DISCORD.
The scene once again the drawing-room of Mr. Blisset’s house; its
occupants, Myles and Adrienne: he just arrived; she smiling to receive
him, and he smiling in answer, as one might smile on suddenly finding a
flower peeping up through the snow.
‘I rather hoped you would come to-night, to do some German,’ said she,
‘but I did not think you would come so early.’
‘We are working half-time. We began to-day,’ said Myles.
‘Half-time already? I thought there was such an enormous supply of
cotton somewhere in the country.’
‘So there is, somewhere; but it will have to be bought with a price
before it can be got at. Lots of other places have begun half-time
to-day. And it’s not only that cotton is dear; there must have come a
reaction after last year’s over-production. It was tremendous. There is
a bad time coming for the workers; but those who can afford to wait,
and who know how to use their chances, will make some big fortunes.’
‘Some others will lose them, I think.’
‘Naturally. The one goes with the other.’
‘But how will you all manage when the hard time comes?’
‘We shall pull through,’ said poor short-sighted Myles, little dreaming
of the depths of misery, and what he, and such as he--proud, honest,
self-dependent men--considered deepest degradation, which lay in the
not far-distant future. ‘We shall pull through. If it is only half-wage
we get, we shall have to do with half-doings; pinch a bit, and clem a
bit, and put on a good face.’
‘But,’ said she gravely, ‘my uncle and Canon Ponsonby were saying the
other night that the time must most likely come when there would be no
work and no wages.’
‘If the war lasts a long time, or the ports are very well blockaded, it
may come to that,’ said Myles, calmly. ‘But we, and a good many others
besides us, have money laid by. We must live on that till better times
come.’
In six months from that time, thousands of working homes were stripped
of every stick of furniture that could possibly be done without. Many a
savings bank had collapsed. Many a stout-hearted toiler had to bend his
proud, unwilling feet towards the relief committee, or the guardians,
and, with burning face, and bursting heart and down-drooped head, tell
his tale, and ask for ‘charity.’ Not yet had the ‘Lancashire Lad’
sent to the _Times_ that pathetic account of the shame-faced girls
who stopped him to ask him, ‘Con yo help us a bit?’ that appeal which
brought the tears to thousands of eyes of readers in every end of the
earth. None of this had happened yet. The great ‘panic’ had not come
swooping down upon the land; but it was not long before the cry of the
distressed must go up.
Myles Heywood, after this his first half-day’s enforced idleness,
perhaps not ill-pleased to be freed for a few hours, on a fine
afternoon, from his toil, said he had no fears for the future. He felt
himself strong: felt that a little pinching and ‘clemming’ would do him
no material harm, and smiled at the storm-cloud hurrying across the
Atlantic.
They went on talking upon different topics; but while she questioned
or answered, his jealous eyes detected some change in her. She was
not cold to him; there was the same genial grace and cordiality, and
yet there was a change. In a pause which presently ensued, a footstep
passed on the flags outside. She raised her head quickly and looked up,
with parted lips and a startled expression.
‘Do you expect some one?’ asked Myles; and so much were the words a
part of the thought, that he scarcely knew he had spoken them, until
she answered,
‘I--oh no! Why should I? But shall we not read some more of
“Iphigenia”? Here is the book.’
She did not look at him. There was a sudden constrained expression
upon her face as she opened the book, and he as suddenly felt his
heart sink with a reasonless, aimless, lover’s pang. He said nothing,
however, but obediently began to read. But neither his heart nor
her’s was in the work, as usual. She had told him that he was an apt
scholar; his intelligence was ready, and his ear quick, and attuned
to the Lancashire gutturals, and its broad ‘a’s’ and ‘u’s’ found
little difficulty with the corresponding German sounds. Myles, for
his part, had treasured up that hour that she devoted to him once or
twice a week, as if it had been some precious coin or gem. Then she
was all attention to him; then she was thinking of nothing else but
him and his lesson, and the idea was heavenly. But this very evening,
for the first time, he was obliged to let himself understand that her
attention wandered, that she sometimes scarcely heard what he said,
and his anxiety and foreboding increased every moment. He was no
favoured lover; he had striven assiduously to conceal every sign of
his devotion, for fear it should annoy her, or repel her. He had no
right to ask her why her attention strayed, what made her absent and
_distraite_, and that very fact made him the more sensitive to the
change in her manner.
