Dolores

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  With instant obedience, as if almost wearied by the hour they had lived, they rose together.

  “Ah!” said Claverhouse, with so much of the old sudden vigour of the word, that Soulsby was startled; “so we have had the hour I have lived in. You know it all. It can be as if these years had never been—even though they must remain.”

  They clasped hands in silence; taking their leave in the manner of the many partings of the older time; and turned from each other with a quiet word of meeting on the morrow. Soulsby followed, as Dolores moved to the door; believing, without the faintest bitterness, that his own presence was forgotten. But the sensitive ear of blindness was skilled in the subtlest inflections of the language of the sounds of movement.

  “Soulsby, my friend!” said Claverhouse, with an utterance of the last word which gave it a burden of eloquence. “This is not the least of the services you have done me.”

  Soulsby turned, and grasped the hand that was held to him, and hastened after Dolores without a word.

  They walked in silence through the streets. Dolores was living again with each pulse of her heart, the hour which seemed the undoing of the five hard years, whose every day was a day of bereavement; and Soulsby shrank from breaking her musing, or seeming to seek her confidence. He felt all the natural wonder on that time of the past, when the lives of Dolores and the playwright had mingled. He pondered with strong emotion and eagerness for fuller knowledge; speaking much to himself that could not pass his lips.

  He spoke to himself of a scene in a country churchyard—feeling no flush on his cheeks, or quiver of personal pain at his heart—questioning simply the troubled way of the woman he loved with the love of a subject and a friend. So her history was sadder and nobler yet. But why had they suffered thus? Why had the years been spent by them thus—by him with his blindness forsaken, by her in the empty constraint of that parsonage home? He could not tell. The part played by the friend of his own youth—the slow-worded father—in the drama held from his knowledge, was hidden from him; and he did not understand. But there was to come understanding.

  One evening, when the Huttons’ return to Millfield was at hand, he went to fetch Dolores from the playwright’s dwelling, where she spent many hours of each day; her father and sister believing the intercourse to be that of teacher and pupil. He was earlier than usual; and entering the room unperceived, stood for some moments watching.

  Dolores was reading from the very manuscript which had defied his efforts; and Claverhouse was leaning towards her in eager listening, his face so free from the familiar signs of trouble, that the friend’s heart misgave him for the different future. He waited, listening, till the full-toned voice was silent.

  “Ah I there is nothing good in it,” said Claverhouse, in his old vehement manner. “My time for work was past; and my heart was heavy, so that I lived too much in my own life. There is nothing good in it.”

  “There is great good in it,” said Dolores, turning the pages with grave scrutiny. “You must give yourself to it again, and carry it on to its end. It is not like the work of your prime; but then it is not the work of your prime. It will have its own value for that.”

  “Ah! it is good to be talked to as a thinking man, even if an old blind one,” said Claverhouse.

  Soulsby’s heart smote him, for every loyally-meant assurance, which had wanted his heart’s sanction. He felt his spirit recoil before the coming time—the months of the failing life, with their burden of the old weariness, the old struggle to attain to gratitude, heavier for the knowledge of different days. That evening he sought a word with Dolores—a word long pondered, but postponed in trembling to the latest moment.

  “Dolores,” he said, with the tone of uttering a sacred word, which marked his speaking of her name. “You will let me say a word to you?”

  Dolores raised her face in silent sanction, struggling for the courage she had long been fostering for this moment of trial.

  “It is only—only a few words—only one thing I have to say. Could you—you will make your home with my wife and—will make your sister’s home your own, until Sigismund Claverhouse—that is, as long as he is spared to us?”

  Dolores’ face grew set; but she answered without pause, in words which by daily, lonely effort she had learned to utter for this answer.

  “What of my father? I cannot leave him.”

  “But his is the lesser need,” said Soulsby, with a solemness undisguised.

  “But the greater claim,” said Dolores, her voice not argumentative, but sadly resigned.

  “It might be for such a little while,” said Soulsby, with pleading as simple as a child’s.

