Horace W.C. Newte - "Sparrows"

Algernon Blackwood - "The Extra Day"

Eliot Gregory - "The Ways of Men"

Octave Thanet - "Stories of a Western Town"

The Two Sides of the Shield

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> The Two Sides of the Shield




'It was when we were at the Cape, wasn't it?' asked Hal.

'Yes, the year Gillian was born. Well, your dear Uncle Claude went to
see Maurice in London, and found there was much excuse. Maurice had
learnt that the old professor was dying, and his daughter had nothing,
and would have had to be a governess, so that Maurice had married her
in haste in order to be able to help them.'

'Then it really was very kind and noble in him!' exclaimed Gillian.

'And I believe every one would have felt it so; but for his
unfortunately reserved way of concealing the extent of the
acquaintance, and showing that he would not be interfered with. Claude
did his best to close the breach, but there had been something to
forgive on both sides, and perhaps SHE was prouder than the Mohuns
themselves. Oh! my dears, I hope you will never have a family quarrel
among you! It is so sad to look back upon a change after the happy
years when we were all together, and were laughing and making fun of
one another!'

'But you were quite out of it, mamma.'

'So I was in a way, but I knew nothing of the justification till too
late for any advances from us to take much effect. I am four years
older than Maurice, we had never been a pair, and had never
corresponded. And when I wrote to him and to his wife, I only received
stiff, formal answers. They were abroad when we were in London on
coming home, and they would not come to see us at Belfast, so that I
could never make acquaintance with her; but I believe she was an
excellent wife, suiting him admirably in every way, and I expect to
find this little daughter of theirs very well brought up, and much
forwarder than honest old Mysie.'

'Mysie is in perfect raptures at the notion of having a cousin here
exactly of her own age,' said Gillian. 'What she would wish is that
the two should be so much alike as to be taken for twins. I have been
trying to remember Dolores on that dreadful Sunday at the hotel, when
Uncle Maurice came to see us, just when papa was setting off for
Bombay, but it all seems confusion. I can think of nothing but a
little black, shy figure. I remember Phyllis telling me that she
thought I ought to do something to entertain her, but I could not think
of a word to say to her.'

'For which perhaps she was thankful,' said her brother.

'I am not sure. You are all too apt, when you are shy, to console
yourself with fancying that you are doing as you would be done by. It
might have worried her then perhaps, but it would have made it easier
for her to begin among us now! I am very glad her father consents to
my having her! I do hope we may make her happy.'

'Happy!' said Gillian. 'Anybody must be happy with such a number to
play with, and with you to mother her, mamma.'

'I am afraid she will not feel me much like her own mother, poor child!
But it will not be for want of the will. When I look back now I feel
sorry for myself for the early loss of my mother, for though we were
all merry enough as children and young people, there always seems to
have been a lack of something fostering and repressing. There was a
kind of desolateness in our life, though we did not understand it at
the time. I am thankful you have not known it, my dears.' There was a
strange rush of tears nearly choking her voice, and she shook them away
with a sort of laugh. 'That I should cry for that at this time of
day!'

Gillian raised her face for a kiss, and even Harry did the same. Their
hearts were very full, as the perception swept over them in one flash
what their lives would have been without mamma. It seemed like the
solid earth giving way under their feet!

'I am very sorry for poor Dolores,' said Gillian presently. 'It seems
as if we could never be kind enough to her.'

'Yes. Indeed I hope we may do something towards supplying her with a
real home, wandering sprites as we have been,' said Lady Merrifield.

'What a name it is! Dolores! It is as bad as Peter Grievous! How did
she get it?' grumbled Harry.

'That I cannot tell, but I think we must call her Dora or Dolly, as I
fancy your Aunt Jane told me she was called at home. I hope Wilfred
will not get hold of it and tease her about it. You must defend her
from that.'

'If we can,' said Gillian; 'but Wilfred is rather an imp.'

'Yes,' said Harry. 'I found Primrose reduced to the verge of
distraction yesterday because 'Willie would call her Leg of Mutton.''

'I hope you boxed his ears!' cried Gillian.

'I did give it to him well,' said Hal, laughing.

'Thank you,' said his mother. 'A big brother is more effective in such
cases than any one else can be. Wilfred is the only one of you all who
ever seemed to take pleasure in causing pain--and I hardly know how to
meet the propensity.'

'He is the only one who is not quite certain to be nice with Dolores,'
said Gillian.

