by Sara Seale
“Yes, she was different, that’s why I chose her, if it won’t hurt your feelings,” said Julian with a smile.
“And the only one of us who didn’t want to go—isn’t that life!”
“Will you tell her if you see her that we want her back very much?” asked Julian. “That I—miss her very much, and—worry quite a bit.”
Milly looked at him curiously, and privately thought Jennet was a fool.
“I’ll tell her—if I see her,” she said. “But when I told you I didn’t know where she was now, it was the truth—honest I don’t.”
“I believe you,” said Julian. “Where had you hidden her until I appeared?”
“In the packing-room, only don’t let on to old Stink-pot out there. You’ve probably lost me my job anyhow, but I kind of like you—I always did.”
“Thank you,” said Julian gravely. “Tell me, was she well? How does she manage for money?”
“She’s had what I could spare, which isn’t much,” said Milly, “You wouldn’t like to leave me some—in case I see her? Ten bob won’t take her far.”
“No, I don’t think I’ll do that,” he said calmly. “I’m hoping, you see, that lack of funds will bring her home.” He turned to go and patted her shoulder. “You’re a good sort, Milly. I’ll see you don’t lose your job, and when I get Jennet back, we’ll make up all the expenses you’ve been put to. Here’s my card. If you should want to get hold of me that number will always find me.”
Milly opened the office door for him.
“You really care, don’t you?” she said with slow surprise, but he only smiled and with a courteous good-bye limped off through the shop.
He felt he could not bear to go back to the flat. He drove instead to Jeremy’s studio.
“Well?” Jeremy said as he saw Julian.
“No good. I was just too late. But she had been there. That girl saw me and tipped her the wink.”
“Stubborn little devil, isn’t she?” remarked Jeremy reflectively. “I didn’t think she had it in her.”
Julian flung himself wearily into a chair and Jeremy looked at him with compassion.
“I was all wrong, wasn’t I, Jeremy?” he said.
“Yes, my boy, you were,” said Jeremy gravely. “And it took Luke with his easy shallow affections to point it out.”
“Luke?” Julian looked genuinely surprised. “Oh, he’s not important any more. He did no harm really. No, it was Jennet herself and her funny little song ... I’d rather rest on a true love’s breast ... than any other where...”
He got up and crossed the studio slowly and painfully. Jennet’s portrait still stood on the easel, but Jeremy had had it framed. Julian lifted the drape, and stood for a long time looking at it.
“Yes, it’s all there in the portrait—the things I didn’t see,” he said.
Jeremy nodded.
“Why wouldn’t you sell to me?”
Jeremy scratched his head.
“I really don’t know,” he said, and sounded embarrassed. “Perhaps you had seemed a little to think that you had first right to anything to do with the child. So you had, really, I suppose. I’d meant to give it to you both as a wedding present. Now—well, you’d better take it away with you anyhow—we can settle on a price later on.”
He blew his nose on a large bandana handkerchief and told Julian to go away.
Jennet stood at the gates of Blacker’s and looked through the bars at the gaunt grey building of the orphanage. Lights were appearing in the tall, barred windows and the monotonous drone of children’s voices flowed faintly from a downstair room.
Jennet straightened her aching back, and felt for the big iron knob that operated the gates. Wearily, she slipped inside, and the gates clanged shut behind her with a harsh rasp of finality. As she walked slowly up the steps to the front door a sense of familiarity, almost of homecoming, seized her. It was so long ago that she had come down these very steps with Julian.
She rang the bell and heard it echo with warning melancholy down the corridors.
“Yes?”
Parker, the surly porter, had opened the door and was peering out at her, unrecognizing.
“Good evening, Parker,” said Jennet politely. “Don’t you remember me?”
He looked at her good clothes and expensive shoes, and shook his head.
“Can’t say as I do, miss,” he replied. “Who did you want to see?”
“I want to see Matron,” she said, then as she saw the cynical comprehension dawn in his eyes, she added hastily: “I’m Jennet Brown. I was one of the inmates here.”
“Jennet Brown ... Jennet Brown...” He scratched his head. “Do you mean you was one of the orphans? Oh! You’re little Jenny Brown, the one what got adopted by some rich dame. You’ve gone up in the world—shouldn’t ’ave known you out of that uniform. What ’ave you come for? Got' into trouble already?”
“No, I’m not in trouble,” Jennet said, flushing. “I’d like to see Matron, please.”
He opened the door wider and she slipped inside and met his suspicious eyes with her old, disconcerting stare. “Will you tell her, please?”
He shrugged, left her standing in the hall and went off slowly in the direction of the children’s voices, louder now, swelling together in a toneless chant. Matron would be taking prayers, but they were nearly over.
The voices had ceased and footsteps were coming down the corridor, the brisk remembered footsteps and starched rustlings of Matron.
“Jenny Brown? I didn’t expect to see you back at Blacker’s,” she said, and her experienced eye ran over Jennet with a quick, curious glance. “The porter said you wanted to see me. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes—yes, there is,” said Jennet a little breathlessly. “I—I’d like to come back, please.”
