Orphan Bride

by Sara Seale

  “Anything else?” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Isn’t that enough? Oh, I see. Well, we’ll see that you get a little judicious fun—at any rate, Luke will. He’s much more one for the gay life than I am. I think I might trust you to Luke.”

  She was silent and a little of the light died out of her face. Luke was certainly more fun that Julian if one wanted fun, but she wondered, not for the first time, if Julian never wanted it.

  “What do you do all day—except play the piano?” she asked him. “I’ve often wondered.”

  He looked amused.

  “How do you know I play the piano?”

  “I think you practise a lot of the day. You do, don’t you?” She wanted to tell him of her strange notion that he released the energy of his crippled body into his fingers, but only managed to say rather shyly: “It’s a kind of recompense.”

  He looked startled for a moment, then he said briefly: “Yes, it’s a recompense.”

  “Couldn’t you play as a career?” she suggested, but he shook his head.

  “Your flattery is pleasing,, Jennet, but I’ll never be in the first flight. I’m just a good amateur. Later—when they’ve decided one way or another about this leg of mine—I shall find a job of work, so you won’t have me idle on your hands, if that was what you were fearing.”

  “You could do other things with all your money,” she said slowly. “You’re quite rich, aren’t you?”

  He looked amused.

  “As your idea of riches go, perhaps. Well, what could I do with all my money, Miss Brown?”

  “Oh, lots of things. You could endow an orphanage, for instance. If I had money, that’s what I should like to do,” she said, suddenly serious. “I have theories about orphanages.”

  “Have you?” he asked idly. “What sort of theories?”

  “Well—” she sat up in bed, and her face was flushed and eager—“I would like to have one orphanage which was a home—a real home, where, although the children hadn’t parents, they had affection—real affection.” They do their best, these other places, but they’re too big. They can’t compete with all the little things that are so important to a child.”

  He looked at her with gentleness.

  “Yes, I see,” he said. “Affection—is that what you’ve missed, Jennet?” And he remembered Luke long ago saying to him: “That child needs affection more than she needs bread.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “We had a sort of rough affection for each other, I suppose. I think it’s when you’re older that you realize what you missed in childhood.”

  “Yes,” Julian said a little grimly, “that’s very true,” and she knew he was thinking of his own childhood. “Perhaps when you do without something for a long time, it’s hard to find the way back.”

  “I don’t think,” said Jennet, wrinkling her forehead, “one ought to find the way back. That’s what Uncle Homer’s done, and he’s got shut up in his little world. One ought to find the way forward.”

  “So much more difficult,” he said with a grimace. “But you’re talking much too seriously for an invalid, my child.”

  She did not know if this was Julian’s old trick of widening the gap, or if it was just his way of changing the subject, but the moment of intimacy had passed. She lay back in the gathering twilight, thinking how queer it was that she could so often talk to Julian when she could not see him very well. It was as if when he did not see her, he could respond to a maturity which he denied in the light of day.

  Presently he rose and said it was time she was settling down for the night. He stooped over the bed and felt her forehead with his usual nightly gesture, then tucked the blanket in and bade her sleep well.

  The Danes were never demonstrative. In all the months she had known them, neither Emily nor Julian had ever kissed her good night.

  CHAPTER E L E V E N

  The day before she was to go to London, Jennet stood on the top of Pennytor and knew a momentary piercing regret at leaving the moor. There was a poignant beauty in the mid-September day, with the turning bracken and the plum-like bloom on the distant tors, and down the coombs, far away, smoke from the village chimneys mingled with the spiral smoke of garden bonfires, spelling security and homecoming.

  Now that release from Pennytor had come she did not want it. Julian in his own environment would become critical stranger again. She wanted to remember him as he had been so briefly, call back the gentleness of those days when she was ill, and forget the vague promise of the future when, even to Julian, she would be a child no longer. The next few weeks held doubts as well as eager anticipation and she knew she must begin all over again to try to please him, in surroundings which would demand so much more care and thought. He had written to Emily outlining such arrangements as he had already made. The sittings were to start almost immediately, as were singing lessons. He himself would attend to the choice of clothes, acquaintances and amusements, and had already taken tickets for entertainments which he thought would prove of value.

  “You are a very lucky little girl having so much thought and trouble spent on you,” Emily had told her, after reading her nephew’s letter aloud. “See that you repay him well for his consideration.”

  Yes, thought Jennet, she was lucky. But she sighed. There was more freedom in the isolation of the moor than there would be in London under Julian’s watchful eye. She walked slowly and soberly home for tea. At Pennycross it was just another day. No one, thought Jennet without surprise as she went upstairs to finish her packing, seemed concerned with her pending absence, and probably no one would miss her.

  Indeed, Homer had forgotten that she was going, and it was only Emily who was there at the gate the next day to say good-bye when Cornish arrived with his taxi.

  “See her right into the train as you did before,” Emily told him briskly. “And send a postcard, dear, to let me know you’ve arrived safely. Good-bye, and don’t be a trouble to Julian or Miss Piggott.”

  “Good-bye, Aunt Emily,” said Jennet, hesitating. She would like to have kissed Emily, but was clearly not expected to.

  This time, Julian was able to meet her himself. She could see him waiting at the barrier. He was leaning on his stick and scanning the passengers, and every now and then he moved his shoulders impatiently as the crowd jostled him.

  Once in the car, he patted her knee, told her it was nice to see her again and she was looking much better. This evening she was to go to bed early, and to-morrow they would go out and buy clothes. She would like that, wouldn’t she?

  After a morning spent in and out of fitting rooms with Julian in attendance, criticising and rejecting, she was not sure that she did. He paid no attention to her own timid suggestions, and Piggy, sitting primly beside him, watched with a twinkle and agreed demurely with his decisions. He gave them lunch, and afterwards hurried them off on a fresh round of shopping. By the end of the day, selections had been made to his satisfaction, and fittings arranged. Everything should be ready by the end of the week.

