Probation

That visit was but the first of a long series. Mr. Blisset was pleased to see the young man who listened so patiently and so deferentially to him, and Myles had an ever-growing conviction that Mr. Blisset’s views of men and things, of right and wrong, were deeper and sounder than his own; riper, truer, and most justly balanced. Myles learnt much in these visits and conversations.

Adrienne had been many times to the cottage on the Townfield, and had completely won the hearts of Mary and Edmund. She had opened up a new field of delight and wonder to the boy, by putting him in the way of studying botany, and his enthusiasm knew no bounds. She lent him books and specimens, and Harry Ashworth, who was a great walker, brought him all kinds of plants, and ferns, and mosses, from the moors on which he was wont to spend his Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings.

When Myles and Adrienne were in his house at the same time, they seemed to have little to say to each other; which was, perhaps, not surprising, for their subjects were not those discussed by Mary and Edmund. Harry Ashworth had a great deal to ask Miss Blisset about music; she comforted him, too, for she helped him to some scientific understanding of the mighty harmonies of which he was fast losing the outward apprehension. Harry had not read much about music or musicians; he had, while his hearing had been pretty good, contented himself with drinking in the sounds themselves. Adrienne soon discovered that the sorrow of his life was his failing hearing, and one evening it occurred to her to tell him the story of Beethoven. Mary and Harry and she happened to be alone. Adrienne began, and related that saddest of stories. It had the effect she intended.

Harry sat with one hand shading his face, in an attitude which he had assumed soon after she began the story, when she said, ‘And at last he wrote to one of his friends and confessed that he was growing quite deaf—that if he went to the opera, he must sit close to the orchestra, and even then, even leaning over towards it, he could scarcely hear.’

Mary went on knitting. Adrienne’s voice, somewhat raised, slow, distinct, and clear, told the tale of that mighty genius—Christlike in the immensity of his woe and the utterness of his separation from those around him. She went through it all. She told him about the great symphonies, about Beethoven’s one or two sad, luckless love-episodes; his poverty; his love for the thankless young profligate, his nephew; the performance of the Choral Symphony—of that great adagio ‘in which we discern the slowly stalking movement of a god!’

‘When it was over,’ Adrienne went on, ‘the audience were almost mad with rapture and delight, and the applause was deafening—thundering—it resounded through and through the great room! the master still stood with his baton in his hand, his back to the audience, till one of the vocalists gently turned him round, and he saw them all—how they were wild with pleasure and emotion; he had thus moved them by his heavenly music to ‘joy,’ and he had heard no sound of it all.’

She paused. It was the life which she most loved in all truth or poetry; to her Beethoven’s sufferings were as actual as his genius or his grandeur.

She saw Harry look at her with an expression which told her that he too understood, and she went on to the end—told of the bitter loneliness of those last years, that death in harmony with the life—that passing away of the Titan soul in the sublime music of the spring thunderstorm, and then she was silent.

Harry looked at her for a moment, started up, and took her hand.

‘Thank you, miss,’ said he, and left the house.

‘Eh, Miss Blisset,’ said Mary, wiping her eyes, ‘you’re like no one else as ivver I heerd tell on afore. You’ve done a kindness to yon poor lad, such as he never had yet.’

‘I’m very glad if you think so.’

‘Yo’ve gi’en him summat to console him. He’ll go about now, thinking he may bear his deafness quite easy like, seein’ yon man as yo’ towd us on were so great and patient. His mind is fair beautiful—Harry’s mind is,’ said Mary, moved out of all reticence.

‘I like him very much,’ said Adrienne; ‘very much indeed.’

‘Ay! He’s good—good to th’ marrow of his bones, he is.’

‘Like you, Mary. You and he are well matched.’

‘Eh, nay! Eh, don’t think o’ that! He’s ne’er said nowt about it.’

‘He will some time!’

Mary was silent, with a downcast face, till at last she said,

‘I know you’ll ne’er say a word to no one about it. I can trust you to tell you this, as whether he ever says owt about it or not, the vary thowt of ony other mon than him fair gives me a turn.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne. ‘And you do deserve to be happy, Mary. I wonder how it is that you and all yours are so different from other people. I always feel well, and happy, and right with the world, when I am with you.’

Later, as Myles walked with her up Blake Street, Adrienne remarked that the end of September was approaching and the evenings darkened earlier.

‘Yes,’ said Myles, ‘soon winter will be here. And then ... now then, you,’ he added to a passer-by, who gave Adrienne a very close berth; ‘mind your manners when you’re passing a lady.’

‘I didn’t know you had lady-friends, Myles Heywood,’ replied a smooth voice, as the offender paused, and looked at them.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ said Myles, with trenchant contempt. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have troubled to speak to you.’ And he passed on.

‘Who is the man?’ asked Adrienne.

‘He’s my—step-father,’ said Myles, in a peculiar voice. Adrienne had heard the whole story from Mary; Myles had never been able to speak of it.

‘Oh, forgive me for saying it, but I wish you had not spoken to him in that way.’

‘Why? How?’ he stammered.

‘Has he ever done you any harm?’

‘Not directly; but I can’t abide the very looks of him.’

‘There!’ said she, with a somewhat nervous smile; ‘you are too contemptuous. Reverence is better than contempt; it is indeed.’

‘Reverence! Would you have me reverence him?’

‘Yes. You ought to reverence human nature—your own nature—in him. If you could have heard yourself speak! Do you know what you would do, if any one spoke to you in that way?’

‘What?’

‘Why, you would—I think you would shake him. I can just see you make one stride towards him, and fasten upon him—poor fellow!—to teach him manners.’

‘You mean that I have none myself. Well, you may be right.’

‘Are you offended?’

‘Miss Blisset—you could not offend me.’

‘I think I could. But do think of what I have said; and try not to be so contemptuous. Will you?’

‘The next time I meet Jim Hoyle, I’ll take off my hat to him politely—since you wish it.’

‘You will drive me to despair! How different you are from your reasonable sister, who sees the right bearings of things at once; and from your sensitive brother, who....’

‘Yes, Ned is like a girl for delicacy,’ said Myles, a sarcastic flavour in his voice. ‘Well, Miss Blisset, I will try hard to please you. Next week there’s a fellow coming that I have a contempt for, if I ever had for any one.’

‘Who may that be?’

‘Mr. Sebastian Mallory, our so-called master.’

A pause. Then a hesitating, ‘In-deed!’ from her, the intonation of which Myles did not remark.

‘So I’ll try to be polite to him, if our paths cross—which I hope they won’t.’

‘Perhaps they may not. But now do try,’ said she. ‘You may find it easier than you think.’

They parted at the wicket, and Myles went home, to find Edmund gone to bed, and to sit up himself, reading ‘My Beautiful Lady,’ which Adrienne had lent to Edmund, never supposing that Myles would look at it, or that he would take any interest in it if he did. But he pored over it, and his heart-strings trembled to the poet’s notes: it was he himself, his own thoughts put into poetry as the lover waited his lady’s coming. And as for the end, Myles read it differently; to please himself, he allowed common sense to step in—Adrienne was not consumptive.