Dolores (16 page)

“You made a statement, Blackwood—I should say, perhaps, quoted
the
statement, that, ‘In my Father's house are many mansions.' The word, ‘mansion,' does not signify in this context, as you implied—the accepted meaning of—a sumptuous dwelling; but merely its derivative meaning, ‘resting-place.' It is the Latin word, ‘mansio,' used by the translators of the Bible in its native significance.”

“Ah, is that so, doctor?” said Mr Blackwood,
not very gratefully—the transition from emotional exaltation to acceptance of correction not coming very easily to pass. “Well, but now,
I
don't believe, you know, in this finding some new interpretation for every
text
in the Bible. I believe in the old gospel meanings, that have been
dear
to us from our
cradles
—that is what I believe in. I like the
old
meanings of the
old
texts—that is what
I
like. Why, there are some people who would go on giving us their new meanings, till in the end we shouldn't have any of the old meaning left.”

“But—er—it is not a question in this case of giving a
different
meaning; it is a question of getting back to the original meaning,” said Dr Cassell, feeling the peculiar injustice of these implications in reference to himself. “It is surely better, to take every method of getting nearer to the truth.”

“Ah, well, the Truth itself is what I care about. I don't care about the different methods of getting near to it,” said Mr Blackwood loudly; producing in poor Dr Cassell a hardly bearable sense of seeing the fallacious point in his reasoning, but being unable in a moment to locate it. “Now, I have just been having a talk with a poor old body, who was so
anxious
to get a word with me, that she hardly
knew
what she was doing; and it was wonderful the
faith
and the
joy
she showed she had in the
gospel.
‘Ah,
sir,' she said, ‘you little know what you do for us, your poorer brethren, in preaching the
gospel
to us; and looking after our needs in the matters where we have the
greatest
need—you little know it,' she said. That is the sort of thing it does one good to hear—that is the sort of thing, that makes one feel that the
Gospel
is the thing that is wanted, and not
interpretations,
and
criticisms,
and things of that sort.”

Dolores, standing with her brother in hearing of this dialogue, found that the old, half-tender sense of the humour of its kind was dead within her. She was living in two worlds; darkly groping in the one for a spot of solitude, that she might in the spirit live wholly in the other. A glance down the road brought the pain of self-reproach. A heavy figure was moving slowly into sight. So not for an hour could her father still his yearning for her fellowship.

It was as she thought. He shook hands in silence with his friends; and motioning her to his side, turned at once towards the parsonage. Bertram and Elsa followed; and behind came a group of Cassells and Blackwoods; of whom the doctor had secured the reins of the talk, and was enlightening a now receptive audience, an excellent example of attentiveness being set by Mrs Cassell.

Dolores gave her power of effort to yielding her father what he needed; but on reaching her
home, and meeting his wife on its threshold, she was again brought face to face with the knowledge, that seemed to render as vanity her hard faithfulness to that which she had seen as just.

“Dolores, I hope you understand that I meant what I said to you this morning. It is not my habit to say one thing, and expect people to do another. I wish work to start in earnest tomorrow. Have you looked out the children's books, and got everything into order?”

Dolores answered, with heavy feelings hidden by her courteous tone, that all should be in order by the morning; and the following day was a pattern of many that succeeded. They were days whose trials would have been embittering, had not daily trials become as childish things. Mrs Hutton did not leave the teaching wholly to her judgment, but in theory gave the direction herself; and her unfitness for the task, and the irritable jealousy which sprang with each day into easier life, made a round of hourly friction. Bertram continued his changes of mood; and was at one time depressed and silent, at another in the spirit that carried no less of painfulness. Her father at the outset spent much of his time in her company, at first in carelessness, and then in defiance of the results in his home; but by degrees, in weariness of discord, and the poisoning of his wife's companionship, fell back into formal recognition of his fatherhood; making his
wife his apparent associate, and burying the deeper loneliness; though with a suggested wistfulness which made each glimpse of the bent grey head the begetter of a pang.

