Dolores

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  He broke off, seated himself on the table, and drew towards him paper and pens. Half an hour later a limping step came softly to the door, and was silent.

  Chapter VI.

  In the living again of the early time of after years, Dolores was to see in her student days the things of the student’s life as strangely least amongst many. There seemed from the first to be strange, bright promise in this being to face and in touch with the one, whom her young reverence had placed apart from the world, in the sphere which youth creates for those it sees the world’s great. Hence, underlying her visible lot, was a hidden thing to which other things grew to be nothing. In secret she watched the self-absorbed being, that seemed to think and move in regard of none, and when perplexity’s edge was blunt, of none regarded. In secret her hours were given to the dramas, which had fed her early eagerness for knowledge of her kind; and, grasped by her mind as given by his own, they seemed to bring her soul and his into subtle mutual knowledge. She spoke no word of this current of her life which was deeper than that which carried her fellows; sensitive to shame upon feelings she could only connect with her earlier self by yielding that self to their force; and in light discussion of the playwright, yielded her part to the lightness, drawing over what she sanctified the closest veil.

  With the opening of the last and lived-in year of this life which to others was passionless, the student-experience of reaching the fulness of student days, and facing their wane, was robbed of its heed by the knowledge of near communion with the creature first to her judging. The strait routine continued to give of what seemed so foreign to itself. It was at the first hearing of a lecture from his lips, that there came the first awakening to the hidden truth.

  She took long to forget what her pale calmness hid, as its minutes passed and its words fell. It was not that the words were as those she had looked for: there was little that strained the feelings or powers of those who listened. There was nothing but an academic dealing with the drama prescribed, with holding to the hearers’ needs, and checking of instinct to rise or probe beyond their following. But poor Dolores! There was little need of what her fancy had painted, for the begetting of tumult within her. As surely as this would have brought it, it was born of what was afforded. This simple doing of a common thing by the man of genius, this expending of the greatly-achieving energy on the unhonoured service, given for sustenance—it was an awakening of deeper heart-throbs. That month was a dream, bound up with the real by the struggle with the lassitude of mind, which came of the long emotional strain; and at its end, no word had passed between the teacher and the pupil who would have given this worth to a word.

  But there was difference in the months that followed. The classic drama was held a subject calling for some individual teaching; and there came a moment when she stood, with limbs that trembled, at the door behind which he awaited her alone. The essay whose judgment was to fill his hour of duty to her, passed from her hand to his, with a faltering of the one and a casual grasp of the other, which showed her herself as she was in his sight—one in an insignificant many. His dealing with it struck no note—as she had had a formless fear that it might—discordant with her conception of him. He propped his face in his hands with his eyes almost touching its pages; read them from the first to the last without diversion of glance; and then accomplished his task with as great a despatch as permitted its doing; limiting critical words to the parts that needed them, and showing what offended by drawing his pen through the passage. When he gathered up the papers at the end, he stayed his hand, and turned them as if he had found them not as their kind. Then putting them into her hands, without encountering her eyes, he pushed back his chair from the desk, and seemed to sink into musing. The lessons passed thus for weeks, even to the doubt at the end. At last, urged by the thought of their lessening number, she embodied in her essay a passage that showed a knowledge of his dramas. It was not an actual quotation or eulogy; for her instinct guarded her from stumbling—simply some words which implied a reading of his latest play. She saw his eyes arrested by the passage; and felt rather than saw, his glance at herself; but he spoke no word. Her sense of repulsion revealed in its pain how much the action had held of purpose; and she summoned her strength, and faced the following meeting with no emotion free. As she entered the room, his eyes went to her face.

  “You read my plays?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Dolores, feeling no power of further utterance.

  “Ah! that is well,” he said, looking into her face with a peering gaze, that seemed to be straining to grasp what it held. Then, turning to her papers, he added in his harsher tones, “Well, for your own sake;” and gave himself to his task.

  No further word, apart from their formal dealings, was said till the close of the term. As he gave her her papers for the last time, he fixed his eyes on hers in a manner to hold her in waiting for speech. When they had stood for some moments, he spoke in quick, deep tones.

  “How about some lessons with me on my own plays?”

  Dolores never recalled her answer. The memory she summoned was of his turning away with the words, “Ah, well, well; we shall see to it.”

  Coming upon him in the cloisters early in the following term, and passing him, believing she was not perceived, she was startled at a distance by his voice.

  “Five o’clock will do,” he called, as though some discussion of the hour had passed. “Five o’clock on Fridays. We begin this evening.”

