“My dear child, that’s really very nice of you.”
“And rather good technique, don’t you think?” Jessica could not quite resist.
He paid that the tribute of a laugh.
“And very good technique,” he agreed. “I accept — with real pleasure.”
“Good!” Jessica said. Then she remembered the lovely woman in the green evening dress, who could certainly not be his daughter and was therefore probably his wife. “I suppose you would really prefer to do that, rather than wait until Mrs. Onderley can come too? She might be a more searching critic, being a woman.”
“I’m afraid we should have to wait too long,” he explained gravely. “There is no Mrs. Onderley, nor any prospect of one at the moment.”
“Oh!” Jessica laughed at his way of putting it. “I thought — There was someone coming out of the house as I came in, and I assumed she was Mrs. Onderley.”
“I expect it was my sister, Angela. She lives here with me and runs the place.” he explained briefly. “Do you mind waiting ten minutes while I change?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You’ll find the evening papers on that table, and I’ll send Barden in with drinks.”
When he had gone, Jessica got up and walked softly up and down the room. She felt too excited to sit still, and certainly much too excited to read evening newspapers.
She had succeeded! At least, she had almost succeeded, and the rest depended on her being able to prove herself. She felt elated and on her mettle. And suddenly she found that she vastly preferred Ford Onderley’s astringent and critical analysis of the situation to any sentimental and indiscriminate aid, applied without enquiry.
“If he does help me, I shan’t feel it’s a sort of charity. Just the sort of obligation which one self-respecting person may accept from another because of — she chuckled as she recalled the phrase — “a temporary emergency.”
As she wandered about the handsome room, she noted with interest the furnishing, the choice of books lying about (his or his sister’s?) and, finally, an excellent studio photograph of Angela.
This Jessica studied at some length — more perhaps for the superficial likeness to her host than for the intrinsic interest of the photograph.
Like her brother, Angela Onderley had wide-set dark eyes, a straight, almost classical nose, and extremely good bone structure. There, Jessica thought, the real likeness ended. For though, in each case, the mouth was unusually firm, Angela’s lips were fine, to the point of thinness, while his, Jessica had noted, were full, generous, possibly even a trifle sensual. Angela’s hair too — even allowing for the artistic licence of a studio portrait — was soft and fine and cloudy. His was thick and strong, and grew with that curious suggestion of aggressiveness which is seen only in people of tremendous vitality.
On the whole, an interesting personality, thought Jessica. Interesting and, in some indefinable way, exciting. Quite possibly he was hard, as people said, but it was a good, sound hardness.
“Not like a stone,” reflected Jessica, “but like a good, hard apple.” Then she laughed aloud at her own simile, and, at that moment, he came back into the room.
“Well, what’s the joke?” he wanted to know, as he poured out sherry for them both.
“Oh, n-nothing. Just something rather silly I thought of,” Jessica said, blushing as she took her glass from him.
“Something about me,” he suggested, noting the blush, she felt sure. “Has the hard-hearted landlord degenerated so rapidly into a mere joke?”
“Oh, no!”
“Still the hard-hearted landlord, eh?”
“No. At least” — and then she laughed again — “that was really what made me laugh. I was thinking that, even if you are hard, it’s a nice, healthy hardness. Not like a stone, but like a good, hard apple.”
“I see.” He gave her an extremely quizzical smile as he drank off the rest of his sherry. “May I enquire if you intend to set your teeth in the good, hard apple?”
“Do I look as though I bite?” returned Jessica with a quick flash of amusement.
“A little — yes, when you’re angry,” was the unexpected retort. “Come along. I’ll run you down home by car.”
Smiling rather at their final exchange of words, Jessica accompanied him out of the room.
Outside, in the drive, a car was waiting. Not the sumptuous saloon car which had taken Angela to her evening appointment, but a small racing car.
“Do you mind an open car?” he asked.
“No,” Jessica said. “Nor a bicycle, nor even my own legs, if necessary.”
“Accommodating girl,” he replied with an air which said that he found her rather pert.
“It’s not really a case of being accommodating,” Jessica explained more earnestly. “I’ve not had enough to do with cars to turn choosy about them.”
“I see,” he said, and held the low door open for her.
It was astonishingly comfortable, Jessica found, though obviously built for speed first and foremost, and she was glad that — possibly in deference to her inexperienced nerves — he chose to drive at a very reasonable pace.
As they passed the Skeltons’ house, Mary, who was in the front garden, looked up, registered a gratifying degree of astonishment at seeing Jessica actually driving past with the dragon, and waved her hand in mingled salutation and congratulation.
Jessica was unable to resist waving back with a certain air of complacent triumph, and — possibly noting the quality of her smile — her companion enquired:
“A friend of yours?”
“Yes. That’s Mary Skelton. Her father —”
“Ah, the young lady who thinks so badly of me?”
“Oh, she doesn’t really, Mr. Onderley. She doesn’t know anything about you,” Jessica cried earnestly.
“That wouldn’t necessarily prevent her thinking badly of me,” was the slightly cynical reply. “At least she thought you would be wasting your time by coming to see me, didn’t she?”
