Chapter XXIII: An Arrival

"Two human loves make one divine."—E. B. Browning.

THE next afternoon, Barbara took Jean out of her bedroom into the one adjoining it, which was now prettily arranged as a sitting-room. Flowers were on the table, and a dainty little afternoon tea was awaiting her.

As they were sitting down to it, Mrs. Sykes's little girl appeared at the door.

"Please'm, a gentleman would like to see you."

Jean's white cheeks flushed crimson.

"If it is Charlie, I can't see him, Barbara. I don't feel well enough. Go down to him and tell him so. Don't let him come up. Be firm, for he is very obstinate."

"Yes, dear; don't be afraid. I shall not let any one come near you."

She remained away a long time. Jean began to wonder when she was coming back. But she came in at last, and her voice was very quiet and gentle as she said—

"It was not Mr. Oxton, dear, but Dr. Fergusson. I think if you could make up your mind to see him it would be a good thing, for he could tell you as a friend about your hand. It is not healing as fast as it should, and he would like to see it. He has come for the express purpose."

Jean was weak, and easily upset. She trembled all over.

"I can't see him, Barbara—not as a doctor—I couldn't; don't ask me to."

"Very well, dear. I won't ask him to look at your hand. See him as a friend. We will give him a cup of tea, and then you will be able to hear about little Sunnie."

Before she had time to make further objection, Dr. Fergusson was in the room.

When he took her hand in his, and asked in his quiet, grave manner how she was, Jean's throbbing pulses were strangely soothed and stilled.

"I am up in town for a few days, and my mother asked me to call and see you. Miss McTaggart has been telling me how ill you have been."

"I am better now," Jean faltered, looking round for Barbara. But Barbara had left the room.

Dr. Fergusson drew a chair up opposite her—

"You look like a shade or ghost of your former self," he said in his most cheerful tone. "Now I am going to take you in hand. Tell me what you have been doing with yourself."

There was a tone of masterfulness in his voice that Jean could not resist.

She obeyed him at once, and then, without asking her, he gently took hold of her bandaged hand, and began asking her various questions as he unbound it. She winced once or twice under his touch, but his presence gave her confidence, and he talked to her so professionally that she was soon at ease with him.

When Barbara came back, she found the doctor talking in his most genial tones, and Jean, lying back amongst her cushions, was smiling brightly at him.

She sat down and poured out tea, and Dr. Fergusson gave them as much Scotch news as they wished for.

"You would never have seen me, if it had not been for a letter your sister wrote to my mother," he said, addressing Barbara. "She mentioned your sudden departure for London and gave your address."

"I moved some time ago," said Jean.

"Yes," he replied, looking at her keenly; "but this isn't the right part of town for you to be living in. It is too far from your art classes. You should economise your strength and time, remember. What have you been painting?"

"A portrait that has been a failure," said Jean a little sadly; "and that picture over there. Would you like to see it? I should be so glad of your criticism. Barbara, will you uncover it?"

The canvas was drawn forward into the light, and Dr. Fergusson looked at it in silence.

The little child's figure was beautiful, and was the centre of the picture. His mother looked life-like in her yearning tenderness over her baby, but her figure as well as that of Eli's was partially unfinished.

"It is good work," pronounced Dr. Fergusson slowly. "I congratulate you on your subject."

"'Lent to the Lord' I think I shall call it," said Jean, looking at it wistfully.

"Happy child!"

Dr. Fergusson murmured the words. Barbara looked at him with interest.

"A good man," she thought, "and a clever one. I am glad to have seen him."

Then she covered the picture up and changed the subject of conversation, for her quick eyes noted Jean's downcast looks.

"Now," said Dr. Fergusson presently, "may I ask for paper and ink? I want to write a prescription for our patient, Miss McTaggart."

He sat down, and glanced more than once at Jean, as he wrote. Then he came over to her and held out his hand.

"I am going, but you will see me again to-morrow. I am ordering you a tonic, and a lotion for that hand. You are fortunate in having such a friend as Miss McTaggart to look after you."

"I am," said Jean, gratefully.

Dr. Fergusson still kept her hand in his whilst he talked, and Jean knew he was quietly feeling her pulse. When he went downstairs, he turned to Barbara, who was following him.

