Chapter XV: 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!'"