Probation

Myles walked home, not in the ‘kind of dream’ proper for a hero under the circumstances, but thinking very lucidly and very connectedly during his pretty long walk, from the end of Blake Street to his house on the Townfield, chiefly of what had happened that evening. He thought of Adrienne—of all those summer months of silence, and then of the sudden, quick acquaintance.

‘She’s certainly different from other people,’ he said to himself: and in that matter he was right, if he meant that she was not like the ordinary Thanshope lady. But the ordinary Thanshope lady had not been brought up as Adrienne Blisset had been, and Myles did not know then what patient struggles with sorrow and poverty and adverse circumstances had made her what she was. At one-and-twenty she had lived in many lands, and her mind had come in contact with many other minds, often minds of a far from common order. Very few English girls in her class have had that experience at that age—nor would those who wish a girl to be innocent and happy desire such experience for her, if it had to be paid for with such a heavy guerdon of sorrow and suffering as Adrienne had paid for hers.

Myles knew nothing of that, he only saw the difference. He felt a curiosity about her, blended with some admiration. He admired her grace, her spirit, her sweet voice, her quick intelligence; and he thought a great deal about her as he walked home, and wondered if he should see her again to-morrow—if she would be as gracious as she had been to-night; he thought of Frederick Spenceley, and classed him in his mind with ‘Mallory and that lot,’ and was glad, quite revengefully glad, that he had been able to treat him as he had done, and that was all.

Perfectly unexpectant, unconscious, unaware of the web which circumstances, past, present, and to come, were weaving about his head, he paced the well-known streets—a son of toil, the descendant of generations of sons of toil, but with a whole world dormant in him, or rather nascent—a whole realm of suffering: love, hope, grandeur, baseness, which this night had first stirred into a premonitory natal activity.

Saturday morning came, and work, and the business of life; Saturday afternoon, and holiday. Myles and Mary walked home together about two o’clock; and his sister looked at him more than once, as his head and his eyes turned quickly from one side to the other, so often that at last she said,

‘Why, Myles, dost expect to see some one thou knows?’

‘Me—no!’ said he, hastily, and with a forced laugh. He had been half unconsciously looking for Adrienne, but in vain.

In the evening he repaired to the reading-room as usual. He went straight to his seat in the window; but she was not there, so he picked up the Westminster, which no one had disturbed since last night, and resumed the article on the governing classes.

But he could not, to use his own expression, ‘fasten to it,’ until he heard the soft opening and closing of the swing-door in the background, and the faint sound, almost imperceptible, of a girl’s light footfall and undulating dress, came nearer and nearer. Then, when he looked up, she was there, looking just the same as usual—which was surprising, after all his dreamy thoughts about her.

She bowed to him, with the smile which lent such a charm to her fair face. For she was fair, Myles decided, as he saw that look of recognition; and he was right. She was one of those women who are not anything, neither ugly nor beautiful, until one knows them, and then they are lovely for ever.

With the ‘Good evening’ and the smile they exchanged, he felt at rest, and could turn to his book again, and read, and understand. For not yet did he know that he had met his fate—good or evil as the case might be; there was a sweet, momentary pause before there came that fever of unrest which love must be to such men as he.

Miss Blisset made her notes, and studied her music with diligence, until nine o’clock came chiming from the steeple above their heads, and there rang out after the chimes the music of the tune ‘Life let us cherish!’

Adrienne put her books together, and rose.

‘Mr. Heywood, I told my uncle about what happened last night, and he told me to ask you to come and see him this evening. Will you?’

‘I shall be very glad to do so,’ said Myles, looking up, pleased and somewhat surprised. He had thought Miss Blisset’s gratitude to him natural, under the circumstances, and had quite supposed that she would treat him with friendliness afterwards; but he had smiled at the idea of the uncle of whom she spoke troubling himself about him. If he let the girl take that disagreeable walk to the town-hall every evening, he was not likely to care much whether she were annoyed or not, so that his work was done. That was the conclusion Myles had come to; and it was a conclusion quite in harmony with his character.

