Probation

Monday morning, with the business of this work-a-day world in full swing, or rather in preparation for the week’s swing of labour. In the freshness and rawness of a six o’clock morning air, Myles walked with his sister to his work. He and Mary were accustomed to do all their private conversation during these walks. They sometimes discussed their mother and her doings, and the discussion took away from the bitterness which silence would have left to rankle there.

To-day Myles was exceedingly silent, but Mary, who knew him and loved him better than any other soul, felt that the silence was no sign of dejection.

The brother and sister separated on arriving at the factory. Mary went to the weaving shed, and Myles to the warehouse. After breakfast the same arrangement took place; but the day was not destined to be one of pleasant memories for Myles.

In the course of the forenoon he was in the outer office, with Wilson the overlooker, when the latter, glancing through the window, remarked,

‘There’s Mrs. Mallory coming. I see her carriage.’

Myles made no answer, for the information did not seem to him of any particular importance; but Wilson went on, in a voice which had grown by anticipation smooth and respectful,

‘I expect she wants to see Mr. Sutcliffe, and he’s out. So she’ll have to put up with me.’

With that he stepped up to a square of looking-glass, which he retained despite all Myles’s gibes and jeers, over the mantelpiece, and smoothed his hair.

‘And Myles, lad, as Mrs. Mallory’s coming, and may have business to speak about, perhaps you’d better——’

‘Go?’ said Myles, tranquilly, though the suggestion was highly irritating to him. ‘That I’m not going to do, old chap. I’ve got these figures to write down; and here I stay and write them, if fifty Mrs. Mallorys were coming.’

Wilson made no answer. Myles’s position was too near his own for him to be able to order him out of the office; but, not quite satisfied, he waited, snatching up bundles of papers and sample cops, shoving an empty skip aside, and endeavouring to make the rough office look a little tidier.

‘What a pity,’ remarked Myles, sarcastically, ‘that you haven’t got a few evergreens and some paper roses. I’d invest in a few, if I were you, and keep them in the cupboard, ready for such an occasion as this.’

With which he seated himself at the desk in the window, which commanded a view of the street, and began to write.

Wilson walked up and down, watching the carriage as it drew nearer, and Myles felt contemptuous and superior.

‘She’s got Miss Spenceley in the carriage with her,’ observed Wilson, reconnoitring over Myles’s head. ‘They go a deal together, those two.’

Myles looked up sharply as he heard this. The carriage had stopped; Wilson had rushed to open the door. Myles saw the open carriage standing at the gates, and how one lady sat waiting while the other got out. The face of the waiting lady was turned towards the office.

‘Miss Spenceley’—the sister of the man who had displayed his contemptible character to Adrienne Blisset the other night. It was not likely that Myles should glance at her with very amiable or respectful feelings. He saw a graceful figure leaning nonchalantly back in the carriage; he had a general impression of a brilliantly beautiful brunette face, large dark eyes, an extremely elegant costume, a hat, or bonnet, with a waving plume, a parasol covered with lace—and that was all. But he had long sight; he saw none of her brother’s expression on the girl’s countenance, which was frank and open, as well as beautiful.

‘I’d bet something they don’t get on well together,’ he thought; and then he heard a silk dress rustle over the threshold, and a woman’s voice answering indifferently Wilson’s profuse salutations. Myles could not help looking up, though he tried not to do so. He had often seen Mrs. Mallory before; but she had never seen him. Now she was looking full at him.

She was a handsome woman, of some forty-six years of age, but looking younger when one did not notice certain lines about her eyes and mouth—lines of meanness as well as of pride. She was very richly dressed in black; there was silk, and lace, and perfume about her. She was tall, fair, pale, and inclined towards embonpoint. She looked Myles over from head to foot; then, turning to Wilson, said,

‘Is Mr. Sutcliffe in?’

‘I’m very sorry, ’m; he isn’t. He has had to go to Bolton, and won’t be back till afternoon.’

‘Oh!’ said she, pausing as if in thought; and then added, ‘Give me the papers Mr. Sutcliffe was speaking about the other day; they are sure to have been left ready. I will take them home with me, and look them over.’

Myles had turned again to his work, and was bending over a page of figures, wroth with himself that, instead of being able undisturbedly to add up the figures he had put down, he could not help listening to Mrs. Mallory’s voice.

