Dolores

by Ivy Compton-Burnett

  “Cannot we have a coherent account of the thing?” said Herbert. “Evelyn and I would like some hints how these matters are managed.”

  “Oh, Herbert, do not joke about it,” said Mrs Blackwood.

  “My darling, you are upset,” said Mr Blackwood, so loudly that Soulsby looked at him with uneasy question.

  “There is no account to give. We simply did it, and there is an end of it. I am sure that is coherent. We will not thrust the whens and wherefores upon you, as my mother finds the subject so distasteful,” said Elsa.

  “Oh, my de-ar!” said Mrs Merton-Vane.

  “Shall we go in to supper, mother,” said Lettice, implying that the subject was of a kind to be dropped as soon as possible.

  “Yes, yes, Letty, my darling. You take the bottom of the table, and relieve your mother,” said Mr Blackwood, ending in a resonant whisper, which he seemed to consider audible to his daughter, but not to the ear against his moustache.

  The supper-table afforded bare accommodation for the party to be seated; but Mr Blackwood was fortunate in not seeing this condition a ground for discomfiture. He pointed his guests to seats, with a loud geniality, and an easy consciousness of ushering them to the excellent, which in no degree failed him, even at the end of his efforts, when Soulsby was found to be standing in helpless survey of the spaceless rows, as a result of persistent passing on of the places pointed out to him.

  “Oh, Mr Souls-by!” said Mrs Merton-Vane. “How self-ish we all are! Re-al-ly, I feel quite ashamed.”

  Soulsby took the seat that by some impenetrable process was put at his disposal, with some nervous words and gestures, which, as they came from himself, were perfectly dignified; and found relief in aiding the passing of the plates; which Mr Blackwood was issuing from the head of the table, without exaggerated heed to their destination.

  “Well,” said that genial host in tones of some triumph, pausing with the carving knife and fork in his hands; “this is a nice thing! This is a nice thing, upon my word—upon my word it is! Ah, Elsa, you may well sit there, looking so innocent! You may, indeed, you monkey. As if we had not had enough trouble with you!”

  “I—I suppose you were surprised to find that your sister was married?” said Soulsby to Lettice; finding this his best in the way of the urbane intercourse incumbent on a guest.

  “Yes, I was very surprised,” said Lettice, implying that surprise was one of the mildest of her sentiments.

  “Lettice would never have done such a thing,” said Mrs Blackwood. “She is very shocked; and I do not wonder.”

  “Neither do I, mother,” said Elsa. “My power of wondering at Letty’s being shocked at things, has been worn out with overwork long ago.”

  “How many days have you been married, my son?” said the Reverend Cleveland. “I do not like this living apart as husband and wife. You must take Elsa to the home you have ready for her.”

  “Yes, sir; I quite agree with you. We are thinking of dispensing with a honeymoon, and going to Manchester to settle next week,” said Bertram, his manner seeming at peculiar variance with his supposedly recent freak.

  “I only have one more Sunday to go to the Wesleyan chapel,” said Elsa, with naughty complacence.

  “Elsa, I hope you will make a point of attending the Wesleyan service, when you are in your own home,” said Mrs Blackwood. “I cannot bear to think of your turning aside, to become anything but a Wesleyan.”

  “Oh, I have turned aside in my heart long ago, mother,” said Elsa; “ever since I heard father’s lecture on the ‘Wesleyan Body, its origin and history,’ in the meeting - house, when I was twelve. I am a church woman now; and you ought to be thankful, I am not a Roman Catholic, as I ought to be on any normal reactive principle. Are you not glad I am a churchwoman, Uncle Cleveland?”

  “If I may say what I should feel, were I your father, I think I may admit that I am,” said Mr Hutton.

  “Dear Uncle Cleveland! What a nice father you would have made!” said Elsa, not subjecting Mr Blackwood to any parental pang.

  “I have been thinking, Blackwood,” said Dr Cassell, recalled by this talk of religion to his own particular pre-eminence; “of giving a series of—lectures—in the meeting-house, upon—Protestantism, and the various causes which—threaten it. I am thinking of arranging the lectures in a course of six; and giving them once a fortnight for twelve weeks.”

