Orphan Bride

by Sara Seale

  On her return in the evening, Homer would sometimes look up from his magazine and observe her silently, his head on one side. Once Emily remarked, glancing at the clock:

  “You’re late this evening. You mustn’t stop out once it’s dark, dear. You might get lost.”

  “No, Aunt Emily, I won’t,” Jennet replied dutifully. But her great eyes shone and even Emily noticed that inner radiance which lit her small thin face. “You’re looking much better,” she said.

  Homer spoke in his soft, hesitating voice.

  “You have news, or a secret, dear child? Have you told the bees?”

  She looked at him, startled. Did her happiness show so much?

  “No, Uncle Homer,” she said gently.

  “Then do so, my dear, before you tell us. Always tell the bees first, or they will be offended.”

  He went back to his magazine, and Jennet slipped out of the room and out of the house, through the orchard to the corner where Homer’s white-painted hives stood in neat rows in the long grass.

  She stood for a moment listening to the gentle hum which came from them, then she clasped her hands and said softly:

  “Oh, Bees, I have made friends of my own. Oh, Bees, please let me keep my friends for ever, Amen.”

  When Julian came the next day it seemed to Jennet that he was more exacting than usual. He took exception to a new sweater Emily had bought for her and told her not to wear it when he was in the house, and he found fault with her accent and her grammar.

  “I hope your singing is of a higher standard,” he remarked, “or I shall scarcely think it worthwhile keeping up those lessons. Let me see your hands.”

  It was the moment Jennet had been dreading. She proffered him her hands, curling the fingers inwards, trying to hide their roughness.

  He took them in his, straightening out the fingers and frowning as he turned them over.

  “Your nails are better,” he admitted, “but what have you been doing to get your hands in this state? Mrs. Dingle doesn’t persuade you to help in the kitchen, does she?”

  “Oh, no,” said Jennet, alarmed. “I never help Mrs. Dingle.”

  “Then how do you account for these?” She shook her head dumbly, and he went on: “You can’t have been paying them enough attention. Wear gloves and attend to them properly at nights.”

  “Yes, Cousin Julian,” she said, and escaped from him before he could think of a fresh criticism.

  Emily noticed her nephew’s shortness of temper, but she saw, too, that he was nervy and on edge with pain.

  “Is your leg worse?” she asked him in the evening as he stood in front of the fire, seemingly unable to sit still for any length of time.

  “Yes, it’s been damnable this last week,” he admitted. “Gregory thinks they’ll have to operate again. I wish to God they’d take it off and have done with it.”

  She was silent for a little, wondering if it would come to that eventually.

  “Why don’t you stop here for a few months and see what rest and the moorland air will do for you?” she proposed at last.

  “No, Aunt Emily, I won’t upset your household arrangements to that extent,” he told her with a grin. “Though it’s a kindly thought and I appreciate it.”

  “Well, after all,” she said a little apologetically, “Pennycross is to all intents and purposes your house. I think you have a right to use it as your home.”

  “And so I do. No, Aunt Emily, what would I do here? I can’t walk any distance, I can’t ride, I’ve never got very interested in gardening. I’m best off in London where I have my friends and my flat. But I may stop for a week or so next month and have a bit of a rest if you’ll have me. We’ll hire a car and take the child round a bit, shall we?”

  Emily smiled.

  “You can take the child round,” she retorted. “You know I loathe motoring. Are you pleased with your orphan, Julian?”

  He passed a hand rather wearily over his thick black hair.

  “I’m afraid I rather jumped on her this afternoon,” he said regretfully. “I must try and not let this blasted pain get on top of me so much. I want to hear her sing before I go. One day she must have decent lessons.”

  But when, on Sunday afternoon he asked Jennet to sing something for him, she felt her throat immediately constrict.

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said quickly.

  He frowned.

  “Why not? It’s some time since I’ve heard you.”

  He played better than Luke, she realized, with a surer, more sensitive touch. “Don’t you think that, as I provide the lessons, I have the right to hear the results?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, come along then.”

  She came unwillingly to stand beside him, and he stopped playing and glanced up at her.

  “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of me?” he asked.

  She lowered her eyes.

  “No.”

  “Shy, then?” He knew she was shy.

  She nodded.

  “A little. You’re very critical.”

  “Am I? But criticism’s valuable when one is learning.”

  He held out his hand. “Well, sing me something, anyway. Here, give me your music.”

  She chose “Searching for Lambs” because the wistful, nostalgic little air required no volume, and because she loved the words:

  “...I’d rather rest on a true love’s breast,

  Than any other where...”

  She stopped. She had forgotten her nervousness and Julian, and thought only of the meaning of the lines. “Go on,” said Julian softly. “There’s another verse.” She knew there was another verse, the best of them all.

  “For I am thine and thou art mine,

  No man shall uncomfort thee:

  We’ll join our hands in wedded bands

  And a-married we will be.”

  She stopped singing, and edged away to her stool by the fire. Julian lifted his hands from the keys and examined them thoughtfully.

  “You like that song, don’t you?” he said then.

  “Yes, I like it.”

