The parsonage lies the same in autumn sunshine. The creeper on the porch is the same in autumn blushing. The oak on the grass stands the same in stirring silence.
But the oak stands the same after its acorns are strewn for many seasons.
Were the tombs so many in the churchyard when last you saw it?—were the familiar ones so grey and lichen-grown? Was the moss so close on the wall which marks its bound? Was the creeper on the porch of the parsonage framing its windows with many-tinted falls? From porch to sill, and from sill to casement, it has crept through its ten years’ journey.
A figure is walking through the churchyard towards the parsonage. A glance is knowledge. It is the figure of the Reverend Cleveland Hutton.
Perhaps it causes surprise that he should still be expending on the village of Millfield his ecclesiastical qualities, when it is remembered that he held the steps to preferment in his hands, in his literary and dedicatory powers. It certainly caused himself surprise; not to speak of bitterness of spirit, and a tendency towards the heretical opinion—more worthy, as it is very justly observed, of a Dissenter—that the Establishment was no better than ordinary, unestablished institutions, in its blundering location of its dignities. And from certain points of view it can hardly seem judicious in Providence, and that foremost of her handmaids, the Establishment, to neglect the advance of a reverend gentleman who has written three pamphlets and dedicated two to his bishop, and not failed to write to the latter on each of the last occasions to request his permission to evince his regard in this manner. It seems so less, when she elevates to a deanery his brother, who has merely printed a booklet entitled “Some Simple Sermons on Great Subjects”—of which attributes, only the former, as the Reverend Cleveland had observed, was to be referred to himself in his creative rather than selective aspect, that is, the aspect in which he was rightly assumed to consider himself revealed—without dedicating it to any one. The folly is clearer, when the former brother has five children and the latter none; though it should perhaps be said in justice to Providence, that study of her dealings suggests, that possession of children appears to her compensation for lack of possession in other respects.
The Reverend Cleveland’s somewhat morose and heavy countenance was more morose than usual, as he wended his way up the sloping path through the churchyard to the parsonage. He was returning from seeing off at the station his brother, the Very Reverend James—a courtesy rendered compulsory by the rarity of meeting resulting from the removal to the deanery. He was also suffering the emotions following the fraternal office of intimating to the latter, that he was aware of the source of the chief ideas in his booklet—some volumes which had been at their joint disposal in boyhood—without reward in signs of incision in the armour of gracious complacence, protecting a very reverend gentleman, taking leave of his barely reverend brother.
But there creeps a change to his face, as he passes to the side of the churchyard which skirts the parsonage garden, and creeps at a moment when change is meet. Yes; it lies in his sight—the tombstone whose writing opens memory’s floodgates—“In remembrance of Dolores, beloved wife of Cleveland Hutton, Vicar of this Parish, who died in the thirty-sixth year of her age.”
But do we forget what was said of the Reverend Cleveland Hutton? He is not a man apart. Do we pity a sorrow hard in time-begotten silence? Let us mark his eyes—the eyes of one fearful of breaking memory’s sleep. Some random words recur; and your thought is a thought you will not voice. But it is a thought which carries truth. There is another mistress at the parsonage.
No; let us check the words which tremble on our lips. Let us not say them. Let us not say, “Poor human love, that it can lightly bury its dead!” Let us hold our peace, and pass on.
Mr Hutton unlatched the gate which led to his garden from the churchyard, and walked up the gravel path to the parsonage. The voice of Mrs Hutton, who stood on the steps awaiting him—a mellowed, mature voice; for the Reverend Cleveland was not a man to succumb with improvidence to earlier maidenhood—greeted him as he came within hearing.
“Well, dear, so you have parted from the Dean? How do you support the thought of six months in the darkness of his absence? You seem to be bearing up fairly well. Did you ever see such popish pomposity? I wonder what would be the result if they made him a bishop?”
The Reverend Cleveland made no reply for a moment. He was not averse to laughing at his very reverend brother; but contingencies are sometimes broached, which hardly call for sanction even in jest.
“I cannot see—from what 1 can gather from James—that a dean’s life is any more arduous or responsible than an ordinary vicar’s,” he observed, with an accent of bitterness, as he walked into his study.