  “Ah, doctor, are you, are you?” said Mr Blackwood, easily sinking such matters as his children’s marriages in this interest. “Well, now—how would it be now, if I were to join you myself; and give—say, alternate lectures with you on some other subject—say Temperance. That is the subject I am best up in. I believe I could make the lectures interesting; I believe that I could. I have had a good deal of experience in that line, as you know; and I could bring forward a good many practical examples, to give the thing a hold upon the people. What do you say to that, doctor?”

  Dr Cassell considered with some fall of countenance.

  “Well, doctor, what do you say to it?” said Mr Blackwood.

  “I hardly think,” said Dr Cassell, in a rather wounded manner, “that lectures on Temperance would—alternate very well with my lectures. The subjects are hardly—kindred; and I had planned that attendance should be required only once a fortnight, with the purpose of—insuring a good audience. I—I think, I do not think well of the combination.”

  “Ah, well, doctor Have it all to yourself if you like,” said Mr Blackwood, with satisfactory compliance, but, as it seemed to his friend, a rather crude frankness.

  “I suppose you will not go—will not have time to go to the lectures, Mr Hut-ton?” said Mrs Merton-Vane, inclining her head.

  “No, I shall not, I fear,” said Mr Hutton, his non-committing tone leading in subtle manner to a silence; which Soulsby felt himself somehow impelled to break.

  “So you have secured the post at Manchester university?” he said to Bertram. “I was glad to hear it.”

  “I have to thank you most gratefully for your influence in the matter, sir,” said Bertram.

  “To think that you have a son a pro-fes-sor, Mr Hutton!” said Mrs Merton-Vane. “I feel quite fright-ened, at sitting by the father of a pro-fes-sor. I suppose we must begin to call him, Pro-fes-sor Hut-ton?”

  “I hope I shall not be Professor long,” said Bertram. “I have only accepted a professorship at Manchester, as a stepping-stone to some smaller post in Oxford. I am obliged to take something that carries a house and a necessary income.”

  “I once knew a Professor Long” said Dr Cassell, brought into full form by the final relief of his dialogue with his host. “I think I may say that everything about him was long. His hair was long; his legs were long; his name was ‘Long’; and the only anecdote he knew—was long.” Dr Cassell laughed; and finding himself fairly followed, continued.

  “He lived to be ninety-one; so I think we may say his life was long. In fact, shall we call him a second Long-fellow?”

  Mrs Cassell looked round, with a smile significant of power of appreciative comment.

  “Ah, Mr Soulsby,” said Mr Blackwood loudly, perceiving Soulsby’s eyes resting on Dr Cassell; “you don’t know the doctor, do you? He’s the one for anecdotes, and clever sayings, and information of all kinds. He is that, I can tell you. You will soon get to know that; I can tell you that you will.”

  Dr Cassell glanced at Soulsby; and then looked at nothing in particular with a smile wavering on his lips; and Soulsby looked at his host, and then at Dr Cassell, and opened his mouth; but shut it again, clasping and unclasping his hands.

  “Well, Dolores, this will make a change for you— this losing your brother and sister,” said Mr Blackwood. “You will have a much smaller household to be mistress of. How shall you like it?”

  “I shall miss them very much,” said Dolores, in a quiet tone; but feeling a deeper than the wonted wound, at this view of her duty to her father as a privilege naturally grasped.

  “Well, you
must get married yourself,” said Mr Blackwood, his tone betraying recognition of the impracticable nature of his advice.

  “Oh, you would not leave your father, would you, de-ar?” said Mrs Merton-Vane, inclining her head. “She has been such a good daughter, has she not, Mr Hut-ton?”

  “She has indeed,” said Mr Hutton. “We all owe very much to her.”

  Dolores did not speak. She was held by feelings, whose bringing of joy and shame was no longer new. She found herself yearning for the time for taking her altered place, as a woman who held what a man gives once to one of her kind—for ending this view of herself, as a woman whose function was to give of herself in fair earning of her bread—for walking in the sight of those who knew her, honoured as one for whom honour was fitting. With the thought of the coming changes, came the vision of her father and Sophia, sufficing to each other in the parsonage life; and her eyes were drawn to her noble-looking sister.

