Orphan Bride

by Sara Seale

  “No,” said Jennet, “I’m not tired.”

  'But she was. When she had started to run she had felt filled with strength and a mounting desire to run and run, but reaction had taken her with startling suddenness at her meeting with Julian, and she was deadly tired.

  At supper she scarcely spoke a word, and when later Julian spoke to her rather sharply about some quite trivial matter, she burst into tears and ran from the room.

  “Good lord!” said Julian, as the door shut loudly. “What have I done now?” He saw Homer looking at him and said with a wry grimace: “You needn’t say it, Homer, I’ve snubbed before and never made her cry.”

  “Perhaps,” said Homer with irritating complacence, “it was a case of the last straw.”

  Emily looked up from her knitting.

  “Nonsense, Homer!” she said briskly. “You mustn’t take too much notice, Julian. The spring is a trying time for young girls, and Jennet is growing up, you know.”

  “So I’ve noticed,” he remarked dryly.

  “She’s probably been overdoing things with these long expeditions on the moor,” Emily went on. “I’ll speak to her tomorrow. In the meantime, if I were you, I should stop away for a week end or so.”

  “Perhaps I will,” Julian said slowly. It had hurt him out of all proportion to watch that instant quenching of delight when she had met him on the moor.

  The rest of the week-end passed without incident. Julian was more gentle than Jennet had ever remembered him, and she ashamed of her outburst, tried gallantly to make amends.

  When she said good night to him on Sunday evening, he remarked:

  “I won’t be coming down for a couple of weeks.”

  “Won’t you?” she said, wondering if she ought to be disappointed.

  “No. I’m giving you all a rest. I worry you, don’t I, Jennet?”

  “Me? Oh, no.” She sounded distressed. “I—I shall be very sorry not to see you.”

  He smiled.

  “You’re very polite. You mustn’t mind my sharpness. I know I’m pretty ill-tempered at times, but I’m quite fond of you, you know.”

  “Are you?” She looked surprised.

  “Go to bed!” He laughed,, and pinched her cheek. “And try not to dream of all the beastly things I’ve ever said to you!”

  He wrote to Emily saying that he would be down for the first weekend in April, and Jennet, who, despite the discomfort of spirit he often caused her, had missed his more frequent visits, was glad. She would ask him if she might bring Frankie and the children to Pennycross for tea.

  Julian arrived soon after four o’clock. He did not look pleased as he came into the hall and flung his coat and hat on to a chair. His dark face was set in forbidding lines, and as he limped into the living room, Emily, at least, realized he was taut with temper.

  “How are you, Julian?” she said, and he answered briefly:

  “Quite well, thanks.”

  “Good evening, Cousin Julian,” Jennet said.

  His eyes ran over her deliberately, and his mouth tightened.

  “I don’t think it is a very good evening, Jennet,” he replied. “Kindly tell me where you picked up this young man.”

  Emily looked startled, and Jennet felt herself go white.

  “Jennet doesn’t know any young men, dear,” Emily said, before she could answer.

  He made an impatient movement with his stick.

  “She may have lied to you, Aunt Emily,” he said hardly, “but I’m not going to have her lying to me. I repeat, Jennet, kindly tell me where you picked up this young man.”

  She stood, twisting her hands together, and answered in a small voice:

  “On the moor.”

  “Jennet!” Emily exclaimed, and looked at her more closely.

  Jennet turned to her quickly.

  “But I didn’t lie to you, Aunt Emily,” she said. “I would have told you if you had ever asked me but—”

  “But you took care not to volunteer any information of your own,” said Julian. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Since February.”

  “February!” He wheeled round on his aunt. “And you advised me to stop away, Aunt Emily, while all the time this—this affair was going on behind my back. Are you quite sure you knew nothing about it?”

  Emily regarded him calmly.

  “Aren’t you being a little unreasonable?” she asked. “I certainly knew nothing about it.”

