Probation

CHAPTER XII.

Myles Heywood’s life had become worse and darker than merely a sad life. It was filled with a wretched pain and unrest, which had been growing like a disease for weeks. His was an earnest, passionate nature, deep and intense; but there was in it a well-spring of contentment, a something essentially sweet and wholesome, which, so long as no very disturbing element intruded, left him tolerably at ease with his life, in spite of the vague dissatisfaction and striving which had led him in earlier days to associate himself with radical working-men’s clubs; which had made him eagerly devour all kinds of iconoclastic literature, and which had often sent him home, on pay-day, meditating upon the unequal manner in which wealth was distributed. But he had had nothing to make him feel this inequality, keenly and cruelly, until, with one single circumstance, one single evening’s adventure, the turning-point in his life came, and he seemed all at once to realise the significance of all these things—wealth, station, and culture—in the shape of Adrienne Blisset. From that time his view of things was changed. He had seen what he felt to be the best, and most beautiful, and desirable thing in the world; and he did desire it with the ardour of a young man and a poet and a lover all combined, and with an ardour deeper still—the ardour of one who feels that everything great and high and satisfactory lies in one direction, and in the other, blackness, emptiness, death, if death be the opposite of life. He could never look back or down again; and yet, the more he looked forwards and upwards, the more did all he saw in the distance seem unattainable and impossible. He had quite ceased to visit Adrienne. To be with her now was only a prolonged ache and pain. He watched her wistfully, and noted in his heart each day that passed over without a visit from her. She used to come so often; now she never came at all. He knew—every one knew, that her uncle was dead, and that she was his heiress. More than once he had heard it was likely that she and Sebastian Mallory would be married. He felt it to be very likely himself; but to go and see her, to hear such a thing from her own lips, was more than his will had strength to accomplish.

Myles had at one time heartily despised Sebastian Mallory; and later, with little more reason, had as intensely disliked him. Now that was all changed, and he himself was surprised to find how utterly and entirely his resentment had burnt out, vanished, evaporated. He could see his (as he considered him) successful rival without any other feeling than one of quiet, despairing indifference. His most active wish, when he was conscious of actively wishing anything, was that all this could somehow come to an end, that some change would soon take place.

The change was approaching, in a manner so unexpected, so utterly terrible and unthought of, that if his sore and weary heart led him somewhat astray, a just and righteously acting world must not blame him too severely. When the eyes are dim with watching, when every nerve is irritable from long strain and a cruel endless tension, when calamity quickly succeeds calamity, it is not given to all men to act exactly as they ought to do.

On the morning of the day on which Mrs. Mallory had been so signally defeated as regarded Miss Blisset, Myles Heywood received a letter. Address and contents were alike in a handwriting unknown to him. The epistle was simply headed ‘Thanshope,’ with the date following. He turned it over, and the subscription puzzled him—‘A Christian Well-wisher,’ it was signed. Marvelling at the whole thing, he began at the beginning, and read it through.

He laid the letter down, feeling that he was trembling—feeling almost as if his limbs failed him. He did not speculate as to who had written the letter. Much of it seemed true to him. Sebastian’s love for Adrienne was no delusion of his jealous fancy. Nothing was said against her; he was blamed, and it was hinted that others spoke lightly of her. He was told to test the report, to inquire for himself; the challenge was a fair one.

That he owed his situation to Sebastian Mallory’s influence was nothing; such things as that had now lost the slightest power to distress him. That Sebastian was ‘stealing a march’ upon him—that idea was so ludicrous and so pitiable as to make him smile drily in the midst of his own torture. There was no sting in that. If Sebastian chose to woo Adrienne, if she chose to receive his wooing, who should say them nay? He had no such right, at least. He dwelt for a moment on these points, and then came the rush of horror and disgust, the sickening, dreadful part of it. He shook with fury, and with misery too, as he realised that there were people who had watched him and her; that wrong constructions had been put upon their friendship; that people gossiped about her—coupled her name with his. It stung him into madness. There must be something in it. ‘Ask,’ said the writer, ‘ask, and see if I have not written the truth.’ To advise him to go away—to appeal to his manly feeling! It was like a hideous dream, which he could not at first grasp. His heart was sore and aching already; this blow seemed to crush him. His nerves had been strained for weeks past; he saw nothing in its proper light or just proportions. He thrust the letter into his breast-pocket, and, driven by necessity, went out to his work. How he got that work accomplished he could not tell. Adrienne was not there, or he did not think he could have struggled through with it.

