Probation

Sebastian Mallory, Mr. Sutcliffe, and Wilson, holding a council of war together, late in the afternoon of that eventful day, discussed the means to be taken for the preservation of order, and the best distribution of relief.

Sebastian, in the course of the debate, asked how many exactly there were to be relieved.

Wilson ran his eye over some long lists of names and addresses.

‘The number of hands is seven hundred and thirty, sir, all in all; but it’s with the heads of families we shall have to deal. About a dozen won’t require relief, and four have taken their names off the books altogether.’

‘Which are they?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Frank Mitchell, weaver; he’s got a brother in Canada, who offered to pay his passage out if he’ll go and help him on his farm; so, as soon as he heard work was stopped, he decided to go. That’s one. Myles and Mary Heywood——’

‘What! Any reasons given for their leaving?’ asked Sebastian, quickly.

‘Well, sir, relief would be a hard nut for Myles Heywood to crack, at the best of times. He’s uncommon proud, and he came up to me, after I’d read your notice, and told me very stiff indeed to take his name and his sister’s off the books. I did hexpostulate with him, but he were quite determined.’

‘Did he give any reasons?’

‘No, sir. He doesn’t generally give his reasons for what he does, leastways not to me; but I’m not his master.’

‘Is he one of my tenants?’

‘No, sir. He lives on the Townfield, at Number 16.’

‘Oh, very well!’ said Sebastian, and the business went on for some time uninterruptedly.

In the evening Sebastian, calling at Stonegate, and asking if Miss Blisset could see him, was admitted, and taken to the drawing-room, where he found Adrienne alone, seated at her piano. She rose, coming forward to greet him, and he saw that her face was pale, and her eyes sad and heavy.

‘I hope you are in a good-natured and self-sacrificing mood,’ said he, ‘for I am come to ask a very great favour.’

‘I shall be delighted if I can help you in any way.’

‘Did you know we cease to work at all after Friday?’

‘Cease to work at all! What will become—oh, I am very sorry—what will the work-people do?’

‘I thought,’ began Sebastian, and bit his lips.

He was afraid of appearing to parade his intentions before her, and altered the form of his announcement.

‘I have consulted with Sutcliffe, my manager, you know, and we have come to the conclusion that it will be the best and wisest plan for me to relieve my work-people myself, for the present at any rate, and——’

‘All of them! To keep them, do you mean?’ asked Adrienne, quickly.

‘It is really the best, and it will be the cheapest way in the end,’ said he, half apologetically; ‘and what I wished to ask you was——’

‘It is right—it is a generous thing to do. I am glad you are going to do it,’ she interrupted him, her eyes beaming, and suppressed warmth in her tone.

And she looked at him more fully and steadily than she had done for many weeks past. Yet there was something not perfectly pleased in her expression.

Sebastian, a young man who was not usually given to losing his self-possession or presence of mind, coloured, half with embarrassment, half with pleasure.

‘I am glad you approve,’ was all he could find to say.

‘I do. It will be such an excellent example.’

‘An example—ah, yes! But now to ask my favour. Sutcliffe thinks it will not do to let them be idle all the time, so we have decided to open some schools—one for the men and boys, and another for the women and girls. Both of them will require some one with brains and a head on their shoulders to look after them. I want to know if you will take the management of the women’s school?’

‘But Mrs. Mallory—will she not wish to——’

‘No. She will have nothing to do with it beyond giving me a subscription. I believe she does not altogether approve of the course I have taken, and has decided to hold herself aloof. You can do it, if you will, and if Mr. Blisset will spare you. I know you are not afraid of yourself, and that is why I asked you.’

‘If my uncle can spare me, I will undertake it,’ said Adrienne, speaking as she now usually did speak to him—rather briefly and drily.

Sebastian could wring no sign from her—nothing but a rapid, guarded glance, and a brief, unemotional speech. It was unsatisfactory, he felt. He was not making way. She tormented his thoughts sometimes in a way that was harassing; he carried in his mind almost incessantly the calm, sweet face, pale and clear; the rapid glance which was, he felt, not so much destitute of expression as full of something veiled—something which she would not allow to beam fully out upon him.

‘It will not be play,’ he proceeded, after a silent pause, during which his eyes interrogated hers, which made no answer. ‘It will be downright hard, arduous work. If it should prove to be too much for you....’

