She decided she was going to like David Forrest. For one thing, his handgrip was firm, and, for another, he didn’t seem at all embarrassed by the puppyish friendliness of the twins.
There was nothing of the flowing tie or luxuriant hair convention about him. In fact, he looked the regulation sportsman, if he looked the regulation anything, except for the fact that he had inherited from his mother rather romantically long, dark lashes, which did not, Jessica thought, detract at all from the general charm.
“Darling, I think the place is looking even more beautiful than before. Though, of course, one misses your dear father,” said Mrs. Forrest, recollecting that, even if she were not missing him, she ought to be. “But I’m sure you manage everything perfectly.”
“Well, I hope I’m going to manage it to your satisfaction,” Jessica told her with a smile, while Judy said very literally:
“Anyway, Daddy never had anything to do with the managing. Jess always did it.”
“ ‘Always’ can’t have been a very long time, judging from Jess’s youthful appearance,” declared David.
But Judy was quite ready and willing to put that right.
“Oh, yes. Jessica has looked after everything since she was fifteen, and she’s twenty-two now,” she announced obligingly.
“You keep the family secrets to yourself,” David said. But he smiled at Jessica in a way that expressed frank admiration without any hint of boldness.
And Jessica reflected that the taking of paying guests was going to have its pleasure, as well as its profit.
During the next few days, life at The Mead proceeded with a smoothness beyond Jessica’s most optimistic hope. Evelyn Forrest was good-tempered and unexacting, and. provided one noticed — and even sometimes remarked — how really nice she was, she was very easy to please.
David, too, was easy-going — with a nice sense of humour which was somewhat lacking in his mother. He was also a good deal more observant and, while she constantly said that she wondered how Jessica contrived to do so much work and still look decorative, he was not at all above lending a hand in the garden, and even in the house, if necessary.
To Jessica, it seemed that she could hardly have had two more ideal guests with which to start her venture. And when, after a day or two, everything seemed in good running order, she decided that the time had come to make her rather frightening appeal to Mr. Onderley.
At first, she thought of telephoning and asking for an appointment. But, on second thoughts, she decided that an informal, semi-neighbourly call might produce better results. So, choosing that indefinite time between tea and dinner, when most people can be relied on to be at home. Jessica set out for Oaklands, the big house, standing in a small, well-kept park, which lay about half a mile beyond the Skeltons’ place.
With shameless guile, she had chosen her most becoming outfit, for — hard man and crusty old curmudgeon though he might be — Mr. Onderley would not be less likely to yield because one was easy to look at.
In her well-cut grey suit, Jessica knew she looked graceful, and as near tall as she was ever likely to look. And the almost copper-coloured silk blouse and gloves were the exact shade of her hair, which she dressed on top of her head in a shining coronet. Unlike the twins, Jessica had clear grey eyes, but the lashes were dark enough to give the illusion of almost dark eyes and, whereas at this time of year the twins achieved a rich brown tan, Jessica’s fine, pale skin took nothing more than a warm, golden shade.
It was probable that at least half Uncle Hector’s misgivings about her capabilities for running any venture of her own were due to the fact that his niece was an extraordinarily pretty girl. Jessica, while vaguely aware of this, presumed to hope that Mr. Onderley’s reactions would be different.
As she passed the Skelton’s house, Mary, who saw her from a window, ran out to the gate to speak to her.
“Hallo, darling. What are you doing, passing an old friend like this?”
Jessica smiled and stopped.
“I’m going up to Oaklands, to have it out with Mr. Onderley,” she explained. “Don’t uncross your fingers once all the time I’m away.”
“Jess! Are you really going?” Mary — who had, of course, had a full account of the interview with Uncle Hector — looked half amused and half anxious.
“Certainly. Why not?”
“Well — don’t pin too many hopes to it, dear. I hear he is very much the hard landlord of fiction,” Mary said doubtfully.
“I’ve got to pin all my hopes to it.” Jessica spoke almost violently. “If he won’t agree to alter the terms of the agreement — it’s business college for me and boarding school for the children.”
“Well, all the luck in the world, Jess,” Mary said heartily.
“She sounded as though she thought I’d need it,” reflected Jessica a little grimly as she went on.
Oaklands was much the biggest and the most beautiful house in the neighbourhood, dating from considerably more than a hundred years ago and combining the elegance of the best Regency period with the rich solidity of early Victorianism.
This was the first time Jessica had approached nearer than the gate of the small park, and her heart beat with mingled excitement and nervousness as she walked up the drive and boldly pulled the big brass bell-pull which hung at the side of the front door.
At the same moment, the door opened — too quickly for it to have been in answer to Jessica’s ring — to disclose a slim, elegant, dark-haired girl about half a dozen years older than Jessica herself. She was in a very lovely jade green evening dress, over which she wore a short mink cape, and she was obviously going out.
As Jessica stood aside to let her pass, she gave a faint, rather remote smile and said,
“Good evening. Did you want to see someone?”
“Yes. If Mr. Onderley is in, I’d like to see him for a few minutes,” explained Jessica, feeling not quite so tall and not half so smartly dressed as she had felt five minutes ago.
