Dolores (26 page)

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.”

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.

He looked at her again; and turned away with some words in the voice she had heard only once before.

“You are a good woman, Dolores. I see each day more clearly whose child you are. I am unworthy of either of you. It is companionship too high for me.”

Dolores went to her room; but it was not at once that she began to prepare for her journey of the morrow.

When the morrow came, she left her home with a calm face and words of cheer. For one moment Sophia was clasped to her breast; and for the same moment, the father's eyes rested on the locked forms of the two dearest of his children. Then he turned and entered his study; and Dolores went on her way.

It came to pass as she had purposed, and taught herself to hope. On the day before her leaving her brother, after the doing of a needful work in smoothing the time of Elsa's settling to domestic duties, and Bertram's earliest efforts at forbearance, a letter was brought to her from her father.

“MY DAUGHTER,—I believe that for you my tidings will hardly be tidings. Sophia is soon
to be married to William Soulsby. We shall have after all the double wedding, the neighbourhood has set its heart upon. I will say no more—except to congratulate you upon the happiness of your sister and your friend, which I know is your own.—Your affectionate father,

“CLEVELAND HUTTON.”

Dolores folded the letter, and told the news in natural manner to her brother and his wife.

“Sophia to be married to Uncle Cleveland's old crony!” Elsa exclaimed. “Why, he is treble her age. I thought he was courting you, Dolores; and that you were fully young for him. What a deep game he has played!”

“Dear Sophia!” said Bertram. “It is a surprise indeed. I hope she will be as happy as she deserves. There is often great happiness with great difference in age. So that has been Soulsby's business in father's part of the world. I suppose you had his confidence, Dolores? I confess I thought with Elsa, that he was courting you.”

“I think I am not a very fit subject for courting,” said Dolores, smiling.

“I suppose you are too clever to be fallen in love with,” said Elsa. “I expect he thinks of you, as he thinks of Uncle Cleveland—a person to talk about colleges and classics with.”

“There is certainly no better person than Dolores, to talk about things with,” said Bertram, with something in his tone that made Elsa fidget and frown.

Dolores went in silence to prepare for leaving her brother on the morrow. She purposely had not written to Sophia the hour of her return; and she walked alone from the station to the parsonage. As she went up the path through the churchyard, she saw two figures coming towards her. She stopped short; and for a second her hand went to her heart. Then she hastened forward, to take her sister to her breast with tender wishing well.

The words she heard that night from each, remained with her, for her help through the years. Soulsby spoke to her little through the evening hours; but his manner was deferential beyond what it was to Sophia. As he was leaving the parsonage at dark, he met her in the garden; and, after a moment of nervous pause, spoke in tones that thrilled her with their grave music.