  “You shall sing it for me again,” he said, and shut the piano abruptly.

  He made no comment or criticism on her voice, but he brushed a band lightly over her hair as he limped past her to the door.

  CHAPTER F I V E

  The halcyon days continued for a little while longer. If it was wet Jennet stopped indoors worrying as to how the Thompson household was managing without her, but unless the rain was coming down too hard to make walking on the moor a reasonable pastime, she set off every day after breakfast, her thoughts full of the possible jobs that might be awaiting her.

  Betty was back at school now, and Mrs. Thompson came downstairs for a few hours each day. She did not talk much, but her rough kindliness was apparent in her small unconscious gestures of affection towards her children and towards Jennet herself.

  “Do your people know you come here?” she asked her once.

  “No,” said Jennet, and when Mrs. Thompson gave her a level look, added pleadingly:

  “It’s so difficult to explain. I don’t think Aunt Emily would mind, but Cousin Julian—he runs my life, chooses my friends and—and—this is the one thing I’ve found for myself. Cousin Julian would never understand!”

  Mrs. Thompson was silent for a moment.

  “I’ve never rightly understood about your Cousin Julian,” she said slowly. “It would seem that he has certain rights over you since he took you from an institution, but no one has the right to run another’s life. You might be better off where you came from, Jennet. What are they fitting you for with this kind of life? What are they going to do with you?”

  “I don’t know, myself,” said Jennet humbly.

  Frankie was home from work for a few days with a poisoned hand, and in the evening he would walk back with Jennet across the moor. Then he would tell her something of the family history. How Mrs. Thompson, despite her husband’s infidelity, had stuck t
o him and made some kind of a home for him to come back to.

  “He is my father,” Frankie said quietly, “and she’s only my stepmother, but she’s worth ten of the old man. I reckon a man doesn’t know when he’s got a good homemaker. You’re another such, Jennet. You will make some fellow a good wife, a good home-maker.”

  She did not answer, but the phrase meant suddenly for her all the affection, the sense of belonging that she had missed all her life. She put a shy hand on his arm.

  “Dear Frankie,” she said softly, “some day you will mean all those things to some woman.”

  He did not understand her reluctance to reveal what she was doing at home. Once, with a rare spurt of anger, he asked her if she was ashamed of them.

  “Oh, Frankie, no,” she cried, immeasurably distressed. “Never think that. You and the children are my only friends. It is just that they ask questions and everything would be spoilt. Please, try to understand.”

  But she could see that he did not, and only looked hurt when she refused to go to the cinema with him.

  “Why not?” he asked impatiently.

  “Aunt Emily would ask questions, and if she asked questions I couldn’t lie to her.”

  “But why should you have to? Why can’t you say like any other girl. ‘Aunt Emily, I want to go to the pictures with a friend.’ ”

  She looked distressed.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t think Aunt Emily would mind, but she would tell Cousin Julian and he might stop me coming here altogether.”

  “But why on earth should he? Where’s the harm?”

  “I don’t know, but I think he would. He once told me I was never to pick up with anyone he didn’t know about, and I feel he would be angry. He’s queer. He likes to decide everything for me—I can’t explain. But I couldn’t bear it.”

  “All right,” he said doubtfully, “I suppose you know best, but it sounds all wrong to me.”

  “Later,” said Jennet, feeling she had been unreasonable, “I’ll tell him about you. I’ll bring the children to Pennycross and he will see how nice you are.”

  He smiled a little crossly. “Don’t worry,” he retorted, “I don’t want to meet your disagreeable Cousin Julian. He sounds a stinker.”

  Jennet’s birthday fell towards the end of February and the children insisted that she should stay for tea that day.

  She set off after lunch with a mounting pleasure which she knew to be out of all proportion to the moment.

  They were watching for her at the windows and came tearing out, shouting their greetings. They told her excitedly to shut her eyes and led her carefully into the house and into the sitting room which was only used on special occasions.

  “Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” they screamed. Jennet opened them and gazed at the feast which was spread out. There were jellies and tuffs and little cakes and buns of all shapes and sizes, and the children had decorated the table with fern and heather and early wild daffodils. There were further shrieks, and Frankie came in from the kitchen, carrying a real birthday cake with icing and seventeen pink candles blazing merrily in the draught.

  Jennet’s eyes filled with tears at the expenditure of so much thought and trouble and she stammered incoherently: “You shouldn’t, Mrs. Thompson—you must have shopped and cooked for days. I’ve never known such kindness.”

  “Rubbish, child!” Mrs. Thompson retorted. “A birthday is a birthday in this family and it’s little enough return for all you did for us when I was sick.”

  “Give her the present, give her the present!” chanted the children, and Frankie put a small parcel on Jennet’s plate.

  “It’s nothing really,” he said off-handedly.

  With loving fingers she undid the string and layers of paper, watched breathlessly by the children, and lifted up Frankie’s gift. It was a little china fawn with long spindly legs and startled eyes.

  “Oh,” she said softly, “it’s lovely—it’s a darling.”

  “We thought it was rather like you,” Frankie told her shyly; then she kissed them all in turn, even Frankie, who turned quite red, and was mocked at by his sisters.