  “But it might be for years,” said Dolores.

  “Well, if you choose to leave him,” said Soulsby, his manner altering, and his tones holding threat and tears; “you will be parted till his death—and wholly parted. You cannot write to him; for he is blind, and would spurn your words through another. You cannot see him, when you come to Sophia; for the emotion of meeting and parting would be dangerous in the state of his heart. Your meeting when the news of your going is broken, will be your last; and your parting will be a parting for both your lives. And you are to him—well, why should I tell you what you are to him?”

  “I cannot see it otherwise,” said Dolores, in a low voice that was almost a sob.

  Soulsby took a step nearer.

  “There would be nothing easier than for your father to find some one else to keep his home; and whom could he find to fill your place? The injury to him is unspeakably greater than the good to your father. Remember what life it is that we speak of; and think of what is in your hands. And it might be for such a little while.”

  His tones again sank into the pathetic pleading; and Dolores turned her eyes from his, into the future—and wavered.

  A footfall sounded in the passage, and passed up the staircase—a heavy, even footfall; which fell on Soulsby’s ear unheeded. But it had done its work.

  “No, I cannot,” said Dolores, raising her eyes. “I cannot leave my father to strangers, while I give what I can give to one who is—who has no claim.” Her voice broke, but she resumed at once. “My father has his best years behind, and he has been through much. I am the only creature he has left to care for him. I shall return home with him.”

  Soulsby was silent.

  “You wonder at my strength?” said Dolores, sadly, interpreting his look. “You would not wonder if you knew my life. It has been a preparation for this.”

  He was still silent.

  “And it might have been a preparation for better?” she said, as if quoting his thought. “Does it seem to you, that I should think it seems otherwise?”

  He turned and left her without further word. There was a task before himself that needed strength. On himself could be taken the breaking to his friend that which was upon him. Thus far he could save her.

  He did it that evening—with blunt, short words, and a blanched face; feeling himself to be copying another courage.

  The blind man heard him, and bowed his head. His first words were a shock to his friend. They were low and calm.

  “How soon will she be with me?”

  It was very soon. The spare figure was then at the door; and Soulsby found his steps were unsteady, as with averted eyes he hastened away. But a stranger might have witnessed that last meeting, and heard the words that were said. It was of the wonted length, and its words were quiet and few. Claverhouse sat without sign of emotion, and spoke of himself. He told of the feelings that would be his own, in the time that lay between that hour and the hour of death, seeming to feel he could bear to suffer what she knew. Dolores hardly moved her lips. She listened with all her powers yielded to the listening; with no sense of being dazed, or struggling to comprehend how matters stood—simply a clear consciousness of what was being done and suffered.

  When Soulsby appeared in the doorway, and stood silent and still, she did not hesitate to rise. He made a helpless gesture
of wincing, and shrank into the passage, and closed the door. But there was nothing that his eyes might not have seen. There was simply a handclasp—long and strong, with the clasp of a parting till death; but a handclasp simply—the farewell which carried most, from its being linked with so much of the past.

  Then they turned from each other; and Soulsby and Dolores walked through the streets in a silence broken by some words on the beauty of the night.

  Chapter XX.

