In a few more seconds Mr. Mohun had come out. He took the cold, trembling hands in his own, pressed them close, met the anxious eyes with his own, full of moisture, and said, 'My poor little girl,' in a tone that somehow lightened Dolly's heart of its worst dread.
'Will you go back into court?' asked the colonel.
'You don't wish it, Dolly?' said her father.
'Oh no! please not.'
'Then,' said the colonel, 'take your father back to the room at the hotel, and we will come to you. I suppose this will not last much longer.'
'Probably not half an hour. I don't want to see that fellow either convicted or acquitted.'
Then Dolores found herself steered out of the passages and from among the people waiting or gazing, into the clearer space in the street, her father holding her hand as if she had been a little child. Neither of them spoke till they had reached the sitting-room, and there, the first thing he did when the door was shut, was to sit down, take her between his knees, put an arm round her, and kiss her, saying again, 'My poor child!'
'You never got my letter!' she said, leaning against him, feeling the peace and rest his embrace gave.
'No; but I have heard all. I should have warned you, Dolly; but I never imagined that he could get at you there; and I was unwilling to accuse one for whom your mother had a certain affection.'
'That was why I helped him,' whispered Dolores.
'I knew it,' he said kindly. 'But how did he find you out, and how had he the impertinence to write to you at your Aunt Lily's-'
'I wrote to him first,' she said, hanging down her head.
'How was that? You surely had not been in the habit of doing so whilst I was at home.'
'No; but he came and spoke to me at Exeter, the day you went away. Uncle William was not there, he had gone into the town. And he-Mr. Flinders, said he was going down to see you, and was very much disappointed to hear that you were gone.'
'Did he ask you to write to him?'
'I don't think he did. Father, it seems too silly now, but I was very angry because Aunt Lilias said she must see all my letters except yours and Maude Sefton's, and I told Constance Hacket. She said she would send anything for me, and I could not think of any one I wanted to write to, so I wrote to-to him.'
'Ah! I saw you did not get on with your aunt,' was the answer, 'that was partly what brought me home.' And either not hearing or not heeding her exclamation, 'Oh, but now I do,' he went on to explain that on his arrival at Fiji he had found that circumstances had altered there, and that the person with whom he was to have been associated had died, so that the whole scheme had been broken up. A still better appointment had, however, been offered to him in New Zealand, on the resignation of the present holder after a half-year's notice, and he had at once written to accept it. A proposal had been made to him to spend the intermediate time in a scientific cruise among the Polynesian Islands; but the letters he had found awaiting him at Vanua Levu had convinced him that the arrangements he had made in England had been a mistake, and he had therefore hurried home via San Francisco, as fast as any letter could have gone, to wind up his English affairs, and fetch his daughter to the permanent home in Auckland, which her Aunt Phyllis would prepare for her.
Her countenance betrayed a sudden dismay, which made him recollect that she was a strangely undemonstrative girl; but before she had recovered the shock so as to utter more than a long 'Oh!' they were interrupted by the cup of tea that had been ordered for Dolores, and in a minute more, steps were heard, and the two aunts were in the room. 'Seven years,' were Jane's first words, and 'My dear Maurice,' Lady Merrifield's, 'Oh! I wish I could have spared you this,' and then among greetings came again, 'Seven years,' from the brother and cousin who had seen the traveller before.
'I'm glad you were not there, Maurice,' said Lady Merrifield. 'It was dreadful.'
'I never saw a more insolent fellow!' said Lord Rotherwood.
'That Yokes, you mean,' said Miss Mohun. 'I declare I think he is worse than Flinders!'
'That's like you women, Jenny,' returned the colonel; 'you can't understand that a man's business is to get off his client!'
'When he gave him up as an honest man altogether!' cried Lady Merrifield.
'And cast such imputations!' exclaimed Aunt Jane. 'I saw what the wretch was driving at all the time of the cross-examination; and if I'd been the judge, would not I have stopped him?'
