Orphan Bride

by Sara Seale

  “Oh, yes, they taught us those, but you see, letter-writing—well, we none of us had anyone to write to.”

  “I see,” said Julian gently. “Well, you can go on writing to me. That’ll keep your hand in.”

  “Yes, Cousin Julian,” said Jennet, and was thankful when Emily bustled in saying supper was ready.

  The week end wore slowly away. For the first twenty-four hours, Julian seemed moody and irritable, but on Sunday he was pleasant enough, refraining from those remarks which caused Jennet such discomfort. When she knew him better she was to realize that it was always the same. The long journey upset him and he found it difficult to throw off the effects quickly, but for the present she only felt that for some reason she must irritate him.

  On Sunday morning it was Julian who said to Jennet: “Fetch a coat and go for a walk,” then he added: “I’ll come with you, but you’ll have to walk slowly.”

  They set out together towards the village, Jennet matching her step to his and wondering what on earth they should talk about. He did his best to draw her out, if she had only realized it, but he put his questions in such a way that she felt unable to do more than give him the bare answers.

  “Do you walk every day?” he enquired.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Where do you usually go?”

  “This way to the village, or the other way, up the road.”

  “But don’t you ever go on the moor?”

  “Not very often.”

  “Why on earth not?” He sounded impatient.

  “I’m afraid of the moor,” she said shyly.

  He laughed, not unkindly, but without understanding. “Good heavens above, why? Once you know where the bogs are and don’t lose yourself, it’s perfectly safe. What a lot you miss, sticking to the roads!”

  She looked at him helplessly, and said a little apologetically:

  “I’ll try the moor next time, if you want me to.”

  He laughed.

  “My dear child, it makes no odds to me where you take your walks. I shall have to turn back now. Go on if you want to.” But she turned with him.

  They did not talk much on the return journey, and when they got home he flung himself irritably into a chair. Even a mile had tired him, and he wondered if for the rest of his life his body was to be a perpetual burden to him.

  That evening, after the others had gone to bed, he sat discussing Jennet with his aunt.

  “I don’t know that my experiment is going to work out,” he told her a little wryly. “I haven’t made much headway this week end.”

  Emily looked up from her knitting and smiled placidly.

  “You must give her time, Julian,” she said. “She’s very shy, you know.”

  He laughed and pulled at his pipe.

  “She must be. I could hardly get a word out of her, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her laugh. Do you suppose she thinks and reasons like other people?”

  “I don’t know, dear. One doesn’t reason very much at that age, anyway.”

  “I suppose not, and life in an orphanage would scarcely tend to give one a flair for conversation.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard her talking to Homer. She’s a good little thing, I will say, and no trouble in the house.”

  Julian grinned.

  “The perfect qualifications for a wife, you think—a good little thing and no trouble in the house.”

  “Well,” reported Emily, “it’s more than you can say of a good many wives.”

  “True,” said Julian, and knocked out his pipe. “Well, if things don’t work out there’s no harm done. We’ll give her a decent start in life, which is more than she would have got from Blacker’s.”

  Emily was silent, then she said with slight reproof: “We’ve made ourselves responsible for the child now. She has a right to look to us for a home.”

  “But not a right to demand marriage, I hope,” he said teasingly, and added with a perfectly grave face: “I shall go back and pick another orphan if I’m not satisfied.”

  “You like to pull my leg, don’t you, Julian?” she said. “And I like to see you do it. You’ve nearly lost your sense of fun, you know.”

  “Have I, Aunt Emily?” he said gently. “Yes, perhaps I have—perhaps that’s what’s wrong with us both. There can’t be much sense of fun in an orphanage. I don’t think I’ll come down again for a bit, anyway.”

  But Julian was wrong, as Jennet herself could have told him. There had been a sense of fun in the orphanage, and it was the fun and companions of her own age that Jennet was missing now. It was odd that neither Julian nor Emily had thought of that, and a little sad that Jennet could accept it.

