Orphan Bride

by Sara Seale

  Jennet started up on the bed.

  “Oh, be careful, Aunt Emily, please be careful!” she implored.

  Emily turned, still holding the fawn.

  “My dear child; I wasn’t going to drop it,” she said with surprise. “You really must learn a sense of proportion, Jennet. You appear to have far more interest in a china ornament than in your future.” She put the fawn back on the mantelpiece and left the room, feeling disturbed and out of patience with the whole affair.

  Jennet fell asleep from pure exhaustion, and only woke when Mrs. Dingle thumped on the door to tell her they were all at supper.

  She sprang off the bed and hastily set about making herself tidy. Julian disliked unpunctuality, and never before had she had to make a late entry into the dining room. But when she got downstairs, he rose at once, and pulled her chair out for her, settling her at the table with the same courtesy he always showed his aunt, and which until now he had never afforded her.

  The small attention disconcerted her, and she sat down dumbly, making no excuses, but the fleeting smile ho gave her put her at ease and gave her an unwonted feeling of warmth. His ill humor seemed to have gone, and although he made no direct attempt to include her in the conversation, she was aware that he made an effort to turn the talk away from all personal channels, and was grateful for the fact that for to-night, at least, they would ignore her.

  The week-end passed without further comment from anyone, and Julian, although he was alone with Jennet on several occasions, made ho other allusion to his plans. He enquired kindly after her health, told her that her singing was improving, and even paid her hands their first compliment.

  “You have charming hands, Jennet,” he said, holding them in his own and turning them over for inspection. “Now you see why I was so particular about them. Keep them like that, won’t you?”

  He made no reference at all to the Thompsons, and for him the incident was closed. He had no further interest in them and took it for granted that Jennet would fall in with his wishes in the matter. He left early on Monday, before Jennet was down.

  The week passed slowly for Jennet and at times she was very unhappy, thinking of Frankie. She remembered how she had rested against his breast in this very place, and the lines of the song came unbidden into her mind:

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

  Than any other where...

  She wept, not for Frankie, or even for the children, but for that lost felicity which had seemed so nearly within her grasp.

  She wrote to Mrs. Thompson, a stiff painful little note, explaining baldly that she was to marry her cousin, Julian, who did not wish her to continue the friendship. She could not write what was in her heart and she knew that she must hurt them. It never occurred to her to disobey Julian and go to see them.

  Once she saw the children at Pennytor. She would have turned away but they had seen her. They did not come running to meet her but stood staring at her without speaking, hand in hand.

  “Hello!” said Jennet awkwardly.

  “Hello!” they replied.

  There was a blank pause, then Jennet said rather desperately:

  “Is your mother quite well again?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Betty replied with rather unfamiliar politeness.

  Jennet knelt down in the heather beside them and looked up into their blank little faces.

  “I’ve missed you so,” she said softly. “You know I would come if I could.”

  Their eyes were accusing.

  “Frankie said we weren’t good enough,” Jo Anne stated in her deep voice.

  “Frankie said that?” There was a bitter hurt in Jennet’s voice. “You know that’s not true. But I have to do what I’m told the same as you have. Will you tell Frankie that?”

  Betty tugged at her sister’s hand.

  “We must be going back. Mum said if we saw you we weren’t to try and keep you talking.”

  “Oh, Betty!” Jennet’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s I who am trying to keep you. You don’t understand—you don’t understand what you all mean to me—how I miss you.”

  They stared at her with stony politeness. How should they understand?

  All at once she hated Julian for his interference, his unimaginative lack of understanding, and she thought of her birthday party, of the solitary little candle left burning on the cake, and the children’s cries of disappointment: You won’t get your wish ... no, she had not got her wish. Julian had taken that from her.

  “I mustn’t keep you,” she said quietly. “Will you take a message to Frankie for me?” They nodded. “Tell him—tell Frankie—” she turned away—“no, don’t tell him anything—just my love for all of you. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” they said, and sounded relieved.

