Jasper

For their aunt’s sake, Mrs Fortescue tried to speak lightly, though she was really feeling sadly discouraged. Chrissie tried to toss her head in the way she usually did when found fault with, but I scarcely think the effort was a success, and she was very glad that as her father was late that morning, having had letters to write in his study, she had finished her breakfast before he came in.

“Yes,” said her mother, in answer to her unspoken question, “yes, you can go upstairs at once and make yourself fit to be seen.”

“Leila,” said Mrs Fortescue in a moment or two, “I do think you might take a little charge of Chrissie. After all she is younger and more thoughtless by nature than you are. Did you not see how untidy she was?”

“How could I?” said Leila gloomily. “She had left the room before I awoke.”

Just then Mr Fortescue’s step was heard in the passage, and as Leila’s black looks were almost as much to be dreaded as Chrissie’s dirty face, their mother added quickly, “Well, at any rate, you can help her now. So run after her;” and Leila, though with evident unwillingness, did as she was told.

“I am so sorry, so terribly sorry,” Mrs Fortescue had time to say to her aunt in a low voice, “that you should have such an uncomfortable first morning with us;” but Aunt Margaret only smiled quietly.

“My dear,” she said, “I am here, I hope, to be of some little help to you, not only to be comfortable, though really there is nothing that matters as far as I am concerned. And don’t lose heart. The little girls will profit by all this in the end.”

An hour or so later, when Aunt Margaret, up in her own room, was still busy unpacking, there came a tap at the door, and in answer to her “come in,” a small voice replied —

“It’s me, Auntie. Mumsey said p’raps I could carry things downstairs, or rerange them for you.”

“Thank you, my dear little boy. Yes – here in this corner are some books and my knitting and some of my pet treasures that I should like to have in the drawing-room. Mumsey showed me the nice table she has kept for me.”

“Yes,” said Jasper, “the table with the splendid big drawer. Shall I take them down now?”

“No, wait a minute or two till I have emptied this last trunk. You may unwrap all those things and then we can throw away the paper.”

“Auntie,” said Jasper, while he worked away busily, “will the glowin’ plants come soon? I do so want them, ’cos you see they won’t wither,” and he sighed. “Roots is funny things – when I was very little I thought flowers would grow wifout roots, just the same.”

“And now you know better,” said his aunt with a smile. “Boots are very wonderful things – not only plant roots. We need them in our characters too.” Jasper looked puzzled. His dream was in his mind, though he was too shy to tell it.

“You see,” Miss Fortescue went on, “it is like this. We should do things because we feel we ought, not just because we’re inclined. Being kind to each other, for instance, when we are feeling good-humoured and pleasant is all very well, but we need more than that. We need to be kind even when we are feeling cross or tired, or even when others are unkind to us, because it is right. Passing feelings are like plucked flowers – what are called good principles are like plants with roots.”

Jasper’s face lighted up.

“And then being good grows,” he said.

“Yes, indeed,” said Aunt Margaret, almost startled by his quickness. “Still it needs care. Watching, and above all, praying to God to help us – that is like the refreshing, nourishing water that plants need if they are to grow and prosper.”

Jasper gave a deep sigh of satisfaction.

“Now,” said his aunt, “I think you might carry down some of these things. Suppose you first take the books. Not too many at a time – can you manage all those?”

“Oh yes. I could take more quite well,” was the reply, for Jasper was a most zealous helper.

“I don’t think I want to send down any more, thank you, dear. I will keep most of my books up here, on those nice little shelves.”

So off trotted the small messenger with his load. Perhaps he was too careful, glancing so often at the pile of books that he did not glance enough at his own feet, for just as he was half-way down the last stair, there came an accident. Somehow or other he tripped and rolled down six or seven steps, the books on the top of him. Poor Jasper! He did not cry out, though for a moment or two he could scarcely keep back his tears – he felt bruised and giddy and rather mortified. But he was a very brave as well as patient little fellow, and he was struggling to his feet again when the dining-room door opened and Chrissie looked out.

“What was that noise?” she said. “Oh, it’s you, Japs – have you fallen downstairs?”

“Yes, I has,” he replied, “but please don’t tell Aunt Marg’ret or she won’t let me help her any more. I hasn’t hurt myself much.”

