Dolores (27 page)

“May I speak once more to you of my feelings towards you? There is little to be said—simply that my wife and I shall always look up to you, as one who lives above a life that can be shared.”

Dolores could not speak. She met his eyes in silence and gave him her hand. He raised
it to his lips, and walked hastily away with his head bare. She watched him till the hedges hid him from sight, and then turned back to the parsonage. When she was alone in her room that night, there was a knock at the door, and Sophia came to her—a Sophia with a younger beauty, a new dignity mingled with the old.

“Dolores,” she said, “tell me truthfully how it is with you. You are so good, that I cannot tell what you may have done. Did you—do you—he says you do not—but do you love him, as I do?”

Dolores laid her hands on her sister's shoulders.

“No, dearest, no. I have strong feelings towards him—deep respect and a great affection—the feelings I should wish to have for the man to whom I must trust my Sophia—nothing more. I have never felt to him as you do—as it is your right alone to feel. You need have no fear.”

“Dolores,” said Sophia simply, “I know I do not know your troubles, as you have always known mine. I am not like you—a woman who lives for the troubles of others, and helping' them through them. But if you have them yourself, you would let me do anything I could?”

“My dear, you have been perplexed about
me?” said Dolores, with gentle regret. “I have much to be forgiven, if I have added to the troubles of your early time. I will tell you, that you may be quite at rest. I have had a sorrow—a long sorrow which I brought on myself, and which is over now. You need have no fear for me; it is over.”

There was much strong feeling in the rustic mind of Millfield, at the marriage of the two young daughters of its parsonage. It was felt that the occasion should be held as pathetic no less than great; and faces were clad in solemnity as well as bodies in holiday garb, for attendance at the double ceremony. This solemn aspect was enhanced by the presence of the Very Rev. James; who spent a week with his merely Reverend brother, with the purpose of giving this weight to the nuptials of the nieces, who owed him gratitude for their maidenly arts, as well as reverence for his honourable service to the Establishment; and Soulsby's grey head and un-wandering glance could hardly be regarded as devoid of all moving bearing. In brief, the mother of the carpenter was felt to be fitly expressing the natural and general, if hitherto undefined feeling, when in the course of the service she said aloud with sobs, “Dear, dear! Poor, dear, motherless young things!”

Evelyn made a graceful, and Sophia a beautiful bride. Herbert did his part with a boyish self - consciousness not unbecoming his youth; and Soulsby bore himself with unfaltering dignity; betraying no embarrassment in sharing his nuptials with those of an age to be his children, but doing the things to be done with simple compliance, as the steps to that which he sought of his choice.

The afterward gathering at the parsonage consisted of familiar figures. Soulsby was frankly friendless, and had been quite startled at the notion of bidding his kin to his marriage feast; and the sisters' and Herbert's circle of acquaintance was comprised in the dwellers in the district. The time to be spent in convivial well-wishing happened to be unwontedly brief; and Dolores was glad as its minutes passed; for there seemed a general uneasiness which refused to be dispelled. The Rev. Cleveland was ponderous and silent. The Very Rev. James was pompous and officious, and exerted an influence consistently constraining. Soulsby was passive in the grip of a nervousness, which sealed his lips on pain of discomfiture for himself and others. Doctor Cassell held aloof, as if uncertain of the etiquette, and Mrs Cassell felt forbidden to leave his side; and Mr Blackwood's spasmodic professions of appreciation of the occasion's qualities, produced more gratitude for his exertions
than relief in their results. It was not until the two young brides came down with their bridal garb put off, and the carriages which the Very Rev. James had hired from the local inn had driven to the door, that any one attained the feelings for which all had striven.

“Well, girls, well; so you are off,” said Mr Blackwood, with equal emphasis and relief. “All health and happiness to you both. I am sure it is the wish of us all. I am sure that it is, Vicar.”

“Yes; yes, I—second you, Blackwood,” said Dr Cassell, his tone suggesting contentment with his choice of expression.

“Good-bye, my dears,” said the Dean, in sonorous tones which drew to him general attention, and seemed to imply that the chief guardian of the brides had hitherto been himself. “God bless you; and may everything fall to your lot that is good for you.”