‘It will not be too much for me,’ she said quickly, and then her eyes did suddenly fill with some expression—what he could not tell. ‘I want some work like that—work which will be hard and absorbing,’ said Adrienne, clasping her hands with an involuntary movement. ‘What must I do? Have you got a room for the school, and some teachers?’

‘I think of dividing part of my warehouse, and filling it with benches. It can soon be done. As for teachers, I thought some of the better-educated amongst the young women themselves, or I could find a mistress, and—do you know Miss Spenceley?’

‘No, I do not,’ said Adrienne, steadily, her colour rising.

‘She is a young lady who professes to need active work and to love it, and I really think, if she had the opportunity, she would throw herself heart and soul into such a scheme. But perhaps you would rather not make her acquaintance?’

Adrienne paused again. Was she to extend the scorn and contempt she felt for Frederick Spenceley to his whole connections, and to make difficulties and quibbles about her co-workers in a scheme in which it was essential chiefly to have workers as soon as possible?

‘No,’ said she; ‘if you think Miss Spenceley would help, I shall be very happy to work with her.’

‘Of course you will be the head,’ said Sebastian. ‘I will take care that is understood, and then there will be no difficulty.’

‘If you will send me a list of names and addresses,’ said Adrienne, ‘I will go myself and see after them. I dare say Mary Heywood could tell me something about a good many of them.’

‘That reminds me that Myles Heywood, for some reason or other, has seen fit to decline all assistance. He has ordered his own name and his sister’s to be taken off my books, and withdraws in dignified silence.’

He looked intently at Adrienne as he spoke. She was silent, crimsoned for a moment as she met his glance; then she started from her chair and walked to the fireplace, stooped over the fire-irons, and began to mend the fire.

‘Allow me!’ said Sebastian, politely, coming to her assistance in time to see her disturbed face. ‘Is it not foolish of him?’ he added, remorselessly. ‘He is too young to have been able to save anything almost, and there is not the least prospect of work at present.’

‘He was quite right,’ said Adrienne, clearly, as she fixed her eyes upon Sebastian.

‘Quite right?’ he echoed, holding the poker suspended in his hand, and looking at her in his turn.

‘Perfectly right. I am thankful to hear it. If he had stooped tamely to accept charity from you—I mean from any one—as soon as it was offered, I—I would never have forgiven him.’

Sebastian gently replaced the poker in the fender.

‘Perhaps he knew that,’ he remarked in his softest tone.

‘He could not,’ was Adrienne’s quick retort. ‘I have not spoken to him for weeks. And if I had—if he had known it....’

‘He might know it perfectly well, all the same,’ insisted Sebastian. ‘Have you thought seriously about it, Miss Blisset? I know Heywood is a friend of yours....’

‘Yes, he is—a great friend of mine,’ she answered firmly, and not one sign was lost upon Sebastian’s cool, observant eyes; the head a little thrown back, eyes bright, the pale cheek flushed, as if she braced herself to meet some peril. He saw and noted it all.

‘You should be cautious how you influence him,’ said he.

‘I do not influence him. He is far too strong and decided to be influenced by—by a girl like me.’

Sebastian smiled politely but derisively.

‘Pardon me, but I don’t think you are quite right there. I am convinced you do influence him, and if so, don’t you think it is unkind to prejudice him against his real interests?’

‘His real interest is not to take charity. Mr. Mallory, the bare idea of Myles Heywood coming up to receive charity is dreadful. It makes me miserable to think of it—only I can’t imagine his doing such a thing. He never will. Poor fellow! I am sorry for him!’

‘Sooner or later it will come to that—it must,’ said Sebastian. ‘And I—you speak as if I had tried to thrust alms upon him ostentatiously, like a rich man relieving a beggar, and then appealing to every one to notice his generosity. Can you suppose I intended anything so revolting?’

The usually placid and unruffled Sebastian spoke in a tone of deep vexation and chagrin.

‘No, of course I did not suppose any such thing,’ replied Adrienne, her face still flushed. ‘I did not do you so much injustice. But I’m glad he refused—so glad. I hope he will find something else. I even hope that this present trouble may turn out to be a means of improving his position, for I think he may turn his thoughts to some higher employment than mere drudgery in a factory—even though it is your factory,’ she added, with a slight smile.

‘He is certainly fit for a higher post. You would be glad to know him in such a situation, would you not?’

‘Indeed I should.’

‘Even though it took him away from his friends and native town?’ went on Sebastian, somewhat ironically.

‘Y—yes. Even in that case.’

‘Well—who knows! It may turn out to be as you say.’