  She accepted most things, they discovered. Perhaps, after all, Emily thought, as she took the girl gently to task the day after Julian had left, an institution taught you that.

  “Jennet, dear, you must try and be a little nicer to Julian,” she said.

  “Nicer?” said Jennet, startled.

  “Well, perhaps that’s the wrong word,” said Emily. “You must try to please him more. Remember that if it wasn’t for him you’d still be in the orphanage.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jennet said. “I—I don’t know how to talk to him.”

  “Well, talk about the weather if you can’t think of anything else,” said Emily impatiently. “Men like to have attention, you know, and you owe him a little attention, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t,” said Jennet simply, “know anything at all about men. They alarm me.”

  But Homer did not alarm her. There were times when she could talk to Homer quite naturally for as much as twenty minutes on end before he retired into the world of his invention. Then he was often wise and always kindly, and Jennet would feel that if only he could remain long enough in the same dimension, he would offer valuable counsel.

  She found him, after her talk with Emily, in the wash, house soaking puppy biscuit for his sister-in-law.

  “Why do you do it, Uncle Homer?” Jennet asked affectionately. It was a cold day, and she knew he would much prefer to be sitting over the fire with a treatise on bees.

  “Well, someone has to,” he replied mildly.

  “But Mrs. Dingle could. She’s very strong.”

  “No, no. Mrs. D. has her own work,” he said at once. “Besides, I like to do it for Emily. She’s been very kind to me—very kind. You know—” he peered at her over the top of his spectacles—“we are both dependants, dear child, I on Emily’s hospitality, you on Julian’s.”

  “Yes,” said Jennet softly, “I know I am, but you—”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, putting his head on one side like a bird, “I, too, for Emily has given me a homeland you know, I am very trying at times.”

  “No, Uncle Homer, you’re a dear,” she said warmly.

  “Emily and Julian find me trying, but that is because they won’t see—they won’t listen to Them,” he told her. “But that is not their fault, perhaps, they do not understand. But still, Jennet, we must never forget we are dependants. There is nothing so ugly as ingratitude—nothing so ugly.”

  “Uncle Homer,” she said slowly, “how do you show gratitude—so that people know you’re grateful, I mean?”

  He smiled at her with childlike sweetness.

  “By being what they want you to be, of course,” he said simply. “By pleasing them.”

  “But if you don’t know what they want you to be,” she said, her high forehead wrinkling with anxiety.

  “One always knows,” he replied.

  “Does one? But if being what they want you to be isn’t you—” she said. “You must be you, Uncle Homer, even if it’s the wrong you.”

  He stopped in his work and smiled at her.

  “They would tell you,” he said. “Only you can’t always hear.”

  “Uncle Homer, please help me,” she begged. “I can ask you things—you’re the only one.”

  “I will communicate with Them,” he said, and went on breaking up biscuit wi
thout taking any further notice of her.

  It was always the same, thought Jennet, leaving the washhouse disconsolately. Just as you thought you were getting somewhere with Uncle Homer he went on to another plane. Now she wouldn’t get another word out of him for hours.

  To be a dependant did not have the chill sound which it might have had she been differently brought up. The orphans knew they were dependants. The orphanage principals had also held that there was nothing so ugly as ingratitude, so Jennet knew that she must certainly try to please Julian, and whatever his plans for her were, to fall in with them as best she could.

  Early in the New Year, Julian came down for another week end. This time he brought Luke Fenton with him.

  Luke was a slim, fair young man with easy, attentive manners and a fund of amusing stories, which Julian said were chiefly at the expense of his friends. Jennet did not trust him and felt that Aunt Emily did not trust him either, but it would have been difficult for her to say why. She had no experience of men, and certainly none of men as charming as Luke could be when he tried. But like Emily, she wondered why they were friends, and sat watching him with her disconcerting stare until he told Julian she did not approve of him and set himself for the rest of the week end to charm her.

