Ivy Compton-Burnett - Dolores

As the months grew few and priceless, and the days heavy with the knowledge, that this sufficing lot was but a passage of her life, about to be resolved into a burden of memories, for the rendering her other than she seemed in a barren sphere, Dolores found that her daily service to duty was a daily wrestling. The approaching change seemed the tearing of her being from the only nurture that was sustenance. And comfort was not a thing to be sought. There was denied to her grief the bitter softening of waking and moving in thraldom to itself. The public tests of student-proficience, which were in name the end of these passionate, prosaic years, lay before her, as they lay before those whose unchastened youthfulness had welcome for their young emulation. It was due from her to strive for much that had grown to be of childish things; and the hours and effort given to the dramatist’s demands, were owed in duty to the feebler ends.

Dolores’ living of this time showed her the same as we have known her. Her bearing marked her light of heart, when the hidden burden lay heavily; the daylight hours of helpless wrestling were atoned by labour in the silence; and her voice was as calm, as her lips were white, when she showed the playwright that his counsels must be second to her academic toiling.

“Ah!” he said, and was silent; but Dolores heard his confession of error in thinking her not as her fellows.

“It is not,” she said, not trying longer to smother what came to her voice, “that I do not value your teaching far above other things. It is only — you see I have given time to what I have done for you — that I have no choice but to work for credentials. I shall be obliged to support myself by teaching.”

“Ah!” he said again; and Dolores again read the meaning of the word, and went away comforted.

But this twofold struggling was not to meet the mockery of missing its purpose. There came other days with another struggling — days with the generous honour which is the portion only of the student in a student world; where the winner of success has no fellows but those who strive for the same, as worthy of striving. These days carried more of bitterness. The need for hourly effort was gone; and the reaction brought a time, to which nothing remained but the suffering knowledge of its passing.

For a moment of this time we may watch her; as she sits at Miss Butler’s side in the common hall; and suffers in the sense, that to the other she is one of a generation going forth, and her lightness the natural lightness of youth rejoicing in its laurels.

“You must be thankful that your degree belongs to the past,” Miss Butler said. “When a thing like that is looming, it is so much better behind than before.”

“That is not the first time I have been admonished of thankfulness,” said Dolores, with humour in her tones. “I had a letter from a neighbour at home, observing that as success was the result of gifts and perseverance, so the way to avoid its snares was to be thankful for both. There is something new in the view that we should be thankful for perseverance. It is usual to be thankful for more pleasant things.”

“The neighbour was your clergyman, I suppose?” said Miss Butler, laughing.

“No,” said Dolores, with a rising smile as Dr Cassell’s image took shape in her mind; “in that case he would be my father. He is a doctor; but he does do religious work. I believe he is — or used to be — a Plymouth Brother.”

“I once had a governess who was a Plymouth Brother,” said Miss Butler; “and I remember she used to tell me to be thankful for things. It was a perplexity to me that she was not a Plymouth Sister; but she was not. I have it on her own authority that she was a Plymouth Brother.”

“The child is the father of the man,” said Dolores. “You were naturally sensitive early to genders. I remember how nervous I was under your grammatical probing, when it was new to me.”

“Nervous?” said Miss Butler, with a twinkle in her eyes. “Why, what was there to be nervous of?”

“What was there?” said Dolores. “It is a pity that confusion should begin at this stage. You would have little mercy for another in a similar position.”

“I am afraid I am given to impatience,” said Miss Butler, as the laugh ceased. “You must take a lesson for your own experience.”

“I hope I shall take many lessons from you,” said Dolores, colouring in the effort against the real reserve of the outwardly genial bread-winning woman.

Miss Butler answered the effort with a smile which said enough to Dolores; and broke in a little nervously, colouring herself.

“You will be thinking about your plans for the future soon, I suppose? I was going to speak to you of a plan — I mean I had a suggestion to make. Would you care to stay up here and work under me? The students are getting too many to be managed without help. The salary for some time would be nominal; but the principal thinks it would be increased as the duties grew heavier, and the post became recognised. It would be good for your prospects; and you are more than equal to the work.”

The self-command which, with its hard exercise, had grown with Dolores’ growth, stood her in faithful stead; though afterwards she feared she had betrayed the bonds, which bound her to this straitened lot.

The next days were graven to the end on her soul. She looked back on them many years after, and saw then her youth’s days of possibility. She saw them the last days of her youth. They were days of hope. It seemed that her nature expanded in their promise. Her power of friendship grew. For Perdita, the friend she loved, that love seemed hourly to deepen. It happened that she was another, who was not to pass from the college in the passing from, its children. She was to remain to give aid in minor duties to the principal, for whom, as for so many others, she exercised a charm. Dolores, in foreliving the time which she saw a time of her own approach to joy, rejoiced also in seeing it a time of a comrade’s watchfulness. There was relief, in the fulness of her own experience, in the loving and guiding this weaker moral creature.

It was with faith in her father’s pleasure, that she wrote to her family the news of this bending of her future. His awaited letter lingered in coming; and there was an expectant smile on her lips when at length she broke its seal.

“MY DAUGHTER, — I have considered the plan for your future which you laid before me, and see there is much to be said for it. I have, however, another to suggest, with which it is my desire that you shall comply, and that your compliance will be willing, and for your happiness. Your sisters and youngest brother are at an age when education must begin in earnest. There is no school for girls within daily distance, and none for boys but that where Bertram is teaching, and which offers little in its lower forms. I cannot send them away to school. The decrease in my income puts it out of the question. My proposal is, that you shall settle at home, and undertake their teaching. A governess able to do this as you would do it, would require a salary larger than you could supply, if you should accept the post you describe, and offer to provide it; and would occasion trouble in the household. I need not tell you that your mother would not consent. Bertram will welcome your help in his studies; we shall all be glad of your companionship; and a life at home will in many ways be better for yourself.

“God bless you, my daughter — Your affectionate father,

CLEVELAND HUTTON.”

Dolores went with the letter in her hands to be alone. The first hour of blind belief, that this was a thing which clashed with her own claims on herself, was by the others an hour of ease. But soon the hours were dark. Soon she saw what her father asked through her father’s sight — simply the accepting of a service to her kin for one to strangers. She neither rebelled then, nor set her face to sacrifice. It was her way to see her life, as in the background rather than the fore, of the lives of others. It was to duty she owed her service — the choice that held the best for the lives on which it bore; and a service untouched by generous effort — given simply as owed. She knew that her father’s letter had truth in its every word. But that which bound her, was the something deeper than its words. Beneath them she read the outcry for her companionship; of declining years in a home that held its weariness; of yearning for the presence, which shadowed the prime knit with a nobler soul. Dolores’ survey of a crisis in her own experience was primitive and stern. For others might be honest doubt, and blameless wavering at a parting of the ways: for herself there was a road to be taken, and another to be left. On the one side lay effort for strangers, to whom others’ effort sufficed; on the other the claims of kindred, of her father and her father’s children.