  “Then you should have made it your business to know,” he replied shortly. “That’s what I brought the girl here for. All these expeditions on the moor—you might have guessed that the attraction was more than a sudden urge for the wide open spaces. I have to hear it from Cornish who, no doubt, has discussed it with the entire village. Who is this man, Jennet, and where do you meet him?”

  Jennet felt sick. Julian’s anger seemed out of all proportion.

  She tried to explain about Mrs. Thompson’s illness, and about the children, but under his bitter, uncomprehending gaze she faltered. Just as before she had been unable to speak of the children to any of them, so now she could not make them understand that it was not Frankie but the affection which stood for the whole family which she had wanted to keep secret and apart.

  Julian listened, sometimes putting in a sharp question, but for the most part his expression was one of grim disbelief until she finally faltered into silence.

  “Very worthy and unconvincing,” he said sarcastically. “And now, if you don’t mind, we will return to the young man. He made love to you, I suppose.”

  “Love?” Jennet’s eyes, enormous and bewildered, met his with pleading. “Frankie’s only a boy. He’s nineteen.”

  Emily got to her feet.

  “I think it would be much better if you left all this until after tea,” she remarked.

  “Go and have you tea, Aunt Emily,” he said, trying to control himself. “I mean to get to the bottom of this here and now.”

  Left alone with Julian, Jennet faced him in silence and waited miserably for him to speak.

  He leant heavily on his stick and said briefly: “Well, I’m waiting.”

  “What do you want me to tell you?” she asked.

  “I asked you if, this man had made love to you.”

  She looked bewildered. She had never thought of love in connection with their tender relationship. “I told you, Cousin Julian, he’s just a boy,” she said.

  He moved impatiently.

  “Even a boy of nineteen is capable of puppy love, he said harshly. “Well, answer me, please.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  His dark eyes were exasperated.

  “Don’t you know?” he asked impatiently. “Really, Jennet! I may have taken you straight from an orphanage, but you must have some sort of knowledge of the world. Did he kiss you, then?”

  She thought of Frankie and his young awkwardness in the heather. “I’d rather rest...”

  “Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, he did.”

  “And yet you tell me he didn’t make love to you,” he said sarcastically, and all at once his anger seemed likely to get beyond control. “Well, it’s going to stop, do you hear. You will stop seeing these Thompson people from now on, and if I think you are still meeting this youth on the moor, I shall tell Aunt Emily not to allow you out alone. Now is that quite clear?”

  The color rushed to her thin cheeks.

  “Oh, Cousin Julian, don’t stop me going there—please don’t stop me going there,” she cried. “It isn’t Frankie, it’s Mrs. Thompson, the children—and doing things for them. They’re my friends—the only friends I’ve ever made. Surely it’s natural to have friends—friends of one’s own age?”

  He looked at her with deliberation.

  “At your age,” he said, “you should have friends of my choosing. What do I know of every Tom, Dick and Harry who may scrape acquaintance with you? You’re only too likely to get mixed up with the wrong people if someone doesn’t check you. I
suppose you imagine you’re in love with this young fellow.”

  “No,” said Jennet, facing him squarely. “But if I were, why should it matter? It’s natural to fall in love, and I’m not a child.”

  He was silent for a moment, and the anger continued to mount in him. He felt cheated, as though she had deliberately tried to hurt him by attempting to lead a life that he had not ordered.

  “Very well,” he said “then we’ll agree that you were simply obeying natural instincts. But you’ve got to understand me once and for all. I took you away from Blacker’s, I’ve thought for you, planned for you, taken endless trouble to ensure the right environment for you. I’m not going to have all my plans upset by every ridiculous notion of independence you may get into your head. Is that clearly understood?”

  “No,” said Jennet in perplexity. “I never have understood why you’ve done all this, Cousin Julian.”

  “Because, you little idiot,” said Julian, both pain and temper goading him to the truth, “I mean to marry you myself. Now do you understand?”