The conversation had been a far from satisfactory one to Sebastian. He had had no idea, a month ago, that Myles Heywood’s image would take such an important place in his concerns. He turned the subject, and made arrangements with Adrienne about the school; but it seemed to him that since their passage of arms—for it had been a passage of arms—her eyes had brightened, and her voice had been more full and decided. He left her at last, firmly convinced that Myles was his formidable rival, and the conviction gave him a strange sensation, such as he had never known before. All his life he had been accustomed to quietly make up his mind, and then as quietly carry out his decision. Now, to his own astonishment, he found himself strangely wavering between certainty and uncertainty; and as he walked from Mr. Blisset’s house to his own, he pondered over the history of his own love for Adrienne, and, almost for the first time, began to wonder what would be the end of that history.

It was three years now since he had first met her. There had been a chamber concert, in Coblenz, of classical music. Adrian Blisset had played violin and his daughter piano, and Sebastian had been one of the not very numerous audience; for the taste of the Coblenzers for music was not of the severe sort. Perhaps the small audience was the more appreciative—at least Sebastian Mallory sat a long two hours and a half, without a thought of being weary or any wish to go. When the music was over he had penetrated to the little room whither Adrian and his daughter had retired; and knocked, and been bidden herein.

Apologising for the intrusion, he had introduced himself, and said he imagined that certain pieces that had been played that evening, and which stood on the programme without any composer’s name, were the production of the musician himself. He was right, and as these compositions had appeared to him to possess a certain wild, weird beauty of their own, there had ensued a long conversation upon the subject, during which Sebastian’s discrimination and real, earnest love for the art he professed had won over even Mr. Blisset’s reserved and moody disposition.

Thus the acquaintance began. The musician had been kinder and more open than he usually was, not only to strangers, but to any one at all. Sebastian had been allowed to visit him and his daughter. Adrienne had played for him; she had talked with him, and he had found her charming.

From Coblenz they had gone to Wetzlar, in the vain and illusory hope that there they might find an audience, and receive remuneration. The projected concert never took place, but certain other things did. They spent altogether a week in the sleepy old town. They floated in a little boat up the river, between the rows of poplars and the level meads; they sat under the shadow of the grim old Heidenthurm of the cathedral, and looked over all the landscape below. Adrienne sat upon the wall above Goethe’s Brunnen, and looked at the girls coming to fill their pitchers, and said to Sebastian, who was standing beside her, and looking earnestly down at her,

‘I wonder if it was to such a well that Hermann came and helped Dorothea? I could almost fancy so. Could not you?’

‘I think I could,’ Sebastian had answered, looking, not at the well, but at her.

With each day that he saw her, his admiration for her grew greater. She was a fair jewel in a poor setting. Her gentleness, her dignity under trouble and sorrow, her

impressed him, delighted him. Her flashes of quaint humour, which showed him how gay the spirit she owned might be, if only the sun would shine a little upon its dwelling-place; her grace, her intellect, attracted him irresistibly; and he loved, too, the quiet independence with which she met him; the calm dignity with which she ignored his wealth, his position, his advantages, and treated him as her equal—no more, no less.

Amongst the list of events which made, as it were, a gaily coloured, kaleidoscopic pattern in his memory, that week at Wetzlar stood out from the rest, like a little patch of pure gold, like the lucent background on which stands out, pure and clear, some mediæval Madonna.

One morning, when he went to call upon them, he found Adrienne in sore distress, which she tried in vain to conceal. She was alone, and he had succeeded at last in getting her to confess what troubled her. A creditor of her father’s pressed hard for a certain sum of money, due long ago. That fact was in itself painful enough, but it alone would not have been sufficient to break down Adrienne’s calm and steadfast courage. It was her father’s manner of accepting, or not accepting, his position, which alarmed and made her wretched. More than once he had uttered dark and oracular hints as to the wisdom of leaving a world which was full of nothing but misery and contradictions. At that time he was in his room, and had refused to see her or speak to her. She did not know what would happen, what he might or might not do; and Sebastian saw the young girl’s courage fail for the first time, for the first time saw her fold her hands, and, with tear-stained eyes, ask piteously,

‘What am I to do?’

‘Leave it to me, Miss Blisset. Of course something must be done, and I will do it. For your sake I will do it gladly,’ he had said, taking her hands, looking into her troubled eyes with a glance that made them more troubled still, and going straight to her father’s room.