"You are right," he said in his quick, incisive tones. "She is half-starved and thoroughly below par. Has it been necessary for her to neglect herself so?"

"I am afraid it has," said Barbara. "I found her, as I told you, with absolutely nothing in the way of nourishment."

"Give her something every two hours. If we wish to prevent blood-poisoning setting in, she must be thoroughly well fed and strengthened. She has evidently had a slight attack of low fever from general debility. I will come in to-morrow afternoon. Is Mr. Oxton in town? I thought he would have looked after her interests better."

Barbara looked straight at him. Her quick woman's eyes had seen that this grave silent man was more than slightly interested in Jean.

"Mr. Oxton is only a distant cousin," she said.

"He did come down to us and sent me to her, but he is in a difficult position, for Jean will accept nothing from him, and I quite understand why it is that she cannot."

Dr. Fergusson raised his eyebrows.

"I tell you this in confidence," said Barbara, determining to make things clear. "He is very pertinacious, but Jean will have nothing to do with him. She likes him as a cousin, but nothing more, and she is not one to change her mind."

"I heard they were engaged," said Dr. Fergusson; and without another word he went straight out of the house.

Barbara went back to Jean, murmuring to herself, with a smile upon her lips, "It will all come right."

Jean was very quiet all that evening. She lay back in her chair, looking out into the London sky, and wondering how soon she would be able to be at work again.

The next morning, she assured Barbara that she was feeling almost well enough to go out.

Barbara laughed at her.

"When you are well enough, you shall come down to Kingsford Farm with me. That will be your first outing, I hope."

"It would be delicious," sighed Jean; "but I cannot do it, Barbara."

It was about three o'clock, when a ring at the door and a step on the stair caused Jean's colour to ebb and flow. Dr. Fergusson's previous visit had given her almost as much pain as pleasure. She now looked forward to meet him again with a mingled feeling of dread and delight. Though she had comparatively seen a great deal of him, his impenetrable reserve had always prevented great intimacy between them, and she found herself wondering now, if he was merely obeying his mother's wishes and coming to her entirely from a professional standpoint.

Another cause was making her nervous: she meant to come to a definite understanding about her injured hand.

Barbara, as usual, slipped out of the room, but Dr. Fergusson sat down and talked to her about ordinary things, until Jean began to think that she would not be able to get the information she wanted. At last, he came over to her and inspected her hand, and then with desperate earnestness Jean looked up at him.

"Dr. Fergusson, please tell me the truth. So much depends on it. When shall I be able to paint again?"

He did not answer for a minute; then he said slowly—

"I think your hand will have to have a six months' rest."

Her lips quivered and a blank look of dismay filled her face, but she did not speak, only drew herself up straighter in her chair.

He looked at her.

"Will that be difficult?"

His voice was very gentle. It might have been Sunnie he was addressing.

Jean thought of her circumstances. She had drawn her last cheque, and had no more money in the bank to fall back upon. She was now living upon Barbara's hard-earned nest-egg. Her pride was broken, but the future seemed impossible to her. Difficult? What could she say? How could she tell him that she was penniless? She struggled to control herself and looked up bravely, but his keen, searching eyes seemed to be reading her through and through, and there was a look upon his face that she had never seen before.

"It will—be more than difficult," she said brokenly.

It was no good. The tears would come, and a sob stopped further speech.

Then Dr. Fergusson bent forward and took her hand in his.

"Jean, will you let me make it easy for you? Don't cry! You have been such a brave little woman all this time. Will you let me have the right to look after you in the future? I have been long in speaking, but I thought—I was told—that some one else—"

It was a halting, nervous speech, but Dr. Fergusson's self-control and self-repression failed him for once. He only saw the girl he loved getting whiter and whiter in dumb misery, and tears dimming her expressive eyes. He had his arm round her now, and Jean's tears were literally wiped away for her.

For her glance gave consent, though she hardly realised as yet the great happiness that had come to her. She only knew that the night had gone and a dawn had begun that was going to last throughout eternity.

Barbara came into the room at last.

"I had a premonition of what would happen," she said, with a bright smile; "and as I don't know you very well, Dr. Fergusson, and I do know Jean, I congratulate you with all my heart."

