The Two Sides of the Shield

‘You look over all the children’s books?’

‘Yes. While we were wandering, they did not get enough to make it a very arduous task, and now I find that they want weeding. If children read nothing but a multitude of stories rather beneath their capacity, they are likely never to exert themselves to anything beyond novel reading.’

‘That is quite true, I believe.’

‘Well, among this literature of Dolly’s I found no less than four stories based on the cruelty and injustice suffered by orphans from their aunts. The wicked step-mothers are gone out, and the barbarous aunts are come in. It is the stock subject. I really think it is cruel, considering that there are many children who have to be adopted into uncles’ families, to add to their distress and terror, by raising this prejudice. Just look at this one’—taking up Dolly’s favourite, ‘Clare; or No Home’—‘it is not at all badly written, which makes it all the worse.’

‘Oh, Aunt Lilias,’ cried Bessie, whose colour had been rising all this time. ‘How shall I tell you? I wrote it!’

‘You! I never guessed you did anything in that line.’

‘We don’t talk about it. My father knows, and so does grandmamma, in a way; but I never bring it before her if I can help it, for she does not half like the notion. But, indeed, they aren’t all as bad as that! I know now there is a great deal of silly imitation in it; but I never thought of doing harm in this way. It is a punishment for thoughtlessness,’ cried poor Bessie, reddening desperately, and with tears in her eyes.

‘My dear, I am so sorry I said it! If I bad not one of these aunts, I should think it a very effective story.’

‘I’m afraid that’s so much the worse! Let me tell you about it, Aunt Lilias. At home, they always laughed at me for my turn for dismalities.’

‘I believe one always has such a turn when one is young.’

‘Well, when I went to live with grandmamma, it was very different from the houseful at home, I had so much time on my hands, and I took to dreaming and writing because I could not help it, and all my stories were fearfully doleful. I did not think of publishing them for ever so long, but at last when David terribly wanted some money for his mission church, I thought I would try, and this Clare was about the best. They took it, and gave me five pounds for it, and I was so pleased and never thought of its doing harm, and now I don’t know how much more mischief it may have done!’

‘You only thought of piling up the agony! But don’t be unhappy about it. You don’t know how many aunts it may have warned.’

‘I’m afraid aunts are not so impressionable as nieces. And, indeed, among ourselves story-books seemed quite outside from life, we never thought of getting any ideas from them any more than from Bluebeard.’

‘So it has been with some of mine, while, on the other hand, Dolores seemed to Mysie an interesting story-book heroine—which indeed she is, rather too much so. But you have not stood still with Clare.’

‘No, I hope I have grown rather more sensible. David set me to do stories for his lads, and, as he is dreadfully critical, it was very improving.’

‘Did you write ‘Kate’s Jewel’? That is delightful. Aunt Jane gave it to Val this Christmas, and all of us have enjoyed it! We shall be quite proud of it—that is—may I tell the children?’

‘Oh, aunt, you are very good to try to make me forget that miserable Clare. I wonder whether it will do any good to tell Dolores all about it. Only I can’t get at all the other girls I may have hurt.’

‘Nay, Bessie, I think it most likely that Dolores would have been an uncomfortable damsel, even if Clare had remained in your brain. There were other causes, at any rate, here are three more persecuted nieces in her library. Besides, as you observed, everybody does not go to story-books for views of human nature, and happily, also, homeless children are commoner in books than out of them, so I don’t think the damage can be very extensive.’

‘One such case is quite enough! Indeed, it is a great lesson to think whether what one writes can give any wrong notion.’

‘I believe one always does begin with imitation.’

‘Yes, it is extraordinary how little originality there is in the world. In the literature of my time, everybody had small hands and high foreheads, the girls wanted to do great things, and did, or did not do, little ones, and the boys all took first classes, and the fashion was to have violet eyes, so dark you could not tell their colour, and golden hair.’

‘Whereas now the hair is apt to be bronze, whatever that may be like.’

‘And all the dresses, and all the complexions, and all the lace, and all the roses, are creamy. Bessie, I hope you don’t deal in creaminess!’

‘I’m afraid skim milk is more like me, and that you would say I had taken to the goody line. I never thought of the responsibility then, only when I wrote for David’s classes.’

‘It is a responsibility, I suppose, in the way in which every word one speaks and every letter one writes is so. And now—here is Gillian finishing her piece. How far is it a secret, my dear.’