They left the hall together: it was Saturday night, and the streets were thronged with a rough-spoken, roughly mannered Lancashire crowd, pushing and talking, and, too many of them, reeling about, with the absence of ceremony peculiar to them. They soon left the thoroughfare, and found themselves first in the narrow cross-lane, and then in Blake Street.

‘Only one more evening,’ said Adrienne, ‘and then my work will be done; and I shall not need to come any more.’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Myles, abruptly.

‘You like reading,’ said Adrienne. ‘Have you read much?’

‘I don’t think I have,’ he owned frankly.

‘The Thanshope library is not a bad one in its way,’ she remarked. ‘Rather behind the time though, in the matter of science and philosophy.’

‘Well, you see, it’s like the gentlemen who have the managing of it, I suppose,’ said Myles, apologetically. ‘They are a little behind the time, too.’

‘Fortunately they have been allowed to exercise no control over my department, the music, since it was all bequeathed by a good and enlightened man to the town; and all those worthy committee people had to do, was to accept it gratefully, and find a room to put it in. And then, too, I don’t think they would know anything about the orthodox and heterodox in such matters.’

‘Is there orthodox and heterodox in music?’ asked Myles.

‘I should think so! The adherents of the different musical creeds are given to a “bear and forbearance” equal to that of adherents of different religious creeds.’

Myles laughed a little at this and said,

‘Then I’m sure ignorance is bliss in that case. We’re somewhat overrun with parsons in these parts. The women make so much of them that they seem quite to lose their understanding—what they have of it. But the vicar—Canon Ponsonby—he is quite different; and he keeps a pretty tight hand over his parsons. I’ve heard that he shows them their place sometimes as if they were schoolboys. He ought to have been a prime minister, ought Canon Ponsonby.’

‘Yes, I know him,’ said Adrienne. ‘He and my uncle are great friends. He is a grand old gentleman.’

Here they turned in at the wicket of Stonegate; Adrienne opened the door, and Myles for the first time—not for the last by any means—stood within that sad-looking, lonesome old house.

It was a square, matted hall in which they stood; dimly lighted by a Japanese lantern, also square, hanging from the roof. On a great oaken table in the centre, stood a large, beautiful vase of grey-green Vallouris ware. Over the carved mantelpiece hung an oil-painting—a fine copy of that beautiful likeness of Goethe—the one with the dark rings of curling hair, and the magnificent face; that likeness which always reminds one of the herrlichen Jüngling described by Bettina as the hero of a certain skating scene, when he stole his mother’s cloak—der Kälte wegen. Opposite to this picture stood, on a pedestal, a bust of Orfila. These were the only ornaments in the place: every other available corner was filled with book-shelves loaded with books. A dome-light gave light by day to this hall.

‘This way,’ said Adrienne, opening a door to the left, and Myles followed her into the room. This room too was lighted with lamps and candles. There was a table in the centre—a writing-table in one of the windows, piled with books, and papers, and manuscripts. In an easy-chair, beside this writing-table, reading, was a man—presumably the ‘uncle’ of whom Adrienne had so often spoken.

‘Uncle’ said she, going up to him, and touching his arm, ‘here is Mr. Heywood, of whom I spoke to you.’

He looked up, and Myles beheld a strange, long, pale face, with hollow eyes, and a large and, as it seemed to him, an expressionless mouth. It was a deathlike face; its expression neutral to impassiveness.

‘Mr. Heywood—oh, I am glad to see you. Take a seat.’

Somewhat chilled by this unenthusiastic greeting Myles complied without a word, feeling remarkably small and insignificant, while Adrienne produced her papers, sat down at the desk, and began to arrange them. Mr. Blisset turned towards her, but did not move his chair. He merely observed to Myles,

‘You will excuse us a moment, Mr. Heywood,’ and then gave his attention to the remarks which his niece, in a low tone, made to him. It was with a kind of shock that Myles soon perceived the man’s lower limbs must be paralysed. That was what Adrienne meant when she spoke of his being unable to come to the library. That was why he was so shy and reserved, that he must be prepared for the visit of a stranger. Myles understood it all now, and, from his experience of Edmund, knew what it meant, only that this was far worse, far more of a living death than that in which Edmund lived.

