The Two Sides of the Shield

There was a lurking purpose in the boys’ minds that if Dolores would not join in fun, yet still fun should be extracted from her. Jasper had brought home a box of Japanese fireworks, and Wilfred, who was superintending his unpacking, proposed to light the serpent and place it in Dolores’s path as she was going up to bed; but Jasper was old enough to reply that he would have no concern with anything so low and snobbish as such a trick. In fact, there was in Jasper’s mind a decided line between bullying and teasing, which did not exist as yet in Wilfred’s conscience. And, altogether, Dolores was in a state of mind that made her stiff letters to her father betray low spirits and discontent.

On Sunday, while waiting for the early dinner, Jasper and Mysie happened to be together in the drawing-room, and Mysie took the opportunity of showing her brother the different cuttings of poetry. The lines were smooth, and some had a certain swing in them such as Mysie, with an unformed taste, a love for Miss Hacket, and amazement that the words of a familiar acquaintance of her own should appear in print, genuinely admired. But the eyes of a youth exercised in ‘chaffing’ the productions of one of his fellow ‘men’ were infinitely more critical. Besides, what could be more shocking to the General’s son than the confusion between the evening gun and the sham fight? And Mysie had been reduced to confusion for not detecting the faults, and then pardoned in consideration of being only a girl, by the time the gong summoned them to the Sunday roast beef.

The dinner over, the female part of the family, scampered headlong upstairs, while Harry repaired with his mother to her room to talk over a letter from his father respecting his plans on leaving Oxford. The other boys hung about the hall, until Gillian and Dolores came down equipped for walking. ‘Hollo, Gill! All right! Where’s Mysie? We’ll be off! Mysie! Mice! Mouse! Val!’

‘You must wait for them, Japs,’ said Gillian. ‘They are having their dresses changed; and, don’t you remember, I always go to Miss Hacket’s.’

‘Botheration! What for?’

‘You know very well.’

‘Oh yes. To help her to write touching verses about the sweet dead dove, with voice and plumage soft as love, eh? Only, Gill, I’m afraid your memory is failing, if you don’t know the evening gun from rifle practice.’

‘Nonsense! that’s no concern of mine,’ said Gillian, opening the front door, very anxious to get Dolores away from hearing anything worse.

‘Oh, that’s your modesty. Only such a conjunction could have produced such a scene that the evening star came up backwards to look at it!’

‘For shame, Jasper! How in the world did you get hold of that?’

‘Too sweet a thing not to meet with universal fame,’ said Jasper, to whom it was exquisite fun to assume that Gillian devoted her Sunday afternoons to the concoction of such poetry with Constance Hacket, and thus to revenge himself for his disgust and jealousy at having his favourite companion and slave engrossed. Wilfred hopped about like an imp in ecstasy, grinning in the face of Dolores, whom Gillian longed to free from her tormentors. The shout was welcome, as Mysie and Valetta came tearing down the drive after them.

‘Japs! Japs! Oh, we couldn’t come before because nurse would make us take off our Sunday serges. Come and let out the dogs. Mamma says we may see if there are any nice fir cones in the plantation to gild for the Christmas-tree.’

‘And you won’t come?’ said Jasper. ‘The Muses must meet. What a poem you will produce!

‘Hear I a cannon or a rifle,
That is an unessential trifle!’

‘What nonsense boys do talk!’ said Gillian, turning her back on them with regret; for much as she loved her class, she better loved a walk with Jasper, and here was Dolores on her hands in a state of exasperation, believing her to have broken her promise, and muttering,

‘You set him on.’

‘No, indeed I never did! You know I promised.’

‘There are plenty of ways of getting out of a promise.’

‘Speak for yourself, Dolores.’

There were ten minutes of offended silence, and then Gillian said, ‘This is nonsense! You may believe me, I was sorry I laughed at the first verses you showed me, and mamma said I ought not. We never spoke of it, but Miss Hacket has been giving mamma all the poems, and Jasper must have got at them. Don’t you see?’

‘Oh yes, you say so,’ said Dolores, sulkily.

‘You don’t believe me!’

‘You promised that your brothers should never hear of it.’

‘I promised for myself. I couldn’t promise for what was put into a newspaper and trumpeted all over the place,’ said Gillian, really angry now.

Dolores could not deny this, but she was hurt by the word trumpeted; and besides, her own slippery behaviour was weakening her trust in other people’s sincerity, and she only gave a kind of grunt; but Gillian, recovering herself a little, and remembering her mother’s words, proceeded to argue. ‘Besides, it was me whom Jasper meant to tease, not you.’

‘I don’t care which it was. He is as bad as the rest of them!’

Gillian attempted no more conciliation, and they arrived in silence at the Casement Cottages, where Constance was awaiting her friend in the greatest excitement; for she had despatched ‘The Waif of the Moorland’ to Mr. Flinders in the course of the week, and had received a letter from him in return, saying that a personal interview with the gifted authoress would be desirable.

‘And I do long to see him; don’t you, darling?

‘It is very hard that he should be kept away from me,’ said Dolores, trying to stir up some tender feelings.

‘That it is, my poor sweet! I thought whether he could come to me for a merely literary consultation without Mary’s knowing anything further about it, and then we could contrive for you to come down and meet him; but there are so many horrid prejudices that I suppose it would not be safe.’

‘I don’t see how I could come down here without the others. Aunt Lily won’t let me come alone, and though it is holiday time, that is no good, for those horrid boys are always about, and I see that Jasper is going to be worse even than Wilfred.

Various ways and means were discussed, but no excuse seemed available for either Constance’s going to Darminster, or for Mr. Flinders coming to Silverton, without exciting suspicion.

CHAPTER XI. – SECRET EXPEDITION

‘The Christmas-tree! Oh, mamma, do let it be the Christmas-tree. It is quite well. We’ve been to look at it.’

‘Christmas-trees have got so stale, Val,’ said Gillian.

‘Rot!’ put in Jasper.

‘Oh, please, please, mamma,’ implored Valetta, ‘please let it be the dear old Christmas-tree! You said I should choose because it will be my birthday.’

‘There is no need to whine, Val; you shall have your tree.’

‘I’m so glad!’ cried Mysie. ‘The dear old tree is best of all. I could never get tired of it if I lived to be a hundred years old.’

‘Such are institutions,’ said their mother. ‘I never heard of a Christmas-tree till I was twice your age.’

‘Oh, mamma! How dreadful! What did you do?’

‘I suppose it is all very well for you kids,’ said Jasper, loftily, putting his hands in his pockets.

‘Perhaps something may be found interesting eve: to the high and mighty elders,’ observed Lady Merrifield.

‘Oh! What, mamma?’

Mamma, of course, only looked mysterious.

‘And,’ added Val, ‘mayn’t we all go on a secret expedition and buy things for it?’

‘We’ve all been saving up,’ added Mysie; ‘and everybody knows every single thing in all the shop at Silverton.’

‘Besides,’ added Gillian, ‘the sconces will none of them hold, and almost all the golden globes got smashed in coming from Dublin, and one of the birds has its head off, and another has lost its spun-glass tail, and another its legs.’

‘A bird of Paradise,’ said Lady Merrifield, laughing; ‘but wasn’t there a tree at Malta decked with no apparatus at all?’

‘Yes, but Alley and Phyl can do anything!’