“Good-bye, my daughters. You know what I wish for you without my saying it,” said the Rev. Cleveland, embracing his children, and implying that this unexpanded farewell was irrevocably his final word.

“Oh, Herbert, my dear, dear boy!” said Mrs Blackwood, putting her arms round her son.

“Oh, come, my darling; come, come,” said Mr Blackwood, finding his powers employed with less effort in a practised direction. “Young people must marry, you know. Why, there was a
time, when you and I were up to much the same sort of thing. Good-bye, my son; good-bye. May your wife be as much to you, as your mother has been to me.”

“Oh, de-ars, thank you both for the pret-ty sight you have given us,” said Mrs Merton-Vane. “And take care of both your de-ar selves,
won't
you? Prom-ise me that you will.”

“While we are thinking of marriages,” said Dr Cassell, edging himself to a prominent place, and speaking with twinkling eye and gesticulating hand; “there is a—story which has just come to my mind, which I flatter myself may be—appropriate. An old man asked another, why he was marrying at his time of life; and received the reply, ‘Waal! I'd be fain to have some one to close me eyes.' ‘Well,' said the other, slowly—in his turn—‘I've had three wives; and they've all of 'em opened mine.'”

“Ah, that's good, doctor!” said Mr Blackwood, with less involuntary mirth than laborious effort to help things to go off well. “That's good, and no mistake.”

“Oh, Dr Cas-sell!” said Mrs Merton-Vane. “And with these de-ar girls just starting off, too!”

“Well, unless they make up their minds to something of the kind, they will miss the train,” said Elsa. “Oh, I am so glad I was not married in a dull, ordinary way like this.”

“It would in that case have been a
triple
wedding,” said Dr Cassell.

“Good-bye, Hutton,” said Soulsby quietly, giving his hand to the Rev. Cleveland. “I am grateful to you for all I have to be grateful for; and it is very much. We shall see you, and—we shall see you both at Oxford, as soon as we return from abroad.” Soulsby had yet to bring himself to give Dolores a name.

“Good-bye, Mr Soulsby,” said Mrs Merton-Vane. “You have a pre-cious charge to take care of. I am sure we all feel she is qui-te safe in your hands.”

“Good-bye, mater,” said Herbert, turning to take Evelyn to the carriage.

There was a little bustle and disturbance. The Very Rev. James pushed his way to the front of the porch, holding his handkerchief in readiness for its God-speeding office. Soulsby took Dolores' hand, and held it for several seconds; and then dropped it suddenly, and hastened down the steps. Mrs Blackwood began to cry, and Elsa to quote a poem on wedding emotions, which had become a domestic classic. Dolores went to the carriages, to leave a word and smile in the memories of the sisters leaving her care for their wider experience; and the Rev. Cleveland brushed his handkerchief across his eyes, and glanced towards the door of his study.

As the carriages drove away, Mrs Merton-Vane looked round the remaining company, and brought her eyes to rest on the Rev. Cleveland.

“It does remind me so of so ma-ny things,” she said, looking down at her widow's garments. “The de-ar children! May their husbands be spared ve-ry long, to love and care for them.”

“Go on, go on,” said Claverhouse, leaning with his ear towards the lips of his friend. “You hesitate and stumble, so that I find my conception constantly broken. Read more fluently. Begin the passage again.”

Soulsby turned back the pages of manuscript, and read in a controlled expressive voice; but in a moment came to a pause, gave a troubled glance at the blind listener, and sat surveying the scored sheets with contracted brows.

“Go on, go on,” said Claverhouse, moving impatiently, and still stooping forward, as though to drink in every whit of the meaning of what was read.

“I—I cannot—quite follow the—the manuscript here,” said Soulsby, with a face of trouble. “The—it has been—I think there are some lines scored out; but—but the scoring marks are only partly through them, and the final version is written half across the other, so that—so that——”

“So that, so that!” said Claverhouse, with
bitter mimicry. “So that it is impossible to see what the old blind driveller meant by his scribbling. Put it aside then. Do not take any trouble to help me. Who am I, that I should exact so much from my friend?”