  Sophia’s face was turned to Soulsby’s; and Dolores saw, with a shock that held her stunned, that its beauty was of a worn and wistful kind for its youth. As she watched it, the large eyes met her own; and shrank and drooped, while the cheeks were stained. Dolores felt stricken, but not bewildered. Her old insight into things that were suffered and hidden, which had seemed to grow blunted in the years with the unstruggling fellows of her flesh and blood, was again at her command; and Sophia’s soul lay bare to her sight—the pure soul, with its daily wrestling, its daily vanquishing, its high resolve.

  Rising as in a dream, when the move was made, and crossing the passage blindly in the idle throng, she found herself at Soulsby’s side, and spoke the words that rose.

  “It will seem very strange at home, when my sister and brother are gone, and I have only Sophia to care for. I hope I shall not be called on to give up Sophia, unless it is to some one very worthy.”

  Soulsby’s eyes went to Sophia’s face.

  “I hope not,” he said, in easy, musical tones. “There would not be many worthy.”

  Dolores’ heart seemed to cease its beating.

  “No, there would not,” she said. “She is so good; how good I can hardly tell you. I have always felt the living with her a privilege.”

  “Yes,” he said, not taking his eyes from Sophia’s face. “I have thought it must be a privilege, from the first time I saw her.”

  Dolores was silent; accepting this new knowledge calmly. So—whether or not he knew it—he had chosen herself for the smaller gulf between them. Whether or not he knew it, there was another filling of his life, that would satisfy its need. And Sophia had given him what she had not; though she knew what it was to give it. She awaited the end of the evening with eagerness and dread.

  The evening had been, in a social sense, but a bare success; though Mr Blackwood accepted gratitude for what it had afforded, with much good faith, and even some encouragement for its fuller expression. Bertram and Elsa had sat apart, taking no share in the talk, and speaking little to each other; and Herbert and Evelyn had followed their example. Mrs Merton-Vane had monopolised the Reverend Cleveland, who made no effort towards diffusion of his social gifts; Mrs Blackwood had sunk her character of hostess in that of disappointed mother; and Mr Blackwood had given her the chief of his attention, in no doubt that his conjugal devotion was in itself a sufficiently pretty thing for the pleasure of his friends.

  Dolores felt the touch of Soulsby’s hand, and heard the words he spoke of meeting on the morrow, with a feeling that seemed little more than simple wonder, that she had believed this thing for herself. On reaching the parsonage, she was going at once to her room, perceiving that Sophia winced before her eyes; but as she reached the staircase, she heard her father’s step behind.

  “My daughter,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder; “so Evelyn is not the only one of you I am to lose?”

  Dolores’ face paled. It was a moment before she could meet the sacrifice of this oft-lived heartthrob. Her father waited with his hand still on her shoulder; and she forced herself to meet his eyes and speak.

  “No, father. You are right that you are to lose two of us; but I am not to be one of them. You must ask no questions yet, and know nothing till it is told you. But I shall always be with you—for us to grow old together.”

  For a moment Mr Hutton was silent. Then he turned away with his usual ponderous neutrality.

  “Well, well, my daughter; if it is in your hands, I suppose it is well. But remember that you owe a duty to yourself, as well as to others.”

  He went into his study and closed the door. No one was to know how much he saw of the happenings around him, or how far was moved by them in his hidden self. Dolores suffered anew, in the denial of a grateful word for what she had done and was to do for him.

  She went to her chamber, and took the first seat that met her eyes. She sat with the darkness round her, with her head erect, and her lips set in stern and simple sadness. Her survey of her position was clear and calm. As far as Soulsby and her father were touched, Sophia and herself might either fill either place. It was Sophia’s long, young life, and the waning days of the other life, whose fading, held from her sight, made her own life as it was hidden, that lay before her for her judgment. This was her choice.