  There was a long silence. Julian turned abruptly away and prodded at the fire with his stick, while Jennet stood perfectly still, staring at his back.

  “You—you’re going to marry me?” she said at last, and her voice sounded wondering, like a child’s.

  “That was my idea. I hadn’t intended telling you just yet, but perhaps it’s just as well you should know now.”

  “Does Aunt Emily know?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. She agreed to the adoption business purely for my benefit.”

  “Then when you came to the orphanage to choose one of us—you knew,” she said.

  “Yes, I knew—though, naturally, I scarcely told your estimable matron my intentions!”

  “Oh, no, no, no!” cried Jennet, and backed away.

  He turned then, and the anger had gone out of his face.

  “Is the idea so repellent to you?” he asked, a little bitterly. “Do you dislike me?” She shook her head. “After all, I can do a great deal for you, and marriage is as good a career to look forward to as any other.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, and she felt at that moment as young and inexperienced as he would have her believe she was. “I don’t understand why you, who must know so many women, came to an orphanage to choose a wife. It sounds crazy.”

  “Not so crazy,” he retorted with a sudden sardonic smile. “I haven’t been lucky with women to date. They expect too much, and give too little. It didn’t seem unreasonable to suppose that by using a little common sense one might select and achieve one’s own results. Now, do you understand, Jennet, why I’ve seemed to you critical, watchful? You’ve been a very important experiment to me.”

  She felt very tired and very bewildered.

  “But why—why did you have to pick me?” she cried.

  He smiled.

  “Perhaps because you were different from the others—perhaps out of perversity, because you didn’t want to come with me,” he said. “You didn’t, did you, Jennet?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder why. The orphanage can’t have been a very attractive alternative.”

  “When,” asked Jennet in a very small voice, “do you want to m-marry me?”

  “Oh, in a year or so, when you’re older.” He laughed and held out a hand. His anger seemed to have gone.

  “Come here.”

  She advanced slowly, and he put his hand under her chin, raising her face to his.

  “You are only a child, after all,” he said, and the firs hint of tenderness she had known in him touched his mouth. “Run away and forget all about it for another year.”

  Her eyes filled with tears and she began to tremble.

  “I’ll never understand you,” she said, and breaking away from him she ran blindly from the room.

  Julian suddenly felt he had been standing for a long time, and he sat down wearily by the fire and filled a pipe.

  He felt no inclination to join Emily and Homer at the tea-table, and presently they returned, Emily glancing at him a little curiously.

  “Where’s Jennet?” she asked.

  “Upstairs, I think. She was a little upset. I told her why we’d brought her here.”

  Emily considered, then she nodded.

  “Perhaps it was the wisest thing,” she remarked. “It’s best to grow up with an idea. That should stop this other foolish nonsense.”

  “That will stop, anyhow,” said Julian with a brief return to his old manner. “Jennet quite understands now.”

  Emily glanced at him over her needles.

  “I shouldn’t be too drastic, Julian. The girl needs a little change—and companionship!”

  Julian raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ll see that she has companionship—mine.” he said. “I’ll avail myself of that old invitation, Aunt Emily, I think, and when I come next week-end, I’ll stop for a week or so. Did you really know nothing about this affair?”

  “No.” Emily shook her head.

  “I knew,” said Homer. “I knew all along.”

  Emily looked at him sharply.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded, and added with a smile: “How could you know, Homer? You never go out.”

  “They told me,” he said quite simply.

  Julian smiled.

  “They tell you a lot of things after they’ve happened, don’t They, Homer?” he said with tolerant amusement.

  Homer looked at him over his spectacles.

  “You could have seen it for yourself, Julian, if you’d only looked,” he said gently. “There was something about her, you know.”

  Julian was silent, remembering the day he had met her running home. There had been something about her then.

  “How did she take your information?” Emily asked with faint curiosity.

