Orphan Bride (3 page)

“Homer, don’t confuse the child,” Emily said placidly. “You’ve met us all, Jennet—at least all except Mrs. Dingle in the kitchen. You’ll find it very quiet here, I’m afraid, but that is the main idea, isn’t it—away from the world, sheltered and trained for better things.”

“Is it?” said Jennet, feeling a little dazed.

“The girl is under the impression that she’s here to help you, Aunt Emily,” Julian remarked.

“Oh, quite. Well, she’ll make herself useful, of course. We’ll find little jobs,” said Emily. “And to-morrow you shall meet the dogs.”

“And perhaps to-morrow, you will also meet Them,” said Homer in a loud whisper.

Jennet replied politely: “Yes, Mr. Davey,” because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Emily remarked brightly:

“Since you are going to live here, I think it would be much easier if you adopted us as relatives. I will be your Aunt Emily, this is your Uncle Homer, and Julian—well, Cousin Julian is very suitable, don’t you think so, Julian?”

He grinned unexpectedly.

“Highly suitable,” he said. “Most proper and respectful. Kindly remember, Cousin Jennet.”

“Yes, Mr. Dane—I mean, Cousin Julian,” she said.

After supper Jennet sat in silence with the two men, while Emily settled her dogs for the night. Homer read an article on bee-keeping, while Julian seemed too tired to do anything but lie back in his chair with his eyes closed. Jennet sat on a low stool and blinked at the fire, trying to keep sleep at bay. It had been a long and bewildering day. She wondered what place she could possibly have in this strange household. She nervously clasped and unclasped her fingers round her knees.

“Don’t fidget,” said Julian, without opening his eyes.

For the next ten minutes Jennet sat rigid, the effort not to move producing an instant agonizing desire to stretch or scratch. Her legs began to bu
rn
but she did not dare to move her stool. It was with much relief that she heard Emily Dane come
back into the room.

“Jeannette, you look half asleep,” she said. “Go to bed, dear.”

Jennet got up with thankfulness, aware of pins and needles in her feet. She stood there awkwardly, wondering if she ought to shake hands with them all.

“Good night,” said Emily, nodding vaguely.

“Goodnight, Miss Dane,” said Jennet.

“Aunt Emily, dear child—try not to forget,” said Emily.

“Aunt Emily,
”
repeated Jennet obediently. “Goodnight—Uncle Homer. Good night, Mr. Dane—Cousin Julian.”

“Good night, Jennet,” Julian said, opening his eyes, and smiling at her unexpectedly.

“I shouldn’t go back to London to-morrow if I were you, Julian,” Emily remarked as the door closed behind Jennet. “That leg needs a rest, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” said Julian indifferently. “I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”

Homer tucked his paper under his arm and, without saying good night to anyone, wandered off to bed.

Julian filled and lighted a pipe.

“Still as mad as ever?” he
observed.

Emily smiled.

“Homer’s not mad, as you know perfectly well—just a little eccentric, and really very clever with his bees.”

“He shook the orphan with his allusions to Them.
”
Julian laughed. “She looked scared to death.”

“It must all seem a little strange a
f
ter life in an institution,” Emily replied, and dropped a stitch without noticing. “I must say, Julian, she looked very clean and scrubbed.
”

He grinned.

“What did you expect, Aunt Emily? A lousy little street urchin?”

“I suppose not. How old is she?
”

“Sixteen.”

“Si
x
teen? She looks younger. I wouldn’t have picked her myself with a view to matrimony, but she’s probably the antithesis of Kitty.”

Julian’s plans did not seem at all odd to his aunt. Selective mating was the only recognized form of breeding in the canine world, and it seemed to her only sensible to apply the same principles to human beings. A great deal of nonsense, she was convinced, could be avoided if only people would select their partners with intelligence. She had never met Kitty, but it was plain that Julian’s natural instincts had misled him there. Emily Dane had never known or wanted that kind of emotion in her life, and she had always considered a great deal of nonsense was talked about love.

