Probation

The spell—the long silence—was broken at last. One evening towards the end of April, when he had been seven months in Thanshope, he first had any news of Adrienne. The Mallorys were in London, and had been there since the opening of Parliament in the beginning of February. Myles had had all the work and responsibility at home laid upon his shoulders. His work for the day was over, and, the evening being fine and the air pleasant, he turned out for his usual stroll up Blake Street. As he came nearer to the house, he saw a man standing in the garden, and as he approached still nearer, he recognised the man; he was Brandon, Mr. Blisset’s old servant and factotum.

The windows in the front of the house were all open, and glittering in the rays of an April sunset—mild and cool. Brandon was standing, looking meditatively towards that sunset, and towards the moors to which it formed a flaming background. His hands were in his pockets, and he was softly whistling a tune.

Myles paused, and the man turned round. There was a mutual recognition. Brandon had been three days in the town, and had heard all the gossip there was—all about Myles’s changed position; and while he looked pleased to see an old acquaintance, he touched his cap as to a superior. Myles, wishing him good evening, rested his elbow on the gate, and said.

‘Are you living in Thanshope?’

‘No, sir. I only came here for a few days on business.’

Myles was gratified that he could at once satisfy the deep yearning that lay at his heart—to ask after Adrienne—and at the same time do what was natural and to be expected; for who, if not her uncle’s old servant, should know anything about her? He therefore inquired.

‘Do you ever hear anything of Miss Blisset now, since Mr. Blisset’s death?’

Brandon looked surprised.

‘Hear of her, sir! I’m in her service.’

‘In her service?’ repeated Myles mechanically.

‘Yes, when my late master died, Miss Blisset was good enough to say that she particularly wished me to remain with her, unless I had other views, which I had not. I have served her and her family for thirty years, and I hope never to serve any other.’

‘I had no idea you had remained with her. I am glad to hear it. She must require a person to—an old servant, who will be like a friend to her as well.’

‘Miss Blisset was so kind as to say, when she asked me to remain, that she looked upon me as a friend. My wife and I are the only servants she has.’

‘Ah! How is Miss Blisset—or rather, how was she when you left her?’

‘She was quite well, sir, thank you.’

‘Does she live in England?’

‘At present she is living in London, and we have been at Florence and Dresden.’

‘Indeed! Does she mean to stay in London?’

‘I think she will stay until autumn. Then she is going abroad with some friends. I am not sure where, but I think to Italy. Most likely she will take either my wife or me with her, and leave the other behind.’

‘Then she does not think of coming to Thanshope at all?’

‘No. Her lease of this house expires directly, and she is not going to renew it. She has seen Mr. Mallory in London, and made arrangements to give it up. I have come to see about storing the furniture.’

‘Yes. When shall you be returning?’

‘In about three days, sir, I expect.’

‘The house will then be empty.’

‘Yes.’

There was a pause. Myles’s heart was beating. Brandon was looking at him inquiringly, as if he awaited some further word or some message to be delivered to his mistress. But Myles dared not send any message. He could not forget how he had ignored her own message to him, though head and heart alike cried out that he was wrong. In ordinary concerns he was clear-headed and practical enough: where his love for Adrienne stepped in, his nature seemed changed; he became timid, nervous, and lost all self-confidence. To have sent a mere conventional phrase of compliments or kind regards, would, it seemed to him, have been deliberate, insolent bravado—after what had passed. If he could have seen her, if she would have spoken to him, he might have confessed his fault and begged her pardon; but there was no word, no message that he could send through even the most trusted of old servants—through any third person.

After a few more words with Brandon, he wished him good night and moved on, leaving that worthy man to think how ill-mannered he was. ‘And he used to sit and look at my young lady in a way that any one must have noticed,’ thought Brandon, rather indignantly.

Myles walked homewards, deciding in his own mind that he would not go near Blake Street again until after Brandon should be gone. He pictured Adrienne in London, with plenty of friends, visiting the Mallorys, happy—the man had given no sort of hint that she was not happy. Suppose he happened to be in London, to be in the same room with her, to pass her in the street! He had forfeited the right to claim her acquaintance; he did not think he would have the courage to address her. He had made a great mess, a horrible mistake, when he repulsed that advance of hers; for that it had been an advance there could be now no doubt, since there had never been anything between her and Sebastian Mallory. What a shock, what offence, that behaviour of his must have caused her! The dead silence which had supervened on her part showed how she must have taken it.

