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!'"