"But I am to be congratulated most," said Jean, with some of her old spirit flashing out, as she gave the doctor a little shy glance, "for he will find me very disappointing, I am sure."

"I am going to carry her off to my mother's," Dr. Fergusson said, standing up, and looking down upon Jean with a proud sense of proprietorship. "We will see what a few months of Scotch air and feeding will do."

"Then, I shall not have the pleasure of taking her back with me," said Barbara.

Jean looked from one to the other with a little perplexity.

"Am I to have no voice at all?" she asked.

"None, until you are entirely convalescent," said Dr. Fergusson. Then, his decided tone softened, and he placed his hand lightly on her shoulder. "My mother wants you, and so do I. Don't you want to come?"

Jean's smile was sufficient answer.

Then Barbara and the doctor began making rapid arrangements, and before he left, it was settled that two days later Jean should start for Scotland.

"I feel quite bewildered," said Jean, when she and Barbara were left alone. "It has all come so suddenly and so unexpectedly; and I don't see my way clear even yet, Barbara. I cannot go on living on your money like this. I have just thought of my portrait. They really ought to give me something for it. I wonder if I could get them to take it at half-price. If only I had a little ready money of my own!"

"Oh, Jean," said Barbara, laughing, "you are hopelessly practical. If ever you could let your money affairs slide, I should think it would be to-day! But give me this Mrs. Alderman's address, and I will see what I can do."

Barbara was a clever woman. She went into the city the next day and interviewed the alderman's wife. A little pressure and a threat to sell her portrait to a second-hand dealer, and she gave in, writing Barbara a cheque for the stipulated amount before she left the house.

"It was an unpleasant business," admitted Barbara, "but a profitable one."

And Jean's cares seemed to melt away with this sum in hand.

When the doctor came to see her again, he was surprised at the rapid progress she had made.

"My mother will not believe that you are an invalid, if you go on like this," he said. And then he and Jean plunged into a long talk, which was delightful only to themselves.

"I am a little shy of you still," said Jean, laying her hand lightly on his coat sleeve. "You have always been so grave and silent to me, that I feel I don't properly know you."

"Are you afraid of my unknown qualities?" the doctor asked, imprisoning her hand in his, and looking at her with his old humorous twinkle in his eyes.

She looked up at him sweetly.

"'Perfect love casteth out fear,'" she said. "I used long ago to pride myself upon my strength of will and purpose. I gloried in standing alone, but I have come to see that dependence is sweeter. I somehow think I have made a mess of my life, and now I am going to put the fragments of it into your keeping, and never have an anxious thought again of what I am to do and how I am to do it."

"But that is deepening my responsibility."

"You are strong enough to bear it."

He shook his head.

"We are both subjects of a King, Jean, whose wishes must come first. You owe an allegiance to Him as well as I. I cannot relieve you of your individual responsibility in the King's service."

"But you can share it," said Jean quickly.

His face brightened.

"Yes, I can do that."

"God's claim will come first with us," said Jean. "I would not have it otherwise. He has led me every step of the way, and I would not have one step altered. But He led you to me, and—"

"And I will never relinquish the charge of you, till He takes you from me," he said tenderly and solemnly.

On the morning before she started for Scotland, Jean received the following letter:—

"DEAR COZ,—Don't expect me to congratulate you! If I'm not a despairing, ruined, heart-broken man, it isn't your fault. I always had my suspicions that I had a rival. Now, honestly, do you think that grim, long-legged doctor will make you as happy as I should? But I won't reproach you. He played his cards better than I did, and got near you when I could not, and took advantage of your weakness when I was at a distance. I was lacking in perseverance, or I know I should have won the day. However, I'll play the part of a hero, give you my blessing, and retire into private life for a bit. I'm afraid the shade of your grandfather will visit you."

"I shall look to Rawlings for comfort. He will say, 'I allays knewed Lunnon would change Miss Jean for the worse. An' if she do prefer a Scotch barbarian to her own kith and kin, and take to porride and broth instead of English beef and puddin', why 'tis Lunnon that have twisted and perverted her head and her heart!'"

"Yours reproachfully,"
"CHARLIE."

"Chris sends love. She is a jewel!"

"I don't think Charlie knows what real love is," Jean mused as she finished reading this epistle. "How I wish he would marry Chris!"