  A trembling came to her; for her conscience and her will clashed, and the clash seemed to shake her soul. As the hour of midnight struck, she rose and crossed the passage to Sophia’s room. As a flash there came upon her memory that other midnight hour, which had seen her doing another thing, with another purpose, for another woman. She seemed to be living the minutes for the second time.

  Sophia was standing, half-clad, at her open window; shivering as though in welcome of cold and weariness, for their relief in deadening the subtler pain. As Dolores came to her, she started, and stood for a moment trembling; and then yielded herself to the arms that were held.

  “Oh, Dolores, Dolores! I meant that no one should know. But I cannot bear it. I cannot feel my happiness in yours. I am not like you. I am wicked; but I do not wish to be. I only wish that I need not live.”

  “My dear,” said Dolores, folding her arms round the shaking form, “you have only to wish to live and be happy; for it is that which is before you. It is coming to you—it will soon come—all that you seek. You are not wicked. These things are not of our own helping. Our feelings are often in spite of the strongest efforts of our will.”

  Chapter XVII.

  Dolores paced the path through the churchyard, looking at the things she saw with emotions that were new. They were after all the things that must be before her through the years. They stood, in their unheeded eloquence—the tombs with their two inscriptions; so nearly the same, and carrying their difference—the tokens of the endings of two of her life’s chapters. She paused before the stone with the fewer marks of time. “In memory of Sophia, beloved wife of Cleveland Hutton, vicar of this parish, who died in the fifty-fourth year of her age.” With all her father had to look back upon, did he know the deeper things that were to be known? She started at a step on the path at hand.

  “I—I am going, at last, if I may, to speak to you plainly. You—you will listen to what I must say; and tell me what I must know?”

  Dolores had turned and raised her eyes; but as Soulsby’s free words showed her the strength of what he felt, she shrank and turned them aside.

  “I must ask you if there is any hope of your fulfilling the great wish of my life. I need not put it in language. It is the deepest personal desire I have known. If you can fulfil it, my happiness will not be met by words. If you cannot, I shall not wish I had kept it hidden. I shall be grateful to you, for permitting me to make it known to you; and I shall feel to the end, that I am the better for having felt it.”

  Dolores looked at him with mute beseeching.

  “Ah! you cannot?” he said at once, with a great gentleness. “Then the words I have said are my last. I will not ask for your continued friendship. It would be to imply that I think there is need.” />
  There was a long silence; and Dolores broke its pain with a sudden question.

  “Will you do me a kindness?”

  He did not utter the words that needed no utterance; but stood in waiting for her bidding.

  “I am going away for a while to stay with my brother,” she said, her eyes drooping to the ground; “and I should be very grateful, if you would spend the time—or a part of it—at the vicarage with my father. He will be lonely without me—with my brother gone, and my sister Evelyn preparing for her marriage; and I do not like to leave too much on Sophia. She is always too ready to sacrifice herself.”

  “The further I am allowed, the greater will be the privilege,” he said, with a courteous list-lessness which wrung her heart.

  “I must go in,” she said, with a feeling something like a shudder. “Do not think—pray do not think, that I am not grateful—deeply grateful—for all I have had from you this morning—and always. You are the only one who has ever given me so much without return. But the time will come, when you will be glad of my answer.”

  “No; you are wrong, if I may say so,” he said, in gentle tones merely of rejoinder. “Unless—unless, of course, I see you united with some one, who—who——”

  He broke off, and hastened away; shrinking from the freedom of seeming to ask if he owed his sorrow to a rival; and Dolores went into the parsonage, and sought her father.

  “Father,” she said, not trying to disguise in her voice, that her words had a deeper than their necessary meaning; “I am going away for a time, to stay with Bertram and Elsa. It is my wish, that you shall ask Mr Soulsby to stay with you till I return. I have spoken to him; and he has given his consent to come and be your companion. It will be well both for you and Sophia.”

  The Rev. Cleveland was silent, looking into her face. When he spoke, she was grateful that he did not feign to miss her meaning.

  “You are sure you are right, my daughter?”

  “Yes, I am sure,” said Dolores, finding that she spoke calmly and steadily.