Indeed, when Judy paid her first visit to her home, Jessica found herself quite unable to tackle the subject, even though she had thought beforehand that it would be as well to make a few tentative hints.
But with Judy’s arms clasped fervently round her neck, and Judy’s voice saying over and over again how lovely it was to be home, how was it possible to start talking about leaving that home?
Instead, she hugged her little sister hard and said:
“It’s very good to have you, my pet. And I’ll soon be downstairs now, and then you shall come home for good.”
“It’s all right. I don’t mind being at the hospital, really,” Judy explained. “Not now that I can hop about and be allowed an occasional visit like this.”
“How was this visit managed?” Jessica wanted to know.
“Oh, Mr. Onderley fetched me in the car, and he’s undertaken to get me back there by six,” Judy said. “It was his idea, ackcherly, and he talked Matron round.”
“He’s been most awfully kind over everything,” Jessica said earnestly.
“Yes. I wish one could choose one’s own uncles,” Judy remarked. “I’d far rather have him for an uncle than Uncle Hector, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, hush! Uncle Hector’s been very good, in his way too,” Jessica said hastily, not at all sure that she would like Ford Onderley for an uncle, and perfectly certain that he would hate having to regard her as a niece. Aloud she said, “He’d be much too young for my uncle, anyway.”
“Yes, of course he would,” Judy agreed. “How old do you think he is?” — because Judy was at the stage when the ages of grown-ups are a matter of passionate interest.
“I don’t know,” Jessica said truthfully.
“Well, I do.”
“Judy! How do you know?”
“I asked him.”
“How very rude and naughty of you,” exclaimed Jessica. “Surely you know better than that, Judy.”
“He didn’t mind,” Judy said, unabashed. “It was when I said it seemed funny that he was sort of looking after all of us and that he didn’t seem old enough, somehow. And he said, ‘Why, how old do you think I am then?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. How old are you?’ and he said, ‘Thirty, next birthday. Don’t you think that’s old enough for me to look after you all?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’”
“I see.” Jessica bit her lip and smiled.
“He wants to come and see you, Jess.”
“Why, so he shall, as soon as I’m downstairs,” Jessica promised.
“But that’s quite a long time yet, I expect,” Judy objected. “Because you’d be surprised how funny your knees feel when you’ve been in bed a long time. Can’t he come and see you here, now that you’re up in a chair by the window? And you look very pretty in that chintz house coat, with your hair all brushed up like that.”
“I suppose he could,” Jessica agreed. “I don’t know if Aunt Miriam has any ideas on the subject. She’s a bit — funny about these things.”
“What things?” Judy wanted to know.
But Jessica murmured, “Oh, never mind. I’ll see what Aunt Miriam says.”
“But he wants to know now,” Judy objected.
“What do you mean — ‘He wants to know now’?”
“Well, he told me to ask you when he could come,” Judy explained. “And I’m to bring back your answer when he comes to take me away again.”
“You’d better just tell him I’m not having visitors yet.”
“But he knows that isn’t true,” Judy said firmly. “David Forrest goes to Oaklands to paint that stuck-up sister of Mr. Onderley, and he said something about coming with his mother to see you. And I don’t think Mr. Onderley was very pleased.”
“Nonsense. It’s not his business to be pleased or otherwise,” Jessica asserted briskly. “It’s nothing to do with him.”
“Well, when can he come?” asked Judy with praiseworthy persistence, for she was a child who was very difficult to sidetrack once she had her mind on a definite object.
Jessica laughed vexedly.
“Oh, all right. Let me see, what’s to-day?”
“Wednesday. Visiting day,” Judy said promptly. “Only I’m visiting instead of being visited.”
“Well, he can come on Friday afternoon. And you’d better tell him I’ll be very pleased to see him,” Jessica said, finding that this was no less than the truth.
“Oh, yes, I’ll tell him that. I’d have told him that anyway,” Judy explained rather naïvely.
And then Tom and Mary arrived, and they all had a very gay and happy tea together.
“Oh dear, how quickly the time goes,” sighed Judy when there was the sound of Ford Onderley’s car coming to fetch her. “But I’ll come and see you again soon, Jess.” And she hugged her sister quite cheerfully as she said goodbye.
Then, with much laughter and trenchant advice from Tom, they negotiated the stairs together, though Jessica thought from the sudden cessation of the noise that someone came half-way up and carried Judy down in the end.
“I’m glad they find a broken leg and a crutch matters for laughter,” she remarked dryly to Mary. “They really are the most extraordinary children in the things they find amusing. I must say the situation would strain my sense of humour a little.”
Mary laughed.
“They’re cheerful by nature, and I think Judy’s finding it fun to feel well again. Anyway, the leg has mended excellently, you know, and the crutch is as much a joke as a support, I think.”
“I dare say,” Jessica smiled faintly, and wished that her own recovery could have been as speedy.
When she announced Ford Onderley’s projected visit to her aunt, that lady certainly put up her eyebrows and looked a little surprised. But she apparently thought the matter unworthy of an argument — or perhaps she considered that the desirability of an early discussion with him outweighed any other consideration.