  He succeeded admirably, for when Luke chose to charm he was a past master in the art. He possessed that ready sympathy which extracts confidences and his novelist’s imagination was much intrigued by the situation.

  “But she’s charming, your little orphan, and I don’t call her plain,” he told Julian the first evening. “I still think you’re crazy, but what a plot, my dear fellow, what a plot.”

  He was avid for details of the orphanage, which he proposed to work into his new book, and he and Jennet spent Saturday morning walking across the moor while she regaled him with stories of Blacker’s.

  “Have you heard about the bishop’s gaiters or the great gruel rebellion, or the awful scandal of Matron’s party knickers?” he asked Julian.

  “No,” said Julian, looking thoughtfully, at Jennet. “You seem to have a greater knack for confidences than I have.”

  She had been looking happy and altogether different, listening to Luke, but at Julian’s comment, the light went out of her face and she fell silent.

  Julian did not mean to be irritated. But it was irritating to see the animation quenched in the child’s face when he walked into a room, to catch a glimpse for the first time of that sudden grin that so transformed her whole expression, and know that Luke could so easily call it up.

  “And tell me,” Luke said on Sunday, “what does it feel like to be adopted?”

  It was nearly tea time. Julian was resting his leg upstairs, and Emily and Homer were both about on their various pursuits.

  Jennet looked into the fire. It had been such a release to laugh and talk and be natural that Luke seemed like an old friend.

  “It’s—it’s queer,” she said slowly. “When I was in the orphanage I used to think the best that could happen to me would be adoption. And then Mr. Dane—Cousin Julian came and picked me and—”

  “And you don’t like it,” finished Luke.

  “Oh, yes, I do,” she said, distressed. “It’s a wonderful chance, only—”

  “Only you’re homesick,” said Luke softly. “Homesick for a drab institution with no color, no fun, no affection. How perverse we mortals are.”

  “Affection,” repeated Jennet, lingering lovingly on the word. “That, was the important thing. I always thought that was the important thing.”

  He glanced at her with interest.

  “You’re right,” he told her. “You can’t rule out affection if you want to be happy, and so I’ve often told Julian. Is it Julian who worries you?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Cousin Julian has been very kind. I just don’t understand him. He seems irritable sometimes.”

  Luke’s plain attractive face crinkled up into the many wrinkles that seemed part of it.

  “Pain makes you irritable,” he told her gently. “Julian was pretty badly smashed up in a crash, you know, and that leg’s by no means right yet.”

  “Oh!” she said softly, “I didn’t know.”

  “He’s had a raw deal altogether,” went on Luke, watching her. “He was engaged to a girl who threw him over when he became crippled. Perhaps he told you.”

  “No,” said Jennet, still more softly, “he didn’t tell me. Why should he? He thinks I’m a child.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen. Sixteen’s a bad age, isn’t it? Neither one thing nor the other.”

  He crossed over to Emily’s old seldom-used piano and started to play.

  “Sixteen is the age of loose ends,” he said with a little smile. “The ending of childhood and the beginning of womanhood.”

  She listened to his playing for a little in silence, then as he wandered into an old German carol, she exclaimed: “Oh, we used to sing that in the orphanage!”

  “Did you?” he said. “Sing it now.”

  She began to hum the air, then she took up the words in a high, sweet soprano, a little timid, but exquisitely true. He stopped playing and looked up at her. “Charming,” he said softly. “And in German, too. Do they teach languages in the orphanage?”

  “Oh, no,” said Jennet, smiling, “we had a German maid who taught us that.”

  “What else do you know?” he asked, and began playing old folk songs, some of which she knew.

  They neither of them heard Julian cornea in until, as they stopped, his voice from the doorway said: “Go on.”

  “Isn’t she delightful, Julian?” demanded Luke, half-rising from the piano. “Go on, Jennet. You play for her, Julian, you’re better than I am.”