He read on, and translated, mechanically, dreamily, till he came to the
words:
‘Und künft’ge Thaten drangen wie die Sterne,
Rings um uns her, unzählbar aus der Nacht.’
‘“And future deeds,”’ he slowly translated, while the sense of discord
and oppression grew every moment stronger; ‘“and future deeds pressed
about us, out of the night, countless as the stars.”’
She had not heard a word. He looked at her, with eyes that dared
not be reproachful, and said nothing. There was pain, there was
embarrassment, in her expression. Then she suddenly said,
‘I want to speak to you. Let us put away this book. I want to tell you
something that I ought to have told you before.’
At once his face changed; the cloud fled; he turned to her with a smile.
‘Something you ought to have told me----’ he began.
The door was opened. Just outside they heard the voice of Brandon, Mr.
Blisset’s old servant, saying,
‘I will see whether Mr. Blisset is at liberty, sir, if you will step in
here.’
Then he threw the door wide open and announced,
‘Mr. Mallory.’
Sebastian came into the room, and Adrienne rose, feeling like one in
a dream, looking like a person who has received overwhelming news of
some kind. She saw Sebastian: she felt that Myles was there--felt it
in every fibre of her being, and while Sebastian spoke to her, she was
only intensely conscious that Myles was gazing at them both; and she
wondered, with an intensity that amounted to pain, what he was thinking
of her.
She gazed at Sebastian, as he came up to her, looking as if he saw no
one but her, with extended hand, and she heard him as he said,
‘Miss Blisset, I little thought before Saturday, that I should have the
happiness of meeting you again--in Thanshope!’
With that their hands closed, and her voice said (with a vibration),
‘It is certainly long since we met. I am glad to see you again.’
Myles had risen with a swift, almost unconscious impulse, and was now
in the window, leaning against it, and looking into the night, which
was now falling fast. He closed his eyes. He felt his own emotion to be
almost grotesque in its intensity, but it was so--he could not help it.
The devil jealousy had seized his very heart-strings on the instant,
and clutched them relentlessly. There was one thing, and one only,
that he could do--having no right to call her to account, he could
suffer in silence, and speak gently to her--after all, he reminded
himself, she had been exquisitely kind to him, and he had no sort of
claim upon such kindness.
While Myles fought this silent, desperate battle with the feelings
which urged him to rush out of the room, and leave those two together,
Sebastian was saying,
‘I came to see Mr. Blisset on some business, and his servant asked me
to come in here. I fear I disturb you.’
‘Not at all. May I introduce--but Mr. Heywood tells me he knows you
already.’
She turned to Myles, who also turned. His very emotion made him rise to
the occasion. Pride and self-esteem, respect and regard for Adrienne,
modesty as to his own merits, all urged him to put on an outwardly calm
demeanour; and Sebastian, whatever astonishment he might feel, was of
course far too civilised to betray it.
‘We have met already to-day, earlier,’ remarked Mr. Mallory,
courteously bowing towards the young man, who, on his part, bowed his
head gravely and proudly, and wished his employer good evening. If
Adrienne had not flushed up, and looked with such startled, conscious
eyes, and such a half-excited smile, around her, he could have done
even more--he might have been able to force a smile too, but under the
circumstances it was physically impossible.
Adrienne, turning aside, as if to push forward a chair, looked at him,
but in his then state of mind he could not understand the glance;
all he could do was to answer it with another, of bitter, clouded,
miserable feeling; sorrow, pain, and a sort of premonitory despair.