  From that day Dolores knew the great man as a teacher, and was dealt with by him as a pupil. He laid aside the conventional mask he wore with women; and showed her himself, sparing her nothing of the brunt of his moods. At times he was full of forbearance and kindliness, in control of his nervous temper, and delighted to gratitude by the insight into his aims, which her early study and the affinity of their minds had given; at others, intolerant of the faintest faltering of grasp; and at others, in a mood of cynical bitterness to the world that ignored his service, which held her in heavy constraint, in its grudging of sign that exception was made of herself. He accepted no gratitude for the service he rendered; and presumed in no way upon it unless in assumption of a right to guide. It was not in chief his own plays that he taught, but, as he told her in a moment of emotion, “the greatest thing that life offered to men”—the study of men, as shown in nature, and, as grasped from nature, in the plays of the greater dramatists of different time and race; in whom, with a natural dignity which thrilled her to passion, he numbered himself: and at times he demanded not only understanding of these, but studies of character from her own pen.

  As the months grew few and priceless, and the days heavy with the knowledge, that this sufficing lot was but a passage of her life, about to be resolved into a burden of memories, for the rendering her other than she seemed in a barren sphere, Dolores found that her daily service to duty was a daily wrestling. The approaching change seemed the tearing of her being from the only nurture that was sustenance. And comfort was not a thing to be sought. There was denied to her grief the bitter softening of waking and moving in thraldom to itself. The public tests of student-proficience, which were in name the end of these passionate, prosaic years, lay before her, as they lay before those whose unchastened youthfulness had welcome for their young emulation. It was due from her to strive for much that had grown to be of childish things; and the hours and effort given to the dramatist’s demands, were owed in duty to the feebler ends.

  Dolores’ living of this time showed her the same as we have known her. Her bearing marked her light of heart, when the hidden burden lay heavily; the daylight hours of helpless wrestling were atoned by labour in the silence; and her voice was as calm, as her lips were white, when she showed the playwright that his counsels must be second to her academic toiling.

  “Ah!” he said, and was silent; but Dolores heard his confession of error in thinking her not as her fellows.

  “It is not,” she said, not trying longer to smother what came to her voi
ce, “that I do not value your teaching far above other things. It is only—you see I have given time to what I have done for you—that I have no choice but to work for credentials. I shall be obliged to support myself by teaching.”

  “Ah!” he said again; and Dolores again read the meaning of the word, and went away comforted.

  But this twofold struggling was not to meet the mockery of missing its purpose. There came other days with another struggling—days with the generous honour which is the portion only of the student in a student world; where the winner of success has no fellows but those who strive for the same, as worthy of striving. These days carried more of bitterness. The need for hourly effort was gone; and the reaction brought a time, to which nothing remained but the suffering knowledge of its passing.

  For a moment of this time we may watch her; as she sits at Miss Butler’s side in the common hall; and suffers in the sense, that to the other she is one of a generation going forth, and her lightness the natural lightness of youth rejoicing in its laurels.

  “You must be thankful that your degree belongs to the past,” Miss Butler said. “When a thing like that is looming, it is so much better behind than before.”

  “That is not the first time I have been admonished of thankfulness,” said Dolores, with humour in her tones. “I had a letter from a neighbour at home, observing that as success was the result of gifts and perseverance, so the way to avoid its snares was to be thankful for both. There is something new in the view that we should be thankful for perseverance. It is usual to be thankful for more pleasant things.”

  “The neighbour was your clergyman, I suppose?” said Miss Butler, laughing.

  “No,” said Dolores, with a rising smile as Dr Cassell’s image took shape in her mind; “in that case he would be my father. He is a doctor; but he does do religious work. I believe he is—or used to be—a Plymouth Brother.”

  “I once had a governess who was a Plymouth Brother,” said Miss Butler; “and I remember she used to tell me to be thankful for things. It was a perplexity to me that she was not a Plymouth Sister; but she was not. I have it on her own authority that she was a Plymouth Brother.”

  “The child is the father of the man,” said Dolores. “You were naturally sensitive early to genders. I remember how nervous I was under your grammatical probing, when it was new to me.”

  “Nervous?” said Miss Butler, with a twinkle in her eyes. “Why, what was there to be nervous of?”

  “What was there?” said Dolores. “It is a pity that confusion should begin at this stage. You would have little mercy for another in a similar position.”

  “I am afraid I am given to impatience,” said Miss Butler, as the laugh ceased. “You must take a lesson for your own experience.”

  “I hope I shall take many lessons from you,” said Dolores, colouring in the effort against the real reserve of the outwardly genial bread-winning woman.

  Miss Butler answered the effort with a smile which said enough to Dolores; and broke in a little nervously, colouring herself.

  “You will be thinking about your plans for the future soon, I suppose? I was going to speak to you of a plan—I mean I had a suggestion to make. Would you care to stay up here and work under me? The students are getting too many to be managed without help. The salary for some time would be nominal; but the principal thinks it would be increased as the duties grew heavier, and the post became recognised. It would be good for your prospects; and you are more than equal to the work.”

  The self-command which, with its hard exercise, had grown with Dolores’ growth, stood her in faithful stead; though afterwards she feared she had betrayed the bonds, which bound her to this straitened lot.