'And I really don't quite see how to manage,' said the mother. 'If we
show him our anxiety to shield her, it is very likely to direct his
attention that way.'

'She must take her chance,' said Hal, 'and if she is any way rational,
she can soon put a stop to it.'

'But, oh dear! I wish he could go to school,' said Gillian.

'So do I, my dear,' returned her mother; 'but you know the doctors say
we must not risk it for another year, and I can only hope that as he
grows stronger, he may become more manly. Meantime we must be patient
with him, and Hal can help more than any one else. There--what's that
striking?'

'Three quarters.'

'Then we must make haste in, or we shall not have finished supper
before ten.'

Lilias Mohun had married a soldier, and after many wanderings through
military stations, the health and education of a large proportion of
her family had necessitated her remaining at home with them, while her
husband held a command in India, taking out with him the two grown-up
daughters and the second son, who was on his staff. She was
established in a large house not far from a country town, for the
convenience of daily governess, tutor, and masters. She herself had
grown up on the old system which made education depend more on the
family than on the governess, and she preferred honestly the company
and training of her children to going into society in her husband's
absence. Therefore she arranged her habits with a view to being
constantly with them, and though exchanging calls, and occasionally
accepting invitations in the neighbourhood, it was an understood thing
that she went out very little. The chief exceptions were when her
eldest son, Harry, was at home from Oxford. He was devotedly fond of
her, and all the more pleased and proud to take her about with him
because it had not always been possible that his holidays in his school
life should be spent at home, and thus the privilege was doubly prized.

The two sisters above and one brother below him were in India with
their father, and Gillian was not yet out of the schoolroom, though
this did not cut her off from being her mother's prime companion. Then
followed a schoolboy at Wellington, named Jasper, two more girls, a
brace of boys, and the five-year-old baby of the establishment--
sufficient reasons to detain Lady Merrifield in England after more than
twenty years of travels as a soldier's wife, so that scarcely three of
her children had the same birthplace. She had been able to see very
little of her English relations, being much tied by the number of her
children while all were very young, and the expense of journeys; but
she was now within easy reach of her two unmarried sisters, and after
the Cape, Gibraltar, Malta, and Dublin, the homes of her eldest sister,
and of her eldest brother did not seem very far off.

Indeed Beechcroft, the home of her childhood, had always been the
headquarters of herself and her children on their rare visits to
England. Her elder boys had been sure of a welcome there in the
holidays, and loved it scarcely less than she did herself; and when
looking for her present abode, the whole family had stayed there for
three months. Her brother Maurice, however, she had scarcely seen, and
she had been much pained at being included in his persistent avoidance
of the whole family, who felt that he resented their displeasure at his
marriage even more since his wife's death than he had done during her
lifetime, as if he felt doubly bound, for her sake, not to forgive and
forget. At least so said some of the family, while others hoped that
his distaste to all intercourse with them only arose from the apathy
succeeding a great blow.




CHAPTER III

GOOD-BYE



A passage was offered to Mr. Mohun in a Queen's ship, and this hurried
the preparations so much that to Dolores it appeared that there was
nothing but bustle and confusion, from the day of her conversation with
Maude, until she found herself in the railway carriage returning from
Plymouth with her eldest uncle. Her father had intended to take her
himself to Silverfold; but detentions at the office in London, and then
a telegram from Plymouth, had disconcerted his plans, and when he found
that his eldest brother would come and meet him at the last, he was
glad to yield to his little daughter's earnest desire to be with him as
long as possible.

Shy and reserved as both were, and almost incapable of finding
expression for their feelings, they still clung closely together,
though the only tears the girl was seen to shed came in church on the
last Sunday evening, blinding and choking, and she could barely
restrain her sobs. Her father would have taken her out, but she
resisted, and leant against him, while he put his arm round her. After
this, whenever it was possible, she crept up to him, and he held her
close.

There had been no further discussion on her home. Lady Merrifield had
written kindly to her, as well as to her father, but that was small
consolation to one so well instructed by story books in the hypocrisy
of aunts until fathers were at a distance. And her father was so
manifestly gratified by the letter, that it would be of no use to say a
word to him now. Her fate was determined, and, as she heroically told
Maude in their last interview, she was determined to make the best of
it. She would endure the unjust aunt, and jealous, silly cousins, and
be so clever, and wise, and superior, that she would force them to
admire and respect her, and by-and-by follow her example, and be good
and sensible, so that when father came home, he would find them
acknowledging that they owed everything to her; she had saved two or
three of their lives, nursed half of them when the other half were
helpless, fainting, and hysterical, and, in short, been the Providence
of the household. Then father would look at her, and say, 'My Mary
again!' and he would take her home, and talk to her with the free
confidence he had shown her mother, and would be comforted.