At noon he took his way home again. Crossing the Townfield, he met Harry Ashworth, who joined him, wishing him good-day, and observing,

‘Myles, lad, you don’t look so well. What ails you?’

‘Nothing, nothing ails me,’ said Myles; and then there flashed a sudden thought into his mind: that letter—that ‘Ask, and see if I have not written the truth.’ He would put it to the test now; no time like the present.

‘I am telling lies,’ said he; ‘something does ail me. Harry, are you my friend?’

‘Ay, for sure I am, old lad.’

‘Then come and prove it. Come with me into our house; I want to show you something.’

They were close at home. Myles led the way, and Harry followed him into the parlour, the front room, now stripped of almost all the furniture and ornaments which had formerly been the pride of Mary’s life.

‘See here!’ said Myles, his eyes filled with a sombre fire, and his lips twitching a little as he pulled out the letter: ‘read this, and tell me, when you’ve done, if you know who’s meant in it.’

Harry looked surprised, but took the letter and read it. Myles watched him, thinking what a good idea it was to make him read the letter. If the report were unfounded, he would not guess who was referred to; and if it were true, he would. Harry’s face changed, grew amazed, embarrassed as he read on. When he had finished the letter, he folded it up, and returned it, without speaking, to its owner. He did not look at Myles, but out of the window, as he said,

‘It’s a very queer kind of a letter.’

‘Well,’ said Myles, obliged to raise his voice, but desirous that neither Mary nor Edmund should overhear the conversation, ‘can you give a guess, lad, as to who the lady is that’s spoken of?’

‘Well,’ said Harry, rather confusedly, ‘I have heard some talk about you and—and—that lady.’

‘Suppose I don’t know who is meant? Suppose it’s all a riddle to me?’ said Myles.

But Harry shook his head, saying,

‘Nay, nay, that won’t do.’

‘But tell me who you think it is,’ said Myles, impatiently, desperately; ‘tell me, for God’s sake! I will know, Harry, so out with it.’

‘You must remember, it’s no tale of mine—it’s only what I’ve heard; and I believe the lady meant is Miss Blisset. Fact is,’ he added decisively, ‘I know it is!’

Again Myles’s lips quivered a little as he said,

‘You said you were my friend, Harry. You must tell me what you’ve heard.’

‘Well, it’s useless to deny that there’s a story going about that before her uncle died she was in love with you, and that you said so often; but I don’t believe it, old chap. You never think I believe it all?’

‘That I said she was in love with me?’ said Myles in a voice that had grown almost hoarse.

‘Yes; and that when you went to their house it wasn’t exactly to see the old gentleman, but——’

‘There, that will do!’ said the other, holding up his hand and turning away sickened. It was too hideous. If any such rumour had penetrated to her ears? He could not speak, till Harry, in an ill-judged moment, said,

‘Nay, there’s nothing to take on about so much, Myles. Some enemy of yours has written that letter—some one as wants you out of the way. Can’t you see what he’s driving at when he advises you to go? Likely enough some one as thinks he might get your place if you were gone. But you’re not the sort of chap to pay any attention——’

‘The advice is good,’ said Myles, curtly. ‘Very likely I shall take it. Do you know who set this tale going?’ he asked, turning to Harry with a look which startled the latter.

‘That’s just what no one can tell,’ said he. ‘It seems to be known everywhere, and yet we can’t tell where it comes from.’

‘Though you give it the benefit of free discussion. Well, I’ve found out what I wanted to know. There’s only one thing more—if you care for me or mine—and we’ve known each other a good many years now—you’ll never speak of what we have spoken of this morning.’

‘My hand upon it,’ said his friend. ‘Never, so long as I live.’

