Orphan Bride

by Sara Seale

  “That’s right,” he said approvingly. “And you know you have only to ask me for anything you need. You’re very undemanding for a woman—or perhaps I should hardly class you as a woman, yet!”

  Later, however, when she asked him when she was to return to London, he answered vaguely, postponing the project until the autumn, unaware of his desire to keep her in isolation for a little longer.

  “July and August are bad months for a city,” he told her. “Much better for you to spend them in good moorland air. In September, perhaps—the, autumn concerts will be starting then; there’ll be more in the way of exhibitions and lectures for you to see and hear.”

  Jennet sighed. Julian had not lost any of his thirst for improvement. He had discarded his dark glasses and she was aware of his eye on her, one eyebrow raised a little at her lack of enthusiasm, and she said meekly:

  “More spinach?”

  He frowned, gave her a sharp look, as if he suspected mockery, then laughed.

  “You’re becoming quite cheeky, Cousin Jennet,” he said, regarding her prone figure in the long grass.

  He leant forward in his chair, suddenly serious.

  “I don’t mean to be tedious,” he said. “I want to make you my sort of person. As you see, I’m somewhat restricted as to the pursuits I can choose, so it’s better that we should both care for the same things. Don’t you agree?”

  She was silent, and he was suddenly irritated by her apparent unwillingness to talk to him as an adult being.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake express some views on the subject. You must have some opinions of your own.”

  “Do you think one can ever really make people what one wants them to be?” she said slowly. “I mean, each person is an individual—if they are forced out of their right groove they might become—become—find it difficult to explain.”

  He looked at her, startled. It had scarcely occurred to him when he had demanded her views that she had any.

  “So you think I’m trying to force you out of your right groove,” he said, smiling a little. “My good child, do you know, at your age, what your right groove is?”

  “I’m not sure. In the orphanage, we all had grooves of a sort, and mine wasn’t at all like yours.”

  Her forehead remained wrinkled, and he stooped on sudden impulse and smoothed it with a careless finger. Her eyes flew open and she stared up at him with a strange expression.

  “Wrinkles,” he said with a smile. “I’m always telling you.”

  “Perhaps people are like that,” she said. “Wrinkles in their characters, I mean. If they’re natural they won’t smooth out.”

  “Is that supposed to be a profundity?” he asked, amused.

  She said with dignity:

  “You asked for my views.”

  He lay back in his chair and observed her lazily.

  “So I did. Have you any more, Miss Jennet Brown?” She gave him a look of grave resignation, and shook her head. No, it was impossible to talk to Julian.

  But there were moments during the summer when each could forget for a brief spell the other’s reserve. Talking in the dusk, when personalities seemed to merge into the twilight, he would sometimes listen to her without remembering their relationship and at times he would talk himself as if, she had been Luke or old Jeremy Pritchard. Once he even discussed the possibility of losing his leg with a calmness which hurt her unbearably, and before she could stop herself she had turned swiftly in the gathering darkness and put her arms round him.

  She felt him stiffen, and drew away instantly, feeling suddenly very lonely. The instinct to comfort had become the instinct to be comforted.

  “Don’t ever give.me pity. Jennet,” he said harshly. “Gratitude if you must—that at least lends stature—but never pity. Always remember.”

  She had been too shy to explain that it was neither one nor the other just then, but plain affection.

  Early in August he wrote to Emily that his treatment had finished and he was going to Scotland with Luke. He would probably not be in Penny-St.-Mary again before September. He made no mention of whether the treatment had done him good and there was no further talk of Jennet coming to London.

  She felt depressed and lonely, and although she had long ago ceased to expect a letter from Julian, she wished he would write. Scotland seemed very far away, and September only a month of vague promise. Emily was too much occupied with her dogs to wonder if the child was missing companionship. Only Homer noticed how much time Jennet spent with Mrs. Dingle in the kitchen when she should have been out in the fresh air, but he forgot about her unless he actually met her face to face.