“Poor Jasper,” said Chrissie, “never mind. It’s a good thing you were only carrying books, not china or glass. Leila’s done enough in that way for to-day. But I say, how pretty some of these books are,” and she held up a small, beautifully bound prayer-book, and another “birthday book,” exquisitely illuminated.

“Yes,” said Jasper, “I fink they’re Auntie’s bestest books. She’s goin’ to keep them in the droind-room, on her table.”

“I’ll help you to carry them in,” said Chrissie, and so she did – the carpet by this time was beginning to dry, though only beginning! – “I wish somebody would give me a prayer-book like this,” she went on. “I’d love to take it to church.”

And then, their pile being safely deposited, Jasper turned to go upstairs again, though limping a little.

“I hope I won’t tumble any more,” he said, “for there’s lots of fings still to bring down.”

“Suppose I offer to help too?” said Chrissie. “My face is quite clean now and my hair’s tidy. I think it was too bad of Mummy to say anything about them before Aunt Margaret, when it was all, or nearly all, Lell’s fault this morning.”

“Auntie’s werry kind,” said Jasper. “I daresay she’d like you to help,” and if he felt a tiny scrap of disappointment at not having all the honour to himself, his good little heart would not allow him to show it. “What’s Lelly doing?” he went on.

“Crouched up by the dining-room fire over a story-book, of course,” said Chrissie. “She won’t mind,” and her face was so bright and her tone so pleasant when she went into her aunt’s room with Jasper, that Miss Fortescue began to think that she had really been taking the little girls’ misdemeanours too seriously!

“They are only children after all,” she said to herself, and “Yes, dear,” she replied to Christabel, “I shall be very glad of your help. Can you hang up some of these cloaks and things in the cupboard? I am so glad there is a cupboard! And Jasper, my boy, will you put my boots and shoes and slippers neatly in a row on that lowest shelf? I won’t send anything more downstairs till I see what had better stay up here, and I have not come across my wool for knitting yet.”

Her cheerfulness touched a gentle chord in Chrissie.

“Aunt Margaret,” she said, “it must be awfully strange for you here in this poky house, compared to Fareham. I wonder you don’t mind more.”

“Dear child, you must not think me better than I am,” Miss Fortescue replied. “I have ‘minded’,” and her voice shook a little, “terribly – wrongly, I fear. But it might have been so much worse. Think what some have to bear – of loneliness and lovelessness when they are old like me! If I can feel that I am of use to you all, and able to brighten things a little for your father and mother, it will be almost as great a joy as it used to be to me to have you all at Fareham.”

Christabel did not reply. But her aunt’s words impressed her. Ideas – feelings rather, perhaps – were awaking in her, which were new to her; though she had often heard and read of “unselfishness,” and the happiness of living for others, of bearing, or at least sharing their burdens, she had never really “taken in,” realised these truths. To see them acted upon, made the very sunshine of life, struck her as very wonderful. For perhaps the first time, she said to herself, “I wish I could really care for other people and try to make them happy and not mind about myself,” and though the thought passed off again, and she was as ready as ever to grumble and to squabble with Leila and to fight for her own rights and fancies, still, it was something that it had been there, a beginning, a tiny seedling, which might yet take root and blossom into beauty.

So the day which had seemed likely, like poor long-ago Rosamund’s, to be “one of misfortunes,” cleared and improved as it went on. Chrissie had one happy quality – she really, if once interested in a thing, did throw her whole heart and cleverness into it; and careless and unmethodical though she was, the sight of her aunt’s fairy-like neatness and order struck her pleasantly.

“If it wasn’t such a trouble,” she said, “I would like to be beautifully neat like you, Aunt Margaret. Leila thinks she is, but I don’t call it neat just to be slow and dreamy and never sure where you are or where your things are. I think its just as bad as my dashing about and turning things topsy-turvy. I don’t say she tears and spoils her frocks as much as I do, but she forgets quite as badly, and – ”

A sigh from Jasper’s corner interrupted her.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

“Oh, I was only thinkin’ I do hope I won’t forget to water the growin’ plants when they come,” replied the little boy.

Chrissie laughed.

