Constance Hacket was very much excited about the address to Dolores’s letter to her uncle. She had not noticed it at the moment that it was written, but she did when she posted it; and the next time she could get her young friend alone, she eagerly demanded what Mr. Flinders had to do with the Many Tongues, and why her niece wrote to him at the office.
‘He writes the criticisms,’ said Dolores, magnificently; for though she despised pluming herself on any connection with a marquess, she did greatly esteem that with the world of letters. ‘You know we are all literary.’
‘Oh yes, I know! But what kind of criticisms do you mean? I suppose it is a very clever paper?’
‘Of course it it,’ said Dolores, ‘but I don’t think I ever saw it. Father never takes in society papers. I believe he does criticisms on plays and novels. I know he always has tickets for all the theatres and exhibitions.
She did not say how she did know it, for a pang smote her as she remembered dimly a scene, when her father had forbidden her mother to avail herself of escort thus obtained. Nor was she sure that the word all was accurately the fact; but it was delightful to impress Constance, who cried, ‘How perfectly delicious! I suppose he can get any article into his paper!’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Dolores.
‘Did your dear mother write in it?’
‘No; it was not her line. She used to write metaphysical and scientific articles in the first-class reviews and magazines, and the Many Tongues is what they call a society paper, you know.’
‘Oh yes, I know. There are charming things about the Upper Ten Thousand. They tell all that is going on, but I hardly ever can see one. Mary won’t take in anything about Church Bells, and we get the Guardian when it is a week old, and my brother James has done with it.’
‘Dear me! How dreadful!’ said Dolores, who had been used to see all manner of papers come in as regularly as hot rolls. ‘Why, you never can know anything! We didn’t take in society papers, because father does not care for gossip or grandees. He has other pursuits. I can show you some of dear mother’s articles. There’s one called ‘Unconscious Volition,’ and another on the ‘Progress of Species.’ I’ll bring them down next time I come.’
‘Have you read them?’
‘No; they are too difficult. Mother was so very clever, you know.’
‘She must have been,’ said Constance, with a sigh; ‘but how did she get them published?’
‘Sent them to the editor, of course,’ said Dolores. ‘They all knew her, and were glad to get anything that she wrote.’
‘Ah! that is what it is to have an introduction,’ sighed Constance.
‘What! have you written anything?’ cried Dolores.
‘Only a few little trifles,’ said Constance, modestly. ‘It is a great secret, you know, a dead secret.’
‘Oh! I’ll keep it. I told you my secret, you know, so you might tell me yours.’
And so to Dolores were confided sundry verses and tales on which Constance had been wont to spend a good deal of her time in that pretty sitting-room. She had actually sent her manuscripts to magazines, but she had heard no more of one, and the other had been returned declined with thanks—all for want of an introduction. Dolores was delighted to promise that as soon as she heard from Uncle Alfred, she would get him to patronize them, and the reading occupied several Sunday afternoons. Dolores suggested, however, that a goody-goody story about a choir-boy lost in the snow would never do for the Many Tongues, and a far more exciting one was taken up, called ‘The Waif of the Moorland,’ being the story of a maiden, whom a wicked step-mother was suspected of murdering, but who walked from time to time like the ‘Woman in White.’ There was only too much time for the romance; for weeks passed and there was no answer from Mr. Flinders. It was possible that he might have broken off his connection with the paper, only then the letter would probably have been returned; and the other alternative was less agreeable, that it was not worth his while to write to his niece. While as to Maude Sefton, nothing was heard of her. Were her letters intercepted? And so the winter side of autumn set in. Hal was gone to Oxford, and there had been time for letters to come from Mr. Mohun, posted from Auckland, New Zealand, where he had made a halt with his sister, Mrs. Harry May, otherwise Aunt Phyllis. Dolores was very much pleased to receive her letter, and to have it all to herself; but, after all, she was somewhat disappointed in it, for there was really nothing in it that might not have been proclaimed round the breakfast-table, like the public letters from that quarter of the family who were at Rawul Pindee. It told of deep-sea soundings and investigations into the creatures at the bottom of the sea, of Portuguese men-of-war, and albatrosses; and there were some orders to scientific-instrument makers for her to send to them—a very improving letter, but a good deal like a book of travels. Only at the end did the writer say, ‘I hope my little daughter is happy among her cousins, and takes care to give her aunt no trouble, and to profit by her kind care. Your three cousins here, Mary, Lily, and Maggie, are exceedingly nice girls, and much interested about you; indeed, they wish I had brought you with me.’
