The Brave In Heart

by Mary Burchell

  She knew quite well that the last disclosure had been made with the intention of provoking her to exclamations and questions, and, for a moment, she was so furiously determined not to play Angela’s game that she actually managed to ignore what had been said.

  But, as her unwelcome visitor turned to go, she knew she could not leave things there, and she spoke, quickly and coldly.

  “What did you mean when you said that about David being—being mad about me?”

  Angela glanced back over her shoulder with slightly raised eyebrows and a mocking smile.

  “Didn’t he tell you?” she enquired incredulously. “He told me.”

  “What do you mean—he told you?” Jessica was startled into immediate retort that time.

  “Why, you know”—Angela turned to face her once more—”when someone is painting your portrait, as David was painting mine, and there’s nothing much to do for quite long periods except talk, you become surprisingly confidential. Maybe he said rather more than he meant to, but—it seems you were quite the only girl, so far as he was concerned. You’re not going to tell me this is news, are you?” she added scornfully.

  Jessica did not answer, for surprise and dismay and some other quite unidentifiable emotion were struggling in her heart. And after a moment Angela said softly:

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “He—never said anything about it,” murmured Jessica.

  “I told you—men are the most extraordinary creatures,” Angela declared with a light laugh. “But you were a bit dumb too, if I may say so, not to guess for yourself.”

  “How could I guess?” Jessica still spoke more to herself than to Angela. But, as her visitor shrugged, as though to say that anyone but a fool would have guessed, she shook off her momentary bewilderment and added sharply: “After all, it may be your guesses that went a little wild. You simply say ‘it seemed’ that —that David was fond of me. Perhaps you jumped to too hasty conclusions.”

  “No,” Angela said. “David was quite categorical. But I shouldn’t really be saying all this to you, should I?” Her greenish eyes gleamed with faint malice. “Ford would hardly thank me for putting such ideas into your head. You’d better just remember that my brother is much the bigger catch of the two, and certainly much better qualified to take on a couple of schoolchildren along with his wife. Now I simply must fly. I’m having tea with the Cavendishes and I’m late already.”

  Jessica made no effort to detain her and, on a delicate wave of expensive perfume, Angela departed, leaving her future sister-in-law as agitated and perplexed as she had meant her to be.

  When she had gone, Jessica sat absently pleating the tablecloth she had been mending, and tried to put into perspective what Angela had just said.

  It made no difference, of course. She was engaged to Ford, who had undertaken to provide a home for her and the children, and any other man’s feelings for her were of purely academic interest.

  At least—no, one could not use the phrase “academic interest” where someone as warm and vital as David was concerned. If he had spoken before Ford . . .

  But he had not spoken. Not to her. She had nothing to go upon but a reported conversation with Angela.

  It was understandable, of course. Her relationship with David, before that unlucky accident upset everything, had been one of delightful and developing friendship, when anything—or nothing—can happen. There had been no apparent need to hurry things. How could David, or anyone else, have guessed that Ford would make his astounding proposal?

  Why had he made it, come to that? thought Jessica.

  Probably Angela, with her disagreeably cynical explanation, had been very near the truth. He could not have the woman he wanted, and so the girl who intrigued and amused and commanded a certain amount of respect from him would do instead.

  It was time he married, anyway, and to combine a quixotic gesture with a piece of cool-headed expediency would undoubtedly appeal to his sense of paradox.

  Yet if David had spoken first . . .

  “I mustn’t start thinking along those lines,” Jessica told herself a little wildly. “He didn’t speak, and he’s gone way, and by the time I see him again it will be almost time for my wedding. Anyway, Angela may have made half of this up. She’s a born mischief-maker”— for Jessica had no illusion now about her future sister-in-law — “and obviously meant to make me miserable and worried about this.”

  And then it came to her, with something of a shock, that, only if her own feelings were involved, could there be any question of her “making herself miserable.” Why, then, was she so deeply moved?

  Of course no decent girl wanted a good friend to make himself unhappy over a hopeless passion for herself. But need it go deeper than that?

  Jessica had not found any satisfactory answer to these questions by the time the twins returned, with their affectionate but insistent demands on her attention.

  “We met Ford on the way home.” Judy explained. “We’ve finally decided that we’ll call him Ford, too, by the way. He doesn’t like being Uncle anything, and we don’t like it either. After all, he’s a brother-in-law really, isn’t he?”

  “Going to be,” amended Jessica a trifle curtly.

  “Well, going to be. It’s the same thing,” Judy replied, with a pleasant disregard for the tricks that Time and Fate can play. “He says we can call him Ford, so that’s all right. And he also says we’re all to come over to Oaklands as soon as possible, because we haven’t even been over the place yet.”

  “Is that an order?” asked Jessica with a most uncharacteristic flash of irritation.

  Both the children gaped slightly.

  “It was an invitation, not an order,” said Tom, recovering himself first, while Judy added frankly:

  “Aren’t you feeling very well, Jess?”

  “I’m quite all right, thank you.” Jessica felt and sounded contrite. “I—I just thought you put the invitation in a funny way.”

