Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
SUDDENLY SHE HEARD A VOICE, AND CHARLIE OXTON . . .
STEPPED UP ON THE BANK
BY
AMY LE FEUVRE
AUTHOR OF "PROBABLE SONS," "THE MENDER,"
"A BIT OF ROUGH ROAD," "HEATHER'S MISTRESS," ETC., ETC.
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 BOUVERIE STREET, E.C.4
Made in Great Britain
Printed by Unwin Brothers, Ltd.
London and Woking
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE CHISEL
TOMINA IN RETREAT
BRIDGET'S QUARTER DECK
THE CARVED CUPBOARD
A DAUGHTER OF THE SEA
HEATHER'S MISTRESS
HER HUSBAND'S PROPERTY
JOYCE AND THE RAMBLER
THE MAKING OF A WOMAN
THE MENDER
ODD MADE EVEN
OLIVE TRACY
DWELL DEEP
A HAPPY WOMAN
THE CHATEAU BY THE LAKE
THE DISCOVERY OF DAMARIS
OF ALL BOOKSELLERS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
XII. AN EVENTFUL RAILWAY JOURNEY
XXI. THE STRUGGLING PROFESSIONAL
THE MAKING OF A WOMAN
A STAGNANT ATMOSPHERE
"God's silence on the outside of the house,
And we who did not speak too loud within."—Aurora Leigh.
SHE sat at her window overlooking the wide and dreary expanse of marshland. A faint streak of light near the horizon was all that could be seen of the sea. No trees or buildings broke the monotonous scene, and Jean's deep inquiring blue eyes sought in vain for anything to brighten her landscape. She was young, she was vigorous and healthy, and her spirits were good as a rule; yet to-day she was in the depths of depression, and the grey mist that was slowly rolling in from the ocean and obliterating the russet-brown rushes and the coarse dank grass that stretched for so many miles in front of her, only seemed a fit emblem of the cloud over her soul.
She threw up her head at last with a weary sigh.
"He is my grandfather!" she exclaimed aloud. "My father's father! But oh! If he had been my mother's father, how differently I should feel!"
She looked round her room, which was a large one, though barely and insufficiently furnished. Her eyes fell on a small oil painting on the wall. It was the portrait of her mother. The broad white brow, the delicately chiselled little nose, and sweet tremulous lips with their pathetic droop, and the deep earnest, soul-searching eyes, all combined to portray a sweet and beautiful woman. Jean inherited her mother's brow and eyes; her nose and mouth were more decided in character, her chin round and determined, and humour lightened the corners of her closely-shut lips. As her eyes met the ones in the portrait, she suddenly saw a scene before her. It had been enacted in this very room many years ago. A tiny curly-headed girl in black frock and white pinafore stood hugging a picture to her breast, and defying a stern old man before her.
"You sha'n't have my mother's picture! You've tooked her away from me and locked her up in a box, and she made this picture for mine own self, and I sha'n't give it to you! I shall grow up a big girl and paint millions of pictures—more than any one else in the world!"
The old man made a step forward, and the much-prized picture was torn from the child's tiny grasp. It was a pretty sketch of an old Italian châlet with a group of children gathering flowers in the foreground. On the floor were various bits of paper and a box of paints. Mr. Desmond had surprised his little granddaughter in one of her first efforts to follow in the steps of her artist mother. She had been happy all the morning with one of her mother's paintings before her, and had with untiring zeal been attempting to reproduce it upon scraps of writing paper. Much paint on fingers and pinafore was the result, also certain daubs of colour on the paper that meant much to her small mind, but very little to any one else.
"Listen to me!" was the wrathful exclamation as the old man, picture in hand, towered above her. "My son disgraced himself by marrying your mother. He could have allied himself with the oldest family in the county, and he refused. He died a beggar in Italy, and sent me his wife and child to support. I took you in for his sake; you bore his name, and when your mother had the audacity to sell her paintings with my son's name upon them, I forbade her to touch a brush or pencil again as long as she was under my roof. She obeyed me, and now that she is dead, am I to stand still and see you strive to make yourself perfect in the art that bewitched and ruined my only son? Who dared to give you pencil and paints?"
The small child was not awed, as her mother had been.
"I shall draw pictures every day, and you're a wicked man, grandpapa! Nurse did buy a paintbox for me, and if you take it away, I shall paint out of your ink-pot! I will! I will paint pictures like mother did!"
Jean smiled as she thought of the small fury dancing up and down, but she frowned when she recollected the summary chastisement that followed, and the consequent collapse and penitence of the motherless little one.
And then her mind left the past and dwelt in her present.
It was a very grey monotonous one, but there were gleams of brightness in it. She lived alone with her grandfather in an old stone house on the border of the marsh. For five years, she had been to a small private school in the neighbouring town, about nine miles away, and then at seventeen, her education was supposed to be complete. She came back, and was installed as her grandfather's housekeeper and companion.
She was fond of music, but there was no piano in the house; a great reader, but the only room that contained any books was her grandfather's library, in which he sat and dared any one to molest him. Drawing and painting were forbidden pastimes. At school, she had envied her fellow pupils who used to attend an art school close by; but, though she had never had a lesson, and in spite of her grandfather's prohibition, she was seldom without a pencil and sketch-book. Beauty in any shape or form intoxicated her; her lesson-books had not a margin that was not covered with faces and forms of all descriptions. When she returned home, she never rested till she had copied her mother's portrait, and as she traced the delicate, pensive features, her whole heart went out in love to her young mother, whose spirit had been crushed and broken by the tyranny of her father-in-law. When that occupation was finished, Jean looked around her, wondering how she would pass her time.
Four elderly servants formed the household—two men and two women. John and Mary were husband and wife; John was butler and valet to Mr. Desmond, Mary the cook. Elsie was the housemaid, and was a soured, miserable woman through numerous misfortunes in her life—chiefly the iniquities and treachery of some of her early lovers. Rawlings was gardener, and was the most cheerful individual of the community.
"Are you feelin' low?" he would say. "Come into the open air and it will blow away your feelin's!"
It was in the garden that Jean eventually spent most of her time. She learnt the times and seasons of every plant and flower from the old man; she was initiated into the mysteries of grafting, potting, and pruning. There was not a big flower garden; the wind swept over the lawn, and the salt spray stunted and burnt the trees and shrubs. It stood in the front of the house, unprotected from the open marshland, but the kitchen garden behind was encircled by four high walls, and it was there that Jean and Rawlings talked and worked together.
But lately the stormy spring weather had laid Rawlings low with an attack of rheumatism, and Jean had shunned the garden.
She had taken the opportunity to steal into the library when her grandfather was interviewing a tenant of his in the servants' hall. And when he returned, she was too deep in a volume of Scott's poems to notice his approach.
He looked at the girl as she sat on the floor by his bookcase, her head resting against the books behind her, and her lap full of odd volumes she had been glancing at. And then, harshly, he brought her out of the stirring scenes of battle and of love in which her soul was feasting.
"Did I give you leave to touch my books?"
Jean started to her feet and faced her grandfather with sparkling eyes.
"No," she said with spirit, "but I am hoping every day that you will. Grandfather, I cannot live this life much longer. You are starving me whilst you are surrounded with plenty. Let me share some of your books with you."
Mr. Desmond stooped and took up the book that she had laid down.
"Poems!" he sneered. "When a woman surfeits herself on romances and poetry, she lays the foundation for worse to follow. No, Jean; keep to your own province and let me keep to mine. Books are for men, household tasks for women. Let Mary teach you to cook a dinner, and Elsie to mend the house-linen. And never let me find you in this room again, unless I send for you!"
"But," argued Jean, stung to the quick by the contempt expressed in her grandfather's tone, "I have a brain as well as you. You don't want two cooks in the house nor two women to mend the linen. I have nothing to do these wet days. If you will not let me read your books, give me money to buy some myself. You will hardly let me read the newspaper. I shall turn into an imbecile, if I am treated like this! Oh! If I had money, how different my life would be here!"
Passion was in her tone. He waved her away like a naughty child.
"I clothe you and feed you. You want no more."
But Jean would not be dismissed.
"Grandfather, if you do not let me read, I shall paint. I shall make it my occupation in life."
The old man glared at her.
"If I ever catch you at it," he roared in fury, "I'll cast you out of this house for ever!"
"Perhaps," muttered Jean, "that would be the best thing that could happen to me!"
She left him, and went up to her room.
Would life always be like this? she wondered, and sitting at her window, gloom descended on her soul. Then she went to her bookcase and discontentedly viewed its contents. A Bible, a prayer-book, and a dictionary, half a dozen children's story books, and Boswell's "Life of Johnson." The latter was the only prize she had earned at school, and she had read it through already five times.
"If only I had money of my own!" she sighed. "I wonder if I could by any possibility earn any!"
Then she started up. "I will go out," she resolved; "as Rawlings says, it will 'blow away my feelin's'!"
She put on her thick coat and hat, and in a few minutes was treading the flat dreary road that led by the side of the marsh to the nearest town.
It was already getting dusk; a flock of wild ducks suddenly rose close to her, and flew screaming over the marsh towards the sea. There was no wind; the croaking of frogs seemed the only sound that broke the monotonous silence. She looked around her with keen alert eyes, but her gaze fell on stunted gorse bushes, and beds of the green rushes that were so familiar a landmark in this part of the country.
"Oh!" she said impatiently to herself, as she threw back her head with a quick, imperious gesture, "I know this all so well, that I could paint it with my eyes shut! It's a deadening part of the world to live in. Stagnant life, and I am beginning to think that mine is like it!"
Then she looked eagerly in front of her. Two figures were walking towards her. One of them she recognised. He was a friend of her grandfather's, who lived about three miles away at his place called the Hermitage, and on account of his quiet and studious habits was nicknamed "the hermit" by his acquaintances.
Mr. Desmond had a good many friends in the literary world, and it was of no uncommon occurrence for two or three men suddenly to turn up and dine and sleep with no previous intimation of their arrival. Jean often wished women would accompany them, but this was never the case. Old Mr. Desmond looked upon the weaker sex as being utterly unfit to converse intellectually with learned savants. He had never been a society man. His wife had died four years after his marriage, and since her death, he had become entirely absorbed in his books. Jean never had much to say to the men who frequented her grandfather's house. She took her seat at the dinner table, but did not see them afterwards. They looked upon her as a schoolgirl still, and were like her grandfather, more interested in science than in women.
Mr. Railton, "the hermit," was the one she knew and liked best. She quickened her pace, and a bright smile came to her lips as she greeted him.
"You are taking a constitutional," he said in his grave courteous manner. "I was bringing a friend of mine to see your grandfather this evening. Let me introduce him to you—Colonel Douglas. He has just come home from wanderings in Persia."
Jean held out her hand. "Then, you are sure of a warm welcome from grandfather," she said, "for the East is his pet part of the world."
As she gazed at the newcomer with some interest, she was conscious of an amused scrutiny in his eye. He was a tall well-knit man, with bronzed face and dark hair, and a certain humorous twist of countenance softened the otherwise stern ruggedness of feature.
"Not quite so dry and old as most of them," she thought, and she noted with appreciation his attire which, though irreproachable for a country gentleman, had a smartness and up-to-date appearance that was not usual amongst her grandfather's friends.
"And what is your favourite part of the world?" asked Colonel Douglas. "This?"—with a wave of his hand over the desolate marsh.
Jean was quite taken aback. She was not accustomed to be asked what were her likes or dislikes. She looked up at him earnestly.
"I should be happy anywhere away from this!"
A hidden fire and passion leapt to her eyes as she spoke, then she passed on, and the two men went their way.
"A sleeping volcano," said the Colonel. "Who is she?"
"The only granddaughter of Desmond—a good little thing in her way, I believe. She has not long been home from school. It is a dull life for her."
They commenced to talk of other things.
Jean soon came to a standstill.
"Of course, they're coming to dinner. I wonder if Mary knows. I don't believe she does. Mr. Railton won't make any difference, but this stranger—he is accustomed to good dinners, I feel sure; I think I will go back and warn her."
REBELLION
"We would be free as Nature, but forget
That Nature wears an universal law,
Free only, for she cannot disobey."—H. Coleridge.
JEAN was not quite so silent at dinner that night. Colonel Douglas told such entertaining stories, and deferred so often to her, that she surprised her grandfather by expressing opinions of her own. He snubbed her unmercifully more than once, but she did not as usual sink under it.
"You must come out to Persia, Mr. Desmond," said the Colonel gaily, "and bring your granddaughter with you. Travelling is made so easy nowadays for ladies. I have been asked to conduct a party through Egypt and Palestine. Shall I undertake you?"
Jean caught her breath, but her grandfather shook his head.
"I am too old to travel."
Colonel Douglas turned to Jean.
"Miss Desmond, can I not persuade you? My sister, whose husband is in India, will chaperon you with the greatest pleasure."
Jean looked across at her grandfather audaciously.
"Shall I go, grandfather? You do not want me here."
Mr. Desmond's brows lowered threateningly.
"When I do not want you, I will let you know," he said coldly.
Jean's eyes flashed.
"I shall paint a picture and get my liberty," she muttered to herself, and this resolve took hold of her, and remained with her to such an extent, that she lost all interest in the ensuing conversation.
Colonel Douglas glanced at her more than once, and noticed the absorbed dreamy look in her eyes. She left the dinner table, and did not see the gentlemen again that night, but upstairs, she was pacing her room with feverishly clasped hands and flashing eyes.
"What could happen, if he turned me out of the house? Where could I go? Would he give me any money? I'll begin to paint to-morrow. I will, I will! He couldn't turn me out of the house to starve. He would give me some money, and wash his hands of me, and I—where could I go? Why, the whole world would be before me. I would be able to go this tour in the East, and take my chance of what happened afterwards."
When she went to bed, she did not sleep. Visions of what might be, rose before her. Wandering beneath date-palms, and a cloudless blue sky; sleeping in white tents, with camels and mules and swarthy Arabs around her, sailing slowly up the Nile seeing strange sights every day, perhaps climbing the Pyramids and viewing the mysterious Sphinx. It all fascinated and enthralled her.
"I should be in a world of beauty and of art, and be surrounded with nice, friendly women and men. I should be able to give myself up to painting and to reading, and I should live, live, live!"
When the morning came, calm common sense battled with her impulsive excitement. She almost cried with vexation when she found her paintbox nearly empty, and not a piece of canvas or paper in her portfolio. But she would not be deterred from her purpose.
"I shall do nothing rash," she argued with herself, "but paint I shall, and as I have no money I shall beg, borrow, or steal. And yet—yet—it is all so hopeless. What should I do if my only relative cast me off? I can but wait. A change must come in my life, sooner or later. I will go out and talk to Rawlings. He is better, so will be in his beloved garden again."
She found him sowing seed. He looked up with a bright smile at her as she came.
"Eh, Miss Jean, 'tis good to be in the air agen. I have been giving thanks with the birds."
"You're always giving thanks, Rawlings. I wish I had any luck to thank for."
Jean balanced herself on the side of a cucumber frame, and looked about her with discontented eyes. It was a fresh clear morning, and the sun was streaming through the swiftly-passing clouds. The old kitchen garden, with its deep red walls and box-edged borders, was full of fresh young life, and Jean's fretfulness passed away.
"I shall make a picture of this garden," she said joyously, "and shall call it 'old age and youth.'"
"Meanin' you and me?" queried Rawlings, dubiously.
"No, I was thinking of the garden itself. How many lives have lived and died in it, Rawlings—vegetable life I mean!"
Rawlings shook his head.
"I've sowed here these twenty year or more. 'Tis a wonderful fruitful spot. But there, Miss Jean, I always hold there be no such thing as dyin' in Gods Kingdom. The plants live on in their seeds, and come up year by year; same in the bulb and root tribe, they bear life in them, whether buried or resurrected."
"I wish you were my grandfather, Rawlings; you would help me to blossom out and sow seed, wouldn't you? You wouldn't put me in a hole, and tell me to stop there, and prevent me covering as much ground as I wanted to. Grandfather would be a bad gardener, and how he would hate to see the wind come and scatter the flower-seeds in all directions! How I wish a wind would come and carry me off somewhere!"
"What is the matter with you, Miss Jean?"
"I want money, Rawlings—money to buy books and paints. How can I get some?"
He looked at her laughing face as she turned it up to his, then gave a dry little chuckle as he went on with his work.
"Books and paints be poor satisfaction for a discontented spirit," he observed. "I be happy without 'em, and so can ye be, Miss Jean."
"No, I can't!" she said, springing up and stamping indignantly with one foot on the ground. "I am starving, Rawlings, and I want to be fed!"
Then in another tone she asked—
"Have you ever been to London, Rawlings?"
"No, that I have not."
"Have you any friends there?"
"A married sister, Miss Jean, who did marry a man in the grocery line. She has ofttimes asked me to pay her a visit, but Lunnon be not to my taste."
"Where does she live, Rawlings?"
"That I can't tell ye, but the name of her house be 177, Charles Street."
Jean repeated this over softly to herself. Then she looked at some Neapolitan violets thoughtfully. Finally she went over to the frame and picked a large bunch of them, and then she ran off to the house, calling to Rawlings over her shoulder, "The wind has begun to blow, Rawlings."
An hour later, she was steadily walking along the same flat road that she had taken the day before, but there was purpose and determination in her face, and in her hand she grasped a small basket of fragrant violets. The town was reached at last, but as she came in sight of the shops, her courage failed her. She hesitated outside a greengrocer's, where flowers were displayed in the window; then squaring her shoulders, walked boldly in.
"Good morning, Miss Desmond," said the woman civilly. "What can I have the pleasure of serving you with?"
Jean became red and confused.
"I—er—don't want anything, thank you. At least I—have you any early potatoes yet?"
"Well no, miss. 'Tis too early. The spring be extra late this year—"
"Thank you—thank you—it isn't of the least consequence!"
Poor Jean dashed out of the shop, and then almost ran into the arms of Colonel Douglas. He started, then held out his hand pleasantly.
"Good morning," he said. "Have you driven in to shop?"
"I never drive," replied Jean. "I always walk."
Her cheeks were crimson, and she turned away her head; but not before Colonel Douglas's keen eyes had noted glittering drops on the end of her eyelashes.
"Splendid!" he said heartily. "There is nothing that does one more good than a thorough brisk constitutional, with a purpose at the end."
Jean's "purpose" nearly overwhelmed her now. Then in desperation she turned to him, shaking off her tears and diffidence.
"Colonel Douglas, will you help me? Buying and selling is only an honourable exchange, as my schoolmistress used to say. Do you want, do you know any one who wants some early Neapolitans?"
She held up her basket to him as she spoke, with a mixture of audacity and bashfulness that amused the Colonel.
He looked at the cool fresh bunch, with their sweet-scented fragrance, then quietly lifted them out of the basket and dropped half a crown in their place.
"This is a very honourable and pleasant exchange to me," he said, and raising his hat, he walked away.
Jean looked down at her basket, and then after him.
"I like him!" she mentally exclaimed. "He is a gentleman, and he isn't curious!"
Then she sped away to a stationer's and invested her one coin in a small quantity of paints and paper.
The walk home seemed short, but Jean nodded her head as she entered the house.
"It has been worth it, but I could never do it again."
She stationed herself in the kitchen garden that afternoon, and sketched old Rawlings amongst his cabbages with a true artist's delight. The old brick wall for a background, and the fresh green, with the sun upon it around the old man formed a pretty picture. She was almost disappointed that her grandfather did not appear upon the scene, but she was left in peace. Mr. Desmond seldom visited the kitchen garden, and had little idea how his granddaughter spent her days. A week passed. Jean worked on with a feverish excitement. Her scarcity of materials only made her more determined to persevere with the little she had. More than once her grandfather looked at her flushed cheeks and bright eyes, wondering at her animation.
"Jean," he said to her one evening after dinner, "I shall be absent a few days. I am going with Mr. Railton to town."
Jean looked up at him startled.
"Will you leave me some money?" she asked.
"I do not think you will need any. Mary manages the housekeeping."
"But, grandfather, I am penniless. It is dreadful to be kept so. Supposing I was out of doors and met with an accident, and had to go to an inn, or fell into a bog—or—"
Jean stopped her eager speech. She saw the ironical smile that she so disliked.
"Pray continue," Mr. Desmond said, "and give me a reasonable excuse for handing out some money to be squandered on ribbons and laces and sweetmeats!"
Jean's eyes flashed angrily, but her grandfather stopped her protestations by putting half a sovereign into her hand.
"Now what will you do with it?" he said, not unkindly.
Jean threw back her young head a little defiantly. "Feed my mind and heart," she said.
Mr. Desmond laughed.
"And what food do they require?"
"Books and paints."
The reply was prompt and unexpected. Mr. Desmond's brows contracted.
"You know my will about paints," he said.
Then Jean cast prudence to the winds. Her young, passionate soul swelled within her.
"Grandfather," she said, "you hate deceit of any kind and so do I. I have been waiting to tell you. I cannot keep from painting. It is no good. I believe it was born in me. I must do it; I have been painting a picture lately that I feel is the best I have done. I will show it to you if you like."
She darted from the room, returning very shortly with her treasure.
"There!" she said triumphantly as she held it out to him. "I know it is full of faults, but I have had no teaching, and if I can do as well without any help, what should I do under a master?"
It required no keen inspection to tell that Jean's little picture bore the marks of genius.
But she was quite unprepared for the paroxysm of fury that took possession of her grandfather. He seized the picture, and dashing it to the ground, stamped it underfoot. Then with an oath he turned upon her.
"Are you to be a perpetual taunt to me of my son's disgraceful alliance?" he roared. "Am I not to be master in my own house? Have I fed and clothed you all these years to meet with this insolent, ill-bred defiance? What did I tell you a short time ago?"
"That you would wash your hands of me, or words to that effect," said Jean, trembling before him, but steeling herself to withstand his anger. "You have housed and fed me all these years, but you have never loved me. I suppose I remind you too much of my mother. I want to go away from you. I cannot live on here and be kept from using the talent God has given me. As I must and will paint, I mean to go away. I want you to give me some money and let me go."
For a moment Mr. Desmond was taken aback by the girl's impetuous earnestness. But he was a passionate self-willed man who had never in his life been thwarted or contradicted by any of his household, and his temper was entirely beyond his control. He turned upon her in a fury, and Jean quailed before his violent words.
"Go to your room! Don't let me see you again until you are in a proper frame of mind. Do you think I am a man to be trifled with? Your mother brought evil into my family, and you are seeking to follow in her steps. I wish to heaven, I had cast her out when she first appealed to me! Your blood is the same as hers. I was a fool to think I could train you, and turn you out a respectable woman. Do you want to leave me? You can make your choice. If you won't obey, you can go and starve, for not one penny will I give towards your support away from me!"
This, interspersed with some very strong language, was the substance of his speech.
Jean fled up to her room frightened and angry, but not submissive. She did not see her grandfather before he left for London, and was very quiet for the next few days—so quiet that Elsie informed Mary that "the master had broken Miss Jean's spirit entirely."
"She locks herself up in her room for hours together, and walks about with her lips as grim as the master's."
"She is but a child," responded Mary. "She'll learn to give in to the master soon. 'Tis her high spirits that won't bear the curb."
A SPEEDY RETURN
"Those things that a man cannot amend in himself
or in others, he ought to suffer patiently
until God orders things otherwise."—Thomas à Kempis.
IT was a bright spring afternoon in town. Colonel Douglas was wending his way from his club in Pall Mall to his rooms in a quiet street off Piccadilly. He was due at his sister's house in Palace Gate at five, and he was inwardly pitying himself for the ordeal of sipping tea and making conversation amongst the society men and women generally to be found at Mrs. Talbot's "At home" days. His thoughts were somewhat after this fashion—
"Wish I could get back to the wilds again. And yet, after ten years' absence, England has an extraordinary fascination for me. I think I'll go into the country for a bit. It is restful, and I can work at my papers in peace. I am thankful that this personally-conducted tour will fall through. Women of fashion are too much responsibility for a single man. Wish Railton would come out."
Here a flower-girl thrust forward a button-hole of Neapolitans. He shook his head and walked on.
"That was a funny little episode down in that marsh country. Wonder what she was after? I should like to know how my half-crown benefited her. A bewitching little creature, with her rebellious longings after a wider life. Her grandfather is a Tartar at home, I fancy. I mustn't forget he has invited me down next week. He's a clever old chap. I quite enjoyed running up against him yesterday in the Museum. Think I shall make that my excuse to Norah for getting out of town."
He let himself into his lodgings with his latch-key, but his landlady appeared in the hall.
"If you please, sir, a lady is waiting to see you. I said I thought you would be in soon."
Colonel Douglas lifted his eyebrows.
"What name?" he asked shortly.
"She did not give her name, sir."
He opened his sitting-room door sharply, and when he confronted Jean, was too much surprised to speak. She stood up with no sense of the unconventionality of her action, only relief and hope seemed to lighten her face when she saw him.
"I was afraid I might not meet you," she said simply. "I got your address from Mr. Railton, for I didn't know it, and I want to know when you and your sister are going to start on this tour through Egypt and Palestine."
"I think it is knocked on the head," he replied, courteously. "My sister has cried off it, and I am not very keen on it myself. I suppose your grandfather is staying on in town. How do you like the change?"
He talked on, for he saw the blank look of dismay on Jean's face, and the rush of colour to her cheeks.
"I did not understand you were up in town. Are you seeing any of the sights, or does your grandfather restrict your dissipation to the British Museum?"
Then Jean found her voice.
"I am not with him. I have made a mistake. It is of no consequence. I thought your trip was settled."
She turned to the door with averted face, but Colonel Douglas caught sight of tears brimming over. He was puzzled and uneasy, especially when he heard her add, almost in a whisper, "I don't know what to do."
"Where are you staying?" he asked kindly. "Do I know your friends? At all events, let me walk back with you."
Jean hurried out of the house, then as she saw him by her side she swallowed her disappointment, and with an effort said—
"Thank you. I don't know London very well. I want to go back to Charles Street. I have left my grandfather altogether. I—I am staying with Rawling's sister. It's a long way from here—in the City, they call it. I came by omnibus."
"I am afraid you are in a difficulty, are you not? Let us take a hansom, and then you can tell me all about it."
"I do want help dreadfully," acknowledged Jean, when she found herself seated side by side with him in the cab. "But you're almost a stranger, and I expect you will think me half crazy."
"Indeed, I shall not. Two heads are better than one. Make me your father confessor."
He spoke lightly, but Jean drew up her young head proudly.
"I have done nothing wrong; at least, I hope I have not. Grandfather is hard and cruel. He has forbidden me to paint, he won't let me read. He told me I could leave him if I liked, and so I did. I left home yesterday. I thought perhaps your sister would take pity on me, and let me join this tour. I want to earn my own living; I shall have to. I have no money, but I know I can earn some. I mean to begin at once. Mrs. Toppings, Rawling's sister, is very kind; she has managed a bedroom for me, and they're most respectable people. I never found their house till ten o'clock last night—there seemed so many Charles Streets in London—but she took me in at once. And if I can't go with you, I shall try something else. I shall go to a registry office, and get a mother's help' situation, or companion. Oh, I shall do very well, I am sure. It is only just at first, and of course, I didn't know about you. I thought you lived with your sister, or had a wife. I hope I shall get on. I mean to. I never shall go back to grandfather again—never, never!"
Jean talked fast and nervously, and Colonel Douglas listened with a grave, quiet sympathy that soothed her. But he was greatly startled and perplexed, and concerned at the young girl's innocence and inexperience.
"My dear Miss Desmond," he said, when she paused for breath, "I have seen a little more of the world than you have, and I beseech you, to think of what you are doing. I am perfectly certain your grandfather would be most desperately anxious and distressed, if he knew that any hasty words of his had driven you to such an extremity as this. A friendless young woman in London will never be able to support herself. You little know the pitfalls for youth and inexperience. Have you no relations in town who might advise you?"
"I have no relations," said Jean, with a look of dismay in her eyes. "Not one, but grandfather, and he doesn't care for me; he doesn't want me. Oh, Colonel Douglas, I must paint! It is life to me! It is cruel to keep me from it!"
"Listen!" the Colonel said, trying to speak lightly, though he knew that this was an important crisis in the girl's life. "I am going to stay at your home next week, and shall not like it at all, if you are not there to welcome me. I promise you, I will do my best to persuade your grandfather to let you follow your beloved art. People say I have a knack at persuasion. I have tackled more difficult subjects than your grandfather in my time, and have come off conqueror. If you wish to study painting, you will want money. Your grandfather is the one who must give you that. Promise me to go straight home, and I venture to say that you and I together will be able to get round your grandfather. If you are quick, you will be able to catch the express from St. Pancras, and I will come and see you off myself."
"I can't! Oh, I can't!" exclaimed Jean, struggling with tears and mortification.
Colonel Douglas laid his hand lightly on hers. Jean often wondered afterwards whether there was mesmerism in his touch. Perhaps it was his tone as well, that made her yield.
"You can and you will, for you have enough determination and good principle to carry you through. Is this the house? I will wait in the hansom while you collect your luggage. Have you money to pay your landlady?"
Jean assented proudly. She went into the house as if in a dream, but very soon returned. Colonel Douglas smiled, as he saw her small handbag. But when she was driving to St. Pancras Station with him, she burst out passionately—
"Colonel Douglas, I shall never forgive you, if you don't help me to get away! I made my plans with such care. I hoped your sister might help me. I was counting on your taking this tour. I put all my trust in you, and you have utterly failed me. I shall never get over it, if you don't persuade grandfather to give me more liberty. I daresay you think me rash and foolish to build upon what you said at all, but when you bought my violets and never asked questions, it made me believe in you. I couldn't help it, and now you're shattering all my plans to pieces!"
"I am wanting you to build with bricks instead of cards," said the Colonel, smiling, and feeling it was quite impossible to help taking an interest in this impetuous unconventional little person. "You wait till my visit to you comes off, and then you will acknowledge, I have been your good genius."
Jean looked almost tearful when the train was starting. Colonel Douglas nodded brightly to her:
"Keep up your spirits. We shall meet again soon."
Half an hour afterwards, he was on his way to his sister's, and was severely reprimanded by her, when he arrived for his late appearance.
"Now, sir," she said to him when her guests had disappeared, and only she and her great friend, a Mrs. Gower, were left. "Give an account of yourself to-day. Why did you fail me?"
"An errand of—of mercy kept me," said the Colonel, leaning back in an easy chair and looking at his sister with a humorous twinkle in his eye.
"I was sure of it!" young Mrs. Talbot exclaimed, turning to her friend. "There never was such a man for laying himself out for impostors. He always has been like it, Jessie, from the time he was found helping a drunkard into a public-house when he was four years old. 'Poor man is firsty!' he explained when his nurse dragged him off. Some one told me he was nicknamed in his regiment 'The humbug's hope.' Last week, he was accosted by a German female in the streets. She had landed that day in a strange country, she said, and she had lost her purse. She appealed to the 'Herr,' for she said she saw 'honour in his eye.' Don't laugh; that was a fact. He told me so himself—didn't you, Phil?"
"Our feelings were mutual," said Colonel Douglas, smiling. "I saw truth in her eye."
"Do tell us about your case to-day," Mrs. Gower said, trying to restrain her laughter. "You have such a self-satisfied expression that I am sure you are convinced that you have successfully relieved distress."
"Yes," the Colonel said quietly. "I hope I have prevented disaster coming to an inexperienced child. If you promise to listen sympathetically, I will tell you about her, for I want Norah's help in the matter."
In a few brief words, he laid Jean's hasty impulsive escapade before them, and for a wonder, his sister did not laugh. She grew keenly interested. "Poor little soul! Why didn't you bring her to me? How can a man try to manage a girl in these days! I mean her grandfather, not you. Does he not see that forbidding her to touch a pencil or brush is the very way to stimulate her to do it? What brutes men can be! Is she a presentable little creature, Phil? Would she like to come up to town and pay me a visit?"
"That would do her no good."
"Thank you! Perhaps you will tell me how I can help you, then?"
"I think," said the Colonel slowly, "that if you know some quiet nice woman who would board her, and mother her, and let her attend some school of art or studio, I might persuade her grandfather to send her up to town for a time. She does not wish to go into society; her heart is in her work."
Mrs. Talbot shrugged her shoulders.
"I am too giddy to have the care of her! I have a great mind not to aid you in this business. But I do happen to know of the very person for her—Frances Lorraine."
"Frances Lorraine!" repeated the Colonel in wonder. "Is she in London? Has she left her old home?"
"She was turned out of it. It's the old story of the brother's wife supplanting the sister. Poor Frances has not much to live upon. She has taken a small house in Kensington, and asked me the other day, if I knew any girls or students who would like to board with her. She's just the sort of a person for a troublesome granddaughter. Cheery and sensible and not too prim. So when you tackle the irate grandfather, tell him she will uphold his authority through thick and thin. Frances always was a most uncomfortably conscientious person!"
Colonel Douglas smiled.
"She always had a knack of getting people to do the right thing, I remember. Well, it will be good for both, I believe, if we can bring them together. The grandfather is the chief obstacle at present."
And it was of her grandfather that Jean was thinking as she was whirled away in the train. She wondered if she should get home before he did, and whether the old servants had been perturbed at her absence. She had made her escape very quietly, putting a note on her grandfather's writing-table in the library. But she had taken no one into her confidence, and now as she realised the frustration of all her schemes she was glad she had not done so.
"It is dreadful going back! I wish I had not given in, but that Colonel Douglas is so determined, I felt I could not resist him. And I think it would have been just as dreadful staying on in London. I couldn't have done it, for I should not have had enough money. It was a mad idea! Thinking over it calmly now, I was silly to imagine it would turn out all right. I might have known it would be difficult—impossible to change one's life and slip into another so easily. How am I to meet grandfather? What can I say! Perhaps I may not have to tell him. And yet I must. I can't deceive!"
This was the substance of her thoughts. She felt very small as she alighted at the country station, and refusing the offer of the only fly, tramped sturdily along the flat highroad towards home. She could hardly believe it was only the day before that she had left it—as she thought then for ever—and as she gazed about on all the familiar landmarks she exclaimed—
"I do believe I am glad to see it again. That London seems a nightmare!"
Elsie met her at the hall door with a little scream of delight.
"Oh, Miss Jean, whatever have you been a-doing! We have been in such a state of fright about you. Rawlings had a telegram first thing this mornin' from his sister to say you were with her, but for pity's sake, don't be playing no such tricks agen. Master isn't back, but he's comin' to-night. He has stopped to dine at Mr. Railton's on his way from the station. What a blessing 'tis to see you agen, and how could you go up by yourself to that awful, wicked London! Why, I've heard awful tales of young girls disappearin' right away from the time they stepped out of the train, and never being heard of no more! Human nature is so shocking in big cities. I'll away to the kitchen to ease Mary's mind, and p'raps you'll tell us what you went for, when you've had some dinner. For you do look dead beat!"
Jean dashed upstairs to her room. Elsie's chatter was unbearable to her.
And when she had locked her door and saw everything in her room exactly as she left it, the humorous side struck her and she laughed aloud.
"How little I thought all my passionate longings for a freer life, my attempt to launch out into the world, would result in a journey up to London, a bad half-hour or so trying to find Mrs. Toppings' house, a meal and a bed there, and then to-day a journey back again! Not one glance at any of the shops, not a glimpse of a picture gallery. All a hopeless failure, but at all events, I have been saved the humiliation of being dragged back by grandfather. How could Mrs. Toppings be so treacherous! Yes, Colonel Douglas has saved me from that!"
She changed her travelling things, then sped downstairs remembering the note she had left on her grandfather's table. She found it in the same place as she had left it, and with a rueful smile she opened it and read it before she tore it up.
"MY DEAR GRANDFATHER,—I have left you. I feel I must use the talent
that has been given to me. I shall do nothing rash, but would rather
not tell you what my plans are till later on. I hope to make my fortune
by painting. I don't expect to get rich suddenly, but I shall work my
way gradually, and when I am independent I shall write to you again."
"Your affectionate granddaughter,"
"JEAN."
"I'm afraid," she said slowly, as she turned and left the room, "I'm afraid, I have acted like a fool!"
Then she rang the bell, and spoke with great dignity when John appeared.
"I hope Mary can give me some dinner. Ask her to send it up, as soon as possible."
"We'll do the best we can," responded John, looking at her keenly; "but you've put us about sorely, Miss Jean."
Jean was silent. When she had dined, she went out into the garden, but kept away from Rawlings. It had been a long day. She was determined to speak to her grandfather before she went to bed, but it seemed to her as if he would never return. At last she heard his footstep in the hall, and went forward to meet him.
"You ought to be in bed, Jean," were his first words. "Has everything gone on well during my absence?"
"I want to speak to you, grandfather," Jean said, quietly, though her heart began to beat rapidly. "I have something to tell you."
Her grandfather looked at her through his bushy eyebrows, and led the way to his library. For the time he had forgotten how they had parted, but he was beginning to recall it now.
"I should like to tell you what I've been doing," said Jean, throwing back her little head with more pride than submissiveness. "You remember how you spoke to me and what you said. Yesterday, I left this house, as I thought, for good. I went up to London."
Mr. Desmond glared at her in silence.
"I—I thought," continued Jean bravely, "that I might be able to go out to the East with Colonel Douglas and his sister; and I went to ask him about it, but I found it was all given up. I came back this afternoon, and I wish to tell you that I am sorry I went away. I ought not to have done it."
"Will you have the goodness to state where you slept last night?"
Mr. Desmond's tone was icy. His eyes never left her face.
"I went to Mrs. Toppings. She was very kind—she is Rawlings' sister—but he didn't know anything about it. I didn't do anything improper, grandfather, don't look at me so! I am sorry. I can say no more."
"But I can say a great deal more," said Mr. Desmond sternly, "I would have you remember what I said to you the other day. If you once leave this roof, you do not come back to it. I am not one to be trifled with in this manner. However, I am not going to waste words with you to-night. You can leave me. I will see you again on this matter."
Jean left him. Never had her grandfather spoken to her with such cold, hard determination in his tone. He had been passionately angry with her many times, but there was now a look upon his face that made the girl shiver.
"I believe," she said to herself, as she lay her tired head on her pillow that night, "that he hates me, as he hated my mother."
A FRIEND IN NEED
"My friends have come to me unsought; the great God gave
them me."—Emerson.
THE expected interview did not come off. Jean saw her grandfather only at meal-times, and then he was coldly distant and polite to her. She wondered her escapade had been treated so leniently, and she began to look forward to Colonel Douglas's promised visit as the means of conciliating her grandfather. He arrived on a beautiful spring evening. Jean welcomed him in the garden, for her grandfather had not returned from his ride.
The Colonel looked at her radiant young face with interest.
"I am so glad to see you," she said, "from entirely selfish views. I am hoping great things from you. I was awake half last night, thinking about it. I don't know how you are going to succeed, but you must, you will, won't you? And I'll thank you all my life long, for the trouble you are taking."
"Ah," the Colonel responded with a humorous shake of the head. "It is a responsibility to push a young bird out of the nest. Experience may teach you to reproach me. I doubt, if I shall deserve much gratitude."
Jean looked up at him soberly and wistfully.