  She watched them race off through the heather while she stood there already forgotten, then she turned and made her way slowly home.

  After all, Julian did not come down the following weekend. Emily thought on the whole it was wise. Jennet was very quiet and mopey.

  She returned quietly to the tasks Emily set her. “Julian will be pleased,” or “Cousin Julian wouldn’t approve,” were no longer phrases which needed explanation. He was the self-appointed arbiter of her destiny, and as such deserved consideration. She wrote to him, as she had always done, stilted colorless letters which painstakingly told him so little. She read diligently, looked after her hands, and even practised singing, for which at first she had no heart. Emily looked on with approval. A sensible child, Julian’s foundling. That little affair had not gone deep, after all.

  Towards the end of April, Julian wrote to say he was coming down by car since he proposed staying for a fortnight.

  It was still raining when he arrived and he grumbled good-humoredly about the drive down, but he had done it in easy stages, and seemed far less tired and irritable than usual. He tossed a package into Jennet’s lap, telling her they were the best chocolates in Fortnum’s, then, scrutinizing her face more closely, remarked that she looked pale and perhaps had better not eat them after all.

  She started to hand the box back, unsure of him in this more genial mood, but Emily laughed and said:

  “He doesn’t mean it, dear. The weather’s been so bad, Julian, she hasn’t been able to get out enough. But she’s perfectly well, aren’t you, Jennet?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Jennet politely.

  “H’m,” said Julian non-committally, but he continued to look at her with a critical eye.

  No one mentioned the Thompsons, but later in the evening Emily told Julian that she thought he had made a mistake.

  “She was fond of the children, I think, and the boy himself is only nineteen. I was afraid at first you had put foolish ideas into the girl’s head. She was very quiet and moony for several days, but I’m thankful to say it’s all worn off, and she’s been working hard to please you.”

  Julian raised his eyebrows.

  “Has she indeed,” he remarked. “Very praiseworthy. They’re not still meeting, I hope?”

  “Oh, no, I’m sure they’re not. The weather has been too bad for walks on the moor, and in any case, she is an obedient child and not given to questioning authority.”

  Julian smiled.

  “An orphanage training has its points, I think,” he said humorously. “Well, I wasn’t really worrying about Jennet and her embryo admirer. A couple of children, from all accounts, although, I gather not averse to kissing. But the child is curiously innocent—or is it ignorant? Anyway, a little judicious supervision won’t do her any harm.”

  Emily looked at him with surprise.

  “You’re really very old-fashioned, aren’t you, Julian?” she said. “I hadn’t quite realized.”

  His dark eyes were grave.

  “Am I?” he answered carelessly. “Perhaps that’s a result of my own rather modern upbringing—and Kitty’s.”

  Only yesterday, Luke had said much the same thing to him, walking into
his flat and remarking:

  “Well, Pygmalion, and how is your Galatea?”

  Julian had answered impatiently, and Luke had said with a grin: “You’d never get by with these old-fashioned methods if you weren’t dealing with a poor, downtrodden little foundling. The girl must be a natural!”

  But looking at Jennet after supper, her brown head bent over her knitting, he did not think she was downtrodden. He was hanged if he knew what she was. He had thought of her as a child, and yet she was not a child. He did not even know if she liked him, or what she thought about his proposal to marry her one day. He knew very little about her at all beyond her orphanage record.

  He moved impatiently, and she looked up, aware suddenly of his intent regard.

  “I didn’t know you knitted,” he said quickly, conscious of her faint embarrassment.

  “Aunt Emily doesn’t like me to be idle,” she said with quaint primness. “We all learnt to knit in the orphanage.”

  “Really? What are you making? It looks a rather alarming color.”

  “I thought it would be nice if she made a pullover for you, dear,” Emily said, pausing in her own work. “She chose the color herself.”