This was the hope that had carried her through the last parting, when
she went on board with her uncle and saw her father's cabin, and looked
with a dull kind of entertainment at all the curious arrangements of
the big ship. It seemed more like sight-seeing than good-bye, when at
last they were sent on shore, and hurried up to the station just in
time for the train.

Uncle William was a very unapproachable person. He did not profess to
understand little girls. He looked at Dolores rather anxiously, afraid,
perhaps, that she was crying, and put her into the carriage, then
rushed out and brought back a handful of newspapers, giving her the
Graphic, and hiding himself in the Times.

She felt too dull and stunned to read, or to look at the pictures,
though she held the paper in her hands, and she gazed out dreamily at
the Ton's and rocks and woody ravines of Dartmoor as they flew past
her, the leaves and ferns all golden brown with autumn colouring. She
had had little sleep that night; her little legs had all the morning
been keeping up with the two men's hasty steps, and though an excellent
meal had been set before her in the ship, she had not been able to
swallow much, and she was a good deal worn out. So when at last they
reached Exeter, and finding there would be two hours to wait, her uncle
asked whether she would come down into the town with him and see the
Cathedral, she much preferred to stay where she was. He put her under
the care of the woman in the waiting-room, who gave her some tea, took
off her hat, and made her lie down on a couch, where she slept quite
sound for more than an hour, until she was roused by some ladies coming
in with a crying baby.

It was, she thought, nearly time to go on, for the gas was being
lighted. She put on her hat, and went out to look for her uncle on the
platform, so as to get into a better light to see the face of her
mother's little Swiss watch, which her father had just made over to
her. She had just made out that there was not more than a quarter of an
hour to spare, when she heard an exclamation.

'By Jove! if that ain't Mary's little girl!' and, looking up she saw
Mr. Flinders' huge, bushy, light-coloured beard. 'Is your father here?'
he asked.

'No; he sailed this afternoon.'

'Always my luck! Ticket wasted! Sailed--really?'

'Oh yes. We did not come back till the ship was out of harbour.'

He muttered some exclamation, and asked--

'Whom are you with?'

'Uncle William. Mr. Mohun--my eldest uncle. He will be back
directly.'

Mr. Flinders whistled a note of discontent.

'Going to rusticate with him, poor little mite?' he asked.

'No. I'm to live with my Aunt Lilias--Lady Merrifield.'

'Where?'

'At Silverfold Grange, near Silverfold.'

'Well, you'll get among the swells. They'll make you cut all your poor
mother's connections. So there's an end of it. She was a good
creature--she was!'

'I'll never forget any one that belongs to her,' said Dolores. 'Oh,
there's Uncle William!' as on the top of the stairs she spied the
welcome sight of his grey locks and burly figure. Before he had
descended, her other uncle had vanished, and she fancied she had heard
something about, 'Mum about our meeting. Ta ta!'

Uncle William's eyes being less sharp than hers, he was on his way to
the waiting-room before she joined him, and as he had not seen her
encounter, she would not tell him. They were settled in the carriage
again, and she was tolerably refreshed. Mr. Mohun fell asleep, and she,
after reading by the lamp-light as long as she could find anything to
read, gazed at the odd reflections in the windows till she, too, nodded
and dozed, half waking at every station.

At last, she was aware of a stop in earnest, voices, and being called.
There was her uncle saying, 'Well, Hal, here we are!' and she was
lifted out and set on the platform, with gas all round. Her uncle was
saying, 'We didn't get away in time for the express,' and a young man
was answering, 'We'd better put Dolly into the waggonette at once.
Then I'll see to the luggage.'

Very like a parcel, so stiff were her legs, she was bundled into the
dark cavern of a closed waggonette, and, after a little lumbering, her
uncle and the young man got in after her, saying something about eleven
o'clock.

She was more awake now, and knew that they were driving through lighted
streets, and then, after an interval, turned into darkness, upon
gravel, and stopped at last before a door full of light, with figures
standing up dark in it. She heard a 'Well, William!' 'Well Lily, here
we are at last!' Then there were arms embracing her, and a kiss on each
cheek, as a soft voice said, 'My poor little girl! They wanted to sit
up for you, but it was too late, and I dare say you had rather be
quiet.'