“He’s got those plants on the brain, Aunt Margaret,” she said. “You’d better forget about them for just now, Japs,” she went on, turning to him, “for very likely they won’t come for ever so long. Things take such a time by luggage trains.”

Jasper’s face fell – somehow his dream and the talk with his aunt had got mixed up with the thought of the real plants and made him long for them with the curious intensity of longing that one scarcely sympathises with enough in children. But his aunt understood.

“Cheer up, Jasper,” she said. “I shouldn’t wonder if they come to-day – this very afternoon perhaps.”

Chapter Nine

Prayer-Books, Lost and Found

And so they did! Aunt Margaret would not have raised Jasper’s hopes without good reason, and she knew that there are ways and means of hurrying up hampers and cases even by goods trains, when there is cause for doing so. Morris, the Fareham gardener, had seen to it all, and the well-chosen plants and flowers arrived in good order, looking none the worse for their journey.

They gave all the children a busy and – for that very reason perhaps – a happy afternoon, Jasper especially, as his mother chose out half-a-dozen pots “for his very own” to keep on a tiny table in front of his window, and the others were arranged in groups on flower-stands in the three rooms downstairs, as neither Leila nor Chrissie cared to have any in their own quarters.

“I’d only forget to water them,” said Chrissie coolly, “and so would Lell, I’m sure, and then there’d be fusses,” and though Leila half thought of firing up at this, her usual dislike to trouble gained the day, and she said nothing.

“The drawing-room looks quite a different place with flowers and greenery about,” said Mrs Fortescue, “and Aunt Margaret’s pretty work-baskets and silver scissors and knick-knacks.”

“And books,” added Chrissie. “Aren’t they lovely – the bindings, I mean?” and she fondled the prayer-book which had so caught her fancy.

“I am afraid the prayer-book is more ornamental than useful to me now,” said Miss Fortescue. “The print is too small for my old eyes. So I have to use a much larger one. Yes – my corner looks quite homelike, thanks to your table and that most comfortable arm-chair, Edith.”

“I think we may sit in here this evening,” said Mrs Fortescue, eyeing the still darkened carpet. “We will leave the window open and keep up a big fire till dark. But we had better not stay any longer just now. I do hope to-morrow will be a brighter day.”

“But it is not raining, though it is dull,” said her aunt, “and the children have not been out. I think we might have a little walk before tea. I should like to know something of the neighbourhood.”

“I can show you the post-office – it’s nearer than the pillar-box,” said Jasper. “Mumsey lets me go to buy stamps – and the omlibus startin’-place, and the church, and – ”

“Don’t be silly, Jasper,” said Leila, who was feeling cross at having to go out. “That’s not what Aunt Margaret wants to see – not that there’s anything at all to see,” she added gloomily. “It’s perfectly hideous, it’s not like London at all.”

“I thought you were within a mile of Kensington Gardens,” said Miss Fortescue quietly. “I have very pleasant associations with Kensington Gardens and the old Palace.”

“We’ve never been there since we came,” said Leila. “Mother’s been too busy to take us, and besides – they’re always stuffed with nursery-maids and perambulators.”

“Well – let us explore a little by degrees; as the spring comes on we must find some pleasant walks. But we must be quick just now, or it will be getting too late for even a short one.”

And for a wonder the two sisters did manage to be ready when their aunt came downstairs, followed by Jasper, who insisted on carrying her “numbrella.” Leila was feeling a little ashamed of her peevishness, and Chrissie was still under the good impression of the morning. So both were, for the time being, at their best, and the walk passed off pleasantly.

But Aunt Margaret was very observant, and even now, in these first few day’s, when the novelty of her presence and the influence of her never-failing cheerful kindliness did much to smooth things, her heart was sometimes sad and anxious.

“They have been terribly spoilt,” she said to herself, “and while life was made so very easy for them, this did not show as it does now. Poor dears – I hope we may be able to check this selfishness and want of consideration for others – it may be more owing to want of thought than to any deeper cause.”

As time went on, however, her anxiety and disappointment increased. Leila fell back into her indolent habits, and Christabel grew more openly defiant and self-willed. And at last their mother felt that she could no longer go on trying to make the best of things in hopes of sparing her aunt distress, and herself perhaps, unselfish as she was, some sharp mortification.