  She would walk to the village sometimes on an errand for Emily, which gave her the excuse for talking to the shopkeepers, but as she never had any money to spend herself she was unable to do this very often. Jennet looked forward with dismay to the, winter and remembered the fog-bound isolation of the moor; and she knew that she envied Milly snug and gay in the cheap brightness of Sparks & Spicer with a passion that would have shocked Julian.

  Once a nostalgic longing took her to the Thompson’s old home. She would stand, she thought, on the little rise where the moor left the road, and perhaps she would see the children playing in the garden. But the house was deserted, the windows were uncurtained and thick with dust; it must have been empty for months. They had gone away, where, she would never know. Now there was only Julian.

  Towards the end of August the weather changed with depressing thoroughness. Sheets of rain fell day after day, turning to dense fog in the evening, and Jennet, confined to the house, grew listless and silent. Emily was short of temper, and Mrs. Dingle, with the household in to every meal for days on end, was full of grumbles.

  “And Julian, of course, has to choose this moment for a visit!” Emily exclaimed, waving a telegram with exasperation.

  “Today?” asked Jennet, her face lighting for a moment. “I thought he was in Scotland.”

  “Well, he’s evidently curtailed the trip and is coming here instead. Jennet, you must change that frock. You know Julian thinks you’ve outgrown it, and see to your nails before he arrives—you’ve been getting careless lately. Oh, dear, oh, dear! Julian is always so precipitate!”

  Emily hurried away to break the news to Mrs. Dingle, and Jennet felt no lifting of the spirit. She realized that she had missed Julian, and those queer, brief conversations in the orchard. But it was the wrong moment for a resumption of that difficult relationship. On such a day as this he would almost certainly arrive in a mood of displeasure, upset by the journey, and if this weather continued, they would all be boxed up in the house together, with no means of escape from each other.

  But Julian’s mood, at any rate to start with, was not one of displeasure. He had voluntarily cut short the visit to Scotland upon a last minute, inexplicable urge to see Jennet again, and the fact that, although she was as dutiful as ever, she did not seem particularly pleased to see him, both piqued and puzzled him.

  “You don’t look at all well compared with when I saw you last,” he told her disapprovingly. “Are you eating properly?”

  “No, she’s not,” Emily replied for her. “But the weather has been very trying, and we are all too much in the house.”

  “Do you feel ill?” he asked, frowning.

  She shook her head, wishing he would leave her alone, and Emily answered impatiently:

  “Of course she doesn’t feel ill. Don’t go putting ideas into the child’s head.”

  Julian raised his eyebrows. It was unusual for Emily to be on edge.

  “Well, she’s thinner, and she certainly doesn’t look well,” he said, and added with more irritation than he really felt: “For heaven’s sake go and change that dress, Jennet. It takes every scrap of color out of your face.”

  It was a bad beginning, and the rest of the evening was no easier. Julian, who had travelled from Scotland the night before and only broken his journey for a couple of hours at his flat before coming straight
down to Plymouth, felt tired and chilled by his reception.

  After supper, they sat in the fireless living room, listening to the rain and talking very little.

  Homer went to bed early, soon to be followed by Jennet, and Julian cocked a disgruntled eyebrow at his aunt.

  “What’s the matter with her?” he demanded irritably. “If she isn’t ill, then she’s indulging in temperament, and you ought to check that, Aunt Emily.”

  Emily retorted with unusual sharpness:

  “Are you the only one who’s allowed to indulge in temperament? Why can’t you leave the girl alone, Julian? You only make her worse by all this fuss and interference.”

  He filled a pipe with impatient fingers.

  “What on earth’s the matter with you all?” he said. “I shall begin to wish I’d stayed in Scotland after all, before very long.”

  “It’s the weather,” said Emily apologetically. “We’ve all been cooped up too much together, and it’s dull for Jennet with two old fogies. She needs change.”

  “And I’m no change, you mean to imply,” he said with a short laugh. “She doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact that I altered my plans at the last minute simply on her account.”

