“Go on, go on,” said Claverhouse, leaning with his ear towards the lips of his friend. “You hesitate and stumble, so that I find my conception constantly broken. Read more fluently. Begin the passage again.”
Soulsby turned back the pages of manuscript, and read in a controlled expressive voice; but in a moment came to a pause, gave a troubled glance at the blind listener, and sat surveying the scored sheets with contracted brows.
“Go on, go on,” said Claverhouse, moving impatiently, and still stooping forward, as though to drink in every whit of the meaning of what was read.
“I—I cannot—quite follow the—the manuscript here,” said Soulsby, with a face of trouble. “The—it has been—I think there are some lines scored out; but—but the scoring marks are only partly through them, and the final version is written half across the other, so that—so that——”
“So that, so that!” said Claverhouse, with bitter mimicry. “So that it is impossible to see what the old blind driveller meant by his scribbling. Put it aside then. Do not take any trouble to help me. Who am I, that I should exact so much from my friend?”
Soulsby sat silent, in grieved forbearance; until Claverhouse, in the nervous irritation of feebleness and premature age, made a movement of violent impatience, when he again took up the sheets.
“Shall—shall I—go on from the end of the—the doubtful passage?”
“No, do not go on at all,” said Claverhouse, still in the painfully bitter tone. “Go back to your wife, and your life of happiness and love, and leave me alone; to get on, or to fail—or to die, as well as I may. What else do I deserve at your hands?”
“I think I have deserved a little better at yours,” said Soulsby, laying down the papers.
“Ah, you have!” said Claverhouse, covering his face, and pushing the fingers of his other hand through his thin, grey hair. “But you do not know what it is to live in formless blackness, and see it swallowing the work of your days. May you never.”
“I do not know it, indeed,” said Soulsby, with gentle earnestness. “And I am wrong in saying you owe anything to me. The debt is mine.”
“Ah! You pander to me, and soothe me with words with no thought in them, because I am an old blind creature in my second childhood,” said Claverhouse. “Well, I shall be gone soon; and you will have nothing to do for me, but look back and congratulate yourself on your goodness.”
There was a long silence; and at length Soulsby spoke, with the constraint which resumes after a break at embarrassing words.
“I—I have some relatives of my wife’s—her father and elder sister—coming to spend some weeks with me. The—the sister is an old friend of yours and—and of your wife’s; and would feel it a privilege—she tells me—to come and visit you. She——”
“Oh!” said Claverhouse, heaving up his shoulders, and speaking in a querulous manner which gave him a strange resemblance to his mother in her later feebleness. “I have earned my bread amongst women. There are hundreds who would be ‘old friends of mine,’ in speaking to a believer in my powers—or rather in my future fame. They don’t care about me, or know me, nor I them. Some relatives of your wife’s! You are heartless, Soulsby. I don’t want crumbs from your domestic happiness thrown to me.”
“This—this has nothing to do with my domestic happiness,” said Soulsby simply. “Dolores Hutton was a friend and pupil of yours before she knew my name.” He gave a start; for his words were no longer spurned.
Claverhouse made an agitated sound, half-lifted his arms, and seemed to be shivering. Then he pressed his elbows on the table, and crouched forward, with his eyes seeming to strain for sight.
“What?” he said. “Who? What are you talking of?”
“Her name is Dolores Hutton. She is my wife’s sister. Their father is a clergyman in Yorkshire. I have heard you speak of her to your wife,” said Soulsby, watching him with changing expressions.
“When will she come? How soon will you bring her to me?” said Claverhouse, still stooping forward, and speaking in a hoarse tone that was almost a whisper. “Let there be no needless waiting. Have I not waited long enough?”
“She can come at some early hour to-morrow,” said Soulsby, finding that his voice sounded strangely. “She reaches me to-night.”
“Why at some hour to-morrow? What time does she reach you? Oh, you may wonder at me, Soulsby. What matters it what a man does on the brink of the grave? Tell her to come to me to-night. Five years! Nearly all there was left me!”
He sank back in his chair, and made a gesture for his friend to leave him.
