The Brave In Heart

by Mary Burchell

  Jessica's plans for the future depended entirely on her unknown but reputedly harsh landlord, and she was understandably nervous about her forthcoming interview with him.

  So it was a welcome surprise when he turned out to be young, good-looking, and only too willing to help her.

  The Brave In Heart

  Mary Burchell

  CHAPTER ONE

  “IT’S FUNNY,” thought Jessica, “how aristocratically reproachful a dead salmon can look. Cod only achieves a huffy, middle-class stare, and herring are definitely cheerful and proletariat. But this salmon” — and she tried to look it firmly in the eye — “makes me feel dreadfully inadequate and low bred.”

  To look a dead salmon in the eye and at the same time maintain one’s balance on a bicycle, however, is not easy, even if the salmon is rearing its head out of the basket on one’s handle-bars. And, after a moment, Jessica abandoned the attempt, and gave all her attention to pedalling as far as possible up the long hill home before she should be forced to dismount and push.

  Past the three elms, clustered in a group like people discussing a secret, past the milestone which was about halfway, past the stile on the left —

  But here, although she still had some breath and energy left, Jessica suddenly dismounted, for a quick glance had shown her that her friend, Mary Skelton, was coming along the field path on the other side of the stile.

  “Hallo,” she called as Mary climbed the stile. “Come and see what Cox let me have at the fish shop to-day.”

  Mary approached.

  “My dear! Not a whole salmon?” She regarded the noble creature with awe. “Introduce me, will you?”

  “Sir Marmaduke Middlecut — Miss Mary Skelton,” replied Jessica promptly, and they both giggled. “Isn’t he a beauty?”

  “He certainly is. Do you think it’s quite the thing to push him round the countryside all naked and unadorned like that, though?” Mary sounded critical.

  “I did wrap him in paper, to begin with, but it was quite an inadequate piece, as I’d only expected cod fillets or something,” Jessica explained earnestly, “and the moment I put him in the basket, he popped his head through a thin bit in the paper, and has been regarding me with a very House of Lords stare ever since.”

  “Oh, well, I could take more than a haughty look from a salmon I’d captured for my own table,” Mary said philosophically. “Are you having it hot or cold? I never can decide which I love best.”

  “Cold — and to-morrow.” replied Jessica promptly. “In fact, Marmaduke is almost a direct answer to prayer, for Aunt Miriam and Uncle Hector are coming to-morrow to — talk things over. And if there’s one thing in the world which could move Uncle Hector to take a genial and tolerant view of life, it’s cold salmon.”

  “How lucky.” Mary was appropriately impressed. “It’s very important that he should be put in a good mood, isn’t it?”

  “If it didn’t sound melodramatic, I’d say our whole future depends on it.” Jessica declared.

  “As bad as that?” Mary thoughtfully wrinkled her very pretty nose as they began to walk on up the hill side by side. “In that case, you’d better tell the twins to run over this evening, and I’ll give you a cucumber out of the greenhouse. There’s one about ready, I think.”

  “Mary, you’re an angel!”

  “Not at all. I want Uncle Hector to let you all stay on at The Mead, and I’m perfectly willing to cooperate in any scheme to that end,” Mary declared with emphasis. “What are the chances, Jess — of your persuading him, I mean?”

  Jessica didn’t reply at once, but her small oval face, with the big, dark-lashed grey eyes, looked thoughtful.

  “Frankly, I don’t think they’re good,” she said at last, with a sigh. “You see, Uncle Hector’s really very much annoyed at having been made an executor of Daddy’s will. He says, very truly, that he’s no blood relation of the twins and me, and I think he feels it’s very inconsiderate of Aunt Miriam ever to have got herself related to us.”

  “Even uncles by marriage must expect a few family jobs of that kind occasionally,” Mary retorted rather indignantly. “Why shouldn’t he do it?”