  Two days later Dolores returned with her father to her childhood’s home—to the parsonage with its fulness of memories, its emptiness of younger voices. Her three-and-thirty troubled years had taught her much; and nothing, if not to live a trivial life for a worthier within her grasp, in brave knowledge of their difference; but her spirit all but quailed before the seeing her service to her father so bitterly far from seeming essential and great. He seemed to be changing further from the silent, deeply - needing man; whose doings were always, and whose thoughts were never, open to his family’s questioning; who craved for earnest fellowship, and cherished dying memories. He talked more freely and more lightly than of old; was often from home without accounting for his absence; and seemed to be in all things falling from the old, elusive personality, which was woven with the fibres of her tenderness. But with all the pain of seeing the change, she saw it only as one who, with eyes straining after a beloved, fading form, sees other things that render his vision vexed. Her inner sight could not waver from the life, beloved and fading, she had forsaken at its lonely close; and there were times when she felt sadly near the end of her power of accepting bitterness. For the times had to come, when she opened the letters from Sophia—always written to herself, and carrying the folded paper in the delicate, scholar’s hand—with a touch that did not tremble; when she wrote the answers—with their message, with its bitter impotence, to be entrusted to the same faithfulness—with no sign of the inward passions; when she spoke of her sisters in their married life, as a woman content that love should not be for herself. So far was her life from what it seemed, that when a letter was brought her, some two months after her return, with the narrow border of the mourning of a friend, her heart gave a throb of thankfulness. It was over. There were no more days to awaken to living in the worn spirit’s trouble. It was gone to its long home; and the future had the ease of unvexed grief.

  She read the few restrained words, in which sorrow was given no place, as lending no meaning to sympathy for a bitterer, subtler form; and folded the letter calmly.

  “Father, I must go to Oxford,” she said, in a quiet voice, but rising from her seat. “Claverhouse, the dramatist, is dead; and it is my wish to be present at the burial.”

  Her father met her eyes for a moment; and then seemed to rouse himself as though for some effort; as if finding the moment meet for some difficult and needful words; but hesitating beyond the limit, answered in his usual, neutral manner.

  “My daughter, I have neither the right nor the desire to put restraint on your actions. I fully understand a wish to attend the funeral of a man whose works and teaching you valued. If you feel you have lost a friend, you may feel sure of my sympathy.”

  Dolores made no response to the question in the last words. She went to the duty of ensuring her father’s welfare in the days of her absence; and in two hours she was gone.

  Two months!—the length of a visit or a journey!—and lived alone! The thankfulness had grown to fierce rebellion, before she reached her sister’s home. Ah! that she had left her father for these empty days, while she cheered the path to the grave of the creature whose life she saw as dark and great! It was not until some sad hours were behind, that her nature reasserted its power; and she saw her actions with unshrinking survey, as her best with the knowledge that was hers; saw that, with the past to live again with the same understanding, she must do again as she had done.

  Walking from the graveyard, with her sister and her sister’s husband, she felt a further change. She felt come over her with the old force, the old tenderness for her kind. Looking forward, she looked on years, when personal griefs would be passive under the old flowing of feeling for her race. Sophia’s sister’s tenderness, given with sensitive forbearance of question as to one bereaved; and Soulsby’s unworded sympathy, and shrinking from allusion to the truth of the cry of his own sorrow, “it might be such a little while;” and even the dumb devotion of Julia, who had fallen suddenly into aged feebleness, and been taken into Soulsby’s household, to give nominal service while she lived, grew in her thought to things that called for gratefulness of heart; and the life of care for her father became an ennobling filial tendance.

  When she reached the changeless village, and saw the grey-headed, slow-moving figure lonely in its waiting, a great wave of pitiful lovingness came over her.

  She joined her father with words of tender thanks; and tried to brighten the walk to the parsonage, by telling of Sophia and her married content.

  But he seemed uneasy and absent; and she found that in spite of herself her feelings were becoming chilled. He looked away into the hedges while she spoke; threw covert glances at her face when she was silent; asked already-answered questions; and seemed not to follow words of inquiry or narrative.

  When they were walking through the churchyard,—as if driven to the point by the approaching end of an hour sought with a purpose, he suddenly spoke, in tones that came strangely from his lips.

  “Dolores, I expect what I have to say will be something of a shock to you; but I know you have nothing but welcome for what makes for another’s happiness; and this, I believe, will be greatly for mine. I am going very soon to be married. It was settled while you were away; though of course I—we had had thoughts of it before. I am sure you are generous enough, to acknowledge that this does not alter my gratitude for what you have done for me, and been to me. I know it is always your happiness to see the happiness of others; and I am sure you will find little else in seeing mine.”

