Dolores (17 page)

Bertram had not made known the hour of his coming; and he entered his father's study, where voices summoned him, without word with parents or sisters. Dolores saw that his mood was the temper of strained buoyancy, which had wearied her perplexity. The dean did not choose on this occasion to leave his liberality in his brother's treatment. He dealt with it himself, with an elaborate precision befitting its greatness, and an air of indulgence towards any impropriety, which should result in his nephew's deportment from the shock of grasping his fortune.

Bertram's wordless quest of beseeming response met such smiles and exchange of looks as it merited; but his answer, when it came, brought his hearers to dumb bewilderment.

“Oh, I do not know, sir. I had quite given up thoughts of going to college. I am old for it now. I—I am very grateful to you, sir; but I cannot—must not think of accepting your generosity.”

“Why, you are upset by the news, Bertram,”
said Mrs Hutton, earning a grateful glance from her husband. “He has wished it so long, James, that he is quite startled by its being made possible.”

“Ah, ah, I expected as much,” said the dean, as Bertram hastened from the room.

Dolores followed her brother; but he repulsed her advance, and turned to her words an unheeding ear. For the next hours he wandered alone in the garden and lanes, avoiding speech, and turning on his heel at the sight of his uncle or his father. Dolores was deeply bewildered, but he gave her no chance of words; and the next day greater perplexity came. It was known in a troubled and almost guilt-stricken household, that he had met his uncle's offer with becomingly grateful, but absolute refusal, on the ground of scruples of conscience, which it was not in his power to reveal.

The next days dragged by heavily. A burden of constraint seemed to lie on the parsonage. Mr Hutton showed an uncommitting moroseness; not referring to the conduct of his son, and avoiding all but conventional dealings with his brother. The Very Rev. James was an embarrassing union of courteous guestship and lofty forbearance with unthankful folly. Mrs Hutton was nervous and constrained; and Bertram forgot his spirits, and sank into unbroken depression, repulsing effort to learn his position
almost with anger. The person to break the oppressiveness was the Very Rev. James. He suddenly laid aside his discomfiting bearing, and began to show Mrs Hutton courtly attentiveness, and to display great interest in her children. She responded in accordance with maternal diplomacy, treating him as an indubitable source of superior counselling; and it was known that he held to his desire to benefit his brother's family, and was to undertake the education of his youngest boy and girls. On his leaving the parsonage, his partings carried a new geniality, which was accorded to Bertram with the rest; and the Rev. Cleveland was supplanted as escort to the station by Evelyn and Sophia.

Dolores looked into the future, questioned her duty, and saw it clear. Much in her home showed it clearer. Her father, as though he regarded the late perplexities as giving him a right to mould his habits afresh, fell back into open seeking of her fellowship; and, although while his wife was engrossed in arranging for her children, the course was safe, she felt its covered danger. Mrs Hutton's dealings with herself put an end to anything that remained of choice. She excused her children from study for their time at home, and did all to be done for them wholly herself; neither seeking Dolores' aid nor accepting it when offered; so that Dolores' time was her own from dawn to dusk. Her purpose
was not of the things to which Dolores was easily blind. She knew she was being shown her presence in her father's home as no more needed. She saw her case, simply and without rebellion, as it was; spent one dark hour, looking at the little good to her kin that had cost all to herself; and set her face forward with her old faith in the just. Full happiness in her father's lot was not a thing that must be sought. She must seek for him peace in his loneliness, the content which—albeit in blindness—he had chosen, made untroubled. She would not act without his sanction and counsel; and she told him her purpose, in words that were few but bore their meaning. As she ended, he spoke in a new tone.

“My daughter,” he said, “you are a good woman. Your mother lives on in you. I will say nothing. You know better than I. Your way will be opened for you.”

The father said words of truth. Dolores' way was opened for her, and for a space her days were light. She needed the accustomed tribute to her fitness to teach; and her appeal brought an answer with hidden meaning. The place she might have held in the days that were behind, had met support, and was open to her need. Then thoughts of her own life came; but they were second to those of her brother's, till the others grew to purpose.

As she waited one evening in the churchyard,
knowing that Bertram chose this path to the parsonage, she met Dr Cassell, on his way to her sisters in some childish ailment; and asked if he knew of her brother's whereabouts.