His heart ached a good deal as he walked towards his home. What profited him all this solitary, lonely prosperity? If he could have exchanged it all for one more of those evenings at Stonegate in the old days—for one more of those glances from Adrienne, which used to intoxicate him with their half-frank, half-timid expression—he would have flung all he had to the winds, and begun life again to-morrow, if he could have seen her once again betrayed into such a look, such a tone, as that with which she had said, ‘Oh, Myles!’ one Sunday afternoon. But that would never be. She too had found that Thanshope was not the place for her. She would never come to Stonegate again. When next he saw it, it would be empty, dismantled, a shell. He wondered—and immediately felt eager that it should be so—whether Sebastian Mallory would let him have Stonegate. There was no other place in which he cared to live. A fear seized him, lest it might already have been promised to some one else. He hastened his steps, and as soon as he got in wrote to Sebastian, and dropped the letter with his own hand into the letter-box. He had written urgently. If Mr. Mallory had not already disposed of Stonegate, might he, Myles Heywood, become its tenant, at whatever rent Mr. Mallory pleased, even to the half of his income? Repairs and everything of that kind (he mixed up business and sentiment in a hurried jumble) were to be his concern, and his alone. And might he have an answer soon? He did not care whether the reasons of his eagerness were guessed or not by Sebastian.

By return of post he had an answer:

Myles carried this note about with him in his breast-pocket, as if it had been a magic talisman. He studiously adhered to his resolution not to go near Blake Street till the three days of which Brandon had spoken should have elapsed, but the shadow of the deserted house ‘haunted him like a passion’—a longing, intense and increasing, concentrated his thoughts upon that ‘house, and heath, and garden,’ the ‘phantoms’ of which had been ‘so dear to him erewhile.’

Not until the fourth evening after this interview with Brandon did he again take his way along the familiar street.

It was even such an evening as that earlier one. The air was mild, the sun, now declining, had been bright—all nature smiled. It was growing dusk as he drew near the house. Why was his heart so low? Why had he such a great sensation of loneliness—of being cast adrift? Why did sad words of a sad song ring in his ears, and seem to be borne in whispers to him with each breath of wind—

He felt the idea dreadfully prophetic; he felt as if that were the fate he had selected for himself, as he at last rested his arms upon the homely wicket of that lonesome abode, and looked towards the front of the house.

He was prepared for closed shutters, melancholy wisps of straw and scraps of paper, doors bolted and barred—such as mark, with a brand not to be mistaken, the deserted house. What he beheld was an open door and an open window—the window to the right hand; he could see that the hall was stripped of its fittings, that the windows were curtainless, but the house was not empty—as yet, its hearth was not ‘desolated.’

What is that moving within the room? A figure; perhaps one of ‘the dim shades, as like ghosts they go and come.’ So dull are our senses, when night is falling, that even he did not recognise whose form it was; it was not to a sight, but to a sound, that his nerves suddenly thrilled, and his senses became tense and alert.

As he stood, a chord was struck upon a piano within—another. A slight shiver shook him, but still he was not convinced until a voice floated out—the softly melodious voice which he knew in every fibre of his heart, not loudly, but with a subdued intensity of feeling which made him also absolutely tremble. For the song she sang brought hopes, doubts, fears—and again, wild and tremulous, chaotic hopes, crowding into his mind. It was the homely old German Volkslied—

To every word his heart throbbed, as she apostrophised, with the abandon of one who believes herself unheard and unlistened to, that absent one—

and sang how he ‘caused her much pain, and knew not how much he was loved.’ A pause after that, till she went on to the second verse—

‘For,’ said the song, ‘I must ever be drawn most tenderly towards thee.’

Towards thee—towards whom? Her voice vibrated, almost failed, as she went on with a sad, pondering accent, to the wonder expressed in the third verse, as to whether he, that absent one of the careless spirit, might be trusted, as he might trust to her; and the notes swelled out again—

Myles’s head had sunk down upon his arms. The wonder, the mystery, the wild hope, that came surging over his heart almost unmanned him, and still the voice floated out, as she sang the last verse of the song. Could it be? Might he dare to hope that, as she chose that hour, that place, that song in which to express her feeling, that it was he—for she was singing now—

Whose face? Her voice had faltered with the energy of her own feeling, on the last lines—

She sang the last cadences again, as if she could not leave them, as if weary of waiting and separation—

With a heart full of the wildest, most chaotic doubt, wonder, surmise, Myles stood, his head raised again, his dark eyes burning, as their wont was when he was agitated, upon the open window. The dusk was too deep now for him to see anything in the room.

His brain, his heart, all of him, were thrilling with the aspiration conveyed in the last untranslatable words of the song—the passionate, simple, primitive—

He saw nothing, heard nothing, until a footstep paused, as if arrested in surprise, beside him—a figure interposed itself between his eyes and the window at which he was gazing.

‘Adrienne!’

The name fell, like a sigh, without his will or wish, almost without his knowledge, from his lips. He scarcely knew himself, or where he was, or anything, except that she stood there, and had paused, stopped, was looking at him. It was light enough to see that she had recognised him on coming close to him, and that, when their eyes met, she was trembling.