  “Well,” Jessica explained, “I expect, to anyone of Uncle Hector’s exact mind, it’s specially annoying being made executor of a will where there’s no money. I think he would probably have administered a ten-thousand-pound estate with fairly good grace.”

  “You mean he’s afraid he may have to put his hand into his own pocket?” Mary suggested shrewdly.

  “Yes.” Jessica nodded. “And he will, so far as the education of the twins is concerned,” she admitted, “unless —”

  She paused so long that Mary prompted her with friendly impatience.

  “Unless—?”

  “Mary, if Uncle Hector would let me keep The Mead running for a year, I believe I could build up a good connection with paying guests. This isn’t the most fashionable part of the Lake District, but it is one of the most beautiful, and people always want to come here again. Take Mrs. Forrest, for instance —”

  She paused again, until Mary said,

  “I’ve taken her. What about Mrs. Forrest?”

  “Well, she wrote to me only this morning and asked if she and her son could come for several weeks, almost right away. And she said quite frankly that, as she knew our circumstances must have changed since Daddy’s death, the arrangement would have to be a business one, and she was prepared to pay well.”

  “And could afford to do so?”

  “Oh, undoubtedly.”

  “Hm, it does seem a direct pointer to the future, doesn’t it?” Mary said.

  “I’m hoping Uncle Hector will see it in that light,” Jessica agreed.

  “Well, may Marmaduke help him to do so, darling!” Mary said fervently, as she prepared to part company with Jessica and take the side road leading to the picturesque villa where she kept house for a rich and doting father.

  The superficial similarity of their positions — keeping house for a widowed father — was perhaps what had first drawn Mary and Jessica to each other. But their actual circumstances could hardly have been more different.

  Mary’s father was a genial, moneyed man of business, with — as he expressed it — his feet very much on the ground. Mary was his only child and, since he saw in his fair pretty daughter a daily reminder of the young wife he had adored, it was his constant pleasure to pet her and indulge her to an extent which would have been ruinous to any nature less sweet and independent than Mary’s.

  Jessica’s father, on the contrary, had been neither genial nor moneyed, and he certainly had never been a man of business in any meaning of the phrase. Except in connection with the scientific research which absorbed both his energies and all his surplus money, he was a vague, impersonal soul and a most undemonstrative father.

  Of Jessica he had undoubtedly been very fond but, after the death of his wife when the twins were born, twelve years ago, he had withdrawn more and more from personal relationships. And, though he wished Tom and Judy very well whenever he remembered their existence in a more than superficial way, he seemed to feel little or no parental responsibility towards them.

  While Mary’s “keeping house” consisted of overseeing (very capably, it must be admitted) a small but efficient domestic staff, and in gracing her father’s dinner table as a smart and well-dressed hostess, Jessica’s duties were of a much more homely and strenuous variety.

  She had been ten when her mother died, and from then until she was fifteen the household suffered from a succession of more or less incompetent housekeepers. Having learned by then, from bitter experience, much of what did not make for a happy, well-run household, Jessica decided that the time had come for a radical change.
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br />   Without much difficulty, she persuaded her father that it would be less expensive, and could hardly be more uncomfortable, to surrender the management of affairs to her admittedly inexperienced hands. And, after some agitating, experimental weeks, the household settled down to the most regular and efficient routine it had known since the death of Jessica’s mother.

  Now, at twenty-two, Jessica was as capable a manager as it was possible to find, and — with the assistance of one general maid, Linda, who was devoted, though somewhat rough and ready — she had made a very happy home life for her father and her young brother and sister.

  Looking back on the last seven years, Jessica thought, as she came over the brow of the hill in sight of home, that it was easy to see now, in the light of possible deprivation, just how happy those years had been.

  Before her lay the house which had always been home, and the thought that she and the twins were more than likely to have to leave its dear and shabby security came over her afresh, with a pang which made her catch her breath.

  No one could pretend that The Mead conformed to any known school of architecture. It straggled its green and white length over an uneconomical quantity of ground, and on both sides and in front spread a richly extravagant area of lawn.