“Well, I certainly never saw James looking in better condition,” said Mrs Hutton; “not that his appearance has ever suggested his wearing himself out with toil.” The Reverend Cleveland readily saw his brother’s ampleness of frame a ground for smiling. “I wonder if he will use his leisure to write another booklet. Perhaps this time it will be ‘Great Sermons on Simple Subjects.’” The Very Reverend James’s isolated literary effort was a recognised subject in Mill-field Parsonage for spare ironic talent.
“I can hardly imagine James writing anything great,” said Mr Hutton, yielding to some crudeness in fraternal comment.
“Ah, my dear, you never imagined him a dean until you saw him one,” said Mrs Hutton.
“He did not make himself a dean,” said Mr Hutton, deprecating the judgment of the actual agents implied.
“Well—peace be to him—and to ourselves, for the time,” said Mrs Hutton. “I have had enough of him for one day. I wonder what he would feel if he could hear us. I should think his left ear must be burning.”
“Oh, I have never known James anything but sublimely complacent,” said Mr Hutton, indicating the unlikelihood of his brother’s suffering this discomfort; and speaking as though he considered a tendency to discontent some moral tribute—a view which would have added to his own self-regard.
Mrs Hutton laughed; and walking to the window, began to watch her children in the garden—two little daughters at play under the eye of a nurse, and a baby boy, to whose mind there seemed nothing wanting in the exercise of staggering as a source of indefinite amusement; from time to time bestowing some advice, voiced with rather unnecessary sharpness, upon the nurse’s handling of her charge. The Reverend Cleveland took up his pen, and drew some sermon paper towards him with some austerity of mien.
Sophia Hutton was a woman of five- or six-and-forty, with the manner of carrying years which shows maturity a seemlier thing than youth. When there was added to this gift a generous dower of brunette comeliness and a gentle dignity of bearing, she appeared to the Reverend Cleveland—in the fuller bloom of ten years earlier—a fitting mistress for the stately home which preferment was to bring. For this she seemed to herself no less a fitting mistress; but confinement to a home for which she was less adapted had cost her feelings milder conflict. There was a certain discernment in her survey of things, which saved her a too disturbing perplexity on the Bishop’s philosophy in viewing the Reverend Cleveland in a merely beneficed condition. Moreover, the maidenhood attending an imperious youth having outlasted the youth, she did not compare the lot of mistress of a sufficient household only with that of the mistress of a stately one, but also with a lot where mistresship played no part. The attractions of linking her portion with the Reverend Cleveland’s had not been enhanced in her eyes by the son and daughter by an earlier marriage. The father, whose home she ordered, had himself taken a second wife; and though her late esteem of stepmothers had not been flattering to the class, she found that their sway appeared less repellent regarded as wielded than obeyed.
As you watch her, do you mark the something of tone and gesture which touches some familiar chord—such a chord as is touched when, after the remembrance of your friend is dim, you come upon his son grown to a similar manhood? Listen to her tones, as she leans from the window with some words to her children on her lips—to that note which holds a latent peevishness as though in wait for a purpose. Yes, it is Mrs Blackwood to whom she is bound by the bond of kin. Ten years earlier, in the days ensuing on bereavement, when the heart is grateful for pitiful human fellowship, and human fellowship is kind, the Reverend Cleveland had passed some time with his good-hearted and genial, if dissenting and emphatic, neighbour. He had met Sophia, the elder sister of his wife, and had induced her to assume the lost relation to himself. In this step she was influenced partly by reasons given, and partly by a genuine, if not a fervid, affection and esteem for the Reverend Cleveland Hutton.
The resemblance between Mrs Blackwood and Mrs Hutton went deeper than what is meant by “a strong family likeness;” and consists of a film of suggestions insistent on the stranger’s eyes, but unheeded by those which have long seen it transparent. They were sisters in the fullest sense—clearly of the same stock and strain. They were, in a word, in that stage of affinity where, with human creatures as with other complex things, contact is another word for clashing. For it happens with character as colours, that, though different examples may make a grateful whole, two shades of the same are likely in touching to offend. Mrs Hutton had the quickness of feeling and intelligence which marked Mrs Blackwood, and greater depth in both; though hardly sufficient to warrant her contempt of her sister’s shallowness. Mrs Blackwood’s tendency to jealousy and peevishness had also its place in her sister, and was also rooted to further depth; though under this head the latter did not insist upon the difference. The strain of kindliness which nature had implanted in both—perhaps with a firmer and more generous hand in Mrs Hutton—had grown in Mrs Blackwood under the influence of Mr Blackwood, and her own endeavour to live her religion in her dealings, into a consistent effort to attain to charity which might almost claim the name. In Mrs Hutton it had found itself in conflict with a talent for hitting on the foibles of her kind with a causticity which passed for wit, and a mingling of wit itself; had found the struggle for supremacy vain; and now held to a suppressed existence. Mrs Hutton had a greater dignity of presence and a truer culture than Mrs Blackwood, and did not fail to recognise the latter’s deficiency; not seldom entertaining the Reverend Cleveland by mimicry of her sister “speaking” at a temperance meeting, or talking for display with gesticulation.