  “Well, dear, there’s no reason why she should,” said Emily mildly. “It might be better if you tell her so.”

  “I will,” said Julian in no uncertain tones, “I’ll tell her to-morrow. I’m hanged if I’ll be cold-shouldered by my own foundling.”

  But when the morning came, it brought with it not only continued bad weather, but a first-class family disturbance such as he did not remember since his childhood days.

  CHAPTER T E N

  It all started with Mrs. Dingle’s annoyance at Julian’s unexpected visit. After breakfast she made a great display of having too much work to do, insisting on dusting Jennet’s room before she cleared the dining table, a thing she never normally did.

  Jennet, making her bed with some idea of helping, listened to her grumbles and watched a little anxiously the careless duster flicking over the furniture with angry slaps.

  “Oh, be careful!” she pleaded. “You’ll break something if you’re so violent.”

  “I don’t need to be taught my work by any little maid from an institution, either,” Mrs. Dingle snapped.

  “You needn’t be rude,” Jennet said. It was a long time since Mrs. Dingle had shown her resentment of the orphanage.

  The woman snorted and continued her operations with more violence.

  “Leave the mantelpiece, please. I’ll do it,” said Jennet, her eyes on Frankie’s china fawn.

  “Stop chittering,” said Mrs. Dingle, with a fine disregard for her own flow of words. “I know my place, I hope, though there’s some ’as doesn’t. Come to that, there’s none of this silly old trade would be missed if it were broke. Collecting dust and such like—oh, my dear soul, ’tes fallen abroad!” The duster had caught the fawn in its devastating passage, and swept it on to the hearth, where it lay in fragments.

  Jennet went white.

  “You did it on purpose!” she accused, her voice shaking. “You did it on purpose, you wicked woman! My little fawn—the only thing in this room I loved.”

  Mrs. Dingle stood irresolute. She was genuinely sorry she had broken the ornament, but Jennet’s accusation riled her anew.

  “Who be you, calling me wicked?” she retorted, her dialect broadening in anger. “Why, you’m not even born respectable, you poor little toad, and talking like that to me! ’Tes too much. I’ll see the missus and hand in my notice.”

  Emily tried to deal with them both as quietly as possible, but Mrs. Dingle did not believe in hiding her feelings or her views. Jennet certainly did not shout, but she stood there looking so strained and wild that Emily was at a loss to understand what in so trivial a misfortune as a broken ornament could cause such unreasonable emotion in each. Finally, she lost her temper, sent Mrs. Dingle packing to the kitchen and told Jennet she ought to be ashamed of herself for creating such a disturbance.

  “What on earth’s all the shindy about?” Julian’s exasperated voice demanded from the doorway. “This house I hold seems to have lost its wits since I was last here.”

  “Then you’d better deal with Jennet yourself and see if you can get any sense out of her,” retorted Emily, “for I’m sure I can’t. She seems to think Mrs. Dingle broke an ornament of hers on purpose, which, of course, is absurd, but it’s not absurd when Mrs. Dingle wants, to leave. I could never replace her, and I’m surprised at you, Jennet, for making trouble. It’s not like you.” Emily ran an |agitated hand through her hair, added that she supposed she must somehow placate Mrs. Dingle, and went out of the room.

  Julian looked curiously at Jennet. She was still very white.

  “No, it’s not like you,” he remarked. “But you haven’t been like yourself since I arrived yesterday. What’s the trouble?”

  “She broke my fawn—my china fawn,” said Jennet, her mind clinging to one thing only. “Perhaps she didn’t do it on purpose, but she broke it all the same!”

  “Well, it was unfortunate, but things do get smashed,” he said impatiently. “Anyhow, it wasn’t broken yesterday and you were behaving very oddly then.” He realized then that she was nearly in tears, and said with kindly raillery:

  “Do you realize, young woman, that I gave up the rest of my holiday especially to come down and see you, and so far I haven’t been able to get a word out of you?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Jennet tonelessly. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

  He was nonplussed at the lack of impression he was making on her.

