock.

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Bram was held very unsusceptible to feminine influences. He was what the factory and shop lasses of the town called a hard nut to crack, a close-fisted customer, and other terms of a like opprobrious nature. Occupied with his books, those everlasting books, and with his vague dreams of something indefinite and as yet far out of his reach, he had, at this ripe age of twenty, looked down upon such members of the frivolous sex as came in his way, and dreamed of something fairer in the shape of womanhood, something to which a pretty young actress whom he had seen at one of the theatres in the part of “Lady Betty Noel,” had given more definite form.

And now quite suddenly, in the broad light of an August morning, with nothing more romantic than the rolling mill for a background, there had broken in upon his startled imagination the creature the sight of whom he seemed to have been waiting for. As he stood there motionless, his eyes riveted, his ears tingling with the very sound of her voice, he felt that a revelation had been made to him.

As if revealed in one magnetic flash, he saw in a moment what it was that woman meant to man; saw the attraction that the rough lads of his acquaintance found in the slovenly, noisy girls of their own courts and alleys; stood transfixed, coarse-handed son of toil that he was, under the spell of love.

The voice of Chris Cornthwaite close to his ear startled him out of a stupor of intoxication.

“What’s the matter with you, Bram? You look as if you’d been struck by lightning. You are to go round the works with Miss Biron and explain things, you know. And listen” (he might well have to recall Bram’s wandering attention, for this command had thrown the lad into a sort of frenzy, on which he found it difficult enough to suppress all outward signs), “I have something much more important to tell you than that.” But Bram’s face was a blank. “You are to come up to the Park next Thursday evening, and I think you’ll find my father has something to say to you that you’ll be glad to hear. And[Pg 13] mind this, Bram, it was I who put him up to it. It’s me you’ve got to thank.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Bram, touching his cap respectfully, and trying to speak as if he felt grateful.

But he was not. He felt no emotion whatever. He was stupefied by the knowledge that he was to go round the works with Miss Biron.

CHAPTER II. CLAIRE.

Bram wondered how Mr. Christian could give up the pleasure of showing Miss Biron round the works himself. Christian’s partiality for feminine society was as great as his popularity with it, and as well known. The partiality, but not perhaps the popularity, was inherited from his father—at least, so folks said.

And Bram Elshaw, looking about for a reason for this extraordinary conduct on the part of the young master, and noting the wistfulness of that young man’s glances and the displeasure on the face of the elder Mr. Cornthwaite, came very near to a correct diagnosis of the case.

Bram was always the person chosen to carry messages between the works and Holme Park, the private residence of the Cornthwaites, and the household talk had filtered through to him about Theodore Biron, the undesirable relation of French extraction, who had settled down too near, and whose visits had become too frequent for his rich kinsman’s pleasure. And the theory of the servants was that these visits were always paid with the object of borrowing money.

Not that Theodore looked like an impecunious person. To Bram’s inexperienced eyes Mr Biron and his daughter looked like people of boundless wealth and great distinction. Theodore, indeed, was if anything better dressed than either of the Cornthwaites. His black morning[Pg 14] coat fitted him perfectly; his driving gloves were new; his hat sat jauntily on his head. From his tall white collar to his tight new boots he was the picture of a trim, youthful-looking country gentleman of the smart and rather amateurish type.

He had a thin, small-featured face, light hair, light eyebrows, and the smallest of light moustaches; pale, surprised eyes, and the slimmest pair of feminine white hands that ever man had. Of these he was proud; and so his gloves kept their new appearance for a long time, as he generally carried them in his hand.

As for Claire, she not only looked better dressed than either Mrs. or Miss Cornthwaite, but better dressed than any of the ladies of the neighborhood. And this was not Bram’s fancy only; it was solid fact.

Claire Biron had never been in France, and her mother had been an Englishwoman of Yorkshire descent. But through her father she had inherited from her French ancestors just that touch of feminine genius which makes a woman neat without severity, and smart looking without extravagance.

In her plain gray frock and big yellow chip hat with the white gauze rosettes, the little slender, dark eyed girl looked as nice as no ordinary English girl would think of making herself except for some special occasion.

Bram had not the nicely critical faculty to enable him to discern things. All he knew, as he walked through the black dust with Miss Biron and pointed out to her the different processes which were going on, was that every glance she gave him in acknowledgment of the information he was obliged to bawl in her ear was intoxicating; that every insignificant comment she made rang in his very heart with a delicious thrill of pleasure he had never felt before.

And behind them followed the two older gentleman, Mr. Cornthwaite explaining, commenting, softening in spite of himself under the artful interest taken in every dryest detail by the airy Theodore, who trotted jauntily beside him; and grew enthusiastic over everything.

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Before very long, however, Mr. Cornthwaite, who was getting excited against his will over that hobby of “the works” which Theodore managed so cleverly, drew his companion away to show him a new process which they were in course of testing; and for a moment Bram and Miss Claire were left alone together.

And then a strange thing, a thing which opened Bram’s eyes, happened. From some corner, some nook, sprang Chris, and, hooking his arm with affectionate familiarity within that of Miss Biron, he said—

“All right, Elshaw; I’ll show the rest. Come along, Claire.”

And in an instant he had whirled away with the young lady, who began to laugh and to protest, round the nearest corner.