Orphan Bride (5 page)

“No, no. Mrs. D. has her own work,” he said at once. “Besides, I like to do it for Emily. She’s been very kind to me—very kind. You know—” he peered at her over the top of his spectacles—“we are both dependants, dear child, I on Emily’s hospitality, you on Julian’s.”

“Yes,” said Jennet softly, “I know I am, but you
—
”

“Oh, yes,” he said, putting his head on one side like a bird, “I, too, for Emily has given me a homeland you know, I am very trying at times.”

“No, Uncle Homer, you’re a dear,” she said warmly.

“Emily and Julian find me trying, but that is because they won’t see—they won’t listen to Them,” he told her. “But that is not their fault, perhaps, they do not understand. But still, Jennet, we must never forget we are dependants. There is nothing so ugly as ingratitude—nothing so ugly.”

“Uncle Homer,” she said slowly, “how do you show gratitude—so that people know you’re grateful, I mean?”

He smiled at her with childlike sweetness.

“By being what they want you to be, of course,” he said simply. “By pleasing them.”

“But if you don’t know what they want you to be,” she said, her high forehead wrinkling with anxiety.

“One always knows,” he replied.

“Does one? But if being what they want you to be isn’t you—
”
she
said. “You must be
you,
Uncle Homer, even if it’s the wrong you.”

He stopped in his work and smiled at her.

“
They
would tell you,” he said. “Only you can’t always hear.”

“Uncle Homer, please help me,” she begged. “I can ask you things—you’re the only one.”

“I will communicate with Them,
”
he said, and went on breaking up biscuit without taking any further notice of her.

It was always the same, thought Jennet, leaving the washhouse disconsolately. Just as you thought you were getting somewhere with Uncle Homer he went on to another plane. Now she wouldn’t get another word out of him for hours.

To be a dependant did not have the chill sound which it might have had she been differently brought up. The orphans knew they were dependants. The orphanage principals had also held that there was nothing so ugly as ingratitude, so Jennet knew that she must certainly try to please Julian, and whatever his plans for her were, to fall in with them as best she could.

Early in the New Year, Julian came down for another week end. This time he brought Luke Fenton with him.

Luke was a slim, fair young man with easy, attentive manners and a fund of amusing stories, which Julian said were chiefly at the expense of his friends. Jennet did not trust him and felt that Aunt Emily did not trust him either, but it would have been difficult for her to say why. She had no experience of men, and certainly none
of
m
en as charming as Luke could be when he tried. But like Emily, she wondered why they were friends, and sat watching him with her disconcerting stare until he told Julian she did not approve of him and set himself for the rest of the week end to charm her.

He succeeded admirably, for when Luke chose to charm he was a
past master
in the art. He possessed that ready sympathy which extracts confidences and his novelist
’
s imagination was much intrigued by the situation.

“But she’s charming, your little orphan, and I don
’
t call her plain,” he told Julian the first evening. “I still think you’re crazy, but what a plot, my dear
fellow,
what a plot.
”

He was avid for details of the
o
rphanage, which he proposed to work into his new book, and he and Je
nn
et spent Saturday morning walking across the moor while she regaled him with stories of Blacker’s.

“Have you heard about the bishop’s gaiters or the great gruel rebellion, or the awful scandal of Matron
’
s party knickers?” he asked Julian.

“No,” said Julian, looking thoughtfully, at Jennet. “You seem to have a greater knack for confidences than I have.”

She had been looking happy and altogether different, listening to Luke, but at Julian’s comment, the light went out of her face and she fell silent.

Julian did not mean to be irritated. But it was irritating to see the animation quenched in the child’s face when he walked into a room, to catch a glimpse for the first time of that sudden grin that so transformed her whole expression, and know that Luke could so easily call it up.

“And
tell
me,” Luke said on Sunday, “what does it feel like to be adopted?”

It was nearly tea time. Julian was resting his leg upstairs, and Emily and Homer were both about on their various pursuits.

Jennet looked into the fire. It had been such a release to laugh and talk and be natural that Luke seemed like an old friend.

“I
t’s
—it’s
queer,” she said slowly. “When I was in the orphanage I used to think the best that could happen to me would be adoption. And then Mr. Dane—Cousin Julian
came and picked me and—
”

“
And you don’t like it,” finished Luke.

“Oh, yes
,
I do,” she said, distressed. “It’s a wonderful
chance, only
—
”

“Only you’re homesick,” said Luke softly. “Homesick for a drab institution with no color, no fun, no affection. How perverse
w
e mortals are.”

“Affection,” repeated Jennet, lingering lovingly on the word. “That, was the important thing. I always thought that was the important thing.”

He glanced at her with interest.

“You’re right,” he told her. “You can’t rule out affection if you want to be happy, and so I’ve often told Julian. Is it Julian who worries you?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Cousin Julian has been very kind.
I just don’t understand him. He seems irritable sometimes.”

Luke’s plain attractive face crinkled up into the many wrinkles that seemed part of it.

“Pain makes you irritable,” he told her gently. “Julian was pretty badly smashed up in a crash, you know, and that leg’s by no means right yet.”

“Oh!” she said softly, “I didn’t know.”

“He’s had a raw deal altogether,” went on Luke, watching her. “He was engaged to a girl who threw him over when he became crippled. Perhaps he told you.”