Sebastian did not see Adrienne’s look, but he did see this one of
Myles’s, and it made him feel suddenly grave and doubtful. In an
instant he understood how things were with Myles: as to Adrienne’s
feelings he was utterly in the dark. He remembered one morning, when
she, relieved through his efforts of great anxiety, had clasped his
hand, and, looking up at him with brimming eyes, had said, ‘There is
nothing I would not do for you.’ They had been almost the last words
she had said to him. The day afterwards he had lost her. He knew
nothing of what she thought of him now, but he realised immediately
that the stiff-necked young workman, whose pride and reserve resisted
all his efforts to break through them, was over head and ears in love
with the woman of whom he had been thinking, when he spoke to Helena
Spenceley of ‘the nicest girl I ever knew.’ It might be preposterous:
it might be that young, handsome, and more than ordinarily
high-spirited and ambitious young workman had no business to fall in
love with young ladies in a superior position in life; but all that did
not prevent the fact that such an occurrence had taken place before,
and would take place again. Sebastian knew it, and, reasoning from the
interest he himself took in Myles, did not underrate the importance of
the discovery he had made.
‘Have you seen the evening edition of the Manchester paper?’ he asked
Myles, as he seated himself.
‘To-night? No.’
‘The war news seems rather important. I hope our neutrality won’t be
put in peril. It would be an everlasting disgrace to us if it were to
be interrupted for a moment.’
‘Yes, it would,’ assented Myles, dimly conscious that it was a superior
sophistication which was able to converse thus easily upon foreign
affairs--under the circumstances.
‘I suppose you take a great interest in the war too?’ said Sebastian,
turning to Adrienne.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Mr. Heywood and I have the audacity to dispute
even with my uncle sometimes.’
‘Mr. Blisset is your uncle?’
‘Yes. Oh! I forgot you could not know; I live with him here. Have you
known him before?’
‘Never. But I find he is my tenant I came to see him on a matter of
business and----’
‘Will you step into the other room, sir?’ interrupted Brandon, coming
in.
Sebastian rose.
‘Shall I see you again?’ he asked, stooping a little towards Adrienne,
who looked up to him with the same distinct, though well-repressed,
agitation or excitement of some kind in her face.
‘It will depend upon how long you stay; I do not know,’ said she; and
her voice was not calm and deliberate as usual.
Myles sat still, his face composed, watching those two; realising her
grace and beauty, and his charm of manner, and all those advantages in
the background. No girl--he felt it keenly--need be ashamed of the fact
that she had fallen captive to the wooing of Sebastian Mallory. His
heart grew heavier and colder.
‘Then I will say good evening, in case I do not see you again,’ said
Sebastian.
They shook hands, and Mallory followed the waiting Brandon.
Then they were left alone. Adrienne’s face had changed; the excitement
had gone from it; it was pale; the glow had faded; her voice sounded
tired when she spoke.
‘When Mr. Mallory came,’ she said, forcing a smile, ‘I was just going
to explain to you that I knew him--or rather, had known him a few years
ago. It was curious that he should call at that very moment.’
‘Yes,’ said Myles, in a voice colourless as her own.
‘Once he was very kind,’ she pursued, ‘when my father was in trouble.
He saved me a great deal of anxiety and distress.’
‘Yes,’ again assented Myles. ‘I am sure he is very considerate, and
means to do right.’
‘You think so! Then your opinion has changed?’
‘Yes, very much. He is not at all the kind of man I supposed him to be.’
‘I am glad you have discovered that. I am sure you and he will get on,
now that the misunderstanding is cleared up.’
Myles rose, smiling rather a faint, miserable smile. He felt it
impossible not to give one little thrust in the midst of the agony he
was himself enduring.
‘You know I am hot-tempered, and, I am afraid, prejudiced,’ said he
quietly; ‘but if you had mentioned to me that you knew Mr. Mallory, and
that he was not the kind of man I supposed, I should--perhaps I might
have behaved more rationally.’
Adrienne stood speechless. She made neither apology nor excuse. When he
said good night, she put out her hand silently, and did not meet his
eyes. His own manner was quite to coldness. Thus they parted. Myles, as
he walked home, could not forget the verse from ‘Iphigenia,’ which he
had laboriously translated:
‘Und künft’ge Thaten drangen wie die Sterne,
Rings um uns her, unzahlbar aus der Nacht.’
In that moment he doubted bitterly whether any deeds, whether anything
but woes, lay for him in the future.
Meanwhile Adrienne was left alone to reflect upon the situation, to
think of Sebastian’s smile, and of Myles Heywood’s pale face and
glowing eyes; and, after due reflection, either to congratulate or
commiserate herself, as she thought most appropriate.