They left the room. Harry departed by the back way to have a word with Mary, and to offer to come and sit up that night with Edmund, who was much worse. The offer was accepted, and Harry went away.

The midday meal was again a very sad one. Myles ate nothing, and said nothing; and Mary, full of fears and forebodings, was almost as bad.

After dinner the young man went out again—up the street he hated, to the room which had become a purgatory to him. How he loathed the sight of that long building with the many windows and the well-known faces! It seemed to him as if every eye must be fixed upon him, every finger pointing at him.

Work was not over until late that afternoon. It was six o’clock, or after, when Myles got home again, and on going into the house found that Mary was sitting upstairs with Edmund; so, after brooding a little, his mind full of wild, half-chaotic projects and ideas, he left the house and wandered out, he knew not whither. At last he found himself in the park, pacing about the broad terrace, and looking with eyes that saw nothing, across the idle town and the nearer hills, to the blue, calm, moorland ridges far away to the north. It was a scene he had loved, half unconsciously, from his childhood up, but to-day it was without joy—almost without existence for him.

At last he seated himself on a bench situated in a kind of rockery which ran along one side of the terrace; the seat was a little retired in a hollow of the rockwork, and there he remained, and gradually he turned his back upon the prospect and his face to the wall, and hid his face in his arm and fought alone, as well as he could, with the misery and despair which rushed over him like a flood. He saw no point of cheerfulness or light in all his life’s sky. All was black and thick and overcast.

‘This is no fit place for me to stay in,’ he thought. ‘I must get away as soon as I can. If I go, all the lies will die out quickly enough, and then—there’s another man who is ready to fight her battles for her, and he may see her as much as he pleases, and there’s no harm in it.’

How long he had remained there motionless and miserable he did not know. He had forgotten all outside things, and was busied solely with his wretched self-introspection. At last, however, distant voices first, and then approaching footsteps, which advanced slowly and with many pauses, penetrated to his abstracted ear. He did not move; why should any one notice him, or think of him? Still less did he move when he distinctly heard and recognised Sebastian Mallory’s voice close to him saying,

‘And then slander will be silenced, and there will be no more misunderstandings. All will be clear between us.’

His voice was deep with love as he spoke, and to each vibration of it Myles’s heart seemed to give an answering throb.

‘Quite clear, as it should be,’ replied the voice he loved best, and it trembled too.

They paced past. Myles hid his face more deeply in his folded arms. He heard Sebastian kiss her hand, and then their voices died away—their footsteps too, and at last Myles raised his head and changed his position. He was half puzzled at the change which had come over him, at the quiet apathy which seemed to fill his whole soul. He had heard those words spoken which he had thought would be harder than any other words for him to bear, and yet he found himself sitting on in the same place, his pulses beating no faster, his breath coming no more quickly. Such utter indifference he felt to be ominous, and yet, though he tried, he could bring no different feelings forward; he repeated to himself all that he thought he had lost, all he believed Sebastian had won—conned it over as a devotee might tell his beads, but it had no effect. He felt no special pain or indignation.

And yet, when he rose with the instinctive intention of turning his steps homeward, he found that he was incapable of going home. He recoiled from the very idea of entering the house, or speaking to any one he knew. He stood reasoning within himself about it.

‘Why shouldn’t I go home? Home is surely the best place. Molly is there, and Ned. I ought to go and stay with him; he’s so ill.’ And he forced his feet towards home. But it was useless, he felt it impossible to enter the house.

‘I know what I want,’ he reasoned within himself. ‘I want a good stretch of a walk, right over the moors, and away from this smoky hole. There’s nothing like a moorland breeze for blowing away unhealthy fancies. Harry used to say so, and he’s tried it often enough, and in trouble enough, poor lad.’

He smiled. He found himself pitying Harry Ashworth with an intensity of commiseration such as he could not by any means wring out for his own sorrows.