Dolores read her letter over and over and over, for the pleasure of having something all to herself, and never communicated a word about the miscroscopic monsters her father had described, but she drew her head back and reflected, ‘He little knows,’ when he spoke of her being happy among her cousins.
Lady Merrifield likewise received a letter, about which she did not say much to her children, but Miss Mohun, who had had a much longer one, came over for the day to read this to her sister. In point of fact, she had paired in childhood with her brother Maurice. She had been his correspondent in school and college days, and being a person never easily rebuffed, she had kept up more intercourse with him and his wife than any others of the family had done, and he had preserved the habit of writing to her much more freely and unreservedly than to any one else. So the day after the New Zealand letters came, just as the historical reading and needlework were in full force, the schoolroom door was opened, and a brisk little figure stood there in sealskin coat and hat.
Up jumped mamma. ‘Oh! Jenny! Brownie indeed! How did you come? You didn’t walk from the station?’
‘Yes, why not? Otherwise I should have been too soon, and have disturbed the lessons,’ said Aunt Jane, in the intervals of the greeting kisses. ‘All well with the Indian folks?’
‘Oh yes; they’ve come back from the emerald valleys of Cashmere, and Alethea has actually sent me a primrose—just like an English one—that they found growing there. They did enjoy it so. Have you heard from Maurice?’
‘Yes, I thought you would like to hear about Phyllis, so, having enjoyed it with Ada, I brought it over for further enjoyment with you.’
‘That’s a dear old Brownie! We’ve a good hour before dinner. Shall we read it to the general public, or shall we adjourn to the drawing-room?’
“Oh! I assure you it is very instructive. Quite as much so as Miss Sewell’s ‘Rome.’”
And Aunt Jane, whom Gillian had aided in disrobing herself of her outdoor garments, was installed by the fire, and unfolded a whole volume of thin, mauve sheets in Mr. Mohun’s tiny Greek-looking handwriting.
It was a sort of journal of his voyage. There were all the same accounts of the minute creatures that are incipient chalk, and their exquisite cells, made, some of coral, some of silex spicule from sponges; the some descriptions of phosphorescent animals, meduse, and the like, that Dolores had thought her own special treasure and privilege, only a great deal fuller, and with the scientific terms untranslated—indeed, Aunt Jane had now and then to stop and explain, since she had always kept up with the course of modern discovery. There was also much more about his shipmates, with one or two of whom Mr. Mohun had evidently made great friends. He told his sister a great deal about them, and his conversations with them, whereas he had only told Dolores abut one little midshipman getting into a scrape. Perhaps nothing else was to be expected, but it made her feel the contrast between being treated with real confidence and as a mere child, and it seemed to put her father further away from her than ever.
Then came the conclusion, written on shore—
‘Harry May came on board to take me home with him. He is a fine, genial fellow and his welcome did one’s heart good. I never did him justice before; but I see his good sense and superiority called into play out here. Depend upon it, there’s nothing like going to the other end of the world to teach the value of home ties.’
‘Well done, Maurice,’ exclaimed Lady Merrifield; but she glanced at Dolores and checked herself.
Miss Mohun went on, ‘Phyllis met me at the door of a pleasant, English-looking house, with all her tribe about her. She has the true ‘honest Phyl’ face still, carrying me back over some thirty or forty years of life, and as you would imagine, she is a capital mother, with all her flock well in hand, and making themselves thoroughly useful in the scarcity of servants; though the other matters do not seem neglected. The eldest can talk like a well informed girl, and shows reasonable interest in things in general; but Phyllis wants to put finishing touches to their education, and her husband talks of throwing up his appointment before long, as he is anxious to go home while his father lives. I wish I had gone to Stoneborough before coming out here, now that I see what a gratification it would have been if I could have brought a fresh report of old Dr. May. (Somehow, I think there has been a numbness or obtuseness about me all these last two years which hindered me from perceiving or doing much that I now regret, since either the change or the wholesome atmosphere of this house has wakened me as it were. Among these ungracious omissions is what I now am much concerned to think of, that I never went to see Lilias when I committed my child to her charge; nor talked over her disposition. Not that I really understand it as I ought to have done when the poor child was left to me. I take shame to myself when Phyllis questions me about her), but as I watch these children with their parents I am quite convinced that the being taken under Lily’s motherly wing is by far the best thing that could have befallen Dolores, and that my absence is for her real benefit as well as mine.’