  Jennet’s shyness descended on her like a cloak. “Oh, no—no, I couldn’t,” she stammered, and ran out of the room.

  Julian limped across to the fire and filled his pipe. “I’m not coming up with you tomorrow,” he said.

  Luke shrugged.

  “Just as you say, my dear chap. He watched his fingers on the keyboard. “I like your orphan, Julian,” he said softly. “But I think you’re making a mistake.”

  Julian grinned and puffed at his pipe.

  “You always did think so,” he said.

  “You can’t rule affection out of your life,” Luke said. “Or if you can, then you shouldn’t rule it out of others.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That child needs affection. She needs it more than she needs bread. You’re taking on trouble, Julian, if you’re still serious in this hare-brained scheme.”

  “I think,” said Julian with a stiffness that was seldom apparent in his dealings with Luke, “that’s my affair.”

  Julian stayed an extra two days, and Jennet, remembering that she had been told to please him, tried to force herself to take the initiative. But the confidences which had come so easily with Luke died under Julian’s disturbing gaze. He was for her the impatient arbiter of her destiny, the person to whom she owed politeness and something a little more, perhaps, but whose dark presence gave her no comfort.

  Once he said to her:

  “You could talk to Luke, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He was very nice. I liked him.”

  “All women like Luke, he flatters them,” Julian told her with a smile.

  Jennet replied simply, “He would hardly flatter me.”

  He laughed with genuine amusement.

  “He was out to charm you as much as if you had been the most glamorous London lovely,” he said. “He can’t resist it—it’s second nature to him.”

  Jennet looked at him gravely.

  “You mean he’s insincere?”

  “Of course he’s insincere,” said Julian impatiently. “He can’t help it. Charm is insincere, Jennet. Don’t be misled by it.”

  “Charm—do you mean affection?” she asked.

  He smiled.

  “The two often get confused,” he said
ambiguously. Yet he could be charming himself when he chose. “I’m arranging with Aunt Emily for you to go into Plymouth for singing lessons,” he told her. “You have a very charming voice, Jennet, it would be a pity not to develop it. I’m afraid I’ve neglected you since you came, but I’ll try and make up for it.”

  He said it quite humbly, and for a brief moment Jennet felt she could understand him and talk his language. Then he looked at her hands and remarked with his old abruptness:

  “These still need attention.”

  She pulled them gently away from his.

  “Fingers take time to recover from bad chilblains,” she said politely. “I don’t suppose you have ever had any.”

  Almost his last words before he left were to tell her that she had only to ask for anything she wanted, and he would be down again soon.

  “In the meantime, practise, and, when I come down at weekends I’ll choose your songs and see how you’re getting on.”

  She had her lessons, her daily walks, her daily milk, and new books from the library. Julian or Emily thought of most things, but they never gave her money of her own, or young companionship, or the right to decide anything for herself.

  CHAPTER F O U R

  During most of January, the weather was too bad to do much walking, which was a relief to Jennet, and she spent long hours writing painstaking copies of The Times leading articles.

  “It will improve your writing and improve your knowledge, and when I’m not here, Homer can dictate, and that will improve your spelling,” Julian said.

  Jennet found The Times dull. She found Homer’s dictation easier to follow than Julian’s who read too fast and became impatient when he had to repeat a sentence.

  “Just listen,” he told her severely on one occasion.

  “I do,” she protested earnestly. “But you go so fast, and some of the words are so long.”

  “Let me see what you’ve done so far. My dear child! Libation has no Y ... and dynamic has one N ... and don’t make those peculiar squiggles for your capitals.”

  Jennet sighed.

  Emily watched with a faintly cynical eye. “You’re very male,” she told Julian once, and when he looked enquiring, explained: “The second time you came here you doubted if your experiment would work, and seemed quite indifferent about it, but since Luke charmed some response out of your orphan, you’ve fallen to it with a will.”