Ivy Compton-Burnett - Dolores

Bertram escorted the guests to the door; and on his return, Dolores was struck by a difference in him. He was buoyant, as she had known him only in unwitnessed moments of the younger time. His spirits lasted till the parting for the night; and apart from their giving of perplexity, in their bearing on the mood they followed, they seemed to sit on him strangely. To-day she had power to follow what she saw, only through sorrow’s dazing sense of living the unreal; but the memory was to grow into meaning.

Poor Dolores! She wrestled along in the silent hours that night — holding to her own nature in the wrestling; neither weeping nor rising to pace the ground; but lying with dry eyes and worn face, and hands clutching the coverings tensely. When the morning grew light, she rose schooled for her lot.

The day was the Sabbath, which brought more of friction than peace in the parsonage household. She walked with her father in the garden after the constraining morning meal, at which Bertram’s moodiness returned, to diffuse a general oppressiveness; and strove to give the daughterly comradeship, for which she gauged his unworded yearning. But it was not long hidden, that this which she felt the chief of her hard service, it might be a greater service to leave undone. Mrs Hutton’s voice fell cold and repelling on her ear, as they passed down the churchyard to the church.

‘I shall expect you to take your share of what has to be done, now that you are at home, Dolores. I shall not expect you to enjoy yourself with the men of the household, and leave me all the brunt of the general management. The mere teaching of the children is not a work which exempts you from everything else. There were a good many things you might have done to save me between breakfast and church; which would have left me free for your father, at a time when he always likes to have me with him.”

Dolores was silent. Thrusts of this kind could not strike without leaving a wound; but the pain was lost in that which pressed without ceasing. And it pressed heavily. The little familiar church, failing by the side of the childhood’s conception which she carried; the loved, familiar face, whose aging struck again the painful note of discord with memory; the familiar, ponderous utterance, whose words were alone in harmony with what had foregone — being exactly those, which a few years earlier had celebrated the corresponding Sabbath;—all went to bring home the straitness of the lot, she had taken for that which she held as fullest.

At the midday meal her brother’s vivacity returned; and the casual manner of the notice which met it, revealed that his changes of mood were wonted. At its end, he suggested that his sister and he should take a walk to the meeting-house; where an afternoon service was to be held by Mr Blackwood.

“You seem to have a fondness for that meeting house, Bertram,” said Mrs Hutton. “Do you approve of his going to dissenting-places so often, Cleveland?”

“I do not understand his preference,” said Mr Hutton; “but it is not a matter upon which I should interfere with a son of mine.”

Bertram looked a little embarrassed.

“I think the Blackwoods like some of us to go now and then, sir. They come to your church sometimes, to hear you preach.”

“It is hardly a province where reciprocation should be regarded as an exchange of civility,” said the Rev. Cleveland, following his son and daughter with rather ungenial eyes, as they left the room; “and I think’ sometimes,’ and ‘now and then’ might be reversed in their connections.”

The meeting-house showed a scene that was typical of Millfield experience. The seats were covered — or sprinkled — by such of the district’s labouring and trading folk, as combined dissent with admiring confidence in Mr Blackwood, as oratorical evangelist. Mr Blackwood himself was standing near the platform, with bent head; twirling his moustache in frank evolution of the coming discourse. Dr Cassell was seated in the front, with an air half-critical, half-approvingly expectant; allowing his eyes to dwell at intervals on the toilette of his wife, whose gloved hand lay on his arm. Mrs Blackwood sat with her son and daughters, with her eyes fixed on her husband, and a rather tense demeanour. An elderly labouring man, whose face expressed that order of goodwill, which may be described as evangelistic, was conducting strangers to places, with a deportment fitted to the reversed proportion of visitors to empty seats. Dolores and Bertram had hardly been ushered with warmth of welcome to the front, when Mr Blackwood stepped upon the platform; opened a hymn-book in which his finger had been keeping a place, and gave out a hymn. A woman took her seat at a piano; which bore a small brass plate, with the inscription: “Presented by Dr Cassell”—to which Dr Cassell’s eyes showed a tendency to turn;—and the assembly sought the place, with a bearing in keeping with apprehension of results, should the first line pass, unsung by any one of them. The rustic official showed an almost painful anxiety, lest lack of books should conduce to this pass; and did not consider it too late to hasten to supply the need — his own lips not ceasing to move the while — in a case which had escaped his notice, during the last verse. This attitude was common to most of the audience, especially the men; two of whom resigned their own books, not failing to point to the line being sung; and stood empty-handed; in one case singing, with an air of struggling with complacence in knowing the words, and in the other remaining silent, as if deprivation was nothing to a sense of it in another. At the end of the hymn, Mr Blackwood broke upon the general standing in wait for the “amen,” with the suggestion that the last verse, as carrying peculiar benedictiveness, should be sung a second time. This done, and a prayer pronounced in a declamatory tone, he delivered his discourse; which imposed no particular strain upon either himself or his hearers. It was dogmatic in tone, and tending to the antagonistic, as though with unexpressed reference to holders of other faiths; and was unhampered by line of argument, or ruling aim. It provoked consentient murmurs and rustles, which he clearly found congenial; not failing to be inspired by them with greater power of emphasis. The sentences tended to rise and swell with ease, but to fail towards the end, or even to meet some trouble in attaining an end; in which cases he made compensation for balance of language in impressiveness of utterance. Mrs Blackwood did not take her eyes from his face while he spoke; and wore the air which is observable in parents at the public performance of their children. Many of the older people were provided with Bibles; and when a scriptural allusion was made, bestowed some tedious precision on seeking the place; as if the neglecting to regard what they had heard, in the text, were an omission more serious than losing the words that ensued. Dr Cassell lived the hour with the bare endurance of a bad listener; and once sat suddenly upright, and looked with flushed eagerness towards the speaker, as though the duties of an auditor and the corrective power of his normal character were at sharp conflict; and then gave a glance at his wife, and settled down with an air of restless resignation. At the end of the final hymn and prayer, he at once made his move to leave the chapel; and his face fell as his friend made public a hope, that no one who desired a word with himself would have hesitation in remaining: and two old people availing themselves of this thoughtfulness, incurred from him a glance of a hardly brotherly nature. Outside he stood in silence, giving his wife no word of his pause, as though feeling that the demands of speech might tend to disarrangement of the matter in his mind. When Mr Blackwood appeared, he at once began to speak, making his habitual gesture with his hand.