She was led into a lamp-lit room, which dazzled her. It was spread
with food, but she was too much tired to eat, and her aunt saw how it
was, and telling Harry to take care of his uncle, she took the hand--
though it did not close on hers--and, climbing up what seemed to
Dolores an endless number of stairs, she said--

'You are up high, my dear; but I thought you would like a room to
yourself.'

'Poked away in an attic,' was Dolores's dreamy thought; while her aunt
added, to a tall, thin woman, who came out with a lamp in her hand--

'She is so tired that she had better go to bed directly, Mrs.
Halfpenny. You will make her comfortable, and don't let her be
disturbed in the morning till she has had her sleep out.'

Dolly found herself undressed, without many words, till it came to--
'Your prayers, Miss Dora. I am sure you've need not to miss them.'

She did not like to be told, besides, poor child, prayers were not much
more than a form to her. She did not contest the point, but knelt down
and muttered something, then laid her weary head on the pillow, was
tucked up by Mrs. Halfpenny, and left in the dark. It was a dreary
half sleep into which she fell. The noise of the train seemed to be
still in her ears, and at the same time she was always being driven up
--up--up endless stairs, by tall, cruel aunts; or they were shutting her
up to do all their children's work, and keeping away father's letters
from her. Then she awoke and told herself it was a dream, but she
missed the noises of the street, and the patch of light on the wall
from the gas lamps, and recollected that father was gone, and she was
really in the power of one of these cruel aunts; and she felt like
screaming, only then she might have been heard; and a great horrid
clock went on making a noise like a church bell, and striking so many
odd quarters that there was no guessing when morning was coming. And
after all, why should she wish it to come? Oh, if she could but sleep
the three years while father was away!

At last, however, she fell into a really calm sleep, and when she
awoke, the room was full of light, but her watch had stopped; she had
been too much tired to remember to wind it; and she lay a little while
hearing sounds that made it clear that the world was astir, and she
could see that preparations had been made for her getting up.

'They shan't begin by scolding me for being late,' she thought, and she
began her toilette.

Just as she came to her hair, the old nurse knocked and asked whether
she wanted help.

'Thank you, I've been used to dress myself,' said Dolores, rather
proudly.

'I'll help you now, missy, for prayers are over, and they are all gone
to breakfast, only my lady said you were not to be disturbed, and Miss
Mysie will be up presently again to bring you down.'

She spoke low, and in an accent that Dolores afterwards learnt was
Scotch; and she was a tall, thin, bony woman, with sandy hair, who
looked as if she had never been young. She brushed and plaited the
dark hair in a manner that seemed to the owner more wearisome and less
tender than Caroline's fashion; and did not talk more than to inquire
into the fashion of wearing it, and to say that Miss Mohun's boxes had
been sent from London, demanding the keys that they might be unpacked.

'I can do that myself,' said Dolores, who did not like any stranger to
meddle with her things.

'Ye could tak them oot, nae doubt, but I must sort them. It's my
lady's orders,' said Mrs. Halfpenny, with all the determination of the
sergeant, her husband, and Dolores, with a sense of despair, and a sort
of expectation that she should be deprived of all her treasures on one
plea or another, gave up the keys.

Mrs. Halfpenny then observed that the frock which had been worn for the
last two days on the railway, and evening and morning, needed a better
brushing and setting to rights than she had had time to give it. She
had better take out another. Which box were her frocks in?

Dolores expected her heartless relations to insist on her leaving off
her mourning, and she knew she ought to struggle and shed tears over
it; but, to tell the truth, she was a good deal tired of her hot and
fusty black; and when she had followed Mrs. Halfpenny into a passage
where the boxes stood uncorded; and the first dress that came to light
was a pretty fresh-looking holland that had been sent home just before
the accident, she exclaimed--

'Oh, let me put that on.'

'Bless me, miss, it has blue braid, and you in mourning for your poor
mamma!'

Dolores stood abashed, but a grey alpaca, which she had always much
disliked, came out next, and Mrs. Halfpenny decided that with her black
ribbons that would do, though it turned out to be rather shockingly
short, and to show a great display of black legs; but as the box
containing the clothes in present wear had not come to hand, this must
stand for the present--and besides, a voice was heard, saying, 'Is Dora
ready?' and a young person darted up, put her arms round her neck, and
kissed her before she knew what she was about. 'Mamma said I should
come because I am just your age, thirteen and a half,' she said. 'I'm
Mysie, though my proper name is Maria Millicent.'