“Yes, he’s in. Barden” — she spoke over her shoulder to a manservant who was now hovering in the background — “this lady wants to see Mr. Onderley.”
And, with a little nod, she went down the steps to a big closed car which had just driven round from the side of the house.
“That must be his daughter,” thought Jessica as she followed the manservant across the hall and into a high, panelled room, where wide bay windows gave a beautiful view across the valley at the back of the house.
“The name is Miss Edom,” Jessica explained. “I haven’t got an appointment with Mr. Onderley, but if he could spare me a few minutes, I’d be very glad.”
It was no longer sounding at all like an informal, semi-neighbourly call, she realised. But the servant’s rather unbending attitude seemed to indicate that that would have been out of place in any case.
He went away, and Jessica was left alone, a good deal oppressed by the silence and the magnificence of the place. In the friendly, familiar surroundings of The Mead, it had not seemed very unreasonable to come and lay her difficulties before her unknown landlord. At the gate of Mary Skelton’s home it had begun to seem a trifle bold. In this quiet, luxurious room, the idea appeared presumptuous and quite terrifyingly impossible of execution.
“Don’t be silly! He can’t eat you,” she admonished herself. “And, even if he is the kind of horrid old thing who shouts, he must have his softer moments. That daughter of his was never dressed by an unbendingly stern papa.”
But none of this reassured her very much and, when she heard a step in the hall outside. Jessica rose to her feet with an odd sensation of not being able to breathe very easily. If he were big and bullying . . .
The door opened, and into the room came a tall, dark, extremely good-looking man in a riding suit, and, at a bewildered, hasty guess, Jessica put his age at something like thirty.
“I wanted to see Mr. Onderley,” she explained, with more of a gasp than she had intended. “Mr. Ford Onderley.”
&nb
sp; “Yes?” he said. “What can I do for you? I am Ford Onderley.”
CHAPTER TWO
JESSICA opened her eyes very wide and said, “Are you really?” before she could quite check her astonishment.
Then she blushed, felt some apology was due, and hastily stammered:
“I — I beg your pardon. I didn’t think — I mean, you aren’t at all as I expected you to be.”
He looked amused, as though he thought her gauche — which no doubt he did — and Jessica felt she was not conducting this interview very skilfully.
“Won’t you sit down?” He indicated a chair, into which she rather thankfully subsided. “What can I do for you, Miss Edom? I believe you are quite a near neighbour of mine, aren’t you?”
It was nice of him, Jessica thought passingly, to refer to her as a neighbour, rather than a tenant, and, recovering herself a little, she said,
“Yes. I live up at The Mead with my young brother and sister. As a matter of fact, you’re our landlord,” she added a trifle naïvely.
“As a matter of fact, I believe I am,” he agreed, looking amused again. “I think Furnivall spoke about you. Didn’t you lose your father very recently?”
“Yes, we did.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, conventionally, but quite pleasantly. “Both for you and for myself. I understand I lost a very excellent tenant in him.”
This seemed as good an opening as any, so, gripping her hands together with a nervous tension which was not lost on her host, Jessica boldly plunged with:
“It was about the renewal of the tenancy that I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Onderley.”
“Oh, yes?” He turned his chair slightly, and she wondered if it were only a trick of the light which made her think that his mouth hardened. That, and the remembered warnings of Bob Parry and Mary.
“I expect you know,” she explained rather breathlessly, “that our three-yearly agreement is renewable next quarter-day, and that the rent is payable half-yearly in advance?”
He nodded, to indicate that he knew, as well as Jessica, the terms on which his property was rented.
“Well, I came to ask if you would consider making the agreement a yearly one and — and the rent payable quarterly in adv —”
“Not without very good reason, Miss Edom,” he interrupted, so unequivocally that she winced. But she returned eagerly to the attack.
“There is a very good reason,” she began.
“From your point of view, or mine?”
“Well — well, ours,” she admitted. “But if you don’t mind hearing about it in detail —?”
He made a slight gesture for her to proceed, though neither his extremely observant dark eyes nor his over-firm mouth relaxed into any smile of encouragement.
However, with or without encouragement, the story must be told, and, in as steady a voice as she could achieve, Jessica explained about their changed financial position. Uncle Hector’s worthy but somewhat dreary proposals for the future, and her own counterproposal and her uncle’s reception of it.
He heard her through to the end, quite patiently. Then, as her voice died away into what she found distinctly embarrassing silence, he regarded her speculatively and said:
“Your uncle is not averse to this paying guest proposition, as such? Only if he is himself involved in any financial risk?”
“Yes, exactly.” Jessica wondered if his thoughtful tone meant that he was considering the position.
“And your proposal is that any financial risks should therefor be shifted from his shoulders to mine?”
Jessica blushed at the dryness of his tone.
“Well, I — there wouldn’t be very much risk for you, Mr. Onderley.”
“On the contrary. I have a very desirable tenant anxious to take on The Mead at an increased rental,” he informed her coolly. “Alternatively, I could sell the place at an excellent price. Your suggestion — if carried out — would mean that I rejected two good certainties, for the speculative pleasure of watching you experiment in something in which you have no experience — my rent being dependent on the success of the experiment, incidentally.”