  “Well, then, try and pull yourself together.”

  “She broke my fawn,” Jennet repeated, and he glanced at her sharply. The child’s manner was very strange.

  “For heaven’s sake! I’ll buy you another fawn. Where did you get it?”

  “That wouldn’t be at all the same,” she replied. “It was given to me.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh? I didn’t give it to you as far as I remember. Who else would have given you a present?”

  “It was given to me,” she repeated with dignity, and added politely: “It doesn’t matter really.”

  His dark eyes narrowed.

  “Oh, but I think it does. You’re making an inordinate amount of fuss about a cheap china ornament. Who gave it to you?”

  She made no answer and he said, his voice hardening: “I suppose it was the same young fellow whom I seem to remember causing trouble between us before.”

  She stared at him helplessly, grief at her loss swamped in the far more upsetting act of reviving that old displeasure.

  He began to fidget with his stick.

  “Really, Jennet, I gave you credit for more common sense. I’m sorry if a sentimental attachment for a china ornament should make you indulge in such an exhibition, but feel it’s a little irrational all the same.”

  Her forehead wrinkled in the old perplexity. It was too difficult to make him understand that Frankie’s gift had long since ceased to be a sentimental reminder of the donor. It had become a symbol of comfort and affection and loving-kindness.

  “You don’t understand—” she began falteringly, but he interrupted her.

  “I understand only too well, and it appears to me that isolating you here at Pennycross, though no doubt dull for you, is an excellent precaution until you’re old enough to adjust your emotional values for yourself. I realize, of course, that it will scarcely be the same thing, but I’ll replace your china fawn as soon as I get back to town, and hope, in the fullness of time, it may claim a small portion of your misplaced affections.”

  He could always defeat her with sarcasm. She felt the tears spring to her eyes, and backed to the door.

  “Oh, no,” she cried. “Oh, no, Julian, you are so wrong. I can’t—” She broke off, not knowing what it was she could not make him understand, and, turning with a swiftness that was too quick for him, ran fro
m the room and out of the house into the pouring rain.

  He limped to the front door, angrily calling her back, but she paid no heed and he could not hope to catch her in his crippled state. With an exasperated shrug he slammed the door shut and flung himself into a chair.

  She was not back by lunch time, and Julian moodily picked at his food, and was inclined to snap when he was spoken to. The rain had stopped, and fog was beginning to seep up from the moor.

  “If she isn’t back soon, she won’t be able to see a yard in front of her,” Julian remarked grimly.

  Emily glanced out of the window.

  “She won’t stay out in this,” she said practically. “She’s a very sensible child, really—besides, fog frightens her.”

  But Pennytor was invisible, and a damp white blanket clinging round the house, and still Jennet had not come. Somewhere out on the moor a bell began to toll eerily, its sound muffled by the fog, and Emily said, “That’s Princetown. There must have been a prison break.” She glanced uneasily at Homer. “They usually choose a fog.”

  Julian turned from his post at the window where he had been standing for a long time.

  “I’m worried, Aunt Emily,” he said, and the lines of pain had deepened round his mouth. “You know as well as I do the moor is dangerous in fog. The child may have had an accident—twisted her ankle or something. She might wander round in circles for hours and fetch up in one of the old tin workings.”

  “I know, dear,” she said, “but I don’t see what we can do.”

  “I can get a search-party from the village to go out and look for her,” said Julian.

  Emily hesitated.

  “If you think that will do any good,” she said, then: “But let Homer go. It would take you too long, and you couldn’t help much in the search.”

  Julian’s lips tightened.

  “Very well, let Homer go. I’m well aware I’m very little use in an emergency these days,” he said.

  Homer got up.

  “I’ll go, of course,” he said, “but the chances of finding her are rather slight until the fog lifts. The warders will be out, anyhow, searching. They may run across her.”