Chapter XVI: A Doctor's Verdict

"And I must go alone! Most near and dear,
I cannot hope to have thee with me here!
I know that thou wilt watch me to the last,
Till all sweet ministries of love be past,
And we shall not be separated long—
But 'Love is strong as Death,' and Death is strong."
—From "Heart to Heart."

YES, Chris was enjoying herself. There was not the smallest doubt about that. Barbara read her letters through, with a smile on her lips and a light in her eye.

"I am so thankful that she is having this change," she said to Jean. "Chris has never had any pleasure like it before. It will do her a world of good."

"Now," said Jean, "if she sees some nice Scotchman up there, and gets engaged to be married, would you be glad, Barbara?"

"Oh, I hope I should; yes, I am sure I should," was the hurried reply.

Then, after a pause, Barbara said rather nervously, "What is this Dr. Fergusson like, Jean? Chris seems to mention him so often."

Jean felt her heart give a thump against her ribs. She knew at once what was in Barbara's mind, and for the first time, wondered what she would feel like if Chris captivated the doctor's heart.

"He—he is a very good man, I know," she replied, steadying her voice with an effort. "Every one likes him."

Barbara said no more, but Jean passed a sleepless night with useless conjectures as to the possibility of Chris and the doctor taking a liking to each other. "Of course, she cannot fail to like him!" argued Jean, in deep depression of spirits. "And she is so bright and good tempered, so unselfish and so unaffected, that he is very likely to care for her. She will make him a good wife, and I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have brought about the match. Oh—" here she flung herself face downwards on her pillow and gripped it with both hands in the intensity of her feelings—"it will be hard—very hard to bear!"

She applied herself with extra vigour to her household tasks, and more than once Barbara remonstrated with her.

"You are always at it, Jean. We are working you to death. What will Miss Lorraine say?"

"She will be glad that I am making myself useful. I want to get away from myself, Barbara. You don't know what a selfish creature I am, and what a struggle it is, to keep my wishes and my desires in the background!"

Barbara only dimly understood, but while Jean was earnestly trying to quench her self-will and self-indulgence, there was another influence slowly growing and increasing in her heart, that was helping her successfully to cope with her besetting sin, and this influence was bringing a new tenderness and softness into her eyes and voice, and a deep undercurrent of peace and happiness into her soul.

Jean was a slow learner at the feet of her Master. But she was learning. From being a dreary irksome book, her Bible was giving her fresh thoughts, day by day. She stumbled very often, her self was her worst enemy, but she thanked God that her life was widening, and that now she could feel as much interest, and perhaps more, in others than in herself.

Chris continued to write her bright, amusing letters. She told of a long day in Edinburgh with her godmother, of lunching with Mr. George Fergusson, whom she thought very nice, but not a quarter good enough to be the son of his mother, of the sightseeing she had done, and of the charming Scotch people she had met. She described a day when she lunched at Strathglen, and found little Sunnie on her couch underneath an old chestnut-tree on the lawn. Dr. Fergusson had carried her down, and Chris described her as "a quivering, radiant sunbeam."

"I don't wonder Jean loved it all," she wrote. "The sombre old house, with its rich carvings and stained windows, and gallery of portraits, the sad, silent self-contained mistress, the devoted old servants and the little bit of sparkling quicksilver with her ringing laugh, her quaint conceits, and her wonderful love for everything and everybody, it impressed me tremendously, and the bond of union between the doctor and that tiny child is most touching!"

Then she spoke of Sunnie's portrait.

"It is marvellous! Jean must be a genius. She seems to have caught and held the spirit of the child in her canvas. It isn't only the outside of Sunnie, but the indescribable sweet witchery of the little darling, the absolute purity and innocence of her nature."

Jean read these extracts, smiled and sighed, and waited impatiently for the next to come.

A fortnight passed, three weeks, and then Chris wrote, saying she was coming back.

It was towards the close of a very warm day in August when she returned. Mick brought her back from the station in triumph. He was a very quiet young fellow, and Chris was his favourite sister. He had missed her, more than he cared to say. Barbara welcomed her home with open arms, and Chris seemed as delighted to be back, as she had been to go. She was brimming over with talk, and had gained an indescribable sort of society air which amused her sister. But Barbara soon found that Chris had come home absolutely heart-whole.