“No,” said Jennet, still more softly,
“
he didn’t tell me. Why should he? He thinks I’m a child.”

“
How old are you?”

“Sixteen. Sixteen’s a bad age, isn’t it? Neither one thing nor the other.”

He crossed over to Emily’s old seldom-used piano and started to play.

“Sixteen is the age of loose ends,” he said with a little smile. “The ending of childhood and the beginning of womanhood.”

She listened to his playing for a little in silence, then as he wandered into an old German carol, she exclaimed: “Oh, we used to sing that in the orphanage
!”

“
Did you?” he said. “Sing it now.”

She began to hum the air, then she took up the words in a high, sweet soprano, a little timid, but exquisitely true. He stopped playing and looked up at her. “Charming,” he said softly. “And in German, too. Do they teach languages in the orphanage?”

“Oh, no,” said Jennet, smiling, “we had a German maid who taught us that.”

“What else do you know?” he asked, and began playing old folk songs, some of which she knew.

They neither of them heard Julian cornea in until, as they stopped, his voice from the doorway said: “Go on
.”

“Isn’t she delightful, Julian?” demanded Luke, half-rising from the piano. “Go on, Jennet. You play for her, Julian, you’re better than I am.”

Jennet’s shyness descended on her like a cloak. “Oh, no—no, I couldn’t,” she stammered, and ran out of the room.

Julian limped across to the fire and filled his pipe.
“
I’m not coming up with you tomorrow,” he said.

Luke shrugged.

“Just as you say, my dear chap. He watched
hi
s fingers on the keyboard. “I like your orphan, Julian,
”
he said softly. “But I think you
’
re making a mistake
.”

Julian grinned and puffed at his pipe.

“You always did think so,” he said.

“You can’t rule affection out of your life,” L
u
ke said.
“
Or if you can, then you shouldn
’
t rule it out of others.
”

“Meaning?”

“That child needs affection. She needs it more than she needs bread. You’re taking on trouble, Julian, if you
’
re still serious in this hare-brained scheme.”

“I think,” said Julian with a stiffness that was seldom apparent in his dealings with Luke, “that’s my affair.”

Julian stayed an extra two days, and Jennet, remembering that she had been told to please him, tried to force herself to take the initiative. But the confidences which had come so easily with Luke died under Julian’s disturbing gaze. He was for her the impatient arbiter of her destiny, the person to whom
she owed politeness and something a little more, perhaps, but whose dark presence gave her no comfort.

Once he said to her:

“You could talk to Luke, couldn’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was very nice. I liked him.”

“All women like Luke, he flatters them,” Julian told her with a smile.

Jennet replied simply
,
“He would hardly flatter me.”

He laughed with genuine amusement.

“
He was out to charm you as much as if you had been the most glamorous London lovely,” he said. “He can’t resist it—it’s second nature to him.”

Jennet looked at him gravely.

“You mean he’s insincere?”

“Of course he’s insincere,” said Julian impatiently. “He can’t help it. Charm is
insincere, Jennet. Don’t be misled by it.”

“Charm—do you mean affection?” she asked.

He smiled.

“The two often get confused,” he said ambiguously. Yet he could be charming himself when he chose. “I’m arranging with Aunt Emily for you to go into Plymouth for singing lessons,” he told her. “You have a very charming voice, Jennet, it would be a pity not to develop it. I’m afraid I’ve neglected you since you came, but I’ll try and make up for it.”

He said it quite humbly, and for a brief moment Jennet felt she could understand him and talk his language. Then he looked at her hands and remarked with his old abruptness:

“These still need attention.”

She pulled them gently away from his.

“Fingers take time to recover from bad chilblains,” she said politely. “I don’t suppose you have ever had
any.”

Almost his last words before he left were to tell her that she had only to ask for anything she wanted, and he would be down again soon.

“In the meantime, practise, and, when I come down at
weekends
I’ll choose your songs and see how you’re getting on.”

She had her lessons, her daily walks, her daily milk, and new books from the library. Julian or Emily thought of most things, but they never gave her money of her own, or young companionship, or the right to decide anything
for herself.

CHAPTER
F
O
U
R

During most of
January, the weather was too bad to
do
much walking, which was a relief to Jennet, and she spent long hours writing painstaking copies of
The Times
leading articles.

“It will improve your writing and improve your knowledge, and when I’m not here, Homer can dictate, and that will i
m
prove your spelling,” Julian said.

J
e
nnet found
The Times
dull. She found Homer’s dictation easier to follow than Julian’s who read too fast and became impatient when he had to repeat a sentence.

“
Just listen
,”
he told her severely on one occasion.

“I do,”
she protested earnestly
.
“But you go so fast, and
some of the
wo
rds are so long.”

“Let me see what you’v
e done so far. My dear child! Libation has no Y
...
and dynamic has one N
...
and don
’
t make those peculiar squiggles for your capitals.”

Jennet sighed.

Emily watched with a faintly cynical eye.
“You’re v
ery male,
”
she told Julian once, and when he looked enquiring, explained: “The second time you came here you doubted if your experiment would work, and seemed quite indifferent about it, but since Luke charmed some response out of your orphan, you’ve fallen to
it
with a will.”

Well,” Julian grinned, “after all, she
is
my orphan.”

Emily smiled.