Julian watched her knitting, his eyes twinkling. He knew quite well what she was thinking and at the moment he was in total agreement with her. He had never really liked women very much. Kitty was a natural outcome of his younger days, and, had he recognized it, the inborn need of every human being for affection and something to possess. He still wanted something to possess, but affection he had considered unimportant. He had rarely known it, for his own mother had left his father for another man when he was fourteen years old, and although they were
n
ow both dead, the painful repercussion of the affair had left its mark on him. If he had married Kitty, she would have been just such another as his mother.

Emily, too, was thinking about women as she knitted. She had never liked Julian’s mother, and the dissolution of that marriage only appeared to her as a natural outcome of bad selection. She thought of Homer who had come to live with her some years ago, after his wife had died. Her sister Eva had been in love with another man when she had married him, but she had made him very happy
because this disturbing, foolish emotion had never entered into their relationship.

Her own relationship with Julian had always been entirely satisfactory. After the divorce, he had spent his school holidays with her, and an undemonstrative affection had grown between them which had never made any demands. Emily, after the death of her parents, had been left badly off, and Julian’s father had paid the rent for her house and made her a small allowance for years. When he died, Julian continued the arrangement as a matter of course and the addition of Homer to the household pleased Julian and meant that she could spend more time on her dogs. Altogether, thought Emily, an admirable nephew from every point of view,
and she would do her best for him over the matter of the girl.

“What are your immediate plans for Jennet?” she asked aloud.

Julian puffed lazily at his pipe.

“No plans,” he said idly. “The adoption papers will be taken out in your name of course, but I shall arrange with my ban
k
to transfer additional money for any expenses. Just ha
v
e her around and teach her anything you think she ought to know and—” he grinned—“gently
f
oster a suitable regard for me.
”

“That shouldn’t be necessary.”

“I don’t know. I have an idea she didn’t like me much.
G
et her some clothes as soon as you can, and burn that frightful uniform.”

“What about education? Is she just to run wild?”

“I hate educated women,” said Julian lazily, “they see all one’s worst points. I’ll do my own education when the time comes.”

“And when will that be?”

He shrugged.

“Who can tell? A couple of years—perhaps more, perhaps less. You’re so sane, Aunt Emily. Luke thinks I’m crazy.”

“Luke Fenton? How is he?”

“
Very well. Still pursuing the latest lovely and being caught by none. We’ll keep him away from our orphan when she’s a little older—not that I think he’d be a serious menace—he likes his ladies to be glamorous.
”

Emily said thoughtfully:

“That’s always struck me as an odd friendship. You and Luke are so entirely different.”

“Perhaps that accounts for the friendship,” said Julian lightly, then his dark eyes were serious. “He’s been a good friend, has old Luke. I’m very fond of him, though he does use all his friends as copy for his perishing novels. Well, I think I’ll turn in.”

She watched hint feel for his stick and drag himself with difficulty from his chair. H
e
had been rather worse, she thought, since that last operation, and she wondered vaguely what he would do in the future. It was true, thought Emily, that there was
no
need for Julian to work at all, but it was better that he should. A job, and eventually a wife, and he would forget the blow which Kitty and the injury had so disastrously dealt to his pride.

“There’s a little whisky left over from when you were last here,” she said, getting up. “Have a peg before you go up, it’ll do you good. Good night.”

Upstairs in her unfamiliar room, Jennet lay in the tester bed, wide awake in the darkness. She missed the heavy breathing of her twenty-one companions in the dormitory and the friendly noise of traffic in the street. She missed the harsh orphanage sheets, and she was afraid the tester would fall down on her head in the night and suffocate her.

She heard Emily go up to bed, and later, Julian, his steps dragging along the passage, and she lay rigid in the big bed and wept.

“Oh, why did he have to pick me?” she demanded of the darkness. “Why did he have to pick me?”