  “Good God!” he exclaimed, “you’d better turn it into a coat for one of the dogs, Jennet. I can see I shall have to take you in hand over the question of clothes.” He looked at the bright sweater she was wearing herself, and smiled.

  Jennet regarded him gravely, then resumed her knitting with care.

  “I didn’t think you’d like it,” she said calmly. “I don’t suppose I have much taste.”

  “I don’t suppose you have, either,” Julian agreed, but his voice was gentle.

  “You shall come up to London one of these days, and we’ll go shopping,” he told her on a sudden impulse.

  She looked up, astonished.

  “You mean you’ll choose my clothes for me?”

  “Certainly. Though you might not think it, I have excellent taste, haven’t I, Aunt Emily?”

  Emily smiled.

  “So you’ve always told me, and I believe you,” she said.

  Julian shifted his bad leg into a more comfortable position.

  “Well, that’s a future date,” he said lightly. “We’ll go round the West End and see what we can do. It’s time you took an interest in yourself, what do you think?”

  “You’re very kind, Cousin Julian,” Jennet said politely, and returned to her knitting.

  The weekend was wet, but on Monday the weather cleared and Julian suggested they go off for the day somewhere.

  “I’ll teach you to drive,” he told Jennet. “That’s an accomplishment you ought to have these days.”

  The lesson was not a success. Jennet was nervous and Julian impatient of mistakes.

  It was a bad start to the day. Jennet, sitting silently beside him, wondered what on earth she could find to say to him for the next few hours. He seemed at a loss for conversation himself, or else he just could not be bothered with her, and glancing at his dark, forbidding profile, she heartily wished herself back in the orphanage.

  They stopped at an inn for lunch, but the food and the service were poor, and Julian came away little better pleased. They drove across the moor in the direction of Widdecombe, where they were to have tea, and Julian stopped the car so that he could get out and ease his leg.

  “Your leg will get better,” she said shyly, walking slowly beside him. “You won’t always have pain, will you?”

  “My leg will never be right,” he replied shortly, “but certainly I hope I won’t always have pain.” He stumbled on the rough ground, and she instinctively put out a hand.

  “Let me help you,” she said, but he quickened his pace and said sharply:

  “I don’t need any help, thanks. I may be a crock, but I can still stand on my own feet.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, flushing, and widened the distance between them as they walked back to the car. It was only half-past three, but she was glad when, he suggested that they gave Widdecombe a miss and went back to Pennycross for tea. He had clearly enjoyed the day as little as she had. But when he stopped the car at the gates, he put a hand for a moment on her knee and said:

  “I’m sorry, Jennet; it’s been a dull day. I’m afraid I’m not very used to amusing orphans. We’ll try again some other time, shall we?”

  If Julian wanted to repeat the unsatisfactory performance, she had no choice but to agree, so she said, as usual:

  “Yes, Cousin Julian.”

  He gave an exclamation of impatience and watched her already edging away to open the door of the car and escape. “Lord, almighty!” he said, “I never knew anyone so acquiescent and at the same time so remote. You hated to-day, didn’t you? Then why in heaven can’t you say so? I shan’t eat you!”

  She swallowed nervously. It seemed so easy to annoy him.

  “You—you jump on me so,” she said. “I get confused.”

  He rubbed the back of his black head with an exasperated gesture.

  “You’d make the Archangel Gabriel jump on you if you stared at him with those enormous eyes and said: ‘Yes, Cousin Gabriel’ in that polite little voice.”

  The unexpected, engaging grin suddenly transformed her thin face.

  “But Gabriel was an understanding angel. He wouldn’t pounce. Now, if you’d chosen Michael—!” she said, and stepped out of the car and into the house.

  Julian admitted to himself that the day had been a failure, and it was largely his own fault, but that polite remoteness of hers had begun to pique him. He tried leaving her severely alone, and he tried drawing her out, but always she remained polite, acquiescent, and seemingly anxious to please, and he knew that whatever the real self was, hidden behind that docile facade, he had never seen it.