But he congratulated himself. A long, long walk, a walk of twenty miles or so, to prove to himself that he was still young and strong, and swift of foot, and that six weeks of clerkship drudgery, and six months’ alternate hot and cold, hope and fear, doubt and despair, had not impaired one iota his strength and endurance! That glorious moorland air, blowing keen and fresh, though it was pure, from the north over the top of Blackrigg! There was surely not a grief, not a solitude-nourished fear and sorrow, that its strong, bracing breath would not blow clean away!

By this time he had left the park, and was walking quickly down the street in a northerly direction. He met one or two friends and acquaintances before he got fairly out of the town; he returned their salutations quite mechanically, and still walked on. Just outside Thanshope, as the suburb of Bridgefold began, there stood a well-known public-house, the Craven Heifer; and, as he was passing its door, some one hailed him.

‘Eh, Myles! I say, Myles, is yon you?’

He looked up, and saw a man standing in the doorway—a man whom he had known years ago, who had once worked side by side with him in the factory, and had left and gone over into Rossendale before Myles had been promoted from the weaving shed to the warehouse. He stared blankly at the man, who had been drinking, and though by no means drunk, was decidedly elevated.

‘Come in, mon?’ he cried. ‘It’s years sin’ I saw you. Come in, and have a glass, for old acquaintance sake. I’ll stand it.’

He would not be gainsaid, but rolled out, and pulled his former friend into the taproom. There were half a dozen men there, all more or less happy and free from care, as it seemed to Myles. They welcomed him noisily, and his friend asked him, with unnecessary affectionateness of tone and manner, what it should be.

‘What? Oh, anything. What you are having yourself,’ said Myles, greeting first one and then another of them, and thinking, with a kind of savage mirth, within himself, that there were more kinds of pleasure in the world than one; since he could not have one kind, he might as well try another. He would see whether these men, who seemed so pleased to see him, were really such bad company after all. And he sat down, and waited until a girl brought him a glass of steaming hot punch—whisky punch; that was what they were drinking.

‘Now, then,’ cried his acquaintance, ‘good luck to you, Myles! Here’s to our next merry meeting, eh?’

‘To our next!’ said Myles, raising the glass to his lips, and then, even as it touched them, feeling as if he had suddenly come to his senses, he put the glass down on the table. ‘Not yet,’ he said, half aloud, and got up from his seat and walked out of the room, shaking off the hands that were outstretched to stay him, and unheeding the loud and angry expostulations which came after him.

‘Pah!’ he exclaimed, as he took his way along the road again; ‘I’m not come to that yet!’

It was a long and toilsome road that led from the town of Thanshope, through some outlying suburbs, to a large manufacturing village, called Hamerton, which lay on the very skirts of Yorkshire, closed in on all sides by the great ridges of Blackrigg, and some neighbouring wild and desolate moors. He took the road along which Hugo and Sebastian had once driven, and the sun had set as he turned his face towards the hills with that strange sensation of oppressive apathy and indifference ever at his heart. The night was descending, the ‘stars rushed out,’ as he at length gained the complete solitude of the moors, and, turning aside from the road, plunged half knee-deep into the thick heather and ling, which was the only vegetation about there. He walked, for a very short time as it seemed to him—really, for hours—battling with the horrible sensations of a great, black, yawning, hideous blank, a huge emptiness, an ewiges Nichts, which completely overpowered him. He was unconscious how far he had gone, or where he was, or that he was even weary, when suddenly he found himself stumbling over the knolls of heather, and looking up, found that it was dark. The summer night had closed in, and he, for aught he knew, might be twenty miles away, or thirty, from Thanshope.

He thought he would sit down and rest a little, so he sank down upon the friendly heather, and found that it formed a soft and yielding bed, and that the air which played around his head and face was cool, and pure, and sweet. For a moment he found a blessed sensation of rest and relief, and then all things seemed softly to swim and fade around him; with sweeping wing sleep came upon him, and laid her finger upon his eyelids, and bade the weary brain rest. He sank gradually down in the hollow of the heather, and a deep, dreamless slumber overcame him, and saved him. Never had sleep been a more beneficent visitant; never had kindly Nature taken to her soft arms a more weary, heart-sick child of hers, than she did that summer night, when she offered to Myles Heywood rest upon her own broad bosom.