"It is only in story books," she confided to Barbara, when they were alone, "that country girls go away from home for three weeks, and meet their fate in that prescribed time. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, but have seen no one that has taken the slightest liking to me, nor I to them."

"We were wondering—" Barbara began, then hesitated. "Did you like Dr. Fergusson, Chris?"

Chris looked at her sister, then laughed.

"Oh, you dear old thing, is that what you were getting into your head? I shouldn't say that the doctor is in the least, a marrying man. He is so—what shall I say?—self-reliant and self-contained. Awfully nice, and considerate and respectful to all women, which is not the fashion with younger men nowadays. But his heart—if he has one—is wrapped round with a stout substantial crust of stolid indifference and unimpressionability! I should say he was interested in women as fellow-creatures, but he never individualises them any more than he would his patients."

She said much the same to Jean, and laughed at Jean's pertinacious questions.

"Why do you like Scotland so much?" she asked in her turn.

And Jean flushed, and was more wary in her catechism afterwards. Then they slipped into the old routine, except that Jean persisted in lightening Chris of some of her labours.

"I never knew how much you did, till you went away," she said. "I have always been too self-indulgent; it will do me such a lot of good, to work a little."

"But you have your painting. You have quite neglected it, since I have been away."

"Yes, but I am making up for lost time now. I shall soon have finished it."

"And then we shall lose you."

"I have had a delicious time here," said Jean. "But I must be in town again soon. The autumn is coming on, and I think I shall have a chance of doing some portraits during the winter."

Time slipped away, but when Jean came to leave Kingsford Farm, she felt she had made real friends there, and friends who would remain so.

"You must come back to us another summer," said Barbara. "Come to us in the spring-time. We have fields of daffodils and primroses; it is the sweetest time in the whole year to me."

"I have learnt a good deal from you," said Jean thoughtfully. "I never had my selfishness brought home to me before. I hope I shall never be so self-absorbed again."

She could not speak of the deeper lessons she had been learning. Not even to Miss Lorraine, in her letters, had she given the least hint of the great change that had slowly and gradually come into her soul.

But she had not been back many days in town, before Miss Lorraine noticed the difference in her.

And one Sunday evening coming home from church Jean said abruptly—

"Do you remember your talk to me, Miss Lorraine, before I went to Kingsford?"

"Yes, I do."

"I see things differently now. I hardly like to say it, but I think I've got a different centre in my life. I hope I have the right one; I should like to tell you about it."

Miss Lorraine listened with a glad heart. The answer to her many prayers had come.

She was able to give Jean wise counsel at this juncture, for, like many beginners, the girl had her ups and downs, and could not understand why her feelings should vary so—why one day she felt able to do and dare great things for her Master, and other days would be cold and indifferent; afraid of being thought peculiar or fanatical, and hopelessly discouraged by her inconsistency of conduct.

"Don't expect to walk without falling, Jean. Aim at doing it. There is no necessity for lowering your standard, but a fall does not mean instant loss of God's grace and love. Tell Him about it, and His hand will be outstretched at once. Remember Peter on the stormy lake. We none of us can always walk on smooth waters. Upheavals will take place; we may be shaken, knocked down, but a Christian will find his feet again, and perhaps be a humbler, truer Christian in consequence."

"Am I right to keep to my art, Miss Lorraine? Is it waste of life?"

"I think not at present, as long as you do not let it crowd out the better things in your life."

So Jean worked on in her School of Art, and was busy and happy as the winter passed by.

The winter brought Miss Lorraine a heavy trouble. Colonel Douglas came and went as usual, but her quick eyes noticed a greyness and pallor about his face, and a weariness that he in vain tried to hide.

She taxed him with it at last.

"You are not well."

"Getting old."

"Nonsense, not old enough to be so tired."

He looked wistfully at her for a moment, and then began to talk of other things, but she was not to be put off, and returned to the attack a day or two afterwards. After a little fencing, he told her—

"I have been to a—a doctor. I am not quite the thing; in fact, he has found out what I suspected myself, that there is something serious, and something, Frances, that cannot be cured."

There was dead silence. The woman caught her breath. Few moments in her life had been so intense with pain as this. She looked at her old friend with a white, still face.

"I am glad you have told me; but is it—is it quite hopeless? Don't tell me, Philip, that you are going to be taken from us?"