Now, as a person of observation, and knowledge of human nature in its subtler aspects, for example, as acted upon by difference in religious views and sameness of blood, are you disposed to dark surmise on the relations of the houses of Blackwood and Hutton; or wondering how long it had been since relations between them existed? In this thing you may take heart. Their ground of intercourse never presented clefts on its surface, though the ensuing stratum was at times volcanic. As far as the masters of the families went, the intercourse was so entirely on the surface, that this covered eruptiveness did not affect it. Mr Blackwood combated Mr Hutton’s leanings to ritual, and urged him to stronger influence on the side of temperance, in unfaltering defiance of years and lack of result, affording to himself enjoyment unutterable, and only moderate annoyance to the latter, whose feelings were not so impervious to blunting influence. He regarded his mission as a high and significant one, and reported the degree of his success to the doctor in a serious spirit. The Reverend Cleveland enjoyed at his pleasure his neighbour’s masculine fellowship; and maintained towards him an easy goodwill; whose basis in his view of himself as a man of erudition of the more abstruse and higher order, as opposed to the doctor’s practical knowledge, did not render it strong to the inconvenient extent of showing him an unsuitable subject for Mrs Hutton’s mimicry.
Of the intercourse between Mrs Hutton and Mrs Blackwood an equally easy account can hardly be given. The local view of them was as an affectionate pair of sisters; and it was a current remark how “nice” it was, that they should spend their married life so near each other. But their intercourse was not confined to the safe, if easily exhaustible, sphere of the surface; and in its more perilous province sustained upheavals which would have threatened the exposed exterior, had not they been of that subtle kind to which open notice is forbidden. For example, when they met one day in the village, they expressed content that their ways coincided, and in making their farewells showed a cordial affection, which, however rarefied, was not in the least degree transparent. But if we suppose it was transparent, our knowledge will go further; for in a very few minutes the jar had come, the note of discord been struck. It was Mrs Blackwood who struck it. She neglected to show enthusiasm over an account by Mrs Hutton of a eulogy in a church paper of one of the Reverend Cleveland’s pamphlets; and when Mrs Hutton was goaded to exaggerate the terms, made it known that she had read the paragraph, and corrected her sister’s version. This was more than could be supported by flesh and blood—from flesh and blood of kindred substance; and hence the sisters’ dialogue was charged with hidden currents. It became a series of thrusts with verbal weapons seemingly innocent, but carrying each its poisoned point. Before they parted, Mrs Hutton had observed with candour and humility, that she recognised now how bigoted she had once been in her views upon Wesleyanism, and of how much higher a type church-people really were; and that intercourse with a university man made one so different, that it was quite an effort to associate with people of another order. Mrs Blackwood had let fall the casual opinions, that no woman who did not marry before thirty knew marriage in its truest sense; and that Dolores was clearly a great comfort to her father—of course she brought back the old days to him.
The old days! They were old indeed to Dolores; when her early memories were stirred by the signs that they were present with another than those who had known them. But she hardly saw her lot as holding ground for sorrowing, or rebelled against its barrenness of fellowship, and constraint before the watchful eyes for food for jealousy. It was not her way to pass sentence on men and women. Her sense of kinship with her kind was deep to pain; holding her shrinking from judgment, and pitiful of the much that embittered even the gladsome portion. She saw it her part to ease the burdens her stepmother bore with the hardness of rebellion; setting this before her as a duty; which, if it called for her highest effort, neither tried her past her strength, nor merited esteem of self in its doing. For the keynote of Dolores’ nature—as it had been of her mother’s before her—was instinctive loyalty of service to that rigorous lofty thing, to which we give duty as a name; a stern, devoted service, to duty interpreted as that which was the best which conditions could demand; an unfaltering, unquestioning, it may soon be said, unreasoning service, which showed her in a crisis no place for conflict or conscious sacrifice, but simply laid a course before her as that which was due from herself to her kind. Thus she was equal to the hardness of watching her stepmother’s days and her own through her stepmother’s eyes, and of accepting her father’s formal dealings as the best for the saving of them all.