One day she received a letter from Perdita; which she read with a deeper paleness than its fellows brought, in their hope of a word of the creature who filled her heart and life, and on whom her lips were sealed. It held a request to be bidden to stay in Dolores' home; as the writer was an orphan, poor in kindred, and this was their only chance of renewing their friendship. Dolores wondered at her little suffering in asking the favour of her stepmother. Her natural, easier feelings seemed all but dead; and the one thing of moment was the chance of staying her yearning with some scanty food. But the result of her effort seemed a rebuke. Mrs Hutton was not a stranger to remorse, for the much that clouded her stepdaughter's days, and was often given in spite of an effort of will; and welcomed a means of making amends, and showing her sister her manner of fulfilling her stepmother's duty.

Perdita found great favour at the parsonage, where she showed herself full of understanding. She paid Mrs Hutton a pretty deference, petted and praised the children, implied a view of her host as an eminent scholar and divine, and avoided betraying too open a preference for being
with Dolores, or encroaching on the hours of her duties. Her visit showed her Bertram at his best. His spirits ceased to fluctuate, and were natural and pleasing. He seemed to have become resigned to his future, and talked of the offered post at the school with evident purpose to accept it, and even with jests of the airs he should assume, when the head of a household. In a moment of being alone with Dolores, he observed that the boys in a country school were not without lives to live, and need to be fitted for living them; and she knew she was to hear the burial words of the university dream.

She noticed that her brother earned Perdita's prettiest dealings. With his high-bred comeliness, and the early growth to maturity in which he followed herself, he unknowing wielded spells over the woman coming with her young needs from a world of women; and Dolores looked into the future, and saw herself bound by further bonds to the friend she loved. When he left the village for a holiday, some days before Perdita's visit ended, her quickening instinct was alive to the change in her friend, and the purpose in the guardedly sparing words she spoke of him. It was not in her nature to know content, that the love of either should be wholly her own; and she grew to think of the two with tender looking forward.

But this was too frail a tenderness for this
troubled time. For herself the presence of Perdita had made darkness and hidden strife. The sacrifice of her choice, lived day by day and silently, was hard to the brink of bending her will. The parting, faced with the knowledge of the sphere of the other's life, all but ended in failing of heart; in its conflict with the passions, from which it was a further conflict to withhold the shame of jealousy. With Dolores it was going sadly, when she forgot her brother's life and her friend's, and bowed beneath the living of her own.

But her experience was, as always, bent by the lighter experience of others. As she stood on the station, with her courage faltering, and her face old for her years, she was accosted by Elsa Blackwood; whose return from a visit had been timed for the reception of her luggage by the parsonage trap; and who joined her in such bright youth, that it would have been strange hearing to a watcher, that the days which had seen the lives of the two were the same. Elsa was in the lightest of her moods. She yielded her possessions, without the soberness of injunction, to the lad who was gardener and groom at the parsonage; and tripped by Dolores with a flow of prattling, which spared her the effort of words. As they neared the place of their parting, her chatter suddenly ceased.

“Why, there is my mother coming to meet
us!” she said, in a voice with a studied lightness.

“Elsa, what is this?” said Mrs Blackwood, as she came into hearing. “This letter came for you from your friends this morning. I noticed the postmark, and knowing you were supposed still to be with them, opened it. It was written yesterday; and they were under the impression that you were on your journey home.”

“You have no right to open my letters, mother,” said Elsa. “Surely I am old enough to have a private correspondence.”

“You are clearly not old enough to have any liberty at all,” said her mother. “Where have you been to-day and yesterday? Your father insists on a full account.”

“Oh, mother, am I never to have any friends of my own choice? Am I to be a child under you and father, till all my youth is past?” said Elsa, with tears in her voice. “What shall I have to look back on, when I am as old as you are? You have had your own youth. Why should you grudge me mine?”

