Chapter IV: A Friend in Need

"My friends have come to me unsought; the great God gave
them me."—Emerson.

THE expected interview did not come off. Jean saw her grandfather only at meal-times, and then he was coldly distant and polite to her. She wondered her escapade had been treated so leniently, and she began to look forward to Colonel Douglas's promised visit as the means of conciliating her grandfather. He arrived on a beautiful spring evening. Jean welcomed him in the garden, for her grandfather had not returned from his ride.

The Colonel looked at her radiant young face with interest.

"I am so glad to see you," she said, "from entirely selfish views. I am hoping great things from you. I was awake half last night, thinking about it. I don't know how you are going to succeed, but you must, you will, won't you? And I'll thank you all my life long, for the trouble you are taking."

"Ah," the Colonel responded with a humorous shake of the head. "It is a responsibility to push a young bird out of the nest. Experience may teach you to reproach me. I doubt, if I shall deserve much gratitude."

Jean looked up at him soberly and wistfully.

"I am grateful to you for making me come back. I acted on impulse. I have been thinking a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that a change of life means a great deal more than I thought it did. If this house were more of a home to me, I would never wish to leave it. If grandfather loved me, I would thankfully stay with him for the rest of my life."

Colonel Douglas was surprised at the depth of feeling in her tone.

"Sometimes we misunderstand those who love us best," he said. "It isn't always the ones who are most demonstrative, who are the most genuine."

Jean smiled rather bitterly.

"Ask grandfather if he has the least liking for me, and hear what he says. Oh, Colonel Douglas, I am so lonely, so friendless! I can't help telling you, but do you know, you are the first person who has taken the smallest interest in me, since I left school. It is so good of you. I don't think I shall mind it when I take up painting, but here I have nothing to do, nothing to read, and I think of myself all day long, until I sometimes wish there was no such person in the world as Jean Desmond!"

She broke into a little laugh, and turned to pick some daffodils in a bed close by.

"Ah, well," Colonel Douglas said cheerily, "when your circle widens, and you know a few more people, you will become so interested in some of them, that you will almost forget your own existence."

"Do you think I shall?" she asked, looking up at him quickly. "Ah, you are laughing at me! Come indoors, will you? I see grandfather riding round to the stables."

She was silent at dinner-time, leaving the conversation entirely to her grandfather and his guest. But as she left the room, Colonel Douglas met her pleading glance with a reassuring nod, and Jean wandered about the empty drawing-room in a fever of unrest and anxious conjecture.

She did not see the Colonel again that evening, and her dreams that night were disturbed by visions of a battle royal waging between him and her grandfather.

But after breakfast the next morning, Mr. Desmond summoned her to the library, where she found Colonel Douglas engrossed in some old parchments and her grandfather looking very grim and determined.

"I sent for you, Jean, as I have been hearing from Colonel Douglas that you have been making complaints to him of your life here!"

The Colonel raised his eyebrows, but did not look up from his parchments. Mr. Desmond continued—

"I have no wish to keep you here against your will. Your act the other day has quite removed the slightest desire on my part to have you here. I was angry at first at your wilful determination to do the one thing I have wished you never to do, but now it is quite immaterial to me. You have enabled me to snap the tie between us with the greatest ease. Still, as I say, I think it is fair to you to give you your choice. I had intended making you my heiress. You are the next of kin. If you like to stay with me, and act as a dutiful granddaughter should, I will overlook the past, and let my will stand as it is.

"If you are determined to follow your mother's profession, I will allow you £150 a year for the remainder of my lifetime, and you are at liberty to leave this house to-morrow. Only remember, whatever happens, you never enter it again. Henceforth, you will be a stranger to me. And after my death, you will have to depend entirely on your own exertions. For you will never receive a penny more from me. Colonel Douglas knows of a lady in London who is ready to receive you as a boarder. He will give you her address, if you wish to have it. I give you your choice; I am not accustomed to have friction in my house, and the sooner this matter is settled the better it will be for both of us."

There was silence. Jean's heart thumped loudly. Her liberty had come at last, and yet now that a crisis in her life had arrived, she shrank for a moment from the unknown future.

Colonel Douglas glanced at her. She looked such a child, as she stood facing her grandfather with her hands clasped behind her back, and her little head held so bravely up, that for a moment, he thought of dissuading her from the step he had made so easy for her to take.