For the Reverend Cleveland had learned the dread of domestic friction, and the moulding of his doings for his wife’s witnessing of them. It was a lesson which nine years earlier he would not have confessed the power to learn. Unthought-of conditions bring out unthought-of powers; and he took what his lot gave him, forbearing to throw away what it yielded in vain struggling for what was denied. But let it not be thought that his wife was a virago or termagant, or that he was not the master of his home. Mrs Hutton was merely an irritable, jealous, sensitive woman; and none knew better that, her husband’s home was a sphere where the latter was master. A ponderous, remote man, mentally and bodily disposed to heaviness, he lived his domestic routine in a manner which told little in covering much. He showed himself blind to things that awakened his resentment, but experienced more than his family guessed. From time to time he would combat the domestic spirit in days which the household dreaded in accord, and which it was an unspoken family law that no one should heed. He would openly seek the companionship of Dolores—who, living in the emotions under which he sustained, and his wife submitted to, this subtly militant temper, was by far the saddest sufferer,—would even speak of his earlier wedded experience; not referring to the change in his course, but intending it to carry its lesson. Mrs Hutton regarded these periods as the standing trial of her lot; and lived them with a sense of rebuke, and a keener sense of perplexity; not perceiving that the smothered smouldering of months had simply reached ignition point and broken into flames. It is a proof that her husband’s was the really dominant spirit, that she was docile while they endured, and less prone for some time after to peevish jealousy.
The eldest son of the parsonage—Dolores’ companion in the life that was woven only in name with the others of the same scene—was a lesser cause of discord. Mrs Hutton was one of the women, to whom masculine failings have a strong excuse in being masculine; and as far as his relations with his father went, there was little to awaken jealousy in a breast where it was the most overbearing of inmates. Mr Hutton was not in the least disposed to an over-genial view of a lusty young piece of male flesh under his roof, growing into added lustiness in dependence on his daily efforts. He was rather addicted to comment on the necessity of putting youthful opportunities to the utmost profit, as young men were not to be supported by their fathers all their lives. The son was a self-absorbed, silent lad, old for his seventeen years; with an easily kindled zeal for the excellent; and a fainter something of Dolores’ instinct of fellowship with thinking things, which had led him to fix his ambitions on teaching. He had a straitened lot. His days were spent at a school in a neighbouring town, and his evenings in pacing the lanes with a book. He regarded his father and stepmother with one of those minglings of feeling which grow from family communion—alternating between affection and resentful dislike. He took scanty notice of the little half-brother and sisters, and reserved what his nature held for Dolores, under whose eye he was approaching an upright and reason-governed manhood.
A favourable time for a glimpse of the brother and sister is a midsummer evening of the year, whose autumn saw things as they are shown with the Hutton family. It was the day of Dolores’ final coming from school; and the trap which formed the provision of its kind at the parsonage had been driven to meet her by her brother; the father’s tutored domestic instinct precluding any form of personal eagerness on his daughter’s return to his roof. She was to pass the summer at the parsonage, and enter in the autumn a college for women. She seconded her stepmother’s view that her future support should not be expected of her father, and was to be fitted for the teaching to which she looked forward with her brother. We may watch her, as she walks up the country road—a tall, rather gaunt-looking woman—for the nameless suggestions of girlhood had lingered but a little while with Dolores,—angular and large of limb; with a plainness of dress that almost spoke of heedlessness, and a carriage not without dignity in its easy energy of motion. Her face is turned to her brother’s, lit up with humour and life; a face with a healthful sallowness of skin, exaggerated aquiline features, and grey eyes innocent of beauty of lash or colour, looking under nervous eyebrows, and a forehead already showing its furrows. She was fresh from the modern public school, where as student and student - teacher she had grown from the early maturity of the girl of thirteen to tolerant womanhood. It had been a helpful sphere for her early needs—rich in fellowship, in nurture for the charity which mellowed her nature’s primary sternness. It was not without cost that she put away what it gave, as childish things, and crossed its bound with her face held to the future.