‘It need not be so here, Aunt Lilias. Only my people are rather old-fashioned, you know, and are inclined to think it rather shocking of me, so it ought not to go beyond the family, and especially don’t ‘let her,’ indicating her grandmother, ‘hear about it. She knows I do such things—it would not be honest not to tell her—but it goes against the grain, and she has never heard one word of it all.’

It appeared that Bessie daily read the psalms and lessons to grandmamma, followed up by a sermon. Then, with her wonderful eyes, Mrs. Merrifield read the newspaper from end to end, which lasted her till luncheon, then came a drive in the brougham, followed by a rest in her own room, dinner, and then Bessie read her to sleep with a book of travels or biography, of the old book-club class of her youth. Her principles were against novels, and the tale she viewed as only fit for children.

Lady Merrifield could not help thinking what a dull life it must be for Bessie, a woman full of natural gifts and of great powers of enjoyment, accustomed to a country home and a large family, and she said something of the kind. ‘I did not like it at first,’ said Bessie, ‘but I have plenty of occupations now, besides all these companions that I’ve made for myself, or that came to me, for I think they come of themselves.’

‘But what time have you to yourself?’

‘Grandmamma does not want me till half-past ten in the morning, except for a little visit. And she does not mind my writing letters while she is reading the paper, provided I am ready to answer anything remarkable. I am quite the family newsmonger! Then there’s always from four to half-past six when I can go out if I like. There’s a dear old governess of ours living not far off, and we have nice little expeditions together. And you know it is nice to be at the family headquarters in London, and have every one dropping in.’

‘Oh dear! how good you are to like going on like that,’ said Gillian, who had come up while this was passing; ‘I should eat my heart out; you must be made up of contentment.’

Elizabeth held up her hand in warning lest her grandmother should be wakened, but she laughed and said, ‘My brothers would tell you I used to be Pipy Bet. But that dear old governess. Miss Fosbrook, was the making of me, and taught me how to be jolly like Mark Tapley among the rattlesnakes,’ she finished, looking drolly up to Gillian.

‘And, Gill, you don’t know what Bessie has made her companions instead of the rattlesnakes,’ said Lady Merrifield. ‘What do you think of “Kate’s Jewel?”’

Gillian’s astonishment and rapture actually woke grandmamma; not that she made much noise, but there was a disturbing force about her excitement; and the subject had to be abandoned.

As the great secret might be shared with Dolores, though not with the younger ones, whose discretion could not be depended upon, Gillian could enter upon it the more freely, though she was rather disappointed that an author was not such an extraordinary sight to Dolly as to herself. But it was charming to both that Bessie let them look at the proofs of the story she was publishing in a magazine; and allowed them as well as mamma, to read the manuscript of the tale, romance, or novel, whichever it was to be called, on which she wished for her aunt’s opinion.

Bessie took care, when complying with the girls’ entreaty, that she would tell them all she had written; to observe that, she thought ‘Clare’ a very foolish book indeed, and that she wished heartily she had never written it. Gillian asked why she had done it?

‘Oh,’ said Dolores, ‘things aren’t interesting unless something horrid happens, or some one is frightened, or very miserable.’

‘I like things best just and exactly as they really are—or were,’ said Gillian.

‘The question between sensation and character,’ said Bessie to her aunt. ‘I suppose that, on the whole, it is the few who are palpably affected by the mass of fiction in the world; but that it is needful to take good care that those few gather at least no harm from one’s work—to be faithful in it, in fact, like other things.’

And there was no doubt that Bessie had been faithful in her work ever since she had realized her vocation. Her lending library books, written with a purpose, were excellent, and were already so much valued by Miss Hacket, that Gillian thought how once she should have felt it a privation not to be allowed to tell her whence they came; but to her surprise on the Sunday, instead of the constraint with which of late she had been treated at tea-time, the eager inquiry was made whether this was really the authoress, Miss Merrifield?

Secrets are not kept as well as people think. The Hackets’ married sister was a neighbour of Bessie’s married sister, and through these ladies it had just come round, not only who was the author of ‘Charlie’s Whistle,’ etc., but that she wrote in the – Magazine, and was in the neighbourhood.

All offences seemed to be forgotten in the burning desire for an introduction to this marvel of success. Constance had made the most of her opportunities in gazing at church; but if she called, would she be introduced?