Matron’s eyebrows rose incredulously.
“You want to come back?” she repeated. “But that’s a very strange request.” She gave a little artificial laugh. “We’ve had many orphans trying to get out, but never, as far as I know, one who wanted to come back.” Her eyes snapped suddenly. “Are you in trouble?”
“No.” Jennet felt so tired that she could scarcely remain standing. “I just want to come back and—I can earn my keep here. I expect you’re short-handed like everyone else. You see—I’ve run away.”
It was no use hiding it. There had to be some explanation.
Matron looked at her with a quick frown. The adoption authorities were always so careful—could there have been any slip-up here?
“You’d better come to my office,” she said briefly. Sitting at last in the bare little office, answering Matron’s sharp questions, the confusion of the last few days seemed more tangled than ever. When she had stood on the pavement outside Sparks & Spicer, wondering desperately where to go, it had seemed to Jennet the simple and obvious thing to return to Blacker’s. But, listening now to Matron, she knew that she could never explain what had driven her back.
“But I cannot understand, Jenny,” Matron was saying. “You say the Danes were good to you.”
“Very good to me.”
“You weren’t ill-used, or put upon in any way?”
“No—oh, no.”
“Then all I can think is, you must be a very ungrateful girl,” snapped Matron acidly.
“I am grateful,” Jennet said faintly. “But gratitude is not enough. One must live one’s own life, think one’s own thoughts ...” Her words petered out under Matron’s skeptical eye.
“It seems to me you are talking arrant nonsense. From all I can gather, Miss Dane has treated you like a daughter of the house, Mr. Dane has made provision in a fashion that sounds quixotically generous, and all the thanks you return them is to run away. Well, we can’t keep you here. You have legal guardians now—it is out of the directors’ hands altogether unless you can prove cruelty or undesirable conditions, and I hardly think you can do that.”
“No,” said Jennet drearily, “I couldn’t do t
hat.”
Matron gave her a sharp look, observing for the first time her exhausted condition.
“You can stop here for a few days while we straighten it all out,” she said more kindly. “Where’s your luggage?”
“I haven’t any,” Jennet said.
“I don’t like it,” said Matron, getting up. “I must wire Miss Dane first thing in the morning to let her know you’re here. She must be worried to death.”
“Oh, please—” Jennet made a last effort—“please don’t tell her—not for a little while. Julian—Mr. Dane thinks I’m stopping with friends. They won’t be worrying. If— when I decide to go back, they need never know.”
“I don’t promise anything,” Matron replied. “Blacker’s could not possibly be a party to harboring and deceit.”
Jennet said: “For sixteen years it was my home. A little longer wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
Matron rustled to the door.
“Well, we’ll see. Come with me now, and I’ll find somewhere for you to sleep tonight.”
The next two days passed with a dream-like quality for Jennet. The other girls accepted her incuriously, as life in an institution is always accepted. There were many who remembered her as the orphan who had been adopted and gone to live in riches, but that, too, was an old story, and probably untrue.
No, there was no going back. Had she not herself said to Julian: “I don’t think one ought to find the way back. One ought to find the way forward.” She had changed.
Despite herself she had changed and gone forward, and on the second morning she knew it, waking in her narrow bed long before it was light, her face wet with tears. She had been dreaming of Pennycross, and she lay in the darkness, the harsh rough sheet under her chin, remembering ...
The bell clanged loudly, insistently, and Jennet rose with the rest. There was no need to get up at six, Matron had told her, no need to put an her apron and help with the younger children. But habit was strong, and she could no more have disobeyed the warning bell than she could have disobeyed Emily’s instructions to stop in bed.
She was superintending the mid-morning, break in the babies’ play-room when an older girl put her head round the door and told Jennet she was wanted in the Visitors’ Room.
“The Visitors’ Room?” Her eyes widened. “Who?”
The other girl shook her head stolidly.
“I dunno. Matron sent me.”
Matron ... Then Jennet remembered. It was Friday. The board of directors were meeting in the afternoon. Matron had said they would want to question her.
The long corridor leading to the Visitors’ Room had just been newly waxed and she slipped a little as she hurried down it.
She knocked on the door and entered, closing it behind her, and a familiar voice remarked:
“Well, Jennet, are you ready to come home?”
Julian stood in the middle of the room, leaning on his stick, and surveying her unsmilingly, just as he had done a year ago, almost to the day. There was no sign of Matron.
Jennet leant against the door, the knob still under her fingers, staring at him, and her face went white.
“Haven’t you anything to say to me?”
She licked her lips.
“I—I didn’t expect you. I asked Matron not to—”
“Not to give you away? But you see, Matron, admirable woman, considered it her duty to wire Aunt Emily, who in turn wired me.” He limped across to her, and flipped her apron with his stick.
“Every time you get out of my sight, Jennet, you collect some extraordinary garment,” he said. “What is it?”
“An apron. We—they all wear them.”
“Do they indeed. Take it off.”
With the old obedience, she undid the apron and stood nervously pressing it into neat grey folds.