With her face held thus, she greeted her brother with the humorous affection of their long comradeship; uttered no word of the day as lived by herself; and lent her ear to his tale of the home routine; showing his father’s and stepmother’s lots as they were to themselves, and summoning an eagerness for his boyish hopes which should prove that there was one who cared for them greatly. For Dolores in her dealings with others suppressed any pain that was her own; and had only cheer for the creatures she saw as having no need of further saddening. Her brother found that she filled the wants of his life; and in giving his troubles of the present and hopes for the future to her keeping, hardly knew that her present and future were things of which he heard little; or that her life held its own crushed sorrows, and duties that were hard and binding.
“I told father I had made up my mind to teach,” he said, as they paused in the hedge-bound road for the trap to pass; “but he does not try to understand the meaning the decision has for me. He remarked that he supposed it was a passable choice, as I had no desire for the Church, and no aptitude for law or medicine. It seems the thing to talk about teaching as a work for feeble youths, who have no chance of another livelihood.”
“Yes, I believe it does,” said Dolores, with a sound of laughter in her full-toned, rather impressive voice; “and I daresay, as many do it, father has put it fitly—the best thing for people with no aptitude for the Church or law or medicine. But you choose it as it is in itself.”
“It is a comfort to hear a sane remark,” said Bertram. “The talk that goes on at home, Dolores! It is invariably bounded by the doings and misdoings of the parish, or of Uncle James—misdoings in the latter case. And the mater is for ever put out about some little trifling thing that cannot possibly matter. We never have a day of peace.”
“Her married life has hardly been all she expected, I am afraid,” said Dolores. “She is fretted by little things, that cannot be avoided any more than they can seem to be worth worrying about. How are the children, Bertram?”
“Oh—well, I suppose,” said Bertram. “Evelyn is fretful as usual; and Sophy waits on her as usual; and we have begun to call the baby Cleveland. The mater says it is time he was called by his name. I believe it is a source of satisfaction to her that it is he and not I who is named after father.
“Poor baby Cleveland!” said Dolores. “I am sure we need not grudge him his name, especially as it was given him after you had had the chance of it. Look, Bertram, here is the very person for us embryo teachers to meet. We cannot fail to be wiser five minutes hence.”
“And wiser still ten minutes hence,” muttered Bertram, as the gate of the cornfield clicked; and Dr Cassell—greyer, stouter, and ruddier, but otherwise unaltered for the further years of dispensing medical, scriptural, and general matter—stepped into the highroad.
“How do you do, Miss Dolores? So your last session at school has come to an end. I must congratulate you upon your latest success.”
“Dolores, I had forgotten your scholarship,” said Bertram.
“Ah, we don’t keep pleasant things in our minds so long as unpleasant,” said Dr Cassell. “And this is a very pleasant thing, I hear, Miss Dolores. Your college course—or the larger part of it—provided for! You are to be congratulated.”
“She is indeed,” said Bertram. “The scholarship carries a lot besides its money value. We are all very proud of her.”
“It is nothing to be proud of, unless hard work is a cause for pride,” said Dolores. “It is simply the necessary means to a necessary end.”
“It may be as well not to feel proud of it as a success,” said Dr Cassell, making a gesture with his hand. “There is never likely—as far as I have had opportunities of judging; and I think my opportunities have been as extensive as those of most—to be too much humility in the world. But satisfaction in the gaining of knowledge is a different feeling.” The doctor came to a pause; and Dolores and Bertram allowed their eyes to meet as they followed his example. “A young man once observed to a great preacher, that God had no need of human knowledge. ‘Sir,’ was the reply, ‘He has still less need of human ignorance.’” The doctor walked on, seeing the vanity of attempting to enhance the given effect; but after a few steps paused again.
“You are richer—in the possession of brains and knowledge—than in the possession of anything else—with the exception of the true religion—on earth. A certain great musician—I think it was Beethoven—had a—somewhat worldly—brother; who one day sent him a card inscribed with the words, ‘Johann von Beethoven’—I am sure now that the musician was Beethoven—‘landowner.’ In reply, the great man sent his own card, bearing as a retort the inscription, ‘Ludwig von Beethoven, brain owner.’ Dr Cassell laughed, but made no movement forward, and after a minute resumed. “Talking of musicians,” he said, “that is a strange story of how Mozart spent his last days in composing the Requiem he believed to be his own. You both know it, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Bertram, detecting the note of wistfulness, and perceiving that Dolores was disposed to indulgence. “There is a book about the musicians at home, and we are all well up in them.”