"I am grateful to you for making me come back. I acted on impulse. I have been thinking a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that a change of life means a great deal more than I thought it did. If this house were more of a home to me, I would never wish to leave it. If grandfather loved me, I would thankfully stay with him for the rest of my life."
Colonel Douglas was surprised at the depth of feeling in her tone.
"Sometimes we misunderstand those who love us best," he said. "It isn't always the ones who are most demonstrative, who are the most genuine."
Jean smiled rather bitterly.
"Ask grandfather if he has the least liking for me, and hear what he says. Oh, Colonel Douglas, I am so lonely, so friendless! I can't help telling you, but do you know, you are the first person who has taken the smallest interest in me, since I left school. It is so good of you. I don't think I shall mind it when I take up painting, but here I have nothing to do, nothing to read, and I think of myself all day long, until I sometimes wish there was no such person in the world as Jean Desmond!"
She broke into a little laugh, and turned to pick some daffodils in a bed close by.
"Ah, well," Colonel Douglas said cheerily, "when your circle widens, and you know a few more people, you will become so interested in some of them, that you will almost forget your own existence."
"Do you think I shall?" she asked, looking up at him quickly. "Ah, you are laughing at me! Come indoors, will you? I see grandfather riding round to the stables."
She was silent at dinner-time, leaving the conversation entirely to her grandfather and his guest. But as she left the room, Colonel Douglas met her pleading glance with a reassuring nod, and Jean wandered about the empty drawing-room in a fever of unrest and anxious conjecture.
She did not see the Colonel again that evening, and her dreams that night were disturbed by visions of a battle royal waging between him and her grandfather.
But after breakfast the next morning, Mr. Desmond summoned her to the library, where she found Colonel Douglas engrossed in some old parchments and her grandfather looking very grim and determined.
"I sent for you, Jean, as I have been hearing from Colonel Douglas that you have been making complaints to him of your life here!"
The Colonel raised his eyebrows, but did not look up from his parchments. Mr. Desmond continued—
"I have no wish to keep you here against your will. Your act the other day has quite removed the slightest desire on my part to have you here. I was angry at first at your wilful determination to do the one thing I have wished you never to do, but now it is quite immaterial to me. You have enabled me to snap the tie between us with the greatest ease. Still, as I say, I think it is fair to you to give you your choice. I had intended making you my heiress. You are the next of kin. If you like to stay with me, and act as a dutiful granddaughter should, I will overlook the past, and let my will stand as it is.
"If you are determined to follow your mother's profession, I will allow you £150 a year for the remainder of my lifetime, and you are at liberty to leave this house to-morrow. Only remember, whatever happens, you never enter it again. Henceforth, you will be a stranger to me. And after my death, you will have to depend entirely on your own exertions. For you will never receive a penny more from me. Colonel Douglas knows of a lady in London who is ready to receive you as a boarder. He will give you her address, if you wish to have it. I give you your choice; I am not accustomed to have friction in my house, and the sooner this matter is settled the better it will be for both of us."
There was silence. Jean's heart thumped loudly. Her liberty had come at last, and yet now that a crisis in her life had arrived, she shrank for a moment from the unknown future.
Colonel Douglas glanced at her. She looked such a child, as she stood facing her grandfather with her hands clasped behind her back, and her little head held so bravely up, that for a moment, he thought of dissuading her from the step he had made so easy for her to take.
Jean's lips quivered slightly.
"You don't want me to stay with you, grandfather?" she queried. "You will not miss me, if I go? If I thought you would care—I—I—"
She stopped.
Mr. Desmond's face was cold and impenetrable.
"My likes or dislikes are of no moment to you. They never have been. The choice rests with you."
Jean's eyes had been filling with tears. She passed her hand lightly across them, then spoke out clearly and decidedly without a trace of emotion in her voice.
"I will go, to-morrow if I can. Colonel Douglas will you tell me about this lady? Does she expect me?"
"I will have a talk with you later about it. Your grandfather and I are going to be busy over some manuscripts this morning."
The Colonel spoke gravely and quietly. Mr. Desmond opened the door and dismissed his granddaughter with cold courtesy. Jean fled into the kitchen garden, and paced the paths in an excited, troubled frame of mind.
"I have done it! I shall belong to no one in future, and I think he is delighted to get rid of me. Oh, I wish, I wish I had a mother living!"
Tears fell fast; then she dashed them away, and joined Rawlings, who was in a small forcing-house.
"Rawlings, I am going to be an artist! Grandfather is letting me go to London. I shall speak as I like, do as I like, and think as I like. Wish me joy! No more of this flat, dingy marshland? I shall work amongst beauty, and take my holidays in the most exquisite haunts of the world. I shall be an independent woman with money at my back. I must pinch myself hard to make sure I am not dreaming. And you will all go on here, year after year, and forget all about me. And then perhaps one day, you will hear of a wonderful picture gracing the walls of the Royal Academy and making everybody talk about it, and you will be told that Miss Jean Desmond is the celebrity who painted it, and then you will wonder how Miss Jean has been getting on, and if she remembers the talks she used to have in this old kitchen garden with you!"
Rawlings looked at his young mistress's bright flushed face, and shook his head with a knowing smile.
"Eh, Miss Jean, and perchance, you'll be sighin' for the good old times when you was young and careless, and had a comfortable home, and was sheltered and cared for, and yet didn't know it!"
"I'm like that crimson rambler," said Jean, pointing to the straggling creeper covering an old potting-shed, "Do you remember when you hammered and hammered, and pruned it and flattened it against the wall? It was always trying to burst away from you, and when you would be master, it at last gave up trying to have its own life, and dwindled and pined in reckless despair. You were angry with it then, and said you would leave it alone, and the poor thing lifted up its head, and found that life was worth living after all. It shook out its branches and flourished and rejoiced. It left the hateful wall with its nails and wires, and stretched out to the old shed, and now, it's a miracle of beauty and strength. Even you allow that some things flourish best with no restraint."
Rawlings eyed the rambler with disdain.
"Poor misguided thing!" he said. "I allow I did spend a mint o' time tryin' to make it into a decent shape and size, but I was expectin' great things from it. Yes, Miss Jean, it makes a great show of growth, and its blossoms are many and gaudy, but where is the scent and sweetness that belongs to the rose tribe?"
"Don't you go for to describe yourself as a crimson rambler, there be many of 'em in the world. They lives and flourishes in their own way, and are never checked and hindered. They makes a show, but never makes the atmosphere sweet around 'em. I wouldn't give tuppence for a rose without scent; 'tis an utter failure of its tribe. The rambler be a common hardy creeper to be sure, and 'tis not so out of place on a potting-shed, but we do look for better things from you, Miss Jean; and believe me, growin' as you like, anywheres and everywheres, you're certain to degenerate into a scentless plant!"
Jean never got the better of Rawlings in argument, but woman-like, she would not be crushed.
"Oh, well, there are other things besides sweetness in life, there's strength and sturdy goodness. I don't think I like very sweet people. There was a girl at school all gush and sentiment, and every one was always 'a dear' and 'a darling' to her. I longed to shake her sometimes! If I'm not a 'sweet' character, Rawlings, I can try to be a strong and a good one."
Then she added wistfully—
"Do tell me you're sorry to lose me, Rawlings! Will none of you care, I wonder! Grandfather is thankful to see the last of me; and remember, I am never to come back here, never! I have had my choice. I could have stayed on here always, if I had liked. I would have grown into a little old mummy of a woman; my meals would have been the excitement of the day; and I would have nodded in my chair for the rest of the time. Would you like a mistress like that, Rawlings? Thank goodness, that will not be my fate! Oh, say you're glad for me, and sorry for yourselves, that's what I want you to say."
"I'll say with truth, Miss Jean, that we shall miss you sorely, but I doubt if I can be glad for you."
Jean gave an impatient laugh, then danced away singing at the top of her voice—
"From life without freedom, oh who would not fly?
For one day of freedom, oh! Who would not die?"
Rawlings shook his head after her.
"From overmuch training to none at all, may the good Lord deliver her!"
After luncheon, Colonel Douglas asked Jean if she would come out for a walk with him. She gladly responded, and they started across the marsh together.
"I am so very grateful to you for making it so easy for me to go," Jean said earnestly. "I do not know how you have managed it, but grandfather is letting me go so much easier than I thought he would, and it is much nicer going with his consent than without."
"I wonder if you are quite aware of the consequences of this act," Colonel Douglas said, looking down upon her with kindly interest. "Do you realise that you are putting away a fortune from you? Your grandfather is a wealthy man, he tells me, though he lives in such simple style. You would inherit everything at his death. Will you live to regret the loss of this?"
"I am sure I shall not," Jean said decidedly.
"You see," she went on, with an old-fashioned air. "I have lived quite long enough to see that money doesn't make you happy; it only makes you comfortable. And to be comfortable means to be very dull, for you have no ups and downs to be exciting. It is all level monotony. I should get tired of it very soon. Of course, if I had a lot of money, and could do exactly as I liked, it would be very nice at first, but I know at school the rich girls were the most discontented. They had so few pleasures compared to the poor ones. A drive in a carriage was nothing to them; a bag of buns or a present of half a crown they turned up their noses at, and I believe it's just the same with men and women. I don't want dull comfort, I want exciting variety, a taste of going without, and a taste of having. I sha'n't be so very poor, you know, Colonel Douglas. £150 means boundless wealth to me."
"Now, tell me about this lady. Who is she, and what is her name, and where does she live? I know so few women. Will she be like a governess or a friend?"
"One question at a time; you quite overwhelm me! She is an old friend of my sister's and of mine. I hope she will become yours also. I have never known any one who does not like her. She lives in a small square leading out of Kensington High Street. Her name is Frances Lorraine."
"And is she old or young? You must excuse my questions, but it is a very important matter to me, as I am going to live with her. I have seen no women since I left school, except our two old servants, and I think I shall find them more difficult to get on with than men. I know I would always rather talk to Rawlings than to Mary or Elsie. Men aren't so fussy, and they're blunt and plain-spoken. The governesses as well as the girls at school were always making and having mysteries. They loved them. Now I hate anything I can't see and understand. Is Miss Lorraine a fussy, mysterious person?"
"I am not going to offer an opinion. You must see and judge for yourself. If I were young, I should like to be under her wing."
Jean looked up at him meditatively.
"I wish we could change places," she said with a sigh. "It must be so delightful to be a man, and to go where you like and do what you like, without any one questioning proprieties. Do you know that Mary and Elsie were both quite shocked that I went to see you in London? Now was it a very dreadful thing to do? Put yourself in my place. What would you have done?"
Colonel Douglas laughed aloud.
"Probably the same as you did, if I were give back my youth again, but at my present age and outlook, I don't think I should have left home at all."
"Ah, you don't know what it is to pant and long to do things that you are forbidden! Not wrong things; I don't think I want to do them; but painting is not a sin, and I cannot keep from it."
It was in this way they walked and talked, Jean doing most of the talking. As they neared the house again, Colonel Douglas said, "Will you take a bit or advice from one who has seen something of the world into which you are going?"
"Of course I will, gladly," was the eager response.
"Seek the best thing first, not last."
"That sounds vague. What is it?"
"The one thing that will bring no disillusion nor bitter disappointment. It must be the genuine thing, not a sham or counterfeit."
Jean raised a puzzled face to the speaker.
"What is it? Fame, I suppose? I am going to work for that."
The Colonel smiled.
"You have a lot to learn. Well, you will be in good hands. Frances Lorraine will be a safe counsellor."
He turned the conversation by asking her about her drawings, and once embarked on the present love of her life, Jean grew eloquent.
She came home in radiant spirits.
"Elsie," she said, as the maid came into her room with a message, "Colonel Douglas is the very nicest man I have ever seen. He is the only man I know that listens and doesn't talk!"
A NEW LIFE
"I am young, happy, and free.
I can devote myself: I have a life
To give."—Browning.
IT was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the end of April. A cab with luggage was threading its way along Knightsbridge. As it approached Kensington Gardens, and the fresh green of the trees formed a refreshing contrast to the rows of buildings just passed, an eager young face looked out.
It was Jean on her way to her new home, and she was in an excited frame of mind.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "I am glad London has no marshland! How I love trees! And how few I have seen in my life."
Then she laughed at her thought.
"To come to London to see trees! What would Londoners say?"
The cab moved on through the busy thoroughfares and then suddenly turned down a quiet side street. When it stopped, and Jean jumped out, she found herself in front of a small old-fashioned terrace facing a green square; balconies were outside the upper windows; it reminded her of seaside lodgings, and she gazed at her surroundings with eager interest.
The door was opened by a neat servantmaid, who took her through a dark hall, up a narrow staircase, and ushered her into a quaint drawing-room. But though the room was rich in foreign curiosities, old lacquered screens, and rare china, Jean's eyes were fixed on the centre of it all—an unpretentious, quiet little lady seated at her tea-table.
She rose, and came forward at once.
"I am very glad to see you. You will be glad of a cup of tea. Come and sit down."
Jean's face brightened. The words were not much, but the handclasp was firm and true, and the tone brightness itself.
Miss Lorraine carried with her everywhere the impression of sincerity and truth; her blue eyes sought her friends' faces with compelling persuasion and goodwill. They seemed to say, "I see through you and all your outside artificiality, and I like you."
The consequence was she was a general favourite. Her plain-spoken words were always accompanied with a humorous smile that made the truth palatable. A well-known hostess in society said of her once, "Frances Lorraine is a living wonder. She tells the truth to every one, and yet gives no offence. She is the only person in town that can do it."
When Jean was sipping her tea, her eyes found time to look round her. After the large stately rooms at her grandfather's this was a welcome change. It was essentially a living-room, the well-worn books lying about, the work-table, the business-like writing-desk, all testified to that fact; but the fragrant flowers and well-cared-for ferns, the choice pictures and numerous pretty knick-knacks, bespoke the owner's refinement and good taste. A rough-haired Irish terrier sat up with ears erect and eager eyes watching his mistress's every movement. Jean put down her hand and patted him.
"I'm so glad you have a dog," she said.
"You are fond of them? Doughty and I have lived together for many years. It is good to have a silent friend who receives confidences but never passes them on."
Jean pondered over this. Then she looked up and encountered Miss Lorraine's kind blue eyes.
Impulsively she put her cup down and exclaimed, "Oh, Miss Lorraine, I hope you will like me and help me. I am taking a step in the dark, and London is an unknown place to me. Colonel Douglas said you would advise me. Do begin at once. I am longing, bursting, to be at work!"
"We won't waste time, I assure you. London is the place for those who don't like waiting. Everything is rushed."
"You are laughing at me."
"No, I am not. In ten minutes, I can tell you all you want to know, and then you will like to go upstairs to your room, will you not? Now I conclude from what I have heard, that a School of Art is the best place for you at present. You have never received any lessons, have you?"
"Never."
"Pick out your best sketches, and to-morrow morning we will go and get the first interview over. If you are advanced enough to be put into the life model class, you will be told so at once. If you have to start from the bottom of the ladder, and be put with beginners, I suppose you will be equally willing."
"Yes," said Jean promptly. "I don't mind what I have to do. I shall love it all. Can I go to the Art School easily from here?"
"Quite easily. It is within a walk, if you are a good walker, and I would advise you for the good of your health to take as much exercise as possible. Doughty and I walk a great deal. Hansoms are expensive, omnibuses stuffy, and I would rather pay a shoemaker's bill than a doctor's any day!"
"Will attending a School of Art be expensive?" asked Jean. "How many years do you think it will be before I can start a studio of my own?"
Miss Lorraine shook her head and laughed.
"An old music master of mine used to be very fond of this saying: 'The top of the tree is not jumped at!' How long will your patience and perseverance last? Have you a good stock of those necessary and useful virtues?"
"I don't think I have a stock of anything," Jean replied, "except wishes, and I've crowds and crowds of them!"
"They are the handle to the saw. Now, shall we come upstairs? I don't think you will find this School of Art at all beyond your means."
Jean followed her hostess up to a cosy-looking room above the drawing-room. A good-sized table and easy chair were drawn up to one of the windows which overlooked the square.
"You will want to get away from me sometimes," said Miss Lorraine with a smile, "so I hope you will have space to read or write. I advise you to keep your painting entirely for your school."
Then resting her hand lightly on the girl's shoulder, she added with much feeling—
"My dear child, I mean to take the best care of you that I can without worrying you. Use me as you like. As a safety valve, if you are in need of one; as an 'Inquire Within' or directory or a modest encyclopedia. I am quite sure that we shall be happy together. Later on, you shall tell me as little or as much as you like about yourself. I am very interested in you."
Jean's eyes filled with sudden tears.
"I have never had any one take an interest in me," she said; "at least not since I left school. And do you know, it is only since I have grown-up, that I have begun to miss my mother."
Miss Lorraine stooped and kissed her and Jean laid her head on her pillow that night without a fear for the future, or a shadow of regret for the step she had taken.
The next few months were rosy ones to her. She plunged into her beloved art with an energy and dogged perseverance that astonished Miss Lorraine. She could talk of, and think of, nothing else. Art and artists were all the world to her. She read and studied when not employed with her brush, any books that she could get hold of, provided they bore the stamp and impress of Art. Other subjects did not interest her.
Miss Lorraine watched her with some amusement and a little concern.
"Don't live your life so fast," she would say to her. "You will get to the end of it too soon. Enlarge your borders."
And when Jean would wax indignant at the idea of her borders being confined and narrow, Miss Lorraine would shake her head wisely, but say no more.
Jean made many friends, and when not actually painting, visited a good many picture galleries and studios. When the hot months of summer came, she went into the country with a young couple to whom she was devoted, a Mr. and Mrs. Blake. They were both of them rising artists, and had taken a fancy to the impulsive, earnest-hearted girl. Miss Lorraine at first demurred, but when she had made inquiries amongst her numerous friends, and discovered that the Blakes were steady and quietly disposed, she gave her consent, and Jean came back to her in the autumn with roses in her cheeks and a light in her eyes which bore testimony to the good it had done her.
One afternoon, Colonel Douglas dropped in to tea. Jean was gazing dreamily out of the window, and did not notice his arrival.
She announced thoughtfully—
"I used to think that beautiful faces and figures have been the highest ideals in Art; but my eyes been opened this summer. I think nature itself without them is better."
"Hear! Hear!"
Jean turned hastily.
"Oh, Colonel Douglas, is it you? Do you agree?"
"Yes, I think I do. I see you have enjoyed your country jaunt."
"Oh, so much!"
Jean turned round from the window with an eager, glowing face—
"I have been down to Devonshire, Colonel Douglas. I have never seen such delicious haunts before. Every square inch of Devonshire ground seems rich in beauty. I suppose it is my home having been amongst the flat, monotonous marshes that makes the hills and dales in Devonshire such a delight. It has made me wonder why artists spend the greater part of the year in town."
"I think you will find that landscape painters are oftener out of town than in it. How is your painting getting on? Is it a success? Is life satisfying you?"
"Oh yes! Everything is perfect, except my own productions, but I am getting on, am I not?" She appealed to Miss Lorraine.
"Yes, your friends the Blakes told me you were considered to have real talent."
"And," said Jean, standing up and clasping her hands behind her, and addressing herself to the Colonel, "the next step is Paris!"
Colonel Douglas's amused look died away. His face fell. Then he glanced at Miss Lorraine, who was in the act of pouring him out a second cup of tea. She looked at him gravely in response.
"I have heard a good deal about Paris lately," she said.
The Colonel shook his head at Jean.
"Oh, you young people! Nothing satisfies you! You have not been in London a year yet, and now you want to leave it!"
"Not directly. I am going to work hard all this winter, but the Blakes are going to Paris next spring, and they want me to go with them. They are going to a studio there, and I can join them. I do hope you approve. I feel," here she laughed merrily, "that you are a kind of guardian to me."
"I do not approve of Paris," said the Colonel shortly.
"Oh, please do! I must go there. It is an education, and I can afford it. I have talked over ways and means with the Blakes. All artists drift off to Paris. I shall not take up my abode there. If Miss Lorraine is not tired of me, I shall return to her. But perhaps I shall have painted a picture by that time that will bring me money and fame."
She looked somewhat wistfully at the Colonel.
Though she saw him seldom she valued his good opinion, and she felt that her Paris scheme had been a distinct shock to him.
"I saw your grandfather yesterday," Colonel Douglas said.
"Did you?" Jean responded in an indifferent tone. She was disappointed that the Colonel purposely changed the subject.
"He was full of animation over a young cousin of his, the son of a man who died in Australia. He has invited him to take up his quarters with him, and told me he intended making him his heir."
"I am so glad," Jean said cheerfully. "I shall like to think that there will be some young life in that stagnant place. He is a man, so he will be able to come and go. And now I must say goodbye, Colonel Douglas, for I promised to go to see a friend of mine—an art student who is ill."
She left the room, and there was silence for a few minutes. Colonel Douglas put his empty cup down on the tea tray, then took up his favourite position on the hearthrug with his back to the fire. His keen eyes roved over the dainty old-fashioned room, and then at last rested on Miss Lorraine's face with an amused tenderness in their gaze. "Your duckling is about to take to the water," he said.
Miss Lorraine looked up at him with a smile. "Yes," she said. "I want your advice. What am I to do? I have not full control over her. She is so wilfully determined about this, that I have thought it wiser not to object. She is a dear warm-hearted child, but at present her whole heart and soul is in her art. And, of course, she is influenced by those with whom she is so much."
"Will they make a real artist of her?"
"Ah! That is the question. I have had a long talk with one of the masters who is interested in her. He says she has talent, perhaps genius; yet he does not think she will do anything great. But who would have the heart to say that to her? She is so buoyant and hopeful about the future, so perfectly happy with her taste of Bohemian life!"
"She must buy her experience," Colonel Douglas said. "You will have to let her go to Paris."
Then he gave a little sigh. "I want your advice, Frances. It always rests me to come here and have a chat with you. I told you about the widow of my old friend Thompson?"
"Yes," said Miss Lorraine brightly. "How is she getting on? You have helped her a good deal. Are her boys doing well?"
"Yes. Alf is getting on in old Grand's office; and the younger, Bob, is articled to a lawyer. It is their mother whom I am anxious about. She is not strong, and has not the means to buy the nourishing food she needs. I have been in the habit of taking her down little trifles now and then, and sometimes sending a small hamper to her, but—"
He hesitated and a dull flush mounted to his cheek. "Certain uncharitable people have been annoying her by foolish remarks, and she has begged me to visit her less frequently and send her nothing more. I wondered if I could still befriend her through you."
Miss Lorraine looked at him with a funny little smile.
"Poor Benefactor!" she said. "I know how difficult your path must be sometimes! Of course, I shall be only too glad to be your almoner. I know Mrs. Thompson a little, and my visits will be beyond any suspicions or surmises."
"Thank you," the Colonel said heartily, and then for the next half-hour, he sat talking over his various protégés and plans for befriending the needy and destitute.
Miss Lorraine listened and advised, and when he went at last, sat back in her chair with a long-drawn sigh and smile.
"Doughty," she said, caressing her dog, "Platonic friendship is possible, when it is deep and real."
Then she sat dreamily gazing into the fire, and her thoughts went back to another autumn day about ten years before, when she and Colonel Douglas had been standing together in the firelight alone. He had pleaded very earnestly, and all the sunshine in her life seemed to slip away, when she told him it could not be. She gave him no reasons; a delicate mother who had taken an unreasonable dislike to the Colonel had come between them. Her duty as a devoted daughter came first, and Colonel Douglas, with the extreme diffidence of his nature, took his dismissal as final. He went abroad to get over it, and returned a quiet grave man, who after a few interviews with her, slipped into the role of an old family friend. She had kept her friend, but lost her lover.
DISILLUSION
"To know the world, not love her is thy point:
She gives but little, nor that little long."
WINTER passed. Jean studied hard at her beloved art, spending her leisure time in seeing her various friends and being initiated into Bohemian society. Miss Lorraine did not often interfere with her. Jean was intolerant of any criticism on her friends, but once Miss Lorraine seriously remonstrated.
"Jean," she said, "who was that man you were walking with, when I met you out to-day?"
"He is a great friend of Mr. Blake's-Herbert L'Estrange. He has just had a picture accepted for the Academy. He has been helping me lately. I never knew any one get such rich effects in colour as he does. You would like him, if you knew him, Miss Lorraine."
"Is he French or English?"
"A little of both. His father was French, and he was brought up in France. He is such a well-read man, not like many of them, who never read at all, and he is very fond of poetry. It is strange how he and I like the same authors."
Jean's tone was eager and her face flushed. Miss Lorraine looked keenly at her.
"He does not look prepossessing, Jean. Did the Blakes introduce him to you?"
"I am sure I do not remember. He is coming with us to Paris. I meet him everywhere. I think he is so intellectual looking. He may not be handsome, but if you knew him as I do, you would not mind his looks."
"Jean, dear," Miss Lorraine said kindly, "take a word of caution from me in good part. You have no mother, and an artist's life is full of dangers. Be careful, very careful, whom you make your friends. You will find, as your life goes on, that there are many people whose influence and friendship will hurt instead of help you."
Jean's eyes flashed.
"Mr. L'Estrange does not deserve this. You cannot understand my friends, Miss Lorraine; I do not expect you to. Mr. L'Estrange is a gentleman, and he never forgets it. He and I have mutual likes and dislikes, we have both suffered from our relations on account of art. He is a genius, and I am honoured by his friendship."
"He may be a genius and all that you say, but I do not think he is a good man. It is not often that I speak so strongly, but I know I am a good reader of faces, and his—. I can only say it does not read well."
"You are prejudiced and uncharitable."
Jean dashed out of the room, and Miss Lorraine sighed. When the spring came, the girl went to Paris. She wrote at first pretty frequently; then her letters flagged, finally ceased altogether, and Miss Lorraine took counsel with the Colonel about her.
"It sometimes strikes me, how strangely we are brought into contact with one another," she said, with a little laugh. "Here are you and I worrying ourselves over a girl who has no particular claim upon us, and who resents our interference in her affairs. Shall we put her out of our lives, and let her, as you say, buy her experience?"
The Colonel looked into the fire with knitted brow.
"I am responsible for her leaving her home," he said. "I should never forgive myself, if she came to grief in any way. Write to her continually, Frances, whether she replies or not. Let her see you mean to keep a hold over her. Write to Mrs. Blake."
"I have, but she does not answer. However, I know Jean is in good health, for my friend Miss Greer saw her working at the Louvre the other day."
"Did she speak to her?"
"Just for a few minutes. Jean was not communicative."
"We cannot put her out of our lives," the Colonel went on seriously. "She has been brought into them with a purpose."
Miss Lorraine smiled.
"I was not in earnest, Philip. I know she is one of your big family, and for that reason alone, I shall always take an interest in her. She has much to learn, but there is, if I am not mistaken, a capability and individuality which will never rest until much is learnt."
"May the Great Teacher take her in hand," said the Colonel musingly.
Miss Lorraine took her friend's advice. She wrote to Jean regularly and continuously through all the summer months. Once she had a short, hurried letter.
And then in October, Jean came back to her. She was sitting at her tea on a wet and stormy afternoon. Doughty was by her side. She had been out to see a sick woman in her district, and had come home tired and a little depressed. Leaning back in her chair, she was meditating upon the suffering in some lives and the impossibility to relieve it, when the door burst open, and Jean almost threw herself into her arms.
"Will you have me, Miss Lorraine? I am sick of everything, and I've come back to you!"
Miss Lorraine kissed her affectionately.
"I knew I had not lost you," she said, and then she made her sit down, and would hear nothing, till she had had some tea and had lost some of the tired lines in her young face.
She was looking very pretty, and had a certain indescribable French daintiness about her that had evidently been acquired in Paris.
"I am dying to tell you everything!" she said. "Don't have lights, let me tell you in the dusk."
So, when the maid had removed the tea things, Jean sat down on the rug and rested her head against Hiss Lorraine's knee. But she did not speak for some minutes, and when she did all eagerness had vanished from her tone.
"I have been doing a lot of thinking lately," she began slowly. "Why is it, I wonder, that artists in their love and appreciation of all that is beautiful seem to fail in—well—in moral beauty? Their lives don't correspond with their creed. Why should art, which ought to be such an ennobling pursuit, be attended on all sides by such enervating, demoralising effects?"
Miss Lorraine was silent. Then after a pause, she said—
"It is too often mere eye worship, perhaps."
"I am sick of it all!"
Jean's tone was vehement and bitter.
She went on—
"I haven't a friend left! Every one has failed and disappointed me."
"What about the Blakes?"
Jean looked uncomfortable.
"I have parted with them as friends. I am sorry for him, very, but I never wish to see her again. He is miserable, and she makes him so. I don't wish to tell tales of other people, Miss Lorraine, but her head has been turned by a—a horrid man. I don't think she means any harm, but she is for ever with him, and he is painting a picture with her. Do you remember how I told you the Blakes painted their pictures together?—she putting the landscape in, and her husband the figures? This man has taken her husband's place; he puts in his figures, and she paints the background. I hate his figures, and I hate his models. Mrs. Blake laughed, and told me I was prudish, but other people, as well as I, dislike Monsieur Tillôt's work. Oh, I can't tell you all; but I have felt lately that I will never touch a paint-brush again. The accessories of art in Paris have sickened me!"
Miss Lorraine listened. She knew she had not heard all, nor arrived at the true cause of Jean's distaste for her Bohemian life.
Then she asked very quietly—
"And has Mr. L'Estrange disappointed you?"
Jean gave a little shiver, and buried her hot cheeks in Miss Lorraine's gown.
"If I don't tell you to-night, I never shall," she said, with a note of desperation in her tone.
Then she blurted out bluntly—
"He—he never rested, till he made me like him, and two days ago—is it? It seems a year—I found out, he was a married man."
"My poor little Jean!"
Miss Lorraine put her hand softly on her head. And then the tired, excited girl burst into a passion of tears.
"I never wish to see any of them again!" she sobbed. "Every one seems a lie and a fraud, and Paris is a hateful city. It seems to make every one vile? Fancy his wife coming to me! A little half-starved woman supporting herself by needlework, and he—oh, I can't tell you! I will never, never believe in any one again!"
Much more she said in the dusky twilight, and though Miss Lorraine's heart ached for the girl's distress, she could not but be thankful that she had not sunk under the demoralising influence of her Parisian life.
When dinner-time came, Jean recovered herself, but her white cheeks and dark circles round her eyes told of her fatigue.
She talked of other matters for the rest of the evening, but when bed-time came, she put her arms round Miss Lorraine's neck.
"If I had not had you to come to, what should I have done? I knew you would receive me, though I have behaved so badly. I have been infatuated all the summer, and now I seem like Marius among the ruins! I said to myself, 'I will go back to her; it would be bliss to be one of her servants, for I should feel so safe!'"
And when Miss Lorraine had given her a good-night kiss and retired to her own room that evening, she thanked God that she had been able to preserve the link unbroken between this impetuous young girl and herself.
Jean was very quiet for the next few days. She unpacked her things, and settled down into Miss Lorraine's even, regular life. But when visitors arrived in the afternoon, she slipped away to her own room.
"I don't want to see anybody," she said; "not even Colonel Douglas."
Miss Lorraine respected her wish. She knew that she needed time and quiet to recover the mental shock that she had received.
And Jean's strong vigorous nature would not be suppressed for long. Of that she felt positively certain.
One afternoon, Miss Lorraine came in, and found Jean lying back in an easy chair with "Aurora Leigh" in her hand.
She dropped the book on the floor, and clasped her hands behind her head.
Looking up at her friend she said, with some of the old mischievous light in her eyes—
"Poets are shams, are they not? They dress everything up in such beautiful language that you begin to think that life is a beautiful thing after all, instead of being such a hollow delusion as it is!"
"You remind me of the story of the chaffinch, who built her nest upon a rotten branch of an old elm. When a storm came, it fell, and her nest was a ruin. 'Ah,' she said to a group of sympathising birds who gathered around her, 'let this be a lesson to you, not to trust to trees. They look so strong but they're all sham, rotten through and through. They were never meant to bear the weight of a nest!'"
Jean smiled, and then shook her head.
"I am not going to build again, Miss Lorraine. My life is ruined. My art was my god, and like Dagon it has fallen, and has broken into a thousand pieces!"
"May all such gods fall!" said Miss Lorraine gravely.
Jean looked at her in astonishment.
"That sounds like a curse. Do you hate art, Miss Lorraine?"
"No, but it ought not to be raised up as a god."
Jean was silent. Then she said suddenly—
"What is to become of me? What am I to do with my life?"
This egotistical question was not answered, for, visitors were announced, and they proved to be Colonel Douglas and his sister, Mrs. Talbot. Jean for an instant looked as if she meditated flight, then she thought better of it. She had seen the Colonel several times, and though she had not told him as much as she told Miss Lorraine, he knew pretty well what had caused her sudden return. He had had several long discussions with Miss Lorraine, and had now come with a formulated plan in his head for Jean's welfare.
The conversation was general for a time, then Mrs. Talbot said suddenly—
"Frances, I am come to ask a favour. I want Jean to take pity on me. I have promised a great friend of mine to send some one down to paint a picture of her little girl, and I can find no one to do it. Everybody seems too busy. It must be a lady, as she wants her to stay in the house, and it is her fastidiousness on this point that makes my task so difficult. Would Jean undertake it? My brother thought it possible she might."
Miss Lorraine looked across at Jean with a little smile.
"Well, Jean, speak for yourself."
"I have given up painting," Jean said shortly.
"But I heard from some one who knows you that you are so good at children's faces," said Mrs. Talbot persuasively. "And this child is a true artist's subject. She is a lovely little thing, I believe, but chained to her couch. It is her mother's greatest grief, for she is a hopeless cripple."
"I am not good enough at portrait painting to go," said Jean, but she seemed to be wavering.
"Mrs. Gordon is not particular. As long as you make a pretty picture of her child, she will be satisfied."
"Where do they live?"
"In Scotland. I am sure you will be happy there. It is a delightful old house to stay in."
"Think it over, Jean," said Colonel Douglas. "I am going to Scotland myself next week to shoot, and if you liked the idea, we could travel down together."
"We were just talking over winter plans when you came in," Miss Lorraine remarked. "I was hoping to have Jean with me, but I will spare her willingly, if she likes to go. It seems a chance for her."
"A chance for what?" asked Jean quickly, and a little rebelliously.
"For doing a kindness to others," the Colonel said gravely.
Jean looked at him in silence, and then a twinkle came into her eyes.
"You always think everybody is like yourself, Colonel Douglas. I don't live for others as you do, but entirely for myself."
"You mustn't make such a confession," said Mrs. Talbot, laughing. "We keep such facts to ourselves. There are very few people in the world who are able to be entirely selfish. Our circumstances and our families generally step in and spoil such a rôle."
"What a blessing they do!" Miss Lorraine remarked.
Jean said no more.
Two days afterwards, she asked Miss Lorraine to come out and shop with her.
"If I go to this place, I shall want some warm things," she said. "I have always heard that Scotland is like the Arctic Regions in winter."
Miss Lorraine responded at once. As they were walking towards the shops Jean said—
"Do you think me weak in changing my mind so soon? I meant to give it all up, but in spite of all that I have been through, I feel a longing to be at work again."
"My dear child, I am so glad to hear you say so. Your Paris experience was unfortunate, but it isn't your art that is to blame."
"No," said Jean. "You take Ruskin's view that it can be a great moral teacher. But why is it not? There must be something wrong somewhere."
"Every gift that is given to us can either be used for good or evil, I believe," said Miss Lorraine gently.
"I had a friend once who was a Dutch painter, and what do you think he used to say? 'Either God or the devil holds the painter's brush.' It seems strong language, but I believe he had got hold of a great truth. It applies to every talent that is given to us. Take music, or literature. It is just the same. We think we are so strong and independent, but in reality our lives and actions are being shaped by one or other of the two great powers. If the Prince of this World holds our brush, our pen, our voice, then our talent will further his cause."
Miss Lorraine was a reserved woman, and did not often touch on serious subjects. Jean listened, and was impressed.
"But, Miss Lorraine," she said hesitatingly, "that seems a crude statement. I daren't say that God influences my actions, but I would be horrified to think that the devil did."
"From the power of Satan unto God."
Miss Lorraine seemed to murmur the words rather than say them.
It was a strange prelude to shopping, but Jean had much to feed her thoughts that morning, in addition to her purchases.
She was very busy for the next few days, and very sorry when the time came to part with her friend.
"Promise me," she said impulsively, "that if I make a mess of this second step of mine, that you will receive me back with just as warm a welcome as you have done now. I am making a fresh start, but I don't feel so sure of myself as I did before, nor yet so young!"
"Lesson number one," said Miss Lorraine to herself, as she gave the promise required.
SUNNIE
"A . . . face, with its sweet spirit smiles,
Babe wonderings, and little tender ways."
* *
* *
*
"She brought Heaven to us just within the space
Of the dear depths of her large dream-like eyes."—Gerald Massey.
"Would I might give thee back, my little one,
But half the good that I have got from thee!"—H. Coleridge.
IT was a cold grey afternoon, when Jean arrived at her destination. She had travelled with Colonel Douglas as far as Edinburgh, then they parted company and she proceeded alone. In spite of her wraps and a well-heated carriage, Jean got colder and colder, and when at last she stepped out of the train, and encountered a bitter icy north wind which seemed to pierce her very bones, her spirits failed her entirely. It was a tiny station; bleak bare hills surrounded it, and no one seemed to be expecting her. She sorted out her luggage, and spoke to the stationmaster, who looked her up and down very thoughtfully.
"Ye'll be goin' up to Strathglen ye say? There be no carriage. I havna heard tell o' yer appearance."
This seemed to Jean to be the height of impertinence. She walked away from him and called a porter.
"Can you get me any conveyance to take me to Mrs. Gordon's?" she asked, and her voice faltered in spite of herself.
The man rubbed his chin meditatively, but made no reply.
"How far is it?" asked Jean impatiently. "Can I walk there?"
"I'll no be sayin' ye couldna, but 'tis ower lang for a delicate body."
"How many miles?"
"Weel, 'tis a mile an' a wee bit to St. Andrew's Cross, an' twa mile as the crow flies to Dyke Farm; but ye must allow for the steep descent to the Old Man's Head, an' 'twill be near on a mile after ye cross the turn pike—"
Jean turned away from him sharply, for she heard the sound of wheels.
A high dog-cart swung up in style, and out of it, sprang a tall broad-shouldered man in thick ulster and cap. Giving the reins to a groom, he came swiftly out upon the platform and lost no time in greeting Jean.
"Is it Miss Desmond? I am very sorry to be late in welcoming you. Mrs. Gordon was in such trouble to-day over her coachman, who is very ill, that she was prevented from sending her brougham. As I had to come to the station to fetch a parcel, I told her, I would meet you, but I have been delayed on the road. I am afraid you have had a long cold journey."
Jean was glad to meet with one man who could move and speak briskly. In a few minutes, her modest luggage was piled in the back of the cart, and she herself, with a fur rug tucked well round her, was perched up in front with the driver.
As they drove away, she said with energy—
"I was just feeling that I could give them all a good shaking."
Her companion looked down upon her with much amusement.
