Probation

It would be difficult to overrate the completeness of the change which had supervened, in both the outer and inner life of Myles Heywood, between the time when he had left his native town, and now, when he returned to it.

He was very busy, very quiet, and very lonely. Sebastian had acted with the soundest wisdom in leaving his new manager to take his place alone, and alone to fight down the obstacles which he encountered, alone to strike back the ill-will, the jealousy, and the insubordination—all of which things raised their heads and gaped upon him with their mouths on his first assumption of his new office.

Myles had accepted the post calmly, but he had known perfectly well that he assumed no light task. It would have been comparatively easy, if there had not been the envy and prejudices of old friends to be overcome. Thanks to the first-rate management of Mr. Sutcliffe, and to Sebastian’s own ubiquitous eye, the whole machine was in complete working order; but this, perhaps, only left all the more room for smaller spites and jealousies to make themselves felt. There was, first of all, Wilson, the faithful old cashier who had once been Myles’s superior: he was a first-rate accountant and bookkeeper, but no manager or man of business, and utterly devoid of the faculty of arranging or regulating things. None knew it better than himself, yet it was something of a trial to his feelings to see the young fellow, whom he had known from the time when he had begun life as a ‘half-time’ of eleven, placed over him. In justice to both the men, it must be said that this little jealousy soon wore off. Myles won Wilson’s heart by his manner of treating him with scrupulous respect in the presence of third persons, and without pretensions of any kind when alone with him. Wilson, too, was an intelligent man, who knew a clever man of business when he met him. Myles very soon proved his perfect capacity for his post, and after that Wilson’s soreness was at an end. He backed up ‘Mr. Heywood’ on every possible occasion, and suffered no appeal from the said Mr. Heywood’s behests.

Myles found it a somewhat more difficult matter to dispose of others, old comrades of his own, who were working away in the same old places, no higher than they ever had been; and who, unable to rise themselves, were lost in astonishment that he should be put over their heads. Some of them were strongly inclined to be provokingly familiar; first jocosely, and then maliciously, insubordinate; utterly unconscious of the mental gulf between him and them. But the stronger brain and will of the man who had risen beyond them was able to check these manifestations of feeling. One or two sharp examples, and a most unequivocal demonstration that no nonsense would be endured, reduced them to their natural places. Ever afterwards he had the name amongst them of having become hard, inconsiderate, and a fine gentleman. He knew it and regretted it, but accepted it as inevitable, remembering the time when he had resented the fact that the law did not compel all men to live on the same level.

The new manager’s eyes appeared to be ubiquitous—nothing escaped them; but good work and good conduct were as keenly noted by him as bad, and he let the approval be as distinctly felt as the displeasure. There was, moreover, another thing which soon began to tell more than all the others put together: he was utterly unconscious of deserving ill-will; he was so evidently bent upon work, hard work, and nothing but work, and not upon hectoring it over those who had become his subordinates, that distrust gradually subsided. Sneers and scoffs had no effect whatever upon him; they were ignored in a manner so complete as to recoil with disconcerting effect upon their originators. That grave absorbed face, those eyes which noted everything, that ready presence of mind, that seemingly unwearying, untiring strength, that utter disregard of the amount of work which fell upon his own shoulders, soon began to tell upon individuals, and, through them, upon the mass.

Myles wrote Sebastian regular accounts of his business transactions, hoping they met with his approval. He never named any disputes with the work-people, leaving his master to infer that he was, as the latter had said, ‘shaking down’ to his new work.

Outside that work his life was rather colourless. Mary and Harry no longer lived at Thanshope. Harry had found work in a manufacturing village some five miles distant; he lived in a cottage on the borders of an open moor, where the air was pure, free, and bracing. He had grown, physically, much stronger in consequence of the change, and thought that his hearing, if not actually better, did not become worse so rapidly as when he lived in the town. Occasionally, on a Sunday, Myles would go over to see them, and nurse his sister’s little boy on his knee, feeling a passion of tenderness which he could not express for the little round-faced thing, with its large, solemn, dark eyes—like his own, Mary said, with affectionate pride. He would walk with Harry over the moors, and gratify him by shouting descriptions of his foreign life into his failing ears. But, except for this one day in the week, they were lost to him; their incessant toil, and his own, preventing further intercourse.

Very often his dead brother occupied a place in his mind. Poor Ned! What a life he could have given him now! He could have had him to live with him, and bought him books and pictures, and given him music, and made his existence a poetry to him. But it was too late: Edmund slept his quiet sleep, killed off by the want and the sorrow which had been too much for them all, at the time of the great distress.