Jean's lips quivered slightly.

"You don't want me to stay with you, grandfather?" she queried. "You will not miss me, if I go? If I thought you would care—I—I—"

She stopped.

Mr. Desmond's face was cold and impenetrable.

"My likes or dislikes are of no moment to you. They never have been. The choice rests with you."

Jean's eyes had been filling with tears. She passed her hand lightly across them, then spoke out clearly and decidedly without a trace of emotion in her voice.

"I will go, to-morrow if I can. Colonel Douglas will you tell me about this lady? Does she expect me?"

"I will have a talk with you later about it. Your grandfather and I are going to be busy over some manuscripts this morning."

The Colonel spoke gravely and quietly. Mr. Desmond opened the door and dismissed his granddaughter with cold courtesy. Jean fled into the kitchen garden, and paced the paths in an excited, troubled frame of mind.

"I have done it! I shall belong to no one in future, and I think he is delighted to get rid of me. Oh, I wish, I wish I had a mother living!"

Tears fell fast; then she dashed them away, and joined Rawlings, who was in a small forcing-house.

"Rawlings, I am going to be an artist! Grandfather is letting me go to London. I shall speak as I like, do as I like, and think as I like. Wish me joy! No more of this flat, dingy marshland? I shall work amongst beauty, and take my holidays in the most exquisite haunts of the world. I shall be an independent woman with money at my back. I must pinch myself hard to make sure I am not dreaming. And you will all go on here, year after year, and forget all about me. And then perhaps one day, you will hear of a wonderful picture gracing the walls of the Royal Academy and making everybody talk about it, and you will be told that Miss Jean Desmond is the celebrity who painted it, and then you will wonder how Miss Jean has been getting on, and if she remembers the talks she used to have in this old kitchen garden with you!"

Rawlings looked at his young mistress's bright flushed face, and shook his head with a knowing smile.

"Eh, Miss Jean, and perchance, you'll be sighin' for the good old times when you was young and careless, and had a comfortable home, and was sheltered and cared for, and yet didn't know it!"

"I'm like that crimson rambler," said Jean, pointing to the straggling creeper covering an old potting-shed, "Do you remember when you hammered and hammered, and pruned it and flattened it against the wall? It was always trying to burst away from you, and when you would be master, it at last gave up trying to have its own life, and dwindled and pined in reckless despair. You were angry with it then, and said you would leave it alone, and the poor thing lifted up its head, and found that life was worth living after all. It shook out its branches and flourished and rejoiced. It left the hateful wall with its nails and wires, and stretched out to the old shed, and now, it's a miracle of beauty and strength. Even you allow that some things flourish best with no restraint."

Rawlings eyed the rambler with disdain.

"Poor misguided thing!" he said. "I allow I did spend a mint o' time tryin' to make it into a decent shape and size, but I was expectin' great things from it. Yes, Miss Jean, it makes a great show of growth, and its blossoms are many and gaudy, but where is the scent and sweetness that belongs to the rose tribe?"

"Don't you go for to describe yourself as a crimson rambler, there be many of 'em in the world. They lives and flourishes in their own way, and are never checked and hindered. They makes a show, but never makes the atmosphere sweet around 'em. I wouldn't give tuppence for a rose without scent; 'tis an utter failure of its tribe. The rambler be a common hardy creeper to be sure, and 'tis not so out of place on a potting-shed, but we do look for better things from you, Miss Jean; and believe me, growin' as you like, anywheres and everywheres, you're certain to degenerate into a scentless plant!"

Jean never got the better of Rawlings in argument, but woman-like, she would not be crushed.

"Oh, well, there are other things besides sweetness in life, there's strength and sturdy goodness. I don't think I like very sweet people. There was a girl at school all gush and sentiment, and every one was always 'a dear' and 'a darling' to her. I longed to shake her sometimes! If I'm not a 'sweet' character, Rawlings, I can try to be a strong and a good one."

Then she added wistfully—

"Do tell me you're sorry to lose me, Rawlings! Will none of you care, I wonder! Grandfather is thankful to see the last of me; and remember, I am never to come back here, never! I have had my choice. I could have stayed on here always, if I had liked. I would have grown into a little old mummy of a woman; my meals would have been the excitement of the day; and I would have nodded in my chair for the rest of the time. Would you like a mistress like that, Rawlings? Thank goodness, that will not be my fate! Oh, say you're glad for me, and sorry for yourselves, that's what I want you to say."