"You mustn't try to hurry a Scot," he said. "It can't be done."
Jean did not answer. She wondered who he was, and then the biting wind driving full in her face, turned her thoughts upon herself. She looked around her. A few grey stone cottages scattered here and there, wide stretches of bleak moorland, and a straight highroad. Was this the romantic and picturesque country she had read about in her favourite Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels? She gave an involuntary shudder.
"Are you very cold?" her companion asked her, cheerfully. "It is a long drive, and not a very pretty one."
"I was wishing," said Jean suddenly, "that I could find myself back in Kensington again, having a cup of tea before a roaring fire."
"I am sorry Scotland is so ungracious to you; but be thankful you have not arrived in a snow blizzard."
"Is it all as ugly and bleak as this?" asked Jean, bluntly.
"What do you consider beautiful? Houses and streets? You will get few of them in this part of the world."
Jean winced under his tone.
"I thought Scotland was rich in mountains and wooded valleys. We have hardly passed a tree. It reminds me of the Essex marshes where I spent most of my childhood."
"Oh, if it is trees you are wanting, we shall be able to give you those. Do you see against the sky line that belt of firs? That is the beginning of the Strathglen property."
"Does it all belong to Mrs. Gordon?" Jean asked, with interest.
"Yes, and to her poor mite of a daughter at her death. It is a fine heritage for her. The pity of it is, that she can only enjoy so little of it. Her world is bounded by her view from her window at present."
"Does the child never go out?"
"In the summer she can be wheeled out. She is a hopeless little invalid, and will never be strong."
"How sad!"
For a moment, Jean forgot herself in the thought of such a fate.
Presently she asked quietly—
"Do you mind telling me who you are? Do you live at Strathglen?"
The stranger laughed.
"I ought to have introduced myself. I am nobody particular. I am Mrs. Gordon's first cousin, and am her general adviser, confidant, and physician. I live about three miles off, and consider Sunnie my favourite patient. I hope you will find her an interesting subject. Her mother is very keen about her picture."
"I will do my best," said Jean. Then she relapsed into silence. They drove on, reached the fir-wood, and now their road lay right through the midst of it. Jean roused herself out of her torpor, when she saw the sun setting like a ball of fire behind the pines. It marked with its red-gold rays, the outline of the slender sterns, and seemed to be running like liquid gold along the carpet of brown cones underfoot.
"Oh how lovely!" she exclaimed. "Please drive slowly."
But her companion never slackened the speed of his horse.
"You are too cold to wait about. We have only a couple of miles to do now."
They passed a frozen lake, then climbed a steep hill, and turned in at some lodge gates, up a long avenue of chestnuts, and finally drew up before a sombre old grey stone building. It was too dark to distinguish much. When Jean found her feet, she could hardly stand, and the sudden blaze and warmth of a richly lighted square hall, dazzled and confused her. She was ushered into the drawing-room, where two ladies sat over their tea by the fire. The elder of these came forward.
"Miss Desmond, I expect? I am so sorry you have had such a cold drive. Come to the fire."
She was a tall, commanding-looking woman, handsome still, though she was no longer young, but her expression was cold, almost stern, and her face, in repose, seemed like a block of stone.
Her companion was her niece, by name Meta Worth. She was a girl of Jean's own age, and was a pretty, graceful little thing.
"Isn't Leslie coming in?" she asked.
"No," Mrs. Gordon replied. "He has sent a message in to say that he must get back. I wish I could have sent the brougham for you, Miss Desmond, but the horses are fresh, and I do not like the groom to drive them. My coachman is laid up with a shocking cold."
"It did not matter at all, thank you," said Jean. "Though it was very cold, we had one lovely picture to compensate for it—the sun setting behind some pine-woods."
"Did it warm you up?" asked Meta.
Jean looked straight at her, then laughed.
"Yes, mentally it did. It gave me something to think about, besides myself and my feelings."
"Sit down by the fire, and have a cup of tea," Meta said, drawing a low chair close to her own.
Jean obeyed. The cup of tea Mrs. Gordon handed her was cold and flavourless. But she was one of those people who fail to produce a good cup of tea, however nice their materials may be for doing it.
Jean sat in the firelight, feeling strange and rather forlorn. She was glad, after a little desultory conversation, to be asked by Mrs. Gordon to come upstairs and see her small daughter.
She was too cold and tired to notice the handsome old staircase they ascended, but as they trod a long corridor, the sound of a piano met her ear. Mrs. Gordon pushed aside a heavy curtain, and then as Jean followed her, a picture imprinted itself at once upon her artist's soul.
An old panelled room in the twilight; a blazing log fire throwing its ruddy light upon a velvet couch drawn up beside it; and nestling amongst the cushions, partially covered by a great fur rug, the loveliest little child that Jean had ever seen. Her hair was of that uncommon colour, a pure rich gold without a tint of red in it; her eyes a dark clear grey with long black curling lashes. Her small, delicately cut oval face and features seemed very white in the firelight, but as she caught sight of her mother and Jean, a faint pink flush rose in her cheeks, making her look perfectly lovely. For an instant, her sensitive little mouth quivered, then she straightened herself, and lying back in an easier position, she put up her arms behind her head, and resting it on her clasped hands, she turned her earnest eyes with a steady penetrating gaze upon Jean.
"Go on, cousin Leslie," she said imperatively in her clear, ringing tones. "Now she is come. Describe her on the piano."
Jean impulsively went down on her knees by the couch.
"Will you give me a kiss? We shall be friends, I know."
The child looked at her, then held up her small finger, with a pretty mixture of shyness and audacity.
"Hush! Listen to cousin Leslie's story. We have had the cold wind, and the shivering young lady with the big rug round her, and the trot, trot, trot of the horse's hoofs, and the wood fairies pattering among the brown dead leaves, and then the wind stopping, and the big red sun blazing out, and sinking, sinking in a quiet sad way to sleep; then the fir-trees moan, and the frogs croak, and trot, trot, trot goes the horse, and the iron gates clang, and the chestnuts shake themselves awake to see who comes, and knock, knock at the door, then we were just having the buzz, buzz of talk in the drawing-room over tea cups when you came in. Now, Cousin Leslie, finish it; tell me what she is like, and I'll kiss her!"
But "Cousin Leslie" got up from the piano.
"You see what she is like, Sunnie. I must be off."
"I see what she looks like, but I want you to tell me what she really is!"
"Take me on trust," said Jean, with hot cheeks, yet with a twinkle of humour in her eye. "I am not a wolf in sheep's clothing."
The little girl drew down her hands and held them out.
"Kiss me, and love me," she said.
And Jean found no trouble in doing both.
"I thought you had gone home, Leslie," said Mrs. Gordon, turning to her cousin.
"That was my intention, but a message came from Her Highness, that I was to come to her. What could I do, but obey?"
"Come and have a cup of tea."
"No, thank you; I must be going. Good-night, Sunnie!"
He bent over the couch, and Jean instantly retreated into the background.
She saw that her driver was not so young as she had at first imagined. His hair was slightly streaked with grey, he had thick black eyebrows, which gave a sternness to his somewhat rugged features, and a dark moustache. Though not exactly a handsome man, he was a striking one, and there was power and force in his face, which now, as he bent over the invalid child, was softened and full of gentle humour.
"Sunnie," as she was called, put up her face for a kiss, which was instantly given, then she said, in her sweet, peremptory tone—
"Now bend your head for your blessing."
Down went the dark head immediately, and two little hands were clasped across it.
"God bless you to-night, and give you sleep, and keep you good! Amen!"
Jean furtively glanced at Mrs. Gordon to see how she was taking this.
She was standing on the other side of the wide fireplace, one hand grasping the high over-mantel, and her eyes were fixed intently on her child. Not a glimmer of a smile, not a softened line in her immovable face. Yet when Dr. Fergusson turned and held out his hand to her, her eyes smiled, if her lips did not.
"Good-night. Come to lunch on Sunday, if you can."
"If I can. May I be properly introduced to this young lady?"
"Of course. Do you not know each other's names? Miss Desmond, this is my cousin, Dr. Leslie Fergusson."
Jean smiled up at him.
"Thank you for the care you took of me."
"I hope you will see Scotland in a pleasanter humour to-morrow. Good-night."
He was gone, and again, Jean turned to the couch.
Sunnie smiled up at her.
"I shall take you as my friend," she remarked, with an old-fashioned air. "Cousin Leslie likes you."
"I am going to take Miss Desmond to her room, Sunnie. You will not see her again to-night. Where is nurse?"
"Coming, mem."
Through the folding doors at the farther end of the room came a pleasant-faced elderly woman in white cap and apron.
"Good-night, Miss Desmond," Sunnie said, in her clear, sweet, little voice. "Nurse and I are going to play a game of draughts, and then I'm going to bed, because I want to-morrow to come quick. You're going to paint my picture, and I'm longing to see how you do it!"
As Jean left the room she turned enthusiastically to the mother.
"I wonder you have not had her painted before. What a lovely study she will make, and what a fascinating child!"
"I am glad you are pleased with her."
Even Jean's warm-hearted praise did not seem to stir Mrs. Gordon from her strange calm. She took her to a very comfortable bedroom with a cheerful fire, and left her there.
"She doesn't deserve to have such a child," Jean said to herself indignantly. "But what a study she will be! I long to be at work. Now for a stiff, dull evening with those two ladies in the drawing-room. Oh dear! I should like to go to bed and have my dinner sent up to me."
But Jean found Meta Worth anything but dull. She talked hard through dinner, not seeming to care whether Mrs. Gordon was responsive or not, and still had plenty to say when they settled down in the drawing-room. Mrs. Gordon took out some knitting, and if she did not make many comments, she listened to her young niece's flow of talk.
"You're one of those people who have a purpose in life," Meta said to Jean. "It must be rather nice. Now I haven't a single hobby; I wish I had. I think I like everything too much. And I do nothing well. I'm a smatterer, am I not, Aunt Helen? I paint a little, and play a little, and work a little, and carve a little. I try my hand at everything, and succeed in nothing. How did you like Leslie's music? I heard the piano. Now, he is a born musician. He amuses Sunnie by the hour. I think he is a good musician spoilt."
"It is a recreation to him," said Mrs. Gordon.
"Yes, but think what he might do, if he would give up this trade of doctoring. Leslie's mother, Miss Desmond, is of the old school. She thinks that neither doctors nor lawyers can be gentlemen. And bitter was the blow when her favourite son persisted in taking up such a 'degrading profession,' as she terms it."
"Would she have preferred him to be a musician?" asked Jean, with a smile.
"Good gracious, no! The Army, Navy, or Church are the only three professions for gentlemen, she always says. I haven't lived very long, but I know one or two men in those favoured positions that are anything but ornaments to them. You will have to go and see Mrs. Fergusson. She is an amusing old creation, and is cleverer than most people."
By and by, Mrs. Gordon went upstairs to visit her little girl for the last time that night.
Meta looked across at Jean.
"Well," she said, "are you frightened of my aunt?"
"No. Why should I be? I feel sorry for her. Is she always so cold and grave?"
"Always since—since the accident."
Jean looked questioningly at her.
"Don't you know? It was too horrible. Her husband was such a bright genial man, that the house was a popular one, and always filled with visitors. The two children were idolised by their parents. Harry was five, like his mother in looks, but a daring little scamp. He was a little spoilt, being the only son and heir, and Sunnie was just a year younger. It was just about this time of year—I have heard it all from Leslie—and one afternoon Uncle George said he wanted Aunt Helen to come out for a drive."
"She had a headache, and was very comfortable over the fire with a book, so she declined. Then, the children clamoured to go with him, and at first Aunt Helen refused to let them. But Uncle George won her over. Harry stamped into the room before he went, and his noise got upon her nerves. She looked up hastily. 'Oh, do run along,' she said. 'I shall be thankful to get rid of you.'"
"Those were her last words to him. The horse bolted, and dashed over a low stone wall. Uncle George and Harry were killed on the spot. Sunnie was brought back, crippled for life. That is Aunt Helen's story."
"Oh, poor woman!" gasped Jean. "How awful! No wonder she is so grave."
"It has turned her to stone. Sunnie is her only comfort. But think of the pity of it! Strathglen is the biggest estate in the county, and Sunnie is the heir or heiress to it. My aunt has given up all hospitality, and lives alone. Leslie and I are the only ones who have an entrance here."
Mrs. Gordon stopped all further conversation on this subject by coming into the room, but Jean's heart was filled with a great aching pity for her. When she wished her good-night, she said a little wistfully—
"I hope I shall not disappoint you by my painting, Mrs. Gordon. I will do my very best."
"Norah Talbot assured me of your capability," said Mrs. Gordon quietly. "You are young and bright, so Sunnie will be happy with you. She is a difficult child with her strong likes and dislikes, but she seems to have taken a liking to you."
Jean's sleep was disturbed that night by dreams of the bereft wife and mother. She had not as yet seen much of life's troubles, and this seemed the most pitiful story that she had ever heard.
AN "OUTSIDER"
"We are wrong always when we think too much
Of what we think or are."—E. B. Browning.
WHEN Jean rose the next morning, she looked out into a bright and sunny world. It was cold and frosty, but the sky was a brilliant blue, and the sun streamed into her window. She felt light of heart, and was so eager to begin her picture, that she unpacked and arranged her paints and easel before breakfast.
At ten o'clock she was in the old nursery, and Sunnie welcomed her with a radiant face.
"I have been thinking about you in the night," she remarked. "I always think of my friends when I can't sleep."
"But don't you sleep all night? I do," said Jean as she bent to kiss the child.
Sunnie shook her head.
"Not when I'm incited by new people. I dream of them. I dreamt that you and Cousin Leslie were holding hands and running away from me, and I was running after you and begging you to come back. I cried, and then I woke up. You know it's very nice, but I do run in my dreams—always. And I did run long, long ago, when I was awake. Mother remembers it quite well, and I do too."
Mrs. Gordon interrupted the child here.
"Now, Sunnie, Miss Desmond is going to set to work. Can you lie still, do you think?"
"Nobody can lie stiller than I can," responded Sunnie proudly. "But mustn't I speak? How long will she be?"
"I won't be long enough to tire you, and you can talk as much as you like," said Jean, smiling at her. Then turning to Mrs. Gordon she said, "May I paint her as I like, or have you any special wishes to be carried out?"
"I will leave her entirely in your hands."
"Then I should like to paint her as I saw her yesterday in the twilight."
"But I was listening to music," said Sunnie quickly.
"Yes," said Jean, "and your little brain was full of happy thoughts and fancies."
"How did you know what I was thinking about?"
"I saw it in your face and eyes."
Mrs. Gordon stayed till Jean had arranged the child according to her satisfaction, and changed her frock back to the brown velvet one she wore the night before. Then she left them together. Even the old nurse was absent, for Jean wished for no counter attractions. She worked rapidly, and found it easy work to keep Sunnie happy and interested.
"Do you tell stories?" the child asked. "Cousin Leslie does. We make them up together, and he plays stories on the piano. That's why I like winter, because he comes and sits in the dark, when the fire is blazing, and plays such lovely things. He makes the birds twitter, and the fairies' bells tinkle, and the water sparkling and splashing. There isn't anything that I ever hear that he can't make on the piano."
"I expect you are very fond of music."
"Not of Cousin Meta's. She doesn't know how to make the piano speak. She rattles and bangs, and makes a jolly noise, but Cousin Leslie can make it whisper. We are quite quiet sometimes, and we pretend we're inside a big church just before the organ begins, and then the people are praying, and the piano hushes and hushes, and then a very soft whisper sounds, and it goes on, and then goes up in the air—up—up—up—and dies away—for it has gone up straight to God, and it is a poor sinner's prayer."
Jean longed to catch the sweet rapt look on Sunnie's face, but she was busy with the outlines of her figure, and trusted that later on, when she needed it, that same expression would cross the child's face again.
"Go on," she said, "tell me more. I should like to hear this wonderful music."
"I don't know that Cousin Leslie would do it with you in the room. He always stops when mother comes in. We have all kinds of music and stories when we're together, funny ones and sad ones and good ones. We have fairies' music, and angels' music, and dance music, and thunder and lightning."
"And which music do you like best?" Jean asked, as Sunnie paused for breath.
"Oh," she said, gazing dreamily into the fire, "I like angels' music the best."
"Why?"
"Because it reminds me of my good time coming," said Sunnie, quaintly.
"And when is that?"
"When I shall be able to run about again, and play like other children with the little angels."
Jean smiled.
"We will hope that time will be long in coming."
Sunnie looked at her with a pucker in her brow.
"I'm talking of heaven," she said, a shade of disapproval in her tone. "You don't want heaven to be a long time in coming. Why, if I could take mother with me, I would like to go to-night. I was talking to Cousin Leslie yesterday about it. I want to go to heaven before I'm grown-up, because I want to play games—proper ones—like other boys and girls, and I can't do it here. Grown-up people don't play games. Cousin Leslie says mother doesn't want all her family in heaven, and I'm meant to stay and take care of her. I s'pose she would rather I didn't go just yet. But when I do get to heaven I shall be happier than anybody else there!"
Jean felt the pathos of this child's life. She listened to her chatter, and wondered she was so light of heart.
"Have you any pets? Or dolls?" she asked her presently.
"I don't care for dolls. I had a dear little puppy, but he didn't like to keep still on my sofa; even the kitten always runs away from me. I have my canary up there. He talks and sings to me. And when he has gone to sleep, and I am alone while nurse is at her tea, do you know who I talk to? You won't laugh if I tell you?"
"Indeed I won't!"
"I talk to my sofa. I often play that he is my horse. Did you ever read a fairy book called 'Grandmother's Chair'? The chair takes a little girl into fairyland, and my sofa does the same. I get nurse to tie two strings on to the legs at the bottom, and then I pretend they're my reins, and I take hold of them and shut my eyes, and we go to the loveliest places. If Cousin Leslie comes and tells me where I am, it is splendid!"
After a time, Sunnie left off talking about herself, and demanded to know all about Jean's life. Jean told her about her lonely life in her grandfather's house, and the luncheon bell rang before she had finished her reminiscences. When she took her easel and paints away, she said to herself, "I have painted a good many pictures in different atmospheres, but never one so near heaven's gate as this is!"
That afternoon, she went for a drive with Mrs. Gordon. Meta did not accompany them. At first Jean felt a little shy with her companion, but not for long. Mrs. Gordon began by asking questions about Miss Lorraine.
"You are fortunate in being with her. Frances always was my ideal of a good woman. She does not say much unless it is necessary, and then it is always to the point. Her life tells."
"Yes," assented Jean. "She often gives me good advice."
"Do you always follow it?"
"I am afraid not. Mrs. Gordon, do you think girls can always follow the advice of those much older than themselves? You see they have lived their lives, and have a different outlook: they look back—girls look forward."
"How long does life last, if you think that Frances has finished hers?"
"I don't mean that exactly."
"I hardly think you do. Women don't lose their individuality, their ambitions, their hopes and fears, so soon as you imagine."
Jean felt snubbed.
"I think," she said meekly, "that when you're young, you look forward to being a success, you work with that object, and you are always hoping and looking for that to be accomplished. I have been bitterly disappointed already in some people and things, but I don't feel I have got to the end of it. Miss Lorraine seems living in a quiet little peaceful backwater, while I am pushing my way down the river to the sea."
"And what is your goal?" asked Mrs. Gordon.
"If you had asked me that a few months ago, I should have said fame, but I am sure now that I shall never be famous, only I want to leave some marks behind me. I don't want to have a wasted life to look back upon."
"And so you think that Frances Lorraine is leading a passive life; and you an active?"
Jean blushed.
"I am not fit to black her shoes," she said impulsively. And then she changed the conversation.
She told Mrs. Gordon a little of her art life in Paris.
"I feel now that it wasn't my art that was wrong, but my atmosphere. You don't know what a pleasure it is to me to paint Sunnie. She is so sweet and pure, it seems to take away the bad taste in my mouth that the Paris studio gave me."
"Sunnie is too old for her age," said Mrs. Gordon. "But her life is so entirely with grown-up people, that one cannot wonder at it."
"I don't know much about children," admitted Jean, "but she fascinates me. And I believe she will influence me, too. Miss Lorraine makes me wish to be good, but I believe Sunnie will make me try to be so."
"What is your idea of goodness?"
Jean looked at her companion with wistful eyes. "I don't know," she said. "I am not religious, but I believe we ought to carry out the teaching of Christ in the Bible, ought we not? I wish I felt as sure of heaven as Sunnie does."
A rather bitter look swept over Mrs. Gordon's face. "Who is sure except children?" she said. "That makes their happiness: their sublime trust in every one—and in God."
"Miss Lorraine is sure," said Jean musingly, "and I think Colonel Douglas."
"And my Cousin Leslie," said Mrs. Gordon. "Yes, and they are happy in their faith, but it has not been tried."
"Do you think it would fail them?"
Mrs. Gordon did not answer. When next she spoke, it was to draw Jean's attention to some local landmark.
Jean wondered when she got home, how she could have touched upon some of the deep things in life with a comparative stranger, especially with such a reserved one as Mrs. Gordon. But she liked her the better for their talk, and she hoped the liking was mutual.
The next day was Sunday, and it was a very strange one to Jean. She went to the little Scotch church with Mrs. Gordon and Meta, and found the service long and dreary. The novelty of her surroundings could not compensate for the length of time she was listening to the old Scotch minister.
Dr. Fergusson came to lunch, and Jean began to brighten up. He always seemed to bring a fresh and breezy atmosphere into the house with him. When lunch was over, Jean went up to her bedroom and wrote to Miss Lorraine.
"DEAR MISS LORRAINE,—I know you will like my first impressions of
this house. It is an interesting one, and to me a very luxurious one."
"Mrs. Gordon looks like a tragedy queen, her little daughter is all
that I could desire from a painter's view. As a subject, she satisfies
me, as a child, she fascinates me. I am wondering when I have my brush
in hand who is wielding it. Do you remember our talk in Kensington High
Street? I miss our cosy teas, and have come to the conclusion that I
like small rooms better than big ones."
"Mrs. Gordon is very kind, and treats me as she would a guest. Keep
a corner of your heart for me. I am an outsider to every one in the
world but you."
"Your affectionate,"
"JEAN."
"Not much in that," was Miss Lorraine's mental comment, "but our plan for her has succeeded. She will get good, not harm, in her present surroundings."
Jean was sitting by her bedroom fire an hour or so after writing that letter, and indulging in a little nap, when a knock at her door roused her. It was the old Scotch nurse.
"If you please, mem, Miss Sunnie be askin' for ye. Wull ye gie the bairn the pleasure o' yer presence?"
Jean started up.
"I will come at once. I think your nursery is the most delightful room in the house."
It looked the picture of comfort when she entered it. The red carpet and curtains, and the blazing fire, the canary, singing his loudest in the deep bay window, the bright pictures on the panelled walls, and lastly, but not least, the sunny presence of the little invalid, all combined to infect every visitor with a sense of cheer and contentment.
Dr. Fergusson was seated in an easy chair by the fire. He got up and relinquished his seat at once. When Jean protested, he said, "I am going to the piano. You have been summoned for a purpose."
"We are going to sing hymns," said Sunnie eagerly. "We always do on Sunday, and we like all the people we can get to help us. Nurse rings a bell down the back stairs, and we sing for an hour, don't we, Cousin Leslie?"
Jean sat down.
"I'm not a singer," she said, "but I'll do what I can."
"This is Sunnie's service," said Dr. Fergusson, as he struck a few chords on the piano.
"What do you do with yourself all day on Sunday?" Jean asked the child.
"Oh, lots and lots of things. Nurse and I make up sermons in the morning and say them to each other, and I paint texts for hospitals, and in the afternoon we always look at the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Have you seen it? It has a picture on every single page. I did want Cousin Leslie to play it on the piano, but nurse says the Sabbath would be broken, if he did. I think I should like to hear the lions roar on the piano and shake their chains when they can't get at poor Christian, wouldn't you? Here comes nurse. Now you must have a hymn-book, and we each choose in turn."
Jean wondered, but said nothing. Quite a number of servants filed in. Four maids, the old cook, two young grooms, the old butler, and a very small stable boy.
Sunnie nodded to each as they came in. She was complete mistress of the ceremony, and when the singing began, Jean was astonished at the heartiness of it all, and still more at the sweetness and power of the child's voice.
Some of the hymns were strange ones to her, some took her back to her school days. When her turn came to choose, she hesitated.
"I'll leave you to choose for me, Sunnie."
"Oh no, that won't be fair. You must know one you'd like."
Jean shook her head, then as her eye fell on the old hymn, "Jesu, lover of my soul," she chose it without a thought of the words or meaning.
Every one sang away with cheerful smiling faces, but after the last one came to a conclusion, Dr. Fergusson surprised Jean by standing up to speak. He took every hymn that had been sung in succession, saying a few simple words on each.
Jean had never heard any one speak so before, and when her hymn came to be commented on, she listened with special interest.
The doctor only took the first line. "It is the key to the whole," he said. "We think a good deal of our bodies, and have a selfish love for ourselves, but what care are we taking of our souls? There is One who knows the value of them better than we do, and who loves them. He would not have given up His life for a light thing, nor left His glorious throne and lived a life of poverty and scorn for a trifle. What brought Him from heaven to earth? My soul. He has proved His love for it, and He asks us now to hand it into His keeping."
He passed on to another hymn, but Jean was profoundly touched by his words. She thought of her letter to Miss Lorraine written only an hour before.
"An outsider to every one in the world but you." Here was One who
loved the best and immortal part of her.
"I can't be an outsider to Him. I can't get outside His love."
She repeated this over and over to herself. It was another link in the chain of love that was gradually drawing her nearer to the great Soul-lover.
THE FIVE MARGARETS
"They're only truly great, who are truly good."—Chapman.
"AND now," said Sunnie, when the singing was over, and all had withdrawn except the doctor and Jean, "now you're going to have tea with me, Miss Desmond. It's to be a Sabbath treat, and Cousin Leslie will have it, too. Mother and Cousin Meta have each other downstairs, and we'll have ourselves up here."
Jean was delighted to stay. Dr. Fergusson drew up another chair to the fire, and nurse presently wheeled a round tea-table up to the couch. It was daintily laid; hot scones were there, home-made jam and honey, and several varieties of cake and bread and butter. Sunnie poured out the tea with important pride.
"Now isn't this good!" exclaimed Dr. Fergusson. "I always say you are a born tea-maker, Sunnie. No tea downstairs tastes like this."
The child flushed all over with pleasure.
"Now," she said, clapping her hands, "we'll pretend—" Her face fell—"I forgot it was the Sabbath."
"We won't pretend anything. We'll be real, and be thankful for what we are," said the doctor.
Sunnie looked down at her little legs under the fur rug.
"Yes," she said, "I might have had my hands and arms cut off, then what should I have done?"
"And I," said the doctor, "might be sweeping a crossing in Edinburgh, with a cough shaking me to pieces, and only a cellar to sleep in, a crust of bread soaked in hot water for my tea, and twopence in my pocket to keep me from the workhouse."
"And I," remarked Jean, "might be a prisoner shut in for life, with only a cell to pace up and down day and night, and without a sound or sight of any human being but my gaoler."
Sunnie's face became grave.
"And there are prisoners, and crossing-sweepers, and children with hands cut off. That isn't pretence. Can't we do anything for them?"
"Yes," said Dr. Fergusson, "you can knit a scarf for an old crossing-sweeper that I know. You are always knitting for somebody, are you not?"
"That will be lovely. I will begin to-morrow."
Sunnie's face was beaming again.
"Have you many patients amongst the poor?" asked Jean, turning to the doctor.
"Yes, a good many. Would you like to visit some?"
"Oh, goodness, no!" said Jean hastily. "I can't bear to see suffering, and when dirt and poverty accompany it, it must be awful."
"It is sometimes. I suppose your artistic nature can only see beauty in beautiful surroundings?"
Jean looked at him.
"You mean that for sarcasm? It is my selfishness, I suppose, and not my artistic nature, as you call it, that makes me shrink from the disagreeables in life. But I haven't been called to do it, so I don't see why I should."
"You would agree with my mother. She thinks that everything ugly should be put out of sight and kept there."
Sunnie broke in eagerly.
"Cousin Leslie, tell Miss Desmond the story of Margaret Gordon."
"I think you tell that story best. We will listen. Go ahead."
"She was a beautiful lady and very good. We've got her picture in the hall downstairs, and she was a—a—an—"
"Ancestor," prompted the doctor.
Sunnie planted herself well back amongst her cushions, and brought the long word out with much emphasis.
"Ancestor. She used to wear a grey gown and a snood of pearls and muslin apron, and doves always flew about her, because she was so good. She used to take baskets of food to every one who was hungry, and she walked with her hands in God's. And one day, her husband came tearing into the yard on his black horse."
"'Margaret, my enemies are after me. It is a false charge of high treason. I am a dead man if they take me.' So she hid him away in this very house as quick as she could."
"And the soldiers came up, and the officer called out, 'Give up your traitor husband!' and Margaret stood still and calm."
"'He is no traitor, but loyal and true.'"
"Then they searched the house, but couldn't find him. 'We shall stay here till we do,' said the officer, 'and you, madam, shall be our prisoner.' So they lived in the house and guarded her night and day."
"But her doves flew in and out of the window, and under their wings they carried messages that she wrote to her husband and he wrote to her, and she sent nearly all her food to her husband by them, too. And she got thin and ill, for she wasn't having enough food. Then one day, they called her out of her room, and said she must tell them where her husband was, or they would burn the house down over her head. She looked at them and said, 'I could no more be a traitor to my husband than my husband could be to his king.'"
"So they locked her in the house and set fire to it. But Margaret looked up to God, and asked Him to help her, and He sent a storm and the rain put the fire out, and Margaret never came out of the house, and the soldiers thought she and her husband were starved to death. But they weren't, for Margaret went into the secret room, and took her husband along an underground passage, into the pine-woods, and they crossed the sea until it was safe for them to come back again. There, wasn't she a brave woman?"
"She was," said Jean warmly. "That's a very nice story, Sunnie, only I think she had the easiest part to play."
"Why?" asked the doctor.
"Think of her husband shut up in that secret room. How could he stand it? I would rather have died than been imprisoned! It is not a man's part to play—that of hiding and letting a woman bear the brunt of his enemies' anger. I don't admire him for it; one pities him, that is all!"
"Have you ever been imprisoned? You speak so emphatically on the subject."
"Yes," said Jean with warmth. "For two years after I left school, I was shut up in an old house with a grandfather who tried to crush the life out of me."
"Oh!" said Sunnie, with big eyes. "What a cruel man!"
"I must be free!" said Jean earnestly. "I would rather be a beggar in the streets than confined in a palace."
"I must add a sequel to Sunnie's story," said Dr. Fergusson. "When the exiles came back, Margaret's husband carved these lines over the front door in Latin—"
"'Loyal and true in trial was she,
Margaret saved this house and me.'"
"And are they there now?" asked Jean, with interest.
"Yes; I will show them to you if you like."
"I am glad he knew her worth."
Dr. Fergusson looked at her with a twinkle in his eye.
"Yet you think he had the hardest part to play, and certainly it was a part that brought him no renown."
"I have no patience with him," Jean said shortly.
"Where did he hide? Is the secret room still in existence?"
"It has never been found."
"How interesting! Have you not looked for it?"
"Many and many a time."
"The exit was in the pine-woods," said Jean thoughtfully. "So the saying is."
"And Margaret's picture is in the hall," said Sunnie. "That's where my picture will be when you've done it, Miss Desmond. I shall be the fifth Margaret there."
"Are you her namesake, then?" Jean asked.
"Yes," said Sunny dreamily, "and all the Margarets have done something brave, except me. People will say by and by, 'And who is this little Margaret, and what did she do?' And the answer will be, 'She did nothing, but lie on a sofa.'"
Jean glanced quickly at her. The sweet merry eyes were swimming with tears.
Dr. Fergusson laid his hand on the little white one that was struggling to extricate a handkerchief from under the cushions.
"They will say—"
"'Patient and cheery in trial was she,
Margaret brightened this house and me.'"
The tears ran over, but a rippling laugh rang out Sunnie's face was a picture of an April shower.
"Oh, you clever man!" she said. "How quick you make rhymes! Shall I tell Miss Desmond about the other Margarets?"
"Please do," said Jean.
She felt already keen pain when Sunnie's radiant spirits deserted her, if only for a moment, and longed to keep the sunshine for ever on her face.
"The first Margaret was a martyr," said Sunnie, with big eyes. "You will see her downstairs dressed like a Puritan. She was burned at a stake, because she wouldn't give up her Bible. The second one was a lovely lady. She is dressed in white satin and pearls, and she helped her husband to defend their castle against their enemies. The third is the old lady with white hair. She rode forty miles to see the king, and get a pardon for her son. And then comes my Margaret that I told you about. I like her best, because an old book says, 'Her hands were in God's.' And that's where I want mine to be."
Sunnie folded her own small hands and looked at them.
Dr. Fergusson looked at them too, then he said—
"With her hands in God's, and her heart at rest,
Perfectly sure that all's for the best."
"There!" said Sunnie, with shining eyes, "that makes a beautiful verse, and I'll write it down in my rhyme book. Only it's too good for me."
"Well," said the doctor, jumping up, "I must be off. When I next come, Miss Desmond, I shall ask to look at the picture."
"I'm longing for to-morrow," said Sunnie.
"You say that every day," laughed Dr. Fergusson.
The little party broke up. Nurse came back to her charge, and Jean went down to the drawing-room. On her way, she paused in the big square hall, and looked up at the family portraits.
"All beautiful women," she commented. "But if I do her justice, Sunnie will eclipse them all. They seem to want soul, their faces are so wooden. I wonder if I shall be able to paint the wonderful charm in the child's sweet face."
In a very short time, Jean had settled down in her new surroundings. When she was not painting Sunnie, she was out of doors. The keen bracing Scotch air, and bright clear atmosphere exhilarated and stimulated her, after London fog and mud. She loved the pine-woods, and wrapping her thick cloak round her, would spend an hour or so sitting on a fallen tree, and learning from Nature's book.
One day, Mrs. Gordon took her into the library, and seeing the girl's glistening eyes, asked—
"Are you fond of reading?"
"Devoted to it," said Jean breathlessly. "I was debarred from reading after I left school, and I think that is the very time one pants for book knowledge. In London, I felt it wrong to read too much, though Miss Lorraine encouraged me to do it. I wanted to devote all my time to art."
"But I should think book knowledge would help art, not hinder it."
"Yes, it does."
"Then do use this library as you like. No one comes here now."
Mrs. Gordon's low even voice never faltered, but Jean's thoughts at once flew to the master of the house, who had once used this room. She looked up gratefully.
"Thank you so much. It will indeed be a treat to me."
And after that, she divided her leisure time between the library and the pine-woods.
But the time she loved best was when she was painting Sunnie. She did this now in the afternoons before the light entirely failed, and when the firelight was at its best. Occasionally Dr. Fergusson would come up and go to the piano, and then it was that Sunnie's face became rapt and absorbed in the music. Jean painted away then as hard as she could at her face alone, leaving all else for a less auspicious time. The child's quaint fancies, and the doctor's humorous fun, helped rather than hindered her in her work. Sometimes the doctor would criticise the portrait, and Jean learnt to value his criticism, for it was always just and true.
"That Sunnie!" he exclaimed one day. "Now, Miss Desmond, we will have you up for libel! The only thing the sun has touched in your picture is her hair; you must make it peep out of the corners of her eyes, be lurking in the corners of her lips, her very nose must be quivering with it. If her face belies her name, how can she take her place amongst the family portraits! Get your brushes full of sunshine, and lay it on thick."
"Between sunshine and firelight I feel rather mixed," said Jean, ruefully.
"I don't think your eye has been properly educated," Dr. Fergusson went on. "There are two sorts of sunshine—that which shines on the surface and penetrates inwards, and that which dwells within and radiates outwards. I consider that Sunnie has within her a battery—shall I call it?—fully charged with sufficient sunshine to warm herself and others."
"But," said Jean, smiling, "she does not need to turn it on or off, it is perpetually leaking out."
"Exactly. Can't you catch it as it does so?"
"I am not a genius."
Jean's tone was dispirited.
"If you don't succeed at first—you know the old saying. Let me see that face on your canvas alive. At present it is calm and dead. It—it reminds me of her mother!"
He turned sharply away, and left Jean to ponder over his words.
If she had not genius, she had perseverance, and she worked at her picture as she had never worked before. She put her whole heart and soul into it, and then one day the flash of inspiration came, the touches were added that before had been wanting, and Sunnie's little face shone out in all its pathos and winsomeness.
Her mother, looking at it, said quietly—
"Don't touch her face again, Miss Desmond. It wants nothing more."
And the doctor said—
"Well done!"
Meta Worth did not often come to the nursery.
"I don't understand children," she confided to Jean, "and least of all do I understand Sunnie. I don't know how to talk to children, they are so serious over imaginary creations of their own, and so utterly indifferent to all that interests me. I am too matter of fact, I suppose. I always think it shows weakness in Leslie's character, the way he talks and goes on with that child. Do you like men who fuss over children? I don't. They are very well as play-things now and then, but Leslie seems to prefer Sunnie's friendship to any one else's. It's ridiculous!"
Jean laughed.
"Do you feel piqued?" she asked.
"Yes," said Meta with perfect gravity. "I think he ought to prefer talking to us in the drawing-room to spending all his time with that child. It isn't as if he hasn't brains. He belongs to no end of 'ological societies, and is supposed to be a very scientific man. His brains can't be satisfied with Sunnie, if his humour is. I wish you would come and see his mother with me one day, will you?"
"With pleasure, if you think she would like to see me?"
"Oh, you're her sort. Every one, according to her, ought to have a Purpose or Plan in their life with a capital P. And one Purpose is better than a hundred, strange to say. She doesn't approve of me because I have so many, and change them so often. A person of one idea is the one she commends. I hate such a creature, for they bore you to death, and have only one subject of conversation."
"Do I bore you to death?" asked Jean. "I think art is my one idea at present."
"No; I'm interested in you, for as you say it is only a temporary hobby, and I am quite certain that you will try another line soon. I think if I were to begin to philosophise, you live too fast. It's like a race. If a runner puts his whole strength and runs his swiftest the first start off, he'll never keep it up."
Jean looked thoughtful.
"I can't help being in earnest," she said; "but I was nearly put off my art altogether before I came here. I had got a sickening of it in Paris."
"And what were you going to do?"
"Nothing. Life seemed a blank."
"You're very young!"
Meta's tone had pity in it.
"And I think you old," retorted Jean. "Have you got beyond everything?"
Meta shook her head and laughed.
"Come with me to see Mrs. Fergusson," she said; "then I will tell you one of my many purposes. We will go to-morrow, if Aunt Helen approves."
"I don't know Mrs. Gordon any better to-day," said Jean thoughtfully, "than the first day I came."
"She doesn't care to be known," said Meta conclusively.
The next day came. Jean ran up to the nursery the last thing before she went out. It had been one of Sunnie's bad days. She did not often get them, but now and then, headache and backache laid her low, and Jean had been told that her painting must be put aside for that day. She found the day nursery empty. Nurse came out from the bedroom beyond.