‘Yes, ’m; I’ll find the papers. They’ll be in Mr. Sutcliffe’s room. But won’t you sit down ’m, while I look for them?’

‘No; make haste, please,’ was all she said, a little impatiently; for Mr. Wilson’s manner was, to put it mildly, fussy; and Myles, feeling the influence of that tone, despite all his efforts, began to count half aloud:

‘Three and five, nine—eight, I mean; and seven fifteen, and——’

‘Here they are, ’m. Allow me to make them into a parcel, ’m: it will be more convenient.’

‘No; you can take them to the carriage, and I will look them over when I have time.’

‘Myles, lad, suppose you were to take the papers to the carriage,’ said Wilson, wishing to appear superior.

Myles looked up, surprised; he could read the simple, fussy character of the faithful old cashier to its very depths, and knew his motives exactly. He had no wish to disoblige him, and, with an amused half-smile, took the papers and walked to Mrs. Mallory’s carriage.

The young lady, Miss Spenceley, was looking somewhat impatiently towards the office.

‘Oh!’ said she, when she saw Myles, ‘is Mrs. Mallory in there? Has she nearly finished her business, do you think?’

Myles had seen the girl many a time before; she was the beauty and the heiress, par excellence, of Thanshope; the only daughter, as her brother was the only son, of her parents. The young man, looking at her more attentively than ever before, could find no trace of likeness, or his scorn of her relative might have displayed itself in his voice.

‘I really don’t know,’ said he, in answer to her question. ‘She is talking to the cashier.’

‘Oh, thanks!’ said she, turning abruptly away, and looking impatiently up the street.

Myles returned to the office, and as he re-entered it Mrs. Mallory was saying to Wilson,

‘Because I expect my son—your master—will be at home again shortly, and of course he will wish to inquire into everything that is going on.’

There was something in the tone in which this was said which rasped upon Myles’s feelings—a calm superiority which he felt to be extremely needless.

‘Then we may expect Mr. Mallory to come and take possession some time soon?’ Wilson hailed the news as if it were a personal favour.

‘I expect so. I do not know the exact time; but of course everything will be ready for him?’

‘Will he be ready for everything?’ thought Myles, with strong contempt; his old spite—it deserves no nobler name—against the absent, unknown Sebastian Mallory rose angrily to the surface again. ‘Our master, indeed!’ he reflected angrily. ‘I wonder if he’s ever proved himself his own master yet?’

Wilson, by an unlucky combination of circumstances, was at this moment inspired to turn pointedly to Myles and remark:

‘Now, Myles, do you hear what Madam Mallory says? I told you the master was coming, and you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘It remains to be seen whether “master” is the right word to use,’ said Myles, with deliberation. ‘In this case I have my doubts about it.’

He bent to his book once more, but not before he had seen the stony stare in the light blue eyes of Mrs. Mallory, and the gaze of haughty astonishment upon her pale, high-featured face—a stare which seemed to say, ‘I have seen human nature in many obtrusive and ill-bred aspects, but never in one which so much required putting into its proper place as this.’

Myles smiled rather grimly to himself; he hated to exchange such civilities with any one, most of all with a woman, but his spirit could ill brook the unquestionably haughty and supercilious manner of Mrs. Mallory, and the profuse mouthing of the word ‘master’ by Wilson’s complaisant lips. Myles had, up to now, utterly refused to call any man master, and he was not going to begin it in the case of a man whom he had never seen; and to whom local report gave anything but a decided or master-like character.

‘There’s no call for you to be so rude,’ said the cashier, shocked and reproachful.

Myles turned to him.

‘Will you understand,’ said he, with lips that had grown tight, ‘that a man can’t both do arithmetic and talk?’

‘Who is the young man?’ inquired Mrs. Mallory of the discomfited Wilson.

‘You must excuse him, ’m. He’s one of the foremen: he knows no better.’

Myles made no sort of comment upon this apology, content that they should say what they liked about it, so long as they did not require him to acknowledge an unknown ‘master.’

Mrs. Mallory, after another and a prolonged stare of the said haughty astonishment, which stare wasted itself upon the back of the delinquent, swept away, leaving Myles with his lips twisted into a fine sneer—an expression to which they were wont too readily to bend.

Myles’s temper had assuredly not been improved by the occurrences of the morning. It was destined to be yet more severely tried before his return to work in the afternoon.