When she looked into his face, her own turned paler, and a startled ‘Oh!’ fell from her lips.

For a moment they both stood silent thus. Then Myles, seeing that she still trembled and looked startled, remembered suddenly where he was, and how it all was. He bared his head and stood before her, saying, in a low voice,

‘Pardon me! I forgot! I will not intrude. I did not know you were here.’

He had turned to go, was absolutely moving, when she herself opened the wicket wide, and said, in an indescribable tone,

‘Will you leave me without one word, as before?’

The tremulous appeal was a command. He entered the garden, looking at her, as if awaiting a direction from her. But at last he said,

‘It was that which made me fear to look at you. I can scarcely believe you will speak to me. Do you mean,’ he added, with a sudden appeal in his voice—‘do you mean that I may come in, and—talk to you?’

For all answer Adrienne held out her right hand, and closed the wicket with the other, so that they stood together within the garden.

Myles took that hand, but he could not at first speak.

‘Miss Blisset, I behaved unpardonably—like a ruffian—two years ago. I do not deserve your forgiveness.’

They had been moving towards the house, and they now stood in the almost dismantled drawing-room, by the open piano.

‘At first,’ said Adrienne, in a voice which still trembled, ‘I thought I never could forgive you. It was cruel on your part——’

‘It was brutal—unpardonable.’

‘No; you were mad with grief—I knew it afterwards—and you could not know what it was I had to say to you.’

‘What was it?’ he asked, below his breath.

‘It was to say good-bye, and something more—to say that I feared I had been unkind! I had seemed to desert you—in your trouble, but that it had never been so in reality, for I had thought of you constantly; and,’ she added steadily, ‘to tell you, too, that I had heard something—that some report had been set going about you and me——’

‘You heard that! It was to spare you that—it was because I was almost mad at the thought——’

‘It was to tell you that I prized your friendship beyond all those slanders, and that nothing could ever shake it. I did wish to tell you that; but after you were gone, after you had left me in that manner, Myles, I dared not write.’

‘Fool that I was! But I have been paying the price of my folly for two years without ceasing. Till seven months ago I believed you were going to marry Sebastian Mallory. You may suppose I was anxious for nothing so much as to be silent—to hear nothing of you.’

Adrienne made no answer, till Myles said,

‘And now you are going to leave Thanshope?’

‘Yes, for ever.’

‘You have come to say good-bye to the old place?’

‘I never meant to come. Brandon found some difficulties about the arrangements I wished him to make, and telegraphed for me. I came this afternoon, and am leaving again to-morrow morning.’

Adrienne had lost her self-command as he gained more of his. Her voice shook uncontrollably, as she leaned her elbow on the top of the piano.

‘I shall always feel happy that I have been able to see you, to tell you that, whether you forgave me or not, I have repented, and do repent, my churlishness, and to thank you for your—your unspeakable kindness to a rough, stupid, clumsy fellow like me,’ said he. ‘Your great goodness and your gentle influence will go with me through my life; and—may you never know a sorrow or a care as long as you live!’

The aspiration appeared useless, for Adrienne had buried her face in her hands, and was weeping with a quiet sorrow that had something of despair in it.

‘But before I go,’ he added, ‘will you answer me a question? Perhaps I have no right to ask it, but I must, I have been listening to your singing; I heard every word.’

‘Yes,’ was the almost inaudible answer.

‘Tell me if you had some one in your mind when you sang that song.’

‘Yes,’ said Adrienne, still scarce above her breath.

‘You had!’ he exclaimed, and forgot the solemn farewell, the almost benediction, he had just bestowed upon her, while he hurried his words out desperately. ‘Oh, Adrienne! forgive me if I am too presumptuous; but have mercy! Tell me, when you sang ‘Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen’.... But I am too bold—I——’

‘Do not look at me so strangely!’ she began, raising her tear-stained face. ‘Tell me——Ah!’ she suddenly exclaimed, as with one movement they clasped each other, ‘it is you, Myles—it was always you; but you were so dreadfully proud.’

‘Do you mean,’ he asked, after a long pause, ‘that if I had come to you that night—if I had forgotten myself, and told you, as I felt sure I should, that I loved you, and that no “friendship” could be anything but a wretched mockery to me—do you mean that then you would have taken me, ruined and wretched, and without one bright thought or one hope for the future?’

‘If you had come then, and told me all that, you need not have gone away without hope, and I should have spent a different two years than I have done. But it is all right now,’ she added. ‘The probation is over, my love, and you have borne it bravely.’

‘If you think so, it must be so; but at the time, I assure you, I felt anything but brave. Now I feel—I feel at rest,’ said Myles.

There was silence. The darkness gathered. The air blew softly in at the window, and bore with it the faint sound of an old tune, in broken, melodious chimes.

THE END.

J. D. & CO

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.