The Two Sides of the Shield

‘She really gave him the cheque!’

‘Yes, but at least it was only for seven. The rascal himself must have altered it into seventy. She and the other girl both agree as to that. There’s been a clandestine correspondence going on with that scamp ever since she has been here, under cover to that precious friend of hers—that Hacket girl.’

‘Ah! you warned me, Jenny,’ said Lady Merrifield ‘But I’m quite sure Miss Hacket knew nothing of it.’

‘I don’t suppose she did. She seemed struck all of a heap. Any way they’ve quarrelled now; the other one has turned King’s evidence—has lost some money too, and says Dolores deceived her. She’s deceived every one all round, that’s the fact. Why she told me two flat lies this very morning—lies—there’s no other name for it. What will you do with her, Lily?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lady Merrifield, utterly shocked, and recollecting, but not mentioning, the falsehood told to her about the note. Lord Rotherwood said, ‘Poor child,’ and Colonel Mohun groaned, ‘Poor Maurice.’

‘Then she did go to Darminster?’ said Miss Mohun.

‘Yes; that came out from this Miss Constance, who seems to have been properly taken in about some publishing trash. Serve her right! But it seems Dolores beguiled her with stories about her dear uncle in distress. We left her nearly in hysterics, and I told the children to come away.’

‘What does Dolores say?’ asked Jane.

‘Nothing! I could not get a word out of her after the first surprise at the alteration of the cheque. Not a word nor a tear. She is as hard—as hard as a bit of stone.’

‘Really,’ said Lady Merrifield, ‘I can’t help thinking there’s a good deal of excuse for her.’

‘What? That poor Maurice’s wife was half a heathen, and afterwards the girl was left to chance?’ said Colonel Mohun. ‘I see no other. And you, Lily, are the last person I should expect to excuse untruth.’

‘I did not mean to do that, Regie; but you all say that poor Mary was fond of this man and helped him.’

‘That she did!’ said Lord Rotherwood, ‘and very much against the grain it went with Maurice.’

‘Then don’t you see that this poor child, who probably never had the matter explained to her, may have felt it a great hardship to be cut off from the man her mother taught her to care for; and that may have led her into concealments?’

‘Well!’ said Colonel Mohun, ‘at that rate, at least one may be thankful never to have married.’

‘One—or two, Regie?’ said Jane, as they all laughed at his sally. ‘I think I had better go up and see whether I can get anything out of the child. Do you mean to have her down to dinner, Lily,’ she added, glancing at the clock.

‘Oh yes, certainly. I don’t want to put her to disgrace before all the children and servants—that is, if she is not crying herself out of condition to appear, poor child.’

‘Not she,’ said Uncle Reginald.

On opening the door, the children were all discovered in the hall, in anxious curiosity, not venturing in uncalled, but very much puzzled.

Gillian came forward and said, ‘Mamma, may we know what is the matter?’

‘I hardly understand it myself yet, my dear, only that Dolores and Constance Hacket have let themselves be taken in by a sort of relation of Dolores’s mother, and Uncle Maurice has lost a good deal of money through it. It would not have happened if there had been fair and upright dealing towards me; but we do not know the rights of it, and you had better take no notice of it to her.’

‘I thought,’ said Valetta, sagaciously, ‘no good could come of running after that stupid Miss Constance.’

‘Who can’t pull a cracker, and screams at a daddy long-legs,’ added Fergus.

‘But, mamma, what shall we do?’ said Gillian. ‘I came away because Uncle Regie told us, and Constance was crying so terribly; but what is poor Miss Hacket to do? There is the tree only half dressed, and all the girls coming to-night, unless she puts them off.’

‘Yes, you had better go down alone as soon as dinner is over, and see what she would like,’ said Lady Merrifield. ‘We must not leave her in the lurch, as if we cast her off, though I am afraid Constance has been very foolish in this matter. Oh, Gillian, I wish we could have made Dolores happier amongst us, and then this would not have happened.’

‘She would never let us, mamma,’ said Gillian.

But Mysie, coming up close to her mother as they all went up the broad staircase to prepare for the midday meal, confessed in a grave little voice, ‘Mamma, I think I have sometimes been cross to Dolly-more lately, because it has been so very tiresome.’