"Come in and speak a word to the poor bairn," she said with her homely smile. "Ye'll no stay long, for she's that low to-day, an' the doctor has not been. His voice be more to her than his physic."
Jean went into the darkened room with softened footstep, but Sunnie looked up and smiled at her. Her small face looked pinched and white, and there were dark circles of pain and weariness round her eyes. Yet her words were characteristic of her.
"I'll be better to-morrow," she said. "I'm longing for it to come."
"My darling, I wish I could bear your pain for you."
Jean's voice was full of pity as she stooped and kissed the child.
Sunnie put her little hand up and stroked her cheek. "I'm saying Cousin Leslie's rhyme over—"
"'With her hands in God's, and her heart at rest,
Perfectly sure that all's for the best.'"
"But I want to hear him play it on the piano. I'm longing for him to come. It would make my head better."
"I am going to see his mother."
Sunnie's eyes brightened.
"She came to see me a little time ago. She's like a fairy godmother."
"Goodbye, I mustn't stop. I do hope you will be better."
Sunnie moved her head a little restlessly. Then her eyes twinkled.
"If I cut off my head and took away my back, I think the other part of me would be nice and comfortable, but what would I look like? Could you draw me?"
"Yes," said Jean laughing, "I will make a picture of you, and bring it to you to-morrow morning."
She went, and was relieved when she heard the child's low chuckle of delight.
CENTRES
"Not by looking within, but by living without,
This centre of self, shall a man grow wise."—Lytton.
META drove Jean over to Mrs. Fergusson's in a small dog-cart. It was a bright crisp afternoon, and Jean enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine, and the long stretch of hills and valleys that lay before them as they went.
They drove into the nearest town, which was five miles away. Mrs. Fergusson's house stood alone on the outskirts of the town, and was surrounded by high brick walls and a thin fringe of Scotch firs and larches. They were ushered into an upstairs drawing-room, but it was her "at home" day, and the room was full of people.
"Lots of these are Edinburgh folk," whispered Meta. "She always gathers clever literary people round her."
And then, stepping up to the hostess, Jean was introduced. Mrs. Fergusson was a tall, handsome old lady. Her white hair and brilliant dark eyes gave her a striking individuality. She looked at Jean kindly.
"The young portrait painter who is staying at Mrs. Gordon's? I am glad to meet you, my dear."
"I told her you would like her because she has an object in life," said Meta, a little saucily.
"Is it painting?" asked Mrs. Fergusson quietly.
Jean looked up at her frankly.
"I don't think it is altogether," she said. "It doesn't satisfy me."
"I am glad to hear that."
"Well," said Meta, looking puzzled, "I should have thought, if a girl throws away a fortune for it, as Miss Desmond seems to have done, it ought to be her object in life, if it isn't."
"You don't quite understand," said Jean. "It was not for painting, so much as for liberty, that I left my grandfather."
"Ah," said Mrs. Fergusson, "liberty is the young people's god nowadays."
Jean fancied she saw reproach in her eyes.
"It doesn't sound nice," she admitted hastily, "but if you knew my circumstances you would understand better. I was becoming a vegetable; nothing more or less would have pleased my grandfather."
"How is little Sunnie?"
Mrs. Fergusson quietly ignored Jean's speech. It made her feel ashamed of protruding her own personality before a comparative stranger.
"She is not well to-day, poor mite! When I left her she was longing for her doctor."
Mrs. Fergusson smiled.
"You have a fortunate subject for your study. I can imagine no greater pleasure than painting such a child, if art is your forte."
She moved away to speak to some one else. Jean was disappointed. She would like to have talked with her longer. Meta had left her and was having an animated conversation with a tall handsome man who was standing in the deep bay window with one or two other young people.
Jean sat down by an old lady, who eyed her curiously. In a few minutes they drifted into talk.
"Is Dr. Fergusson here?"
"Indeed, no," replied her neighbour, with a strong Scotch accent, "he'll be away visiting and curing his patients. He's a busy man, Leslie Fergusson is; not after George's pattern over there, who whiles away his time in ladies' drawing-rooms, and makes his mother wish she hadn't brought him into the world at all!"
"Is that Dr. Fergusson's brother? I did not know he had one."
Jean was smiling at the old lady's energetic disapproval.
"There are only the two, but I always say it is one too many for their mother's peace of mind! Clever? Ay, he may look so, and I will not say he isna, but he uses up his brain in composing trashy poems for local papers, and cultivating compliments and flirtations with any pretty lass about. He will tell you he is a barrister in Edinburgh. He's a briefless one, and will be never anything else in my estimation!"
Jean was silent. Her eyes left Meta and her companion, and travelled after Mrs. Fergusson. She longed, as she saw her move about and entertain her guests, to come one afternoon when she had no visitors and have her to herself. And she began to feel a little lonely. Every one seemed to know each other, and call each other by their Christian names. She realised that she was a stranger in a strange land, and thought it a little ill-natured of Meta to forsake her.
Then, in another moment, Mrs. Fergusson was before her and speaking to her.
"Miss Desmond, I would like to show you some favourite pictures of mine. They are in the library; will you come?"
"With the greatest pleasure."
Jean crossed the room with her in quite a flutter of delight.
As they passed up a low staircase, Mrs. Fergusson laid her hand on her arm.
"And how do you like us?" she asked, quaintly. "I hear this is your first visit to Scotland."
"Yes," said Jean impulsively. "It is my first visit, but I find Scotch people are hard to know. I don't think I should ever make friends here. I am willing, but—well—perhaps Mrs. Gordon is extra difficult to know, and of course, I am in a peculiar position. Everybody is very kind, but—"
"But they don't embrace you with open arms? No, they will not do that. We are slow and cautious folk, and take time to form friendships."
Jean coloured.
"I have no right to speak so, only I can't help getting interested in people. I just love little Sunnie, and hoped to like her mother. I feel so sorry for her. But I am nothing to any of them. Meta is very friendly, but she is variable."
Mrs. Fergusson looked at Jean rather searchingly.
"My dear," she said, "round whom or what does your life centre?"
Jean gazed at her uncomprehendingly.
Mrs. Ferguson smiled.
"I am not going to preach you a sermon," she said. "Now what do you think of these?"
The library was hung with numbers of valuable paintings, many of them genuine works of the old masters. Jean's eyes brightened. She forgot herself, and for the next ten minutes, became quite absorbed in them. Mrs. Fergusson's comments, and the information she gave Jean, proved her to be a true lover as well as a patron of art.
When they returned to the drawing-room, tea was being handed round, and shortly afterwards, Meta and Jean took their departure.
"Well?" asked Meta. "How did you get on with the old lady?"
Jean resented her tone.
"I don't think you went to see her this afternoon," she retorted.
Meta gave a low laugh.
"No; I took you to see her. But I told you what to expect. What do you think of George Fergusson?"
"I had no opportunity to judge. I was told he was a ne'er-do-weel and spent his life in drawing-rooms."
"What old cat told you that?"
Meta's tone was indignant.
"He very seldom appears on his mother's 'at home' days. He is nearly always in Edinburgh. He is quite as clever as the doctor, and much more genial and brilliant in society."
Jean made no reply.
After a few minutes she said—
"Why did you never tell me there was another son? I thought Dr. Fergusson was the only one. He never mentions his brother."
"Leslie never talks of his own people or of himself at all. I wonder you have not discovered that. And George is not often at home. They hardly ever meet. How would you like Mrs. Fergusson as a mother-in-law? Do you think she would make a nice one?"
Jean looked at Meta in astonishment; then she said quietly—
"I should not think Dr. Fergusson was at all a marrying man."
"Leslie! Gracious, no! If he ever marries, it will be Aunt Helen. You look surprised, but he is so devoted to Sunnie, that it would be a good arrangement all round. And if there is any one that Aunt Helen cares for, it is he."
This idea was such a novel one to Jean that she took time to consider it.
Meta rattled on—
"I told you that I would let you know my present purpose when we came away from Mrs. Fergusson's. Can you guess?"
"Yes," said Jean, smiling at her frankness. "You wish to become her daughter."
"Hush, you needn't proclaim it! George and I have known each other for years. There is an understanding between us, but it's a question of money. Of course if anything happened to Mrs. Fergusson, the sons would be well off. She is a very wealthy woman."
"But if I were a man," said Jean hotly, "I would earn my own living, not wait in idleness for money that I didn't make."
"Would you?" said Meta, in an offended tone. "You would be an immaculate being, then!"
Conversation languished after this. Each girl pursued her own thoughts.
When they arrived home, Jean's first question was about Sunnie. Mrs. Gordon answered her gravely—
"She is better. She has now gone to sleep. Dr. Fergusson has been to see her, and has just left."
Jean went to her room. There she sat down by her fire, and went into a reverie, from which she did not rouse herself till it was time to dress for dinner. The Fergusson family were engrossing her thoughts at present.
"I wish I could know Mrs. Fergusson. And I should like to see the doctor in his own home. He seems unapproachable, unless in Sunnie's company. I am sure he is truly good; but then most of my friends are that. I am sure that Colonel Douglas and Miss Lorraine are. And Mrs. Fergusson has a way of asking the same kind of questions that they do. 'Round what or whom does my life centre?' Round myself. I can answer that easily enough. But the answer would not please her. I wonder if it would the doctor. I think I shall try to get his opinion on the subject."
This idea she carried out a day or two afterwards. She was painting Sunnie, and he had been at the piano carrying them through flights of fancies till Sunnie hardly realised where she was.
"Come back to earth, Sunnie," Jean said, laughing. "You look too far away for me to paint. I shall have to get a telescope to see you with."
"Like the stars," said Sunnie dreamily. "I should like to float through the sky on a star, wouldn't you?"
"I think I should prefer the moon," said Jean; "a new moon would be most comfortable."
"The moon turns round the earth, doesn't it?" asked Sunnie, bent on getting information.
"Yes," replied the doctor; "the moon is our satellite. Do you know what a satellite is?"
"No."
"A revolving follower."
Jean saw her opportunity.
"I suppose people are very like planets," she said. "They must all have a centre round which they revolve."
Dr. Fergusson looked at her rather keenly.
"It's a good thing to know what our centre is."
"I should think it was generally the same in every case," said Jean flippantly. "Myself is my centre; isn't it yours?"
The doctor did not answer. He left the piano and came and stood behind her.
"You are managing your firelight well," he said.
Jean's brush stopped working.
"What ought to be the centre of our lives?" she persisted.
"The same as our earth's—the sun."
His tone was grave and quiet.
"Oh!" said Jean, with impatience in her tone. "I wish we didn't keep twisting round to religion. I never could be a saint! I have no wish to be one."
"I think," said Dr. Fergusson, ignoring her speech, "that there are three centres round which most people gravitate: Themselves, as you say, and that centre is the poorest and most unsatisfying of all. Then, the centre of others. It is a wider and more beneficial one. But our Maker created us to revolve round Him. We shall have mistaken our purpose in life, if we do aught else."
"I always have made mistakes," said Jean, "and I shall continue doing it to the end."
"Don't spoil your life here, child, for eternity has begun with you already, remember; and we are told that as a tree falls, so it will lie."
He placed his hand on her shoulder as he spoke.
Jean remembered the light pressure of it for long afterwards, and his words left a heavier pressure on her soul.
She made no reply. Her flippancy died away.
Her heart was saying in the midst of some painful throbbing, "With his hand upon me, I could be anything he liked to make me."
And then her cheeks burnt at the thought, and she recommenced her painting with a fierce abruptness that showed itself in her face.
Dr. Fergusson noted that look, and he turned to Sunnie.
"Now," he said, "I am off. And you won't see me again for a whole week. I am going to Edinburgh on business."
"Ah," said Sunnie, taking hold of one of his hands and laying it against her cheek, "you'll have to see a lot of strange and funny things to tell me when you come back. I like to hear about big towns where the children see no fields and have houses and chimney-pots peeping in at every window. Miss Desmond will have to tell me stories till you come back, and we'll make up what you're doing while you're away, won't we?"
She looked round for Jean, but she was busy packing up her things and moving her canvas away. She was nowhere to be seen, when Dr. Fergusson was taking his departure.
"WORTH SENDING FOR!"
"A friend ought to shun no pain,
to stand his friend in stead."—R. Edwards.
AS Leslie Fergusson drove home that night, his brows were furrowed with thought. In common with other lonely men, he had occasionally a habit of uttering his thoughts aloud. His good mare Bess was often the recipient of his confidences.
"I cannot trust myself," he muttered. "I know on the deepest things in life, we are far apart, yet her little gracious ways, her sweet wistfulness in the midst of her wilful words, make me long to win her. It would not be for our lasting happiness, if I did so. I am not a boy, and I suppose as one grows older, one feels more deeply. I think after my week in Edinburgh, I will run up to London for a short time. When I return the picture will have been finished, and she will have left."
Jean little thought, when she left her room so hastily that night, what a long time it would be, before she saw Dr. Fergusson again.
A day or two afterwards, she was startled by receiving a telegram from Colonel Douglas.
"Can you return to Miss Lorraine? She is ill."
Jean did not take long to make up her mind. She went straight to Mrs. Gordon, and showed the message to her.
"I must go at once. She has been so good to me, and she lives alone. There is no one to look after her."
"And what about Sunnie's portrait? You have nearly finished it, have you not?"
"Yes; I am only working up the background. I think perhaps, I can work it up in London, if I take it with me."
"Perhaps that would be the best plan."
Jean's heart sank at Mrs. Gordon's calm acquiescence. She could not help speaking impulsively, as was her wont—
"I must thank you for the nice time I have had here. You have been very kind to me, and I shall be dreadfully sorry to leave."
"I think Sunnie will be sorry, too. I consider you have been very successful with her picture and am glad you have been happy with us. When must you start?"
"This afternoon, if I may," said Jean, turning away to prevent Mrs. Gordon's seeing the quick tears in her eyes.
She hardly knew what she was doing for the next hour or two. Every one was kind, but Jean resented their comparative indifference to her departure. Meta expressed a hope that she would meet her again in London.
Sunnie was the only one who really cared, and when she heard, she put her little arms round her neck, drew her down to her, and began to cry.
"You are one of my friends," she sobbed. "I can't bear a friend to go away."
Jean kissed the golden head.
"I shall not forget you," she said. "I shall write letters to you now and then; will you not like that?"
"Yes," sobbed Sunnie, "but I shall be so empty without you, when Cousin Leslie isn't here. Will you never come back, never?"
Jean could not bring herself to reiterate that mournful word.
"I only came to paint your picture, Sunnie, and now my work is done, and my friend in London is ill. You mustn't wish to keep me back. I wish sometimes that I could live here always, but you see, it isn't my home."
Sunnie lay back on her cushions, and regarded her with tearful eyes; then a glint of sunshine came like a rainbow across them.
"You must marry a prince and drive to Scotland in a big coach, like they used to do long ago. And your prince must come and live close here, and you must come and see me in the twilight, when the fire is blazing and Cousin Leslie is playing the piano. I shall always be here, you know; I shall never move away until—I go to heaven."
"Oh! Sunnie," said Jean, kneeling by the child's couch, and taking her little hands in her own, "how I wish I felt as sure of heaven as you do!"
Sunnie looked perplexed.
Jean went on in a little burst of confidence—
"You are all so good here, and I feel so wicked! Will you ask God in your prayers, darling, to teach me what He has taught you?"
"Has God taught me anything?" questioned Sunnie, wonderingly. "I think Cousin Leslie teaches me most. If you would only stay, he could teach you too."
"I wish I could stay."
Jean's tone was almost passionate.
Sunnie looked at her pathetically.
"I shall see you in the dark, sitting opposite me, I with your long-tailed paint-brush and my picture. I shall shut my eyes every evening, and see you there, and I shall pretend you're real, and I shall go on talking to you. I have to do such a lot of pretending when Cousin Leslie is away."
"He will be coming back soon. You must wish him goodbye for me, Sunnie."
There was a tremor in her voice. She felt again the touch of his hand on her shoulder: that involuntary, earnest touch that had shown her the secret of her heart, and had made him take a decisive step to remove himself from the fascination of her presence.
"Yes," said Sunnie; "make up a nice message for me to give him. Your love and a kiss?"
"Oh no!" said Jean, laughing though her heart ached. "No special message—just a goodbye."
Then she rose to her feet, and stood looking down upon the little invalid very tenderly.
"Sunnie, I wonder if you would give me what you give the doctor every night. You call it your blessing."
Sunnie's face shone. She brushed the traces of her tears away with her little hands, and then clasped them over Jean's dark head, which was now bent down over her.
"God bless you, and keep you safe and good in London. Amen."
With the echoes of that sweet little voice ringing in her ears, Jean left Strathglen that afternoon, and as the night express whirled her away, she put her head in her hands and sobbed in sheer unhappiness.
"I shall be an outsider always. I went, and now I am returning; it has only been a passing incident in my life. I should have liked to make it my home. I hoped to get to know Mrs. Fergusson; I longed to have more talk with Dr. Fergusson, to know him as—as a friend. He was so reserved, so unapproachable at first, and lately, he has been so different. Oh, I wish I had his religion; I wish I could have the steadfast happiness that he has! They will all forget me. After all, what can I expect? I went on a matter of business. It is done—they want me no more."
She was so occupied with herself and her feelings that it was not till she approached London that her thoughts turned to Miss Lorraine.
"I wonder if she is very ill. It is rather strange Colonel Douglas telegraphing for me. If anything happened to her, I shouldn't have a friend left. I wonder if there is any one else in the world as friendless as I!"
But when she reached Miss Lorraine's house and met the housemaid at the door, when she heard that the mistress of the house had been taken ill three weeks ago with an attack of influenza, and seemed to have no strength to rally from it, but had been lying weak and exhausted, hardly knowing those in the room, then Jean put herself in the background and rose to the occasion.
"Take me to her," she said.
"Please, miss, the nurse said they were not to be disturbed. These nurses are terrible fidgets. We have had two changes already, and this one treats me as if I'm the dirt under her feet! And please, miss, the Colonel is in the drawing-room: will you see him first?"
Jean sped up the narrow stairs, and the next moment had her hand grasped gratefully by Colonel Douglas, who was looking worn and harassed.
"This is good of you, Jean. I have been so anxious. My sister is abroad, and there has been no one I could turn to. Frances has always been the one to nurse and help others, and when she is struck down, it seems strange that she should be left so forlorn. She has been calling for you. The fact is, her old servants and the nurses don't pull well together. The house wants a mistress. You will put things straight."
Jean nodded, then went straight to the sick-room. She was shocked to find Miss Lorraine so weak, and her feeble words, "Stay, Jean. Don't leave me. I want some one who cares for me," touched her to the heart.
She interviewed the nurse and doctor, found that the former's services would be no longer required, and took possession of the sick-room herself. Before a few days were over, she had proved herself an apt and skilful nurse. Miss Lorraine caught the infection of her brightness, and rapidly began to recover.
Colonel Douglas haunted the house. There was something infinitely pathetic to Jean in his attitude. Grapes, flowers, and dainties of all kinds were the plea for him to come in.
"Will you take this to Frances, my dear? And if she is well enough—if it wouldn't excite her—just tell her that I'm on the spot to do or carry messages."
And in watching by the sick-bed, and in consoling and comforting the staunch old friend, Jean learnt many a lesson in patience and unselfishness. It made her realise her own narrow outlook and the poorness of her aims and standards in life.
It was a bright afternoon in early spring when Miss Lorraine first came into her pretty drawing-room. Jean had filled it with sweet-smelling flowers, and when the invalid, looking very white and fragile, was seated in her favourite chair, Jean came and knelt down by her caressingly.
"You will let me go on doing things for you, won't you? You won't get strong enough to do without me?"
"My dear child, you have worn yourself out in looking after me. Humanly speaking, you have brought me back to life again, and though when I was weak and ill I longed to die, it was a very wrong and selfish wish."
"Why?" asked Jean, who was always being astonished at Miss Lorraine's view of things.
"I have done so little, and there is so much to do," was the reply. "However small our influence is, it is ours to use for our Master. A lifetime of a hundred years is not too long to work for Him. We have only one life on earth. I don't believe we shall ever get the same chance of helping one another again."
"What about me?" asked Jean, in her impulsive fashion. "I haven't yet begun to think of any one in the world but myself!"
"Well," said Miss Lorraine, "I was wondering the other day, if I had been brought back to life just to help you along the road of life. I am afraid I have been rather a failure in that way up to the present time."
Jean's eyes filled with sudden tears.
"You are helping me," she said. "You shall help me, for I think now, I am willing."
No more was said then, for the door opened and Colonel Douglas came in. It was their first meeting since Miss Lorraine's illness. He stepped across the room on tiptoe, looking at her with eager, anxious eyes.
"My dear," he said, as he grasped her hand, "how frail you look, and how glad and thankful I am that you have been spared to us."
His voice was husky, and as he sat down by her side, his hands trembled visibly as he rested them on his knees.
Miss Lorraine looked at him with a quiet smile.
"Yes," she said, "when you began to take an interest in a little rebellious girl down in the Essex marshes, you little thought what a good turn you would be doing me, later on."
Jean laughed.
"I haven't done much," she said; "but I am proud to think that Colonel Douglas thought me worth sending for."
But the Colonel did not seem to hear. He had only eyes and ears for Miss Lorraine.
"We have missed you sadly," he said, with a wistful look at her. "I wonder if it is a good thing for you to see your friends so soon. You have had a rest from their worries all this time."
"But I am quite fit and ready to hear everything now," she said briskly.
Colonel Douglas shook his head.
"About as fit as that pale snowdrop would be to bear a weight of any sort," he replied.
And Jean, watching her invalid with a jealous eye, quite agreed with him, for a very little upset her now. Jean sometimes could hardly believe that illness could so change the quiet, self-contained woman. She started and trembled at the slightest sound, and her tears came as easily as her smiles. She was putting a strong restraint upon herself now. The sight of her old friend was almost too much for her.
Colonel Douglas noted her weakness, and with wonderful tact began to talk to Jean of her grandfather and old home.
"I was down there for a couple of days last week," he said. "We had some snipe shooting. Your cousin is a pleasant young fellow; have you never met him yet?"
"No," said Jean. "I have heard nothing from my old home since I left. I only knew of his existence from you."
"He is trying his hand at farming down there. I shouldn't say he will make his fortune at it, but it gives him something to do, and keeps him from getting into mischief. He asked me after you, how you were getting on, and said he would like to meet you. I thought perhaps when he next comes up to town, Frances—if you are strong enough—"
"Yes," she said, as he hesitated, "certainly ask him to come and see us. I shall be very glad to see him."
"And my grandfather?" asked Jean slowly. "Did he mention me at all."
"I cannot say he did. He made no response when I told him what you were doing."
"I shall never be forgiven," said Jean. "Would you like to see my picture of little Sunnie, Colonel Douglas? Miss Lorraine made me promise to show it to her this afternoon."
She left the room to get it. Colonel Douglas stood up by the fire and looked down upon Miss Lorraine, with a smile of content.
"Jean's character is developing," she said. "She is growing out of that heedlessness and irresponsibility. Her thoughtfulness and patience in a sick-room has filled me with astonishment."
"She was very young when we took her in hand," said the Colonel, smiling. "I think her emancipation was a success; she would have become bitter and self-centered, had she stayed with her uncle."
Jean returned, and with the help of Susan, got her large canvas into the room. When she threw back the covering over it, Miss Lorraine caught her breath.
The picture glowed with life and colour. Sunnie lay back amongst her cushions with the firelight playing over her face and cloud of golden hair. Her little face seemed almost to be alive, the eyes were looking upwards with that peculiar mixture of dancing fun and sweet seriousness, her mouth was slightly parted, and her attitude was that of a listener to the unseen.
As Jean looked at it a lump came into her throat. It brought back with a rush those happy hours in the firelight.
"I am thinking," she said, "of calling it 'What the fairies told her!' Do you like it, Miss Lorraine?"
"So very much, dear. It is intensely life-like. Why, Jean, you ought to try to get it into the Academy."
"I did think of it, and asked Mrs. Gordon if she would mind. She said she would not. Do you think there might be a chance of getting it taken?"
"Certainly," said Colonel Douglas, looking at it intently. "You have surprised me, Jean. You must have made rapid progress with your art. This is something more than a mere portrait. You have treated it so artistically."
"Her surroundings were artistic," said Jean. "I never got the first sight of her out of my mind. It burnt itself into my brain, and I determined to reproduce it, if possible. I am glad you like it. I love to look at it myself, for it gives me Sunnie, and I am sure there isn't another child like her in the whole world!"
"Let it stay there, Jean," said Miss Lorraine. "I shall enjoy looking at it."
Jean slipped out of the room soon after this, leaving the Colonel and the invalid to talk together, and though Miss Lorraine was rather tired after the interview, she was none the worse for it.
The next day Jean brought her a letter to read.
"As you have seen what Sunnie is like, I thought you might be interested in her letter."
Miss Lorraine took it and read:
"MY DEAREST PAINTER,—I do not call you Miss Desmond any more. I miss
you always, but most I miss you when Cousin Leslie is making the piano
talk, because there is only one to listen, and it was two when you were
here."
"I got my sofa to take me to see you last night. We were half an hour
doing it, for I told nurse not to talk till I told her, and she says
it was half an hour by the clock. I tell you what we did, and you must
tell me if it was right. We went very quickly and not too high, just
on a line with the telegraph wires that I see from the window. I knew
they led to London, so I could not go wrong. Then we flew over hundreds
and hundreds of roofs, till we came outside your house; then we dropped
until I could peep in at the window. And this is what I saw:"
"You were in your pretty pink dressing-gown giving nasty medicine to
a little old lady in curls in bed, and she was making faces like I do,
and then you laughed at her, and began telling her one of your nonsense
stories, and then she drank it up and laughed, too. Then you went into
another room, and sat down by the fire and thought of Sunnie, and a
nice hot dinner was brought in on a little round table, and you sat up,
and eat it."
"When you'd finished, you went back to the fire, and then I crept in
at the window, and crept on to your lap. Didn't you feel me cuddle you?
You were looking tired and had sad eyes, but I kissed you happy again.
And then, I had to come back, and the journey home was long and very
cold. My sofa says he doesn't like London, but we shall come and see
you again soon. I will make him take me."
"Write me a letter and tell me you will be looking out for me when
the fire flares up and the lamps are out. You won't see me, but you
will feel me. Nurse has helped me spell this; she says it is all
nonsense, but she doesn't understand what you and me and Cousin Leslie
make up together. Cousin Leslie played to me about you the day before
yesterday. We had the train that took you away and the barrel-organs
that played in the London streets when you got there, and the poor,
sick lady whispering, and you making her better."
"Write me a long letter soon. I send you this new blessing: I made
it up myself yesterday—"
"'God keep you beautiful, and good,
and bring you back to Scotland and us
for ever and ever. Amen.'"
"Your loving"
"SUNNIE."
Miss Lorraine smiled as she handed this back to Jean.
"You have won her heart," she said.
"Every one loves her," was Jean's reply. But there was a wistful look in her eyes as she spoke, that Miss Lorraine noted and remembered.
AN EVENTFUL RAILWAY JOURNEY
"It was the Voice of Revelation
That met my utmost need;
The wondrous message of salvation
Was joy and peace indeed."
* *
*
"For now is life a lucid story,
And death a rest in Him;
And all is bathed in light and glory
That once was dark or dim."—Rev. Canon Twells.
MISS LORRAINE was now quite convalescent, and Colonel Douglas and she resumed their old friendly relations with one another. She was soon listening to his usual troubles with ungrateful protégés, but her sound common sense and good advice comforted and helped him as she often had before.
One afternoon, the Colonel brought a tall, sturdy young fellow with him, whom he introduced as Charlie Oxton. He was Jean's distant cousin and her grandfather's heir, and he made himself at home at once. Miss Lorraine liked his honest frankness and Jean soon began asking him about her former friends and the old servants at her grandfather's.
"Yes," he said, "they are all there, waiting to welcome you back; aren't you coming?"
"Don't you know," said Jean, "the reason of my leaving?"
"Oh, yes, but I expect you are tired of painting pictures by this time, aren't you? And you'll never make your fortune at it. All the artists I have met—and I've knocked about with a good few—are all poor, miserable beggars. I wish you would chuck it up, and write and tell the old man so."
Jean looked a little offended; the young man went on—
"I'm out a good bit, and we only see each other in the evening, but he's getting old, and I fancy the house wants a woman to look after it."
"There are Elsie and Mary," said Jean. "He does not like women; he never has. And if I gave up painting to-morrow, which I shouldn't think of doing, he would never take me back; he said he wouldn't."
"Oh, I'd talk him round," the young man said cheerfully. "He isn't half a bad old chap, if you take him the right way. Do you remember old Rawlings?"
Jean smiled.
"As if I could forget him! Does he still potter about and talk philosophy amongst his flowers?"
"He talks of you sometimes, and asked me if I was coming to London to find out whether you had done your grand picture yet that was going to make every one talk."
"I can see the curl of his lip as he spoke," cried Jean. "Tell him from me when you go back that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that the Crimson Rambler is going to astonish him yet. Do you learn lessons from him in the garden?"
"We have differences of opinion there."
"Oh," said Jean impulsively. "I should like to go down there for a day and see them all, but I have never yet regretted leaving, and I never shall!"
"And you are still studying art?"
"I have been away, but I am going to have three months now at the Royal College of Art. I am going in for portrait painting, and I want to perfect myself in it."
He looked at her meditatively; then shook his head. "You will neither make money nor fame at it," he said. "You haven't the look of it."
Jean was inclined to be indignant.
"I daresay you think me impertinent," he went on, with his imperturbable good-humour, "but I take an interest in you, for, as you know, I have cut you out, and will have in due time what was originally meant for you. Now I pictured you one of those stout, square young women with big voices and untidy hair who can elbow their way along quite easily and are indifferent to snubs. Those are bound to get on."
"I have got on, haven't I, Miss Lorraine?"
Jean did not know whether to be vexed or amused with this young man, but she was not going to be disheartened in her choice of a profession.
"I think you had better show him your last production, dear."
"No," said Jean; "that I will not do. I am, in fact, packing it up to go to the framers. Mrs. Gordon wrote asking to have it back when I found out it was too late for the Academy this year. But I am going to try again for next year. Mrs. Gordon is quite willing."
"I will bring Rawlings up to see it when it is hung there," said Charlie Oxton.
He stayed a good while, and when shaking hands with Jean said—
"We are good friends, are we not?"
"I don't make friends quite so fast," said Jean. "We are acquaintances at present."
"How many visits will make me into a friend?"
She would not answer, though the quizzical look in his eyes brought an answering gleam in hers.
A week afterwards she received some snipe in a tin box with the inscription inside—
"For COUSIN JEAN,
From an acquaintance!"
And after this vegetables, fruit, and flowers followed at intervals.
Jean was studying again hard. Miss Lorraine went away to visit her mother and left her alone for a time, but when the summer came on, and Jean became pale and languid with the heat, Miss Lorraine begged her to take a rest.
"I don't know where to go," she said. "I am getting unsociable, I fancy. Two girls I work with, want me to go with them to Brittany, but they are rather go ahead, and I am old-fashioned. After my Paris experiences, I fight shy of art students. I could go down and do some painting in a farmhouse. I want to study some interiors, if I can, but I don't know where to go."
"We will make some inquiries. I wish you and I could go off together somewhere, but I have promised to keep house for a friend while she is away for a much-needed change."
Very shortly afterwards, Miss Lorraine came to Jean.
"My dear, I think I have heard of the very thing for you. It is an old farm down in Devonshire, and was originally a manor house. It has a beautiful oak-panelled room in it, and the whole of it is most picturesque, I am told. Part of it is in a very tumbled-down condition. Two daughters of a clergyman I used to know live in it. They got it cheap, and they are anxious for lodgers or paying guests in the summer time. What do you think of it?"
"Have you any photo of it?" asked Jean. "You know I do not care for strangers much, and I would rather lodge with quite common people. I should be far more independent. Perhaps I would not be allowed to paint in peace."
"I am quite certain you would be perfectly independent there; they are a Scotch family, well connected, but very poor."
"Scotch, are they?"
It was a magnetic word. From that instant, Jean wanted to go. It did not take long to make her arrangements, and she packed up her clothes and painting materials in no time.
"Miss Lorraine," she said the evening before she went, "do you think I am wasting my life?"
Miss Lorraine looked at her.
"Are you feeling you are?" she asked.
Jean fidgetted in her chair. She was sitting by the window, which was open, and enjoying the scent of the mignonette and heliotrope in the balcony.
"I remember," she said, without answering the question, "that Colonel Douglas said to me just before I came to London, 'Seek the best thing first, not last.' I asked him what he meant, and he said that it would be the one thing that would bring no disillusion or disappointment; he warned me that it must not be the sham or counterfeit, but the genuine article. I thought he meant fame then, but I have begun to think differently lately. And I have had disillusions in my art life. What do you think is the best thing to seek after?"
Miss Lorraine was silent for a moment; then she said softly—
"'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you.'"
"I felt you would say something like that," said Jean after a pause; "and I want to tell you something before I go away from you. I have been—what you call seeking, but I can't find."
Miss Lorraine looked her sympathy. Jean went on hurriedly—
"I may not be enough in earnest or I may not have the right motives, but I do want to be really good like you and Colonel Douglas and—and others are. And I've asked to be made so, but nothing has changed me. I have even begun to read my Bible regularly, but I don't care for it. Were you born good? How did you arrive at it? Don't laugh at me. I'm really in earnest."
"My dear child, I am the last person in the world to laugh at you. Let me ask you this, Jean: do you feel that your life is a failure in the sight of God?"
"Well, no—not exactly. I am making use of one of the talents that He has given me. And I can't say I'm a very wicked sort of person, am I? I was looking at a little devotional book the other day—One of yours, I think it is—and I could not work myself up to such a pitch as I was told to. I don't loathe myself for being such a sinner; I don't feel sometimes that I am one at all."
"But whether you feel it or not, the fact remains the same. If you believe the Bible, you must believe in sin. If you have had any knowledge of life, you must believe in it."
"Let us take the great centre truth of the Bible, Jean. God's own creatures that He made for His own glory were estranged from Him; He sent His Son to bring them back to Himself. Christ died for this purpose. He offered Himself a sacrifice to reconcile us to God. Have you been reconciled? Or are you still estranged? If you are estranged, you are virtually rejecting and ignoring that great sacrifice. That is the one sin which shuts out a soul from the presence of God."
"Christ said, 'This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.' Do you know God, Jean, dear? Have you any interest, any love for Him?"
"Very, very little," murmured Jean, with downcast eyes; "but I am groping after Him."
"And do you know the one thing that will make you really in earnest in your search?"
"No."
"The knowledge of your own heart. Ask God to show it to you. Ask Him to remind you that for twenty years you have received all and given nothing to Him; that you have lived entirely for self. That though the Son of God came down on this earth and suffered and died for you, you have been turning your back on Him and entirely ignoring His claim upon you. When you realise the burden of sin, which, remember, as long as you keep apart from your Saviour, you are bound to bear on your own shoulders and be responsible for, you will long in a way you now cannot understand for a personal interview with your Saviour. And that interview must in one way or another, I believe, take place in every soul that is really seeking the kingdom of God."
Jean remained speechless. Miss Lorraine had never spoken with such fervour and earnestness to her before.
She added—
"Unless your life is in touch with your Saviour, it is utterly purposeless and unfruitful. A life centering round itself becomes more dwarfed and withered year by year. It is like a pool of stagnant water—no force, no freshness, no purity."
Miss Lorraine was called away. Jean sat on by that London window feeling very small indeed. She wondered dimly how she could have spoken so complacently of herself and her talents a few minutes ago. But self was deeply rooted in the inner chambers of her heart, and the shaking of her idol was not a pleasant process.
She wished Miss Lorraine "Good-night" that evening with a miserable face.
"I know you are right," she said, "and I am all wrong, but I am a very slow learner. You have shaken my foundation, and it will take time to readjust it."
The next morning, she had bidden goodbye to her friend and was being whirled down into the heart of Devonshire.
It was a lovely June day. As she looked out of the carriage window and saw the green fields, the fresh young green of the trees, and the young colts and lambs at play, the peace and rest of the country stole into her soul. She passed snowy orchards of apple-blossoms, thatched cottages and slopes of yellow buttercups and marsh marigolds; here and there a whiff of freshly-cut hay made her look about until she discovered the hayfield.
A railway journey gives time for thought and reflection. Jean came to a crisis in her life whilst she was gazing out of her window. She seemed to get a sense of God's greatness and goodness, His tender, protecting care of all His creatures, and as she dwelt on His love and power, she began to realise her own worthlessness.
Jean was slow in learning, as she said, but what she learnt, she remembered. If the unspoken prayer of her heart could have been put into words, it would have been after this fashion—
"I'm not even good enough to feel my sins, but I want Thee, I want
to belong to Thee. I want to be made into what Thou dost wish me to be."
"I want to know Thee, I want to have Christ as my Saviour and Lord.
I am helpless to do any of this properly myself, but I am willing. Take me
now, and help me never to go back from it."
And as her gaze went up into the unfathomable blue, her eyes were opened. She knew that a personal interview between her spirit and her Master had taken place. A sense of awe came over her. If she had been alone in the carriage, she would have got down upon her knees. As it was, a plain, hard-featured woman opposite wondered what thoughts could so soften and lighten a young face.
It was five o'clock when the train put Jean down at her destination. She was the only passenger that alighted, and both the stationmaster and one porter looked curiously at her.
"Be you the party for Kingsford Farm?" she was asked.
"Yes, I am. Is there a trap here for me?"
"Miss McTaggart be waitin' outside."
Jean went through the little booking-office and found a very shabby dog-cart drawn up under the shade of an old elm close by. A girl was in it, and turned at once to greet her.
"Good evening, Miss Desmond. I hope you are not tired. Will you get up in front? And Brayson will pack your luggage in behind."
Jean was disappointed that the voice was essentially an English one. Yet the face with its freckles, high cheek-bones, and rough reddish brown hair, was distinctly Scotch. She climbed in, and took herself to task for noting the shabby jacket elbows, the white cotton gloves, and the square thick boots that protruded from the short blue serge skirt her driver wore. But Miss McTaggart was apparently oblivious of dress. Jean put her down at once for a strong-minded young woman who scorned all feminine fripperies.
She little knew that in one quick glance, Christobel McTaggart had taken in every detail of her London-made blue linen gown, with its French embroidery, her shady hat with blue cornflowers, even her dainty gloves and boots. Jean was not an extravagant dresser, but she always knew what she wanted, and her artistic eye never played her false.
For a short time, there was silence between the girls. Why did Jean's thoughts take her with a rush to another drive some months ago in an open dog-cart, to another silent driver?
She rushed into speech at once.
"Have we a long drive? It is very good of you to come to meet me."
"About four miles. We have no man to spare at present, and I liked coming."
"How delicious the air is! I was beginning to feel very tired, and now I am quite reviving. Are you near the sea?"
"No, but we can see the moor from our bedroom windows. I like the moor air as well as the sea. It is quite as invigorating."
Up and down hill they went, and Jean had her first experience of Devonshire lanes. She longed to get out and pick some of the wealth that bordered their path, but Christobel assured her, she would see plenty of lanes close to home.
