“Poor old Jess! You had the worst time in the end, I think,” Judy’s letter went on. “But Mary says you are better now. Mr. Onderley comes to see me on visiting days and brings lovely things. Has he been to see you yet? If not, wear that nice blue frilly dressing-jacket when he comes. The one Mary gave you for Christmas that looks like a film star.
“Lots of love from
“Judy.”
Jessica slowly folded up the note again and smiled.
“She sounds quite happy.”
“Oh, yes,” Tom stated confidently. “She is.”
“It’s very kind of Mr. Onderley to go and see her.” Jessica bit her lip thoughtfully. “I’m glad he likes her.”
“I think,” Tom said, with a sort of naïve shrewdness, “it’s because he likes you.”
Jessica murmured. “Oh, nonsense.” But, after her young brother had gone — just as after Mary’s departure — the person with whom her thoughts were mostly concerned was Ford Onderley.
Why was he being so specially kind to them all? Was it sheer good nature? Or a humorously perverse desire to show that he was not the hard landlord he was supposed to be? Or did he, for some reason she could not fathom, consider that she and the twins were in some way his concern?
It was more than Jessica could decide — particularly as she felt too weak to tackle anything really problematical just now.
However, it seemed that she was not the only one who thought Ford Onderley’s continued attentions required some explanation. Aunt Miriam, who belonged to what is usually referred to as “the old-fashioned school” (meaning that she had some regard for appearances and the conventions), came in the next afternoon with a large basket of fruit and a rather perplexed expression.
“Mr. Onderley called with this for you, Jessica,” she said. “He really does seem very attentive, my dear.”
“Yes. He’s very kind,” murmured Jessica, feeling faintly self-conscious — and angry with herself for being so.
“Jessica, just how well do you and Mr. Onderley know each other?” Aunt Miriam pushed up her spectacles on to her forehead and regarded her niece rather severely. “Your uncle and I supposed he had known your father for a long time, and you children most of your lives. But, since he is obviously quite a young man, that isn’t possible. Did your father know him well?”
“No,” Jessica said, in a rather small voice. “He didn’t know him at all.”
“Jessica! Really, my dear, when you went to see him about the new agreement, did you know him at all well?”
“No, Aunt Miriam. It was the first time I had met him,” Jessica confessed.
“You should have told your uncle, and let him go. It would have been much better.”
“But I got what we all wanted,” Jessica pointed out, not without satisfaction, because she very much doubted if Uncle Hector would have done as much.
“That isn’t the only point,” Aunt Miriam said, and she meant it. “There are such things as decent appearances.”
“Really, Aunt Miriam, I don’t think I’ve outraged those,” Jessica protested a little dryly.
“Well, my dear, I don’t think he has sufficient regard for them,” Aunt Miriam retorted. “He actually spoke to your uncle about — about paying the costs of your illness.”
“That was absurd, of course,” Jessica agreed quickly.
“And now he talks of intending to be your first visitor when you are up.”
“Does he?”
“And there are all these expensive presents. In my young days, that would have been called making a girl conspicuous.” Aunt Miriam pressed her lips together disapprovingly. “To my way of thinking, there are only two people towards whom a man can act as Mr. Onderley is acting.”
“Really, Aunt Miriam?” Jessica said curiously. “And who are they?”
“Either an old family friend — and it seems you certainly are not that.”
“Or else —?” pressed Jessica, half-amused and half-annoyed.
“Or else a fiancée, Jessica,” her aunt stated firmly.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT AUNT Miriam’s preposterous suggestion, Jessica opened her eyes wide and laughed.
“Oh, Aunt Miriam dear, there’s absolutely nothing like that! Really, you must believe me. I don’t even know him very well.”
“Then he shouldn’t be acting the way he is,” Aunt Miriam retorted. And Jessica had a momentary and quite dreadful fear that Uncle Hector would be instructed to ask Ford Onderley his “intentions” next time he called at the house.