The part between brackets was omitted by Miss Mohun in the public reading, but the last sentence she did read, thinking it good for both parties to hear it. However, Dolores both disliked the conclusion to which her father had come, and still more that her aunt and cousins should hear it, though, after all, it was only Gillian and Mysie who remained to listen by the time the end of the letter was reached. The long words had frightened away Valetta as soon as her appointed task of work was finished.
Aunt Lily did not see the omitted sentence till the two sisters were alone together later in the afternoon. It filled her eyes with tears. ‘Poor Maurice,’ she said; ‘he wrote something of the same kind to me.’
‘I expect we shall see him wonderfully shaken up and brightened when he comes home. The numbness he talks of was half of it Mary’s dislike to us all, only I never would let her keep me aloof from him.’
‘I almost wish he had taken Dolores out to Phyllis. I am not in the least fulfilling his ideal towards her.’
‘Nor would Phyllis, unless the voyage had had as much effect on her as it seems to have had upon Maurice. So you don’t get on any better?’
‘Not a bit. It is a case of parallel lines. We don’t often have collisions—unless Wilfred gets an opportunity of provoking her.’
‘Why don’t you send that boy to school?’
‘I shall after Christmas. He is quite well now, and to have him at home is bad both for himself and the others. He needs licking into shape as only boys can do to one another, and he is not a model for Fergus, especially since Harry has been away.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Nothing very brilliant, nor of the kind one half forgives for the drollery of it. Putting mustard into the custard was the worst, I think; inciting the dogs to bring the cattle down on the girls when they cross the paddock; shutting up their books when the places are found—those are the sort of things; putting that very life-like wild cat chauffe-pied with glaring eyes in Dolly’s bed. I believe he does such things to all, but his sisters would let him torture them rather than complain, whereas Dolores does her best to bring them under my notice without actually laying an information, which she is evidently afraid to do. It is very unlucky that her coming should have been just when we had such an element about—for it really gives her some just cause of complaint.’
‘But you say he is impartial?’
‘Teasing is unfortunately his delight. He will even frighten Primrose, but I am afraid there is active dislike making Dolores his favourite victim; and then Val and Fergus, who don’t tease actively on their own account, have come to enjoy her discomfiture.’
“And you go on the principle of ‘tolerer beaucoup?’”
‘I do; hoping that it is not laziness and weakness that makes me abstain from nagging about what is not brought before my eyes by the children or the police—I mean Gill, Halfpenny, and Miss Vincent. Then I scold, or I punish, and that I think maintains the principle, without danger to truth or forbearance. At least, I hope it does. I am pretty sure that if I punished Wilfred for every teasing trick I know, or guess at, he would—in his present mood—only become deceitful, and esprit de corps might make Val and Fergus the same, though I don’t think Mysie’s truth could be shaken any more than honest Phyl’s.’
‘Besides, mutual discipline is not a thing to upset. Lily, I revere you! I never thought you were going to turn out such a sensible mother.’
‘Well, you see, the difficulty is, that what may work for one’s own children may not work for other people’s. And I confess I don’t understand her persistent repulse of Mysie.’
‘Nor of you, the nasty little cat!’ said Aunt Jane, with a little fierce shake of the head.
‘I do understand that a little. I am too unlike Mary for her to stand being mothered by me.’
‘There must be some other influence at work for this perverseness to keep on so long. Tell me, did she take up with that very goosey girl, that Miss Hacket?’
‘Oh yes; she goes there every Sunday afternoon. It is the only thing the poor child seem much to care about, and I don’t think there can be any harm in it.’
‘Humph! the folly of girl is unfathomable! Oh! you may say what you like—you who have thrown yourself into your daughters and kept them one with you. You little know in your innocence the product of an ill-managed boarding-school!’
‘Nay,’ said Lady Merrifield, a little hotly, ‘I do know that Miss Hacket is one of the most excellent people in the world, a little tiresome and borne, perhaps, but thoroughly good, and every inch a lady.’
