Probation

One evening—it was Sunday, the day after that drive into the country—Sebastian Mallory strolled into the drawing-room where his mother sat, and, glancing round, seated himself, without speaking at the piano, on which he struck some aimless chords, which presently developed into a coherent harmony, in a style un poco pesante. He played the first bars of Liszt’s second Rhapsodie Hongroise, and then paused.

‘What is that thumping thing?’ inquired Mrs. Mallory, whose many mental superiorities did not include an understanding of the art of music.

‘This “thumping thing,” as you so justly term it, is a “Hungarian Rhapsody,” by that Thor the Hammerer of pianoforte music, Franz Liszt.’

‘I am as wise as I was before.’

‘N’importe! Where is Hugo, I wonder?’

No reply.

‘You have not seen him?’

‘I saw him leave the garden about an hour ago.’

‘Gone out for a walk, I suppose. I am glad he can find anywhere to go to.’

‘Sebastian, may I ask how long a visit that boy is to pay here?’

‘Visit!’ said Sebastian, turning round on the music stool, in some surprise; ‘why, Hugo lives with me. I thought you knew.’

Mrs. Mallory lowered her favourite weapon, the feathery screen.

‘Lives with you? What will you say?’

‘I can but repeat my previous statement. He is my ward—you do know that, mother—but then we drop that connection as much as possible. I suppose we are more like brothers than anything else.’

‘You are the guardian of his property, then? He is a von—is he of noble family?’

‘Two questions. He is of noble family. Von Birkenau is a good old name, and he is the last of his race. As for property, he has none—not a scrap.’

‘How came you to be his guardian? It was very extraordinary—so young a man as you. Had his family, or whoever left him to you, any claims upon you?’

‘It was his mother who left him to me, because I asked her to. She had no claims upon me in the legal sense of the word; only the claim of having been my great friend, and the source of inestimable benefit to me. Paula von Birkenau was a woman in a thousand, beautiful, good, and gifted; and, I am sorry to say, very unhappy.’

Mrs. Mallory, watching her son’s face, thought how odd it was that he should have such queer, out-of-the-way ideas and tastes. What could there be in this memory of an impecunious German countess to bring that smile to his lips, and that light of subdued enthusiasm to his eyes?

‘If her son has no property, how did she manage to live?’

‘She was penniless when she married, and her husband’s family had been a declining one for generations. When he died, she was left without a stick or stone of land or house, and without a penny of fortune. She retired into a Stift—an institution, you know, for poor ladies of noble family. There are many like it in Germany. She procured admittance for her son into a place of the same kind—a school, where he was hard-worked and ill-fed, and quite unable to pursue the real bent of his talent for music. I made the acquaintance of Frau von Birkenau six years ago. I could not describe her; she was a beautiful soul; she did more for me than any one I have ever known. She talked to me a great deal about her boy, and I went to see him. I liked him, and told her so. She asked me if I would think of him sometimes, and perhaps pay him an occasional visit, when she should be dead; she suffered from a painful complaint, and bore her sufferings like a heroine. I said the best and shortest way would be for her to make a will, appointing me her son’s guardian, when I should have full authority over him. This she did, about four years ago, and very shortly afterwards she died. On my signing a document to the purport that henceforth I undertook the duties of a parent to him, the authorities of the school permitted me to remove Hugo, to his and my great satisfaction. Since then he has been my companion in all my ramblings, and though I don’t wish to sound my own praises, I must say he looks a different fellow altogether from the white-faced, pinched-looking lad whom I took away with me overwhelmed with grief at his mother’s death.’

‘In-deed!’ observed Mrs. Mallory, in cold tones of intense, though repressed, exasperation. ‘It sounds like a page from a romance. If my opinion were asked, I should say I could hardly tell whether he or you stood most in need of a guardian—of some one to control you. You have encumbered yourself with his entire maintenance. He is a pensioner on your bounty?’

Sebastian shook his head. Leaning his elbow upon the top of the piano, he remarked,

‘There is no question of “incumbrance.” I love the lad. I delight to see him growing happier every day, and to know that his powers are expanding in the direction best suited to them. It is not every one who can secure the pleasure of enabling an artist nature to grow and develop in a congenial soil. As to his being “a pensioner on my bounty,” excuse me, mother, I mean no disrespect when I say that I dislike that expression intensely. If you had not used those words, I should not have mentioned that Hugo knows nothing at all of this. All he knows is that I am his guardian. I let him live under the impression that I guard not only himself, but his property. And that impression must not be disturbed. I will not have his happiness embittered just when he should be able to throw aside all care for everything except his studies. He is intensely sensitive. I never approach the subject with him—you understand?’