Lady Merrifield drew the little girl into her own room, stooped down, and kissed her, saying, ‘My dear child, these things need a great deal of patience. You will have to be doubly kind and forbearing now, for she must be very unhappy, and perhaps not like to show it. You might say a little prayer for her, that God will help us to be kind to her, and soften her heart.’

‘Oh yes, mamma; and, please, will you set it down for me?’

‘Yes, my dear, and for myself too. You shall have it before bed-time.’

Aunt Jane had followed Dolores to her own room the girl, who was sitting on her bed, dazed, regretted that she had not bolted her door, as her aunt entered with the words, ‘Oh, Dolores, I am very sorry I could not have thought you would so have abused the confidence that was placed in you.’

To this Dolores did not answer. To her mind she was the person ill-used by the prohibition of correspondence, but she could not say so. Every one was falling on her; but Aunt Jane’s questions could not well help being answered.

‘What will your father think of if?’

‘He never forbade me to write to Uncle Alfred’ said Dolores.

‘Because he never thought of your doing such a thing. Did he give you this cheque?’

‘Yes.’

‘For yourself?’

‘N-n-o. But it was the same.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘It was to pay a man—a man’s that’s dead.’

‘That may be; but what right did that give you to spend the money otherwise? Who was the man?’

‘Professor Muhlwasser, for some books of plates.’

‘How do you know he is dead! Who told you so? Eh! Was it Flinders? Ah! you see what comes of trusting to an unprincipled man like that. If you had only been open and straightforward with Aunt Lily, or with any of us, you would have been saved from this tissue of falsehood; forfeiting your Uncle Reginald’s good opinion, and enabling Flinders to do your father this great injury.’ She paused, and, as Dolores made no answer, she went on again—‘Indeed, there is no saying what you have not brought on yourself by your deceit and disobedience. If Flinders is apprehended, you will have to appear against him in court, and publicly avow that you gave away what your father trusted to you.’

Dolores gave a little moan and start, and her aunt, perceiving that she had touched an apparently vulnerable spot, proceeded—‘The only thing left for you to do is to tell the whole story frankly and honestly. I don’t say so only for the sake of showing Aunt Lily that you are sorry for having abused her confidence. I wish I could think that you are; but, unless we know all, we cannot shield you from any further consequences, and that of course we should wish to do, for your father’s sake.’

Dolores did not feel drawn to confession, but she knew that when Aunt Jane once set herself to ask questions, there was no use in trying to conceal anything. So she made answers, chiefly ‘Yes’ or No,’ and her aunt, by severe and diligent pumping, had extracted bit by bit what it was most essential should be known, before the gong summoned them. Dolores would rather have been a solitary prisoner, able to chafe against oppression, than have been obliged to come down and confront everybody; but she crept into the place left for her between Mysie and Wilfred. She had very little appetite, and never found out how Mysie was fulfilling her resolution of kindness by baulking Wilfred of sundry attempts to tease; by substituting her own kissing-crust for Dolly’s more unpoetical piece of bread; and offering to exchange her delicious strawberry-jam tartlet for the black-currant one at which her cousin was looking with reluctant eyes.

Mysie and Valetta were grievously exercised about their chances of returning to the G.F.S. Tree. Indeed Gillian went the length of telling them that Fly was behaving far better in her disappointment as to the Butterfly’s Ball than they were as to this ‘old second-hand tree.’ Fly laughed and observed, ‘Dear me, things one would like are always being stopped. If one was to mind every time, how horrid it would be! And there’s always something to make up!’

Then it occurred to Gillian, though not to her younger sisters, that Lady Phyllis Devereux lived in general a much less indulged, and more frequently disappointed, life than did herself and her sisters.

However, there was great delight at that dinner-table. Jasper had ridden to get the letters of the second post, and Lord Rotherwood had his hands and his head full of them when he came in to luncheon—there being what Lady Merrifield called a respectable dinner in view. In the first place. Lord Ivinghoe was getting on very well, and was up, sitting by the fire, playing patience. Nobody was catching the measles, and quarantine would be over on the 9th of January. Secondly, ‘Fly, shall you be very broken-hearted if I tell you.’

‘Oh, daddy, you wouldn’t look like that if it was anything very bad! Lion isn’t dead?’

‘No; but I grieve to say your unnatural grand-parents don’t want you! Grandmamma is nervous about having you without mamma. What did we do last time we were there, Fly?’