And finally, after passing through the river, at the ford from which the farm took its name, they drove in at some white gates, and one of the prettiest old farms that Jean had ever seen lay before them.
It was of grey granite with big buttresses, covered with ivy, dividing it into three sections. Over a deep stone porch was a projecting casement window; the entrance was flagged with stone, but an old oak staircase went up in the centre of the small square hall to a long passage above, out of which all the bedrooms led.
Jean was led into a long low sitting-room, which had originally been a dining hall. Here she was welcomed by a young woman who was evidently Christobel's senior by some years. She was in a cotton shirt and dark serge skirt, but her face was a beautiful one, and a wealth of thick auburn hair was rolled off her forehead into a shapely coil behind. Very pale and weary she seemed, yet her smile seemed to warm through Jean's bones, as she expressed it afterwards.
"Come and sit down and have some tea," she said, "and then Chris will take you to your room."
Jean obeyed, and as she sipped her cup of tea, she looked about her. The room was plainly furnished; it was wainscotted in oak, but above the wainscot, it was simply coloured in grey-blue, and some old prints adorned the walls. An oak dresser contained some really good old china; there was a bookcase, a side table holding a sewing machine and work-basket, and a couple of armchairs; the square table was in the middle of the room, and chairs were placed round it. Jean faced the two windows, which, with their deep window seats and casement panes, were the prettiest part of the room.
"This is our sitting-room," Barbara McTaggart said as she noted Jean's wandering eyes. "The kitchen is the other side of the hall; the room above this, is where we think you will like to sit and paint. It is the only room that has been preserved in its original state. We think it was used as the best bedroom by the farming folk, and they have not made so free with it as the other rooms."
"It looks a dear old house," said Jean.
"One wing of it is nearly in ruins. We cannot afford to repair it, and it is unsafe to live in. But we have as many rooms as we want. I believe originally they were all panelled rooms, but when the house was turned into a farm, a great deal of the wood was stripped off and burnt."
Their conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Chris and her brother, a young man with a plain, honest face. He was introduced to Jean as "Mick." He sat down and drank a cup of tea with relish.
"I've just been selling some cattle," he said to Jean, "and it's a warm day to be much on the highroad here. I'm as thirsty as a fish, Barbara. I met Tom Barton coming home; he asked me if we had any flowers for sale. They're going to have some féte on next week, and want all the flowers they can get."
"I have nothing to do with the flower garden; Chris must settle that."
Chris squared her elbows on the table, and began to discuss the subject with her brother. Jean looked at her, as she did so. She had a bright, pleasant face, but none of the beauty that her eldest sister possessed. Her hands were red and roughened with toil, and her whole appearance seemed to bespeak that she was useful rather than ornamental.
KINGSFORD FARM
"And one, an English home—gray twilight pour'd
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored
A haunt of ancient peace."—Tennyson.
WHEN tea was over, Chris took Jean upstairs.
"We are rather proud of this old house," she said, as she pointed out to her the ornamental carving round the balustrade of the staircase. "If one had money, how delicious it would be, to do it all up. This is your bedroom; it is very simple, but we hope you will like it."
Jean saw a large, rather bare-looking room. A very small square of carpet was laid in the centre of the floor; a little white dimity bed was in one corner, an old-fashioned washstand in the other; a hanging wardrobe, small chest of drawers, and modest dressing table completed the furniture, with the exception of one cane-bottomed chair and a bowl of pink roses on the deep window-ledge.
"It looks most cool and comfortable," was Jean's remark.
Then Chris took her farther down the old passage, and threw open a carved oak door.
"This is our show-room," she said. "Sometimes Barbara and I come up and sit here with our work. We imagine ourselves ladies of leisure, and expect a stately old butler to throw open the door and announce some guests dressed in Caldecott's fashion."
It was indeed a show-room. Ceiling and walls were all panelled and carved, the mantelpiece was in beautiful preservation, and the coat-of-arms and motto of the owner was carved above it; the floor was of polished oak.
"I spent two days last week rubbing it up," said Chris proudly; "for I was determined you should see it at its best. We settled when we came here, that nothing new should ever come into this room. That Chippendale cabinet belonged to our grandmother. The old oak chest we picked up cheap at a sale. The spinning-wheel an artist friend brought from Brittany, and that queer old cradle we got at a cottager's sale. These Chippendale chairs used to be in our drawing-room at home, and so did that oval table."
Jean's eyes were busy. Three casement windows looked out over valleys and woods, and the river dashed over granite boulders below. As she leant out of one window which was framed with creepers, a deep crimson rose touched her cheek, and the scent of the honeysuckle from below filled the air with its fragrance.
"It is perfect," she said. "May I use this room?"
"Of course. You are going to paint it, are you not? I often wish I could paint. I think I am better with my pen than with my brush. I wrote a little story about this room when we first came here. You know the place is called King's-ford, because Charles I forded the river during the Civil Wars. It is easy to make up a nice little tale about this house being his refuge for the time. It belonged to some Hollingsworths long, long ago. I am sure the name sounds loyal, does it not? There is Barbara calling; I must go, for I have a good hour's work in the dairy. We have supper at half-past eight. Your trunk has been carried up to your room, and you will find Barbara downstairs if you want anything."
She ran out of the room, singing in a fresh young voice—
"Should one of us remember
And one of us forget,
I wish I knew what each will do—
But who can tell as yet?"
Jean pulled a chair up to the window and sat down. She wanted quiet, for she wanted to think.
The quaint old-fashioned room, the scent of the climbing roses, the sleepy chirps of the birds outside as they prepared to retire to rest, all seemed like some delicious dream. She could hardly believe that that very morning, she had been in the midst of the roar and bustle of London. And more serious thoughts took possession of her as she sat at that window—thoughts that made her at last murmur to herself:
"This has been a day of great beginnings."
She did not go downstairs till the supper bell rang, and then she found every one in a pleasant, talkative mood. Conversation was not wholly on farming; Barbara, Jean found, knew London well, and had plenty to say on art and literature.
"My first visit was when I was quite a young girl," she explained. "I used to stay with an old uncle and aunt. They did not go out themselves, and never entertained, but they sent me to every museum and picture gallery in town, and very often to a good concert. I learnt a good deal whilst with them."
"I have never been out of Devonshire, since I was two years old," said Chris, with a sigh, "though I was born in Edinburgh."
"Were you?" said Jean, with interest. "I wonder if you have any relations still in Scotland?"
"No, none, except my godmother, whom I have never seen. She is a very distant connection of ours—a Mrs. Fergusson. She lives about sixteen miles out of Edinburgh."
"At a house called 'Duncommon'?" exclaimed Jean. "I wonder if it is the same!"
"'Duncommon' is the name of her house," said Barbara gravely. "Do you know her?"
"Yes. How very strange! It must be the same."
Jean began to tell them of her Scotch visit with great animation. There was no difficulty in proving that Chris's godmother and Jean's Mrs. Fergusson were one and the same.
"She has asked me at different intervals to go and stay with her," said Chris, "but I have never been able to do it as yet."
"It seems so strange to come down to Devonshire and find a link at once with the people I have been staying with in Scotland," said Jean presently.
"Not so strange as you imagine. The Douglases and Lorraines both lived in our father's parish in Hampshire. The living was in the Douglas gift, and was given to my father, because they had known him in Edinburgh. You went to Scotland through Mrs. Talbot, Colonel Douglas's sister. The Fergussons were mutual friends. Scotch folk always help each other and hang together."
A little sigh followed Barbara's words.
"Then do you know Colonel Douglas as well as Miss Lorraine?" asked Jean.
"Yes, slightly; but he was in the service when we knew the family, so was only home occasionally."
When supper was over, Michael McTaggart went out. Jean lingered on in the room, watching Chris clear away the remnants of the meal, with some surprise. Barbara asked to be excused, and followed Chris into the kitchen, leaving Jean by herself for a short time.
When the sisters came back, they brought work with them, and talk began again. Jean listened in wonder to an account of what seemed to her a hard, barren life, with an ever-present anxiety as to how to make both ends meet. Yet the sisters were perfectly cheerful and happy. When she went up to her bedroom that night, she felt a decided interest in the family into which she had come as a paying guest.
Early hours were kept in Kingsford Farm, but Jean came down fresh and vigorous at eight o'clock the next morning. She was surprised to hear that Chris had been up since five.
"I do all my dairy work before breakfast," she said, "and in summer, the best part of the day is in the early morning."
Jean went up to the panelled room directly the meal was over.
"I will take the morning for work and enjoy myself for the rest of the day," she announced.
And Barbara smiled in her quiet amused fashion, but said nothing.
Jean got her canvas out, and made a little progress before one o'clock.
"Now," she said, as she joined the others at their early dinner, "I want one of you to come out with me this afternoon and show me the premises and the country round."
"We are busy folk, Miss Desmond," Michael said good-naturedly. "You will not often find any of us at leisure till about five o'clock."
"I am going to pick currants for jam," said Chris. "Will you talk to me while I work? It is very pleasant in our kitchen garden."
"I will come and help you," said Jean. "What is your sister going to do?"
"I am going to bake bread," said Barbara, "and make a cake. I'm sure a cool garden would be pleasanter than a hot kitchen this weather."
"Yes," said Jean, with pity in her tone. "I couldn't stay in a kitchen five minutes, a day like this."
She put on a shady hat, and followed Chris out. They went through the farm and into a walled garden, with rows of apple and pear trees bordering the walls. Currants and gooseberries of all sorts and sizes were there in profusion, and they set to work with a will, though Jean's tongue went faster than her fingers.
"I like currant-picking," said Chris cheerfully, "but I can't bear doing the gooseberries; they tear one's hands so!"
"I shouldn't do them, then," said Jean, "but make some one else do it."
"But if there is no one else?"
"Then pay a small boy to do it."
"Do you always get over your difficulties so easily?" laughed Chris. "If you are not rich, you cannot afford to pay some one to do your disagreeables for you."
"Then I would just leave them," Jean persisted.
Chris shook her head, but did not argue the subject.
"I wish, if you don't think me curious, you would tell me how you came to this place," said Jean presently. "You all seem so contented and happy here, and yet from what you say, you have not always been accustomed to a farm life. Who taught you to do dairy work and cook and manage everything?"
"I will tell you," said Chris, and a shade of gravity crept into her frank, laughing eyes. "We never have been comfortably off. My father had a very poor living, barely three hundred a year, and there were eight of us children to feed, clothe, and educate. Our mother was not strong, and of course, from the time we were quite little children, we learnt to help ourselves and others."
"Barbara was the eldest, then came Jack and Tom, then Lilian, then Mick, then me, then Rob and Martin. The elder boys went to school, but mother taught us girls, and Barbara, in her turn, taught the younger boys till they were old enough to join the others at school. We girls did all the mending, and as we grew older made our own dresses, and helped in the house as much as we could."
"Then mother's health failed, and she died. Barbara came home from the hospital just in time to nurse her before the end. She couldn't be spared from home again. Two years afterwards, Lilian married a soldier, a Captain Dunbar, who took her straight out to India with him; she has been there ever since. Jack and Tom went out to Canada. They are just getting a livelihood, no more. Rob went to sea; Martin died. He had diphtheria. Father would nurse him, and caught it, too. He died three weeks afterwards."
Chris stopped abruptly. Jean hardly knew how to express her sympathy. But with a catch in her breath Chris went on—
"Mick was wild to follow the others to Canada, but a friend of father's offered us this farm very cheap, and we three determined to come and work it. We are making it pay, which is more than any one has done in it before. We always said from the time Mick was quite a boy, that he was a born farmer. He used to be always talking to the country people and helping them with their fields. Of course, his idea was to go out to the Colonies, but we had not any capital to start him, and after talking it over, we determined to stick together and come here. Lilian did ask me to come out to her, but of course, it couldn't be thought of."
"Why not? I have always heard that India is a delicious place for girls."
"Yes, if you have money for your passage and outfit, and no one wanting you at home. One of us could not have done the work here; there must be two—I mean two women. We have only a woman who comes by the day to help us with the rough work. Barbara would not have been able to manage everything; I could not have left her."
"I should have done so," said Jean thoughtfully. "I should have been thankful to have a chance of getting away from poverty and work. I shouldn't have thought of Barbara at all, I should have thought only of myself. I should argue if I were dead, or if I had never been born, she would have got on without me, so she might as well do so now."
Chris paused in her currant-picking and looked at Jean.
"You have never had brothers or sisters?" she said.
"No," said Jean, "I have not."
"Then you have only had yourself to consider. That must be a strange experience."
She went on picking in silence for some minutes. Jean went on impetuously—
"Do tell me, have you and your sister had any pleasures in your life at all? I have thought my life a dull and dismal one, but it was a life of ease compared with yours, and that I fled from. I wanted my liberty, and I got it. Have you done nothing but slave and work since you were children? Wouldn't you like to go out to India, or to Scotland to see your godmother, or to London to do a little sightseeing?"
"We have never had time or opportunity to do what we like," said Chris, laying down her basket and straightening herself for a minute. "I don't know that I have given much thought to it. I suppose I have had my daydreams, as most have, and Barbara has given up something tangible. She could have married once, but father could not spare her, and she sent him away. But I can't say we are unhappy, either of us. We get a good deal of enjoyment out of our lives, and fancy what we might be doing! Governessing in some tradesman's family, or perhaps typewriting and starving in London. Clergymen's daughters have a hard time of it when their fathers are taken from them. Don't pity us. I enjoy every minute of my day. Now I have filled my basket. Shall we go in?"
"I haven't filled mine," said Jean, in rueful tones.
"Never mind; perhaps you will help me again to-morrow for a short time. I am going to hunt for eggs now; will you come with me?"
Jean willingly agreed, and they were busy till tea-time, Jean experiencing for the first time the engrossment and fatigue of labour.
CHARLIE OXTON
"A man he seems of . . . cheerful yesterdays
And confident to-morrows."—Wordsworth.
IN a few days' time, Jean had adapted herself with great content to the simple farmhouse life. She wandered out of doors a good deal, made sketches of anything that took her fancy, and worked away at her panelled room. After tea, she would persuade one of the sisters to bring their work out into the garden, and sitting lazily in a hammock chair, would beguile them into talk. She liked Chris's lighthearted chatter, but sometimes preferred listening to Barbara's earnest views of life.
She was talking about her brother one day.
"He is such a steady, good boy, with such a sound head on his shoulders," she said, with sisterly pride. "So many of our friends predicted our failure in farming. Every one seems to think that if young fellows can farm in the Colonies, they always come to grief if they try it at home. But Mick has got grit and purpose in him, and he knows the secret of successful farming."
"What is it?" asked Jean. "Why is it that young men can't farm in England as they do abroad?"
"I think it is their position in life that is against them. When first we settled here, several families round were inclined to be friendly. They expected Mick to hunt, and shoot, and join in all the sport going. They asked us to tennis parties and 'At homes.' They looked upon Mick as a gentleman farmer, not a working one, and when he told them simply and plainly that he could not afford the time for sport, when we explained that we were really going to bake and brew and milk and garden, they quietly dropped us. We know the vicar and his wife, but no one else. And the hard part for Mick is that he never mixes with his own kind. The other farmers round here are quite ignorant rustics. We do not despise them—Mick learns many a valuable lesson from them—but socially they are not at ease with us nor we with them. In the Colonies it is so different, for so many gentlemen are farming. And I think there are few young men who will put their pride in their pocket, and work with their labourers. The temptation is to treat their farm as a small property, and get servants to do the work for them. Then failure is sure to follow."
"You all shame me," said Jean. "I feel so lazy and self-indulgent. Honestly, Miss McTaggart, are you happy working so hard?"
Barbara looked away to the wooded hills on the other side of the river, before she replied.
"I think want of occupation is the great cause of people's discontent and unhappiness. We are so busy that we have no time to think whether we are happy or not. Happiness never bears analysing, does it? I think one is happiest, when one is unconscious of it."
"Oh no," said Jean; "I can't agree to that. I always know whether I am happy or not. Don't smile in that way."
"I am only thinking that you are very young in years and experience."
"I am afraid I am," Jean said humbly. "I feel I have a lot to learn. Miss McTaggart, let me ask you a question which was asked me once. Round what or whom does your life centre?"
Barbara looked surprised.
"We are getting into deep waters," she said. "I think my life at present centres round Mick and Chris, and—and my absent brothers abroad."
"Yes, your life and your sister's centres round others," said Jean, with conviction. "Mine has centered round myself, but—but—I wonder if I shall come on to your centre, and then reach my right one at last?"
"What is your right one?" asked Barbara, looking puzzled.
Jean coloured. "I have been seeing things so differently lately—I mean from a religious point of view."
"Oh," said Barbara, with quick comprehension. "I see. I suppose the religious centre is the Church—our vicar would say so."
"Would he?" said Jean. "I was told it was Christ, and I've been looking it up in the Bible. St. Paul puts it, 'To me, to live is Christ.' But I'm just a beginner, and it seems so difficult to understand."
Barbara did not speak. Jean went on—
"You and your sister are so brave and unselfish and good, that I thought perhaps you might be able to help me."
"No," said Barbara, a slow flush coming into her pale cheeks. "You are quite mistaken in your opinion of us. It is entirely owing to the way one is brought up. You have had no cause to think of others, because you have had no 'others' belonging to you. We have been trained since our infancy, by principles and circumstances, to put our individual selves in the background. No credit is due to us for doing so. No high motive—I am speaking of myself now—except that of duty has influenced us. I daresay mine is not the highest centre, but it is the only one I am deeply interested in. My brothers and sisters come first with me. Their welfare is, I think, dearer to me than my own."
"I see," said Jean slowly. "Your love for them rules your life. And I suppose that is what a real Christian feels about Christ. Then of course, He would be the centre of their life."
There was silence again between them. Barbara with her quiet, sad eyes looked at this young, earnest-hearted girl with wonder. Was she groping after truths that she herself had let go by? Her life had been full, but Jean had touched upon a truth that might make it a fuller and a happier one.
And then Barbara rose, and shook off such disturbing thoughts.
"I must go in now," she said. "I have finished the work I brought out to do."
With Chris, Jean was bright and girlish; she admired her cheery practical common sense, and learnt many a lesson from seeing her at work amongst her poultry and flowers.
One afternoon, Jean wandered out by herself over the meadows that led down to the river. There were times when the bustle and noise of the farmyard drove her out and away from it. As she got nearer the river, that delicious coolness that running water always brings in its train, refreshed and soothed her spirit. And then suddenly, she heard a voice, and Charlie Oxton, in a fisherman's suit and a fishing-line in hand, stepped up on the bank from the grey boulders below and confronted her with a broad smile of recognition.
"Hullo! Where do you spring from?" he said. "I've come down for a week's fishing, and am putting up at the Long Elm. How extraordinary to run up against you here!"
Jean looked at him straight.
"You knew I was coming here," she said; "for I told you so."
"Did I?" he said in some confusion. "I've such a bad memory. I hear so much when I'm in town, that I get quite muddled. On my honour, you could have knocked me down when I saw you walking down this way?"
"I thought you were farming," Jean said, still with a spice of severity in her tone. "This is a busy month with most farmers. How can you leave your hay?"
"I don't cut mine till July. You are forward in these parts. I'm just having a holiday before my busy time begins. Do you like fish? I've caught a splendid fat trout. Come and have a look at him."
Jean followed him down the bank, whilst he plunged his hand into his basket and dangled a very fine specimen of Devonshire trout before her eyes.
"You shall have that for your supper," he said. "Now will you say you are glad to see me?"
Jean could keep grave no longer. It was impossible to resist Charlie Oxton's gaiety.
"Of course I am glad to see you," she said. "Have you seen Miss Lorraine lately?"
"Haven't been to town since you left. How is your old feudal room getting on? Seen any ghost in it? Now own up, are you really working or playing down here? I've a suspicion that you are just wandering round in buttercup meadows and making every honest labourer stop his work to talk to you."
"As I am doing at this moment," retorted Jean. "I will not be your interruption, for I'll depart at once."
"You'll do no such thing. Sit down under this tree, and tell me what you're doing. I don't believe they're feeding you well. You look pale. That's your farm up there, isn't it?"
"How do you know?" asked Jean.
"Oh, my landlady told me."
"You were never cut out for a story-teller!" said Jean. "You're such an audacious bungler!"
Charlie's eyes twinkled.
"Would your friends ask me to tea, if I brought them some fish? It's dull work having one's meals in the musty inn parlour."
"You had better catch your fish first," suggested Jean.
Barbara looked surprised, when later on Jean appeared with her cousin, but she welcomed him warmly, and when Mick came in, Charlie and he plunged into farming matters with such zest and earnestness, that Jean and the sisters left them to talk and smoke together.
"Did you know Mr. Oxton was coming down here?" asked Barbara quietly of Jean.
"Of course not. I should have told you, if I had. He is a nice boy, and has knocked about in the Colonies so long that it has given him that blunt, downright manner."
"Is he the one who has ousted you of your grandfather's money?" asked Chris.
"That is hardly the way to put it," Jean replied. "My grandfather disinherited me before he came on the scene at all."
"She'll marry him," Chris said to her sister that night when they had retired to their bedroom that they shared together. "And it will be a nice match. I can tell from the way he looks at her that he is in love."
Barbara smiled.
"I am not so certain," she said. "I fancy Jean does not care for him in the way you think. She is the kind of girl that will expect a good deal from the man she sets her affections upon. I do not think that this Mr. Oxton will come up to her standard."
"Now, Barbara, how can you possibly tell? That is ill-natured to Mr. Oxton, who seems a very good sort of man."
Charlie Oxton certainly spent a good deal of his time at Kingsford Farm. When haymaking began, he went into the fields with Michael, and was as hardworking as any. He made himself at home with an ease and frank unconventionality that astonished Jean. He ran errands for Barbara, chaffed and sparred with Chris; and took Jean under his special care and protection with such a brotherly, or perhaps fatherly, solicitude, that she was more amused than touched by it.
"It's no good, my dear child," he said one morning when he had crept up to the panelled room and had stood unperceived behind her chair for some minutes watching her paint. "You have taken a subject beyond you. The perspective of that elaborate ceiling is wrong, and if you succeeded in depicting this apartment as it is, what an empty picture!"
"It is meant to be empty," said Jean, laughing away her annoyance; "it is an empty interior. What is the matter with my perspective? I have sketched and re-sketched it, till I am quite dizzy."
"As I look at it now," said Charlie, squinting fiercely at her canvas as he spoke, "your point of sight—your vanishing point say—is too low!"
"Of course it is, you goose!" said Jean impatiently, "because you are standing up and I am sitting down. You only do it to tease. I don't believe my perspective is wrong. I have tested it every way."
"Interiors are out of date," went on Charlie, unabashed. "What the public wants are pretty girls to look at, or angelic children, or sporting men. They won't thank you for a panelled room with no one in it. Now if you put me in it, there would be some sense in it. I will pose as a rowdy Cavalier, if you like, or a prim Puritan, or a love-sick swain. I will dangle one leg out of that window over there, and kiss my hand to some damsel below, or I will stand in the middle of the room with a drawn sword and knitted brow, with my teeth clenched, and my eyes in rolling despair, waiting for my pursuers to burst in the door. See what subjects I am giving you! With me as a centre-piece, your picture is sure to be a success. I would grace the walls of the Academy."
"Oh, go away!" said Jean. "You know I am not intending this picture to be a success. It is a test of skill: I am trying to improve myself in my drawing."
"Well," persisted Charlie, "will you undertake my portrait? You say you are going in for portrait painting. Will you paint me? I will come up here and give you two hours' sitting a day. I will not speak a word. The portrait must be full face. I will give it to our uncle as a birthday present, and when he has admired it, and thanked me for it, and hung it up in his hall, I shall tell him it was painted by you. Can you see and hear him when he is enlightened? When shall the first sitting be? To-morrow?"
"Never," said Jean. Then she turned round and faced the young man. "Charlie, you have no business here. Go back to your uncle, and to your farm. You have been here three weeks. You are doing no fishing. You are wasting your time and other people's. And—and I'm quite tired of the sight of you!"
"Say that again," said Charlie, trying to look injured. "Who brings you London papers, and rabbits, and trout? Who talks to you when you are silent, and smooths your frowns away, and is ready to dry your tears at any moment of the day? Who is ready to lie down this blessed moment on the ground for your Highness to trample upon and walk over? Now come, Jean, as a man and a—a brother, I protest against such a rude, ungracious speech."
"I mean it," said Jean, with a grave face. "I don't want you here any longer. You hinder me in my work. I have been neglecting it lately, and life isn't made up of walks and talks in orchards and fields."
Then he held out his hand.
"Goodbye," he said. "I am going, but we haven't done with each other yet, Jean."
He slammed the door behind him, and strode out of the house.
Jean went on painting, and quite expected him to put in an appearance when tea-time came round, but Michael enlightened her—
"I met Oxton on his way to the station," he said. "Hasn't he gone away rather suddenly? He had his luggage with him, and wished me goodbye."
"Why, he promised to help me with my bees to-morrow," said Chris, in tones of dismay. "Did you know he was going, Jean?"
"I told him he was wasting his time here," said Jean.
The sisters looked at each other, but said nothing, and Jean never mentioned him again. She applied herself more diligently than ever to her work on hand, and sometimes shut herself up for a day at a time in the panelled room.
A SUBSTITUTE
"He never errs who sacrifices self."—Bulwer Lytton.
"JEAN," said Chris one morning at breakfast, "guess whom I have heard from to-day?"
"Any one that I know?" said Jean musingly.
"Yes."
"Not Mrs. Fergusson?"
"The very same. And she sends her periodical invitations. I wonder she cares to remember me at all."
"But why don't you go? Oh, you must. You would like her so much. She is fascinating. I only saw her once, but I longed to see her again. Why shouldn't you go?"
"It isn't feasible," said Chris briskly. "We never have been able to afford the luxury of paying visits, have we, Barbara?"
"I wish you could go, but I don't see how it could be managed."
Barbara looked wistfully at her younger sister as she spoke.
Michael glanced at both his sisters; then slowly put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, and tossed across a little crisp crackling piece of paper to Chris. "If that will help you to go, I shall never miss it nor you either; it's the price of that acre of hay in the bottom meadow. I sold it straight away to Tom Barton the other day."
Chris looked at the five-pound note, then flipped it back at her brother with her finger.
"Thank you," she said laughing; "but it isn't a question of money, exactly. No, I must write her a civil little note as I generally do."
Jean said no more, but after breakfast, got hold of Barbara alone.
"I wish you would make Chris go," she urged. "She never seems to have any pleasure. It is such a chance for her. What is the difficulty?"
Barbara hesitated.
"We cannot spare her," she said. "Chris does so much about the farm, her fowls, the dairy, the pigs,—everything she sees to. I have as much as I can get through, with the cooking, and mending, and cleaning. I would willingly do her work if I could, but it is more than one pair of hands can do."
"Couldn't I help you?" said Jean quickly. "Don't say no; let me take Chris's place for the time. I'm sure I could manage everything but the dairy. If you could do that, I would take some of your work instead. Do let me try, and we will make Chris go!"
Barbara was hard to persuade, and Chris harder still, but in the end Jean overcame all their objections.
"I am my own mistress," she said. "It will do me good to have to work. I have lived such a lazy, selfish life up to now. Give me a chance of showing you that I am not utterly incapable. And if everything does go wrong, Chris can but come back. I don't think I can do much harm though, and I have helped her so often in feeding the animals, that I feel I know all about it."
When it was once settled, Chris became wild with delight. Her only fear was that she would not be properly dressed. But Jean took her in hand; the little village dressmaker came up, and the panelled room was turned into a work-room. An old black silk of Barbara's, originally her mother's, was, with the help of some inexpensive black net and an old lace fichu of Jean's, made into a very nice dinner dress for every evening. Then Jean persuaded Michael to take her into the nearest town on market day. She came back with sundry small purchases, amongst which was a dress length of very pale blue sprigged muslin; this, with some old lace that Barbara turned out of an unused cupboard, was manipulated by the dressmaker and Jean together into a very pretty gown.
When Chris remonstrated, Jean said, "I will give you something, so this is my present, and I've a pair of pale tan slippers and stockings that I'm going to lend you. I noticed we wear the same size in shoes."
Chris's everyday clothes were repaired and smartened. When the last day at home came, and she was putting her "outfit," as she called it, into a neat little trunk that Mick had bought for her, she turned to Jean with tears in her eyes.
"I feel," she said, "as if I am not worth all this. If it was Barbara, now, she would grace any one's drawing-room or dinner table. I'm such a plain, homely creature; I shall be awkward and ill at ease, and my godmother will be sorry she has asked me."
It was so new for Chris to think about herself at all, that Jean was almost startled. She reassured her.
"You will enjoy yourself from beginning to end. The only fear is that Mrs. Fergusson may want to keep you altogether."
Then she gave her many exhortations.
"Ask Mrs. Fergusson to take you to see Mrs. Gordon, and try to see Sunnie, if you can. Mrs. Gordon is not fond of taking visitors up to the nursery, but say you have a message to give her, from me. Oh, how I wish I was coming with you! I loved Scotland so! The very smell in the air of the heather and pines seems so utterly different to anything we have in England. What it must be in summer, I fail to imagine! I only saw it in the late autumn and winter. And if Miss Meta Worth is staying there still, remember me to her. She is a nice girl, and she is very fond of Mrs. Fergusson. You may see her. I wonder if you will see Mr. George Fergusson and Dr. Fergusson. Do you know her sons at all?"
"I didn't know there were any," said Chris, staring at Jean with puzzled eyes. "You have never mentioned them. What are they like?"
"I only saw Mr. George once. He lives in Edinburgh. Dr. Fergusson attends Sunnie; he is a great deal at Mrs. Gordon's. She is a cousin of theirs. I think I told you. Write and tell me everything, Chris, won't you? I shall be so interested to hear about every one that you meet."
"I think it is a pity that it isn't you going, instead of me," said Chris, looking at Jean's flushed cheeks and eager eyes with amusement. "I expect I shall be dreadfully homesick, and perhaps arrive home again before a week is over. Do you know that I have never left home in my life? Does that seem incredible to you?"
She made a very early start the next morning, and left the house with her brother at seven o'clock. Barbara looked after her tearfully, but there was no time to waste in regretting her departure. Jean and she set to work with a will, and for the first time in her life, Jean found that it took a good deal of strength and energy to do the commonest things in a house. She said to Barbara at the close of the day—
"I am glad you have let me look after my own rooms. I am ashamed to think how Chris must have tidied and swept and dusted for me, and I taking it all as a matter of course! I shall manage better to-morrow."
Alone in her room that night, her thoughts followed Chris through every stage of her journey.
"I would give all the world to be with her," she said to herself, almost passionately. "I can picture them all sitting down to dinner, Dr. Fergusson coming in late and rather tired. How does he spend his evenings at home, I wonder! Perhaps he will lie back in an easy chair with his newspaper and a cup of coffee, and listen to Chris and his mother talking together. I wonder if Mrs. Fergusson remembers me at all! Perhaps Dr. Fergusson will go to the piano and play, but he will never play such delicious impromptus as he did to me and Sunnie in the old nursery. Oh, if only such times could last for ever! Shall I never have them over again! It seems hard. It all meant so much to me, and I feel as if now I was nothing to any of them—only a young struggling portrait painter who came and went, and whom little Sunnie rather liked; but then she would like any one! If I could only go back, now that I see things differently! I used to speak so scornfully of religion. I would be so different!"
And then Jean did what many a young over-full heart has done before—she threw herself upon her knees, and told the One she was getting to know as her personal Friend the inmost secrets and longings of her heart. If some tears fell, the comfort of knowing that she had given herself and her life into the hands of One who loved her, sent her to rest, happy and content.
And five o'clock the next morning found her stirring. She was determined to fill Chris's place to the utmost of her ability, but after the novelty of the first few days wore off, she began to feel the irksomeness and weariness of the daily household tasks. She had never known before what it was to be obliged to work when she felt disinclined—headache, backache, heat or cold, must be entirely disregarded, if the routine of Chris's work was to be accomplished. Her dogged perseverance held her in good stead, and the assurance of Chris's enjoyment did much to solace her, for her want of leisure.
Barbara spared her as much as possible. She felt sincerely grateful to her, and would have lightened her labour, if she could.
"It all seems such an easy, happy life to you and Chris, until one comes to do it," said Jean, one afternoon as she was helping Barbara to iron some linen in the kitchen. "Don't you get sick of it all, and long to have some one to do all the drudgery for you? It seems a waste of life for educated and cultured people to be filling their time with such menial work."
"I don't think it is waste of life," Barbara said, thoughtfully. "Very often the people living in ease and luxury are wasting their lives, as you call it. You see us now in our busiest time, but in the long winter evenings, we have time for reading and improving our minds. I have a horror of sinking to the level of the rustic labourer, who, when his work is done, sits and dozes in his kitchen or the inn parlour, and lets his brain become less and less active as the years roll by. Mick reads to us while we work. Sometimes I have a game of chess with him, and he brings home many a good and interesting book from the free library in the town. Our vicar is very good in lending us magazines. He comes in and has a chat with us occasionally. Do you think we are apathetic and sluggish in our conversation and tastes?"
"No—oh no—far from it!" exclaimed Jean hastily. "I think you are all wonderful, and I have no business to criticise you. I only thought that if I were always to live the kind of life that you do, I should give up everything else. It would be too much trouble."
"You are unaccustomed to such work as ours," said Barbara. "You would get used to it, after a time. It is what many an English girl does in the Colonies."
"Yes," said Jean, "but some of them sink under it. It is a case of the survival of the fittest out there."
Chris's first letter to Jean was an intensely interesting one to her, and she read and re-read it with increasing pleasure:—
"MY DEAR JEAN,—What a trump you are! When I lie in bed here sipping
my early cup of tea, and think of the delicious restful day in front
of me, I know that you are up and about, roughening those artistic
fingers, and burning your pretty face over the kitchen fire, tramping
through the yard after the chicks, chasing the pigs away from the
dairy, and sweeping and dusting, laying the breakfast and taking it
away—oh! I must stop, but I can see it all in my mind's eye, and quite
expect to receive a telegram soon: 'Can stand it no longer. Come back
at once.'"
"Well, I have written to Barbara and given her an account of my
journey. I know you will be more interested in my godmother. She was in
the drawing-room when I arrived, and greeted me quite affectionately.
What a handsome, old lady she is! We had a quiet, little chat together.
She showed me a miniature of my grandmother, whom she knew intimately.
Then, she took me to my bedroom. I felt like Cinderella in the palace!
Such a luxurious room, with every comfort—a sofa, and a bookcase, and
a writing-table, lovely pictures and dainty chintzes! I felt I could
spend the whole of my days in it."
"I was left to dress for dinner. There were some cream roses on
my dressing table, and her maid, who came in and embarrassed me by
insisting upon unpacking my things and helping me to dress, suggested
my wearing them. I was so thankful they were not pink in colour, as
I know she would have made me put them on. I should have been too
frightened to refuse, and the combination of those and my red hair
would have put a finishing touch to my ugly face! Well, I got into my
black silk and rustled downstairs with my head well up, and wrapped
my shyness over with an easy assurance of manner that I hoped would
carry me through. Dr. Fergusson was in the drawing-room when I went in.
I like him, Jean. He has the keen sense of humour I love to see in a
man, and a sense of repressed force of character—how can I describe it?
When he forgets himself and talks with earnestness and animation, you
realise he is a strong and clever man, but you also realise that there
is a good deal more of him to know than he lets you know. He and his
mother had a delightful discussion on the present generation versus the
past."
"'Of course,' said Mrs. Fergusson, 'every one is staunch to their
own generation. I think my own girlhood was a much happier and more
wholesome one, than the girls of the present day. But my mother
thought her girlhood was preferable to mine. Mrs. Kitty McTaggart,
Christobel's grandmother, said once to me: "'Bel, my dear, I don't mind
growing old, I don't mind grey hairs and wrinkles, but I do mind these
empty, scatter-brained lassies scoffing and jeering at the days of our
childhood. It is the sweetest memory to me, and the only comfort to me,
is that the wheel of time will bring these lassies to my stage, and
they, in their turn, will have their past held up to ridicule by their
grandchildren!"'"
"'I should like to have known that grandmother of mine!' I could not
help saying."
"'You are very like her, child,' my godmother said, and I could only
stare at her, for the miniature she showed me was such a sweet one."
"I mentioned your name, Jean. Mrs. Fergusson remembered you quite
well, after a minute's thought. Dr. Fergusson asked whether you were
doing any more portraits. I told him how it was you came to us, and then
he asked his mother, if she had seen Sunnie's picture. She said no, but
that if I liked, she would take me to see it. 'I hear,' she said, 'Mrs.
Gordon is going to allow it to appear in the Academy, if it is approved
of. I would not care to have a child of mine brought before the public
in such a manner.'"
"'I suppose Helen belongs to the present generation,' said Dr.
Fergusson, quizzically."
"We went into the drawing-room after dinner, Mrs. Fergusson and I.
The doctor was called out. I found myself telling her everything. I felt
it would be more honest. And when I told her how you were doing my work,
so that I could come, she said thoughtfully—
"'That is good to hear. I remember I thought she had capabilities
of other kinds besides art. She was undeveloped, when I saw her.'"
"I heard that Miss Worth had gone back to London. I am afraid I must
stop now, but I will write again soon."
"Your affectionate and grateful"
"CHRIS."
"Dr. Fergusson came in before I went to bed, and said to me in a
half-joking fashion—"
"'You mustn't let my mother rob you of your roses. You have been
accustomed to keep early hours, I can see, so beware of interesting her
too much. Time is of no account to her. She considers it a servant, not
a master.'"
"Mrs. Fergusson put her hand on his shoulder in such a pretty,
graceful fashion."
"'No, laddie,' she said gently, 'I have given up trying to master
it; it is like the modern young woman—I can't keep pace with either!'"
A DOCTOR'S VERDICT
"And I must go alone! Most near and dear,
I cannot hope to have thee with me here!
I know that thou wilt watch me to the last,
Till all sweet ministries of love be past,
And we shall not be separated long—
But 'Love is strong as Death,' and Death is strong."
—From "Heart to Heart."
YES, Chris was enjoying herself. There was not the smallest doubt about that. Barbara read her letters through, with a smile on her lips and a light in her eye.
"I am so thankful that she is having this change," she said to Jean. "Chris has never had any pleasure like it before. It will do her a world of good."
"Now," said Jean, "if she sees some nice Scotchman up there, and gets engaged to be married, would you be glad, Barbara?"
"Oh, I hope I should; yes, I am sure I should," was the hurried reply.
Then, after a pause, Barbara said rather nervously, "What is this Dr. Fergusson like, Jean? Chris seems to mention him so often."
Jean felt her heart give a thump against her ribs. She knew at once what was in Barbara's mind, and for the first time, wondered what she would feel like if Chris captivated the doctor's heart.
"He—he is a very good man, I know," she replied, steadying her voice with an effort. "Every one likes him."