'There you go. Lily and Jenny!' said the colonel, 'and Rotherwood just as bad! Why, Maurice would have had to take just the same line if he had been for the defence.'
'He would not have done it in such a blackguard fashion though,' said Lord Rotherwood.
'I saw what his defence would be,' said Mr. Mohun, briefly.
'There!' said Colonel Mohun, with a boyish pleasure in confuting his sisters; but they were not subdued.
'Now Maurice,' cried Jane, 'when that man was known to be utterly dishonourable and good for nothing, was it fair-was it not contrary to all common sense-to try to cast the imputation between those two poor girls? So the judge and jury felt it, I am happy to say! but I call it abominable to have thrown out the mere suggestion-'
'Nay now, Jane,' said the colonel, 'if the man was to be defended at all, how else was it to be done?'
'I wouldn't have had him defended at all! but, unfortunately, that's his right as an Englishman.'
'That's another thing! But as the cheque did not alter itself, one of the three must have done it, and nothing was left but to show that there had been an amount of shuffling, and-in short, nonsense-that might cast enough doubt on their evidence to make it insufficient for a conviction.'
'Reginald! I can't think how you can stand up for such a wretch, a vulgar wretch,' cried Miss Mohun. 'You put it delicately, as a gentleman who had the misfortune to be counsel in such a case might do, but he was infinitely worse than that, though that was bad enough.'
'It was Yokes,' put in Mr. Mohun; 'but what did he say?' looking anxiously at his daughter.
'It was not so bad about her,' said her uncle, 'he only made her out a foolish child, easily played upon by everybody, and possibly ignorant and frightened, or led away by her regard for her supposed relation. It was the other poor girl-
'The amiable susceptibilities of romantic young ladies!' broke out Lady Merrifield. 'Oh, the creature!' To think of that poor foolish Constance sitting by to hear it represented that the expedition to Darminster, and all the rest of it, was because she was actually touched by that fellow. I really felt ready to take her part.'
'She had certainly brought it on herself,' said Aunt Jane; 'but it was atrocious of him and if the other counsel had only known it, he stopped the cross examination just at the wrong time, or it would have come out that it was literary vanity that was the lure. No doubt he would have made a laughing-stock of that, but it would not have been as bad as the other.'
'Poor thing,' said Lady Merrifield; 'it was a trying retribution for schoolgirl folly and want of conscientiousness. I should think she was a sadder and a wiser woman.'
'He must have overdone it,' said Mr. Mohun, 'he is a vulgar fellow, and always does so; but, as Reginald says, the only available defence was to enhance the folly and sentiment of the girls; but of course the judge charged the other way-
'Entirely,' said Lord Rotherwood, 'he brought Dolly rather well out of it, saying that as he understood it, a young girl who had seen a needy connection assisted from her home might think herself justified in corresponding with him, and even in diverting to his use money left in her charge, when it was probable that it would not be required for the original object. He did not say it was right, but it was an error of judgment by no means implying swindling-in fact. He disposed of Miss Hacket in the same way-foolish, sentimental, unscrupulous, but not to that degree. Girls might be silly enough in all conscience, but not so as to commit forgery or perjury. That was the gist of it, and happily the jury were of the same opinion.'
'Happily? Well, I suppose so,' sai
d Mr. Mohun, with a certain sorrowfulness of tone, into which his little daughter entered.
'I say, Rotherwood,' exclaimed the colonel, as the town clock's two strokes for the half-hour echoed loudly, 'if you mean to catch the 4.50, you must fly.'
'Fly!' he coolly repeated. 'Tell Mysie, Lily, that Fly has never ceased talking of her. That child has been saving her money to fit out one of Florence's orphan's. She-'
'Rotherwood,' broke in Mr. Mohun, 'your wife charged me to see that you were in time for that dinner. A ministerial one.'
'Don't encourage him, Lily,' chimed in the colonel. 'I'll call a cab. See him safe off, Maurice.'
And off he was hunted amid the laughter of the ladies; the manner of all to one another was so exactly what it had been in the old times.