  He broke off; and walked on rapidly, with his eyes averted. There was something in his tone, which betrayed that some of the convictions he expressed were of a wavering quality. Dolores followed in silence, finding that no words came, until she saw, or rather felt, his glance drawn to herself. Then she spoke in an earnestly sympathetic tone.

  “Father, you are far too much to me, for me to feel regret over anything that will make your life fuller. You will understand anything that was the result of surprise? I shall find it easy to rejoice with you.”

  The Reverend Cleveland made an involuntary pause, and met his daughter’s eyes. She read in his own the words he did not speak—the old pregnant words, “You are a good woman, Dolores.” She spoke again, with no purpose but the easing of his task.

  “Is it any one I can guess, father? Not that it makes any difference, who it is. There is no one I can think of whom we know, for whom I do not already feel friendship.”

  “It is Mrs Merton-Vane,” said Mr Hutton, in a tone with a rather peculiar easiness.

  They had reached the parsonage door. They looked into each other’s faces. Their hands met; and Dolores gave her father an embrace of earnest wishing of good. Then she went to her room, and stood at the window.

  No thoughts of her altered future or her father’s came. One sentence seemed to be burning itself on her soul. “So it was for nothing that she had left him.” Her father’s cheering—for these two months!—was other than her own. Ah, that he had told her in time—that either had known—that both had known—what there was to know! Her face grew old and hard; and, as never before in her life, she felt her heart fail.

  It was long before weeping came, to give the sad courage of looking forward. There was this left to her—to work, and pity, and be just.

  When she sought her father, she found him sitting in his study, quiet and ponderous. A knowledge of the gulf between them came almost invincibly repelling, as she met his look and words, and read his belief that her time had been given to household dealings. She
took the seat that faced him, and spoke with her hands laid out on the table clasped, and her eyes drooping.

  “Father, it is better that I should leave your home for good before your marriage. I shall take up teaching again. I think of spending a time with Sophia and her husband; and looking for suitable work from there. So your way will be clear of all impediments. I was the last and the chief one, was I not? “She ended with a touch of playfulness, and met her father’s eyes with a smile, unconscious of the look in her own.

  But the Rev. Cleveland saw it; and, though its meaning was hidden from him, it pierced his heart with pain that was heavy with the past. As he rose and hastened from the room, a word came muttered and helpless in the voice of an old man—a word which his daughter heard, and knew as not uttered as her own name—“Dolores!”

  A few weeks later there was another mistress at the parsonage. The marriage took place at a neighbouring parish, where Mrs Merton-Vane was staying with some friends. Dolores came to witness it with her married sisters and their husbands, as a one-time member of the household returned for presence at its festival. Many times before the parting, she felt the wisdom of the course she had chosen. The new Mrs Hutton’s manner to herself had a coldness that was absent from her words to the sisters, who had given up claim to their father’s roof; and her father gave her the same unemotional greeting and parting that he yielded them all; having assumed the veil over his deeper feelings, which he was to wear for the remainder of his days.

  The wedding was an hour of uneasiness for all who saw it, in spite of the countenance given it by the sons and daughters of the earlier marriages. The guests adapted their deportment to their common, unflattering sense, that the purpose of their presence was simply the disproving the occasion a ground for sensitive feelings. Dr Cassell hardly opened his lips; and rested his eyes on the little gold cross, which Mr Hutton still saw reason for including in his daily equipment, with a doubtful aspect of regarding ritualism and third marriages as having some subtle and repellent connection; not so much as moving his eyes, when Elsa nudged him, and begged for the anecdote he had told at the last wedding. Mr Blackwood’s “Well, Vicar, good-bye. You have every good wish from us all for many years of happiness,” had a forced, unemphatic ring: and Elsa’s words, “Oh, Uncle Cleveland, I am sure you ought to be quite ashamed of having three wives! It is a good thing you did not live in the time, when the clergy were not allowed to marry. I suppose I ought not to call you uncle any longer?” had the unwonted effect of provoking a less ready smile on the face of Mr Hutton, than of any other of her hearers.