Barbara said no more, but Jean passed a sleepless night with useless conjectures as to the possibility of Chris and the doctor taking a liking to each other. "Of course, she cannot fail to like him!" argued Jean, in deep depression of spirits. "And she is so bright and good tempered, so unselfish and so unaffected, that he is very likely to care for her. She will make him a good wife, and I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have brought about the match. Oh—" here she flung herself face downwards on her pillow and gripped it with both hands in the intensity of her feelings—"it will be hard—very hard to bear!"
She applied herself with extra vigour to her household tasks, and more than once Barbara remonstrated with her.
"You are always at it, Jean. We are working you to death. What will Miss Lorraine say?"
"She will be glad that I am making myself useful. I want to get away from myself, Barbara. You don't know what a selfish creature I am, and what a struggle it is, to keep my wishes and my desires in the background!"
Barbara only dimly understood, but while Jean was earnestly trying to quench her self-will and self-indulgence, there was another influence slowly growing and increasing in her heart, that was helping her successfully to cope with her besetting sin, and this influence was bringing a new tenderness and softness into her eyes and voice, and a deep undercurrent of peace and happiness into her soul.
Jean was a slow learner at the feet of her Master. But she was learning. From being a dreary irksome book, her Bible was giving her fresh thoughts, day by day. She stumbled very often, her self was her worst enemy, but she thanked God that her life was widening, and that now she could feel as much interest, and perhaps more, in others than in herself.
Chris continued to write her bright, amusing letters. She told of a long day in Edinburgh with her godmother, of lunching with Mr. George Fergusson, whom she thought very nice, but not a quarter good enough to be the son of his mother, of the sightseeing she had done, and of the charming Scotch people she had met. She described a day when she lunched at Strathglen, and found little Sunnie on her couch underneath an old chestnut-tree on the lawn. Dr. Fergusson had carried her down, and Chris described her as "a quivering, radiant sunbeam."
"I don't wonder Jean loved it all," she wrote. "The sombre old house, with its rich carvings and stained windows, and gallery of portraits, the sad, silent self-contained mistress, the devoted old servants and the little bit of sparkling quicksilver with her ringing laugh, her quaint conceits, and her wonderful love for everything and everybody, it impressed me tremendously, and the bond of union between the doctor and that tiny child is most touching!"
Then she spoke of Sunnie's portrait.
"It is marvellous! Jean must be a genius. She seems to have caught and held the spirit of the child in her canvas. It isn't only the outside of Sunnie, but the indescribable sweet witchery of the little darling, the absolute purity and innocence of her nature."
Jean read these extracts, smiled and sighed, and waited impatiently for the next to come.
A fortnight passed, three weeks, and then Chris wrote, saying she was coming back.
It was towards the close of a very warm day in August when she returned. Mick brought her back from the station in triumph. He was a very quiet young fellow, and Chris was his favourite sister. He had missed her, more than he cared to say. Barbara welcomed her home with open arms, and Chris seemed as delighted to be back, as she had been to go. She was brimming over with talk, and had gained an indescribable sort of society air which amused her sister. But Barbara soon found that Chris had come home absolutely heart-whole.
"It is only in story books," she confided to Barbara, when they were alone, "that country girls go away from home for three weeks, and meet their fate in that prescribed time. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, but have seen no one that has taken the slightest liking to me, nor I to them."
"We were wondering—" Barbara began, then hesitated. "Did you like Dr. Fergusson, Chris?"
Chris looked at her sister, then laughed.
"Oh, you dear old thing, is that what you were getting into your head? I shouldn't say that the doctor is in the least, a marrying man. He is so—what shall I say?—self-reliant and self-contained. Awfully nice, and considerate and respectful to all women, which is not the fashion with younger men nowadays. But his heart—if he has one—is wrapped round with a stout substantial crust of stolid indifference and unimpressionability! I should say he was interested in women as fellow-creatures, but he never individualises them any more than he would his patients."
She said much the same to Jean, and laughed at Jean's pertinacious questions.
"Why do you like Scotland so much?" she asked in her turn.
And Jean flushed, and was more wary in her catechism afterwards. Then they slipped into the old routine, except that Jean persisted in lightening Chris of some of her labours.
"I never knew how much you did, till you went away," she said. "I have always been too self-indulgent; it will do me such a lot of good, to work a little."
"But you have your painting. You have quite neglected it, since I have been away."
"Yes, but I am making up for lost time now. I shall soon have finished it."
"And then we shall lose you."
"I have had a delicious time here," said Jean. "But I must be in town again soon. The autumn is coming on, and I think I shall have a chance of doing some portraits during the winter."
Time slipped away, but when Jean came to leave Kingsford Farm, she felt she had made real friends there, and friends who would remain so.
"You must come back to us another summer," said Barbara. "Come to us in the spring-time. We have fields of daffodils and primroses; it is the sweetest time in the whole year to me."
"I have learnt a good deal from you," said Jean thoughtfully. "I never had my selfishness brought home to me before. I hope I shall never be so self-absorbed again."
She could not speak of the deeper lessons she had been learning. Not even to Miss Lorraine, in her letters, had she given the least hint of the great change that had slowly and gradually come into her soul.
But she had not been back many days in town, before Miss Lorraine noticed the difference in her.
And one Sunday evening coming home from church Jean said abruptly—
"Do you remember your talk to me, Miss Lorraine, before I went to Kingsford?"
"Yes, I do."
"I see things differently now. I hardly like to say it, but I think I've got a different centre in my life. I hope I have the right one; I should like to tell you about it."
Miss Lorraine listened with a glad heart. The answer to her many prayers had come.
She was able to give Jean wise counsel at this juncture, for, like many beginners, the girl had her ups and downs, and could not understand why her feelings should vary so—why one day she felt able to do and dare great things for her Master, and other days would be cold and indifferent; afraid of being thought peculiar or fanatical, and hopelessly discouraged by her inconsistency of conduct.
"Don't expect to walk without falling, Jean. Aim at doing it. There is no necessity for lowering your standard, but a fall does not mean instant loss of God's grace and love. Tell Him about it, and His hand will be outstretched at once. Remember Peter on the stormy lake. We none of us can always walk on smooth waters. Upheavals will take place; we may be shaken, knocked down, but a Christian will find his feet again, and perhaps be a humbler, truer Christian in consequence."
"Am I right to keep to my art, Miss Lorraine? Is it waste of life?"
"I think not at present, as long as you do not let it crowd out the better things in your life."
So Jean worked on in her School of Art, and was busy and happy as the winter passed by.
The winter brought Miss Lorraine a heavy trouble. Colonel Douglas came and went as usual, but her quick eyes noticed a greyness and pallor about his face, and a weariness that he in vain tried to hide.
She taxed him with it at last.
"You are not well."
"Getting old."
"Nonsense, not old enough to be so tired."
He looked wistfully at her for a moment, and then began to talk of other things, but she was not to be put off, and returned to the attack a day or two afterwards. After a little fencing, he told her—
"I have been to a—a doctor. I am not quite the thing; in fact, he has found out what I suspected myself, that there is something serious, and something, Frances, that cannot be cured."
There was dead silence. The woman caught her breath. Few moments in her life had been so intense with pain as this. She looked at her old friend with a white, still face.
"I am glad you have told me; but is it—is it quite hopeless? Don't tell me, Philip, that you are going to be taken from us?"
There was a sharp ring of anguish in her voice that she did not try to keep back.
The Colonel rose from his seat, paced the room irresolutely, then turned to her.
"I was about to wish that my time was short here, Frances, but I will not be a coward. I have always enjoyed such good health, and have led such an active life, that a sick-room is abhorrent to me. But if it is to be my lot, I shall be willing to go through it. I may live a few years, the doctor says, but I shall always be an invalid. I have done with health and strength and activity; and sickness and weakness and pain, Frances, are formidable foes to confront. There! I ask your pardon for letting you see me in this mood, but I have always been to you with my troubles, and I could not keep this back from you."
He made a feint at one of his cheerful smiles, but Miss Lorraine sat still.
"Oh," she said at last, "if I could go through it for you! Women can bear sickness—they are accustomed to it. Oh, Philip, can I do nothing, nothing for you?"
Colonel Douglas sat down and partially turned his face from her, as if he could not meet her eyes.
"I would like," he said a little brokenly—"at the end—you know I am not fond of nurses—I would like to think, you would be near me. Would you come, if I sent for you, Frances?"
"To the end of the earth," she said. "But you are not going far away, Philip?"
"The doctor advised my going to the South of France. He suggested first a sea voyage, but I could not stand that. You see I have been such an active man, that I don't think I could stand the life on board ship when you're thrown upon yourself so. I thought perhaps I would try the Riviera, and yet—"
Here a little fiery sparkle shot into his tired-looking eyes. "Why should I try to prolong my life? I shall be away from my friends. No, I will die in harness, Frances."
Then a great impulse seized the woman who loved him. She rose from her seat and stepped across to him.
"Philip, you must carry out the doctor's orders, you must go to the Riviera, but—will you take me with you?"
The Colonel did not start, or show any surprise at her words. But he put one of his hands on her shoulder, and looked at her.
And then he drew a long breath.
"Oh, Frances, do you think I do not love you better than that? Could I wear you out for my selfish gratification and pleasure? It is like you to offer yourself for such a task, but I would not be a man, if I were to say yes."
Miss Lorraine's fair face was flushed. For a moment she struggled for self-control, and then she burst into tears.
"Oh, Philip, my heart would break, if you suffered and slowly died—away—out of my reach. I ask to come as your nurse. You cannot, you shall not, prevent me! Because I made a great mistake years ago, shall that mistake still shadow our lives? I am not a girl now, I am a woman, and if I am forward and unconventional, we are too old friends to misunderstand each other. You do not like hired nurses, I do not, and I plead with you now, for the sake of the girl you once loved, to give me the right to come with you and comfort you, and be with you till the end. Do not refuse me."
Colonel Douglas took her hands in his.
"Frances, my love has never changed, I have never swerved in my allegiance to you, and if you are going to crown my last days with such unspeakable happiness, I will hold out no longer."
He drew her to him, and the long lonely years of severed lives in the past, and the certainty of the black cloud hovering over them, so soon to sever them again, could not bring one drop of bitterness into that sweet moment when their hearts met and touched each other.
"We will not wait any longer," he said at last, "and we shall be married as quietly and quickly as possible."
Miss Lorraine acquiesced. Her one desire was to be with him now, and spare him as much as possible. She knew that joy and grief would be intermingled through every bit of intercourse they held together, but her own feelings she thought little about—he was her chief concern.
When Jean was told, she marvelled at Miss Lorraine's composure.
"I have always wondered," she said simply, "why you did not come together before."
And this was the general opinion of their friends. The Colonel came as often as he generally did to the house, but his anxious care and thought for his numerous protégés was most touching, and once Miss Lorraine broke down.
"Why do the good people all go first?" she exclaimed. "You can't be spared, Philip. It is such a test of our faith to believe that it is for the best!"
He smiled, and shook his head. It was easier for him to feel resigned to his fate, than for her; but she never uttered a complaint again, and outwardly was the same bright, brave soul that she had always been.
It was just at this time, that Jean's picture was accepted for the Royal Academy. She could hardly believe in her good fortune at first, and then was quite cast down, to think that neither Miss Lorraine nor Colonel Douglas would ever see it hanging there. They were both delighted at her success, and the Colonel said, "You will go ahead now, Jean. I predict that picture will make your name."
"It is all owing to you," she said gratefully.
TOWN FRIENDS
"Friendship is the great chain of human society."—J. Howell.
THE marriage took place very quietly one bright frosty morning. Only Mrs. Talbot, Jean, and Colonel Douglas's best man were present. It was their wish to have it performed privately.
Jean's eyes were full of tears, when the parting came. The Colonel looked ill and worn, but his face was illumined with peace and content, and his wife was perfectly oblivious of everything and everybody but him.
As they drove away, Mrs. Talbot turned to Jean.
"That is a marriage that must have Heaven's blessing on it!" she said. "Philip is lucky to have won her at last, when he needs her most. He ought to have been married to her, years ago. I never could understand it. It seems an irony of fate, doesn't it? That they should be allowed such a short time of wedded bliss. But Frances is a sensible woman to have done it. She will be an invaluable nurse to him, and I really could not have left my family to go with him."
Jean felt very forlorn, when they had gone. Mrs. Douglas had let her house to a friend, and Jean was in lodgings with an old servant of hers, who had a house in a quiet little street at the back of the church in Kensington High Street. She was away most of the day, but in the evening, when she came back to her empty rooms, she realised how lonely a girl could be living in London. It was a good thing that she had her interest in Sunnie's picture just now. That occupied her thoughts and attention.
One afternoon, she was walking back to her lodgings, when she met Charlie Oxton.
He greeted her delightedly.
"I've been round to your house and had such an experience. Six young ladies drinking tea with their mamma. You could have knocked me down with a feather! They were all most gushing, and when I asked for your address, tried to look shocked. So, then I explained, I was your cousin and had a perfect right to go to your rooms and have tea or lunch, or dinner as I happened to want it. And I added, 'I'm from the Colonies, and I'm accustomed to straightforward, simple dealing.' And then seeing from their looks they didn't approve, I hooked it."
"But," said Jean, who could not help smiling at this characteristic speech, "I don't intend to offer you hospitality in my rooms. It is one of the things Miss Lorraine begged me not to do. Dear me! I shall never call her Mrs. Douglas. You see she didn't much like my living by myself; but girls do it as a matter of course now, and I am in no ways peculiar. Only I have to be very circumspect in my conduct."
"Bother take circumspection! Let us go and have tea somewhere. I hate English conventionality!"
Jean took him to a favourite tea-shop of hers.
"You have heard that my picture has been taken?" she said.
"No, really? Hearty congratulations. Rawlings must come up. He remembers the crimson rambler, and said only the other day, 'Miss Jean's fortin' be long in comin'. Well, her tooked her way agen the master an' me, and her be bound to suffer!'"
"Do you think they will sky it? Or stuff it, in some dark corner? I'm so anxious, that I long to go and beard the whole lot of them in their den. Who hangs the pictures, Charlie?"
"I'm hanged, if I know! What a rum affair this is of the Colonel's! It has all been done so rapidly that I can hardly believe it. What brought him to the scratch? Why on earth, do two old parties of that age want to spoon? I thought she was too sensible a woman for that sort of thing!"
Jean's eyes flashed.
"She is too sensible for you to discuss at all. I daresay, you can't understand it. They are both of them above and beyond you altogether, and I'll ask you not to mention their names before me, unless you do it respectfully!"
Jean's flashes of temper always amused Charlie Oxton. His eyes twinkled.
"You're awfully handsome when you're roused. I haven't the bump of veneration. Was born without it, they tell me. But I don't want to talk about them. It was quite 'promiskus'! How are your country friends? Awfully good sort they are!"
"I heard from Chris this morning," said Jean, relapsing into calm again.
"And that dreary old brown room you were painting. Is it finished? Has that been offered to the Academy? No? That's a pity. They'll lose something. Are you doing any portraits now? Because I think I could get you some commissions."
"I'm open to any offer," said Jean.
"But you won't paint me."
"No, you're too uninteresting. I like to paint good-looking people."
"Now that's what I call downright wickedness of you art people. You're all for outside show. Dress Vice up in beauty, and you'll paint her! The truly virtuous and intelligent of the earth count for naught. Why do you paint portraits? To perpetuate the individuals after they've gone the way of most men. Why should the homely good folk not be remembered, as well as fashion's beauties?"
"I quite agree with you," said Jean, "and as a matter of fact they often are—if they can afford it. It is only rich people, who order life-sized portraits in oils. But real good people will leave their lives and influence imprinted on the hearts of those who love them, and they will need no portraits to remember them by. The beauties who have nothing but their faces to recommend them, will need to have their pictures taken, if their friends wish to remember them at all."
"Poor Beauties!" said Charlie. "So now I know why you won't paint me. My life and influence has so imprinted itself on your heart, that you will need no portrait to bring me before you. Well—there's something soothing in that! But about this commission. It is an old chap who has been making his pile in Australia. He has had some funny ups and downs, but now he has settled down as a family man and bought an estate in Berkshire, and he wants to decorate his walls with the orthodox oil portraits. His wife vows she won't sit for the biggest painter living, but he is determined to have his own visage on his walls, and I undertook to sound you on the subject."
"I might not give him satisfaction," said Jean, slowly.
"Bless your heart! Anything would satisfy him. I believe I could sketch him off myself. A bald head, two keen far-seeing eyes, smug placid self-satisfied smile, thick plebeian nose, and very big prominent ears. White shirt front and red tie. Place him against a marble pillar, with an Italian stuccoed villa in the background, let his fat hand with two huge rings rest on a greyhound's head, and there you have him!"
"It doesn't sound enticing!"
"But, my dear girl, you don't paint because you like it, do you?"
"Of course, I do."
"I thought you were making it your profession."
"So I am."
Charlie looked at her and shook his head. "You'll never make your fortune," he said.
Jean laughed gaily.
"Not my pile, like your good friend, but I shall get along. I have no expensive tastes, and a simple life suits me best."
"There I'm with you! The more money you have, the more you multiply your responsibilities, worries, and accounts! I can tot up rows of figures, as long as they don't run into more than three or four figures; then I'm stumped! We have a good many tastes in common, Jean."
"Very few I should say," asserted Jean.
He chatted on, driving dull care away, persisted in loading her with flowers, when he left her at her door, and scolded her well, for not being willing to go to a theatre with him. He stayed in town several days, and each day, found him lying in wait for Jean as she came out of her art school. She was quite relieved when he left town. He made her promise to write to him, if she wanted commissions for portraits.
"I run up against a lot of people, am always looking up old chums and going to stay at their places. I'm not like you were—bound and tied to the old man. I told him I must have perfect liberty of action and speech, and he knuckled under, in no time. But I'm often in the way of getting you work, remember; and will be on the look out for a real out-and-out beauty for you! Drop me a line if you think better of my old sheep-farmer. He isn't a bad sort of fellow."
A few days after his departure Jean got the following letter from him—
"MY DEAR JEAN,—You should have seen Rawlings' face when I told him
the news! He looked as if I were offering him a mixture of apple
dumpling and squashed toads! A kind of proud disgust and of awed
contempt showed itself in his smile. 'Ay, sir, if you be speakin'
Gospel truth, I be pleased that the maid has not come to ruin.
Her were allays so cocksure that her would do it, that I did feel
'twas the Almighty's business to teach her a lesson; but maybe
the lesson will come. 'Tis from the top o' the tree, the fall be
lowest! Go up to see it, sir? Well, maybe I shouldn't mind that,
as long as it be a respectable, nice sort of a pictur! There are
picturs, and there are picturs, sir, and 'tis to be hoped that
Miss Jean have done her name and fam'ly credit. I be very pleased
to hear that her have been doin' her best, but I've never rightly
understood this Academy. 'Tis a school for young gents, I reckon;
but tis not seemly for Miss Jean to be hangin' her pictur up on
their walls!'"
"I can tell you, he'll be a proper treat in town, and we'll surprise
you, when we meet you there. Take care of your little self, and for
goodness' sake, guard the door of your lodging-house. What would happen
to your reputation, if any male species—friend or relative—should leave
their card on the doorstep! I gave the old man your news at dinner. I
waited till it was nearly over, and then shot forth my explosive bomb."
"It shattered him, you bet! But he didn't move a muscle. In went his
eyeglass, and his glare was stony."
"Have I not requested you never to mention that young person's name
to me? Her actions are of no consequence or interest in my eyes, and
neither ought they to be in yours."
"'Hum!' I said, but I didn't plague him further."
"Goodbye, my little cousin."
"Your very plain but devoted"
"CHARLES."
"Absurd boy!" was Jean's comment. But she folded up the letter, and put it in her desk.
A short time after this, Mrs. Talbot came to see her.
"I promised Frances to look you up now and then, and I always consider you one of my brother's protégés—the only respectable one he has—excuse plain speaking, my dear! How are you getting on? Is your landlady attentive and obliging? You must come and dine with me one night. I shall be giving one or two quiet little dinners soon. By the by, do you know that Mrs. Gordon is coming up to town? She has taken a house in Chester Square for two months. She is bringing up that little child to a specialist. Dr. Fergusson has been planning it for a long time. I shake my head over it. He says she is strong enough for an operation now, which was talked about a long time ago."
"Really!" exclaimed Jean. "Is there any hope at all about her case? I fancied there was none."
"My dear, you know what doctors are! I believe myself, it will be a useless expense and trouble."
"But Dr. Fergusson must know. He would never let Sunnie suffer unnecessarily. And wonderful things are done nowadays. You have surprised me! I never thought Sunnie could be moved. How will she bear the long journey? When are they coming?"
Mrs. Talbot smiled at her excitement. "They will travel in an invalid carriage, of course, with every comfort. I believe they are to arrive to-morrow—I am not sure. Helen Gordon is an old friend of mine. Would you like to meet her again? I will send you an invitation to dinner the night I am expecting her, if you like."
"Thank you very much, but I don't know if Mrs. Gordon would care about seeing me again. She was very kind to me, but I'm a professional, Mrs. Talbot, and she only had me in her house for business. It is Sunnie that I would really like to see."
"Don't have any foolish pride. Mrs. Gordon will be glad to meet any of my guests. And as to Sunnie, go to see her, whenever you like."
When Mrs. Talbot left, Jean's feelings got the better of her. She danced upstairs to her dingy bedroom, put on her hat, and fled out into the park, with a song of thanksgiving in her heart.
Just when she was feeling most lonely, this news had been brought her. She could hardly believe that in a few days' time, she might meet the ones who were so constantly in her thoughts, and then she wondered how Sunnie would bear the journey, and whether she had any idea of what was going to be done with her.
For the next two days Jean haunted Chester Square. She hardly knew why she did it, but deep down in her heart, she had a secret hope that she might see Dr. Fergusson's tall, upright figure go in or come out of one of the houses. She felt shy about calling, for she did not feel sure of Mrs. Gordon's attitude towards her, but when the third and fourth day passed, and she heard and saw nothing of them, she resolved to venture. She knocked at the door in fear and trembling, and was more relieved than otherwise, when she was told that Mrs. Gordon was out. Then she asked for Sunnie's nurse, and was shown into the drawing-room. In a few minutes, the old nurse appeared, and her face was reassuring.
"Eh, dear Miss Desmond! 'Tis homely to see you, mem, in this great city. The bairn is just wonderfu', but she was awfu' upset by the journey, and we've had to keep her fearsome quiet. My heart misgies me ower this concarn, but 'tis the doctor's will and her mither's, and I'm ne'er the one to speak my mind agen it."
"Could I see her, do you think, nurse?"
"Weel, I'll no say ye mayn't, but the doctor's orders were that she mustna be excited, an' ye know what a bit o' quicksilver it is. There's to be a consultation to-morrow, an' I'm doubtin' if—"
"Never mind," said Jean, swallowing her disappointment bravely. "I will wait. I will leave you my address, Nurse, and then—"
She paused, for she heard a hasty knock at the hall door, and then a quick step that she knew very well.
In another moment the drawing-room door opened, and Dr. Fergusson walked in.
SUNNIE'S MOTHER
"What would I give for a heart of flesh to warm me through,
Instead of this heart of stone, ice-cold whatever I do;
Hard and cold and small, of all hearts the worst of all?"
—Christina Rossetti.
HE smiled as he shook hands with Jean.
"You have found us out," he said. "Sunnie has been expecting to see you every day. Her mother was not sure of your present address."
"Can I see her," asked Jean, "or is it best not?"
"I don't think it will hurt her a bit, only you mustn't stay long, for her sleep forsakes her at present, when she is too talkative."
"Perhaps Mrs. Gordon would rather I did not see her to-day."
"If you have my permission, it will be all right."
His smile was bright as he looked at her, and then he led her upstairs and opened the door of a large front drawing-room. There, on her couch by the window, was Sunnie. She did not turn her head or hear their entrance, for she was busy talking to her bird.
"If you were let out of your cage now, Dicky darling, would you know how to fly? Or would you have quite, quite forgotten how to, all these long, long years? But I think I know the secret, Dicky. I shall soon fly somehow, and they're going to make me either fly on earth, or else fly to heaven!"
Jean's eyes filled with sudden tears. Then, she stepped quickly across the room, and knelt down by the couch. Sunnie's arms were round her neck in an instant.
"My darling painter! You've come at last. Now I'm quite happy; and isn't it a wonderful happenings my being in London!"
"Now listen to me," put in Dr. Fergusson, as he pulled out his watch and shook it sternly in front of Sunnie. "Ten minutes' talk, and then Miss Desmond must go; those are my orders. She will come again another day."
Sunnie looked at him, a little saucily. "We shall have to talk very fast then, for there's ten million things, I want to tell her! This isn't my first visit to my painter in London, is it? You remember how I came before?"
She looked up at Jean with one of her mischievous glances.
"I've been to London very often since you've been here! I left my body behind, as I told you it was too hindering and stupid! Cousin Leslie never knew how I came—it was just a secret between me and you—and now I've come like everybody else does, by the train, with luggage, and it's a much stupider way, and it tires one so."
"But I love to see you here, Sunnie," said Jean, with her hand caressing the golden curls. "It has been such a pleasant surprise to me."
"And where has your little ill lady gone to?"
"Far away. She has a husband now, and doesn't want me."
"That's a pity! Cousin Leslie and me often wants you; we shall never get husbands and leave off wanting you!"
Jean laughed merrily. "You can't tell, Sunnie. You are safe from one for a long time yet, but he may turn up one day!"
"Let me tell you a nice little plan of mine," said Sunnie, with an old-fashioned air. "I've thought of it for a long time. You must come to us soon again, and instead of my picture you must paint Cousin Leslie. Yes—" here she held up one small finger at the doctor—"you're not to confusion me by laughing! My painter shall do you, and I'll tell you how to sit. I shall have you sitting in a chair, and you'll be smelling a bunch of violets, and your hair must just be long enough, to curl up at the edge like I love to see it, and I'll put my fur rug over your feet, and you must be reading a book, and just looking up and pretending not to laugh. And do you know what the picture shall be called?"
"Let me see," said the doctor. "I should think it might be 'The Versatile Wonder.' I am to be smelling, and curling, and cowering under a rug, and sitting, and reading, and looking, and pretending. Don't you think I might be talking, and playing the piano, and walking, and—"
Sunnie stopped him severely. "You're to listen to me—this isn't your ten minutes! It's mine and my painter's. The picture shall be called 'The Man We Love.' And my painter shall write it underneath, and send it to the 'Cademy, and it shall be put next mine. That's what it shall be called, for it's quite true, isn't it?" She turned her blue eyes upon Jean for confirmation.
Certainly. Sunnie was good at bringing about embarrassing situations.
Jean's cheeks flushed crimson. She tried to pass it off.
"I'm afraid. I shall never get another picture into the Academy, Sunnie."
"No; but tell me, isn't the name of it nice. We do love him, don't we?"
Jean's eyes caught the doctor's. His sense of humour was stronger than his sentiment fortunately, and she laughed aloud meeting his amused glance.
"What man or woman don't you love, Sunnie?" he asked. "We must wait awhile for this wonderful picture. My hair must curl first!"
The time was slipping by. Jean wondered if Sunnie was purposely keeping off the all-important topic. But in a minute or two, the child's face changed. A shade like the white clouds of a summer's day passed over it. She raised herself on her cushions, and took hold of one of Jean's hands with both hers.
"I'm going through a great thing this week," she said, dropping her voice almost to a whisper. "They say I sha'n't be hurt, and Cousin Leslie promises me I shall feel nothing, but I know it's a solemn thing, because mother's tears fell on my cheeks last night. It means, perhaps, that I shall get up and walk, like the palsy man who was dropped through the roof to Jesus. How I wish He would make me do it without any doctors! I love Cousin Leslie, but I've seen three strange men, and one had glasses that made him look like an owl, and they've poked me about so!"
Jean felt the little hot hands that were holding hers so tightly, begin to tremble. Dr. Fergusson had moved to the other end of the room, and was looking out of the window. She bent and kissed Sunnie on the forehead.
"It will be all right, darling; Cousin Leslie will be there; he won't leave you. And Some One else will be there, too. I am quite sure Jesus will."
The child's blue eyes glistened. She nodded her head gravely. "Yes, I shall shut my eyes, and tell Him to take me straight to heaven, if it hurts too much."
Then, in an unusually brisk and cheerful little tone, she remarked aloud, "And so you see, when p'raps you see me next, I shall be walking downstairs and opening the door to you, and I shall say, 'Come in; Miss Margaret Gordon has left her sofa, and you'll never see that Margaret Gordon again. Quite a new one is speaking to you now.' My dear painter, tell me true, which will you like best—the new strong walking Sunnie, or the little old sick one?"
Jean's time was up. She clasped the child to her for a minute, and tried to steady her voice.
"My Sunnie, as I know her, will never change," she said, and then she wished her goodbye.
In the hall, Jean turned to Dr. Fergusson, who followed her out.
"Tell me," she said impulsively, "is there any risk?"
"Not much," he said; "not enough to give me an anxious thought, but I don't know what the after effect may be. She is so nervously strung, and so excitable. Her mother and I have talked about it for a long time, and it is entirely her wish that the attempt should be made."
"If anything happened to Sunnie, I should never forgive you."
Jean's tone was fierce with emotion.
"Her mother would certainly not forgive me."
The doctor straightened himself as he spoke, and his features became set and hard.
Then he looked at Jean and his tone softened. "Physicians are only God's instruments," he said. "Little Sunnie is in better hands than ours."
"When is it to be?"
"The day after to-morrow."
There was silence; then as Jean held out her hand his eyes met hers.
"I will let you know the result as soon as I can, but it will not be a sudden cure. Very, very gradual. Goodbye."
He turned back hastily, and Jean went out into the street feeling very depressed, and more lonely than ever.
All the next day, she painted away with feverish eagerness. It was wonderful, the tight hold little Sunnie had taken of her heart; she tried to banish her from her thoughts, but her sweet little pathetic voice kept ringing in her ears—
"They're going to make me either fly on earth, or else fly to heaven!"
When the following day came, she absented herself from the studio, and though she made a pretence of doing a little painting at home, she spent most of her time in pacing her two rooms. Her heart felt bitter against Mrs. Gordon.
"Why should she urge this so much? Does she really care at all for her child, or is her invalidism a bore to her? I suppose Dr. Fergusson can be trusted, but he may have been overpersuaded by her."
If Jean had been a witness of a scene the evening previously, she would have judged Mrs. Gordon less harshly.
She had been sitting by her child till she fell asleep. Sunnie had been restless and wakeful, and it was ten o'clock before she dropped off into the sound slumber her mother waited for. Then Mrs. Gordon rose to leave the room. Turning round, she found that Dr. Fergusson was standing behind her chair, looking meditatively at the little sleeper.
She looked at him.
"This time to-morrow it will all be over."
"Yes," he said; "and God grant it may be successful."
"I want to speak to you. Come into the drawing-room."
Her voice was abrupt, yet before she went she bent down and kissed her child passionately.
Dr. Fergusson looked at her curiously, as he followed her into another room.
He closed the door, and then she turned and faced him. There was a light in her eyes, a tremor about her firmly pressed lips, that showed that this was no light matter to her.
"Tell me again, Leslie, am I risking her life?"
"I can only say, I think not."
"But you are not sure of it being a success? We have the best surgeons, they are hopeful, and you are so. It must, it must be a cure!"
She sat down with her face towards the fire, and though her hands were lightly clasped on her knees, the doctor noted how they trembled, and how nervously she was working her fingers in and out of each other.
After a minute, she said, without looking round—
"Sit down, Leslie, and listen to me. You will not despise me; you know how I love her!"
She stopped, as if she could not go on, and then it seemed as if her tongue was loosed.
She spoke rapidly, choking back more than one dry sob.
"Sunnie is the only bit of joy that God has left me. He has tempered that. I see her suffer, I know how much she misses. I see other healthy, happy children, and remember what she was when she was born."
"I never forget, never for one moment, day or night, what she might be and what she is. She is reconciled to it, but she is not natural, not child-like—she—don't be shocked, God is weaning her from me to Himself. I do not love Him; how can I? She does. Her interest is in the Unseen—mine is not; she loves me as she does her nurse, not as she does God!"
"And, Leslie, listen to me: she is my child—I must have her; she is all that is left to me. I want her to rise from her sofa, to shake off all her unnatural goodness and devotion, to leave it with her cushions and couch, and to come out into the world with me, her mother! Listen! I have stood aside all these years seeing you, and even strangers, gather, round her couch and amuse and interest her hour by hour. I have sat downstairs in my lonely drawing-room and heard the music and the laughter overhead. My heart is too full of passion and bitterness to join in it."
"The child knows I have no sympathy in her pretty fancies and conceits. Life is too real, too horrible to me to pretend to look at it with her innocent eyes. So I have looked on, as I say, and seen her turn to you instead of to me for her amusement and entertainment. Don't mistake me, I have never grudged you one hour you have spent with her. I am grateful, deeply grateful to you for doing what I could never do. I don't know if I am grateful to you and to her nurse, for making her so religious, but I am grateful to you for making her little life a bright and happy one."
"But now—oh, how can I tell you? Ever since you told me there might be a chance of her recovery, that she might, if this operation and treatment is successful, be able to stand and walk, and even be like other girls, how I have hugged the hope of it to my heart, how I have resolved to have my way and will with her, should she regain her health! I am desperately anxious, Leslie, about to-morrow's result! I feel I am staking my all on it, but if we win, my child shall be mine, ten thousand times more than she has ever been! I shall come first with her. I will take her out, and let her mix with other children, and clear her mind of all these morbidly religious fancies."
"Don't think I want to make a clean sweep of you, but I am tired of being in the background; I am tired of feeling my child is more saintly than I am! I want her to drop to her mother's level, to turn to me for wisdom and counsel, to think of earth and all it can give her, and be a little companion to me. A cripple child may well be a saint, but a healthy one, never!"
This passionate revelation of a soul that had shut itself away from others for so long startled its hearer.
Yet as he listened, Dr. Fergusson pitied more than he condemned. He knew that the trouble in her life had made her bitterly rebellious against the One whom she considered had cruelly afflicted her. It had soured and embittered her whole nature, and her very silence and reserve had helped her to nurse her resentment in secret. The flame of anger and bitterness had burnt steadily all these years, eating away all that was good and wholesome in her nature, and Helen Gordon had given way too long to the evil powers in her soul to be ashamed of owning now her passionate feelings and motives.
For a moment there was silence, then the doctor spoke.
"Helen, I can hardly believe it is you that is speaking! If these are your sentiments, may God in His mercy take little Sunnie from you, before you have time to injure her soul!"
The mother sprang to her feet.
"You are cursing me, Leslie!"
"Far be it from me to do that, and yet I can almost feel for the first time in my life, the power and the force of the Master's words: 'But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea!'"
There was a dead silence for a minute. The passion died out of Mrs. Gordon's eyes. She resumed her seat, and Dr. Fergusson gently put his hand on her shoulder.
"Helen, your love for your child will save you from trying to ruin her."
Mrs. Gordon remained silent.
"You are a little unhinged by your anxiety; you do not really mean what you say."
"I mean every word of it," she said huskily. "I don't know why I said it, though!"
"I want to ask you a question." Dr. Fergusson's tone was very grave. "Have you ever prayed since your husband's death?"
She looked straight at him as she replied shortly, "Never."
"Then I want you to do so now, with me. Don't speak. I tell you, I will not undertake to see little Sunnie through this operation, unless you kneel down with me and commit her into God's care and keeping."
"I cannot pray to One whom I have lost faith in!"
"'If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful,'" quoted Dr. Fergusson sadly. "You are a miserable woman, Helen, and in your misery, you are actually contemplating dragging your happy little child—as you express it—down to your own level. Is this a mother's work? Do you see what your wild words signify? Look back to your own childhood, and remember your absolute, unquestioning faith, your confidence and love and trust in God above. I knew you in those days, and I remember. Let us kneel together, and ask for that old faith to be given back to you. God is love. He understands. He pities, and He will forgive."
In another moment, Dr. Fergusson was on his knees in that drawing-room, and yielding to his almost magnetic influence, when again he put his hand on her shoulder, Mrs. Gordon followed his example.
His few quiet words had shown her herself in a startling light.
And then the strong man by her side poured out his soul in earnest, almost heart-broken supplication for her. It was a prayer that seemed to bring God Himself down to wrestle with the powers of darkness that surrounded the soul of one of His creatures.
And Leslie Fergusson knew that there was a desperate issue at stake. He knew that the woman beside him had come to a crisis in her life. If ever her pride was to be broken down, and she was to take the place of a supplicant instead of an injured sufferer, if ever her darkness was to be turned into light, and her rebellious discontent transformed into the peace that passes understanding, that time would be now. It was no wonder that he wrestled in prayer, no wonder that his soul rose in all its strength and importunity, and laid hold of the Hand that moves the world.
As Mrs. Gordon listened to the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man, she felt indeed that it would avail much.
Let us leave them. If the woman with seven devils in her was brought to the feet of her Saviour, and rid of her tormentors, would He be less ready to receive and pardon one who was likewise brought to His feet by one of His servants?
When Dr. Fergusson came out of that room, he looked worn and exhausted, but there was a light in his eyes that told of victory.
And that night a tear-stained, repentant woman knelt long at her bedside acknowledging her sin, and worshipping the One she had wounded so sorely.
SUCCESS
"Defeat thou know'st not, canst not know;
Only thy aims so lofty go,
They need as long to root and grow
As any mountain swathed in snow."—MacDonald.
"GOT through splendidly and is doing well. There is every hope
for her.—L. F."
This was the contents of a note brought to Jean about four o'clock in the afternoon, and the relief was unspeakable. The following day she inquired at the door, and the old nurse saw her for a moment.
"The doctors are very pleased, mem. I canna say so much for meself, for the bairn is just prostrate. If I only ken rightly what they've been doin' to her, but 'tis the muscles and nerves they've keep it blatherin' over, an' whether its untwistin', or cuttin', or lengthenin', or shortenin', a body canna tell. The bairn is to be keep it terrible quiet. An' she lies like a lily, puir wee thing! One o' those wenches from the hospital is helpin' me, but she be a puir feckless critter, an' I'm no gaun to be trappit by sich a wean as her, for her head be so haughty as her brains be sma', an' I'll learn her a few trifles yet, forbye we've seen the last o' her."
But it was many days before Jean could see Sunnie, and meanwhile she had a great pleasure.
One afternoon, Dr. Fergusson met her out, and told her that his mother was coming up to town for a week or two.
"She will be at the Windsor Hotel, and will be so glad to see you. She told me to tell you so. I hope you will be able to go."
"Indeed I will," said Jean, with bright eyes. And she took the first opportunity of paying Mrs. Fergusson a visit.
She found her in a private sitting-room, looking as well and handsome as she had seen her before. She welcomed her very kindly.
"My goddaughter spoke so much of you that I was anxious to see you again. I have to thank you for making her come to me."
"I was so glad she went," said Jean. "She did enjoy it all so."
"I could see she did. She is a happy, unselfish girl with old-fashioned ideas of home and duty. I hope to see more of her. We quite missed her bright, cheery personality when she left us."