  “Did I?” said Judy, and began to re-examine her own wording with such laborious attention that Jessica said hastily:

  “It doesn’t matter, dear. I’ve got it straight now. When are we to go to Oaklands?”

  “Ford said you were to decide that,” Tom explained in a tone which added quite clearly: “See how little of an order it was!”

  Jessica smiled involuntarily.

  “Almost any day next week will do for me,” she remarked pacifically. And then added: “I expect Angela had better decide what will suit her.”

  “Oh, Angela!” exclaimed Judy, and made a face. Which so exactly expressed all that Jessica herself had been thinking of that lady that she could not find it in her heart to reprove Judy. She merely said conscientiously:

  “Well, Angela will be our hostess at Oaklands, after all.”

  “Only for the time being,” Judy stated with naïve satisfaction. “You’ll be the hostess there soon, won’t you, Jess?”

  “I don’t think I’d emphasise that fact for the moment,” her sister said dryly.

  “No. But it’s nice to think about it,” Judy said, and obviously meant it.

  The next day Ford came himself, to repeat the invitation in a more exact form, adding—entirely on his own initiative, Jessica could not help thinking—that Angela would be very glad to see them all at Oaklands.

  So it was arranged that after church on the following Sunday, they should all three go to Oaklands for lunch and stay for the rest of the day. Put in that way, the invitation assumed a slightly formal character—which was perhaps what Angela had intended—but the twins accepted, for their part, with unconventional whoops of satisfaction which rather destroyed any suggestion of formality.

  “Are you so pleased to be seeing Oaklands at close quarters?” Ford looked amused.

  “Oh, yes. It’s much the biggest and most interesting place in the district,” Judy explained. “Besides, it’s going to be home,” she added with a touch of artless pleasure.

  “Yes. It’
s going to be home,” Ford agreed, and, putting a hand on Judy’s head, he ruffled up her brown hair, teasingly but not without affection.

  Watching them together, Jessica thought: “The children have a surer touch with Ford than I have myself. I wish I felt as much at home with him as they do.”

  Ford, however, seemed to consider himself quite at home with Jessica, for, when the children had gone off on their own affairs, he said with extreme frankness:

  “Angela came to see you yesterday, didn’t she? Is that why you’re grave and thoughtful to-day?”

  “Ford—no!” exclaimed Jessica. But she blushed, partly because of the unexpectedness of the question and partly because she was aware that she was not being entirely truthful. And, to cover her confusion, she countered with: “Why do you ask? Did you expect her to say something to upset me?”

  “Expect? No, that would be too strong a word,” he conceded. “But being related to Angela doesn’t blind me to the fact that she can be something of a troublemaker when she likes. I just wondered—”

  “Ford, what an odd way to regard your own sister,” said Jessica who, coming from a devoted family herself, was inclined to suppose that all brothers and sisters regarded each other with a partial eye.

  “But why be unrealistic about one’s relations, simply because they are relations?” asked Ford amusedly. “Angela and I get on quite amicably, and I wish her very well. But I am not unaware of her faults, and I’m certain she is very well informed on mine,” he added with a laugh.

  Jessica found herself wishing that such frankness from him might be answered with equal frankness from her. At that moment, she would have given much to be able to tell him of the two disclosures which Angela had made yesterday. But he was, of course, the last person to whom she could mention these, and, with a slight sigh, she turned away and looked out of the window, as though absorbed in watching the twins who were out on the lawn as usual.

  “What is it, Jess?”

  She was aware suddenly that he was standing close behind her. And then he lightly put his arms round her. So lightly that, although in the first reaction she stiffened slightly, oppressed by all the untold things which stood between them, after a moment she relaxed against him, from the sheer relief of having someone on whom she could almost literally lean.

  “There’s nothing the matter,” she said slowly and without much conviction. At which he laughed softly and kissed the top of her bright head, rather as he might have kissed Judy.

  “Darling,” he said, “there’s quite a lot the matter. This is rather an odd marriage which we propose to make, and there are several features about it which worry you profoundly. But you can’t talk about them to anyone, because you have no one to consult. Isn’t that it?”

  Jessica turned her head and looked up at him, half fearful and half relieved at his penetration. His face was quite close to hers but, for once, it was not his handsome, cynical mouth which she noticed most. It was the strangely kindly look in his dark, penetrating eyes.

  “Well, it—it is a bit that,” she found herself admitting.

  He sat down on the wide window-seat and drew her down beside him, but so that she could still lean against him and did not need to look into his face unless she wanted to.

  “Listen to me, Jess. I’m perfectly well aware that the most important thing in the world to you just now is to provide a happy home and background for the twins,” he said calmly. “There’s no need to reproach yourself about that. It’s natural and it’s right. I don’t imagine there’s anything of the grand sacrifice or any other melodramatic feature about your marriage to me. But the plain fact is that if you had not the responsibility of the twins, you probably would not have chosen to marry me. Isn’t that right?”

  “Ford!” She moved disturbedly against him. “Do you really think it helps either of us to have things quite so much in black and white?”