There was a sharp ring of anguish in her voice that she did not try to keep back.

The Colonel rose from his seat, paced the room irresolutely, then turned to her.

"I was about to wish that my time was short here, Frances, but I will not be a coward. I have always enjoyed such good health, and have led such an active life, that a sick-room is abhorrent to me. But if it is to be my lot, I shall be willing to go through it. I may live a few years, the doctor says, but I shall always be an invalid. I have done with health and strength and activity; and sickness and weakness and pain, Frances, are formidable foes to confront. There! I ask your pardon for letting you see me in this mood, but I have always been to you with my troubles, and I could not keep this back from you."

He made a feint at one of his cheerful smiles, but Miss Lorraine sat still.

"Oh," she said at last, "if I could go through it for you! Women can bear sickness—they are accustomed to it. Oh, Philip, can I do nothing, nothing for you?"

Colonel Douglas sat down and partially turned his face from her, as if he could not meet her eyes.

"I would like," he said a little brokenly—"at the end—you know I am not fond of nurses—I would like to think, you would be near me. Would you come, if I sent for you, Frances?"

"To the end of the earth," she said. "But you are not going far away, Philip?"

"The doctor advised my going to the South of France. He suggested first a sea voyage, but I could not stand that. You see I have been such an active man, that I don't think I could stand the life on board ship when you're thrown upon yourself so. I thought perhaps I would try the Riviera, and yet—"

Here a little fiery sparkle shot into his tired-looking eyes. "Why should I try to prolong my life? I shall be away from my friends. No, I will die in harness, Frances."

Then a great impulse seized the woman who loved him. She rose from her seat and stepped across to him.

"Philip, you must carry out the doctor's orders, you must go to the Riviera, but—will you take me with you?"

The Colonel did not start, or show any surprise at her words. But he put one of his hands on her shoulder, and looked at her.

And then he drew a long breath.

"Oh, Frances, do you think I do not love you better than that? Could I wear you out for my selfish gratification and pleasure? It is like you to offer yourself for such a task, but I would not be a man, if I were to say yes."

Miss Lorraine's fair face was flushed. For a moment she struggled for self-control, and then she burst into tears.

"Oh, Philip, my heart would break, if you suffered and slowly died—away—out of my reach. I ask to come as your nurse. You cannot, you shall not, prevent me! Because I made a great mistake years ago, shall that mistake still shadow our lives? I am not a girl now, I am a woman, and if I am forward and unconventional, we are too old friends to misunderstand each other. You do not like hired nurses, I do not, and I plead with you now, for the sake of the girl you once loved, to give me the right to come with you and comfort you, and be with you till the end. Do not refuse me."

Colonel Douglas took her hands in his.

"Frances, my love has never changed, I have never swerved in my allegiance to you, and if you are going to crown my last days with such unspeakable happiness, I will hold out no longer."

He drew her to him, and the long lonely years of severed lives in the past, and the certainty of the black cloud hovering over them, so soon to sever them again, could not bring one drop of bitterness into that sweet moment when their hearts met and touched each other.

"We will not wait any longer," he said at last, "and we shall be married as quietly and quickly as possible."

Miss Lorraine acquiesced. Her one desire was to be with him now, and spare him as much as possible. She knew that joy and grief would be intermingled through every bit of intercourse they held together, but her own feelings she thought little about—he was her chief concern.

When Jean was told, she marvelled at Miss Lorraine's composure.

"I have always wondered," she said simply, "why you did not come together before."

And this was the general opinion of their friends. The Colonel came as often as he generally did to the house, but his anxious care and thought for his numerous protégés was most touching, and once Miss Lorraine broke down.

"Why do the good people all go first?" she exclaimed. "You can't be spared, Philip. It is such a test of our faith to believe that it is for the best!"

He smiled, and shook his head. It was easier for him to feel resigned to his fate, than for her; but she never uttered a complaint again, and outwardly was the same bright, brave soul that she had always been.

It was just at this time, that Jean's picture was accepted for the Royal Academy. She could hardly believe in her good fortune at first, and then was quite cast down, to think that neither Miss Lorraine nor Colonel Douglas would ever see it hanging there. They were both delighted at her success, and the Colonel said, "You will go ahead now, Jean. I predict that picture will make your name."

"It is all owing to you," she said gratefully.