  It was a merry tea-party. Mrs. Thompson saying little but watching their young faces with contentment thought how different Jennet looked when she was flushed, and wondered, not for the first time, why a solitary old maid should have adopted her.

  “They’ll be giving you a party at home tonight I suppose,” she suggested carelessly.

  Jennet shook her head. “They don’t even know,” she said.

  “They don’t know?” Frankie sounded incredulous. “They don’t know it’s your birthday? What kind of people are they?”

  “Well, you see,” Jennet explained, “I just didn’t think of telling them, I suppose.”

  He shook his head at her.

  “You are a queer girl.”

  “Haven’t you had any presents, or anything!” Betty’s eyes were round and shocked.

  Jennet looked surprised.

  “No, of course not.”

  “How awful.”

  “Now, children.” Mrs. Thompson quelled her daughters with a firm glance. “Jennet must cut her cake, but first she must blow the candles out.”

  “You must make a wish, Jennet,” Betty told her, “and blow them out all with one breath or it won’t come true.”

  Jennet stood up and stooped over the cake. In the flickering circle of light her face had an almost passionate intensity. There was only one wish for her. “Oh, please let me keep my friends. Please let nothing happen to spoil things...”

  The children watched with unblinking absorption. It was a solemn moment. Jennet took a deep breath and blew. An “Oh” of dismay went up from the children as sixteen little spirals of smoke rose from the candles, leaving one still burning brightly alone.

  “You won’t get your wish,” pronounced Betty with sorrow. “Oh, Jennet!”

  Jennet still stood, looking down at the solitary candle, and her eyes were suddenly scared.

  “Won’t I?” she whispered. “Won’t I, really?”

  Frankie leant forward and blew out the little flame. “What tommy rot!” he exclaimed. “Girl’s nonsense. Here, Jennet, cut the cake. We’re all famished.”

  He took her home before it was quite dark and she stood for a moment where they always parted, the china fawn clasped to her breast.

  “It has been the most wonderful birthday I’ve ever had,” she told him softly. “Thank you, dear Frankie.”

  He touched her face with awkward fingers.

  “You aren’t like any girl I’ve ever known,” he said, “you want so little.”

  “I’ve never had very much,” she said simply, and turned back to Pennycross.

  When Julian came for the week end her birthday wag discovered and everyone was most distressed that it had passed unnoticed. Julian insisted on a bottle of champagne in which to drink her health, and when he returned to London sent her an expensively bound edition of Pater. She wrote him a polite little note thanking him for his present, but she would never like it as well as Frankie’s fawn.

  They met one Saturday early in March at Pennytor for a picnic with the children. Emily, who now took these excursions for granted, saw her off with the injunction not to be late for tea as Julian would be arriving then.

  It was a mild hazy day, and after they had eaten their lunch they felt too lazy to go exploring with the children but lay in the shelter of the boulders, talking. Frankie had the same gentleness for her that he had for his sisters, and ashy protectiveness which made him constantly thoughtful for her. Jennet found him very endearing.

  “You have the strangest eyes,” he told her suddenly. “You stare at me sometimes as if you didn’t see me.”

  “I was always being told in the orphanage not to stare,” she said. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “Silly! It’s not a rude stare. That’s different. Does this Cousin Julian of yours ever say nice things to you—the sort of th
ings men say to girls, I mean?”

  “Cousin Julian?” She looked surprised. “No, don’t think so. He’s usually criticizing. He thinks I am very young and untutored.”

  “You are very young—like the little colts on the moor, or a fawn.”

  “But you make it sound like a compliment,” she told him shyly. “I don’t think Cousin Julian has ever paid me a compliment.”

  He frowned and pulled at a tuft of heath. “Crossed in love and soured for life I should think,” he said crossly.

  “Yes, he was—crossed in love, I mean,” she said, “but she didn’t sound a very nice girl, I must say. She threw him over when he got his leg smashed.”

  He rolled over on to his back.

  “Oh, well, don’t let’s talk about him. Sing to me.”

  She sang, and he lay propped on one elbow watching her. When she had finished he put an arm round her shoulders, and she rested her head against his breast with a small sigh of contentment.

  She sang very softly:

  “I’d rather rest on a true love’s breast,

  Than any other where...”

  He bent over and kissed her gently.

  She made her way back across the moor, caught in a spell of enchantment. As she neared the house she began to run for the sheer joy of the wind in her hair and the turf beneath her feet. She ran and never saw Julian coming to meet her until she was almost in his arms, then she stopped dead and the light went out of her face.

  “Hello!” she said flatly.

  “Hello!” he replied, and stood looking down at her with a thoughtful expression.

  He had been watching her long before she was aware of him, even before she had started to run, and for the moment he thought she had keen him and was running to meet him. He seemed to see her with fresh eyes, and he realized with a faint sense of shock that she was changing.

  He did not speak much as they slowly walked the rest of the distance to the house, and Jennet was very quiet.

  “Tired?” he asked her once as she stumbled over a root. “You’ve had a long day by all accounts, though I must own you didn’t look tired when you came running down the track. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so well.”