“And the dictates of my heart are all for staying at home and looking after my ancient parents and worrying them. Am I to be sent away? Not yet, old gentleman, not yet.”
The Reverend Thomas Glynde laughed, somewhat as if a weight had been lifted from his heart. In his way he was a conscientious man. It was his honest conviction that Dora would do well to marry Arthur, who was a gentleman and essentially harmless. In persuading her to do so covertly, as he had thought well to do, he was honestly performing that which he thought to be his duty towards her. Presently Mrs. Glynde came back, and shortly afterwards Dora left the room. The Rector was not reading the book he held open on his knee, but gazed instead absently at the pattern of the hearthrug.
A change had come in this quiet household. Dora had gone away a child. She had come back a woman, with that consciousness of life which comes somewhere between twenty and thirty years of age—a consciousness which is partly made up of the knowledge that life is, after all, given to each one of us individually to make the best of as well as we may; and no one knows what that best is except ourselves. What is happiness for one is misery for another, and while human beings vary as the clouds of heaven, no life can be lived by set rule.
Over these things the Rector pondered. He felt the difference in Dora. She was still his daughter, but no longer a child. Her existence was still his chief care, but he could only stand by and help a little here and there; for the dependency of childhood was left behind, and her evident intention was to work out her own life in her own way. So do those who are dependent by nature upon the advice and sympathy of others learn to lean only upon their own strength.
In the room overhead, standing by the window with weary eyes, Dora was murmuring: “I wonder—I wonder if I shall be able to hold out against them all.”
CHAPTER XXII. ACROSS THE YEARS
Across the years you seem to come.
“That is just what I can't do. I cannot afford to wait.”