Orphan Bride (19 page)

“That’s no excuse.”

“No excuse; for what?”

“For evading obligations.”

“That sounds ve
r
y virtuous and prim. After all, you didn’t ask to be picked for Julian’s experiment.”

“No—but that’s rather like the people who say they didn’t ask to be born. I mean, it doesn’t let you off living decently because you didn’t ask to be born.”

“You know, you’re wonderful' copy,” he told her slowly. “You’re an almost extinct type, and Julian is another. I’d like to be there when someone applies the match to one or both of you.”

She moved a little restlessly.

“I don’t understand you,” she said. “Julian never talks like this.”

Luke grinned.

“
I bet he doesn’t! How does he talk?”

Her grin flashed out with enchanting suddenness
.
“He instructs,”
she said demurely, and they both laughed.

He took her home soon after that, but it was the first of several occasions. When Julian returned to London, he found them established as old friends, and Luke often made the third of a trio when he took Jennet out.

“What you missed, my dea
r
chap!” Luke told him on his return. “Did you realize that our Galatea had never been to a theatre
in her life?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” Julian replied a little shortly.

“That was your misfortune, then. It was delightful seeing her reactions, and I must own I spent the evening watching her charming face instead of the stage
”

Julian felt annoyed with himself and annoyed with Luke. It was entirely his own fault that he had missed the pleasure of such an occasion, and the knowledge that Luke’s easy charm had probably added much
to
the
evening’s success did not help to ease his irritation. When Luke further remarked that he had introduced Jennet to one or two friends who were anxious to renew the acquaintance at an early date, he said brusquely
:

“I’m not having Jennet careering round London with Tom, Dick and Harry. She understands that, and won’t,
I think, accept invitations from anyone I or Piggy don’t pass.”

Luke grimaced.

“Oh, come now, Julian, you can’t adopt that line,” he said. “What’ll all your friends say if you play jailer like some Victorian parent?”

“I haven’t the slightest
interest in what my friends say,” Julian replied indifferently, then added with a rather grim smile: “Though I know very well, my dear fellow, you’ll make a good story out of anything and no doubt dine out on me and my foundling regularly
.
”

Luke laughed.

“How well you know me! But seriously,
it’s
an in
t
riguing situation—as long as you don’t carry it too far.
”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that even a little orphanage nobody is a human being. How much do you truthfully know about the real Jennet?”

Julian smiled. He was used t
o
Luke’s theorizing.

“As much as is good for me, I expect,” he replied carelessly. “And by the same token, Luke, don’t you try your merry tricks on my orphan. It would scarcely be fair.”

Luke’s grin grew broader.

“My dear chap, I don’t poach,” he said innocently.

“Don’t you? I seem to re
member—”
Julian left his
sentence unfinished, but his glance was affectionate. Luke had never poached on his preserves
—
their friendship was of too long standing for anxiety on that score.

But he was piqued all the same by Jennet’s ease with him. Luke could extract from her a naive wittiness which he had seldom seen himself. She
c
ould state her opinions eagerly, but with a little sidelong look at Julian as if she expected a snub from
that quarter, and Luke’s compliments brought a frequent sparkle to her
grave eyes.

“Why don’t you leave her alone?” Luke asked him once, when after a concert they had dropped a silent Jennet at Piggy’s flat and turned into the club for a drink. “If Delius makes her think of lost causes, why not? Why snub the poor child for saying so? The trouble with you is you’re an intellectual snob, and you never used to be.”

Julian smiled reminiscently.

“Jennet once told me the same thing, only she put it in a different way,” he said
,
remembering their conversations in the orchard.

“I wonder she dared,” laughed Luke, “she has a most unwholesome respect for you.”

“Can respect be unwholesome?” asked Julian lazily.

“Yes, w
h
en it’s all you want,” Luke replied unexpectedly, then
h
e leant forward and spoke with probing curiosity. “Is it really all you want, Julian? You didn’t demand respect from Kitty.”

Julian’s face became hard and wary.

“Kitty was just an emotional experience it was healthy to get out of one’s system,” he said.

Luke shook his head
.

“And you think you’ve cured that—and earlier disillusionments by cutting out emotion altogether?”

“Perhaps.”

“And yet I should have said you’re very fond of your Galatea.”

Julian moved impatiently.

“Of course I’m fond of her. I wish you’d drop that ridiculous name, Luke—anyhow in front of other people.”

Luke grinned.

“
All right, Pygmalion, have it your own way.”

Julian put down his empty glass and got up.

“I’m going home. Can I drop you?”
he said, feeling suddenly tired.

L
uke rose with him.

“No, thanks, the night is young. I think I’ll go and look up a friend whose husband is attending a city dinner.”
He gave Julian a puckish grimace. “It’s a pity you haven’t
more friends with husbands at city dinners. You’d be a lot
more human,” he said, and sauntered away.

There came a period when Luke was engrossed in a new novel and for days at a time they did not see him. Julian
a
nd Jennet lunched alone, and sometimes he went with her to Jeremy’s studio and sat watching her for the greater part of the sitting. Those were always bad days, when
Jeremy said her pose stiffened
a
nd lost the quality he was trying to catch. Julian made her nervous, and although he never interfered, she felt his unspoken criticism and wished he would go away.