“I will give her your message,” said Soulsby, composing the papers with nervous fingers. “I—I see no reason why it should not be as you wish. I—I shall be deeply rejoiced, if—if——”
He saw his friend was giving him no heed, and passed from the room. In the passage he came upon Julia, standing with her hands folded in her apron, and an expression on her wrinkled face he could not interpret.
“You—you—I need not warn you—I am sure you are the last person to need warning. But I—I am bringing a—a friend—a lady, here with me to-night. She is an old friend of—of Mrs Claverhouse. You—you will know to take all that happens as a matter of course?”
“I heard, sir,” said the old servant, in a quietly hopeless tone. “It doesn’t seem as if much good could come out of anything now. But I hope there can’t come any harm either—that the time for that has gone as well. Anyhow you may trust me, sir.”
“I am sure of it,” said Soulsby, in his courteous manner, as he left the dwelling.
It was late in the evening when he entered it again, with Dolores walking behind him. Julia gave but a glance to the tall, spare woman, with the simple garments and worn face; and then led the way in silence.
As the door opened, Claverhouse started to his feet, and put out his hands, as though to repel approach, his ear turned to catch the footsteps on the floor. As Dolores came towards him, some words broke from his lips like a cry.
“Why did you leave me? Why could you spare me nothing of all that you gave?”
As their hands met, Soulsby slipped from the room, closing the door behind him. Julia gave no sign of surprise, as she saw him enter the passage. She moved from the door, placed a chair for him in silence, and entered the kitchen.
It was long that he sat in the darkness, with his hands moving slowly against each other, and his grey head bent as if in pondering. They fell on his ear—filling him with emotions that held thought in abeyance—the voices of these two fellow-creatures of his reverence—the deep, harsh sounds that were to him a prophet’s utterance, and the impressive, woman’s tones which he had thought to hear for his own hourly cheering. When the hour grew late, and he rose and entered the chamber, he found them sitting at the table together; with their lips moving, and their faces seeming to tell simply of long, unbroken friendship. For some moments he watched them mutely; and then stepped forward, and stood at hand, making no further sign.
With instant obedience, as if almost wearied by the hour they had lived, they rose together.
“Ah!” said Claverhouse, with so much of the old sudden vigour of the word, that Soulsby was startled; “so we have had the hour I have lived in. You know it all. It can be as if these years had never been—even though they must remain.”
They clasped hands in silence; taking their leave in the manner of the many partings of the older time; and turned from each other with a quiet word of meeting on the morrow. Soulsby followed, as Dolores moved to the door; believing, without the faintest bitterness, that his own presence was forgotten. But the sensitive ear of blindness was skilled in the subtlest inflections of the language of the sounds of movement.
“Soulsby, my friend!” said Claverhouse, with an utterance of the last word which gave it a burden of eloquence. “This is not the least of the services you have done me.”
Soulsby turned, and grasped the hand that was held to him, and hastened after Dolores without a word.
They walked in silence through the streets. Dolores was living again with each pulse of her heart, the hour which seemed the undoing of the five hard years, whose every day was a day of bereavement; and Soulsby shrank from breaking her musing, or seeming to seek her confidence. He felt all the natural wonder on that time of the past, when the lives of Dolores and the playwright had mingled. He pondered with strong emotion and eagerness for fuller knowledge; speaking much to himself that could not pass his lips.
He spoke to himself of a scene in a country churchyard—feeling no flush on his cheeks, or quiver of personal pain at his heart—questioning simply the troubled way of the woman he loved with the love of a subject and a friend. So her history was sadder and nobler yet. But why had they suffered thus? Why had the years been spent by them thus—by him with his blindness forsaken, by her in the empty constraint of that parsonage home? He could not tell. The part played by the friend of his own youth—the slow-worded father—in the drama held from his knowledge, was hidden from him; and he did not understand. But there was to come understanding.
One evening, when the Huttons’ return to Millfield was at hand, he went to fetch Dolores from the playwright’s dwelling, where she spent many hours of each day; her father and sister believing the intercourse to be that of teacher and pupil. He was earlier than usual; and entering the room unperceived, stood for some moments watching.
Dolores was reading from the very manuscript which had defied his efforts; and Claverhouse was leaning towards her in eager listening, his face so free from the familiar signs of trouble, that the friend’s heart misgave him for the different future. He waited, listening, till the full-toned voice was silent.