"I'll say with truth, Miss Jean, that we shall miss you sorely, but I doubt if I can be glad for you."

Jean gave an impatient laugh, then danced away singing at the top of her voice—

"From life without freedom, oh who would not fly?
For one day of freedom, oh! Who would not die?"

Rawlings shook his head after her.

"From overmuch training to none at all, may the good Lord deliver her!"

After luncheon, Colonel Douglas asked Jean if she would come out for a walk with him. She gladly responded, and they started across the marsh together.

"I am so very grateful to you for making it so easy for me to go," Jean said earnestly. "I do not know how you have managed it, but grandfather is letting me go so much easier than I thought he would, and it is much nicer going with his consent than without."

"I wonder if you are quite aware of the consequences of this act," Colonel Douglas said, looking down upon her with kindly interest. "Do you realise that you are putting away a fortune from you? Your grandfather is a wealthy man, he tells me, though he lives in such simple style. You would inherit everything at his death. Will you live to regret the loss of this?"

"I am sure I shall not," Jean said decidedly.

"You see," she went on, with an old-fashioned air. "I have lived quite long enough to see that money doesn't make you happy; it only makes you comfortable. And to be comfortable means to be very dull, for you have no ups and downs to be exciting. It is all level monotony. I should get tired of it very soon. Of course, if I had a lot of money, and could do exactly as I liked, it would be very nice at first, but I know at school the rich girls were the most discontented. They had so few pleasures compared to the poor ones. A drive in a carriage was nothing to them; a bag of buns or a present of half a crown they turned up their noses at, and I believe it's just the same with men and women. I don't want dull comfort, I want exciting variety, a taste of going without, and a taste of having. I sha'n't be so very poor, you know, Colonel Douglas. £150 means boundless wealth to me."

"Now, tell me about this lady. Who is she, and what is her name, and where does she live? I know so few women. Will she be like a governess or a friend?"

"One question at a time; you quite overwhelm me! She is an old friend of my sister's and of mine. I hope she will become yours also. I have never known any one who does not like her. She lives in a small square leading out of Kensington High Street. Her name is Frances Lorraine."

"And is she old or young? You must excuse my questions, but it is a very important matter to me, as I am going to live with her. I have seen no women since I left school, except our two old servants, and I think I shall find them more difficult to get on with than men. I know I would always rather talk to Rawlings than to Mary or Elsie. Men aren't so fussy, and they're blunt and plain-spoken. The governesses as well as the girls at school were always making and having mysteries. They loved them. Now I hate anything I can't see and understand. Is Miss Lorraine a fussy, mysterious person?"

"I am not going to offer an opinion. You must see and judge for yourself. If I were young, I should like to be under her wing."

Jean looked up at him meditatively.

"I wish we could change places," she said with a sigh. "It must be so delightful to be a man, and to go where you like and do what you like, without any one questioning proprieties. Do you know that Mary and Elsie were both quite shocked that I went to see you in London? Now was it a very dreadful thing to do? Put yourself in my place. What would you have done?"

Colonel Douglas laughed aloud.

"Probably the same as you did, if I were give back my youth again, but at my present age and outlook, I don't think I should have left home at all."

"Ah, you don't know what it is to pant and long to do things that you are forbidden! Not wrong things; I don't think I want to do them; but painting is not a sin, and I cannot keep from it."

It was in this way they walked and talked, Jean doing most of the talking. As they neared the house again, Colonel Douglas said, "Will you take a bit or advice from one who has seen something of the world into which you are going?"

"Of course I will, gladly," was the eager response.

"Seek the best thing first, not last."

"That sounds vague. What is it?"

"The one thing that will bring no disillusion nor bitter disappointment. It must be the genuine thing, not a sham or counterfeit."

Jean raised a puzzled face to the speaker.

"What is it? Fame, I suppose? I am going to work for that."

The Colonel smiled.

"You have a lot to learn. Well, you will be in good hands. Frances Lorraine will be a safe counsellor."

He turned the conversation by asking her about her drawings, and once embarked on the present love of her life, Jean grew eloquent.

She came home in radiant spirits.

"Elsie," she said, as the maid came into her room with a message, "Colonel Douglas is the very nicest man I have ever seen. He is the only man I know that listens and doesn't talk!"