Chapter XII: 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.