She merely saw to it that Jessica was decorously buttoned into her tailored housecoat, and seated in a chair by the window, with a rug over her knees, in good time for the visit.
Jessica herself felt faintly nervous — though why, she hardly knew. Perhaps Ford Onderley always affected her a little that way, partly because she connected him with momentous decisions in her life and partly because she was never quite sure how he would react.
“He’s a bit inclined to be a law unto himself,” reflected Jessica. “I expect that’s why he is rather unpredictable and alarming.”
But there was nothing very alarming about Ford Onderley when, with a rather repressive expression, Aunt Miriam brought him upstairs that afternoon.
He looked cool and self-possessed, as usual, but his dark eyes rested rather kindly on Jessica as he took her hand, and he said to Aunt Miriam, almost accusingly:
“She doesn’t look very strong yet.”
“My niece has been very ill,” Aunt Miriam pointed out austerely, “and I’m sure you will understand that we can’t allow visitors to stay very long yet.”
“That’s all right, Aunt Miriam. I’ll send Mr. Onderley away when I get tired,” Jessica said, hoping her aunt would accept the implication that she intended to conduct the interview herself and did not require a third person there.
Evidently that was her visitor’s idea too, because, as Aunt Miriam hovered, undecided, between her niece and the door, Ford Onderley showed polite but unmistakable signs of holding the door open for her.
Aunt Miriam, as she would have expressed it herself, knew when she was not wanted, and she retreated in good order, though with a somewhat dissatisfied expression.
Ford Onderley closed the door after her and then came back, to take a seat opposite Jessica and study her with the attentive concern of someone who had every right to do so.
Faintly embarrassed under this scrutiny, Jessica smiled and said:
“It’s all right. I’m not fading away or anything. In fact, I’m improving daily. But first I must thank you for everything you’ve do
ne, Mr. Onderley. You’ve been most terribly kind and —”
“Please don’t.” He smiled in his turn, and made a slight gesture of protest. “I haven’t done a thing which hasn’t been very easy to do. It doesn’t amount to more than going to see your very good and entertaining little sister in hospital, and ensuring that you both have the small luxuries which everyone likes to give an invalid.”
“No, no.” Jessica shook her head. “I can’t have it all dismissed like that. Even at the risk of embarrassing you — though I don’t think you’re very easy to embarrass,” she added thoughtfully.
“Not very,” he agreed.
“But, even at that risk, I must point out that you were first down the cliff to rescue Judy and me, that you took charge of everything for us from that moment, and that you’ve been more than kind and generous since. All that takes some thinking out, Mr. Onderley, as well as some time and effort in execution. So, in spite of your deprecating air, I insist on thanking you.” And with a smile, she held out her hand to him.
He took it immediately, holding it warmly in his strong, firm clasp. But all he said was:
“Please don’t accuse me of a deprecating air. I feel it would sit most unbecomingly upon any harsh landlord.”
“Don’t be absurd.” She laughed. “I also insist on burying the harsh landlord myth, once and for all. And, anyway” — she bit her lip suddenly — “I’m afraid you won’t be a landlord to us very much longer.”
He glanced at her quickly.
“What makes you say that?”
“Why, Mr. Onderley, I’m afraid it must be obvious,” she exclaimed with a little sigh. “You know that our — our arrangement depended on my being sufficiently well and strong to run this place and take paying guests. I don’t want to exaggerate my illness, but I know it’s left me horribly weak and — and, though no one admits it in so many words, I’m going to have a rather tiresome heart for a while at least. One of my visitors rather let that out. So it looks as though Uncle Hector’s alternative scheme for our future will be the one to be tried.” And she gave a rather sad little laugh.
Her visitor got up restlessly from his chair and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, walked slowly up the room and back.
“You know, don’t you, that there won’t be any question of rent until you get over this patch of ill-luck? So that if that’s the only trouble —”
“Oh, Mr. Onderley, it isn’t. But, in any case, you must see that I couldn’t possibly accept such generosity.”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Of course you do! You’re a man of the world, and you once indicated very clearly that you had no sympathy with spongers — in which I agree with you.”
“My dear child, the question of sponging simply doesn’t enter into this,” he exclaimed impatiently.
“Oh, but it would if we all elected to live on you rent-free. Quite apart from the comment which it would cause.”
“I see no reason why there should be any comment on something which would be entirely between you and me, and not for public information at all.”
She gave him a quizzically amused look.
“You haven’t learned much yet about life round here, have you?” she said, almost indulgently. “If we continued to live on here without what I believe is called ‘visible means of support,’ I assure you there would be rich ground for speculation. But, in any case, I grant you that is of secondary importance. The real point is that we have not the slightest claim on you.”
“Not that of friends?”