“It’s really only that he is a very generous man — with a rather unconventional way of showing it, if you like,” Jessica explained earnestly. “And I assure you, Aunt Miriam, I’ll put the matter right in a tactful way the first moment I see him. I think I agree that he had better be my first visitor,” she added reflectively. “It seems that a few early explanations would be in order. How soon can I have visitors, do you think?”
“You won’t be out of bed for another week or ten days,” her aunt informed her, and Jessica accepted the obvious implication that Aunt Miriam would not countenance male visitors while her niece was still in bed.
But Aunt Miriam was amiably defeated on this minor point, for two or three days later the Forrests called, and David, as well as his mother, was swept upstairs on the tidal wave of Evelyn Forrest’s sympathetic enquiries, comments, exclamations and suggestions.
“You poor child!” she cried, kissing Jessica with real anxiety and kindness. “What a terrible time you must have had.”
“Well, I’m better now,” Jessica explained with a smile, and gave her free hand to David, who held it longer than was necessary, and just looked his sympathy while his mother’s stream of eloquence ran on.
“It seems you were quite a heroine,” Mrs. Forrest said admiringly. “Protecting Judy all that time, at the expense of your own safety. It does seem hard that your only reward should be to have all your future plans spoilt. But I dare say everything will work out all right and that your aunt and uncle will arrange something to please you all.” And she looked very significantly at Aunt Miriam, as though willing her to act in what she, herself, considered the right manner.
Aunt Miriam, however, merely looked stiff and remote, as though she considered Mrs. Forrest was presuming. Which, of course, she was.
Jessica glanced sharply from one to the other.
“What makes you think all my future plans will be spoilt, Mrs. Forrest?” she asked, with deceptive quietness.
“Well, darling, you’ll have to go very slow for a while with that poor little heart of yours, and —”
“Mother, don’t you think we’re talking rather too much?” interrupted David, who had not been able to talk at all up till now. But Jessica broke in quickly:
“Do finish what you were going to say, Mrs. Forrest. About my having to go slow and —? What else were you going to say?”
“Only that you certainly won’t be able to run this place and take paying guests, dear, for quite a long time.” Then, as she saw Jessica bite her lip and turn even paler, she cried anxiously and belatedly: “Oh, I do hope I’m not giving away any secrets?”
“You’re speaking a little out of turn,” her son told her dryly, with something as near to anger as his good nature allowed.
“Oh, no,” Jessica said softly. “Oh, no. It doesn’t matter really. No one had told me — yet, in so many words, but I knew it pretty well, just from putting two and two together.”
“It was just common sense,” commented Aunt Miriam a little repressively. And Jessica could not help feeling that some very unpalatable arrangements were going to be made in the name of common sense.
“Let’s talk about something else,” she said quickly. “Tell me what you’ve been doing. I’m afraid my little escapade rather spoilt your holiday, didn’t it?”
“Oh, we’ve managed very well,” David assured her. “Don’t you worry about us. We made ourselves quite comfortable at our hotel and, thoug
h we’ll soon be going back to London for a while, Mother is talking of taking a furnished house near here for the autumn.”
“I simply must be here to see the autumn colours,” declared Mrs. Forrest rather emotionally. “It must be the most beautiful sight.”
“It will probably rain a great deal at that time of year,” remarked Aunt Miriam, to whom dry feet were more important than autumn colours.
“Very possibly. We shall see some beautiful rain and cloud effects as well, then,” retorted Mrs. Forrest, determined to show that she had a soul above mundane matters.
“It will be lovely to have you for neighbours,” Jessica said tactfully, “if — if we’re still here.”
“Of course you must still be here,” David declared. “That’s half the attraction of the place for us. And, anyway, when else am I going to get that portrait of you done?”
Jessica smiled at him.
“Oh, yes — the portrait. It seems I’ve held up the course of artistic inspiration as well as your holiday. I feel very guilty.”