  This it was the twins’ particular pleasure to preserve in a condition of velvety smoothness, and they cut it with the ancient mower and rolled it with the creaking roller almost daily. No budding dandy ever shaved his chin with more loving care than the twins shaved their lawn, and, as Jessica neared the gate, the familiar “crank, cra-a-ank” of the roller could be heard.

  She bit her lip, remembering that Tom and Judy were still unaware of the shadow of dispossession which lay over them. Their father’s death, a month ago, had, of course, shocked them, but they were happily ignorant of the threat to everyday life which it implied. Jessica herself had been stunned when she first realised it.

  Alfred Edom had never given the impression of being either a rich or a businesslike man, but the discovery that, virtually, any means he possessed had died with him had been shattering. Even now, Jessica could not accustom herself to the idea that for future guidance — and, to a great extent, for financial support — she and the twins were dependent on two people whom they hardly knew.

  Uncle Hector and Aunt Miriam — their only living relatives — had never lived sufficiently near for intimacy. Nor had they been affectionate at a distance, and it was two years since Jessica had even seen them. During that time, correspondence had been limited to Christmas cards of the more austere variety, and picture postcards dispatched from holiday resorts, bearing strictly conventional phrases relating to weather and scenery.

  Even Aunt Miriam had never indicated any warm affection for her brother’s children. And it must indeed have been a disagreeable shock for poor Uncle Hector when he found himself called on to administer a practically non-existent estate for the benefit of a couple of nieces and a nephew in whom he had little or no interest.

  At the same time, from what Jessica could remember, she thought he was the kind of man to regard unwelcome duties in a heavily conscientious light. This would probably impel him to veto any suggestion of hers that did not conform to his own highly conventional outlook.

  “He’ll probably want to pack the twins off to boarding school, and put me in a hostel for business girls while I learn shorthand and typing and how to do accounts,” thought Jessica gloomily.

  Whereas, ever since the arrival of Mrs. Forrest’s letter that morning, she had been thinking more and more enthusiastically of the plan which she had just broached to Mary.

  Mrs. Forrest — the wealthy widow of a man who had been a close colleague of Alfred Edom’s in his younger days — had stayed at The Mead for a few days during the previous summer. On a motor tour through the Lake District, she had called to see her late husband’s friend and his family, and, partly owing to some trouble with her car, partly to the fact that she liked the neighbourhood, she had remained with the Edoms for the best part of a week.

  At the time, she had told Jessica — with the enthusiastic, slightly gushing air which she affected — that she would certainly return the following year. But, not until her letter that morning, had Jessica realised that Mrs. Forrest’s proposed return might very well affect the family future.

  As she pushed open the gate with the front wheel of her bicycle, the creaking of the roller ceased, and Tom and Judy came rushing to greet her.

  They were good-looking children. Singularly alike, in a straight, brown, rather thin way. Both had wide, friendly brown eyes; intelligent, tanned little faces; and thick dark hair, which Judy wore cut almost as short as Tom’s.

  “You have been a long time!” cried Judy, with flattering inaccuracy, while Tom, who was a kind and thoughtful child, took Jessica’s bicycle for her and wheeled it towards the house.

  “Gosh, is that a salmon?” He inspected the bicycle’s front passenger.

  “Yes. I’m going to cook it this evening and we’ll have it cold to-morrow, when Aunt Miriam and Uncle Hector come.”

  “I call that a waste.” remarked Judy, who was healthily greedy and had no inhibitions about the desirability of pretending otherwise.

  “I call it rather clever.” retorted Tom, but he gave Jessica such a frank grin as he spoke that she decided it was not necessary to be a hypocrite and reprove him for an attitude of artless expediency which, after all, coincided pretty closely with her own.

  “Why is it clever to give salmon to people we don’t like?” enquired Judy, with her usual tendency to reduce a situation to rather distressingly simple terms.

  “Oh, Judy! We don’t exactly dislike them,” Jessica protested quickly. “We don’t know them very well, that’s all.”

