Ivy Compton-Burnett - Dolores

“Well, I am glad the term has an end,” said Felicia. “Things might have become monotonous if it had not had one. It will be cheering to join one’s family, and find oneself a recognised item of something.”

“I never understand you when you talk like that,” said Perdita. “I felt myself recognised from the first. Did not you, Dolores?”

“Perhaps at the first,” said Dolores. “For a few hours I clung to interest in myself, and thought it natural that others should share it; but soon I hardly included myself in my own survey of life. I agree with Felicia that the change is painful.”

“Happily it is quick,” said Felicia.” In my case its climax was reached on the first morning; when the lecturers’ enclosed pew struck me as a convenient hiding-place in chapel; and I was ushered into general view — hard treatment when the floor is recognised as the only congenial passage of the embarrassed.”

“Well, they say that suffering is the truest education,” said Dolores. “A foundation like this is right to accord its advantages early. Were any of them in the pew? If so, they would understand you to take them for your own kind.”

“I did not think of that,” said Felicia. “To think that I wasted gratification that the pew was empty! But Miss Butler came in, as I slunk out; and looked at me with a twinkle in her eyes. You know my view of Miss Butler’s eyes. I am growing accustomed to violating truth beneath their scrutiny.”

“Violating truth?” said Dolores. “I find they have the opposite influence.”

“It is the questions she asks, while she uses them,” said Felicia. “She asked me this morning, whether I did not find that classics had a growing fascination.”

“Ànd what did you say?” said Perdita.

“I said ‘yes,’” said Felicia, turning a grave face to the laughter of the others.

“But, seriously, I don’t think one can study a subject without feeling its fascination,” said Perdita. “My way of looking at my work is quite different from what it was. I can’t help feeling and knowing it.”

“And I can’t help feeling and knowing that mine is the same,” said Felicia;—” the view natural in the daughter of a parson with eleven children; brought up on the principle, that life is a time for becoming qualified to teach, and then teaching; resolving itself into week-days devoted to secular studies, and Sundays to scriptural.”

“Are not scriptural studies postponed till the day of scriptural instruction?” said Dolores. “To remember them longer than is needful seems sheer prodigality of brains — extravagance in a scarce luxury, that is unbecoming in daughters of parsons with families.”

“But when Saturday’s studies are postponed to the Sunday, there is little difference,” said Felicia. “Things just move on.”

“As the daughter of a parson myself, I should regard Saturday’s studies as contraband on Sunday,” said Dolores.

“Yes,” said Felicia, smiling. “A memory lives with me of a Sunday of my youth, when my father brought a clerical brother ‘to see me doing my scripture;’ and it wasn’t scripture.”

“What did they say?” said Perdita.

“Little at the time,” said Felicia. “But my father said things afterwards. But I must be about my business. I have some books of Miss Butler’s, that she lent me a month ago; and I feel the cutting of their leaves a seemly step to returning them.”

The spires of the university pierced the greyness of dusk. Among the many figures that trod the streets, which every age has trodden in its chosen sons, one figure passed lonely, bareheaded, marked of glances.

In the gateway of one of the colleges it made a halt; and remained stooping and still. Other figures passed it; nudging, muttering, or stepping aside with silenced tread. Two youths in cap and gown put their heads together, whispered, and broke into laughter. The ponderer started, glanced at the breakers of his musing, and stepped from the gateway. As he went his way, he cast another look at the youths. The look was long; and spoke of something that was neither resentment nor denial of heed.

On reaching the door of a dwelling in a street, that was little accounted and echoed of the past, he paused, and moved his hands in search. His hand lingered in his garments; his head bent; and the minutes past unheeded. All at once he drew himself up with one of his sudden movements, clasped his hands, searched again with wandering fingers; and at last struck the knocker with violence on the door. A moment brought the response. It opened to disclose a little old woman, tiny to the point of dwarfishness, but strongly and squarely built; with a skin as dark, and eyes as piercing and deeply set as her son’s. She bent her gaze for a moment on the stooping form; and then stood aside in silence, as it brushed past her, and hastened up the staircase. A door sounded on an upper floor; and she returned to the room whence the knocking had summoned her. A remarkable — looking old creature she was, as she sat in the lamp — lit chamber, with eyes rivetted to a printed page, and fingers empty of trifling of needle. She was clearly of a great age. Her tiny hands were dark-coloured and deep — veined; the whiteness of her hair was the streakless whiteness of the time when grey and raven tresses share the past. But age, though it showed its presence, had wrought no further. There was no faltering of limb, no trembling of the lower jaw, no wandering of the piercing eyes that passed down the page. They scanned it eagerly, neither missing nor recurring to a word. When an hour had passed, she laid the marker in the book; and taking the lamp in her hands, went up the staircase. Her gait was curious — a mingling of a slight lameness with the combined ungainliness and energy, which marked her son’s. At the door of an upper room she came to a pause, and stood with her ear to the keyhole. She stood for long, the bentness of her form and her childlike stature giving the posture easiness. The sounds from within — an irregular tread on the floor, betraying it bare of cover, and from time to time a deep voice breaking forth, brought no change to her still features; save that once, when the voice grew almost to a shout, a spasm of emotion gave them a fleeting softening. At length the steps and the voice grew silent; there was a sound of the drawing of a chair across the boards and the rustling of handled papers. She bore the lamp to the lower chamber; and began to limp about it with purposeful movements. The service of eyes and limbs was readily rendered, though the rendering would have carried to an eye that watched, no lessening of that which marked her very far in years. She spread the cloth for the evening meal, and brought vessels and platters from a closet and ordered them for three. There seemed to be a servant helping from a kitchen; for she went once or twice to the door, to receive some article of food or crockery; but she gave no sign of communion in glance or word. Her tiny, aged hands wrought without faltering: the doing from time to time of the duty of one by both, or a grasp for an easy holding, was all that betrayed that the days of their service were numbered. When the task was ended, she returned to her seat at the table, trimmed the lamp, and resumed her book. It was a little book of worn and sombre binding, containing a drama. She read as before, absorbedly; holding the volume closely to her eyes, and turned to catch the light of the lamp. The travelling of the eyes was rapid; and at certain passages they gathered fire, as though the inspiration were known. When she came to the end, she turned the pages read, with a touch that lingered and almost caressed. The caressing movement gained deepened meaning from the hard experience in the face above it. With the turning of the blank opening leaf, her hand and eyes were stayed. It bore a written inscription. The tracing of the pencilled words was too faint for her aged sight; but she read them with eyes that knew them. “To Janet Claverhouse, from her son, and the author of—” beneath there followed the printed title of the play. The sunken features quivered. Motherhood had come late, and widowhood early to Janet; and through the fifty years from the day which brought them both, life had held them for her simply.