  “I can’t make any headway,” he told Emily irritably. “Sometimes I wish she’d tell me to go to hell and have done with it. I could shake her when she stares at me with those huge eyes and looks at me as if I’d slapped her.”

  “Well, you do, dear, quite often,” Emily said prosaically. “Figuratively, I mean. I expect you scare her to death at times.”

  “I don’t think she’s scared,” said Julian slowly. “I think she just doesn’t care one way or the other.”

  Emily blinked her surprise.

  “Why should she?” she asked mildly. “There’s no personal emotion in this arrangement of yours.”

  But Jennet was certainly not indifferent. Julian’s personality was too forceful and, at times, too uncomfortable for that. His interest often alarmed her more than his indifference, and she felt gauche and tongue-tied and thoroughly inadequate. There were times when she could see he was in pain and then she would experience that old desire to comfort and help. But she had learnt not to help him, even in small things. He preferred to fetch and carry for himself, and he expected no pity. He never mentioned his future plans, but he said to her once:

  “You will have to try and match your steps to mine, I’m afraid.”

  It was a reminder of the future, and she understood now why he would not let her learn dancing, why Emily’s suggestion of riding had not been encouraged, and why games, even if she had known any young people with whom to play them, had never been thought of.

  Julian, because he was conscious of failure, went through a period of intense irritability, when he found fault more, often than he praised, and defeated his own purpose by his unintentional snubs. He treated Jennet like a child, alternating between kindness and critical impatience, and because he never showed her the inner workings of his own mind, he knew little or nothing of hers.

  He continued to try to teach her to drive, but the results were so disastrous to both of them that he gave it up and arranged for her to have proper instruction from a Plymouth school of motoring after he had gone back to London. He discussed books and world affairs with her, and even superintended her singing practice. By the end of the fortnight, she began to feel driven, and her face wore a harasse
d expression which drew protest from Emily.

  “You’re driving her too hard, Julian,” she told him. “If you’re not careful the, girl will think of you only as a tutor and never as a husband. Her face is beginning to look quite pinched, and she’s not eating nearly so well as when you first came.”

  Julian looked startled.

  “I haven’t meant to drive the poor child,” he said remorsefully. “I thought I was putting in a good job of work. She’s so suggestible in many ways that I forget it may not always be easy.”

  Emily shook her head.

  “This moulding of another’s character to suit yourself can be dangerous,” she said shrewdly. “Take care that you don’t leave her none of her own.”

  Julian changed his tactics. He left her alone as regards her studies, but concentrated instead on her health. Emily’s remark had worried him, and he saw for himself that the girl was thinner, and that her eyes looked bigger than ever. He insisted on extra milk and earlier hours and, he watched like a hawk at meal-times to see that she finished every mouthful.

  Jennet soon thought that this kind of supervision was even worse and she began to dread, meals.

  The climax came one evening at supper. Emily had heaped her plate with spinach, and try as she would, she could not finish it.

  “Eat up, dear, we’re waiting,” Emily said.

  Jennet put down her fork.

  “You gave me too much, Aunt Emily,” she said in a defeated voice.

  Julian leant across the table.

  “Nonsense!” he said. “Spinach is good for you. Finish it up like a good girl.”

  Jennet raised her eyes to his.

  “I won’t eat it,” she said clearly.

  Julian’s eyebrows shot up and he looked amused.

  “Dear me!” he said, “I wouldn’t have dared say that to my nurse when I was a small boy. Come along, child, make an effort.”

  She suddenly got to her feet and picked up the plate of spinach, and for one moment Julian thought she was going to throw it at him.

  “I won’t eat it, do you hear?” she cried, and her face was quite white. “That’s all you are—a nurse, a governess. Eat your spinach, do your lessons, clean your nails! I’m not a child, do you hear? I’m seventeen and you treat me as if I was seven.”