One face was missing—that of Hoyle, his old enemy. Myles made some casual inquiries about him one day, and heard that he had left Thanshope about a year ago. He never knew the part the man had played between him and Adrienne.

The young men who had once been friends of his (it seemed as if it must be hundreds of years ago), and to whose debating society he had once belonged, received him with a mixture of timidity and admiration. Many of them had advocated—perhaps still did so—the Proudhonistic theory—‘all property is a crime.’ At one time Myles had believed and ardently advocated the same delusion. He had lived faster and grown faster than these old friends of his, and now they were divided between embarrassment at his open support of one of the most flagrant property-holders of the district, and admiration of his cleverness, which had swept such gains into his own lap. Myles felt little sympathy with them, and had the uncomfortable sensation that while they were shy of discussing things before his face, they were very voluble, and chiefly about himself, behind his back.

He found his most congenial associate in Mr. Lyttleton, the Factory Inspector of Thanshope and some surrounding towns, who lived in Thanshope—a middle-aged, highly educated man, who was attracted, the first time he saw him, by the keen yet sombre countenance of Mr. Mallory’s new manager; and who, when he learnt the outlines of Myles’s history, became still more interested in him, asked him to his house, and there introduced him to some young professional men, of a higher class, taken all in all, than those he had known in Eisendorf. The benefit was mutual, and Myles’s circle of acquaintances, if not of intimates, thus gradually extended. Almost everywhere he pleased, but everywhere there was the constant wonder why Heywood was so reserved, so almost melancholy in manner, and so sparing in speech; ‘much more like a Spanish grandee,’ observed a young doctor to Mr. Lyttleton, ‘than a man who has risen from the ranks of the working-men. I can’t make the fellow out.’

Very few people could make the fellow out, though many seemed to find a decided pleasure in trying to do so.

Thus time passed until Sebastian and his wife came home, and then Myles found that ‘master and servant’ was indeed far from expressing the relation which Mallory wished to exist between them. Sebastian’s regard, once won, was dealt out with no niggard hand. He had got Myles to yield to his will; now it seemed he wished for more than respect—regard. The best part of Myles’s nature responded to the call; his liking warmed each day, till it grew to an affection, reserved and reticent indeed in outward show, but inwardly glowing as warmly as Sebastian himself could desire. The former ill-will had burnt itself out. Master and man were on a footing of perfect amity and accord. The more Myles heard of Sebastian’s plans, thoughts, and schemes, the better he liked them, and the wiser he felt them to be. He could appreciate them now; three years ago he could only have scoffed at them. He entered heartily into them all; he worked unremittingly till Sebastian declared he was afraid of his energy, and refused rest, saying he neither required nor desired it. Whatever his own private and personal hopes, thoughts, or wishes (if he had any), he kept them strictly and entirely to himself. Helena was very kind to him, and they were very good friends; she, woman like, always thinking of that background in his life, that hinted love-story, of which Sebastian had given her some glimpses. Occasionally she and her husband would speak of it.

‘Sebastian, you know him best, and what he is capable of. Do you think he is in love with that girl yet?’

‘I think, most reverend matron, that he is in love with that girl—who, by-the-by, is rather older than yourself—yet.’

‘Then why doesn’t he find her out and propose to her?’

‘I have not asked him.’

‘He cannot think she is too good for him.’

‘I should not be surprised if he did.’

‘Absurd!’

‘Pray take it upon yourself to tell him so. No doubt you will succeed in convincing him.’

‘You are ridiculous, sir.’

When he, Myles, had by any chance a leisure hour, he would go—even after the nights had grown dark, and frosts of winter had set in—up the dreary length of Blake Street to the wicket of the empty Stonegate, and, leaning upon that support, would stand gazing at the emptiness and the desolation of it. No one lived there. A woman came some few times in the week, and spent the day there, lighting fires and throwing open shutters and windows; but that was all. It had always, at the best of times, been a dreary-looking, sad, cold place, but now it was forlorn in its mournfulness. If it had not been so utterly lonely, Myles would not have gone there. No one he knew ever came past. He had his watch-post to himself, and probably found some kind of mournful, unsatisfactory joy in his vigils. Always it remained the same—empty, closed, desolate—always void of her presence—always without sign or indication that it would ever again be gladdened by it. Her name had never been mentioned, either by him or his friends. He was absolutely ignorant of where she was, or how; of what she was doing, whether she were happy or sad; of every fact and circumstance connected with her.