Chapter XIV: 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.