“That’s better,” he said, and asked again with quiet casualness: “Are you ready to come home?”
She was defeated. He would always defeat her.
“Yes,” she heard herself saying with a little sigh. “Yes, Julian.”
He smiled suddenly and sat down on the arm of a chair. “Before we go,” he said, “I want to have a little talk with you. I want you to understand that when we leave here, you are free to do whatever you choose. You can stay on with Piggy, or you can go back to Pennycross and stop with Aunt Emily until you’ve decided what you want to do with your life. I myself will be going away next month—perhaps for some little time. Remember that Pennycross is your home now, just as much as if you had been born there and lived there always. But whatever you decide to do, it’s your decision and no one will try and influence you.”
The color came flooding into her face.
“But your—your plans—” she began, but he interrupted her.
“I have no plans—only the wish to see you happy.” He smiled at her. “I was wrong, wasn’t I, Jennet, and you were right? You can’t run other people’s lives, mould other people’s characters. No one has that right. I’ve given up any sort of claim I thought I might have on you.”
She felt the tears prick her eyelids.
“I—I don’t know what to say,” she stammered. “It—it will seem so queer not to have you telling me what to do.”
He avoided her eyes and traced patterns on the bare boards with his stick.
“You’ll get used to it.”
She watched his averted profile, and was hurt by the change she saw there.
“You look ill,” she said impulsively, and there was pain in her voice.
He looked up, and his eyes were grave. “It’s been an anxious few days,” he told her gently, but it was the only rebuke he gave her.
She wanted to go to him, to put her arms round him and tell him whatever he wanted of her, that she would do. He had given her release, but she would always be bound to him in some small corner of her heart.
He got to his feet.
“Well, fetch your things,” he said abruptly. “There’s nothing more to wait for. Oh, before I forget it, Piggy asked me to give you this.”
He took a letter from his wallet and handed it to her.
“Piggy? What’s in it?”
“I’ve no idea. Probably a note to assure you of her welcome in case you felt too ashamed of yourself. Put it in your bag. You can read it in the car.”
He turned away and began to limp across the room, and she noticed how much more his foot seemed to be dragging. She hesitated a moment longer, conscious of something she wanted to say to him, then she left the room, quietly closing the door.
Upstairs in the empty dormitory she read Piggy’s note.
Piggy had written:
“... I do not suppose that Julian will tell you that he is to go into the nursing home next month for his final operation. I think he has told no one but me. It means a good deal to him this time as I understand they must then decide whether or not to take the leg off.
I shall look forward to seeing you back, dear. It was always a maxim in my schoolroom that the real test of affection is to give up voluntarily that which you most desire. Considering the happiness of another before your own is the true mark of devotion, however it may be disguised...”
Jennet sat very still, at first unable to think of anything but the ordeal ahead of Julian. No, he would not tell her. He was afraid of pity. He was, perhaps, afraid of all emotion, save the familiar one of anger...
She read the letter again, and, the pedantic, rather pointless phrases of the last page repeated themselves in her head in a strange, persistent pattern. The real test of affection is to give up voluntarily ... Julian had given her up voluntarily ... that which you most desire ... but Julian ... but Julian did not desire...
Color flooding her face, she seized her hat and coat and handbag and ran out of the dormitory.
Julian had been inspecting the Founder’s portrait, but he turned at her entrance. He looked at her in silence as she stood just inside the doorway, her coat trailing beside her on the floor.
“Julian—” she said, and paused.
There was the vast width of the room between them, and she was reminded of that other occasion when she had been afraid to cross it on account of the clatter her clumsy shoes made on the bare boards.
“Why don’t you want to marry me?” She had to raise her voice to reach him, and he replied:
“Is this a shouting match? Come over here.”
She advanced a little across the floor. “Why don’t you want to marry me?” she repeated. “Is it because it’s a true mark of devotion?”
He leant rather heavily on his stick and remained where he was.
“It sounds a funny sort of reason,” he remarked.
Jennet moved a little more.
“It’s a test of affection to give up something which you most desire—”
“Indeed?”
“And considering the happiness of another before your own is the true mark of devotion, however much it’s disguised.”
He looked at her oddly, and the lines about his mouth deepened.
“Where have you suddenly acquired these extraordinary-sounding platitudes?”
“Never mind. Have you given up your plans for me because they didn’t work after all, or because—”
“Really, Jennet, I don’t think we’ll discuss it.”
“—or because—” she covered quite a large area of floor —“you found you—you cared for me enough to want me to be happy?”
“Would that make any difference to you?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, yes, it would.” There was not a great amount of space between them now. “You see, the reason I ran away was the reason I couldn’t finish the song. I wanted—I wanted—oh, Julian, do make it easy for me.”
He shifted his weight on to his other leg.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked her a little harshly. “That I love you and we’ll live happily ever after?”
“Yes,” she said a little breathlessly, “that would do.”
He moved abruptly, retreating a little against the wall. “No, I won’t have that,” he said. “You’re young, with whole clean climbs that need a sound body to match them. I never had any right to expect you to slow down your pace to mine.”