“I don’t know what to do with either of the little girls,” she said one day, when things and tempers had been unusually trying. “I cannot bear to say much about it to Reginald – he has enough to worry him in so many ways. I had hoped that when we settled down into this new life they would really try to be a comfort to us. But they think of nothing but their own likes and dislikes – they don’t seem to have the least idea of obedience. Why, Chrissie was almost rude to you, dear aunt, at their French lesson to-day – and Leila had evidently not pretended to learn those verses! And you are so good to them.”

“Do not distress yourself for me,” said Miss Fortescue. “We have all been to blame in the past, and we must face it and do our best. I am sure it will all come right in the end. Your children and Reginald’s, dear Edith, cannot be really selfish.”

Mrs Fortescue tried to smile.

“Perhaps I have been selfish in not being stricter with them,” she said. “My one idea was to make them happy, and with the boys it seems to have done no harm.”

“Roland has had the discipline of school for several years,” said Aunt Margaret; “and as for little Jasper – well, really, he seems one of those sweet natures that can’t be spoilt.”

“And I fancy he has had rather a Cinderella-like life in the nursery, boy though he is,” said his mother. “How strange it seems that selfishness in some should be good training for those who suffer from it.”

“But, on the other hand, there is the good example,” replied Miss Fortescue. “I have noticed several times that the little fellow’s gentleness and sweetness have made his sisters ashamed of themselves – Chrissie especially. And Jasper is not very strong, you know, whereas the girls are overflowing with health, which may be a bar to sympathy sometimes – all good gifts may be abused. But I do hope that the great change in their lives may prove a blessing in disguise to our little girls.”

“I had hoped so too,” said their mother. “Indeed, Miss Earle said something of the kind before she left. She had begun to feel very discouraged.”

“And other discipline will be sent if they do not profit by this,” said Miss Fortescue almost solemnly. “But let us hope that they will.”

Life, however, as the days went on, was by no means as peaceful and happy in the small house in Spenser Terrace as it might have been, and should have been. And but for Aunt Margaret’s unfailing sympathy and hopefulness I scarcely think Mrs Fortescue could have kept up at all. For she knew that she must be cheerful when her husband was at home. Life was far from easy for him at present; he was working hard in ways that were new to him, and more trying than if he had been a younger man, and a bright welcome and peaceful evenings were certainly due to him. More than once she tried to make her little daughters understand this, and for a few hours, a day or two at most, it seemed to impress them. But, alas! all too soon the old habits overmastered them again: Leila was as lazy and self-absorbed as ever; Chrissie disobedient and defiant.

Mrs Fortescue, with some difficulty, had found a daily governess, living near them, who was glad to come for the morning hours and take the children for a walk when lessons were over. She was a simple, good-natured girl, well taught and well able to teach up to a certain point, but she was a very different sort of governess from Miss Earle, and very soon both Leila and Christabel began to take advantage of her simplicity and half-timid manners.

One day, to her great distress, Mrs Fortescue, meeting the poor thing on her way out, saw unmistakable signs of recent tears in her face and eyes, and when a kind inquiry was made as to their cause, they burst out again more freely.

“I’m afraid I must give it up,” she sobbed, “and I was so glad to come near home and all. And it’s not easy for me to find pupils, as of course I am not accomplished.”

“But your English teaching is excellent,” said Mrs Fortescue; “it is all I require for the children at present. Please don’t be discouraged.”

Still she sobbed on.

“It’s – it’s not that,” she said, “except that if I were cleverer they – they might respect me. Jasper is as good as gold, but – but the little girls, the young ladies – they do not obey me in the least, and – and – they say things – ”

Mrs Fortescue turned and walked down the street with her. It was quiet, and really less likely to be disturbed by passers-by than the small house by incursions of children!

“What sort of things? Tell me more, I beg you, Miss Greenall.”

“That – that I’m not a lady – and I have never pretended to be one in the full sense of the word. Father was only a shop-keeper, and mother is a farmer’s daughter. But still – I don’t think Christabel need speak as she does. And leila dawdles on purpose to vex me sometimes, I do think, and when I found fault to-day – she kept us waiting fully ten minutes – she said of course I couldn’t understand what it was to have no maid – ‘of course you,’ she said, ‘have been used to huddling on your clothes anyhow, ever since you were quite a baby almost’ – and,” Miss Greenall continued, “I know I am not untidy, though I dress plainly. Mother brought us up to be very neat.”