  The next days were graven to the end on her soul. She looked back on them many years after, and saw then her youth’s days of possibility. She saw them the last days of her youth. They were days of hope. It seemed that her nature expanded in their promise. Her power of friendship grew. For Perdita, the friend she loved, that love seemed hourly to deepen. It happened that she was another, who was not to pass from the college in the passing from, its children. She was to remain to give aid in minor duties to the principal, for whom, as for so many others, she exercised a charm. Dolores, in foreliving the time which she saw a time of her own approach to joy, rejoiced also in seeing it a time of a comrade’s watchfulness. There was relief, in the fulness of her own experience, in the loving and guiding this weaker moral creature.

  It was with faith in her father’s pleasure, that she wrote to her family the news of this bending of her future. His awaited letter lingered in coming; and there was an expectant smile on her lips when at length she broke its seal.

  “MY DAUGHTER,—I have considered the plan for your future which you laid before me, and see there is much to be said for it. I have, however, another to suggest, with which it is my desire that you shall comply, and that your compliance will be willing, and for your happiness. Your sisters and youngest brother are at an age when education must begin in earnest. There is no school for girls within daily distance, and none for boys but that where Bertram is teaching, and which offers little in its lower forms. I cannot send them away to school. The decrease in my income puts it out of the question. My proposal is, that you shall settle at home, and undertake their teaching. A governess able to do this as you would do it, would require a salary larger than you could supply, if you should accept the post you describe, and offer to provide it; and would occasion trouble in the household. I need not tell you that your mother would not consent. Bertram will welcome your help in his studies; we shall all be glad of your companionship; and a life at home will in many ways be better for yourself.

  “God bless you, my daughter—Your affectionate father,

  CLEVELAND HUTTON.”

  Dolores went with the letter in her hands to be alone. The first hour of blind belief, that this was a thing which clashed with her own claims on herself, was by the others an hour of ease. But soon the hours were dark. Soon she saw what her father asked through her father’s sight—simply the accepting of a service to her kin for one to strangers. She neither rebelled then, nor set her face to sacrifice. It was her way to see her life, as in the background rather than the fore, of the lives of others. It was to duty she owed her service—the choice that held the best for the lives on which it bore; and a service untouched by generous effort—given simply as owed. She knew that her father’s letter had truth in its every word. But that which bound her, was the something deeper than its words. Beneath them she read the outcry for her companionship; of declining years in a home that held its weariness; of yearning for the presence, which shadowed the prime knit with a nobler soul. Dolores’ survey of a crisis in her own experience was primitive and stern. For others might be honest doubt, and blameless wavering at a parting of the ways: for herself there was a road to be taken, and another to be left. On the one side lay effort for strangers, to whom others’ effort sufficed; on the other the claims of kindred, of her father and her father’s children.

  She grew older in the days that followed. It was not that she struggled: the struggle had been but of an hour. It was simply that she suffered, and that the suffering went deep. Through the much that was hard to say and do, she still saw grief a lesser evil than justice a good. And when the hardest came, it was as one who lived the unreal that she saw and heard.

  “Ah, you are going? Ah, well. Do not forget what has passed between us. I shall not forget. I have spent much time in teaching here; but I have taught none. They have all been strangers. You have been my pupil.”

  Chapter VII.

  The village lay in its silent, unprogressing peacefulness—meeting Dolores as it had met her four years earlier, on the threshold of her womanhood. Now that womanhood seemed old. Those four bright, troubled years, which had left this early world the same! As she spoke and moved beneath the pressure of her pain, she found herself simply dwelling through a dream on their difference, had nothing been sought but
the sameness. But the living beneath her pain was not that which was before her. It was the living above it: and she found she had hardly faced what she had freely chosen—the suffering living of this visible, unmeaning, demanding round. For there were other things that were the same.

  “Oh, Dolores, I cannot be thankful enough, that you have come home for good,” said Bertram. “In a life that grows more hopeless with every day, it seems the last straw to have nobody to make a companion of.”

  “Why, Bertram, what is the trouble?” said Dolores.

  “Nothing, beyond what you know. But it is enough to feel one’s youth slipping away; and have no chance of doing what must be done then or never; and which will spoil one’s life if it is not done.”

  “Oh, Bertram, is it so impossible that you should go to college?” said Dolores. “Cannot you or father see any way, in which it could be managed?”

  “I can see a way very well,” said Bertram. “Simply by the mater’s making a little effort against expense for a few years. But father cannot—is not allowed to see it; and I can drudge on in a schoolroom of bumpkins, when a course at Oxford would open a career. It is not a light matter to me, Dolores. I am nearly two-and-twenty; and the years for it will be gone. One cannot begin one’s life too late. But not a farthing further is to be wasted on me. Father takes credit to himself for having kept me sheltered and fed, while I should have starved or died of exposure, if he had not.”

  “I suppose his income is really very much less,” said Dolores, in nervous uncertainty how to respond. “This fall in the tithes has made such a difference. He cannot do things for the younger ones, as he once intended.”

  “But they are not living the best years of their youth,” said Bertram. “It does seem that some sort of effort might be made, to save the whole of my life. Father and the mater think that so long as I can just support myself, so as to be off their hands, I am not to be troubled about.”