‘I suppose I do. But I consider it the most amazing piece of folly I ever heard of. How do you know what he may turn out?’

‘How, indeed? At least he will have had every inducement to turn out well; and, unless I am much mistaken, he will do so. It is not only his name and lineage that is noble.’

‘I thought you were a Radical’ observed Mrs. Mallory.

‘My dear mother!’

‘That Frau von Birkenau must have been a clever woman—too clever for you, at any rate.’

‘Please don’t say anything against her. I would as soon say anything against you as against her,’ said Sebastian, calmly; and his mother, meeting his eyes, found herself blushing for her own meanness. Such signs of sensibility are often reckoned hopeful.

‘Is he to be always here?’ she asked quickly, to cover her confusion.

‘I don’t know. He will please himself. At present England is new to him. He may enjoy it, or study it, until he gets tired of it; and then, I expect, he will go to some German musical Conservatoire to study, just as he pleases. I shall give him his choice.’

‘Humph!’ said Mrs. Mallory, with indescribable significance of tone.

‘But I repeat, he is never to be told of his position. I shall explain it all to him myself, when circumstances make it desirable. And I think you will get to like him, mother. He is the best-hearted fellow, and absolutely adores those who are kind to him. He is a perfect child in some ways.’

‘I don’t like young men who are like children.’

‘Well, I like Hugo. It would pain me exceedingly to have any misunderstanding with him,’ said he, with an emphasis unusual to him, as he turned again to the piano, and solaced himself with a waltz of Schubert.

Mrs. Mallory sat puzzling angrily over the character which daily baffled her more completely; its traits becoming more involved, enigmatical—nay, to her, insane. She considered this freak of his to display an eccentricity not short of insanity, but strangely enough she did not dare to tell him so. Did he care for any one? Was he so devoted to this lad, whom she disliked for his fantastic, unconventional habits and speech, and whom she would regard with contemptuous pity, as he sat, the morning long, at the piano, absorbed, with strange tossings of the head, and quaint, absent-minded wavings of the hands, and contortions of the body? Or was he only obstinate to have his own way, and provoke her, his mother?

At this moment the door was opened, and Hugo entered, followed by the butler, with tea.

Mrs. Mallory was too much annoyed to linger over that refreshment. She drank it quickly, and went to her writing-table, where she turned over the papers, listening vexedly the while to the talk between Sebastian and Hugo—talk in which she had no sort of share—about music, and foreign friends, and foreign countries; and she heard Hugo express his rejoicing that at last he could have an hour of Sebastian’s company, and she heard Sebastian answer, that he was glad too, for that he missed his companion. And she knew that the tone was one of genuine affection; that Mr. Mallory of the Oakenrod was perverse enough to pin his affections rather upon an eccentric, penniless German lad, than to make acquaintances which would be to his advantage; that her chance remark about the cleverness of the late Frau von Birkenau had been, in vulgar parlance, ‘a bad shot’—a very bad one indeed, and that she had not increased her own influence by making it.

The laughs and chaff of Hugo and Sebastian became intolerable, as forming a running accompaniment to reflections of this nature. She made another shot, this time unconsciously; and this time she hit her mark, also unconsciously. Picking up a note which lay upon her table, she suddenly interrupted the conversation.

‘Sebastian, here is a note—it must go to you now, I suppose. I have nothing more to do with these affairs.’

He looked up; rose and came to fetch it; smiled as he took it; but she would not see either smile or look.

‘It is from Mr. Blisset,’ she remarked, apparently busily arranging her papers. ‘Something about repairs. I cannot imagine what he wants doing, I am sure.’

Sebastian and Hugo exchanged glances.

‘Mr. Blisset—who may he be!’ inquired Sebastian.

‘Your tenant. He lives at Stonegate, that place up at other end of the town, which your great-grandfather built, and which has always been a great deal more trouble than profit.’

‘How long has this Mr. Blisset been its tenant?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know. Eight or nine years, I think.’

‘Do you know anything about him—who he is, or where he comes from?’

‘No. He is an invalid—paralysed—a most crotchety, tiresome person.’

‘Ah! Let me see what he says.’

He opened the note, and his face changed as he saw the handwriting. It had been addressed to Mrs. Mallory, as had probably all other communications on the subject. The hand was small, compact, and characteristic—the matter was business-like.

Sebastian, without comment, handed the note to Hugo, who read it with a smile, and an excited expression, which caused Mrs. Mallory to set him down in her own mind as a lunatic.