‘Granted, but that’s not the other one—Constance is her name? My dear, I saw her goings on at the G.F.S. affair—If she had only been a member, wouldn’t I have been at her.’
‘My dear Jenny, you always had more eyes to your share than other people.’
‘And you think that being an old maid has not lessened their sharpness, eh! Lily? Well, I can’t help it, but my notion is that the sweet Constance—whatever her sister may be—is the boarding-school miss a little further developed into sentiment and flirtation.’
‘Nay, but that would be so utterly uncongenial to a grave, reserved, intellectual girl, brought up as Dolores has been.’
‘Don’t trust to that! Dolores is an interesting orphan, and the notice of a grown-up young lady is so flattering that it carries off a great deal of folly.’
‘Well, Jenny, I must think about it. I hope I have done no harm by allowing the friendship—the only indulgence she has seemed to wish for; and I am afraid checking it would only alienate he still more! Poor Maurice, when he is trusting and hoping in vain!’
‘Three year is a long time, Lily; and you have no had three months of her yet—’
The door opened at that moment for the afternoon tea, which was earlier than usual, to follow of Miss Mohun’s reaching the station in time for her train. Lady Merrifield was to drive her, and it was the turn of Dolores to go out, so that she shared the refection instead of waiting for gouter. In the midst the Miss Hackets were announced, and there were exclamations of great joy at the sight of Miss Mohun; as she and Miss Hacket flew upon each other, and to the very last moment, discussed the all-engrossing subject of G.F.S. politics.
Nevertheless, while Miss Mohun was hurrying on her sealskin in her sister’s room, she found an opportunity of saying, ‘Take care, Lily, I saw a note pass between those two.’
‘My dear Jenny, how could you? You were going on the whole time about cards and premiums and associates. Oh! yes, I know a peacock or a lynx is nothing to you, but how was it possible? Why, I was making talk to Constance all along, and trying to make Dolly speak of her father’s letter.’
‘I might retort by talking of moles and bats! Did you never hear of the London clergyman whose silver cream-jug, full of cream too, was abstracted by the penitent Sunday school boy whom he was exhorting over his breakfast-table?’
‘I don’t believe London curates have silver jugs or cream either!’
‘A relic of past wealth, like St. Gregory’s one silver dish, and perhaps it was milk. Well, to descend to particulars. It was done with a meaning glance, as Dolores was helping her on with her cloud, and was instantly disposed of in the pocket.’
‘I wonder what I ought to do about it,’ sighed Lady Merrifield, ‘If I had seen it myself I should have no doubts. Oh! if Jasper were but here! And yet it is hardly a thing to worry him about. It is most likely to be quite innocent.’
‘Well, then you can speak of the appearance of secrecy as bad manners. You will have her all to yourself as you go home.’
But when the aunts came downstairs, Dolores was not there. On being called, she sent a voice down, over the balusters, that she was not going.
Aunt Jane shrugged her shoulders. There was barely time to reach the train, so that it was impossible to do anything at the moment; but in the Merrifield family bad manners and disrespect were never passed over, Sir Jasper having made his wife very particular in that respect; and as soon as she came home in the twilight, she looked into the school-room, but Dolores was not there, and then into the drawing-room, where she was found learning her lessons by firelight.
‘My dear, why did you not go with your Aunt Jane and me?’
‘I did not want to go. It was so cold,’ said Dolores in a glum tone.
‘Would it not have been kinder to have found that out sooner? If I had not met the others in the paddock, and picked up Valetta, the chance would have been missed, and you knew she wanted to go.’
Dolores knew it well enough. The reason she was in this room was that all the returning party had fallen upon her; Wilfred had called her a dog in the manger, and Gillian herself had not gainsayed him—but the general indignation had only made her feel, ‘what a fuss about the darling.’
‘Another time, too,’ added Lady Merrifield, ‘remember that it would be proper to come down and speak to me instead of shouting over the balusters in that unmannerly way; without so much as taking leave of your Aunt Jane. If she had not been almost late for her train, I should have insisted.’
‘You might, and I should not have come if you had dragged me,’ thought, but did not say, Dolores. She only stood looking dogged, and not attempting the ‘I beg your pardon,’ for which her aunt was waiting.