“Ah, history repeats itself, does it not, Miss Dolores? There comes a time when the best sister is not enough,” said the doctor, with a wink and a gesture towards the road.

Dolores saw that comprehension was accepted, and asked no question; but waited with a sense of seeing a dawning on what had been dark.

When Bertram came up the churchyard, the dusk was gathering; and she started at the sight of the sombre figure breaking the shadows. The start was a help, and she spoke the words she had been schooling herself to utter.

“Bertram, I am going to ask you a question, and I want your answer to be true and full. So it is no longer your wish to go to Oxford, if the way should open?”

Bertram started and whitened.

“Yes,” he said in a shaky tone. “It is a small thing to wish so much, and feel so hopeless; but I do still wish it, Dolores—more than I can say in words.”

“But the reason you had for refusing to go—the reason you will not disclose—does not that remain? What meaning had your absolute refusal of my uncle's offer? I would rather you
should give up all, than do what is against your conscience.”

“What do you mean?” said Bertram. “It is not possible for me to go.”

“Yes, I think it is possible,” said Dolores, gently. “I am taking a post at my old college—I am going away from home; it will be better so, Bertram,—where the salary would enable me to give you some help; and father could do something now, with the children's education settled. But if in some way it cannot be, we will not speak of it.”

“Dolores, I will tell you it all,” said Bertram. “I will tell you it all, and then you will know what you are doing; or I could not accept your sacrifice, much as I
can
accept from you. But do not speak to me while I am speaking. It began with my being so hopeless over being denied the chance to make a name as a scholar. My life seemed so narrow, and I saw no hope of its widening; and I was in despair, and made a grasp at all that was within my reach. I—I will not speak of my feeling for—for Elsa. You either know it, or you do not know it,—in either case we will not speak of it. The thing I have to tell you is—is that we are married. No; do not speak, Dolores. We met in that time when we were both away from home, by her leaving her friends before her people thought. We knew that our families would oppose, as my prospects
were so poor; but we meant to disclose our marriage, and settle down at the grammar school-house, where I was to be master. Well, you understand my feelings when I returned, and was met by my uncle's offer. My manner of meeting it is no longer a mystery. Of course, I saw my accepting it as impossible. But with the suggestion the old longing returned. It had lived so long with me; and Elsa was sorry for both our sakes, that I had given up the chance of fulfilling it. She saw the difference it would make to the lives of us both; and thought we might have kept our secret, and lived apart in our homes, as betrothed to each other, till my college years should be over. I was troubled and bewildered by her thinking I should have done differently; and I simply revealed nothing, and did nothing: and—well, that is all, Dolores. It is not less than enough, I daresay you will think.”

Bertram pressed his hands to his head, and leant against a tree, dropping his eyes to the ground.

“Then that is why you have been sometimes so excitable, and sometimes so depressed, ever since I came home?” said Dolores, too startled to think of anything but following her brother's course.

“Yes,” said Bertram, in the tone of one simply giving a desired explanation. “I alternately
worried over the passing of my youth without the chance I longed for, and yielded myself to thinking of Elsa, and our secret betrothal.”

For some moments Dolores was silent, the image of Perdita vivid in her mind.

“Well, and what now?” she said at last, in the same voice.

Bertram hesitated.

“If I could go to Oxford—you are generous, Dolores—it is the dream of my boyhood—I—I do not see why it would not be right.”

“You are married—” said Dolores.

“We have been through the marriage service,” said Bertram. “Not that that is not enough. We are married for life, of course; and I am grateful that it is so; but I cannot see that the living apart for a few years, especially as betrothed, is such a wrong thing that our prospects for life must be sacrificed. Anyhow,
I
do not think so, Dolores. It is my honest opinion that it is not so; and I think I have a right to decide. I am a man of three-and-twenty, and not young for my years. I have a right to act according to my honest opinions.”

Dolores was silent. The last argument was a strong one to her, and Bertram had known it in choosing it.

“I think the decision of the matter rests with me,” he repeated. “I do not see that you have a right to question my conscience. If you would
offer me help if things were otherwise, I think you should offer it now.”

“Well—then be it so,” said Dolores slowly. “You are a grown man, as you say, Bertram. I may have no right to value your opinions more lightly than my own. So we will leave it so.”