  “Well, we don’t like what we do know,” amended Judy obligingly, but without much real improvement.

  “We’re going to have to like them to a point,” Tom put in, and Jessica realised that he understood rather more of the situation than she had supposed. “They’ll have the chief say in what happens to us in future, won’t they, Jess?”

  “Oh, no!” cried Judy in indignant protest, before Jessica could reply. “Why should they? Jessica can decide what happens to us. Can’t you?” She looked at her sister anxiously.

  “Not entirely, Judy. It’s all rather complicated. But I hope we shall be able to find a solution which won’t mean any great change for us all,” Jessica said carefully. For, without wanting to alarm the children unduly, she saw that it might be as well to prepare them for the possibility of a change.

  Judy had a lively imagination, and her mind immediately rushed forward to the extremity of tragedy.

  “You don’t mean that we might have to leave here?” she gasped.

  “I hope not, Judy. I’m not absolutely certain.”

  “And does it really depend on Uncle Hector?”

  “Very largely.”

  “Oh, gosh! He can have the whole salmon, if that’s any good,” Judy cried fervently.

  Jessica smiled slightly as she unhooked her basket from the handlebars, so that Tom could wheel her cycle away to the shed.

  “I don’t know that the salmon would help to all that extent,” she said. “But it may give a general air of good feeling to a difficult discussion.”

  Judy looked preternaturally cast down, though she would, Jessica knew, revert to an equal degree of high spirits in a very short time. It was Tom who, pausing with the bicycle, fastened on the more practical view of the situation and said,

  “Jess, do we own The Mead? I mean — did Pop?”

  “No,” Jessica said rather carefully. “That’s one of the difficulties. We rent it, and the rent is a very high one for people with practically no money.”

  “Meaning us?” enquired Judy, once more defining the situation in painfully simple terms.

  “Meaning us,” Jessica was bound to agree.

  “Who does own it, then? Mr. Furnivall?”

  Jessica sho
ok her head.

  “No. Mr. Furnivall is only the agent. The real owner is Ford Onderley, who has the big house up at Oaklands.

  “Oh, dear! He doesn’t even live here,” Judy exclaimed with a sigh.

  “I don’t know that that has anything to do with it,” Jessica said with a smile.

  “Well, I mean one can’t even go and ask him to reduce the rent,” Judy explained simply.

  “Silly, you couldn’t, anyway,” Tom told her. “People don’t reduce rents. They put them up. Though, as a matter of fact, Bob Parry told me they have opened up Oaklands, and that Mr. Onderley and his sister are coming to live there for the summer,” he added.

  “There you are, then!” cried Judy triumphantly.

  “Nonsense, dear.” Jessica smiled and shook her head. “It isn’t as simple as all that. I’m afraid a reduction in rent wouldn’t solve our difficulties for us, even if there were any question of our achieving it.”

  “You mean we’ve got to let Uncle Hector decide?” Judy relapsed into exaggerated gloom once more.

  “I’m afraid so. But don’t wallow in despair just yet, Judy,” her sister advised her briskly. “I’ve been thinking over what we could do, and I’ve a suggestion to make to Uncle Hector.”

  “D’you mean you have a plan?” enquired Judy, with respect and also with rising spirits.

  “I suppose you might call it that.” Jessica laughed.

  “Oh, well, then, I dare say it will be all right.” Judy said much more cheerfully. “You usually know the way out of most difficulties, Jess.”

  And, comforted by her rather touching faith in Jessica’s powers of dealing with a problematical future, she went off to complete the rolling of the lawn, while Tom — more thoughtfully — wheeled Jessica’s bicycle into the cycle shed at the back of the house.

  As she went into the house, Jessica felt her responsibilities weigh upon her suddenly with exaggerated heaviness. Judy’s simple belief in her power to hold back disaster made her realise afresh how little she really had to put between them all and a bare (though common-sense) future which would hold literally nothing of the life they all loved and knew.