  “Yes,” he said, with a touch of his old cynicism. “I think it helps you, although it shocks you slightly, too.” But he softened what he was saying by touching the curve of her cheek with his lips. “I’m willing to accept die position exactly as it stands—as I told you when you first agreed to marry me. What I did not add then, but which I will add now,” he said slowly, “is that you may take your own time over everything. Do you understand? I shall not force the—the pace of this marriage beyond anything which you yourself want. Until you wish otherwise, you can regard me, if you like, as simply the man who provides you and the twins with a home.”

  “But, Ford, that—that’s unfair!”

  “It’s the way I want it,” he retorted coolly. And then added dryly: “No one but a fool tries to regulate his married life by what is fair or unfair.”

  Jessica turned suddenly and put her arms round him.

  “Oh, I wish—” Then she stopped and put her head down against him, without saying what it was that she wished.

  “What do you wish, Jess?” He was rather unnaturally still as he looked down at her.

  “I wish I knew whether it’s kindness or cleverness that makes you say the generous things you do.”

  He laughed at that with real amusement, and kissed her.

  “Allow for a little kindness in my composition,” he told her teasingly, “and I dare say you can put down the rest to the fact that I’m a wily fellow.”

  “I don’t think that’s the right proportion at all,” she retorted with energy. “I think you’re really generous and rather a darling. Only, of course, you’re clever too and—and—”

  “Time my generous impulses well?” he suggested.

  Which was so exactly what Jessica meant that she laughed and kissed him, without actually replying.

  “Well, my dear, look at it whichever way you like,” he said. “Only try not to feel scared and trapped.” A slight movement from her showed how surely he had guessed her feelings up to now. “We may not be starting with a wonderfully romantic basis for our marriage, but it’s not an insecure one, you know. We ought to be able to build something successful and happy on it.”

  “I hope so,” she murmured. And then added earnestly: “I’ll try very hard, you know.”

  “Yes. I know you will.” He smiled. “Don’t try too hard, or you may wreck it that way.”

  “Oh, Ford!”

  “All right. I’m only teasing you.” He touched her cheek amusedly, and she instinctively drew rather close against him again. “As a matter of fact, there is only one thing which could wreck it absolutely.”

  “What’s that?” She didn’t move from her comfortable position against him, because she thought he was still teasing her.

  “If you were very much in love with another man.”

  She was terribly glad, in that moment, that she had not been looking up at him, and he could not see her face very clearly. Not that she was “very much in love with another man.” Only—there was David, and that revelation of Angela’s yesterday, and all the disturbing conjectures and reflections which inevitably followed on it.

  Yes. She was glad Ford was not actually looking at her as she said quite steadily.

  “I’m not very much in love with anyone else.”

  “If you like, you can leave it at ‘not very much in love with anyone’” he told her with a laugh, seeming rather to enjoy the fact that his frank acceptance of the situation shocked her.

  But, surprisingly, she made no answer in words. Only put her arms round him again and hugged him rather convulsively. And he refrained from asking her why— possibly, of course, because this was one of his “clever” moments.

  Church on the following Sunday morning was, Jessica was very much afraid, regarded by the twins merely as a “curtain-raiser” before the visit to Oaklands. Certainly they were ready in good time, looking rather unnaturally clean and tidy, and their behaviour on the whole was decorous. But obviously their thoughts were elsewhere, judging from the glances which they sent towards the Oaklands pew where Ford and his sister attracted a good deal of su
rreptitious attention.

  Judy, who had a taste for what she called “the jollier hymns,” joined very heartily in most of the singing, but during the sermon she sat and regarded Angela with such speculative interest that Jessica wondered very much what was going on under her brown thatch. As for Tom, he was actually guilty of exchanging incomprehensible signs with Bob Parry, who occupied a respected position in the Choir, owing to his sweet soprano voice rather than to any standard of Christian behaviour.

  Jessica frowned and shook her head at Tom, who promptly brought the sign conversation to a close with a particularly hideous grimace, and after that looked moderately attentive. But she was aware that there was an indefinable current of excitement in their pew that morning, and that she herself was by no means immune.

  After all, she doubted if her attention were any more on the sermon than Judy’s. For one thing, she was conscious that she herself was attracting some of that surreptitious local attention which concentrated mainly on the Onderleys.

  Everyone knew about her engagement to Ford by now, and she was regarded with the mingled respect, envy and surprise due to one who had carried off the best matrimonial prize in the district. It was inevitable that people should glance from him to her with various expressions indicative of wondering how she had “done it.”

  Ford Onderley was not a frequent attender, and everyone was glad of this nice, cosy opportunity of examining him at leisure. As, in addition, his fiancée was also present, they provided between them a most interesting morning, and food for plenty of future speculation.

  If Ford found all this something of an ordeal, he certainly showed no signs of doing so, and Jessica could only hope that her air of calm detachment equalled his.

  Afterwards, when they met outside the church, in the slowly moving stream of the departing congregation, he kissed Jessica and drew her arm through his as though they had been engaged at least a year. And his matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation steadied her and made her feel less self-conscious.

  Several people came up to tell her (with genuine feeling) how glad they were to see her recovered, and they added their good wishes on her marriage, and achieved an introduction to the interesting fiancé.