The writing and reporting over, Adrienne left the room. Myles and the strange-looking, corpse-like man were left alone; and now Mr. Blisset turned to him and said, still in the same cold, measured voice,

‘You rendered a very kind service to my niece last night, and I am much obliged to you.’

‘Pray don’t mention it. No one could have sat still and seen a young lady annoyed by a fellow like Frederick Spenceley.’

‘Spenceley—surely I have heard the name!’

‘Very likely. His father is the richest man in Thanshope.’

‘Oh—ah! Naturally I have heard of him then. So that was the name of the individual who insulted her?’

‘That is his name,’ said Myles, concisely, ‘and it’s another name for a cad and a blackguard.’

‘Oh, is it? You know something about him?’

‘There are few people in Thanshope who don’t. He is a born ruffian—Spenceley. Some day the ruffianism will come out through the veneering, and, once out, it will never be polished over again.’

Mr. Blisset assented half-inquiringly, surveying Myles all the time from his impassive eyes, and then he said,

‘I am sorry my niece should have to go to the reading-room. She tells me that one evening more will finish what she has to do, otherwise I should not permit it. But I should think you have frightened the fellow away for a time?’

‘Oh yes! He won’t trouble her again,’ said Myles, with contemptuous indifference, forgetting that beaten-off insects, with or without stings, have a habit of returning with blundering persistency to the attack. ‘But couldn’t she go in the daytime?’ he asked suddenly.

Mr. Blisset shrugged his shoulders.

‘There is so much work to be done in the daytime,’ said he—‘correspondence, and reading, and manuscript to copy. But I spare her as much as I can. I never ask or wish her to work after she returns in the evening. The rest of her time is her own.’

‘I should hope so!—from nine o’clock!’ thought Myles, a little surprised. ‘She must be ready to go to bed at ten, after such a day as that. I wonder at what time it begins. Why, I am better off than that.’

‘The rest of her time is her own,’ repeated Mr. Blisset, as if he clung to that concession with fondness and pride, feeling that it made up for all other privations which her day’s work might entail—which indeed was the case. His infirmity—his long confinement to one house and one spot—the absorbed concentration of his faculties upon one work—a work which he was determined should burst upon the world, and make him illustrious—all this, and above all, Adrienne’s own devotion to him and his pursuits, since she had come to live with him, had fostered his natural egotism; till now he verily believed that his yoke was easy and his burden light to the young creature who bore it, and that that hour ‘after she came in’ was an elastic period, in which any amount of private work and reading could be done, and pleasure enjoyed.

Yet he was not a hard-hearted man, and if Adrienne had been by any cause removed from him, it would have been her gentle presence and the charm of her company that he would have lamented—not the loss of her services in reading, writing, and research.

His intense and almost forbidding coldness of manner was soon understood by Myles, who discovered before long that it arose chiefly from physical weakness and languor—not from any want of interest in the questions of the day, or in the men and things about him.

‘You are writing a great book, sir?’ inquired Myles, by way of something to say.

‘A book,’ corrected Mr. Blisset—a slight but ineffable smile playing upon the marble of his face. ‘Let no men and no generation call any of their own achievements—whether in literature or legislation—great. That is for posterity to decide.’

(‘Humph!’ thought Myles. ‘That implies that posterity will take some notice of it, in which case—but the reflections opened up were too large to be fully followed out then.)

‘One branch of knowledge, and one alone, can produce works which at the very time of their appearance may be safely pronounced great—and that is science, of course,’ resumed Mr. Blisset half-closing his eyes.

‘Then yours is not a scientific work,’ said Myles politely.

‘It is chiefly historical and speculative, but based, I trust, on the truest and most profoundly scientific principles. It is an inquiry into the question whether highly advanced civilisation and an art-spirit living, original, and capable of producing new and great works, can exist together—whether they are ever likely to go hand in hand.’

‘And what do you conclude?’ asked Myles.