The ‘something to be done’ naturally resolved itself into pecuniary assistance. The matter was perfectly simple. Notes for three hundred thalers settled it. Sebastian insisted upon becoming Mr. Blisset’s banker, and Mr. Blisset said that he could not refuse the possibility of being under obligations to a gentleman, who would understand the feelings of another gentleman, rather than to a coarse-minded tradesman, who could not by any possibility understand such fine sensibilities. The money was a loan. They both called it a loan; and Sebastian came out and told Adrienne that it was all right.

She had burst into tears; then recovering, had said,

‘There is nothing that I would not do for you.’

To which he had replied,

‘Then come and have a row on the river.’

Upon which they had straightway had a very delightful row on the river, the Lahn; and delicacy alone had prevented Sebastian from then and there saying to Adrienne that he loved her, and asking her to be his wife. He deferred the question—he hoped, not for long—only until he had spoken to her father; and that he decided he would do the following day.

In pursuance of this resolution, he had called during the forenoon at the musician’s lodgings, and had asked to see him.

‘Ja!’ the hostess told him, with a shrug of the shoulders, ‘the Herrschaften had left by the first train that morning. Last night the gentleman had spoken very sternly to the Fräulein; she had heard him. The Fräulein had expostulated, and cried, and said, “How unthankful it will seem!” To which her Herr Papa had replied that he could not endure such a burden; he must leave the place. After which he had desired his Fräulein Tochter to pack up, and they were gone.’

‘Where?’ asked Sebastian.

‘Na! How should I know, mein Herr? Apparently to Frankfort, since the first train in the morning goes direct there; but from Frankfort, I have heard, one may go out anywhere over the whole world, even to Africa, if one chooses. What do I know?’

Sebastian had retired, quite convinced that it was not Adrienne but the morbid pride and vanity of her father, which had caused this contretemps. That pride could not endure to live in the presence of the man who had placed him under an obligation. He had gone to hide himself, and Sebastian tried in vain to find any further trace of Adrian Blisset and his daughter.

He had so much the less forgotten her. The feelings of warm admiration, chivalrous respect, and tender affection which he had hitherto felt for her, suddenly leaped up in a quicker flame—he loved her. From feeling convinced that to have her as his wife would be a good and a happy thing for him, he had become determined that one day she should be his wife; she and no other. From that time she had remained for him as a sort of standard, an ideal of womanhood; gentle-spirited, true, and pure, wise and prudent, sweet and modest. He had judged all other women by this standard, and had never felt anything more than a certain admiration for any woman since his parting from Adrienne.

Then had ensued his return home, his not very satisfactory relations with his mother, the distress amongst his people, the necessity for prompt action and hard work, his introduction to Helena Spenceley, his sudden, unexpected meeting with Adrienne, and the eager conviction that now she soon must, should be his. Beside Helena’s brilliant beauty, the delicate grace of Adrienne was as the beauty of a white violet compared with a crimson rose. Helena was dazzlingly beautiful, but she was the exact opposite of all which he had been for three years praising and exalting to himself as best and sweetest and most desirable in woman. He thought a good deal of Helena. She was younger than Adrienne, wilder, less educated, prejudiced, hot-headed, violent, and bewitching.

‘Yes, she must be bewitching,’ argued Sebastian, with exquisite naïveté, within himself. ‘Look at Hugo. The lad was enraptured with her.’ That was to be expected. Hugo was young too; he had not loved Adrienne Blisset for three years. Sebastian had the steady purpose and intention of asking Adrienne to marry him, to honour him and make him happy by becoming his wife. When? As soon as he could find the opportunity, he said to himself. But it never did come. He could not understand how it was, that, though he saw Adrienne repeatedly and alone, though she was amiable, cordial, pleasant, yet he could never get that question asked. Adrienne’s behaviour puzzled him. He could have sworn that once she loved him. When he was with her, Myles Heywood’s handsome olive-hued face, with its scornful lips and defiant eyes, seemed always to be hovering there between her and him. And yet, on the one occasion on which he had seen them together, Myles had looked and behaved as if he were as far as possible from being anything like a favoured lover, thought Sebastian, with an odd sensation of jealousy and pain. No; it was only opportunity for which he waited, an opportunity which seemed as if it would never come. Certainly it had not been there that evening. He walked home lost in profound speculations, thinking of Adrienne’s lifted head and flashing eyes, and of how Myles Heywood had been ‘very stiff indeed’ with poor old Wilson that morning.