‘I think,’ said Lady Merrifield, gently, ‘that when you consider it a little, you will see that it would be well to be more considerate and gracious. And one thing more, my dear, I can have no passing of private notes between you and Constance Hacket. You see a good deal of each other openly, and such doings are very silly and missish, and have an underhand appearance such as I am sure your father would not like.’
Dolores burst out with, ‘I didn’t,’ and as Primrose at this instant ran in to help mamma take off her things, she turned on her heel and went away, leaving Lady Merrifield trusting to a word never hitherto in that house proved to be false, rather than to those glances of Aunt Jane, which had been always held in the Mohun family to be a little too discerning and ubiquitous to be always relied on; and it was a satisfactory recollection that at the farewell moment when Miss Jane professed to have observed the transaction, she had been heard saying, ‘Yes, it will never do to be too slack in inquiring into antecedents, or the whole character of the society will be given up,’ and with her black eyes fixed full upon Miss Hacket’s face.
‘Oh, Connie dear, I had such a fright! Do you know you must never venture to give me anything when any one is there—especially Aunt Jane. I am sure it was her, she is always spying about?’
‘Well, but dearest Dolly, I couldn’t tell that she would be there, and when I got your letter I could not keep it back, you know, so I made Mary come up and call on Lady Merrifield for the chance of being able to give it to you—and I thought it was so lucky Miss Mohun was there, for she and Mary were quite swallowed up in their dear G.F.S.’
‘You don’t know Aunt Jane! And the worst of it is she always makes Aunt Lilias twice as cross! I did get into such a row only because I didn’t want to go driving with the two old aunts in the dark and cold, and be scolded all the way there and back.’
‘When you had a letter to read too!’
‘And then Aunt Lily said all manner of cross things about giving notes between us. I was so glad I could say I didn’t, for you know I didn’t give it to you, and it wasn’t between us.’
‘You cunning child!’ laughed Constance, rather amused at the sophistry.
‘Besides,’ argued Dolores, ‘what right has she to interfere between my uncle and my friends and me?
‘You dear! Yes, it is all jealousy!’
‘I have heard—or I have read,’ said Dolores, ‘that when people ask questions they have no right to put, it is quite fair to give them a denial, or at least to go as near the wind as one can.’
‘To be sure,’ assented Constance, ‘or one would not get on at all! But you have no told me a word about your letters.’
‘Father’s letter? Oh, he tells me a great deal about his voyage, and all the funny creatures they get up with the dredge. I think he will be sure to write a book about them, and make great discoveries. And now he is staying with Aunt Phyllis in New Zealand, and he is thinking, poor father, how well off I must be with Aunt Lilias. He little knows!’
‘Oh, but you could write to him, dearest!’
‘He wouldn’t get the letter for so long. Besides, I don’t think I could say anything he would care about. Gentlemen don’t, you know.’
‘No! gentlemen can’t enter into our feelings, or know what it is to be rubbed against and never appreciated. But your uncle! Was the letter from him?’
‘Oh yes! And where do you think he is? At Darminster—editing a paper there. It is called the Darminster Politician. He said he sent a copy here.’
“Oh yes, I know; Mary and I could not think where it came from. It had a piece of a story in it, and some poetry. I wonder if he would put in my ‘Evening Star.’”
‘You may read his letter if you like; you see he says he would run over to see me if it were not for the dragons.’
‘I wish he could come and meet you here. It would be so romantic, but you see Mary is half a dragon herself, and would be afraid of Lady Merrifield’—then, reading the letter,—‘How droll! How clever! What a delightful man he must be! How very strange that all your family should be so prejudiced against him! I’ll tell you what, Dolores, I will write and subscribe for the Darminster Politician my own self—I must see the rest of that story—and then Mary can’t make any objection; I can’t stand never seeing anything but Church Bells, and then you can read it too, darling.’
‘Oh, thank you, Connie. Then I shall have got him one subscriber, as he asks me to do. I am afraid I shan’t get any more, for I thought Aunt Lily was in a good humour yesterday, and I put one of the little advertisement papers he sent out on the table, and she found it, and only said something about wondering who had sent the advertisement of that paper that Mr. Leadbitter didn’t approve of. She is so dreadfully fussy and particular. She won’t let even Gillian read anything she hasn’t looked over, and she doesn’t like anything that isn’t goody goody.’