They talked a good deal of the McTaggarts, and then of Sunnie, and finally Mrs. Fergusson said—
"And how are you getting on? If I remember, when I saw you last, you were more interested in Miss Jean Desmond than any one else. Now she seems to have disappeared. Is she always in the background?"
"I hope she will be," Jean said, laughing and colouring. "I don't think there is anything interesting to tell you about her."
"Are you still portrait painting?"
"Yes, I am making that my study, but I am working under a master still; I have so much to learn."
"And are you going to make it your life work?"
"I don't know. Sometimes I think not."
Jean's tone was a little wistful. She added—
"I want to be of real use in the world, Mrs. Fergusson. I want to help those who are in need of help."
"Have you many friends in your art world?"
"Very few. I had some, but they came to grief in Paris—or rather the wife did. And I never have cared to make any since."
"I should have thought amongst art students that there was many a chance of befriending those less fortunate than yourself."
"Yes," said Jean thoughtfully, "there must be. Thank you for the suggestion. I will try."
When she rose to go, Mrs. Fergusson placed her hand affectionately on her shoulder.
"I must see more of you, dear. If you are in lodgings, you must have lonely evenings. You must spend some of them with me. Can you dine with me to-morrow night?"
Jean accepted gladly, and every detail of that evening at the "Windsor" remained long in her memory.
She arrived clad in her best evening gown, a white crêpe de chine with bands of gold embroidery, and a bunch of yellow roses at her breast.
Very sweet and bewitching she looked, and when Mrs. Fergusson, who was talking to her son, saw her enter, her keen bright eyes dwelt on the doctor's face as he greeted her, and she said to herself—
"I never thought she was so taking. I am beginning to suspect Leslie's silence and indifference about her."
It was a cheerful little dinner-party. Jean enjoyed seeing the mother and son together; their conversation was out of the ordinary, and she listened with intense interest when topics of the day were touched upon.
Dr. Fergusson saw her home.
Jean for the first time since her drive with him to Strathglen, saw and heard him out of Sunnie's presence. He was a different man. His light badinage and humorous gaiety were entirely put aside. A stern gravity and keen alertness of thought and speech were now his characteristics.
Jean felt awed, almost afraid of him.
When she parted with him, she said a little timidly—
"Thank you so much for coming with me, but I ought not to have troubled you. I am accustomed to go about alone."
"My mother has old-fashioned notions, and I have inherited them," he replied, with a smile that swept away every line of sternness from his face. "Good-night."
Jean went into her lonely rooms that night with a sense of warmth and protection such as she had not felt since Colonel Douglas and his wife had left London.
A few days afterwards, she went to see Sunnie. She found her apparently unchanged, her little face perhaps slightly whiter and more transparent in texture, but her shining eyes and dancing smile were still undimmed and undaunted.
Mrs. Gordon was sitting by her, and as she turned to greet her visitor Jean wondered at the subdued sweetness and gentleness of her smile.
She had the same erectness and dignity of carriage, but the cold hardness, the determined set of lips and brows, had disappeared.
"If you will stay with Sunnie for half an hour or so," she said, "I will go away, for I have a good many letters to write."
Jean gladly acquiesced, and Sunnie stretched out her small hand to take hold of hers.
"I shall hold you tight all the time, and then you won't be able to go. Shall I speak first or will you?"
"I will listen," said Jean, laughing. "Your little head will be lightened, if I let you relieve it."
"Yes," assented the child gravely, "it will. My head has got to be taken care of—it's the oldest part of me; for as to my body I don't understand it at all, it is going to be quite different and quite new again. Let me tell you, painter, dear. It was last week they made me stand, and two doctors besides Cousin Leslie were looking at me. And do you know, I did it! And it didn't hurt me, only I felt funny afterwards. And yesterday, they made me try to walk, and I actually could, holding nurses hand, only I felt giddy and it made me cry, and I told them I wasn't sure whether God would want me to, for that was going to be His treat for me when I got to heaven. It's all very wunnerful, isn't it? But I keep thinking I will wake up and find I have been dreaming. And then mother is so—so different. She came in one night and put her arms round me and cried, and said, 'Sunnie, we're going to live a new, life, you and I, but we shall have God between us.' I s'pose dear mother is so happy because I'm going to walk; she looks so pretty and young when she smiles."
"And when are you going back to Scotland, darling?" asked Jean.
"I don't know."
Sunnie raised herself up in her cushions.
"I want to go back, and I don't want to go back. I don't like the train. It will be years before I can walk like you, I expect; and oh dear! Oh dear! I should like to pull my soul out of my body, and put little wings on it and fly away! I'm afraid I don't like my feet. They seem so waggly, and make my back ache, and I've got to try, and go on trying, they say, to make them walk!"
Sunnie's brightness for one instant deserted her.
Jean could not bear to see the shadow on her face.
"Oh, Sunnie, think of picking the primroses in the woods when you go home, of chasing the butterflies, of running over the lawn, and playing with the dogs, of running messages for mother."
"Yes," put in Sunnie breathlessly, with burning cheeks, "of running down to open the door to Cousin Leslie, of running upstairs again, and showing him a little old empty sofa in the corner of the nursery, of driving in his high dog-cart along the roads, and perhaps riding a pony all by myself and jumping over hedges and ditches. Oh yes, it will be lovely when I can do it all; and till I can, as Cousin Leslie says, I can put my hands in God's, like the good Margaret did, and let Him lead me."
"Yes," said Jean, looking thoughtfully at her; "you will never be able to walk without God, Sunnie—I can't!"
Then they began to talk nonsense together, for Jean wisely determined to keep the child off the subject of herself, and she left her brimming over with her usual flow of fun and high spirits. She saw her often after this, and then came the eventful 1st of May.
Jean had the great pleasure of going to the private view and taking Mrs. Fergusson and Mrs. Gordon with her. Her picture was placed well, and several well-known R.A.'s congratulated her, on her first attempt. But she really enjoyed it most, a day later, after the public had been admitted and she slipped in amongst the throng. Mrs. Talbot accompanied her.
"I feel I am with a celebrity," she said, as they entered the room where the picture was. "It is quite on the line, my dear; you are fortunate. And what a winsome little creature she is! I foresee a good many mothers will ask you to paint their children after this. How did Mrs. Gordon like looking at it? I never have got her to dinner yet, she has been so wrapped up in that child. This operation is a wonderful one by all accounts; it will be a mercy, if the poor child is cured. It seemed so sad to think that property was lying waste, so to speak. Now a few years hence, Helen will be looking out for a suitable husband for her daughter. It is to be hoped she will keep her beauty, but after all, money is the attraction to most men nowadays!"
Jean listened to Mrs. Talbot's voluble talk, and wondered vaguely if Sunnie's recovery would be an unmixed blessing to her. Then, she was startled by hearing her name called, and turning round, met the beaming face of Charlie Oxton.
"Now, by Jove, this is lucky! Couldn't have hit it off neater! It was a sudden resolve this morning. I wired to you, but you've been out all day, so your landlady told me, and my wire is unopened. I called at your place a couple of hours ago. The sceptical Rawlings is here. I've brought him. Hush! See him opposite your production! I've hustled him in there and left him. He is a fish out of water, and though I'm getting no end of entertainment out of him, I don't like a perpetual grinning crowd dogging our footsteps. A pity your grandfather wouldn't come up. He's very seedy, has been in bed four days, and is crawling about looking like green meat!"
When Jean could get a word in, she introduced Charlie to Mrs. Talbot, but the latter soon moved away, and then Charlie edged up to the old gardener, and brought him to a quieter corner of the room, where Jean was sitting.
She had her hands seized and nearly shaken off her body.
"Eh, dear Miss Jean, this is a day! And ye looks near the same as when ye left us, only a bit finer in the garments! Well, to think on't! An' the pictur' be a very pretty one indeed, very pretty, quite like an ordinary. There was a little lass feedin' her dog in the Chris'mas al'mack Mary got from the grocer's, an' it be very similar to your pictur', very similar!"
"That's a tremendous compliment," said Jean smiling. "You mustn't make me too vain, Rawlings!"
"Eh, I hopes not, but ye always did say ye would do big things, Miss Jean. But now ye have climbed so high maybe ye'll be satisfied an' come back to us!"
"I've burnt my boats; I can't return," said Jean, and her smile faded away.
"This here town be a terrible place for a country-bred maid," went on Rawlings with a backward throw of his thumb to the gaily dressed throng behind them. "Why, where do all the folks come from? 'Scurshions up to London and back, I reckon. But I never seed nor heard such a stock! Their trailin' gowns a-switchin' round, the feathers, as big as a barn fowl's whole body, on their heads, their jool'ry an' chains a-rattlin' an' swayin' in the air, an' their sham flowers, an' their sham scents, an' worse than all, their bare necks showin' thro' ragged muslin! Why bless my soul, 'tis enough to scandalise a respectable person!"
"Now, Rawlings, look here, keep your eyes off the young women. I brought you up here to see the pictures; don't you be turning yourself into a critic of town beauties!"
Charlie's face looked very grave. Rawlings hitched up his shoulders, and taking out a red cotton handkerchief, mopped his forehead.
"The pictur's be worse than the females lookin' at them," he sighed. "I've had to turn my head in confusion four times in this very room! Miss Jean, the master be right. Artists an' sich like be a bad lot, they're no better than they should be, I be very much afraid. Your pictur' be very nice, but it be in bad company, an' I mind my copy-books at school, 'Evil communications corrupt good manners.'"
"Now, Rawlings, leave the poor pictures alone, and tell me of your garden, and of Mary and John and Elsie."
"Elsie have left us, Miss Jean. She actooly at her time o' life took a husban', an' he a common porter on the line! An' the house be not changed for the better, for the young maids won't work, neither will they stay, an' Mary gets pretty distracted. John be in poor health, he's goin' the way o' most, rheumatics an' lumbago an' such like, an' when he be better, I be worse, an' so we ups an' downs like a see-saw!"
"You must come home, and have some tea with me," said Jean. "I invite both of you."
Charlie's eyes twinkled.
"We accept with thanks, don't we, Rawlings? I'm like a young lady now; I have my chaperon!"
Jean took them both back to her lodgings, where they had a merry meal. Rawlings overflowed with good advice and warning, Charlie with his usual lighthearted fun.
When they left, Rawlings wrung Jean's hand.
"You'd best come back, Miss Jean, before 'tis too late, for I've a fancy the old master be not with us for much longer."
"We will hope," said Charlie hastily, "that he'll live a long time yet, Rawlings. But even after his departure, Miss Jean might care to come back. Perhaps she would prefer the new master?"
There was a look in his eye underlying this audacious speech that made Jean blush. Then she threw up her head with a little of her old spirit.
"I left it, Rawlings, because I wished to. I never intend under any circumstances to return!"
"Ah," sighed Rawlings, with a shake of his head, "wilful maids be like weeds, ye can't keep 'em down nohow!"
TWO LETTERS
"Oh, righteous doom, that they who make
Pleasure their only end,
Ordering the whole life for its sake,
Miss that whereto they tend;"
"While they who bid stern Duty lead,
Content to follow—they,
Of duty only taking heed
Find pleasure by the way."—Trench.
JEAN always looked back to that spring in after years, as a very happy bit of her life. She saw a good deal of Mrs. Fergusson, and then her son took her home, and Mrs. Gordon and Sunnie followed soon afterwards. Jean did not often meet the doctor. He had a good many engagements in town, and was generally away when she visited Sunnie. But the day before he went back to Scotland, she met him there, and when she left the house, he walked a part of the way home with her. She asked him then a question that had been continually in her thoughts.
"Will Sunnie's complete recovery of health change her nature?"
"Why should it?" he asked.
"I don't know," said Jean. "To me, she has been a child so different to all others, that I should hate to see her lose all her quaint individuality. She may, from constant association with other children, rub off the bloom. I can't express myself properly, but her invalid life has given her what an ordinary child's life could never give. And I don't want her changed."
"I think I know what you mean, but it would be rather selfish of us to want to keep her as she is, for our own gratification. It will be a much healthier life, physically and mentally, and I do not see why her spiritual life should suffer. I am not afraid of it." Then he added—
"I went to see her portrait the other day."
"Did you?" said Jean. "I sometimes wonder if I shall paint any one else with such pleasure, as I did that."
"You had a good subject," said the doctor. Then looking at her a little keenly, he asked: "Has this success of yours wedded you more than ever to your art? You did not appear to me to be entirely enamoured of it in Scotland?"
"No, I went to paint Sunnie's picture rather against my inclination."
"You are happier now?"
"Yes," said Jean, looking straight in front of her, "but it isn't my art that is making me happier."
There was silence; then she added a little hurriedly—
"Long ago, when first I knew him, Colonel Douglas gave me this advice. He said, 'Seek the best thing first.' I sought fame, for I thought then it was the best thing. Now I know better."
Another silence. Dr. Fergusson did not break it, neither did Jean. When she reached her lodgings, she held out her hand.
He took it, and kept it in his for a moment. "Then we are fellow-travellers now," he said, looking down upon her with a smile. Jean could not speak, and rather abruptly, he left her.
It was a warm day in June. Jean came in to tea, feeling tired and dusty. She found two letters on the table, and sitting down by the open window, she read the one that interested her most. It was from Mrs. Fergusson.
"MY DEAR JEAN,—Will you give me the pleasure of a short visit now
that summer is here? I am sure you must be longing to get away from
London dust and noise, and my old garden is looking very sweet in its
young green at present. It was very pleasant to see as much of you as
I did when I was in town, but our slight acquaintance has only made me
wish to see you more, and I am hoping you may reciprocate this wish."
"My son unites with me in kind remembrances."
"Yours affectionately,"
"JANET FERGUSSON."
"Let me know what date would suit you to come."
Jean drew a long breath of delight and longing. It seemed to her that at last, the wish of her heart was going to be gratified.
Mrs. Fergusson had a marvellous attraction for her, and though her note was not a long or gushing one, it showed her that she was wanted.
She sat looking out in the busy street, with a light in her eyes and joy in her heart. She saw again the sweet old Scotch house, and the graceful, clever woman who presided over it. She pictured the evenings that Chris had described to her so well, and could hardly believe that it was her good fortune now to be the favoured guest. Perhaps with the anticipation of walks and talks with her old friend, the idea of a renewed and closer intimacy with her "fellow-traveller" intermingled.
"Oh!" she sighed at last in deep content, "I can hardly believe it is true!"
After a little, she roused herself from her daydreams and proceeded to pour out for herself a cup of tea. It was then she noticed her other letter, and she smiled as she recognised Charlie Oxton's bold calligraphy.
She opened it.
"MY DEAR COZ,—Your grandpater has had a slight seizure of some sort;
we have been at sixes and sevens, and the whole household has gone
to pot!"
"John is the only one who keeps his wits and his legs. The young maid
who was always fighting Mary has decamped, Mary is ill in bed—influenza
and temper have overcome her. Rawlings is down with rheumatics. I'm
in and out, up and down, bossing the show, but it's beyond my powers
to cook and nurse, and dust and sweep, and the governor is conscious
enough to express his determination to have no nurse or strange woman
inside his house."
"In our dire extremity, I thought of you, and asked the governor,
if he'd like to see you. He cocked his eyebrows, pulled down his mouth,
and grunted assent, which shows how very meek and mild and docile
he has become! Will you take pity on us? My hay is just being cut,
and my farm going to the dogs for want of my personal supervision.
Wire reply."
"Yours in a fix,"
"CHARLIE."
Jean's face underwent several changes as she read this.
"It is cruel to come now!" was her first comment. And then raged a conflict in her soul.
"Why should I go to him?" she thought. "He cast me out, he made my life a misery to me, and he expects me to return to my bondage with a thankful, grateful spirit! Charlie seems to think nothing of my wishes and my feelings. Two helpless men they are, and their one desire is to get a woman to put things straight. Any woman could do it! Why should I victimise myself? Why should I give up the greatest pleasure that has come to me since I have been in London? If I don't go to Scotland now, I have a feeling I never shall. I know how many visitors Mrs. Fergusson has coming and going, she will forget all about me, she has so many interests, and I want to—oh, I do want to go! Why should both these letters come at once?"
She got up and paced her room.
The old Jean would have had no difficulty in coming to a decision, but the Jean who had taken service under the Master who never pleased Himself, could not waive aside other people's needs so easily.
"Oh," she cried impulsively, "it is too much to expect of me. I am not an old, matured, self-denying Christian. I cannot give up such a pleasure, to go and look after grandfather when he hates me and has turned me out of the house. I should be too good to live if I did it!"
Then she sat down, and with her elbows on her tea-table and her chin in her hands, she went on wrestling with the subject.
It was a long time before she moved her position, but when she did, it was to get upon her knees.
"Oh, God, it is Thy will I ought to be doing, not my own. Forgive me for thinking about myself so much. Help me to do what I know must be Thy will, and make me content and willing to do it."
The victory was won; and not giving herself time to ponder over her decision, she went straight off to the post-office and despatched a telegram—
"Coming by first train to-morrow."
"JEAN."
It did not take long to make her arrangements, though it kept her busy for the rest of the evening. And very early the next morning, she started with a brave heart and cheerful face for her old home. She had written to Mrs. Fergusson explaining her circumstances. As she was being carried along in the train, she was tempted to begin pitying herself, but she quenched it.
"If Chris or Barbara had been in my place, they would have come as a matter of course, without any struggle or self-commiseration. I wonder whether I shall ever reach their stage—to think of other people, always and naturally, before myself! It must be difficult!"
When she reached the old familiar station and found no Charlie there to greet her, her heart sank.
She got into an open fly and drove along the flat marshes, smelling the salt scent of the sea, and wondering if the past four years had only been an interlude, and as she had lived for so many years in this dreary bit of country, so now she was going to continue to do the same for the rest of her life.
"I feel my independence and liberty fast oozing away!" she said to herself, and then she smiled at the thought. When she at last reached her grandfather's house, she found it unchanged—a little shabbier and drearier, that was all. She paid and dismissed her driver, for the hall door was open, and no one seemed about. Then she carried her small portmanteau into the hall, and met Charlie and the doctor coming downstairs. Charlie looked worried, his immaculate head of hair was ruffled, but as he saw Jean a broad smile of relief came over his face.
"Here she is, Doctor! You're a trump, Jean! Come right in, have a good square meal, and then you'll be able to tackle us all. All right, my good fellow, you go on; we shall weather through now without your nurse."
He dismissed the doctor in an airy fashion, then tucked Jean's arm in his, and marched her off to the kitchen, where Mary was sitting before the fire enveloped in shawls, and groaning audibly.
"Now you'll have to buck up, old lady," he said, taking hold of her by the shoulder. "Here's your mistress. A nice state of things she will find! Give her some food at once. Here! I'll forage in the larder. It's no use waiting for John. He's attending to his master, and heaven only knows when he'll be set at liberty."
He bustled off, and Mary, trying to rise, began to cry weakly.
"Oh, Miss Jean, 'tis terrible to find me like this, but I've just crawled out of bed, and the sink is piled with dirty dishes, and the floor hasn't been swept for a week, and there isn't even a drop o' hot water. Me that never let the kettle get cold from one year's end to another! Ever since Elsie left, there's been trouble on trouble, the master hasn't seemed to care how things go, and I'm that ashamed of your seein' the house so topsy-turvey, that I could sink to the door for shame!"
"Nonsense, Mary; I think you had better go back to bed. You arn't fit to be up. I'll see that things come straight. I shall have a woman from the village to help me."
Before Jean went to bed that night, she had worked wonders. The knowledge she had gained at Kingsford Farm when Chris was away, stood her in good stead now, and Charlie was lost in admiration.
She did not see her grandfather that evening. She went down to the village and engaged a capable woman to come the next day and take Mary's place in the kitchen. She cleaned out the kitchen and made Charlie work with her.
"You must help me to-night, and after to-morrow, we shall be straight. Why have you let things get so bad?"
"Why? Because those old fools, Mary and John, have fought half the village, and told me that there was no one fit to black my shoes for four miles round! They've refused to have outside help, and your grandpater has backed them up. Truth is, Mary is too old for the job; she ought to be in an almshouse."
"She is ill with worry," said Jean. "I believe she has a lot of work in her yet."
"Oh, it will be all right now you're here! As I told the governor, you never ought to have left him!"
"I was the best judge of that," said Jean a little stiffly.
"Don't sit up so! He ought to have given you a studio, and taken a pride in your performances. Take my word for it, my dear girl, it's a bad policy to have no relations at your back. I'm jolly glad you're home again in your rightful place."
"But," said Jean, with a blank look at him, "I am not going to stay here."
He gave her a wink.
"Don't you fret yourself! We'll settle it up in a very satisfactory way for all parties concerned!"
Jean said no more.
Charlie would not see her side, and she was too tired to argue the point with him.
The next morning, she interviewed her grandfather, and was shocked to see his weakness and general feebleness; but he did not seem very amicably disposed towards her.
"It's that boy's doing," he murmured. "He is so masterful. There was no need for you to come back, but if you make yourself useful, you may as well stay till I'm about again!"
Jean smiled, a little sore at heart. But she had no time to think about herself, there was too much to do, and she set to work as cheerfully as she could.
Old Mr. Desmond was astonished at the quick, deft way in which she made him comfortable, and put his room to rights. She proved as good a nurse to him, as she had been to Miss Lorraine. In a few days, the household was again a quiet, orderly one. Two young maids were engaged, and Jean superintended everything herself.
When Mary recovered, she was sent away for a holiday, and she returned with renewed strength and vigour to take up the reins in the kitchen. Then Jean had a little more leisure; she was able to roam out into the garden, to take walks with her cousin, and then it was that he informed her, he was going abroad again.
"I sha'n't be long—about three months—but I've got some land out there that wants looking after. I ought to have gone before, only I really didn't like leaving the old man; he's been very good to me! He's rather rum, isn't he? Told me this morning that as long as you kept in your proper place, he would keep you here. That's a woman's sphere, cooking, dusting, and looking after the house generally! And he thinks you're pretty good at it, do you know! I, of course, agreed with him." He looked at her with such twinkling humour in his eyes that Jean could not be angry.
"Directly he gets better, I shall go," she said promptly. "But sometimes I am anxious, Charlie. What does the doctor think?"
"Oh, he's a fool! The governor is getting old, and he had a pretty heavy stroke, but there's life in him for a good while yet. I told him I was off, and the arrangement is that you stay with him till I come back."
"But," remonstrated Jean in genuine dismay, "I really cannot. Three whole months! He doesn't really want me. I believe he thinks he is doing me a kindness in having me here, and I feel quite the other way. I must get back to my work in London."
"Rot! You can work, as you call it, here. I'll put that straight, and it wouldn't hurt to let your paints hang over for a bit. There's plenty else to occupy you!"
"Between you and grandfather," said Jean, with some spirit, "I feel I have no mind or individuality of my own at all!"
Charlie gave one of his hearty laughs.
"You're one of the best young women going!" he asserted. "But you're mistaking your vocation. You are born to rule a house, and make us poor men comfortable. You've a knack at it that dozens of married women would give their eyes to have! And the governor and I know when we're well off."
Jean felt powerless to plead her own cause with Charlie, and so before she half realised it, he had taken his departure, and she had pledged herself to stay with her grandfather till he came back.
THE STRUGGLING PROFESSIONAL
"Serene, and unafraid of solitude,
I worked the short days out."—Aurora Leigh.
JEAN had need of much patience during the weeks that followed. Her grandfather was irritable and difficult to please, yet he became so accustomed to her services, that he would never let her leave his room for very long at a time.
It was the old life again, the dreary flat marshland without, and the narrow confined life within, yet Jean wondered sometimes what had changed it all so to her. She was not unhappy; she did not feel the fret and chafe of it as she used to do, and she found herself taking an increasing interest in her poorer neighbours close to the door. She read and talked to her grandfather, and tried to consider all his whims; she gardened with Rawlings, and she found a little time for quiet reading herself.
"I suppose," she mused, "that my life is round a different centre. I hope and trust that it is. What a difference it has made in my life! But how I wish I could get grandfather to see it too!"
She prayed much that she might seize any little opportunity given to her, of speaking to others about the things that were of so much interest to her. She soon found in visiting some of the cottages which were a long way off from the church, that there were great big boys and farm lads who went to no place of worship and hardly knew what to do with themselves on Sunday. With some trepidation, she asked her grandfather if he would object to her starting a class for them, and holding it in an unused room on Sunday afternoons.
He stared at her in surprise at the request.
"What is this fancy? What can you teach them, except how to paint?"
Jean was not repulsed by his sneer. Her opportunity had come.
"Grandfather, I have never told you, but I have been led to look at life so differently since I have been in London. I see that it is so short down here compared with the years that will follow. And it is meant to be a preparation, isn't it? I don't know how to express myself well, but I have learnt to love and follow Christ, and I have taken Him as my Saviour and Master. It has made me so happy that I want others to be happy too."
"Well, keep it to yourself," grunted Mr. Desmond. "Women always are superstitious fools; they have no brains to be otherwise."
But he raised no objection to the class of boys, and Jean started it with great fear and trembling the following Sunday.
It was her first venture, and eight lads in the hobbledehoy stage appeared, four of whom could not read. They had learnt in a manner, but had forgotten, as from the time they had left school, they had never opened book or paper. Their ignorance was dense.
"Can you tell me anything about John the Baptist? Who was he?" she asked, after they had read a chapter together.
"He called out bears to eat the children up!" said one, who thought himself the scholar.
"Him what was thrown in the pit by his brothers," suggested another.
"Him what built the first Baptist chapel!" cried a third.
Jean found she must take them slowly, but her earnestness and sincerity carried weight, and her class increased to eighteen before she had had it for six weeks. It was a great interest to her, and she learnt as much as she taught them.
She heard from several of her friends, and her correspondence with them was a great pleasure to her.
Mrs. Douglas wrote from Cannes with real affection. She said that Colonel Douglas was growing gradually weaker, but "so cheerful and bright, and so interested in all that you are doing, Jean, dear."
Chris wrote bright, chatty letters, begging her to come and stay with them before the summer went, and Sunnie wrote her quaint, original epistles, always ending with—
"And I hope, my dear painter, that you will come to Scotland
soon again, for we want you badly."
Jean went about with a smile upon her lips at the thought of these writers, and Rawlings said one day to her, as she came out to him in the garden singing to herself—
"I always telled ye, Miss Jean, that you'd find your old home the happiest. Ye've got ten years younger since ye've come back, an' a month o' that there Lunnon do consume more lives away, and destroys more smiles an' music out of a body's heart than fifty year of country toil and honest work do!"
One afternoon, old Mr. Desmond, who was well enough now to creep out of doors with a stick, was walking round the garden with his granddaughter.
"I'm going to take a fresh lease of life," he said, with energy. "I feel stronger to-day than I have done for months."
"I am so glad," said Jean sincerely. "I am sure you are much stronger than you were. I wrote to Charlie to-day, and told him so."
"Ay, that lad is a good sort. If I had left you, he promised to look after you, which is more than you deserve. I never alter my mind, and my will remains as it was when I re-made it the day after you defied me, and took yourself away to London. Don't think—" here he turned upon her half irritably—"don't think that your coming back at this belated hour will change my mind towards you. Not one penny of money will you receive from me after my death."
"Oh, I know, I know," said Jean, trying to speak patiently. "I have not been wasting my time, grandfather. I believe I shall be able to earn my own living, and," she added, with some spirit, "I shall not be in need of any help from Charlie!"
Mr. Desmond gave a dry little laugh.
"Wait till the time comes," he said. "If you continue to please him, your future is provided for."
"What do you mean, grandfather? Do you think I would take any money from Charlie?"
"As his wife you will, I should think."
"His wife!"
Jean laughed aloud.
"I shall never, under any circumstances, be his wife," she said decisively.
"Wait until he asks you. He means to ask you when he returns, and you are a fortunate young woman to have obtained his regard. I think he will improve you in many respects. He has right views concerning women, and is masterful enough to be able to enforce his wishes."
"Poor Charlie!"
That was all Jean permitted herself to say, but she felt very angry. Did Charlie think her affection would be so lightly won, as to be able to discuss her so coolly with her grandfather? She wisely put the subject away from her, and talked of other things. She took her grandfather into the kitchen garden, where he had a long talk with Rawlings, and brought him into the house at length, astonished at the increase of his powers both of body and mind. Late that evening, John came to her.
"The master seems very talkative to-night, Miss Jean; have ye noticed it?"
"Yes, I have," said Jean, looking at him a little dubiously. "Do you think it a bad sign, John? He seems so much better in every way to-day."
John rubbed his hands together.
"Well, miss, I'll sit up with him for a bit. He's a little bit too bright to my mind!"
"Call me, if you want me," said Jean.
She knew that John was pessimistic, and went to sleep with an untroubled mind.
But early the next morning, she was roused.
Old Mr. Desmond had had another stroke, and though the doctor was sent for, and everything was done that could be, he never rallied, but passed away unconsciously before twenty-four hours were over. Jean was almost stunned by the suddenness of it. She had no one to come to her to help at this sad time, but the doctor and her grandfather's lawyer arranged matters, and she, with a few of Mr. Desmond's old friends, followed him to the grave one bright September morning. She telegraphed the sad news to Charlie, and then, packing up her things, moved back to her London lodgings.
The old servants remonstrated with her, and begged her to stay till Charlie Oxton returned.
Jean was quite firm.
"It is not my house," she said. "It never has been. It belongs to Mr. Oxton now, and I know you will have a good master."
"But we want a missis," said Rawlings. "Mr. Charles never could manage here. Look at the downfall after Elsie went away! I never said much, but it sheer disgusted me to see the place go down so. Mary be too on in years, Miss Jean. Well, there, I'll say no more, for I know Mr. Charles's mind, and we'll see you back as missis yet!"
Jean went back to town with a sad heart. She parted with her Bible-class lads with real sorrow, for she felt they were being influenced. She did not regret her time spent with her invalid grandfather, but she did regret not making better use of her opportunities in her intercourse with him. "I might have talked to him more about unseen things. If I had only known! He seemed so uninterested, so bitterly disposed towards any religion. Oh, how I wish I had a readier tongue about the things I love! I ought to be longing to bring others to my Master, to win them for His cause, and I am silent and tongue-tied when the opportunity comes."
She opened her heart to Mrs. Douglas, who answered her very lovingly.
"Only the close presence of your Saviour, dear Jean," she wrote, "will give you the longing and the power to speak for Him. Do you remember after the disciples had walked and talked with their Master on the road to Emmaus, how they said their hearts burned within them on the way? It is this heart-burning that we want so badly nowadays, when there is so much slackness and half-heartedness in our Christianity. Pray for it, dear, and ask for the realisation of the Master's presence. That alone will give it to you."
Jean pondered and prayed, and very shyly and diffidently began to bear witness for her Master amongst the art students with whom she associated once again. She was hard at work now, for she realised as she never had before, that she must be in future a working woman. She had not a big balance in the bank, and she knew that she would miss her yearly income intensely. So she began to economise in matter of food and clothing, and inquired amongst her friends whether they could get her any commissions for portraits. Then suddenly one afternoon, Charlie Oxton appeared at her lodgings.
"Yes," he said when he had shaken hands with her, "I'm back again. I hurried up my business and took the first boat home, after I heard of the governor's death. Poor old chap! He was very good to me. Why did you come away? That house ought to be yours, you know. But we'll make that all right, I hope. You're a sensible girl, aren't you, Jean? I won't beat about the bush, but ever since I first saw you, I knew we were cut out for each other. I believe if I searched the whole earth, I couldn't find another your equal. And you like me, don't you? I know you do in a sneaking, underhand fashion, though you're too proud to confess it! You see, I couldn't walk in and take the whole of your inheritance because you happen to have offended the old man; but if we go shares, we shall both be happy and comfortable, and have the old man's blessing. He told me he wished it, though he said—" here the twinkle of humour crept into his eye—"you didn't deserve it. That was the money, of course, not me. Well, what do you say, Jean? Are you willing to take me 'for better for worse?' I'm sure I am, with all my heart and soul, and I promise to be a model husband."
He stopped from sheer breathlessness, and perhaps there was a tinge of nervousness in his tone at this epoch.
Jean gazed at him as one petrified. Then she found her voice.
"I am sorry, Charlie—very. I like you immensely as a friend, but we can be nothing more to each other, never!"
Very clear and determined was her voice.
Charlie had been standing by the window as he talked and she sitting at her tea-table. He came over to her.
"Of course I expected you to say something of this sort; but, Jean, I won't take 'no.' I'm not going to be dismissed. You belong to me, I consider. Why, your grandfather bequeathed you to me with his money. I said I wouldn't take one without the other, and you know which I value most. And I've had some experience with girls—don't look so furious! Not in the way you imagine; but I know that if I'm not built as a hero, I'm built for a jolly good husband, and I haven't a vice about me. Don't smile! I'm in dead earnest. We shall be as happy as turtle-doves together. You don't know your own mind, but let me make it up for you. If we were only living a century or two ago, I would run away with you—carry you off by force—and it would be a complete success. Now, honestly, have you any real dislike to me?"
"I like you very much," faltered Jean, edging away from him as she spoke, "but not as a possible husband, Charlie."
"Then it's only a question of time. I'm sure of it. I won't worry you, but you won't get rid of me very easily. You'll find yourself in quite a different mind one of these days. I won't stay longer now, but remember I'm not a rejected lover, I'm a postponed one."
He took up his hat and held out his hand. When Jean took it, he raised her hand to his lips.
"There! That's a pledge of what will follow. Now, I'm off to the old place, and I sha'n't know a happy hour till you come to me."
He swung out of the house, and Jean felt quite dazed by his vehemence. She was amused in spite of it by his original wooing.
"There wasn't one word of love," she said. "Charlie is essentially practical, and yet I know he likes me."
She dismissed him from her thoughts, but as time went on, she began to be annoyed by the continual presents he sent her—game, fish, flowers, honey, dairy produce; and her landlady at last had the boldness to say with a smile—
"From your young gentleman again, miss."
The crowning blow was when Jean discovered that two hundred pounds had been paid into her account at the bank. She wrote off in hot haste to Charlie, sending him a cheque for it, and asking him for an explanation. He came up in person to do her bidding, which was not what she desired.
"I'm not a good hand with my pen. It is only your usual allowance, my dear Coz, which, of course, your grandfather wished continued. Wasn't it two hundred he allowed you? Or was it more?"
"It was one hundred and fifty," replied Jean severely. "And you know my grandfather did not wish it continued. I had a talk with him about it before he died. He never left me a penny, and you know he did not. Do you think I shall ask you to support me?"
"You needn't be so tragic and scornful. I know what the governor did wish, and you know it too. Ah! my lady fair, blush away! Have you no regard for his wishes?" Then, changing his tone, he said earnestly: "Look here, Jean, you're leading me an awful life at present. How can I eat, drink, or sleep, when I'm consuming everything that you ought to be sharing? If I thought you knew your own mind, I'd chuck it all up and go back to Australia, but I'm dead certain you'll come round. Oh, Jean, we could be so stunningly happy together! Do listen to me."
Then Jean lost her temper.
"It is cruel of you to persecute me like this, Charlie. It is not gentlemanly. You know my defenceless position, and you take advantage of it. I have no parents, no brother to take my part. I never wish to see you again—never!"
Charlie took up his hat and walked off in high dudgeon, and for the time his gifts ceased.
Jean was working very hard just now. She was painting the portrait of an alderman's wife, giving lessons in the place of one of the teachers in the art school, and attempting a fancy picture of her own, which she hoped might be accepted for the next Academy. In the midst of this, she received another invitation from Mrs. Fergusson, begging her to come to her for a little rest and relaxation. It was a bitter disappointment to her to decline, but she literally could not afford to go. She had neither the time nor the money to do it.
Sometimes when she came back to her lodgings tired and weary, she wondered if this incessant grind for daily bread would be her lot in life. Yet she was not unhappy, and she pluckily and cheerfully put her shoulder to the wheel. Few of her fellow-students, hearing her bright tones and ringing laugh, realised that she had changed from the comfortable amateur into the struggling professional.
IN DIRE STRAITS
"I do not ask my cross to understand,
My way to see;
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand
And follow Thee."—Adelaide Procter.
"SURELY it is Jean Desmond? How strange that I should not have run up against you before. I have been in town for six weeks. Are you still studying art?"
It was Meta Worth. She met Jean out of doors one day, and was looking very bright and pretty. Jean was conscious of her own shabbiness by the side of this stylish young woman.
"Yes," Jean responded. "I am working hard now, for I am obliged to."
"I saw your grandfather's death in the paper, and strangely enough I know your cousin, Mr. Oxton. He is a great friend of some friends of mine, and last time I met him, we discovered that you were a link between us. Am I to congratulate you?"
"Certainly not," said Jean, with hauteur.
Meta laughed.
"The great charm about Mr. Oxton is that he is so absolutely natural and confiding. He told me that it was a question of time with you, and I think you are very fortunate—your old home and inheritance waiting for you, and an awfully good sort of husband in the bargain."
"Have you been to Scotland lately?"
"Yes, I came from Aunt Helen's to town. I really meant to find you out, for I was charged with messages for you, but I have been simply bewildered with engagements."
"How is Sunnie?"
"Isn't it a miracle about that child? She is going through a course of massage at present. Has a massage nurse, who fights with the old one like anything! Aunt Helen seems a different being. I suppose it is Sunnie's cure that has brightened her up so. She is bound up in her child, of course, but in a different way, and has lost that iron inflexible look in her face and tone."
"Did you see anything of Mrs. Fergusson?"
"As much as usual. Why doesn't she take to me, I wonder? She won't ask me to stay with her, and I hear that she has even asked you."
Jean laughed. There was something very frank about Meta with all her society airs.
"Perhaps she knows that it isn't her society that you covet."
"George is in town," said Meta, with a little answering laugh. "He is as devoted as ever, but this is in confidence. There is no open engagement, remember. We must wait. He has so little money, poor fellow!"
Then, she hurriedly bid Jean goodbye.
"I'll come and see you one day, but I must rush away now. I have your address."
But she never came, and Jean was not surprised.
In after years, Jean often looked back to this winter as the darkest time in her life. Her portrait of the alderman's wife was finished, but not to that lady's satisfaction. Her full-blown face was stamped with her plebeian origin, and the masses of jewellery and lace she persisted in wearing did not add to her beauty. She insisted that Jean should try to show it in the Academy, and when it was refused, she was so angry that she refused to pay for it.
"I do not consider it a likeness. I would never have dreamt of paying so much for a picture that wasn't going to be shown. I would never have given you the order, only I thought your pictures would be accepted for the Academy. You have had one in it. If mine was worth anything, it would be there. My husband says you have made me a fright. Unless you can alter it, I won't pay you for it!"
Poor Jean happened to be at a very low ebb at this juncture in her money affairs. And she found it necessary to change her lodgings and take one room in a much cheaper neighbourhood, where she waited upon herself, and could economise in many little ways. The change was not beneficial to her health, but she was thankful to be able to pay her way.