Dolores looked her over. She was a good deal taller than herself, and
had rich-looking shining brown hair, dark brown eyes full of merriment,
and a bright rosy colour, and she danced on her active feet as if she
were full of perpetual life. 'All happy and not caring,' thought
Dolores.

'Now don't fash Miss Mohun with your tricks. She has stood like a
lamb,' said Mrs. Halfpenny reprovingly. 'There, we'll not keep her to
find an apron.'

'I don't wear pinafores,' said Mysie, 'but I don't mind pretty aprons
like this. 'Why, my sisters had them for tennis, before they went out
to India. Come along, Dora,' grasping her hand.

'My name isn't Dora,' said the new-comer, as they went down the
passage.

'No,' said Mysie, in a low voice; 'but mamma told Gill--that's Gillian,
and me, that we had better not tell anybody, because if the boys heard
they might tease you so about it; for Wilfred is a tease, and there's
no stopping him when mamma isn't there. So she said she would call you
Dora, or Dolly, whichever you liked, and you are not a bit like a
Dolly.'

'They always called me Dolly,' said Dolores; 'and if I am not to have
my name, I like that best; but I had rather have my proper name.'

'Oh, very well,' said Mysie; 'it is more out of the way, only it is
very long.'

By this time they had descended a long narrow flight of uncarpeted
stairs, 'the back ones,' as Mysie explained, and had reached a slippery
oak hall with high-backed chairs, and all the odds and ends of a
family-garden hats, waterproofs, galoshes, bats, rackets, umbrellas,
etc., ranged round, and a great white cockatoo upon a stand, who
observed--'Mysie, Cockie wants his breakfast,' as they went by towards
the door, whence proceeded a hubbub of voices and a clatter of knives
and jingle of teaspoons and cups, a room that as Mysie threw open the
door seemed a blaze of sunshine, pouring in at the large window, and
reflected in the glass and silver. Yes, and in the bright eyes and
glossy hair of the party who sat round the breakfast-table, further
brightened by the fire, pleasant in the early autumn.

Eyes, as it seemed to Dolores, eyes without number were levelled on
her, as Mysie led her in, saying--

'Here's a place by mamma; she kept it for you, between her and Uncle
William.'

'No, don't all jump up at once and rush at her,' said Lady Merrifield.
'Give her a little time. Here, my dear;' and she held out her hand and
drew in the stranger to her, kissing her kindly, and placing her in a
chair close to herself, as she presided over the teacups--not at the
end, but at the middle of the table--while all that could be desired to
eat and drink found its way at once to Dolores, who had arrived at
being hungry now, and was glad to have the employment for hands and
eyes, instead of feeling herself gazed at. She was not so much
occupied, however, as not to perceive that Uncle William's voice had a
free, merry ring in it, such as she had never heard in his visits to
her father, and that there was a great deal of fun and laughter going
on over the thin sheets of an Indian letter, which Aunt Lily was
reading aloud.

No one seemed to be attending to anything else, when Dolores ventured
to cast a glance around and endeavour to count heads as she sat between
her uncle and aunt. Two boys and a girl were opposite. Harry, who had
come to meet them last night, was at one end of the table, a tall girl,
but still a schoolroom girl, was at the other, and Mysie had been lost
sights of on her own side of the table; also there was a very tiny girl
on a high chair on the other side of her mamma. 'Seven,' thought
Dolores with sinking heart. 'Eight oppressors!'

They were mostly brown-eyed, well-grown creatures. One boy, at the
further corner, had a cast in his eye, and was thin and wizen-looking,
and when he saw her eyes on him, he made up an ugly face, which he got
rid of like a flash of lightning before any one else could see it, but
her heart sank all the more for it. He must be Wilfred, the teaser.

Aunt Lilias was a tall, slender woman, dressed in some kind of soft
grey, with a little carnation colour at her throat, and a pretty lace
cap on her still rich, abundant, dark brown hair, where diligent search
could only detect a very few white threads. Her complexion was always
of a soft, paly, brunette tint, and though her cheeks showed signs that
she was not young, her dark, soft, long-lashed eyes and sweet-looking
lips made her face full of life and freshness; and the figure and long
slender hands had the kind of grace that some people call willowy, but
which is perhaps more like the general air of a young birch tree, or,
as Hal had once said, 'Early pointed architecture reminded him of his
mother.'

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