CHAPTER XXVII.
LOVE LANE FROM KENSINGTON TO FULHAM.
Where are the great, whom thou wouldst wish to praise thee?
Where are the pure, whom thou wouldst choose to love thee?
Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chiding raise thee?
Seek, seeker, in thyself, submit to find
In the stones bread, and life in the blank mind.
—A. T. Clough.
Robert came up to town on the Tuesday, as he had promised Dolly. As he came along, he told himself that he had deserved some reward for his patience in waiting. He had resisted many a sentimental impulse, not wishing to distract his mind until the summer term was over. He might almost have trusted himself to propose at Easter, and to go on calmly with his papers, for he was not like George, whose wandering attention seemed distracted by every passing emotion. Robert's stiff black face melted a little as he indulged in a lover-like dream. He saw Dolly as she would be one day, ruling his household, welcoming his guests, admired by them all. Henley had too good taste to like a stupid woman. Nothing would ever have induced him to think of a plain one. He wished for a certain amount of good-breeding and habit of the world.... All these qualifications he had discovered in his cousin, not to speak of other prospects depending on her aunt's good pleasure.
Old Sam opened the door, grinning his congratulations. Robert found Dolly sitting with her mother on the terrace. Philippa jumped up to meet him, and embraced him too with effusion.
'We were expecting you,' she said. 'I have much to say to you; come with me.' And clasping her hands upon his arm, she would have immediately drawn him away into the house, if Robert had not said with some slight embarrassment, 'Presently, my dear aunt, I shall be quite at your service; but I have not yet spoken to Dolly.' Dolly did not move, but waited for Robert to come to her—then she looked up suddenly.
Dolly's manner was charming in those days—a little reserved, but confident and sympathetic, a little abrupt at times, but bright and melancholy at once. Later in life some of its shadows seemed to drown the light in her honest face; her mistakes made her more shy, and more reserved; she caught something of Henley's coldness of manner, and was altered, so her friends thought.
I don't, for my own part, believe that people change. But it is not the less true that they have many things in them, many emotions and passing moods, and as days and feelings follow, each soul's experience is written down here and there, and in other souls, and by signs, and by work done, and by work undone, and by what is forgotten, as well as that which is remembered, by the influence of to-day, and of the past that is not over. Perhaps, one day, we may know ourselves at last, and read our story plainly written in our own and other people's lives.
Dolly, in those days, was young and confident and undismayed. It seems strange to make a merit as we do of youth, of inexperience, of hardness of heart. Her untroubled young spirit had little sympathy for others more weary and wayworn. She loved, but without sympathy; but all the same, the brightness of her youth and its unconscious sweetness spread and warmed, and comforted those upon whom its influence fell.