“My dear Mr. Onderley” — once more she put out her hand and took his, with a smiling air which suggested that she, rather than he, were in charge of the situation — “you have shown yourself much too good a friend for me to call you anything else. But, even with the best and oldest of friends, one only has a claim in a case of necessity. You know that as well as I do. Both I and the twins are being offered a perfectly kind and adequate solution of our problem by our only relations. The fact that we should much prefer to live here doesn’t in the least entitle us to do so at your expense. You must see that.”
He was silent for a moment, looking down at the hand which held his, and, glancing at him, she thought how mulishly obstinate his handsome mouth could look.
“You mean,” he said slowly, “that I really have no right to offer a solution of your problem.” She flushed.
“Please don’t think I resent your — your —”
“Interference.” He supplied the word obligingly, with a rather grim little smile.
“I would rather call it interest,” she replied firmly. “After all, it was I who first asked you to take a hand in our affairs. And, if I remember rightly,” she added, with a demure smile. “I had considerable difficulty in persuading you to do so. I can hardly complain now if that — interest extends beyond the point I originally intended.”
He acknowledged that with a short laugh and, moving away from her, stood leaning against the side of the window and looking down into the garden.
“So you propose to leave The Mead quite soon?”
She hated having it put into words, but there was no sense in being sentimental about the actual defining of the position.
“I think it is bound to be quite soon. Of course, Uncle Hector will make the final decision now. There will be the question of finding boarding schools for the children — when Judy is well enough to go.”
“Do they know yet?”
“No.”
She could not manage more than the bald monosyllable, because the necessity of telling Tom and Judy about the changed future weighed heavily on her.
“They’re going to hate it as much as you.”
“At first, yes. But we shan’t be the first people to have to adapt ourselves to circumstances we don’t like.”
She saw his mouth tighten obstinately again, and knew — if she had not known it before — that he was a man who reckoned to alter circumstances to suit his wishes.
There was an odd little silence. Then he straightened up suddenly and looked full at her.
“Have you realised that there is a way in which all these unpleasant changes could be avoided?” he said abruptly.
Jessica opened her eyes rather wide.
“No. I can’t say that I have.”
“You said just now that I had no right to offer a solution to your problem.”
“Oh, I don’t think I put it quite like that,” murmured Jessica, but he brushed the interruption aside.
“Jessica, let me have the right to offer a solution. Marry me. And you shall stay on here — or, rather, at Oaklands — and neither you nor the children shall ever lack for anything.”
CHAPTER SIX
JESSICA stared back at Ford Onderley in tense silence for a moment or two. Long enough for her to note, with exaggerated attention, the sound of a car approaching the house, passing and fading away into the distance again.
It was as though the sound intruded into a small. significant world which held only herself and Ford Onderley, and then retreated into that other, ordinary world from which, for a few minutes, she and the dark, purposeful man standing opposite her were completely isolated.
Then, as the last hum died away, Jessica found her voice and said, with a calmness which she herself found surprising:
“You didn’t consider that last suggestion very carefully before you made it, did you?”
“Of course I did.” For a man who was making a proposal, he sounded, she thought, incongruously impatient. “I never make suggestions without considering them. Why should you think I made this one without considering it?”
“I suppose — because one always thinks of quixotic suggestions being made on impulse,” Jessica said with a faint smile. “And then as speedily regretted,” she added as an after-thought.
“This isn’t a quixotic suggestion, Jessica.”
“No?” She opened her grey eyes wide.
“No. I should have asked you to marry me, e
ven if all this trouble hadn’t happened.”
“Would you? But why?” asked Jessica with candour.
Something in that must have amused him, because he laughed — though a little vexedly, she thought.
He didn’t reply directly, but with another question.
“Don’t you know you’re a very easy person to fall in love with?” he said, and again there was that touch of impatience, as though he resented having to explain something which surprised him at least as much as her.
“I hadn’t thought of myself that way,” Jessica told him with truth. “And I — I’m not in love with you, you know.”
She said that as gently as she could, not wishing to hurt someone who had been so good to her. But she thought, from the tightening of his mouth, that he was angered, rather than hurt, by the rare experience of having things not go his own way.
“I am willing to accept that,” he said, “at present. I’m not so naïve as to suppose that all successful marriages start with romantic devotion on both sides. Perhaps mutual liking and respect count even more. I don’t know. But, for my part, I can offer you most of the things that you and the twins think necessary to your happiness, and, in exchange —”
He paused for a moment, and she prompted him softly —
“Yes? In exchange —?”
“I shall have the woman I want for my wife.”
At the way he said that Jessica experienced a curious little thrill, half alarm, half some emotion she could not define. And she thought: “What a curious word ‘wife’ is. It means nothing until it’s applied to oneself. Then it means everything.”
It was the first time, too, that anyone had called her a woman instead of a girl, and to Jessica that seemed of sudden and enormous significance.
“You don’t — expect — a reply immediately, do you?” she said at last.
“No,” he conceded. But she knew he was not pleased at the thought of delay, and she had a sudden, angry impulse to tell him that she would not be either bullied or bribed into marrying him.
Then she glanced up, and found his dark eyes fixed on her, with an expression of half-puzzled anxiety, and her heart softened unaccountably.
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