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!"