“Ah! I see,” said Dr Cassell, as he shook hands and turned on his way.
“Dolores, your scholarship has become such a standing cause for rejoicing that I did not think of speaking about it,” said Bertram. “Father is very proud of you in his heart—though, of course, he is not allowed to show it. Studying and teaching at the same time, and competing with people who are only studying, means more than any one thinks who is not initiated.”
“Oh, no, dear, it has not meant much,” said Dolores, smiling at the face beside her—a younger copy of her own, with a softening which left its claim to comeliness. “Nobody is quite without gifts, and mine have gone in one direction. Besides, I was working for my own sake. I am going to college for my own future, and I should not feel justified in going without lightening the expense for father.”
“I do not see why you should be expected to qualify to teach at all,” said Bertram. “Neither of the little girls is to do anything of the sort. I don’t think the mater comes out well in this matter. For it is all her doing at the bottom, of course.”
“Oh, I look forward to teaching,” said Dolores. “I take the same view of it as you do. And I am not studying against the grain.”
“If you were, you would be not the less expected to do it,” said Bertram. “It is not right that the mater should lead father to make differences between his children. You cannot but see that yourself, Dolores, with your stern views of justice.”
“Oh, we must not look at things only with justice,” said Dolores. “It must be hard for a woman who—like other women—wishes to be first with her husband, and to see his interest centred on her children, to have two children who are strangers in her home; preventing her eldest child from being his first, and taking the precedence of the older ones. I think it is natural she should want to be rid of the eldest, almost more so if she is a daughter, and may seem to compete with herself.”
“Well, that is putting things from the stepmother’s view with a vengeance,” said Bertram. “How about the stepchildren? If father had not married again, think how different your life would have been. You would have been everything to him. You must know that you are still his favourite child in his heart. But the more you are away, the less it will be so, Dolores. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ is a maxim which applies entirely to father.”
Dolores was silent, walking at a quickened pace. Her lot held its own pain; which was not less sharp that she uttered no word of it. When she spoke, her voice had its usual vigorous tones.
“It does not do to think of what might have been. We must admit that father has found happiness in his second marriage, and it is that we have to think of. It was his own life he was concerned with when he married again. It was no right of mine to be everything to him. We have always had from him a father’s affection and a father’s duty. More than that we have no reason to expect.”
“If I have always had a father’s affection,” said Bertram, “I should not say that affection was a strong point with fathers.”
Dolores was silent; and no more was said till they walked up the garden of the parsonage.
“Well, Dolores,” said Mrs Hutton, coming into the porch; “I am glad to see you at home again. You must be tired after your long journey. Children, came and say ‘how do you do’ to Dolores.”
The two little sisters—Sophia, a noble-looking girl of eight, and Evelyn, a fragile little damsel two years younger—obeyed with an eagerness which brought a chill into Mrs Hutton’s mellow tones.
“Come, there is no need to be boisterous. Do not be rough, Sophy. Bertram, there is no occasion to stand in the middle of the hall, leaving no passage for any one. Your father is in his study, Dolores, if you would like to see him.”
“Well, my daughter,” said the Reverend Cleveland, stepping from this sanctuary in response to the sounds that reached him, and speaking with a touch of emotion in his tones, “so you have left your school-days behind you. Well, it is a chapter of your life past; so things go by one by one till everything is behind. But I think you may look back on them as a chapter well lived”
“Come, Cleveland, let some of us move out of the hall,” said Mrs Hutton. “I daresay Dolores would prefer some tea after her journey to listening to such a mixture of metaphors. Who ever heard of any one’s school-days being a chapter—and a chapter well lived, too? Come, children, run into the dining-room.”
Poor Mr Hutton, checked in the rather morose philosophising natural to him as a vehicle of fatherly greeting, bestowed upon his daughter a conventional paternal embrace, and followed his family in silence.
“The news of your scholarship gave me the greatest pleasure, my daughter,” he presently said, with the formal precision which marked his dealings with Dolores. “Its proof of perseverence and ability is as gratifying as its substantial aid. I am glad to be assured of your fitness for the work you have chosen. Convinced of your power to succeed, I could wish you nothing better.” Mr Hutton had a way of making public defence of his sanction of his daughter’s earning her bread.