“Oh, well — no, not really. She’d just heard you were rather the hard landlord of fiction, you know,” explained Jessica, and then wondered if she had made things sound any better. “You mustn’t mind if people say rather idiotic things before they get to know you. They always do in a place this size, you’ll find. Why, we were known as a ‘theatrical’ family for years, just because my mother let me and my friends dress up and invent plays in the garden on Saturday afternoons.”
“Thank you. You make me feel much better about it,” he said with extreme gravity. Whereat Jessica blushed and wondered if he usually found people amusing, or just found her specially so.
On their arrival at The Mead, the twins came out to greet the extraordinary spectacle of their sister returning with the spoils of war in the shape of Mr. Onderley himself.
“I say, it was nice of you to come down and see us for yourself,” Tom said as he shook hands. While Judy — in much the same words, but with even more frankness than her sister — added:
“We didn’t think you’d be a bit like this.”
“Will someone tell me what you did expect me to be like?” their visitor said with real curiosity.
“Oh, yes,’ Judy explained obligingly. “We thought you’d be old and cross, with fuzzy eyebrows and a barking voice. At least, I did.”
“Did you think I’d be like that?” enquired Ford Onderley gravely, turning to Jessica.
“N-not exactly.” Jessica said, a little put out. Then she added hastily: “Would you like to see around your own property? Because, if so, the children will take you round while I see about dinner.”
“Yes, do come,” Judy begged, and took him by the hand, which seemed to astonish him a good deal.
However, he went oft with the twins with quite a good grace, and Jessica ran into the house to give the finishing touches to the dinner, since this could be left to Linda only in the initial stages.
“I don’t reckon to do fancy touches,” was one
of Linda’s favourite sayings, and she could hardly have reckoned more accurately.
As Jessica was passing through the hall, she saw David Forrest coming down the stairs, and, on sudden impulse, she decided to enlist his aid.
“I say, will you be a special angel to-night?” she begged. “I mean — be very scintillating and entertaining at dinner, will you? I’ve invited my landlord to dinner, and I want to give him the general impression that The Mead is the abode of wit and learning and good food.”
David Forrest leaned over the banisters to smile at her and catch her half-whispered, urgent plea.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. “What are his special interests?”
“I can’t imagine. The Stock Exchange, I should think, for one.”
“I can’t possibly scintillate about the Stock Exchange,” David Forrest stated firmly. “But I’ll do my best with what might be termed general subjects. Do you want any help? With the dinner, I mean?”
“Good heavens, no! Though thank you very much. I don’t know many men who’d offer to give a hand with a meal. But, anyway, that wouldn’t do at all. I want him to recommend this place to his distinguished friends, and he certainly wouldn’t if he thought they were expected to cream the potatoes or make the salad dressing.”
“They might enjoy it,” remarked David Forrest argumentatively.
“Oh, no!”
“Why not — if I should?”
“Because I can’t possibly expect many of them to be as nice as you.” Jessica said simply.
Then she went off into the kitchen, leaving him to look after her with a very reflective smile and a slightly heightened colour. And presently he went out into the garden to join the twins and their visitor.
While Jessica rapidly put the finishing touches to the dinner, she mentally decided that, whereas it had been good technique to take David into her confidence, it would be a mistake to say anything to Mrs. Forrest.
She entered into everything with such gusto that she would undoubtedly overplay her part, and make Mr. Onderley suspicious by virtue of the sheer lavishness of her praise. Mrs. Forrest was, in all her genuineness, what advertisements call a highly satisfied client, and could be left to show her pleasure and enthusiasm without any prompting or appeals.
It was nice of David to respond so whole-heartedly to her plea, Jessica thought with a grateful smile. And. glancing out of a side window, she saw that, even now, he was strolling up and down the lawn in conversation with Ford Onderley — thus rescuing him from an overdose of the twins’ society before the novelty of their friendliness could degenerate into boredom over their juvenile enthusiasm.
Only at that moment did Jessica recall, with full comprehension, the frankness with which she had given David her opinion of himself. Really, it had been rather forthcoming of her after only a week’s acquaintance!
But, somehow, one felt like that with David. (Characteristically, one already thought of him as David.) Besides, why shouldn’t he know that he and his mother were the ideal paying guests?
By the time the two men came in to dinner, they seemed on very sociable terms, and Judy found an occasion to whisper to her sister that Mr. Onderley was “quite all right, and not so difficult to talk to as Uncle Hector.” from which Jessica dared to hope that the twins, in their turn, had made a fairly favourable impression.
Conversation never languished in any company which included Mrs. Forrest, and Jessica thought it was almost amusing to hear how naturally she gravitated from discussing the beauties of the neighbourhood to praise of life at The Mead.
“Of course, we’re specially lucky in having such a pleasant place to stay,” she explained to Ford Onderley. “Jessica runs this house beautifully. I’m going to recommend her to all my friends. I always tell her that I don’t know how she manages to be so capable and so decorative at the same time.”
“It certainly is an achievement,” agreed their visitor gravely, with a little bow in Jessica’s direction, which somehow made her feel that he was quite as amused as she, at the unrehearsed effect of Mrs. Forrest’s praise.
