The Two Sides of the Shield

‘Sweet little bud of stainless white,
Thou’lt blossom in the garden of light.’

‘Mary thought that so sweet she asked Miss Mohun to send it to Friendly Leaves, but she wouldn’t—Miss Mohun I mean; she said she didn’t think they would accept it, and that the lines didn’t scan. Now I’m sure its only Latin and Greek that scan! English rhymes, and doesn’t scan! That’s the difference!’

‘To be sure!’ said Dolores, ‘but Aunt Jane always does look out for what nobody else cares about. Still I wouldn’t send the baby-verses to Uncle Alfred, for they do sound a little bit goody, and the ‘Evening Star’ would be better.’

The verses were turned over and discussed until the summons came to tea, poured out by kind old Miss Hacket, who had delighted in providing her young guests with buttered toast and tea cakes.

Dolores went home quite exhilarated and unusually amiable.

Her letter to her father was finished the next day. It contained the following information.

‘Uncle Alfred is at Darminster. He is sub-editor to the Politician, the Liberal county paper. I do not suppose Aunt Lilias will let me see him, for she does not like anything that dear mother did. There is a childish obsolete tone of mind here; I suppose it is because they have never lived in London, and the children are all so young of their age, and so rude, Wilfred most especially. Even Gillian, who is sixteen, likes quite childish games, and Mysie, who is my age, is a mere child in tastes, and no companion. I do wish I could have gone with you.’

Lady Merrifield wrote by the same mail, ‘Your Dolores is quite well, and shows herself both clever and well taught. Miss Vincent thinks highly of her abilities, and gets on with her better than any one else, except the daughter of our late Vicar, for whom she has set up a strong girlish friendship. She plainly has very deep affections, which are not readily transferred to new claimants, but I feel sure that we shall get on in time.’

Miss Mohun wrote, ‘Lily and I enjoyed your letter together. Dolly looks all the better for country life, though I am afraid she has not learnt to relish it, nor to assimilate with the Merrifield children as I expected. I don’t think Lily has quite fathomed her as yet, but ‘cela viendra’ with patience, only mayhap not without a previous explosion. I fancy it takes a long time for an only child to settle in among a large family. It was a great pity you could not see Lily yourself. To my dismay I encountered Flinders in the street at Darminster last week. I believe he is on the staff of a paper there, happily Dolly does not know it, nor do I think he knows where she is.’

In another three weeks, Constance was in the utmost elation, for ‘On hearing the cannonade of the Autumn Manoeuvres’ was in print, and Miss Hacket was so much delighted that justice should be done to her sister’s abilities, that she forgot Mr. Leadbitter’s disapproval, and ordered half a dozen copies of the Politician for the present, and one for the future.

Dolores, walking home in the twilight, could not help showing Gillian, in confidence, the precious slip, though it was almost too dark to read the small type.

‘Newspaper poetry, I thought that always was trumpery,’ said Gillian, making a youthfully sweeping assertion.

‘Many great poets have begun with a periodical press,’ said Dolores, picking up a sentence which she had somewhere read.

‘I thought you hated English poetry, Dolly! You always grumble at having to learn it.’

‘Oh, that is lessons.’

“‘Il Penseroso,’ for instance.”

‘This is a very different thing.’

‘That it certainly is,’ said Gillian, beginning to read—

‘How lovely mounts the evening star
Climbing the sunset skies afar.’

‘What a wonderful evening! Why, the evening star was going up backward!’

‘You only want to make nonsense of it.’

‘It is not I that make nonsense!’ said Gillian, ‘why, don’t you see, Dolly, which way the sun and everything moves?’

‘This is the evening star,’ said Dolores, sulkily. ‘It was just rising.’

‘I do believe you think it rises in the west.’

‘You always see it there. You showed it to me only last Sunday.’

‘Do you think it had just risen?’

‘Of course the stars rise when the sun sets.’

Gillian could hardly move for laughing. ‘My dear Dolores, you to be daughter to a scientific man! Don’t you know that the stars are in the sky, going on all the time, only we can’t see them till the sunlight is gone?’

But Dolores was too much offended to attend, and only grunted. She wanted to get the cutting away from Gillian, but there was no doing so.

‘The mist is rising o’er the mead,
With silver hiding grass and reed;
‘Tis silent all, on hill and heath,
The evening winds, they hardly breathe;
What sudden breaks the silent charm,
The echo wakes with wild alarm.
With rapid, loud, and furious rattle,
Sure ‘tis the voice of deadly battle,
Bidding the rustic swain to fly
Before his country’s enemy.’

‘Did anybody ever hear of a sham fight in the evening?’ cried the soldier’s daughter indignantly. ‘There, I can’t see any more of it.’

‘Give it to me, then.’

‘You are welcome! Where did it come from? Let me look. C.H. Oh, did Constance Hacket write it? Nobody else could be so delicious, or so far superior to Milton.’

‘You knew it all the time, and that was the reason you made game of it.’

‘No, indeed it was not, Dolores. I did not guess. You should have told me at first.’

‘You would have gone on about it all the same.’

‘No, indeed, I hope not. I did not mean to vex you; but how was I to know it was so near your heart?’

‘I ought to have known better than to have shown it to you! You are always laughing at her and me all over the house—and now—’

‘Come, Dolly. I never meant to hurt your feelings. I will promise not to tell the others about it.’

No answer. There was something hard and swelling in Dolores’s throat.

‘Won’t that do?’ said Gillian. ‘You know I can’t say that I admire it, but I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’ll take care the others don’t tease you about it.’

Dolores made hardly any answer, but it was a sort of pacification, and Gillian said not a word to the younger ones. Still she thought it no breach of her promise, when they were all gone to bed, and she the sole survivor, to tell her mother how inadvertently she had affronted Dolores by cutting up the verses, before she knew whose they were.

‘I am sorry,’ said Lady Merrifield. ‘Anything that tends to keep Dolores aloof from us is a pity.’

‘But, mama, I had no notion whose they were.’