“You needn’t, dear,” Mrs. Forrest assured her before David could answer for himself. “He has been getting on with his portrait of Mr. Onderley’s sister instead.”
“Have you really?” Jessica turned back to David with interest. “Then you did decide to paint her, after all?’
“Yes. She’s a most interesting subject. Much more so than I expected,” David said candidly. “Though why I came to any decision about her before I saw her, I don’t know. It’s always silly to do that.”
“Oh, well, you didn’t like her brother, dear,” his mother explained equably, “and you thought she would be the same type. Personally, of course, I think she is. I dislike cold and arrogant people, don’t you?” she added, appealing to Aunt Miriam, as though there could reasonably be two opinions about this.
“Certainly I dislike them,” said Aunt Miriam, surprised to find herself in agreement with Mrs. Forrest, even on such an unexceptionable generality as this.
“I don’t think Mr. Onderley is cold and arrogant,” Jessica stated firmly, more interested in the particular than the general.
“Well, you wouldn’t call him warm and humble, dear,” protested Mrs. Forrest.
“No — not humble.” Jessica laughed at the word in connection with Ford Onderley. “But I think he’s essentially generous and warm-hearted. And, if he is a little bit arrogant, it’s more a mannerism than — I mean —”
Jessica caught Aunt Miriam’s eyes upon her with such an extremely speculative and disapproving light in them that, to her intense annoyance, she suddenly found herself blushing and stammering.
“Well, anyway, he has been very kind to me,” she finished hastily and a little crossly.
“You’re rather an easy person to be kind to, Jessica,” David told her with a very charming smile, and the awkward moment was neatly glossed over.
After that, he seemed to take charge of the conversation, and Jessica realised, with something like relief, that she could lie back and smile and listen, and contribute only an occasional word or two. David, she thought affectionately, was like that. He was a born smoother of difficulties, and could be trusted to size up a situation and deal with it, without having to have it explained to him in words of one syllable.
He knew she was just a little tired, and wanted to be amused and soothed and not to have controversial topics raked over.
“David is all that one means by a really nice man,” thought Jessica lazily. “Dear and kind and easy to live with.”
In this Mrs. Forrest would have entirely agreed with her — and probably have pointed out that it was largely due to her own admirable training.
Even Aunt Miriam, who was a difficult person to please, could find nothing in David of which to disapprove. Indeed, when the Forrests had gone — after promising to come at least once more before their departure to London — she observed that he was “a very steady and likeable young man, which was surprising in an artist.”
“Yes, he’s a darling,” Jessica agreed.
“I don’t wish to sound censorious,” continued Aunt Miriam, who did not in the least mind sounding censorious, “but I should say that she is both flighty and interfering. Rather absurd in a woman of her age.”
“She’s very kind,” Jessica insisted, “and, if she is a little — flighty, as you say, she also has plenty of common sense and would be a good friend in an emergency.”
“Possibly.” Aunt Miriam sounded as though she thought the possibility remote. “But he is the really stable one of the two. He will make an excellent husband for some lucky girl. That is, if his mother ever lets him get away,” she added, with a certain grim shrewdness.
“Oh, Aunt Miriam! I don’t think she’s a very possessive parent. Do you?”
“Not outwardly. She is too clever for that,” was Aunt Miriam’s expressed opinion. “But I don’t doubt she has seen to it on several occasions that either he has been moved on at the right moment, or some girl has been moved off.”
This was so nearly epigrammatic for Aunt Miriam that Jessica laughed aloud.
“Perhaps it’s just that he can look after himself, in spite of his charm and good nature,” she suggested. “But I agree with you that he can’t have reached his age without several girls having had a more or less decorous try at making him give up bachelordom.”
“Of course. It’s in the nature of things, with a really nice man,” stated Aunt Miriam with austere realism.