'I could hardly help telling him to take care, or Victoria would never let him out again,' said Miss Mohun. 'Poor old fellow, it would have been a fine chance for him with four of us together.'
'You can come back with us, Jenny!'
'I brought my bag in case of accidents.'
'And we'll telegraph to Adeline to join us tomorrow,' said Mr. Mohun, who seemed to have been seized with a hunger for the sight of his kindred.
'Telegraph! My dear Maurice, Ada's nerves would be torn to smithereens by a telegram without me to open it for her. I've a card here to post to her; but I expect that I must go down tomorrow and fetch her, which will be the best way, for I have a meeting.'
'Jenny, I declare you are a caution even to Miss Hacket,' said Colonel Reginald, re-entering.
'Well, Ada always was the family pet. Besides, I told you I had a G.F.S. meeting. Did you get a cab for us; Lily has had quite walking enough.'
The ladies went in a cab, while the gentlemen walked. There was not much time to spare, and in the compartment into which the first comers threw themselves, they found both the Hacket sisters installed, and the gentlemen coming up in haste, nodded and got into a smoking-carriage, on seeing how theirs was occupied.
'Oh, we could have made room,' said Constance, to whom a gentleman was a gentleman under whatever circumstances.
'Dear Miss Dolores's papa! Is it indeed?' said Miss Hacket.
'So wonderfully interesting,' chimed in Constance. And they both made a dart at Dolores to kiss her in congratulation, much against her will.
The train clattered on, and Lady Merrifield hoped it would hush all other voices, but neither of the Hackets could refrain from discussing the trial, and heaping such unmitigated censure on the counsel for the prisoner, that Miss Mohun felt herself constrained to fly in the face of all she had said at the hotel, and to maintain the right of even such an Englishman to be defended, and of his advocate to prevent his conviction if possible. On which the regular sentiment against becoming lawyers was produced, and the subject might have been dropped if Constance had not broken out again, as if she could not leave it. 'So atrocious, so abominably insolent, asking if he was unmarried.'
'Evidently flattered!' muttered Aunt Jane, between her teeth, and unheard; but the speed slackened, and Constance's voice went on,
'I really thought I should have died of it on the spot. The bare idea of thinking I could endure such a being.'
'Well,' said Dolores, just as the clatter ceased at a little station. 'You know you did walk up and down with him ever so long, and I am sure you liked him very much.'
An indignant 'You don't understand' was absolutely cut off by an imperative grasp and hush from Miss Hacket the elder; Aunt Jane was suffocating with laughter, Lady Merrifield, between that and a certain shame for womanhood, which made her begin to talk at random about anything or everything else.
CHAPTER XXII. NAY.
'What a mull they have made of it!' were Mr. Maurice Mohun's first words when he found the compartment free for a tete-a-tete with his brother.
'All's well that ends well,' was the brief reply.
'Well, indeed! Mary would not have thought so.' To which the colonel had nothing to say.
'It serves me out,' his brother went on presently. 'I ought to have done something for that wretched fellow before I went, or, at any rate, have put Dolly on her guard; but I always shirked the very thought of him.'
'Nothing would have kept him out of harm's way.'
'It might have kept the child; but she must have been thicker with him than I ever knew. However I shall have her with me for the future, and in better hands.'
'You really mean to take her out?'
'That's what brought me home. She isn't happy; that is plain from her letters; and Jane does not know what to make of her, nor Lilias either.'
'When were your last letters dated?'
'The last week in September.'
'Early days,' muttered the colonel.
'I thought it an experiment, you know; but you said so much about Lily's girls being patterns, that I thought Jasper Merrifield might have made her more rational and less flighty, and all that sort of thing; but of course it was a very different tone from what the child was used to, and you couldn't tell what the young barbarians were out of sight.'
'So I began to think last winter; but I fancy you will find that she and Lily understand one another a good deal better than they did at first.'
'I thought she did not receive my intelligence as a deliverance. I am glad if she can carry away an affectionate remembrance, but I want to have her under my own eye.'
'I suppose that's all right,' was the half reluctant reply.