  “I don’t know,” he said frankly. “She accepts things rather like a child, but whether she’s accepted me along with my lecture, I really don’t know.”

  “I don’t suppose, as yet, she understands jealousy as a motive for anger,” remarked Homer from behind his paper.

  Julian frowned.

  “My dear Homer, I was scarcely that!” he retorted.

  “Weren’t you?” said Homer.

  He peered over the top of his paper at Julian and observed: “You’ve become very fond of her, haven’t you, Julian? It’s a pity you won’t let her see it.” Then he began a long and rambling discourse on bee-keeping, until Julian finally knocked out his pipe and went upstairs to unpack.

  CHAPTER S I X

  To Jennet, the loss of Frankie and the children was more important than Julian’s extraordinary revelation. She lay on her bed after she had left him, the tears running slowly on to the pillow, and gazed miserably at Frankie’s china fawn. It was all she had now to remind her of those happy occasions. To marry, even to marry someone so unlikely as Cousin Julian was far in the future and might never happen, but to lose the only friend she had ever made, that was in the immediate present, and filled her whole horizon.

  It did not occur to her to question Julian’s action in any spirit of rebellion. She could still hear Matron's thin voice saying: “When you live on charity you have no rights to independence. Always remember that.” Jennet remembered and accepted.

  It was upon these thoughts that Emily entered with her cup of tea. She looked at Jennet’s tear-stained face and said briskly:

  “Sit up now, and drink this while it’s hot. Julian thought you might be glad of it.”

  “Cousin Julian?”

  Emily sat on the side of the bed, and nodded her head brightly.

  “He’s really very kind, you know, when he isn’t in too much pain,” she said. “You must always remember, Jennet, that Julian suffers a great deal. It makes him irritable.”

  “Yes, Aunt Emily,” said Jennet.

  Emily glanced at her curiously, wondering how much she had taken in of Julian’s proposition.

  “It wa
s very wrong of you, dear, to meet this boy on the sly, and say nothing to me about it,” she began. “But we’ll say no more, since Julian has spoken his mind, and I expect you understand now why he was upset. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “Not altogether,” Jennet said slowly. “Frankie didn’t want to marry me. He was my friend.”

  “Well, dear,” Emily said placidly, “Julian is your friend, too, and he does want to marry you. Perhaps one couldn’t expect him to understand.”

  But it was too much for Jennet to assimilate just then. Julian was charity. You couldn’t look upon him as a friend. “Frankie was different,” was all she said.

  Emily hoped that Julian, by his drastic handling of the situation, had not put silly ideas about the youth into the girl’s head, but men were very clumsy in most of their approaches. She decided to improve the occasion while she might.

  “You must remember, dear,” she said, “that if it hadn’t been for Julian, you would still be in the orphanage. You owe him a great deal, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Jennet, “I know.”

  “His plans may have come as a shock to you,” Emily continued in the soothing voice she only used to her dogs. “But there’s nothing really odd in his ideas. Very sensible, I think. After all, people come here and buy my puppies and then train them to be the sort of dogs they want to ... own. There’s no reason why marriage shouldn’t be regarded in just the same light. Don’t you agree?”

  “I don’t know,” Jennet said in a tired little voice. “I haven’t thought about it much.”

  “Well, you should. You’re seventeen now and are ceasing to be a child,” said Emily vaguely, not quite sure what she was trying to convey to the girl. “You don’t dislike Julian, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, try and fall in with his arrangements as much as you can. You’ve a long time before you as yet, but in the meantime get used to the idea that Julian is doing a lot for you, and you can repay him if you will.”

  “Yes, Aunt Emily,” Jennet said wearily, and Emily got up to go, satisfied that the right seed had been planted.

  “That’s a good girl,” she said, patting Jennet’s shoulder. She picked up the china fawn in passing and glanced at it idly. “I don’t remember this. Where did it come from?”