‘I began in hope,’ said Mr. Blisset. ‘But the hope has died away. Music still remains—a wide, only partially trodden field, but for the rest——’ he shook his head. ‘Of course it is a gigantic undertaking,’ he went on, ‘and I have been engaged upon it for twenty years. But I think when my work is complete, that I shall have pretty well exhausted the subject.’

‘And your readers, too, perhaps,’ thought Myles, unwillingly forced to wonder whether there were much use in Mr. Blisset’s gigantic undertaking.

At this juncture Adrienne came into the room again; and Myles, beholding her for the first time in indoor dress, was sensible of a warmer, deeper feeling of admiration than he had hitherto experienced. There was a nameless foreign charm about her, which worked like a spell upon him. She held some trifling work in her hand, and coming quietly in, seated herself, and lent her attention to her uncle as he went on discoursing in a monotone, which by degrees fascinated Myles, so that he listened intently, and nolens volens.

It was only afterwards, in thinking it all over, that he remembered what a sad, dreary life it must be for the young girl, alone with this stupendous egotist, listening while he discoursed of—himself; helping him in his great work; writing letters relating to his vast undertaking; studying hard in order to supply him with facts. That was all true: but at the moment Myles did not think of it, for Mr. Blisset spoke upon subjects that the young man had thought about himself—subjects that made his heart burn—of governments and peoples, and the lessons which history may teach us.

And when Myles heard the treasures of learning and research, which Mr. Blisset had undoubtedly accumulated, brought to bear upon his own view of the question, and found that the speaker too was one of those whose watchword is—

his admiration speedily grew to enthusiasm, and he sat listening, his handsome face all flushed with eagerness, and was disposed, before the evening was over, to rank Mr. Blisset as a demigod.

Mr. Blisset was pleased, like other philosophers, with the admiration he excited, and surveyed the young man with a favouring eye.

‘You must come and see me again,’ said he. ‘It is always a pleasure to me to know one who has thought and felt upon these subjects. But I have talked till I feel almost exhausted. Adrienne, my love, suppose you give us some music.’

‘Yes, uncle,’ said she; ‘I like you to talk in that way,’ she added, touching his forehead with her lips. ‘Then you do yourself justice.’

There was a piano in the room, and Adrienne’s playing for her uncle when the day’s work was quite over—a sort of requiem upon the toil they had passed through—was as regular a thing as the falling of night upon the earth. There, in the world of harmony, was her kingdom—there she ruled; from thence she could sway the hearts of men.

The harmonies she made for them that evening were calm and grave—a pathetic Tema of Haydn’s; a solemn Ciaconna of Bach’s; a slow movement, the ‘singing together of the morning stars,’ of Beethoven’s.

Mr. Blisset shaded his long pale face with his long pale hand, and sat, with closed eyes, listening. Myles was listening too, but ear, with him, was subservient to eye and to thought. His gaze never left Adrienne, and the longer he looked, the deeper became the charm. There had slumbered in his mind, throughout these years of toil and striving, a latent, dormant, ideal of loveliness, purity, and fitness for worship, and it was as though, when Adrienne’s fingers touched the keys, that the door of heaven was opened, and a ray, falling upon her fair head, proclaimed her his soul’s dearest wish.

With a sigh, promptly repressed, he rose from his dream as she finished, and took his departure, after Mr. Blisset had made him promise to come again.

It was Saturday night, and Myles found the din of the town not yet hushed. He saw sights which were familiar enough to his eyes, heard sounds to which his ears were accustomed—drunken men reeling out of the public-houses which must be closed, brawling songs shouted hoarsely up and down—all the ugliness of rude, coarse natures taking their pleasure. He had never in his life found pleasure himself in such things; but equally, he had grown accustomed to the fact that others—men with whom he was on good terms—did take pleasure in them. He thought of the scene he had just left, and there shot a sudden sense of chill doubt and discomfiture through his frame of musing, high-strung happiness, a desperate feeling that those whom he saw about him in the streets now, were his class, his companions; that, ever since he had begun to hope and think, he had hoped for their advancement, their good, and he must not be untrue to them.

‘Pah!’ said he to himself, ‘as if she could ask a man to be false to what he ought to be true to. She’s like truth itself.’