'There's Phyllis. She is full of good sense, with no nonsense about her or May, and her girls are downright charming.'
'Very likely; but I say, Maurice, you must not underrate Lilias. She has gone through a good deal with Dolores, and I believe she has been the making of her. You've had to leave the poor child a good deal to herself and Fraulein, and, as you see by this affair, she had some ways that made it hard for Lily to deal with her at first.'
Her father plainly did not like this. 'There was no harm in the poor child, but as I should have foreseen, there's always an atmosphere of sentiment and ritual and flummery about Lilias, totally different from what she was used to.'
Colonel Mohun had nearly said, 'So much the better,' but turned it into, 'I think you will change your opinion.'
Brothers and sisters, and cousins, whatever they may be to the external world, always remain relatively to each other pretty much as they knew one another when a single home held them all. The familiar Christian names seemed to revive the old ways, and it was amusing to see the somewhat grave and silent colonel treated by his elder brother as the dashing, heedless boy, needing to be looked after, while his sister Jane remained the ready helper and counsellor, and Lady Merrifield was still in his eyes the unpractical, fanciful Lily with an unfortunately suggestive rhyme to her name.
Perhaps it maintained him in this opinion, that when he had answered all questions about Captain and Mrs. Harry May, and had dilated on their pretty house in the suburbs of Auckland, his sisters expected him to tell of the work of the Church among the Maoris and Fijians. He laughed at them for thinking colonists troubled their heads about natives.
'I know Phyllis does. One of Harry May's brothers went out as a missionary.'
'Disenchanted and came home again when his wife came into a fortune.'
'Not a bit of it,' said Aunt Jane. 'I know him and all about him. He stayed till his health broke, and now he is one of the most useful men in the country. He is coming to speak for the S.P.G. at Rockquay, Lily; and you must come and meet him and his charming wife. They will tell you a very different story about Harry's doings.'
'Well,' allowed Mr. Mohun, 'there are apparitions of brown niggers done up as smart as twopence prancing about the house. Perfectly uninteresting, you know, the savage sophisticated out of his picturesqueness. I made a point of asking no questions, not knowing what I might be let in for.'
'Then you heard nothing of Mr. Ward, the Melanesian missionary, whom Phyllis keeps a room for when he comes to New Zealand to recrui
t.'
'The man who was convicted of murder on circumstantial evidence! Oh yes. I heard of him. I believe the labour-traffic agents heartily wish him at Portland still, he makes the natives so much too sharp.'
'Aye,' said the colonel, 'as long as Britons aren't slaves they have no objection to anything but the name for other people.'
'Wait till you get out there, Regie, and see what they all say about those lazy fellows-except, of course, ladies and parsons, and a few whom they've bitten, like May.'
'The few are on the Christian side, of course,' said Lady Merrifield, with irony in her tone.
Indeed, she was not at all sure that half this colonial prejudice was not assumed in order to tease her, just as in former times her brother would make game of her enthusiasms about school children; for he was altogether returned to his old self, his sister Jane, who had seen the most of him, testifying that the original Maurice had revived, as never in the course of his married life.
Dolores tried to forget or disbelieve the words she had heard about his having come to fetch her away, and said no word about them until they had been unmistakably repeated. Then she felt a sort of despair at the idea of being separated from her aunt and Mysie, for indeed they had penetrated to affections deeper than had ever been consciously stirred in her before. Yet she was old enough to shrink from allowing to her father that she preferred staying with them to going with him, and it was to her Aunt Jane that she had recourse. That lady, after returning from her expedition to bring her sister Adeline to Silverton, was surprised by a timid knock at the door, and Dolores's entrance.
'Oh, if you please, Aunt Jane, may I come in? I do so want to speak to you alone. Don't you think it is a sad pity that I should go away from the Cambridge examination? Could not you tell my father so?'
'You want to stay for the Cambridge examination,' said Aunt Jane, a little amused at the manner of touching on the subject, though sorry for the girl.
The Two Sides of the Shield Page 29