“Elsa, do not be foolish,” said Mrs Blackwood. “If you have been with those friends your father does not approve, say so, and we will forgive you this once, and help you to do better in future. It would be a dreadful thing to have such a burden on your conscience. There is a guidance we cannot understand in these things.”

“Oh, well, mother, if you have guessed it, it is no good to say any more,” said Elsa. “Here is the gate to the churchyard, where Dolores leaves us. Let us say good-bye at once, and spare her a family confession and pardon.”

Dolores was used to Elsa's wildness; and gave her thoughts, as she bent her steps to the parsonage, to preparing an account of the scene for her father, who was always indulgent and amused over the mischief of his wife's comely niece.

But as she entered her father's study, whence a hum of voices sounded, thoughts of Elsa were banished. Mrs Hutton stood by the fireplace, looking flushed and nervous, her dress betraying some elaboration of its daily simple fitness; and by the window two portly, sable figures seemed to block out the light with their ample sombreness. They were the figures of the Rev. Cleveland Hutton and the Very Rev. James Hutton. The latter's greeting came deliberate and deep.

“Well, Dolores, it is a great pleasure to meet you. It must be two years since I visited your father, and found you at home. What a likeness!——She looks more the student than ever, Cleveland.”

“She has done very well at college,” said Mr Hutton. “I am told I ought to be proud of her.”

“And you are not, I suppose?” said the Dean,
with rather laboured pleasantry. “Well, you must leave the being proud to me. I am sure I am very ready to be proud of my niece.”

The Very Rev. James showed little change for the years. He was yet in the prime of his pomposity and portliness, his fondness for kindly patronage, and his contentment with himself and his ecclesiastical condition. Experience had dealt with him gently. His hair was less grey than the Rev. Cleveland's, and his figure straighter for all its greater cumbrousness. His personality was simple and inclined to transparence. Many had said that a minute of his company sufficed for the knowledge that he was married and childless.

It was only of late that this state had struck the Very Rev. James, in its aspect of difference from that of his brother. It was not that he had given no reflection to the comparison of himself and the Rev. Cleveland. It was a matter which had had some attraction for his thought; but it had seemed to him fairly summed up in their professional relation, or, more vaguely, in the position that he was himself the greater man. The new line of his fraternal considering had a climax which afforded him surprise and a degree of amiable excitement.

“You do not owe my visit to chance, or even merely to brotherly feeling for your father,” he said to Dolores, repeating a speech he had made
to Mrs Hutton; and improving the effect of its ending by subjecting one of his eyes to a wink in the direction of his brother. “My coming has a purpose. Your father will perhaps explain it.”

“Your uncle has made a most generous suggestion,” said the Rev. Cleveland, turning to his daughter with an air of elation at once nervous and laborious. “He has offered to bear the expense of a college course for Bertram. As I have told him, we know it to be the wish of your brother's life. I am most glad and grateful.”

“Oh, so am I,” said Dolores. “It is the thing of all others that Bertram would have chosen; and I have so wished it for him.”

“Ah, James, you see what your offer means,” said the Rev. Cleveland, adjusting his tone between the morose and pathetic. “My children are good children to me. My daughter knew that I could not afford what she wished so deeply for her brother; and I have heard no word of it. My lot has been hard in many ways, but in my children I am blessed.” Mr Hutton felt an attitude of mingled pity and complacence to himself suitable to intercourse with his brother.

The Very Rev. James looked uncertain whether to be gratified by the happy direction of his bounty, or ruffled at the presence of pleasures in his brother's portion, which were lacking to his own; and Mrs Hutton's suggestion was opportune,
that they should “walk round the garden and find the children; “who had been given hasty, covert directions to make change for the better in their apparel, and place themselves there at general avail.

The presence of the dean was oppressive in the parsonage, by the time that his nephew returned to learn his altered relation to him.