“Dolores, I must ask one more thing of you,” said Bertram. “I have asked so much that I cannot hesitate. It will not count. We shall never speak of this—to others, or between ourselves. Not a word of it will pass my lips, and must not pass yours. I must have your promise. The matter concerns me solely. I have told it to you of my own will. It is a promise I have a right to exact.”

“Ah, you know me well, Bertram,” said Dolores, with a half-sad smile.

Bertram waited in silence.

“Well, up to a point, I think it may be a promise you have a right to exact,” she said. “I promise never to disclose what you have told me to-night, as long as my silence does not involve—seem to me to involve—an injury, or anything that I consider an injury, to any human being.”

“No, no; read more slowly, Sigismund. I cannot follow what it means. You used not to read to me so quickly.”

There was a querulous, quavering note in the aged tones. The last days of the many which Janet Claverhouse had seen, had carried a change. That which sorrow had failed, and the ills of the flesh had spared to bring, was wrought by the surer force of days. The grasshopper had become a burden, and filial tendance was an added weariness.

With the sound of the feeble voice, the son slackened and lowered his tones; but before he had turned the page, it broke in again.

“No, no; I do not hear, Sigismund. You read in a whisper. You can shut the book; I will not listen any more. You do not try to make it easy for me. I am old; and you do not care to help me any longer.”

Claverhouse laid down the book he had been holding closely to his eyes, and placed
his hand on the shrunken fingers on the coverlet.

“My dear old mother!” he said.

Janet's eyes filled with the easy tears of bodily weakness.

“I am old, and complaining, and you do not care for me,” she said with faint sobs. “But I shall not be with you much longer. You will soon be rid of the burden of me. But when you were helpless, I never thought you were a burden.”

Claverhouse moved his hand and was silent; and the aged creature saw that the wounding power of the words of her feebleness could not be deadened by their helpless utterance.

“Ah! I am an ungrateful old woman,” she said, as if half-speaking her own thoughts, half-quoting those she judged to be her son's. “I expect too much of every one. I expect them to bear with me, and suffer with me from morning till night, and give them nothing in return but more to bear with. It will be a good thing when I am gone, and my son can live his own life without the burden.”

Claverhouse was still silent. This prostration of the vital creature, he had honoured through the years as her who had borne him, in the aged weakness of other women, was a grief with a subtle bitterness. He could almost find it in him to wish, that the end had come some
seven years earlier, in a sickness which had stricken her first feebleness, and given in its passing a new hold on life.

“My dear little mother!” he said at last, taking the tiny hand. “Weakness and weariness are hard for a spirit such as yours. But endurance, as other things, grows great in you. You need not doubt me. I know when it is weakness speaking, and when it is yourself.”

Janet shed a few more tears, but of a quieter kind which brought a calmer mood; and then lay back on her pillows, and presently passed into sleep. The son sat by her chair, with his face towards her, but his eyes looking into space. He was sitting thus, when the door of the chamber opened, and Julia entered with a covered cup in her hand. Her look of venerating tenderness at the face on the pillow was followed by another that spoke of deeper things, as her master yielded her his seat and stole from the room. It was not till the uneven, heavy tread on the stairs was succeeded by the sound of the upper door and silence, that the expression of listening eagerness died on her face, and she seated herself to await the end of the sleep, that checked her tendance. The light slumber of age was readily broken by the change in the ministering presence. Janet awoke, and rested her eyes on the watcher at her side. After a moment she suddenly staggered to her feet, and took
some struggling steps, as though continuing in action the experience of her dreaming. A gesture of her hand towards the floor above, and the movements of her lips and limbs, showed that her purpose was the old pilgrimage to the door of her son. Julia checked her gently; laid her back on the pillows, and soothed and fed her. She received the ministrations in a silence that told of inner weariness, broken by words in which complaining and gratitude were mingled. But she seemed to gain strength from the food as she swallowed it; and when the cup was set aside, her talking gladdened the humble, waiting heart with its shadowing of the old self. A colour rose to her shrunken cheeks as she spoke. It was of her son that she talked, and her desires for his comfort when her mother's care should be lost to him. Her voice seemed to lose its high-pitched quaver, and regain its old deep tone. But she appeared to be agitated; and more than once repeated herself unwittingly, or stumbled over her words. Julia perceived the signs of change, but could not interpret their certain message; and when she sank into sleep, left her without uneasiness.