Mrs Fortescue sighed deeply.

“My dear Miss Greenall,” she said, “your mother brought you up much better than I seem to have brought up my daughters. I am unspeakably ashamed of them, and I beg you to accept my apology. And they shall apologise to you to-morrow morning.”

But at this poor Miss Greenall looked up with frightened eyes. She was a pretty fair girl, small and delicate-looking.

“Oh, please, please,” she entreated, “do not tell them I have complained. I could not go on if they knew it. I will try again and be a little firmer with them, if only, only you will say nothing.”

And, though against her own convictions, Mrs Fortescue had to agree to what Miss Greenall asked.

And for a few days things were better. The little girls had been startled by the sight of the tears which the poor governess had not been able to repress – startled and shamed. Nor had Jasper’s face of shocked surprise lessened the impression.

He was no tell-tale, but still —

“Japs,” said Chrissie, the first time they were alone together, “I’m sorry we made that silly Miss Green – what’s-her-name – cry, and so’s Lell. We were half joking, you know.”

The child looked at her with his solemn blue eyes, and Christabel felt herself blushing. She was naturally truthful.

“At least,” she went on, “we didn’t mean her to take it like that. She might have seemed to think it a joke. But we don’t want Mummy to hear about it. Things sound worse when they’re tell-taled.”

“I’se not a tell-tale,” said Jasper stoutly.

“Well, well – I didn’t say you were. And I promise that we won’t say those things again, as she minds them so, silly that she is.”

“Will you tell her you’re solly?” Jasper inquired.

“I don’t know – we’ll see about it,” Chrissie replied, “but any way we won’t make her cry again.”

So Jasper contented himself with cherishing most carefully the very best of his hyacinths, just beginning to show a little colour, as a gift to Miss Greenall, to be presented as soon as it would be fit for her acceptance.

“And if Lelly and Chrissie would werry much like to join,” he said to himself in his generous little heart, “we might give it ’atween us all. I’m sure it’s goin’ to be a splendid one.”

But, alas! before the hyacinth’s delicate pink flowers had reached perfection, and Jasper’s kind plan could be carried out, sad things had come to pass, which I must hasten to tell you about.

The impression made upon Leila and Chrissie by Miss Greenall’s distress was not a lasting one, except in so far as they were more careful in their way of speaking to her; for they knew that Jasper’s eyes were upon them, and that any rudeness to their teacher would not escape him. But beyond this, there was no real improvement. They were careless, unpunctual, and, so far as they dared, disobedient. Still Miss Greenall went on doing her best, and now and then her patience and gentleness had some little good, effect. She was able to tell Mrs Fortescue that things were rather better. “I think I can go on,” she said, “if only Leila was more attentive and Chrissie less heedless.”

It really went to her heart – brought up as she had been in neat and careful ways – to see the children’s destructiveness – copy-books blotted and torn; lesson-books dog-eared and spotted; worse still, frocks and aprons covered with ink, or ruthlessly smeared with fingers much in need of soap and water! And in these kinds of carelessness Christabel was the worst offender, in spite of her occasional good resolutions, always encouraged by Aunt Margaret, to try to be as neat as “you were, when you were a little girl,” in reply to which, her aunt would smile and assure her that good habits of no kind come all of themselves to anybody, man or woman, boy or girl.

It chanced one Sunday morning, when the sisters were, as usual, late in getting ready for church, and their father’s voice had sounded more than once up the staircase hastening them, that Chrissie could not find her prayer-book. Go without it she scarcely dared, for this was the sort of carelessness that Mr Fortescue himself might notice, and when “Daddy” did “notice,” even Chrissie “minded!” Now Leila was the happy possessor of two prayer-books, one of which was practically new, and which she kept wrapped up in tissue-paper in a drawer.

“Oh Lell,” said Chrissie in despair, as Leila was leaving the room, “do lend me your best one, or take it yourself and let me have the one like mine.”

“No, indeed, I won’t,” said Leila, hurrying off, as Mr Fortescue’s voice came again.