“The — the rent is payable in advance,” Jessica reminded him in a greatly subdued tone. “You’d be sure of that, anyway.”
“It would be a little difficult to throw you all out, halfway through the year, because of non-payment of rent,” he informed her. “Particularly as I feel sure you would come and plead your cause with at least as much eloquence as on this occasion.”
Jessica flushed angrily.
“You think I’m cadging, don’t you? Just because I come here and ask for easier terms in — in the present emergency.”
“No, not necessarily. I’m thinking how very shrewd it was of your Uncle Hector to let you come and do the pleading,” was the rather unexpected reply.
A small, uncontrollable smile flitted over Jessica’s face.
“Well, you see, he — he had the idea that you’d known me since I was young enough to pat on the head.”
“And thought that my hard heart was more likely to melt to the pleas of my little favourite than to the arguments of an Uncle Hector?” finished Ford Onderley, with a grim smile in his turn.
“S-something like that,” Jessica confessed.
“A view in which, I notice, you seem to have concurred, since you left him in ignorance of his mistake.”
“Well, I thought I’d do it better than Uncle Hector,” Jessica explained earnestly. “After all, my heart’s more in it. He would only be discussing an arrangement which would suit his convenience. I’m talking about the happiness and home of myself and the twins.”
“How old are the twins?” he enquired — irrelevantly, she thought.
“Twelve.”
“Ah, I see. Not of a sufficiently tender age to add pathos to the situation, and so you didn’t bring them with you.”
Jessica jumped to her feet, scarlet with the angry certainty that he was finding this interview no more than mildly amusing.
“I’m sorry — I shouldn’t have come,” she cried, and it annoyed her still further to find that her voice was shaking. “I ought to have been warned. Mary said it wouldn’t be any good, and that I mustn’t hope you’d —”
“Sit down,” he interrupted coolly. “We’re still discussing the possibilities of your plan, you know. Only, I have no intention of being imposed on by you or Uncle Hector. Nor do I intend to bolster up any project which is doomed from the start by incompetence.”
“But I — I’m not incompetent. Really I’m not.” Jessica spoke more quietly.
“No?” He smiled, and, for the first time, it was not an unkindly smile. “You don’t strike me as incompetent, I admit, even though you are so extremely young and lovely. But I can’t take your competence entirely on trust, you know. Tell me something more about your plan of action, for I never lend my support to any venture without knowing all about it — flinty-hearted though that may seem to you and — Mary.”
Jessica sat down slowly again, glanced at her host, and took heart from the fact that there was an undoubted glint of amusement in his eyes. Nothing tolerant in his expression — but at least he was ready to listen.
So she carefully explained about the promising beginning she had made with the Forrests, and how she intended to build up a good connection, as far as possible by personal recommendation.
“Provided you achieve something worth recommending. I might be able to help you there,” he said unexpectedly.
“Oh, Mr. Onderley!” Hope leapt into Jessica’s shining eyes. “Do you mean you’re considering my proposition?”
“Certainly I’m considering it. You don’t suppose I should be wasting so much time on it if I didn’t think it was possibly worthy of support, do you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry I was rude to you,” cried Jessica with contrition. “I was scared and — and so much depended on it. I’m not really taking your support for granted, you know. It’s most awfully good o
f you —”
“Please don’t rush from one extreme to the other,” he begged. “It’s really rather embarrassing to be credited with a cloven hoof one moment and a halo the next, you know.” But he looked amused, and not at all embarrassed. “I’m really neither a villain nor a philanthropist. The point is that your father was always an excellent tenant of mine. There is therefore no reason why I should not be reasonably accommodating in what you so engagingly term ‘the present emergency,’ provided —”
“It was Uncle Hector’s phrase — not mine,” murmured Jessica.
“My respect for Uncle Hector increases,” remarked Ford Onderley ironically. “But, as I was saying, there is no reason why I should not help you, provided I find that you are sufficiently capable and hard-working to deserve help.”
“You mean you’ve no use for duds, however unfortunate?” suggested Jessica with a little grin which was entirely devoid of rancour.
“I mean, my dear,” he said dryly, “that it is singularly easy in this wicked world for the lazy to pass themselves off as the unfortunate, and every day it is being made easier for them. I don’t intend to facilitate matters still further. In fact, to return from the general to the particular, my willingness to help you depends very much on your willingness to help yourself.”
“Well, that’s fair,” Jessica agreed heartily. “And, though I dare say I sounded resentful and touchy at first, I don’t in the least mind your doing a bit of personal investigating. In fact” — she smiled at him winningly — “you’d better come and see us for yourself.”
“Is that a direct invitation?” He too smiled.
“Of course.”
“When may I come?”
“This evening,” Jessica said promptly. “Then you’ll know things haven’t been specially prepared for you.”
“Not afraid to be taken unawares, eh?” He looked amused but approving. “Well, I call that a good suggestion. Do you really mean that I may call some time this evening?”
“No. I mean — will you come back to dinner with me?” Jessica replied, her colour rising a little with excitement and a sort of heady enjoyment of her own boldness.
The Brave In Heart Page 3