Mrs Hutton gave a quick glance at her husband, and opened her lips; but closed them again, and busied herself with the wants of her children.
“Dolores is the cleverest person in the house, isn’t she?” said Sophia, fixing her eyes gravely on Dolores’ face, as if appreciation were a serious matter.
“She has had the most advantages,” said Mrs Hutton.
“We met Dr Cassell on our way from the station,” said Dolores, “and heard two entirely fresh anecdotes. His memory is bottomless.”
“Did he congratulate you on your scholarship?” said the Reverend Cleveland, who, as a university gentleman of clerical calling, took a somewhat exaggerated view of the moment of matters academic.
“Yes, it was he who reminded me of it,” said Bertram. “But he does not follow that sort of thing. His ideas of education are very queer. However, he assured her she was richer in the possession of knowledge than of anything else on earth.”
“Well, well, he might be further wrong there, my daughter,” said Mr Hutton.
“My dear Cleveland,” said Mrs Hutton, “we all know that Dolores is your daughter. You need not remind us of it again.”
Mr Hutton did not glance at his wife, or give any sign of hearing her words. He fell into silence.
“Father always calls Dolores that, doesn’t he?” said Sophia, who was subject to the tendency of early days to cast every other remark in the form of a question.
“No, no, of course not; only sometimes,” said Mrs Hutton. “All fathers call their daughters that sometimes—after they are grown up.”
“Has this scholarship been gained by a pupil at your school before, Dolores?” said Mr Hutton.
“Oh, pray do not let us talk about the same thing for the whole of tea-time,” said Mrs Hutton. “I am sure we are all very glad that Dolores has made the most of her advantages, and so gained other advantages for herself. But we need not confine our conversation to it entirely. It is such a very dull subject for the children.”
Dolores coloured and made no response to her father.
“Has the scholarship been gained by a pupil from your school before, my daughter?” said the Reverend Cleveland, repeating his question as though he supposed she had not heard it.
Mrs Hutton, whose instinct seldom failed her where her husband was concerned, appeared to be absorbed in presiding at the urn, while Dolores made a brief reply; and the Reverend Cleveland broached another subject, as though no inkling of the jar had reached him.
“By the way, my dear, I met your sister and brother-in-law this morning; and we are to spend the evening with them on Wednesday. Cassell is to be there, and Mrs Merton-Vane, and the new Wesleyan minister; so we shall be quite a party. A queer enough party in all conscience; but one cannot pick and choose one’s company in a village. I thought it best to accept. That was right, I suppose?”
“Yes; Carrie would be vexed if we refused. She always wants to show us off to the Wesleyan ministers. Dissenters are proud of being related to church-people, just as the Americans are the nation who set most value on a title,” said Mrs Hutton, who was no longer hampered by her native sectarianism.
There was a general laugh; and for the next few minutes Mrs Hutton was sprightly and talkative.
“I suppose that Bertram and I must go on foot and leave the trap to you ladies, so that you can keep your furbelows in order?” said the Reverend Cleveland, with a laboured effort to maintain the geniality of his daughter’s homecoming.
Bertram smiled and agreed, but Mrs Hutton was silent. The knowledge that Bertram and Dolores were included in her sister’s hospitality killed any pleasure in her thoughts of it. Her husband confined his formality with his eldest daughter to his own home; and she saw the evening resolve itself into hours of humiliation under her sister’s eyes.
“I cannot think,” she observed to her husband when they were alone later, “why Carrie cannot ever ask us to her house without Dolores and Bertram. They are no imaginable relation of hers.”
The Reverend Cleveland was silent. Silence was neither taxing nor self-committing. He often availed himself of it.
“It is such a very peculiar thing,” continued Mrs Hutton, not soothed by this unreadiness of response. “It seems as if my path is to be continually dogged by my stepchildren. Any one would think that it was you and not I who was related to Caroline.”
Mr Hutton rose and moved towards the door. He was not a man of recreant spirit any more than he was a man of words; but there were matters where his powers of endurance were minimised.
“Well, well, I expect she means it for the best,” he said. “I daresay they think that, as you have the stepchildren, it would not help your position to refuse to recognise them’