“I’m glad you like him.” Jessica smiled, thinking it was just as well that Aunt Miriam should approve of one of her men friends.
“Yes,” her aunt said reflectively. “Though there is no real facial likeness, he reminds me of your dear uncle when he was younger.”
Jessica was struck dumb with astonishment at the disclosure of this curious parallel. Personally, she could find no single point of resemblance between her ponderous, worthy uncle and the gay and charming David, and she could only wonder silently at the miracles which can be wrought by a personal point of view.
She was also faintly touched at the thought that someone could actually look at Uncle Hector with the eye of romance. Undoubtedly, Aunt Miriam had married him in the belief that he would make an excellent husband — and he had not let her down. Therefore she could pay no young man a higher compliment than to think that she detected in him the same lasting qualities which had distinguished her own husband.
“It’s really rather a nice comment on Uncle Hector,” thought Jessica, amused and touched. “Oh dear, if only he had included a certain capacity for taking generous risks, along with all his other virtues!”
But that brought her back so closely to her own problems that she sighed and said abruptly:
“Aunt Miriam, how long am I going to be laid by the heels here?”
“Do you mean — when will you be up?”
“No. I meant — when will I be able to live a normal, energetic life again?” Jessica said.
“Not for some months, my dear.” Aunt Miriam spoke kindly, but quite finally. “We didn’t mean to discuss the question with you so early in your convalescence, but” — she pressed her lips together disapprovingly — “Mrs. Forrest has rather precipitated matters. I’m afraid there isn’t any question of your keeping this place running as a separate home, as you hoped. The children will have to go to boarding school, as soon as Judy is sufficiently well, and I hope you will manage to make yourself happy with your uncle and me until you are strong enough to earn your own living.”
In spite of being keenly sensible of the fact that her aunt and uncle were being very generous, Jessica was too weak to keep back the tears of disappointment that came into her eyes.
“Oh, Aunt Miriam, please don’t let’s decide this in a hurry. Practically speaking, Mr. Onderley was willing to let us stay here rent free for a year until —”
“Jessica, you must see how impossible and unsuitable that would be!” exclaimed Aunt Miriam sharply. “It was a considerable co
ncession that he was willing to take the year’s rent in arrear. It would be nothing less than dishonest to accept that condition, knowing that, for most of the year at least, you would be unable to do anything towards earning the money for the year’s rent when it did fall due.”
“Yes, you’re right, of course.” Jessica saw the bitter logic of that.
“In any case, my dear, with or without paying guests, you won’t be in a condition to run this place for some while,” Aunt Miriam pursued relentlessly.
“I thought perhaps you” — Jessica hesitated, knowing that she should not presume on past and present kindness — “I thought you might have grown to like it here and — and be willing to stay quite a long while.”
“My dear Jessica, we can’t possibly keep two homes running for an indefinite time!” her aunt pointed out, not unreasonably.
“No. I suppose not,” Jessica agreed with a sigh, and then was silent.
There really didn’t seem to be much else to say. She had made as good a struggle as she could to keep the home which she and the children loved, but luck had been against her.
Not, thought Jessica remorsefully, that they were not exceedingly lucky to have Uncle Hector and Aunt Miriam behind them. Their plight would have been serious indeed without their uncle and aunt. But — it had seemed at one time that hard work and determination and enthusiasm were going to be enough. And now, all because of an ill-timed expedition and a piece of bad judgment, her pleas to Uncle Hector and her appeal to Ford Onderley — not to mention her promising beginning with the Forrests — were all to go for nothing.
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful for what Aunt Miriam offers,” Jessica thought as she lay awake that night, going over and over the changed circumstances of her life. “It’s just that I can’t resign myself to leaving here. I can’t. And I’m afraid the children will feel the same.”
It would be her duty, of course, to point out the advantages of their new life and help to reconcile them to the change, but she was afraid it was a task for which she would have very little heart.
The Brave In Heart Page 8