‘My poor darling! But couldn’t you write and get your uncle to look at some of my poor little verses that have never seen the light?’
‘I dare say I could,’ said Dolores, pleased to be able to patronize. ‘Oh, but you must not write on both sides of the paper, I know, for father and mother were always writing for the press.’
‘Oh, I’ll copy them out fresh! Here’s the ‘Evening Star.’ It was suggested by the sound of the guns firing at the autumn manoevres; here’s the ‘Bereaved Mother’s Address to her Infant:’
‘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 starClimbing 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 flyBefore 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.’
‘You saw that she was pleased with them.’
‘Yes, but that was the more ridiculous. Fancy the evening star climbing up—up—you know in the sunset!’
‘Portentous, certainly! Yet still I wish you could have found it in your heart to take advantage of any feeler towards sympathy.’
‘How could I pretend to admire such stuff?’
‘You need not pretend; but there are two ways of taking hold of a thing without being untrue. If you had been a little wiser and more forbearing you need not have given Dolores such a shock as would drive her in upon herself. Depend upon it, the older you grow, the more dangerous you will find it to begin by hitting the blots.’
Gillian looked on in some curiosity when the next day good Miss Hacket, enchanted with her dear Connie’s success, trotted up to display the lines to Lady Merrifield, who on her side felt bound to set an example alike of tenderness and sincerity, and was glad to be able to observe, ‘The lines run very smoothly. This must be a great pleasure to her.’
‘Indeed it is! Connie is so clever. I always say I can’t think where she got it from; but we always tried to give her very advantage, and she was quite a favourite pupil at Miss Dormer’s. Is not it a sweet idea, the stillness of the evening broken by the sounds of battle, and then it proving to be only our brave defenders?’
‘Yes,’ was the answer. ‘I have often thought of that, and of what it might be to hear those volleys of musketry in earnest. It has made me very thankful.’
So Miss Hacket went away gratified, and Gillian owned that it would have been useless to wound the good lady’s feelings by criticism, though her mother made her understand that if her opinion had been asked, or Connie herself had shown the verses, it would have been desirable to point out the faults, in a kindly spirit. The wonder was, how they could have found their way into the paper, and they were followed by more with the like signature.
Indeed, the great sensational tale, ‘The Waif of the Moorland,’ was being copied out of the books where it had been first written. Dolores had sounded Mr. Flinders on the subject, and he had replied that he could ensure its consideration by a publisher, but that her fair friend must be aware that an untried author must be prepared for some risk.
Constance could hardly abstain from communicating her hopes to her sister; but Mr. Leadbitter—to whom the poetry was duly shown—had given such a character of the Darminster Politician that Miss Hacket besought Constance to have no more to do with it. Besides, she was so entirely a lady, and so conscientious, that all her tender blindness would not have prevented her from being shocked at encouraging, or profiting by, a surreptitious correspondence.
Constance declared that Mr. Leadbitter’s objection to the paper was merely political, and her sister was too willing that she should be gratified to protest any further. The copying had to be done in secret, since it was impossible to confess the hopes founded on Mr. Flinders, and it therefore lasted several weeks, each fresh portion being communicated to Dolores on Sunday afternoons. There were at first a few scruples on Constance’s part whether this were exactly a Sunday occupation; but Dolores pronounced that ‘the Sabbatarian system was gone out,’ and after Constance had introduced the ghostly double of her vanished waif walking in a surpliced procession, she persuaded herself that there was a sufficient aroma of religion about the story to bring it within the pale of Sunday books.
The days were shortening so that Lady Merrifield had doubts as to the fitness of letting the girls return in the dark, but Gillian would have been grieved to relinquish her class, and the matter was adjusted by the two remaining till evensong, when there was sure to be sufficient escort for them to come home with.
Therewith arrived the holidays and Jasper, whose age came between those of Gillian and Mysie. Dolores had looked forward to his coming, for, by all the laws of fiction, he was bound to be the champion of the orphan niece, and finally to develop into her lover and hero. In ‘No Home,’ when Clare’s aunt locked her up and fed her on bread and water for playing the piano better than her spiteful cousin Augusta, Eric, the boy of the family, had solaced her with cold pie and ice-creams drawn up in a basket by a cord from the window. He had likewise forced from his cruel mother the locket which proved Clare’s identity with the mourning countess’s golden-haired grandchild and heiress, and he had finally been rewarded with her hand, becoming in some mysterious manner Lord Eric.