Soulsby sat silent, in grieved forbearance; until Claverhouse, in the nervous irritation of feebleness and premature age, made a movement of violent impatience, when he again took up the sheets.

“Shall—shall I—go on from the end of the—the doubtful passage?”

“No, do not go on at all,” said Claverhouse, still in the painfully bitter tone. “Go back to your wife, and your life of happiness and love, and leave me alone; to get on, or to fail—or to die, as well as I may. What else do I deserve at your hands?”

“I think I have deserved a little better at yours,” said Soulsby, laying down the papers.

“Ah, you have!” said Claverhouse, covering his face, and pushing the fingers of his other hand through his thin, grey hair. “But you do not know what it is to live in formless blackness, and see it swallowing the work of your days. May you never.”

“I do not know it, indeed,” said Soulsby, with gentle earnestness. “And I am wrong in saying you owe anything to me. The debt is mine.”

“Ah! You pander to me, and soothe me with words with no thought in them, because I am an
old blind creature in my second childhood,” said Claverhouse. “Well, I shall be gone soon; and you will have nothing to do for me, but look back and congratulate yourself on your goodness.”

There was a long silence; and at length Soulsby spoke, with the constraint which resumes after a break at embarrassing words.

“I—I have some relatives of my wife's—her father and elder sister—coming to spend some weeks with me. The—the sister is an old friend of yours and—and of your wife's; and would feel it a privilege—she tells me—to come and visit you. She——”

“Oh!” said Claverhouse, heaving up his shoulders, and speaking in a querulous manner which gave him a strange resemblance to his mother in her later feebleness. “I have earned my bread amongst women. There are hundreds who would be ‘old friends of mine,' in speaking to a believer in my powers—or rather in my future fame. They don't care about me, or know me, nor I them. Some relatives of your wife's! You are heartless, Soulsby. I don't want crumbs from your domestic happiness thrown to me.”

“This—this has nothing to do with my domestic happiness,” said Soulsby simply. “Dolores Hutton was a friend and pupil of yours before she knew my name.” He gave a start; for his words were no longer spurned.

Claverhouse made an agitated sound, half-lifted
his arms, and seemed to be shivering. Then he pressed his elbows on the table, and crouched forward, with his eyes seeming to strain for sight.

“What?” he said. “Who? What are you talking of?”

“Her name is Dolores Hutton. She is my wife's sister. Their father is a clergyman in Yorkshire. I have heard you speak of her to your wife,” said Soulsby, watching him with changing expressions.

“When will she come? How soon will you bring her to me?” said Claverhouse, still stooping forward, and speaking in a hoarse tone that was almost a whisper. “Let there be no needless waiting. Have I not waited long enough?”

“She can come at some early hour to-morrow,” said Soulsby, finding that his voice sounded strangely. “She reaches me to-night.”

“Why at some hour to-morrow? What time does she reach you? Oh, you may wonder at me, Soulsby. What matters it what a man does on the brink of the grave? Tell her to come to me to-night. Five years! Nearly all there was left me!”

He sank back in his chair, and made a gesture for his friend to leave him.

“I will give her your message,” said Soulsby, composing the papers with nervous fingers. “I—I see no reason why it should not be as you wish. I—I shall be deeply rejoiced, if—if——”

He saw his friend was giving him no heed, and
passed from the room. In the passage he came upon Julia, standing with her hands folded in her apron, and an expression on her wrinkled face he could not interpret.

“You—you—I need not warn you—I am sure you are the last person to need warning. But I—I am bringing a—a friend—a lady, here with me to-night. She is an old friend of—of Mrs Claverhouse. You—you will know to take all that happens as a matter of course?”

“I heard, sir,” said the old servant, in a quietly hopeless tone. “It doesn't seem as if much good could come out of anything now. But I hope there can't come any harm either—that the time for that has gone as well. Anyhow you may trust me, sir.”

“I am sure of it,” said Soulsby, in his courteous manner, as he left the dwelling.

It was late in the evening when he entered it again, with Dolores walking behind him. Julia gave but a glance to the tall, spare woman, with the simple garments and worn face; and then led the way in silence.