When Soulsby appeared in the doorway, and stood silent and still, she did not hesitate to rise. He made a helpless gesture of wincing, and shrank into the passage, and closed the door. But there was nothing that his eyes might not have seen. There was simply a handclasp — long and strong, with the clasp of a parting till death; but a handclasp simply — the farewell which carried most, from its being linked with so much of the past.
Then they turned from each other; and Soulsby and Dolores walked through the streets in a silence broken by some words on the beauty of the night.
Chapter XX
Two days later Dolores returned with her father to her childhood’s home — to the parsonage with its fulness of memories, its emptiness of younger voices. Her three-and-thirty troubled years had taught her much; and nothing, if not to live a trivial life for a worthier within her grasp, in brave knowledge of their difference; but her spirit all but quailed before the seeing her service to her father so bitterly far from seeming essential and great. He seemed to be changing further from the silent, deeply — needing man; whose doings were always, and whose thoughts were never, open to his family’s questioning; who craved for earnest fellowship, and cherished dying memories. He talked more freely and more lightly than of old; was often from home without accounting for his absence; and seemed to be in all things falling from the old, elusive personality, which was woven with the fibres of her tenderness. But with all the pain of seeing the change, she saw it only as one who, with eyes straining after a beloved, fading form, sees other things that render his vision vexed. Her inner sight could not waver from the life, beloved and fading, she had forsaken at its lonely close; and there were times when she felt sadly near the end of her power of accepting bitterness. For the times had to come, when she opened the letters from Sophia — always written to herself, and carrying the folded paper in the delicate, scholar’s hand — with a touch that did not tremble; when she wrote the answers — with their message, with its bitter impotence, to be entrusted to the same faithfulness — with no sign of the inward passions; when she spoke of her sisters in their married life, as a woman content that love should not be for herself. So far was her life from what it seemed, that when a letter was brought her, some two months after her return, with the narrow border of the mourning of a friend, her heart gave a throb of thankfulness. It was over. There were no more days to awaken to living in the worn spirit’s trouble. It was gone to its long home; and the future had the ease of unvexed grief.
She read the few restrained words, in which sorrow was given no place, as lending no meaning to sympathy for a bitterer, subtler form; and folded the letter calmly.
“Father, I must go to Oxford,” she said, in a quiet voice, but rising from her seat. “Claverhouse, the dramatist, is dead; and it is my wish to be present at the burial.”
Her father met her eyes for a moment; and then seemed to rouse himself as though for some effort; as if finding the moment meet for some difficult and needful words; but hesitating beyond the limit, answered in his usual, neutral manner.
“My daughter, I have neither the right nor the desire to put restraint on your actions. I fully understand a wish to attend the funeral of a man whose works and teaching you valued. If you feel you have lost a friend, you may feel sure of my sympathy.”
Dolores made no response to the question in the last words. She went to the duty of ensuring her father’s welfare in the days of her absence; and in two hours she was gone.
Two months! — the length of a visit or a journey! — and lived alone! The thankfulness had grown to fierce rebellion, before she reached her sister’s home. Ah! that she had left her father for these empty days, while she cheered the path to the grave of the creature whose life she saw as dark and great! It was not until some sad hours were behind, that her nature reasserted its power; and she saw her actions with unshrinking survey, as her best with the knowledge that was hers; saw that, with the past to live again with the same understanding, she must do again as she had done.
Walking from the graveyard, with her sister and her sister’s husband, she felt a further change. She felt come over her with the old force, the old tenderness for her kind. Looking forward, she looked on years, when personal griefs would be passive under the old flowing of feeling for her race. Sophia’s sister’s tenderness, given with sensitive forbearance of question as to one bereaved; and Soulsby’s unworded sympathy, and shrinking from allusion to the truth of the cry of his own sorrow, “it might be such a little while;” and even the dumb devotion of Julia, who had fallen suddenly into aged feebleness, and been taken into Soulsby’s household, to give nominal service while she lived, grew in her thought to things that called for gratefulness of heart; and the life of care for her father became an ennobling filial tendance.
When she reached the changeless village, and saw the grey-headed, slow-moving figure lonely in its waiting, a great wave of pitiful lovingness came over her.
She joined her father with words of tender thanks; and tried to brighten the walk to the parsonage, by telling of Sophia and her married content.
But he seemed uneasy and absent; and she found that in spite of herself her feelings were becoming chilled. He looked away into the hedges while she spoke; threw covert glances at her face when she was silent; asked already-answered questions; and seemed not to follow words of inquiry or narrative.
When they were walking through the churchyard, — as if driven to the point by the approaching end of an hour sought with a purpose, he suddenly spoke, in tones that came strangely from his lips.
“Dolores, I expect what I have to say will be something of a shock to you; but I know you have nothing but welcome for what makes for another’s happiness; and this, I believe, will be greatly for mine. I am going very soon to be married. It was settled while you were away; though of course I — we had had thoughts of it before. I am sure you are generous enough, to acknowledge that this does not alter my gratitude for what you have done for me, and been to me. I know it is always your happiness to see the happiness of others; and I am sure you will find little else in seeing mine.”
He broke off; and walked on rapidly, with his eyes averted. There was something in his tone, which betrayed that some of the convictions he expressed were of a wavering quality. Dolores followed in silence, finding that no words came, until she saw, or rather felt, his glance drawn to herself. Then she spoke in an earnestly sympathetic tone.
“Father, you are far too much to me, for me to feel regret over anything that will make your life fuller. You will understand anything that was the result of surprise? I shall find it easy to rejoice with you.”
The Reverend Cleveland made an involuntary pause, and met his daughter’s eyes. She read in his own the words he did not speak — the old pregnant words, “You are a good woman, Dolores.” She spoke again, with no purpose but the easing of his task.
“Is it any one I can guess, father? Not that it makes any difference, who it is. There is no one I can think of whom we know, for whom I do not already feel friendship.”