‘Of course,’ said Gillian, ‘if my cousin is in the room.’ She spoke rather coldly and gravely, and Miss Hacket exclaimed—

‘I know we have been a little remiss, my dear, I hope Lady Merrifield was not offended.’

‘Mamma is never offended,’ said Gillian—‘but, I do think, and so would she and all of us, that if Constance comes, she ought to treat Dolores Mohun—as—as usual.’

The two sisters were silent, perhaps from sheer amazement at this outbreak of Gillian’s, who had never seemed particularly fond of her cousin. Gillian was quite as much surprised at herself, but something seemed to drive her on, with flaming cheeks. ‘Dolores is half broken-hearted about it all. She did not thoroughly know how wrong it was; and it does make her miserable that the one who went along with her in it should turn against her, and cut her and all.’

‘Connie never meant to keep it up, I’m sure,’ said Miss Hacket; ‘but she was very much hurt.’

‘So was Dolly,’ said Gillian.

‘Is she so fond of me?’ said Constance, in a softened tone.

‘She was,’ replied Gillian.

‘I’m sure,’ said Miss Hacket, ‘our only wish is to forget and forgive as Christians. Lady Merrifield has behaved most handsomely, and it is our most earnest wish that this unfortunate transaction should be forgotten.’

‘And I’m sure I’m willing to overlook it all,’ said Constance. ‘One must have scrapes, you know; but friendship will triumph over all.’

Gillian did not exactly wish to unravel this fine sentiment, and was glad that the little G.F.S. maid came in with the tea.

Lady Merrifield was a good deal diverted with Gillian’s report, and invited the two sisters to luncheon on the plea of their slight acquaintance with Anne—otherwise Mrs. Daventry—with a hint in the note not to compliment Mrs. Merrifield on Elizabeth’s production.

Then Dolores had to be prepared to receive any advance from Constance. She looked disgusted at first, and then, when she heard that Gillian had spoken her mind, said, ‘I can’t think why you should care.’

‘Of course I care, to have Constance behaving so ill to one of us.’

‘Do you think me one of you, Gillian?’

‘Who, what else are you?’

And Dolores held up her face for a kiss, a heartier one than had ever passed between the cousins. There was no kiss between the quondam friends, but they shook hands with perfect civility, and no stranger would have guessed their former or their present terms from their manner. In fact, Constance was perfectly absorbed in the contemplation of the successful authoress, the object of her envy and veneration, and only wanted to forget all the unpleasantness connected with the dark head on the opposite side of the table.

‘Oh Miss Merrifield,’ she asked, in an interval afterwards, when hats were being put on, ‘bow do you make them take your things?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Bessie, smiling. ‘I take all the pains I can, and try to make them useful.’

‘Useful, but that’s so dull—and the critics always laugh at things with a purpose.’

‘But I don’t think that is a reason for not trying to do good, even in this very small and uncertain way. Indeed,’ she added, earnestly. ‘I have no right to speak, for I have made great mistakes; but I wanted to tell you that the one thing I did get published, which was not written conscientiously—as I may say—but only to work out a silly, sentimental fancy, has brought me pain and punishment by the harm I know I did.’

This was a very new idea to Constance, and she actually carried it away with her. The visit had restored the usual terms of intercourse with the Hackets, though there was no resumption of intimacy such as there had been, between Constance and Dolores. It had, however, done much to make the latter feel that the others considered themselves one with them, and there was something that drew them together in the universal missing of Mysie, and eagerness for her letters.

These were, however, rather disappointing. Mysie had not a genius for correspondence, and dealt in very bare facts. There was an enclosure which made Lady Merrifield somewhat anxious:

‘My Dear Mamma, ‘This is for you all by yourself. I have been in sad mischief, for I broke the conservatory and a palm-tree with my umbrella; and I did still worse, for I broke my promise and told all about what you told me never to. I will tell you all when I come home, and I hope you will forgive me. I wish I was at home. It is very horrid when they say one is good and one knows one is not; but I am very happy, and Lord Rotherwood is nicer than ever, and so is Fly. ‘I am your affectionate and penitent and dutiful little daughter,

‘MARIA MILLICENT MERRIFIELD.’

With all mamma’s intuitive knowledge of her little daughter’s mind and forms of expression, she was puzzled by this note and the various fractures it described. She obeyed its injunctions of secrecy, even with regard to Gillian and Bessie, though she could not help wishing that the latter could have seen and judged of her Mysie.