Jasper, however, or Japs, as his family preferred to call him, proved to be a big, shy boy, not at all delighted with the introduction of a stranger among his sisters, neither golden-haired nor all-accomplished, only making him feel his home invaded, and looking at him with her great eyes.
‘Is that girl here for good?’ he asked, when he found himself with Harry and Gillian.
‘Yes, of course,’ said the cousin, ‘while her father is away, and that is for three years.’
Jasper whistled.
‘Aunt Ada said,’ added Gillian, ‘that if she got too tiresome, mamma had Uncle Maurice’s leave to send her to school.’
‘That would be no good to me,’ said Jasper, ‘for she would still be here in the holidays.’
‘Has she been getting worse?’ asked Harry.
‘No, I don’t know that she has,’ said Gillian, ‘except that she runs after that Constance more than ever. But, I say, Jasper, mamma says she is particularly anxious that there should be no teasing of her; and you can hinder Wilfred better than anybody can. She wants her to be really at home, and one—’
But though Jasper was very fond both of mother and sister, he would not stand a second-hand lecture, and broke in with an inquiry about chances of rabbit-shooting.
Among his juniors he heard more opinions and more undisguised, when the whole party had rushed out together to the stable-yard to inspect the rabbits and other live-stock.
‘And Dolly says you are a fright,’ sighed Mysie, condoling with a very awkward-looking puppy which she was nursing.
‘She! she thinks everything a fright!’ said Valetta.
‘Except Constance,’ added Wilfred.
‘Who is ugliest of all!’ politely chimed in Fergus.
‘Oh, Japs, she is such a nasty girl—Dolly, I mean!’ cried Valetta.
“You know you ought not to say ‘nasty,’” exclaimed Mysie.
‘Well, but she is!’ insisted Val. ‘She squashed a dear little ladybird, and said it would sting!’
‘She really thought it would,’ said Mysie.
At which the young barbarians shouted aloud with contempt, and Valetta added. ‘She is afraid of everything—cows and dogs and frogs.’
‘I got a whole match-box full of grasshoppers to shut up in her desk and make her squall,’ said Wilfred, ‘only the girls went and turned them out.’
‘It was so cruel to the poor grasshoppers,’ said Mysie. ‘One had his horn broken, and dragged his leg.’
‘What does she do?’ asked Jasper.
‘She’s always cross,’ said Fergus.
‘And she won’t play,’ added Valetta. ‘And never will lend us anything of hers.’
‘And she’s a regular sneak,’ said Wilfred. ‘She wants to tell of everything—only we stopped that and she doesn’t dare now.’
‘You see,’ said Mysie, gravely, ‘she has always lived alone and in London, and that makes her horribly stupid about everything sensible. We thought we should soon teach her to be nice; and mamma says we shall if we are patient.’
‘We’ll teach her, won’t we, Japs!’ said Wilfred, aside, in an ominous voice.
‘She is only thirteen,’ added Valetta, ‘and she pretends to be grown up, and only to care for a grown-up young lady—that Constance Hacket.’
‘Yes,’ added Mysie, ‘only think—they write poetry!’
‘What rot it must be!’ said Jasper. ‘There’s a man in my house that writes poetry, and don’t they chaff him! And this must be ever so much worse.’
‘Oh, that it is,’ said Valetta. ‘I heard Mr. Poulter and Miss Vincent laughing about it like anything.’
‘But they get it put into print,’ said Mysie, still impressed. ‘Miss Hacket brought it up to give to mamma, and there’s ever so much of it shut up in the drawing-room blotting-book with the malachite knobs. I can’t think why they laugh—I think it is very pretty. Old Miss Hacket read me the one about “My Lost Dove.”’
‘Mysie always will stick up for Dolores,’ said Valetta in a grumbling voice.
‘I always meant her to be my friend,’ said Mysie, disconsolately.
‘Well, I’m glad she’s not,’ said Jasper. ‘What a sell it would have been for me to find you chummy with a stupid, poetry-writing, good-for-nothing girl like that, instead of my jolly old Mice!’
And at that minute all Dolly’s slights were fully compensated for!
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!