On leaving the factory he parted from Mary, as he had an errand in the town, and told her he would be home in half an hour for dinner. He did his errand, and took his way home. And as he arrived at his own gate there came out from it a man whom Myles recognised as a person to whom he bore no friendly feelings. He was named James Hoyle, and was by trade a small shopkeeper, in the stationery and evangelical-religious-book line: occasionally he acted as a preacher of a denunciatory and inflammatory description; always he was a missionary—so, at least, he said.

To him and to his style of preaching and piety Myles had a most thorough dislike; he believed him to be a hypocrite, and in this case his dislike was well grounded enough, and founded on facts.

‘Good morning, Myles. The Lord bless you!’ observed Mr. Hoyle, holding out a dingy, fat hand. No lowest scum of the Levites, of whatever section, whatever persuasion, could have looked, thought Myles, sleeker, or more as if his sleekness were an ill-gotten gain.

Out of tune as Myles was with all the world, this apparition and his tone of familiarity was not of a kind likely to restore harmony to the jarring notes of his life’s music. Drawing up his proud figure to its utmost height, and looking with his contemptuous eyes down upon the pudgy individual who addressed him, he said,

‘Good morning. I’ll thank you not to make so free with my name. Who gave you leave to call me “Myles”?’

He ignored the outstretched hand, having an objection to touching what he considered to be both literally and metaphorically dirty fingers.

Hoyle looked up at him, and his eyes twinkled.

‘I’ve been taking spiritual counsel with your mother, my dear young friend. A sweet, precious soul! It is a privilege to converse with her; she teaches one so much.’

‘Does she? It’s a pity but she could teach you to be sober and honest,’ said Myles, with distinct enunciation and scornful mien, holding himself somewhat aloof from Mr. Hoyle. ‘Anyhow,’ he continued, ‘until you’ve managed it—the soberness and honesty, I mean (you needn’t look as if you didn’t know. I saw where you came out of at eleven o’clock on Saturday night)—till then, you’ll please give this house a clear berth, and my mother may take her spiritual counsel—if she wants it—with a different sort of person from you.’

He was about to turn in at the gate, but, with his hand on the latch, was arrested by an expression on the face of the other.

‘The day will come, young man, when you will wish you had treated me—me, of all people—with more respect,’ said he with a smile, for he had a flexible face, which appeared to lend itself even more easily to smiles than to other expressions. Yet the smile was an evil one.

He turned and walked away, and Myles, in some annoyance, went into the house. Usually Mrs. Heywood had the field to herself in the exercise of her tongue. Edmund occasionally indulged in a burst of temper, but always to his own disadvantage. Mary never answered at all. Myles alone, as has been before said, could, with a certain look and tone, show himself master of the fretful, repining embodiment of scolding and selfishness whom they had the misfortune to call mother. To-day he was in no mood to ‘stand nonsense,’ and as he went into the kitchen he said, hanging up his cap, and taking Edmund’s hand, as he seated himself beside him,

‘What does yon James Hoyle want always hanging about here? The chap is never out of the place, and I can’t abide him. If he doesn’t give us a little more of his room and less of his company I must speak to him. Mary, lass, I hope thou’rt not got agate of meeting-going.’

He spoke with perfect good-nature and good temper, not suspecting anything but that all the rest of the company were equally averse with himself to Mr. Hoyle’s visits, and he smiled a little as he looked at Mary.

‘Me!’ said his sister, laughing. ‘Nay, I’m not come to that. As long as I live I’st go to th’ parish church every Sunday, and sit in th’ old place——’

‘Alongside o’ Harry Ashworth,’ put in Edmund, gravely, at which Mary’s cheeks flushed, and she went on somewhat more rapidly.

‘For I make nowt at o’ out o’ the meetin’-house.’

‘Perhaps you’ll end by leaving th’ owd place for an older, and going clean over to Rome,’ said Mrs. Heywood, who had been bending over the fire, looking at a pan of potatoes, and who now raised rather a flushed face from that occupation; ‘choose how, there’st nowt be said here against James Hoyle, the godly man! and it’s more than likely that you’ll see more of him than you have done yet.’

‘How do you mean?’ asked her eldest son, turning towards her; ‘you mean that Jimmy Hoyle would come here a second time after I’d forbidden him the house?’

He laughed, as if he thought it rather a good joke.

‘You’d turn him out of the house? That’s like you!’ said Mrs. Heywood, emptying the potatoes into a tureen.

‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Myles, in some surprise at her whole demeanour.

‘Well, you’ll get to know, then,’ she retorted, without meeting his eye. ‘A good man is like the salt of the earth. He can make even a sinful house holy, and bring a blessing on it. James Hoyle and me is going to be married. We’st be wed this day three week, and then I’d like to know how you’ll forbid him the house.’

There was a momentary silence, during which Myles, who had risen, stared at his mother in an incredulous manner. Mary, after a moment, turned pale, and sat down upon a chair in the background. Edmund’s lips were curled into a sneer.

‘Mother!’ said Myles, confronting her, and somewhat forcing her eyes to meet his. ‘Is this a joke that you’re playing upon us? Because, if so, it’s a very poor one.’

‘Joke!’ she retorted, her voice rising to shrillness. ‘What should it be a joke for, I’d like to know? Have I such comfort in my children that I shouldn’t be glad of the help of a godly man—oh, and he is a godly man—like that?’

‘That’s a poor answer, mother,’ said Myles, who had thrust his hand into his breast, as if to repress some anger or emotion. ‘Your children have never done anything to cause you uneasiness.’

‘Do go on blowing your own trumpet!’ Mrs. Heywood exhorted him.

‘Nay, I’ve no more to say about it. But I want a better answer than that your children’s conduct drove you to marry that great, idle, greasy, sanctimonious, all-praying, no-doing brute—he isn’t a man. I can understand him wanting to marry you, you’ve thirty pounds a year of your own: but that you should look at him!’ He made an expressive gesture of contempt.

‘So it’s my money he’s marrying me for,’ said Mrs. Heywood; and no girl of eighteen could have spoken with more anger at the suggestion. ‘That’s it, is it? Ay, ay! “Honour thy father and thy mother”—do!’

‘Are you giving us an example of honouring our father?’ he inquired, growing quieter in tone as his anger and disgust grew more intense, and her determination (he saw) more fixed. ‘Or is your present plan likely to lead us to honour you? No, mother; I can’t see what a woman like you wants with marrying again; though if it had been a decent man, let him be never so rough, I’d have put up with him, but that—why, I saw him on Saturday night coming out of the lowest public-house in Thanshope—half-drunk—as plain as I see you. But here’s the long and short of it. That man certainly never enters this house again. I’ll let him know that. And if you do marry him, he’ll please to find a home for you; for neither he nor you will share ours. Mark my words—if you go to him you leave us for ever.’

‘Mother, thou’ll ne’er be so wicked,’ said Mary, from her corner, in tears.

‘Hold thy tongue, thou hussy! calling thy mother wicked,’ said Mrs. Heywood, sharply.

‘I’ll not have Molly called by that name,’ said Myles, composedly. ‘Remember, it’s I that am master here, when all’s said and done. I’ll have no such nonsense carried on. So let us hear—do you intend to be a wise woman or a fool?’

The words were not at all rudely spoken, but they were unfortunately chosen. They incensed Mrs. Heywood, and she replied sharply,

‘I intend to marry James Hoyle.’

‘Then,’ said he, slowly, as if giving her an opportunity to recant, ‘it’s settled that I intend to have no more to do with you.’

‘Oh, Myles, don’t be so hard on her!’ implored Mary, coming forward and laying her hand upon his arm.

‘My good lass,’ said he, ‘dry thy eyes, and be glad thou’rt not called upon to be hard, as thou calls it.’

Mary did not expostulate. Under the gentleness of the words she read a decision which she did not attempt to combat.

‘Mary’s our good angel,’ remarked Edmund from the couch; and his eyes, too, fell upon her with affection.

‘A nice angel you’ll find her when I’m gone,’ grumbled Mrs. Heywood.

‘Once more,’ broke in Myles’s voice, ‘I tell you, mother, I have spoken to you for the last time, unless I hear that this abominable thing is given up—for the last time.’

‘Myles!’ implored his sister. But she might as well have tried to move one of the great boulders on Blackrigg as make him soften or yield one jot.

‘Come, lass!’ he observed to her. ‘Those that must work must eat. The time’s gone by in this precious palaver, and we’ve only twenty minutes left.’

He sat down and helped himself, and tried to look as if nothing had happened; soon, however, he laid down his knife and fork, and told Mary, who had not even pretended to eat, that it was time to go.

She put her shawl over her head, and, saying good afternoon to Edmund, they went out.