Grandmamma was somewhat disappointed to have missed her eldest grandson, but she was obliged to leave Silverton two days before his return with his little sister. She had certainly escaped the full tumult of the entire household, but Bessie observed that she suspected that it might have been preferred to the general quiescence.

In spite of all the regrets that Bessie’s more coeval cousins, Alethea and Phyllis were not at home, she and her aunt each felt that a new friendship had been made, and that they understood each other, and Bessie had uttered her resolution henceforth always to think of the impression for good or evil produced on the readers, as well as of the effectiveness of her story. ‘Little did I suppose that ‘Clare’ would add to any one’s difficulties,’ she said, ‘still less to yours, Aunt Lilias.’

CHAPTER XX. – CONFESSIONS OF A COUNTRY MOUSE

Here were the travellers at home again, and Mysie clinging to her mother, with, ‘Oh, Mamma!’ and a look of perfect rest. They arrived at the same time as Dolores had come, so late that Mysie was tired out, and only half awake. She was consigned to Mrs. Halfpenny after her first kiss, but as she passed along the corridor, a door was thrown back, and a white figure sprang upon her. ‘Oh, Mysie! Mysie!’ and in spite of the nurse’s chidings, held her fast in an embrace of delight. Dolores had been lying awake watching for her, and implored permission at least to look on while she was going to bed!

Harry meanwhile related his experiences to his mother and Gillian over the supper-table. The Butterfly’s Ball had been a great success. He had never seen anything prettier in his life. Plants and lights had been judiciously disposed so as to make the hall a continuation of the conservatory, almost a fairy land, and the children in their costumes had been more like fairies than flesh and blood, pinafore and bread-and-butter beings. There was a most perfect tableau at the opening of the scenery constructed with moss and plants, so as to form a bower, where the Butterfly and Grasshopper, with their immediate attendants, welcomed their company, and afterwards formed the first quadrille, Lady Phyllis, with Mysie and two other little girls staying in the house, being the butterflies, and Lord Ivinghoe and three more boys of the same ages, the grasshoppers, in pages’ dresses of suitable colours.

‘I never thought,’ said Harry, ‘that our little brown mouse would come out so pretty or so swell.’

‘She wanted to be the dormouse,’ said Gillian.

‘That was impracticable. They were all heath butterflies of different sorts, wings very correctly coloured and dresses to correspond. Phyllis the ringlet with the blue lining, Mysie, the blue one, little Lady Alberta, the orange-tip, and the other child the burnet moth.’

‘How did Mysie dance?’

‘Very fairly, if she had not looked so awfully serious. The dancing-mistress, French, of course, had trained them, it was more ballet than quadrille, and they looked uncommonly pretty. Uncle William granted that, though he grumbled at the whole concern as nonsense, and wondered you should send your nice little girl into it to have her head turned.’

‘Do you think she was happy?’

‘Oh, yes, of course. She always is, but she was in prodigious spirits when we started to come home. Lady Rotherwood said I was to tell you that no child could be more truthful and conscientious. Still somehow she did not look like the swells. Except that once, when she was got up regardless of expense for the ball, she always had the country mouse look about her. She hadn’t—’

‘The ‘Jenny Say Caw,’ as Macrae calls it?’ said his mother. ‘Well, I can endure that! You need not look so disgusted, Gill. You didn’t hear of her getting into any scrape, did you?’

‘No,’ said Hal. ‘Stay, I believe she did break some glass or other, and blurted out her confession in full assembly, but I was over at Beechcroft, and I am happy to say I didn’t see her.’

Mysie’s tap came early to her mother’s door the next morning, and it was in the midst of her toilette that Lady Merrifield was called on to hear the confession that had been weighing on the little girl’s mind.

‘I was too sleepy to tell you last night, mamma, but I did want to do so.’

‘Well, then, my dear, begin at the beginning, for I could not understand your letter.’

‘The beginning was, mamma, that we had just come in from our walk, and we went out into the schoolroom balcony, because we could see round the corner who was coming up the drive. And we began playing at camps, with umbrellas up as tents. Ivinghoe, and Alberta, and I. Ivy was general, and I was the sentry, with my umbrella shut up, and over my shoulder. I was the only one who knew how to present arms. I heard something coming, and called out, ‘Who goes there?’ and Alberta jumped up in such a hurry that the points other tent—her umbrella, I mean—scratched my face, and before I could recover arms, over went my umbrella, perpendicular, straight smash through the glass of the conservatory, and we heard it.’

