Chapter XI
Dolores returned to the little emotionless world where she had her lot, sustained — since sustaining was her need — by the hope that what she had seen had its being only in her eyes. She knew it was not as she hoped; but had not strength to carry the knowledge.
And it was not as she hoped. Other sight than her own saw the change. Perdita was the mark of the glances of many eyes, and the words of many lips. Poor Perdita! She could not but know a feverish joy, in this feeling herself seen the one of these many bright souls, which had earned homage where any heed was of price; and she did not shrink from the giving of her ear to words, or her eyes to the meeting of glances. To her nature bending was easy, and she bowed to present force. But beneath, no less than Dolores, she lived a hidden life. It was not that the hidden life was as Dolores’. It had no place for struggle or searching of self. But it held a passion — a passion which for all its difference, was enough to bend her yielding soul. She bowed before it; and the visible life bore signs of what was within. It was said that she could not yield what was sought to the man of genius, and that her sufferings were sore in her helpless giving of pain. Words of sympathy and pity were spoken.
Dolores heard them; and saw that as far as they were knowing, they were true. But she could give her thought to her friend only at times and hardly. Her own experience was growing vexed to the utter clouding of her soul. She lived in wavering between two states — demanding and different, — the state of being borne, conscious and struggling, on her passion’s flood; and that which followed as reaction, and seemed a sort of exhaustion of her nature, in which she questioned the two lives other than her own, which were threatened by the same undoing.
Her hours with Claverhouse laid bare the change in him before her. The old self was again dead — the old dramatist spirit. Again he was as teacher to pupil. Again he was living his own human life. One day, as she rose to leave him, he suddenly laid his hand on her arm. His eyes, with a piercing expression pitiful with their straining to fulfil their purpose, seemed groping for her own.
“You know what is my aim?” he said, speaking low and deep.
Dolores felt herself trembling.
“Yes,” she said, barely finding utterance.
“And you know her? You are her friend, as you are mine?”
“Yes,” said Dolores.
“If you can, you will help me?” he said. “I feel helpless — I am helpless. And yet I am a man who has done and seen much. If you are able, you will help me?”
Dolores was alive to nothing beyond the look and tone.
“Oh, I will, I will,” she said, her voice the voice of one taking a vow.
“Ah! I knew you as a friend,” he said. “You have been my friend. If it were not to be—”
Dolores left him with blind steps; the surging of her feelings aroused by the last words, making her see the promise she had uttered doomed to be falsely spoken.
That day she sat alone through the evening hours, with books and papers untouched before her, and her face pressed into her hands; living, since no power she had could help her, in the future which the words, “If it were not to be—” forced before her sight. She was living in it, alive to nothing beside, save that which alone lay deeper — the knowledge that she could live in her actual life in no other. She did not hear an agitated footfall in the corridor. Her door was flung open; and before her thoughts were clear, Perdita was on her knees at her side, hiding her face in her garments, and sobbing almost with struggles.
Dolores spoke no word; her voice seemed dead; and her question needed no utterance.
“Oh, Dolores, my friend! It is to you I must come. I cannot carry it myself. I am so utterly alone. But you will bear with me? Tell me that you will.”
Dolores answered by a movement of tenderness. She knew that the movement came without the bidding of her will. She was stunned by this sudden awakening to actual things. A jarring, formless feeling was creeping over her, that Perdita’s words and actions were less helpless than they seemed.
“He has said it — as I knew — as every one knew — he must say it soon. He spoke to me — when we were alone. Oh, it was so dreadful, Dolores.”
Dolores flung her arms round the crouching form that clung to her. It seemed to herself that the action had love and hatred in it. What she suffered was something stronger than suspense.
“Oh, it is so dreadful,” sobbed Perdita. “He is so great; and it would be such a privilege to give up to him a life like mine; but I cannot, Dolores, I cannot; it is not through my own will. It is not in my power.”
Dolores was silent and still.
“I cannot,” said Perdita, raising her face. “I have prayed that I might be able; but I am not able. Speak to me, Dolores.”
Dolores uttered no sound. As never before in the years she remembered, her own life was all in all. Perdita’s choice for her future was a clearing of her own. Claverhouse’s sorrow was a thing for herself to heal. For the moment it had this meaning and no other.
“Speak to me, Dolores,” said Perdita, in a voice that was almost a cry.
But Dolores spoke no word.
“I cannot stay here,” went on Perdita, again hiding her face; and again giving Dolores the dim, jarring sense, that her words came as they were purposed. “I cannot stay where I must see him, and watch him day by day. I must go away. I shall go far away, where I can never meet him. I shall go and live somewhere where I can see you, Dolores; somewhere near your dear home, where you were all brothers and sisters to me; where I shall not be a creature utterly alone. I shall find there some way of earning my bread; and when you are at home, I shall see you all, and be comforted.”
Dolores heard the words, and knew their hidden meaning. She felt that the hidden meaning was as nothing.
“I must go away,” said Perdita again, the words seeming to come more easily now once uttered. “I must go and earn my bread near your peaceful home; and when you are there, you will let me see you? You will always love me, Dolores?”
“I shall always love you,” said Dolores suddenly; her words with their terrible inner significance causing her a feeling that seemed to be shame struggling through a deeper passion.
Perdita rose to her feet. She was lost in herself, and could give no heed to Dolores’ pallor and silence.
“I will leave you, my sister-friend,” she said, caressing Dolores’ hair; while her voice seemed to lose its emotional tremor. “I have troubled and bewildered you. Come to me when you are willing to be wearied; and I will tell you my plans for the future.”
Again Dolores spoke suddenly.
“You have plans already?” she said.
“Yes,” said Perdita, with a swiftly checked touch of uneasiness, as though words had escaped which had better been unsaid. “I have thought of them before to-night. I have seen this coming for some time, as you must have seen it too. But its coming unnerved me.”
She hastily left the room; and Dolores rose and walked with aimless, rapid movements. She yet lived in her own future, in a spirit of feverish grasping at it, which belonged to a creeping sense, that its supplanting was at hand. She lived in it till the conception seemed exhausted, and the reaction came without effort. Perdita’s words! They returned to her one by one, with their weight of meaning. Perdita’s soul was laid uncovered to her sight. The unquestioning repulse of what held so much in the sphere where she had her lot; the use of her helpless emotions for her voluntary ends; the grasping at a life that afforded her that which she believed she was honest in clutching! Dolores saw it as it was, fraught with covered purpose.