“When you paint Jessica, will you have her looking capable or looking decorative?” Judy asked David Forrest at this point. At which Jessica looked a good deal surprised, and David a little put out.
“I haven’t even asked her if I may paint her yet, Judy.” David said with a frown. “And now you’ve crushed all my plans for a diplomatic approach.”
“Can’t you just ask without being diplomatic?” Judy suggested, and they all laughed.
“Well, Jessica, you see it’s out of my hands.” David smiled at her. “Without diplomacy, may I ask you across your own dinner table — will you sit for me some time?”
“Decoratively or capably?” enquired Jessica, looking amused.
“We’ll decide on that afterwards.”
“Couldn’t you do her making pastry?” enquired Judy. “She’s got a very pretty greeny-grey overall, and she’d look both capable and decorative then.”
“It’s an idea!” declared Mrs. Forrest, ignoring her son’s rather annoyed expression. “And then, if it were one of David’s most successful portraits, it might be in the Academy. How would you like that, Judy — to have your sister’s portrait in the Academy?”
“It’d be marvellous.” agreed Judy enthusiastically. “And p’raps a millionaire would see it and fall in love with her and buy it.”
Everyone laughed, except David, who said shortly.
“It wouldn’t be for sale. Will you really sit for me, Jessica?”
“Yes, of course, if you want me to.” Jessica smiled at him, and thought it was quite extraordinarily officious of Ford Onderley to murmur:
“Will such a busy person have sufficient time?”
“I’ll fit it in somehow,” Jessica assured him with a little toss of her head, and hoped he understood thereby that even if he were entitled to inform himself on the efficiency with which she ran her home, he was certainly not at liberty to query her use of her own time.
He accepted the rebuke with a rather quizzical glance, but turned almost immediately to David to say:
“I know your work quite well and. if I may say so. I’ve always admired it. Are you strictly on holiday here? Except for the proposed study of Miss Edom, I mean?”
“Well” — David smiled — “I can’t say an artist is ever strict about holidays. If I saw a subject I wanted to paint. I shouldn’t bother about being on holiday.”
“You must come over and meet my sister.” Ford Onderley spoke abruptly, like a man who saw no point in wasting time on a detailed approach to his subject. “I should very much like to have you do a portrait of her, if you’re interested in the commission.”
“That’s very kind of you. I should be happy to meet your sister, of course,” David said, but a trifle remotely. And Jessica had the impression that he preferred to choose his own subjects, rather than accept a commission just because someone was willing to pay well.
She would have been less than human if she had not been gratified by the implication, and she gave David the very nicest smile of which she was capable.
After dinner the twins went to bed — with an almost unnatural docility and lack of protest, since they too, wished to contribute all they could to the general good impression which Mr. Onderley was to receive — and Jessica served her guests with admirable coffee in the long, pleasant lounge which looked over the garden.
She felt a little like a hard-working student who had sat for a stiff examination, fondly believed she had done well, but still awaited the results with some trepidation. And when Ford Onderley finally rose to go, she accompanied him to the gate with an air of hopeful expectancy which she could not suppress, though she knew it was more suited to one of Judy’s age and temperament than her own.
Perhaps he found it a little touching, as well as amusing, because, as they went down the path together towards the gate, he took her lightly and rather kindly by her arm.
“You
’re putting up a very good fight, Jessica,” he said. “May I call you Jessica?”
“Yes,” she said, though she was slightly startled by the suggestion. “Everyone calls me Jessica, so you can too.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you mean — just now — that you do think you’ll help me, by letting me have the tenancy on easier terms?” she asked eagerly, because she could not bear to be kept in suspense any longer.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I’ve been thinking over the best way to arrange it. You can have the tenancy on a yearly agreement.”
“And the rent quarterly in advance?” she prompted hopefully.
“No. The rent annually — in arrear.”
“But —” She stopped dead, and perforce he had to stop too. “What do you mean, quite?”
“That you can go through this coming year without paying rent for The Mead.” he explained calmly. “If, at the end of the year, you have made a good profit and look like succeeding, you can pay your year’s rent and renew your tenancy. If, in spite of hard work, you have the misfortune to fail, I will not add to your burden by expecting you to pay the year’s rent. Is that clear?”
“Qu-quite clear,” gasped Jessica, so moved by his totally unexpected generosity that she felt ridiculously like crying. “It’s most terribly kind of you. I — I don’t know what to say.”
“Then you needn’t say anything,” he told her. “You might just mention to Mary Skelton that I have my softer moments, however.”
“Oh, I will,” cried Jessica fervently. “Indeed I will. But you mustn’t think Mary meant anything serious. She’s the sweetest person, really, and no one will be better pleased than she to hear how nice you really are.”
He laughed — perhaps at the naïve implication.
“Well, you must both come over to Oaklands soon and meet Angela,” he said, with what Jessica could not help feeling was a touch of masculine obtuseness. Angela, if she were not much mistaken, was a young lady who chose her own friends.
But aloud she said:
“Thank you. That will be lovely.” And stood by, smiling beatifically, as he got into his car.
The Brave In Heart Page 4