“Ah I there is nothing good in it,” said Claverhouse, in his old vehement manner. “My time for work was past; and my heart was heavy, so that I lived too much in my own life. There is nothing good in it.”
“There is great good in it,” said Dolores, turning the pages with grave scrutiny. “You must give yourself to it again, and carry it on to its end. It is not like the work of your prime; but then it is not the work of your prime. It will have its own value for that.”
“Ah! it is good to be talked to as a thinking man, even if an old blind one,” said Claverhouse.
Soulsby’s heart smote him, for every loyally-meant assurance, which had wanted his heart’s sanction. He felt his spirit recoil before the coming time—the months of the failing life, with their burden of the old weariness, the old struggle to attain to gratitude, heavier for the knowledge of different days. That evening he sought a word with Dolores—a word long pondered, but postponed in trembling to the latest moment.
“Dolores,” he said, with the tone of uttering a sacred word, which marked his speaking of her name. “You will let me say a word to you?”
Dolores raised her face in silent sanction, struggling for the courage she had long been fostering for this moment of trial.
“It is only—only a few words—only one thing I have to say. Could you—you will make your home with my wife and—will make your sister’s home your own, until Sigismund Claverhouse—that is, as long as he is spared to us?”
Dolores’ face grew set; but she answered without pause, in words which by daily, lonely effort she had learned to utter for this answer.
“What of my father? I cannot leave him.”
“But his is the lesser need,” said Soulsby, with a solemness undisguised.
“But the greater claim,” said Dolores, her voice not argumentative, but sadly resigned.
“It might be for such a little while,” said Soulsby, with pleading as simple as a child’s.
“But it might be for years,” said Dolores.
“Well, if you choose to leave him,” said Soulsby, his manner altering, and his tones holding threat and tears; “you will be parted till his death—and wholly parted. You cannot write to him; for he is blind, and would spurn your words through another. You cannot see him, when you come to Sophia; for the emotion of meeting and parting would be dangerous in the state of his heart. Your meeting when the news of your going is broken, will be your last; and your parting will be a parting for both your lives. And you are to him—well, why should I tell you what you are to him?”
“I cannot see it otherwise,” said Dolores, in a low voice that was almost a sob.
Soulsby took a step nearer.
“There would be nothing easier than for your father to find some one else to keep his home; and whom could he find to fill your place? The injury to him is unspeakably greater than the good to your father. Remember what life it is that we speak of; and think of what is in your hands. And it might be for such a little while.”
His tones again sank into the pathetic pleading; and Dolores turned her eyes from his, into the future—and wavered.
A footfall sounded in the passage, and passed up the staircase—a heavy, even footfall; which fell on Soulsby’s ear unheeded. But it had done its work.
“No, I cannot,” said Dolores, raising her eyes. “I cannot leave my father to strangers, while I give what I can give to one who is—who has no claim.” Her voice broke, but she resumed at once. “My father has his best years behind, and he has been through much. I am the only creature he has left to care for him. I shall return home with him.”
Soulsby was silent.
“You wonder at my strength?” said Dolores, sadly, interpreting his look. “You would not wonder if you knew my life. It has been a preparation for this.”
He was still silent.
“And it might have been a preparation for better?” she said, as if quoting his thought. “Does it seem to you, that I should think it seems otherwise?”
He turned and left her without further word. There was a task before himself that needed strength. On himself could be taken the breaking to his friend that which was upon him. Thus far he could save her.
He did it that evening—with blunt, short words, and a blanched face; feeling himself to be copying another courage.
The blind man heard him, and bowed his head. His first words were a shock to his friend. They were low and calm.
“How soon will she be with me?”
It was very soon. The spare figure was then at the door; and Soulsby found his steps were unsteady, as with averted eyes he hastened away. But a stranger might have witnessed that last meeting, and heard the words that were said. It was of the wonted length, and its words were quiet and few. Claverhouse sat without sign of emotion, and spoke of himself. He told of the feelings that would be his own, in the time that lay between that hour and the hour of death, seeming to feel he could bear to suffer what she knew. Dolores hardly moved her lips. She listened with all her powers yielded to the listening; with no sense of being dazed, or struggling to comprehend how matters stood—simply a clear consciousness of what was being done and suffered.
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.