Outside, the wind howled across the moor, and one of the dogs moaned as if it, too, could not sleep. Jennet counted sheep until they fad
ed
and she slept
.

The orphans rose winter and summer at six o’clock, so Jennet woke automatically. Then she remembered she was no longer in the dormitory at Blacker’s, but many miles away in a place called Dartmoor where the convicts lived.

She sat listening for any sounds of others awake in the house. A heavy silence lay over everything. It never occurred to Jennet not to get up. At the orphanage no one called you, they just rang a bell. No bells seemed to ring in this house, so it must be difficult to know what you were supposed to be doing at different hours. She washed in the cold water she found in the jug on the old-fashioned wash-stand, dressed, carefully, and made her way quietly downstairs.

The clock in the hall told her it was half-past six, but not a soul was about. The orphanage was already a hive of industry at this hour, but here there wasn’t even any sign of breakfast being prepared. Jennet found her way to the
kitchen b
ut it was as deserted as the rest of the rooms. Whoever
w
orked here had left it in a disorderly state, with dirty dishes piled in the sink and cupboard doors left open. Perhaps Mrs. Dingle had overslept, thought Jennet, and then considered it might be a good thing if she washed the dishes and was some help.

The stove was out and so was the boiler, and there seemed to be no other means for heating water, so she had to manage as best she could with cold, and she had just finished drying the last plate when the door was pushed open and a woman came into the kitchen,
stifling a yawn with the back of her plump
h
and.

She paused, her mouth still open, gazing at Jennet, then she said: “Beggar me!”

“Good morning
,”
said Jennet politely. “Are you Mrs. Dingle? I’m Jennet Brown. I’ve washed your dishes for you, only I’m afraid I haven’t done them very well as the water was cold.”

Mrs. Dingle flushed and placed her hands firmly on her broad hips.

“And who asked you to wash my dirty old trade—miss?” she demanded truculently. “Why aren’t you in bed, where you belong?”

Jennet looked taken aback. Mrs. Dingle wa
s
not pleased.

“No one told me—I didn’t know
—
” she stammered.
“
You see, in the orphanage we always got up at six, so I thought, as I was down first, I’d help you. You see, I thought you had overslept.”

The woman wheeled round on her.

“And if I had, Miss Nosey, ’tes none of your business,” she snapped. “The missus, she tells me Mr. Julian is bringing down some orphan, and I’m to wait on her same as if she was any other little maid. But you mind your business other mornings and stay in bed till you’re called. Running to the missus I with tales of a dirty kitchen and such-like!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” said Jennet hastily, quite overcome by Mrs. Dingle’s wrath, and appreciating without rancor her indignation at having to wait on an orphan. “It was
j
ust that I’d nothing to do, and—and it’s natural to me to—to clean up, you see,” she added shyly.

Mrs. Dingle relented enough to say that since Jennet was here she’d better make her a cup of tea, for breakfast was not until eight-thirty. She made the tea and gave Jennet her cup, remarking:

“Get that inside you. You look a proper little mommet and no mistake.”

Jennet didn’t know what a mommet was,
but she was used to strangers thinking she looked hungry.

“How old are you?” asked Mrs. Dingle, and when she was told, opened her little eyes. “My dear soul! I took you for fourteen
!
They institutions! Stunted your growth, I suppose.”

“
Oh, I don’t
think
so,” said Jennet, startled.
“
We had some quite big girls. I’ve always been small.”

It was lighter now, and Jennet went to the window and looked out with curious eyes at her first glimpse of Dartmoor. What she saw was not reassuring. A vast expanse of brown, rough country stretched as far as the eye could see under a grey, threatening sky.

“Is that Dartmoor?” she asked.

“Aye—that’s t’moor,” Mrs. Dingle replied carelessly.

“What are those brown lumps in the distance?”

“They be tors. They each have names same as mountains.”

Jennet shivered.
“
It looks depressing—and a little frightening.
”

Mrs. Dingle laughed.