‘And what did you do? Of course you told!’

“Oh yes! I jumped up and said, ‘I’ll go and tell Lady Rotherwood.’ I knew I must before I got into a fright, and Ivinghoe said I couldn’t then, and he would speak to his mother and make it easy for me, and Ply says he really meant it; but I thought then that’s the way the bad ones always get the others into concealments and lies. So I wouldn’t listen a moment, and I ran down, with him after me, saying, ‘Hear reason, Mysie.’ And I ran full butt up against some-body—Lord Ormersfield it was, I found—but I didn’t know then. I only said something about begging pardon, and dashed on, and opened the door. I saw a whole lot of fine people all at five-o’clock tea, but I couldn’t stop to get more frightened, and I went up straight to Lady Rotherwood and said, ‘Please, I did it.’ Mamma do you think I ought not?”

‘There are such things as fit places and times, my dear. What did she say?’

“At first she just said, ‘My dear, I cannot attend to you now, run away;’ but then in the midst, a thought seemed to strike her, and she said, rather frightened, ‘Is any one hurt?’ and I said, Oh no; only my umbrella has gone right through the roof of the conservatory, and I thought I ought to come and tell her directly. ‘That was the noise,’ said some of the people, and everybody got up and went to look. And there were Fly and Ivy, who had got in some other way, and the umbrella was sticking right upright in the top of one of those palm-trees with leaves like screens, and somebody said it was a new development of fruit. Lady Rotherwood asked them what they were doing there, and Ivy said they had come to see what harm was done. Dear Fly ran up to her and said, ‘We were all at play together, mother; it was not one more than another;’ but Lady Rotherwood only said, ‘That’s enough, Phyllis, I will come to you by-and-by in the schoolroom,’ and she would have sent us away if Cousin Rotherwood himself had not come in just then, and asked what was the matter. I heard some of the answers; they were very odd, mamma. One was, ‘A storm of umbrellas and of untimely confessions;’ and another was, ‘Truth in undress.’”

‘Oh, my dear? I hope you were fit to be seen?’

‘I forgot about that, mamma, I had taken off my ulster, and had my little scarlet flannel underbody, so as to make a better soldier.’

‘Oh!’ groaned Lady Merrifield.

‘And then that dear, good Fly gave a jump and flew at him, and said, ‘Oh, daddy, daddy, it’s Mysie, and she has been telling the truth like—like Frank, or Sir Thomas More, or George Washington, or anybody.’ She really did say so, mamma.’

‘I can quite believe it of her, Mysie! And how did Cousin Rotherwood respond?’

‘He sat down upon one of the seats, and took Fly on one knee and me on the other, though we were big for it—just like papa, you know—and made us tell him all about it. Lady Rotherwood got the others out of the way somehow—I don’t know how, for my back was that way, and I think Ivinghoe went after them, but there was some use in talking to Cousin Rotherwood; he has got some sense, and knows what one means, as if he was at the dear, nice playing age, and Ivinghoe was his stupid old father in a book.’

‘Exactly,’ said Lady Merrifield, delighted, and longing to laugh.

‘But that was the worst of it,’ said Mysie, sadly; ‘he was so nice that I said all sorts of things I didn’t mean or ought to have said. I told him I would pay for the glass if he would only wait till we had helped Dolores pay for those books that the cheque was for, because the man came alive again, after her wicked uncle said he was dead, and so somehow it all came out; how you made up to Miss Constance and couldn’t come to the Butterfly’s Ball for want of new dresses.’

‘Oh, Mysie, you should not have said that! I thought you were to be trusted!’

‘Yes, mamma, I know,’ said Mysie, meekly. ‘I recollected as soon as I had said it; and told him, and he kissed me and promised he would never tell anyone, and made Fly promise that she never would. But I have been so miserable about it ever since, mamma; I tried to write it in a letter, but I am afraid you didn’t half understand.’

‘I only saw that something was on your mind, my dear. Now that is all over, I do not so much mind Cousin Rotherwood’s knowing, he has always been so like a brother; but I do hope both he and Fly will keep their word. I am more sorry for my little girl’s telling than about his knowing.’