‘I will have it seen to!’ was all Sebastian said, carefully putting the document into a small letter-case.

‘I should send Mitchell to make an estimate: he will do it as cheaply as any one,’ observed Mrs. Mallory.

‘Yes, it shall be attended to,’ repeated her son. ‘Now, Hugo, sit down to that piano, and play something—something right lively and soul-stirring, you will understand.’

‘I think I do,’ said Hugo, smiling in an uncanny manner, as he placed himself at the piano, and straightway burst into a triumphal march.

---

Later, when Hugo and Sebastian were alone, the former said,

‘Now you can go and call, Sebastian.’

‘Heaven forbid! I have not the least right to do so.’

‘But you would like to. Make a way. Make that note about the repairs an excuse. Call upon Mr. Blisset, and find out what sort of an old party he is.’

Sebastian said nothing, and the subject dropped.

The next day, as they sat in Sebastian’s study, and he cut the leaves of a Review, he remarked,

‘I had a conversation with Myles Heywood to-day.’

‘The revolutionary weaver?’

‘He is no weaver, ignoramus. He is a sort of head man, but they call him a cut-looker.’

‘A how much?’

‘A cut-looker. Your education, like mine, has been neglected. But I know now what a cut-looker is. Myles Heywood is one. He earns forty shillings a week. It exercises the brains and the observation, and they have time for reading and thinking, too. Myles Heywood reads. He has read Buckle’s History of Civilisation.’

‘Indeed!’ said Hugo, sitting with his head on one side, looking like an intelligent dog. ‘That does not raise my opinion of him. It is a book I hate.’

‘He has read most of the works of John Stuart Mill.’

‘I’m glad I don’t know him so well as you do.’

‘Impertinent!’

‘Can he play Beethoven’s Sonatas, and paint in oils; and does he sing tenor, baritone, or bass?’

‘Tsh! I tell you I take the greatest interest in the fellow. He knows a lot of German, too. Where he learnt it I can’t tell. When I asked him who taught him he flushed up, looked me straight in the face, and said, “A friend.” So I had to beg his pardon.’

Sebastian had thrown himself into an easy-chair, and was lighting a cigar.

‘Beg his pardon—why?’

‘My dear child, you wouldn’t say to your equal, “You learn German—who teaches you?” and why should you say it to a cut-looker?’

‘Well?’ said Hugo, seeing the expression upon Sebastian’s face, and knowing it to be no careless one.

‘I did beg his pardon, and he said, “Don’t mention it.” Then I asked him what he meant to do with himself while we were working half-time. He said he had no doubt he could manage to dispose of his own time, and I incautiously persisted, “But how?” He said he really had not thought much about it—might he ask why I wanted to know? So I had to beg his pardon again.’

Sebastian was puffing away, with raised eyebrows. Hugo burst out laughing.

‘I never heard of anything so preposterous. Why did you go on talking to him, if you got so vexed?’

‘But I didn’t. I got interested. Why should the fellow dislike me so intensely? What can be his object?’

‘Sebastian! I thought you did not care a straw what any one thought of you. You have said so often enough.’

‘Well, and it was generally true—generally, mind you. I am interested against my will—personally interested. One thing I’ve found out—he hates me.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Hold your froward tongue! You know how to play Beethoven’s Sonatas, and I know what I am talking about. He hates me, and I have made up my mind that he shall, so to speak, eat his words—that is, change his opinion. It will gave me endless trouble, I know,’ added Sebastian, knocking the ash from his cigar; ‘endless trouble, but I will do it. I must know whether that man is master, or I.’

‘Oh, if it comes to that,’ said Hugo, shrugging his shoulders, and laughing a little; ‘if he has excited your obstinate combative instincts, you will never let the poor beggar alone till he at any rate says that he gives in. Bless you, I know you!’

‘He will never say he gives in unless he actually does so.’

‘Ja, ja!’ said Hugo, nodding significantly, ‘I know. May you find the game worth the candle, is the sincere wish of one who succumbed long ago to your masterful disposition!’

‘Thanks!’ laughed Sebastian. ‘And as I can’t begin this laudable campaign on the instant, I shall carry my investigations into another direction, that, namely of Stonegate. I am going to call upon Mr. Blisset.’

‘At Stonegate—also with a view to conquest?’ inquired Hugo, politely, rising and walking quickly to the door, and closing it after him just in time for it, instead of his own person, to receive the large bundle of tape-tied ‘documents’ which Sebastian wrathfully sent flying after him.