Eagerly and feverishly, she worked at a picture that she hoped would bring her in money. She had taken a Bible scene, and was depicting Hannah giving her tiny boy into Eli's keeping. The three figures showed power. The mother's heart seemed divided between the anguish of parting, and pride of giving up her son for such a service. Eli was drawing the boy gently away from his mother's lingering clasp, and the child had the big tears in his eyes and the frightened look upon his face that told how much the parting meant to him. The models she hired for this picture were an expense, but they were the means to the end, and she worked on, hardly giving herself time to sleep or eat. Her face grew thin, but her spirits were good.
"It is hard times," she said to herself; "but I shall weather through."
She had many nice thoughts over her painting. The subject itself interested her. She thought over various titles for it. "A Mother's Gift" and "Lent to the Lord" were her favourites. When she came back from her teaching at the art school, her eyes would brighten as she settled to her picture, and it was only when daylight faded that she permitted herself to rest.
One day she met with a slight accident. In opening a tin of sardines for her frugal supper, she cut her right hand very severely with the tin. She did not think much of it at the time, but bandaged it, and though for a few days it was very inconvenient, she hoped it would heal speedily. This it did not do, and after a great deal of pain and inflammation, she took herself off to a doctor. He thought rather seriously of it, and told her she must give her hand complete rest or he would not answer for the consequences.
Jean stared at him blankly.
"I cannot rest it," she said. "I live by it. I am an artist."
"I am very sorry, but I say emphatically that you must give up your painting till your hand is well. I do not want to alarm you, but it has every appearance of blood-poisoning. You must take plenty of nourishment and have complete rest."
Jean walked home feeling almost crushed. Then she threw up her head and looked away to the grey fleecy clouds that were passing overhead.
"It must be all right for me," she said. "I am in God's keeping. He knows best. 'I will trust, and not be afraid.' She went into her forlorn little room. Lately, she had been feeling so tired and unfit, that she had rather neglected its appearance. She sank into a chair and looked round her.
"Oh, what would I give to see some one walk in with a cup of tea ready made!"
She felt too tired to get out of her chair and light her small oil-stove, but after making an effort to get her kettle to boil, she thought she would go straight to bed.
"I may feel better to-morrow."
Half an hour later, a little girl, her landlady's child, came up to the door.
"Please, miss, a gent wants to see yer. He giv' me this 'ere bit o' card."
Jean took it and read, as she expected—
"Mr. Charles Oxton."
Underneath was a pencil line—
"Must see you. Won't keep you a minute."
Jean's eyes looked wistful. It would be nice to see some one who might be able to help her; and how Charlie would help!
As she thought of the quantity of good things he would order in, and the money he would spend on her, she set her lips firmly together.
"I can give him nothing in return. I mustn't see him, I cannot."
She asked the child to take him a message, and wrote a note at once, sitting up in bed as she did so.
"DEAR CHARLIE,—Excuse shaky writing, it is my left hand. I have hurt
my right one. I am sorry I cannot see you, but I am not very well, and
have gone to bed. I shall be all right again soon. Leave a note with my
landlady, if it is anything particular."
"Yours in haste,"
"JEAN."
The little girl stumped downstairs, but Jean's quick ears caught the sound of a very long colloquy on the doorstep, and her landlady's shrill tones predominated. Then, at last she heard retreating footsteps on the pavement outside, and burying her hot head in her pillow, she felt for the moment that her last chance of relief had gone.
When the next day came, after a night of sleeplessness and fever, Jean found herself unable to raise her head.
All that day she tossed on her bed. Her landlady, Mrs. Sykes by name, a rough but good-natured woman, came up and attended to her, but when the second day came and went without any improvement, the landlady began to be anxious.
"I'd best call in a doctor, miss. You be almost light-headed at times!"
"Oh no," said Jean. "I can't afford it. I shall be better. I'm tired. I hope to be up again to-morrow. I am so sorry to be such a trouble."
Mrs. Sykes left her with ominous head-shakings, and Jean caught the murmur.
"She oughter go to hospital, an' she'll 'ave to it she don't get better, for 'tis more than a hard-workin' widder can do, with four days' charin' a week an' six troublesome children!"
Hot tears ran down Jean's cheeks. Her head was aching, and her hand throbbing and burning painfully. Her landlady's words seemed the last straw. Never in all her life, had the fact of her being without any near relations so come home to her.
"Hospital will be my portion and strange nurses, and I shall be a 'number' and a 'case.' I haven't a single friend in town. Not one that would prevent me from such a fate! I have prayed and prayed. I have been willing to do and be what God wills. Is this His will for me now? Or has He never heard me, and are my prayers in vain?"
It is in the hours of weakness, that the tempter exerts all his power. Jean realised this now, but she cried again to the One who was now testing her faith.
"Help me to be like Job. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.' If it is Thy will that I should die in hospital without any one knowing where I am, or what has become of me, yet come so close Thyself and wrap me so tightly in Thy arms, that I shall feel and care for nothing else."
And as she prayed a deep, restful peace stole into her soul.
She forgot that she was at her last penny; that sickness and want had stricken her down, and that even her landlady was wanting to get rid of her. A verse that had comforted her during these dark days came with fresh force into her mind:
"The eternal God is thy refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms."
And Jean had a wonderful realisation that she was in those wonderful arms, and that she could leave herself there without any fear.
Mrs. Sykes, downstairs, was now answering a sharp ring at the door. Opening it, she was confronted by a sweet, fresh-faced young woman who had her portmanteau on a cab outside.
"If you please, does Miss Desmond live here? She is ill, is she not? May I see her? I have come to nurse her."
"It's time some one did," said Mrs. Sykes volubly, "for she be half-starved, poor thing, and now redoocing herself with fever. These 'ere hartists be very slow at makin' a livin'. Can't do it nohow. Only comes to grief."
With swift light steps, the visitor made her way to Jean's room. She drew a quick breath, as she took in with one glance the bareness and poverty of her surroundings. Then she bent over the invalid. Jean was breathing softly, and a smile was on her lips, but her face, with its hot fever-flush, looked almost transparent, and her cheek-bones showed prominently through their thin covering.
"Underneath—the everlasting arms," she murmured. And then she opened her eyes, and a quick, surprised light of recognition sprang into them.
"Barbara! You! Oh, how good of God!"
Barbara steadied her voice, for she had been near tears, but she was well versed in a sick-room, and was quite aware of the necessity of self-control.
"Yes, dear, I have come to nurse you, and I shall not leave you till you are well again."
Jean took hold of her hand.
"Can Chris spare you?"
"Perfectly. You wonder how I knew about you? Mr. Oxton came down to us and told us. He is going to stay and help with the farm, till I go back. He loves farming, you know, and Mick will be very glad to have him. Now I must leave you for a minute, while I have my luggage brought up."
She slipped away, and after a few minutes' talk with Mrs. Sykes, engaged a room for herself next to Jean's. Then after depositing her belongings in it, she walked out of the house. Half an hour later, she returned with her hands full of purchases. Jean was drowsy when she came back to her, and Barbara did not disturb her. She turned her attention to the oil-stove, and presently came up to her.
"Now, Jean dear, here is some hot soup, which I want you to take."
Jean sat up and took it, asking no questions.
"I won't talk to you yet, Barbara. You are here, and I am so thankful. I will lie still and get well. Your soup seems to have given me strength already."
She dropped asleep, and Barbara began to make herself, as well as Jean, thoroughly comfortable. She was one of those women who understand that art to perfection, and in an hour's time, Jean's room looked a different place. Then she brought in a chair-bedstead from the adjoining room, and after having some supper, went to bed. Jean was rather restless, but she told Barbara the next morning that she had not slept so well for weeks.
Barbara kept her well supplied with nourishment, and in the afternoon, she felt so much better that she was able to sit in a chair by the window and talk.
"I can't thank you, Barbara. It is just like you to come off to London to nurse a girl who happened to stay with you once for a few weeks. Who but you would have done it? But you were sent at the right time, just when I wanted you most. I need not have feared."
"You ought to have let us know, Jean."
"I couldn't! You don't know all. I'm desperately poor; I am not going to worry, but I'm terribly afraid my painting will come to a standstill, and then, how shall I live? It is such a bitter disappointment to me about my picture. I could have finished it, and I think I was doing good work."
"Mr. Oxton was in a dreadful state about you. Jean, dear, may I ask you if there is anything—"
"Anything between us? Nothing, and there never will be. He does not know what he wants. I know. It is a wife, but it will not be me. I have told him so. And Barbara, you have been getting me lots of invalid food. We must settle up accounts."
"Now look here," said Barbara, laying her hand affectionately on Jean's shoulder, "I want to tell you something. Years ago, I put aside a certain sum of money as a nest-egg for sickness or misfortune. None of us have ever needed it. I am using it now for your benefit, and you can pay me back later on, when you are busy painting again. You will let me have this pleasure, will you not?"
For a moment Jean's pride rose, then she crushed it back.
"I will regard it as a loan, Barbara. You don't need me to say how grateful I am."
She choked back a sob, and added: "Barbara, you have been my salvation. I think I should have died, if I had been taken to a hospital."
"And yet I found you so happy," said Barbara thoughtfully. "Jean, you have something that I have not. And I believe you found it enough, when you had everything else wanting!"
"Yes, I believe I did," Jean confessed.
AN ARRIVAL
"Two human loves make one divine."—E. B. Browning.
THE next afternoon, Barbara took Jean out of her bedroom into the one adjoining it, which was now prettily arranged as a sitting-room. Flowers were on the table, and a dainty little afternoon tea was awaiting her.
As they were sitting down to it, Mrs. Sykes's little girl appeared at the door.
"Please'm, a gentleman would like to see you."
Jean's white cheeks flushed crimson.
"If it is Charlie, I can't see him, Barbara. I don't feel well enough. Go down to him and tell him so. Don't let him come up. Be firm, for he is very obstinate."
"Yes, dear; don't be afraid. I shall not let any one come near you."
She remained away a long time. Jean began to wonder when she was coming back. But she came in at last, and her voice was very quiet and gentle as she said—
"It was not Mr. Oxton, dear, but Dr. Fergusson. I think if you could make up your mind to see him it would be a good thing, for he could tell you as a friend about your hand. It is not healing as fast as it should, and he would like to see it. He has come for the express purpose."
Jean was weak, and easily upset. She trembled all over.
"I can't see him, Barbara—not as a doctor—I couldn't; don't ask me to."
"Very well, dear. I won't ask him to look at your hand. See him as a friend. We will give him a cup of tea, and then you will be able to hear about little Sunnie."
Before she had time to make further objection, Dr. Fergusson was in the room.
When he took her hand in his, and asked in his quiet, grave manner how she was, Jean's throbbing pulses were strangely soothed and stilled.
"I am up in town for a few days, and my mother asked me to call and see you. Miss McTaggart has been telling me how ill you have been."
"I am better now," Jean faltered, looking round for Barbara. But Barbara had left the room.
Dr. Fergusson drew a chair up opposite her—
"You look like a shade or ghost of your former self," he said in his most cheerful tone. "Now I am going to take you in hand. Tell me what you have been doing with yourself."
There was a tone of masterfulness in his voice that Jean could not resist.
She obeyed him at once, and then, without asking her, he gently took hold of her bandaged hand, and began asking her various questions as he unbound it. She winced once or twice under his touch, but his presence gave her confidence, and he talked to her so professionally that she was soon at ease with him.
When Barbara came back, she found the doctor talking in his most genial tones, and Jean, lying back amongst her cushions, was smiling brightly at him.
She sat down and poured out tea, and Dr. Fergusson gave them as much Scotch news as they wished for.
"You would never have seen me, if it had not been for a letter your sister wrote to my mother," he said, addressing Barbara. "She mentioned your sudden departure for London and gave your address."
"I moved some time ago," said Jean.
"Yes," he replied, looking at her keenly; "but this isn't the right part of town for you to be living in. It is too far from your art classes. You should economise your strength and time, remember. What have you been painting?"
"A portrait that has been a failure," said Jean a little sadly; "and that picture over there. Would you like to see it? I should be so glad of your criticism. Barbara, will you uncover it?"
The canvas was drawn forward into the light, and Dr. Fergusson looked at it in silence.
The little child's figure was beautiful, and was the centre of the picture. His mother looked life-like in her yearning tenderness over her baby, but her figure as well as that of Eli's was partially unfinished.
"It is good work," pronounced Dr. Fergusson slowly. "I congratulate you on your subject."
"'Lent to the Lord' I think I shall call it," said Jean, looking at it wistfully.
"Happy child!"
Dr. Fergusson murmured the words. Barbara looked at him with interest.
"A good man," she thought, "and a clever one. I am glad to have seen him."
Then she covered the picture up and changed the subject of conversation, for her quick eyes noted Jean's downcast looks.
"Now," said Dr. Fergusson presently, "may I ask for paper and ink? I want to write a prescription for our patient, Miss McTaggart."
He sat down, and glanced more than once at Jean, as he wrote. Then he came over to her and held out his hand.
"I am going, but you will see me again to-morrow. I am ordering you a tonic, and a lotion for that hand. You are fortunate in having such a friend as Miss McTaggart to look after you."
"I am," said Jean, gratefully.
Dr. Fergusson still kept her hand in his whilst he talked, and Jean knew he was quietly feeling her pulse. When he went downstairs, he turned to Barbara, who was following him.
"You are right," he said in his quick, incisive tones. "She is half-starved and thoroughly below par. Has it been necessary for her to neglect herself so?"
"I am afraid it has," said Barbara. "I found her, as I told you, with absolutely nothing in the way of nourishment."
"Give her something every two hours. If we wish to prevent blood-poisoning setting in, she must be thoroughly well fed and strengthened. She has evidently had a slight attack of low fever from general debility. I will come in to-morrow afternoon. Is Mr. Oxton in town? I thought he would have looked after her interests better."
Barbara looked straight at him. Her quick woman's eyes had seen that this grave silent man was more than slightly interested in Jean.
"Mr. Oxton is only a distant cousin," she said.
"He did come down to us and sent me to her, but he is in a difficult position, for Jean will accept nothing from him, and I quite understand why it is that she cannot."
Dr. Fergusson raised his eyebrows.
"I tell you this in confidence," said Barbara, determining to make things clear. "He is very pertinacious, but Jean will have nothing to do with him. She likes him as a cousin, but nothing more, and she is not one to change her mind."
"I heard they were engaged," said Dr. Fergusson; and without another word he went straight out of the house.
Barbara went back to Jean, murmuring to herself, with a smile upon her lips, "It will all come right."
Jean was very quiet all that evening. She lay back in her chair, looking out into the London sky, and wondering how soon she would be able to be at work again.
The next morning, she assured Barbara that she was feeling almost well enough to go out.
Barbara laughed at her.
"When you are well enough, you shall come down to Kingsford Farm with me. That will be your first outing, I hope."
"It would be delicious," sighed Jean; "but I cannot do it, Barbara."
It was about three o'clock, when a ring at the door and a step on the stair caused Jean's colour to ebb and flow. Dr. Fergusson's previous visit had given her almost as much pain as pleasure. She now looked forward to meet him again with a mingled feeling of dread and delight. Though she had comparatively seen a great deal of him, his impenetrable reserve had always prevented great intimacy between them, and she found herself wondering now, if he was merely obeying his mother's wishes and coming to her entirely from a professional standpoint.
Another cause was making her nervous: she meant to come to a definite understanding about her injured hand.
Barbara, as usual, slipped out of the room, but Dr. Fergusson sat down and talked to her about ordinary things, until Jean began to think that she would not be able to get the information she wanted. At last, he came over to her and inspected her hand, and then with desperate earnestness Jean looked up at him.
"Dr. Fergusson, please tell me the truth. So much depends on it. When shall I be able to paint again?"
He did not answer for a minute; then he said slowly—
"I think your hand will have to have a six months' rest."
Her lips quivered and a blank look of dismay filled her face, but she did not speak, only drew herself up straighter in her chair.
He looked at her.
"Will that be difficult?"
His voice was very gentle. It might have been Sunnie he was addressing.
Jean thought of her circumstances. She had drawn her last cheque, and had no more money in the bank to fall back upon. She was now living upon Barbara's hard-earned nest-egg. Her pride was broken, but the future seemed impossible to her. Difficult? What could she say? How could she tell him that she was penniless? She struggled to control herself and looked up bravely, but his keen, searching eyes seemed to be reading her through and through, and there was a look upon his face that she had never seen before.
"It will—be more than difficult," she said brokenly.
It was no good. The tears would come, and a sob stopped further speech.
Then Dr. Fergusson bent forward and took her hand in his.
"Jean, will you let me make it easy for you? Don't cry! You have been such a brave little woman all this time. Will you let me have the right to look after you in the future? I have been long in speaking, but I thought—I was told—that some one else—"
It was a halting, nervous speech, but Dr. Fergusson's self-control and self-repression failed him for once. He only saw the girl he loved getting whiter and whiter in dumb misery, and tears dimming her expressive eyes. He had his arm round her now, and Jean's tears were literally wiped away for her.
For her glance gave consent, though she hardly realised as yet the great happiness that had come to her. She only knew that the night had gone and a dawn had begun that was going to last throughout eternity.
Barbara came into the room at last.
"I had a premonition of what would happen," she said, with a bright smile; "and as I don't know you very well, Dr. Fergusson, and I do know Jean, I congratulate you with all my heart."
"But I am to be congratulated most," said Jean, with some of her old spirit flashing out, as she gave the doctor a little shy glance, "for he will find me very disappointing, I am sure."
"I am going to carry her off to my mother's," Dr. Fergusson said, standing up, and looking down upon Jean with a proud sense of proprietorship. "We will see what a few months of Scotch air and feeding will do."
"Then, I shall not have the pleasure of taking her back with me," said Barbara.
Jean looked from one to the other with a little perplexity.
"Am I to have no voice at all?" she asked.
"None, until you are entirely convalescent," said Dr. Fergusson. Then, his decided tone softened, and he placed his hand lightly on her shoulder. "My mother wants you, and so do I. Don't you want to come?"
Jean's smile was sufficient answer.
Then Barbara and the doctor began making rapid arrangements, and before he left, it was settled that two days later Jean should start for Scotland.
"I feel quite bewildered," said Jean, when she and Barbara were left alone. "It has all come so suddenly and so unexpectedly; and I don't see my way clear even yet, Barbara. I cannot go on living on your money like this. I have just thought of my portrait. They really ought to give me something for it. I wonder if I could get them to take it at half-price. If only I had a little ready money of my own!"
"Oh, Jean," said Barbara, laughing, "you are hopelessly practical. If ever you could let your money affairs slide, I should think it would be to-day! But give me this Mrs. Alderman's address, and I will see what I can do."
Barbara was a clever woman. She went into the city the next day and interviewed the alderman's wife. A little pressure and a threat to sell her portrait to a second-hand dealer, and she gave in, writing Barbara a cheque for the stipulated amount before she left the house.
"It was an unpleasant business," admitted Barbara, "but a profitable one."
And Jean's cares seemed to melt away with this sum in hand.
When the doctor came to see her again, he was surprised at the rapid progress she had made.
"My mother will not believe that you are an invalid, if you go on like this," he said. And then he and Jean plunged into a long talk, which was delightful only to themselves.
"I am a little shy of you still," said Jean, laying her hand lightly on his coat sleeve. "You have always been so grave and silent to me, that I feel I don't properly know you."
"Are you afraid of my unknown qualities?" the doctor asked, imprisoning her hand in his, and looking at her with his old humorous twinkle in his eyes.
She looked up at him sweetly.
"'Perfect love casteth out fear,'" she said. "I used long ago to pride myself upon my strength of will and purpose. I gloried in standing alone, but I have come to see that dependence is sweeter. I somehow think I have made a mess of my life, and now I am going to put the fragments of it into your keeping, and never have an anxious thought again of what I am to do and how I am to do it."
"But that is deepening my responsibility."
"You are strong enough to bear it."
He shook his head.
"We are both subjects of a King, Jean, whose wishes must come first. You owe an allegiance to Him as well as I. I cannot relieve you of your individual responsibility in the King's service."
"But you can share it," said Jean quickly.
His face brightened.
"Yes, I can do that."
"God's claim will come first with us," said Jean. "I would not have it otherwise. He has led me every step of the way, and I would not have one step altered. But He led you to me, and—"
"And I will never relinquish the charge of you, till He takes you from me," he said tenderly and solemnly.
On the morning before she started for Scotland, Jean received the following letter:—
"DEAR COZ,—Don't expect me to congratulate you! If I'm not a
despairing, ruined, heart-broken man, it isn't your fault. I always
had my suspicions that I had a rival. Now, honestly, do you think that
grim, long-legged doctor will make you as happy as I should? But I
won't reproach you. He played his cards better than I did, and got near
you when I could not, and took advantage of your weakness when I was at
a distance. I was lacking in perseverance, or I know I should have won
the day. However, I'll play the part of a hero, give you my blessing,
and retire into private life for a bit. I'm afraid the shade of your
grandfather will visit you."
"I shall look to Rawlings for comfort. He will say, 'I allays knewed
Lunnon would change Miss Jean for the worse. An' if she do prefer a
Scotch barbarian to her own kith and kin, and take to porride and broth
instead of English beef and puddin', why 'tis Lunnon that have twisted
and perverted her head and her heart!'"
"Yours reproachfully,"
"CHARLIE."
"Chris sends love. She is a jewel!"
"I don't think Charlie knows what real love is," Jean mused as she finished reading this epistle. "How I wish he would marry Chris!"
THEIR FUTURE
"Come, my beloved! we will haste and go
To those pale faces of our fellow-men!
Our loving hearts, burning with summer fire,
Will cast a glow upon their pallidness;
Our hands will help them, far as servants may;
Hands are apostles still to saviour hearts,
So we may share their blessedness with them."—MacDonald.
IT was a bright, frosty day, the latter end of February, when Dr. Fergusson and Jean paid their first visit together to Sunnie and her mother.
As Jean entered the familiar hall, and her eyes wandered to the family pictures and the race of Margarets, she gave a little start as she recognised Sunnie's picture amongst them.
"A framed sunbeam," said Dr. Fergusson, following her looks. "You will never paint a more successful picture, Jean."
Then they went up the stairs to the old nursery. Jean wondered if she were dreaming; everything seemed exactly the same. She almost expected when the door was opened to see the little golden-haired figure on the couch in the firelight, but instead, she saw Mrs. Gordon in a low chair by the fire and Sunnie sitting on the rug with her head resting against her mother's knee.
The child was on her feet in an instant, and with a joyous cry, started forward and precipitated herself into Jean's arms.
"My painter has come at last!"
Mrs. Gordon welcomed Jean affectionately.
"Sunnie has done nothing but talk of you ever since we heard the news. We hoped you might come over this afternoon, but were not sure."
"Now," announced Sunnie, "we will all sit round the fire and have a talk like we used to do; but may I place the chairs, mother?"
Assent was given. It seemed strange to Jean to watch the child's active movements. She looked White and fragile still, and seemed taller than when she had lain on her couch, but her cloud of soft hair floated over her shoulders in the old bewitching way, and her little expressive face had lost none of its fascinating sweetness and joyousness.
"The big cushioned chair for my painter, for then she can take me on her knee, and mother will be in her own chair on one side of her to talk to her, and Cousin Leslie will have his own lounge seat on the other side of her, and we'll all be as close together as ever we can manage, for we all love each other so, don't we! And this is my party, for mother said it was."
"I think I am the favoured one," said Jean as, after settling every one to her satisfaction, Sunnie climbed into her lap. "I don't think I have ever held you in my arms before."
"She is not very heavy, is she?" said her mother, looking at her child rather wistfully as she spoke.
"Leslie, what do you think of her?"
"She is first rate," he replied cheerfully. "Perhaps she ought to be fattened up a bit, but you must expect her running about to take it out of her a little."
"I do run about, don't I, mother?" Sunnie put in, "but my days now are like the days in heaven."
Then she put her arms round Jean's neck and drew her face down to kiss.
"I'm going to call you Cousin Jean now. Do you remember I dreamt long ago, soon after you came to paint my picture, that you and Cousin Leslie, were holding hands and running away from me? You won't do that, will you? I'm so excited about it. When will you be married, and where will you live? Close to us, won't you? And then I can come and have tea with you sometimes. Cousin Leslie, do go to the piano and play all about it, and play the wedding-bells ringing? Please do!"
She was off Jean's lap and by Dr. Fergusson's side in a second. Jean's face got crimson, but Dr. Fergusson, with a little laugh, went over to the piano. He dashed into a merry chime of bells, and then drifted into the Wedding March, which delighted Sunnie and rather embarrassed Jean. Then he got up, and placed his hand lightly on Jean's shoulder.
"I hope that day will not be far off," he said.
She looked up at him with a smile, but could not speak, and then Mrs. Gordon carried her cousin off, leaving Sunnie with Jean alone.
"I know you will excuse us," Mrs. Gordon said, "but I do want to talk a little business with Leslie; I shall not keep him long."
They went, and Sunnie returned to Jean's lap.
"Now we'll be properly cosy. Isn't it a wonderful thing about my legs?"
She stretched her tiny tan-stockinged legs out admiringly.
"They hardly ache at all, nor more does my back, and I walk and run miles and miles every day. And, Cousin Jean, I've made a present of my legs to God. I tell Him to make them do just what He would want them to do, if they were in heaven! And then I think Jesus leads me about, and it is so lovely, and I've been to see three sick people in the village, a man who has a cough and a woman who has a bad leg, and a boy who is very ill and is going to heaven very soon. And mother lets me carry them things, soup and jelly, and puddings, and my legs do love it so!"
"And when I'm out of doors, and the sun shines, and the birds sing, and the flowers smell, I wonder if I'm in heaven after all. It is so like what I used to make up to myself about heaven. But do you know, Cousin Jean, I'm sorry for one poor thing! It's my old sofa. He looks so dull and lonely without me, I'm afraid his heart must be nearly broken. He always had me with him, and we used to go for such lovely rides together. He seems to look at me and say, 'You're forgetting your old friend'; and then sometimes I go and cuddle him, and tell him how lovely it is in the world outside the windows. And I ask nurse to leave him to me to dust every morning; he likes me to fuss over him, I'm sure he does!"
Jean looked across at the old sofa and smiled.
"But I expect you haven't quite done with him yet, Sunnie. Don't you sometimes lie down on him?"
"Oh yes, but I don't live on him, as I used to do," Sunnie replied.
She chatted on in her quaint sweet fashion, and Jean was almost sorry when Mrs. Gordon and Dr. Fergusson returned.
When they were saying goodbye, Sunnie looked up into Dr. Fergusson's face rather wistfully.
"I should like to give both of you my blessing, but I'm not on my sofa now—"
Jean smiled.
"Can't you give it off the sofa, Sunnie? I should dearly like to have it."
Sunnie climbed into a high chair.
"Will you bend your heads prop'ly?"
Dr. Fergusson put his arm lightly round Jean, and both heads were bowed before the little maiden. She gravely put her hand on each head and shut her eyes devoutly.
"God bless my dear two cousins, and keep them good and happy, and marry them quick, and make their house like heaven. For Jesu's sake. Amen."
Jean had tears in her eyes as she clasped the child in her arms.
"Sunnie," she whispered, "I have to thank you for making me wish to be good. It was the first step to happiness with me."
And then they went away.
That same evening, Jean and Dr. Fergusson were having a tête-à-tête over the drawing-room fire. Mrs. Fergusson was confined to her room with a bad cold.
"Poor little Sunnie!" Jean said. "I can't bear to think she will grow up and be disillusioned."
"Why should she be?"
"Oh, she must. She thinks every one is sincere and good, and all the world as it should be. I hope her faith will stand the shocks it is bound to have."
"Sunnie is in the care of One who loves her, the One who has power enough to keep her from the evil in the world."
"Yes."
There was a pause; then Dr. Fergusson leant forward, and put his hand on Jean's arm.
"Jean, my child, I want to unburden myself to you. I want your help."
"I will give it," Jean replied simply, but the deep devotion in her eyes told more than her words.
Dr. Fergusson drew a long breath.
"Will you be willing to cast your lot in with mine wherever I may be led?"
"Yes; as long as I am with you, nothing else matters."
"Listen, Jean. For years, I have been longing for a fuller sphere of work. A doctor has some opportunities, but they are few and far between. A sick-bed and agonies of pain are not conducive to listening to the Master's message. I have longed to go out like the early apostles did, to preach and teach the gospel of the kingdom. For years, I have believed that God intends I shall do so, but I have not seen my way. Even that tiny Sunnie, when she was tied to her sofa, held me with an iron hand from attempting a change of work. How could I leave her, when I knew she depended on me for cheer and comfort and guidance? Now she and her mother are one, she has more interests in her life, and she can stand alone. She does not need me. I have been thinking deeply of the cry abroad for medical missionaries. We sit at home and say people ought to go; thousands are still unreached, unfed, unsatisfied. Will you come with me?"
He stopped abruptly. Jean was conscious of a distinct shock.
"Missionaries," she said doubtfully, "always seem to me rather uninteresting. Why do people look down upon them so? They do."
"Does our Master? Are His ambassadors nothing to Him? Have we to live as the world would have us, or as Christ would?"
The colour deepened in Jean's cheeks.
"I feel at the present moment that I would go anywhere with you, Leslie. You can be certain of me joining you in anything that you undertake, for I know you must be in the right."
"But you do not feel drawn to mission work abroad?"
Jean clasped her hands round her knees, and gazed thoughtfully into the fire.
"I'm such a beginner," she said at last, "that I hardly know. I'm trying to imagine myself being told to go without you, Leslie. I think if it was God's will for me, I should do it, of course. But I should require very definite assurance about it."
"If we love our Master, His last words ought to have weight with us."
"What were they?"
"I shall leave you to find out," Dr. Fergusson said, with one of his rare smiles. "But, Jean, if your desire is to do God's will, so is mine, and I am not afraid of the result. My mother will be against the plan, I am afraid, but if you and I are of one mind, we shall gain her consent before long."
When Jean went to bed that night, she turned over the leaves of her Bible and read the last chapter of each of the four Gospels and the first opening verses of the Acts. Then she sat over her fire, deep in thought. She began to see that her religion was a very selfish one, if she had no desire to communicate it to others, that she was a poor follower of the One who lived to influence and help those around Him.
And it was not strange with such thoughts, that she should have a dream, the vividness and reality of which woke her up in the early hours of the morning, and prevented all further sleep from visiting her.
When she came down to breakfast, her face attracted Dr. Fergusson's attention at once. They were alone together, as Mrs. Fergusson was breakfasting in her room.
"What is the matter, Jean? You look big with thought."
"So I am. I am longing to talk to you and tell you a dream I had."
Dr. Fergusson smiled.
"You are such a practical young person generally, that I am surprised you have any dreams."
Jean laughed lightly.
"Don't say I have no imagination. I am sure I have that."
"Would you like to drive out with me this morning? I have to go to a rather pretty village about eight miles out?"
"I should love it. My dream will keep. I will run up to Mrs. Fergusson, and tell her I am going."
A little later, when they were driving swiftly along in Dr. Fergusson's high dog-cart, Jean told her dream.
"I thought I was seeing a ship off. You were in it, and I was trying to get to you, but I couldn't, and some one behind me kept saying, 'Only willing and cheerful workers go abroad; you are neither, in your heart!' And then a great darkness fell over me, and everything—God Himself, and hopes of heaven, and forgiveness for my past sins—all melted away, and the same voice said, 'Your religion, your Christianity, has been taken away from you. You didn't make proper use of it.' I tell you, Leslie, it was awful! I felt almost as if I were in hell, there seemed no light, no hope, and I had lost God! That seemed the most awful thing of all. I felt that there was no future, and my soul was in abject despair. I couldn't pray; I tried to find my Bible, but I found it was gone; I rushed about trying to find good people, a church, a clergyman, any one or anything that would help me, but every one I met was like myself, and at last some one said to me, 'You are a heathen like ourselves. We don't know anything about God or heaven!' Then I woke up, the tears were streaming down my face, and oh, I can't tell you the blessing it was to find it was only a dream!"
Dr. Fergusson was silent, but he looked down upon her very tenderly. Jean went on rather impulsively: "My dream has finished what you began, Leslie. I feel I have experienced what it is to be a heathen! And oh, what they miss! I am longing, burning, to go and tell them of the love and goodness and mercy of God, to bring sunshine into that awful darkness of soul, to tell them the story of the Cross, and all that it brought to us, and Christ's keeping as well as saving power. I never knew what a glorious thing it is to be a Christian, till it seemed to be all swept away from me last night!"
"I read the passages that gave Christ's last words, and I was convinced in my head before I went to sleep that every Christian ought to be a messenger or a witness, but when I woke this morning, my heart was convinced as well as my head. Leslie, you need not be afraid that I will hang back now. I believe God has shown me Himself what He would have me do."
"I believe He has," Dr. Fergusson said, thoughtfully. "I am not one who says no one can witness at home, Jean. I would not forget the words, 'beginning at Jerusalem,' but there are always those who, from health or circumstances, are unfitted for the foreign field. It has been the dream of my life to go. My mother has hitherto held me back."
"And will she be willing now?"
"I think she will not miss me so much. I daresay you know Meta Worth and my brother are going to marry shortly. My mother wishes them to come and live here with her, and they seem to like the idea of it. I shall be quite easy in my own mind about leaving her, and if you are willing, I shall offer myself at once for foreign work."
Jean laid her hand caressingly on his arm.
"I think, Leslie, if you said you were going to sweep a crossing in London, I would buy a broom and shoulder it joyfully after you!"
Dr. Fergusson smiled down at her.
"I should not like to think that was your only motive for following me out to the mission field."
"No," said Jean, an earnest look succeeding the mirthful one in her eyes. "I shall gladly follow the Master's servant because I love him, but I also love the message he takes, and above all, I love the Master from whom it comes. And, Leslie, we will not be melancholy missionaries. It is a message of good tidings. We will think of the verse—
"'The desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be
found therein; thanksgiving and the voice of melody.'"
LOOKING BACK
"How sweet to know
The trials which we cannot comprehend
Have each their own divinely purposed end.
He traineth so
For higher learning, ever onward reaching
For fuller knowledge yet, and His own deeper teaching."
"Nor only here
The rich result of all our God doth teach,
His scholars, slow at best until we reach
A nobler sphere;
Then, only then, our training is complete,
And the true life begins for which He made us meet."—F. R. Havergal.
"DEAR COZ,—When is your wedding coming off? Mine is next Midsummer
Day. I'm following your example, and Chris and I are going to set up
house together. We understand each other to a T, and she's a stirring,
cheery companion, I can tell you! She is a true farmer's wife, for a
working farmer I mean to be, either in this old land or across the
ocean. All my hurt feelings have departed. I could even shake hands
with your doctor, so send me a line, and I'll ever remain,"
"Your affec. cousin,"
"CHARLIE."
Jean received this letter about six weeks after she had been in Scotland.
It brought a smile to her lips, but a letter from Barbara by the same post did more. It brought real joy to her heart.
"MY DEAREST JEAN,—I hope you will be pleased about Chris. I think
they are well suited to each other, and Charlie is such a dear good
unselfish fellow, that she will be certain to find him a good husband.
I hope Mrs. Fergusson will approve. She has been so very kind to Chris
in more ways than I can mention."
"And now, dear Jean, this is very private and confidential. You will
like to know that I have been seeking to know the One you love and
serve. I have been so filled with my own shortcomings, that I have had
a miserable time of it, but the light has come at last, and I, like
Christian, have dropped my burden at the Cross. Oh, Jean, why did I
never do it before? Why have I wasted all these years in fruitless
living? But I don't believe I should have been convinced of my need of
it, if I had not gone to nurse you."
"I shall never forget the sight of you, parched with fever, nearly
starved, without a friend, and yet murmuring with a smile, 'Underneath
are the everlasting arms.'"
"I felt then the worth of those arms to sustain you at such a time."
"Write to me and help me, for I'm such a beginner, but I'm so happy.
Even the future loss of Chris does not, cannot depress me. I am longing
that she should experience it with me. Pray for her, and for me, that I
may not bring discredit upon my Master's cause. Much love, dear."
"Your grateful friend,"
"BARBARA."
"Leslie," Jean said a little later, "do you know, I shall only take up my painting as a recreation in future. I want to finish my picture, but I feel now that nothing is worth absorbing one's whole time and thoughts but our Master's work. Barbara's letter inspires me. Why have I been so silent, so self-absorbed? I feel a longing desire to win every one into the kingdom. Is this just a wave of enthusiasm, or do you think I may be learning a little more in God's school?"
"My darling, it is only that you have been sent into another class. Thank God for it, and ask Him to deepen and strengthen every desire to work for Him. There are passive and active Christians. I dare not judge the former. Sickness, physical nervousness, and other causes may cripple their powers, but I would have every nerve and tissue of your being, tingling with life and activity. A healthy soul is like a healthy body, it suffers at once, if it does not exercise its functions. If we have good news to tell, it is only the devil himself who will keep our mouths shut."
Sunnie did not hear of the missionary scheme till Jean's Scotch visit came to an end, and she had returned to London.
Then she wrote a letter:—
"My DARLING COUSIN JEAN,—Cousin Leslie has been talking to me, and
playing it all out on the piano. I cried at first, because I did want
you to come and live close to us."
"But the poor heathen must be made happy, and they will love to hear
Cousin Leslie play hymns and talk to them. And it's dreadful for
grown-up people in the world to grow up and know everything else except
about Jesus. I'm making up pictures in my head about you, when you go
over the sea. You'll have a little house in the middle of cocoa-nut
trees and bananas, and monkeys and parrots will be running about your
garden, and little black children will be coming to your school, and
you'll teach them the hymns we sing on Sunday, and they'll laugh and be
glad."
"God will make me glad soon, so I'm trying hard not to cry. I shan't
be a brave Margaret Gordon if I do, shall I? But I feel like I did in my
dream, when you were holding Cousin Leslie's hand and running away from
me."
"I think a missionary is a grander thing than a king or queen, for
it's next best to being an angel. And if I grow up without going to
heaven, I shall be a missionary, too."
"Your loving little"
"SUNNIE."
* * * * *
It was the eve of Jean's wedding-day.
She was in the little house in Kensington that belonged to Mrs. Douglas, and the latter was with her. She had arrived in England three months before, for she had buried Colonel Douglas in the sunny south. She returned with a serene and peaceful face to take up her old life in London again.
It seemed pathetic to Jean to think that the happiness of wedded life had come to her so late, and for such a short space of time, but Mrs. Douglas had no complaints or regrets.
"I went to him when he wanted me most, and we shall only be a little time away from each other. My heaven is all the sweeter for his presence there. I can afford to wait till I am sent for!"
She was full of affectionate interest in Jean, and after the girl had poured out an account of herself during her time abroad, Mrs. Douglas remained very thoughtful. Then she put her hand caressingly on Jean's wavy hair, for she was sitting at her feet, with her head resting on her knee.
"Jean, darling, isn't it sometimes good to look back, and trace our steps through life? You came to me an undisciplined, wilful, thoughtless girl; you are leaving me to-morrow a thoughtful, earnest woman. Do you realise how all your circumstances, your disappointments, your troubles as well as your pleasures, have been the moulding of the clay in the hands of the Great Potter?"
Jean looked up thoughtfully.
"I would not have a day different if I might," she said emphatically.
And Mrs. Douglas said softly—
"And that is what most of us will say when we get to heaven."
FINIS