Once, Jeremy threw down his brush impatiently and declared the sitting was finished for the day.

“Something’s happened to
her,”
he told Julian. “I don’t seem able to catch that quality that so attracted me. It isn’t there any more. What have you been doing to her, Julian? She’s always more difficult when
you’re in the studio.”

Julian frowned.

“She’s probably tired. She wasn’t well not so long ago.
”

“
Are you tired, Jennet?”

Jennet, sitting stiff and discouraged on the model’s throne, shook her head dumbly.

“N
o, it isn’t that,” Jeremy said, his piercing gaze study
i
ng her.
“
It’s something quenched—that unconscious look she had when she was singing. Sing now, Jennet. Sing that little song about lambs.”

“Oh, no—not in cold blood!” said Jennet, and sent a dismayed look to Julian, who got to his feet.

“I’ll leave you,” he said quietly. “You may get on better without
m
e.”

He limped out of the studio, and Jeremy sat down on the dais at Jennet’s feet.

“Is he the trouble?” he asked, and lighted one of his rank cigarettes.

“He makes me nervous,” she admitted.

“Well, we won’t have him at any more sittings in that case,” he told her. “Julian is
a
curious young man. He interests me. You both interest me.”

“You knew he took me from an orphanage?” said Jennet suddenly. She liked this old man with his penetrating interest in humanity.

“I had heard something to that effect,” he said, puffing clouds of acrid smoke
o
ver his shoulder. “A dangerous experiment—yes, a dangerous experiment.”

“
Dangerous
?
For whom?”

“
Perhaps for both of you. I don’t know.”

“
I’m to marry him one day,” said Jennet naively. “Did he tell you?”

“So I understood.” His old eyes suddenly searched her face.
“
What was it in that song that was so important to you?”

She hesitated, trying to formulate the right words. “Comfort—kindness—a sense of belonging,” she said.

“Will you sing it again f
o
r me?”

She moistened her lips with a nervous tongue and began to sing, faltering at first, then with growing confidence. Halfway through the second verse, Jeremy went back to his easel and took up his brush. He did not speak when she had finished, but worked on absorbed in his canvas until she asked timidly if she might rest.

“Yes, rest—rest, my child,” he cried, flinging down his palette. “I’d rather rest on a true love’s breast
...
Yes, it comes back when you sing. Run home, run home, and remember that felicity is to be found in the strangest places.”

She did not understand him, but then she often did not. He talked as m
u
ch to himself as to her.

“Will it come right now?” she asked.

“
Will it come right? Oh, the portrait. Yes, I think it will come right. Good-bye, child—the same time to-morrow.”

If Julian was annoyed at being excluded from the sittings, he made no comment, but only told Jennet not to let Jeremy tire her. He still accompanied her to her singing lessons, but now he would often leave before the hour was up. Occasionally she dined with him at his flat,
and she would sing, afterwards listening while he played for her. Then he was kindly and uncritical, playing what she asked for, sometimes smiling at her choice with tender amusement.

She liked to stand at the windows of his quiet room when dusk descended, and watch the dim shapes of silent craft go up and down the river. Then Julian became again a voice in the shadows and she could talk to him. Once he came and stood behind her, and, with an unconscious
gesture, drew her head back against his breast.

Her hands slid up to his resting on her shoulders, and he did not draw his own away.

“Julian
...”
she said, and stopped
.

“Well?”

But she did not know what she had been going to say,
and fell silent, watching the river.

“What did you want to say?” he asked above her head.

“I don’t know. They will be lighting the lamps at Pennycross now.
”

His voice was a little surprised.

“You said that with nostalgia. Are you missing the country?”

“A little.” She laughed. “I never thought I would ever miss the moor—it used to frighten me. I think I must be bad at uprooting. I get used to places and people
.”

“Are you used to me, then
?”

She sighed.

“Yes, I’m even used to you.”

He laughed, but his hands tightened on her shoulders. “You’re even used to me! That has an ambiguous
sound!” He suddenly turned her round to face him, and she could just see the expression on his face in the gathering darkness. “Are you still afraid of me?”

“I was never afraid of you. You just made me nervous
.”

“Isn’t it the same thing? Jennet
...
I’ve planned for
you, thought for you, guarded you ever since that first day in the orphanage. Remember that, will you? You’re all I have.”

That seemed a strange thing for him to say.

“But you have so much,” she said simply. “Money, friends, a status in life.”

“You’re all I have,” he repeated a little roughly. “It’s nearly dark. We’d better have some light.”

S
he stood very
still in the window while he moved about the room switching on lamps. It seemed almost as if, for the first time since she had known him, he was
asking something of her instead of demanding. But with light suddenly flooding the room, the strangeness passed. Julian told her she had better get tidy for dinner.

In his bedroom, she found a thick packet of letters on the dressing table and recognized her own writing. She picked them up wonderingly, turning them over in her hands. They were all there, in their right order, those short, stilted little records of nearly a year. She took them with her when she returned to the living room.