  He even went with her to the hairdresser the next day, and gave his instructions, after which he went away, to Jennet’s relief. He was quite capable of sitting through the unbecoming process of washing and drying to make sure no error of judgment was made. In the afternoon he took her to Jeremy Pritchard’s studio for her first sitting.

  She liked the studio. It was restful after the long hours of Julian’s repeating:

  “No, no, that’s quite unsuitable...”

  “Stand still, Jennet, you’re throwing the thing out of line...”

  “Don’t fidget...”

  “Don’t stand on one leg...”

  “Don’t, don’t, don’t...”

  But Jeremy, too, proved difficult. He came to meet them in a paint-stained smock, his shock of white hair gleaming in the light of the studio, and exclaimed immediately:

  “Oh, good God, she’s been to a hairdresser! That’s not at all the effect I wanted.”

  Julian raised his eyebrows.
>
  “Don’t you approve?” he asked with surprise. “I thought I’d been quite clever, keeping her just as she was.”

  “She’s not as she was,” retorted Jeremy, ruffling Jennet’s newly set hair into fine disorder.

  “Nonsense! Don’t be so temperamental,” said Julian. “We haven’t altered the style.”

  Jeremy shrugged.

  “I can’t help it. I want her as she was that night. Bring her back next week when the barber’s art has worn off, and you, young lady, be kind enough to wear the same frock.”

  “I haven’t got it with me,” said Jennet, feeling nervous at so much personal discussion, but Jeremy commanded with a wave of the hand:

  “Then send for it. If it’s at the cleaner’s, get it back dirty, but get it, my child, get it.”

  “In that case,” said Julian with a grin, “we’d better go away and find some tea. Tidy your hair, Jennet, we can’t have an imitation of Jeremy’s style.”

  It was too early for tea, so he took her to the National Gallery, and discoursed painstakingly and with knowledge upon pictures. But when he demanded her own views, he dismissed them kindly as immature and lacking in judgment.

  It was the same with music. She was unable to give herself up wholly to enjoyment at the concerts to which he took her, for she knew at the end he would demand an intelligent criticism. She had no musical criticism in his sense of the word. Music had always filled her with delight, but it was not enough to tell Julian that Debussy made her think of moonlight, and Beethoven’s symphonies jollity and peasants.

  “You must learn to talk intelligently about music, he would say impatiently, and he would try to explain tempo and counterpoint until her untutored mind could receive no more and she became stubbornly dumb.

  He had arranged singing lessons for her with one of the best teachers in London. He made a point of seeing her every day and required from Piggy a close account of health and occupation.

  Sometimes Piggy would accompany them on their various pursuits, but more often she made some excuse and stopped at home.

  Once she said to Julian:

  “My dear boy, you are governess enough for three. You have no need of my supervision.”

  Julian raised an eyebrow and looked a little at a loss.

  “Am I governessy?” he enquired with surprise.

  Piggy smiled a little dryly.

  “You were always a very thorough little boy,” she replied ambiguously. “I remember you used to run your interests to death.”

  Julian ran a hand over his thick black hair.

  “It’s such a long time since I’ve had an interest,” he said apologetically. “But I shall be away for a few days next week. I’ll get Luke to take the child out on the razzle.”

  Piggy’s eyes behind her glasses were enigmatical.

  “Why don’t you take her on the razzle, as you call it, yourself?” she asked, her little pig’s mouth pursing.

  Julian laughed.

  “Oh, Luke’s the one for the gay life. I’m afraid it bores me. I’m a bit useless at a party these days, and frankly, I don’t want Jennet to get party-minded. What’s the use? Still, once in a while won’t hurt, provided I know who she’s out with.”

  “You’re more old-fashioned than I am,” Piggy told him with a certain grimness.

  Jennet had been in London nearly ten days before she saw Luke. He telephoned the morning that Julian went away, and at the sound of his gay voice, Jennet’s spirits rose.

  “To-night’s the night,” he told her. “Put on your prettiest frock and be ready at half-past six. We’re going places.”

  “Did—did Julian say I might?” she asked, and heard him chuckle at the other end of the wire.

  “Yes, the dragon said you might,” he replied. “What a model wife you’ll make, Galatea! I’ll be seeing you.”

  From the moment Luke entered the flat Jennet felt the old warmth flow back ill to her, and at the sight of his Laughing, wrinkled face, her own lit with pleasure.

  “How grand—how very grand we are!” he exclaimed, viewing her new frock with an appreciative eye. “You’ve grown up, Galatea, and your taste is perfect.”

  “Julian chose it,” said Jennet shortly. “Julian chooses all my clothes.”

  “Does he indeed? And is no longer Cousin Julian, I see. Well, well, well.”

  Luke turned to Piggy with some graceful remark which was answered rather shortly, then he swept Jennet off to his car.

  “Pigling Bland never really approved of me,” he said, tucking her carefully in beside him. “She thinks I’m a Shallow Charmer—she once told me so. She never got over the fact that I used to pinch Julian’s, toys when we were children.”

  Jennet laughed happily.

  “And did he let you pinch them?” she asked. “I should have thought Julian’s possessions were always sacred.”

  He glanced at her quickly and grinned.

  “Oh, you’ve discovered that, have you? But strangely enough he did in those days. He was always very fond of me.”

  It was a delightful evening altogether, Jennet thought, and for her, one of outstanding novelty.

  “Do you know I’ve never been to a theatre?” she confided to Luke, as they took their places in the stalls.

  He looked at her incredulously.

  “Oh, come now, my pretty ingénue.”

  “It’s the truth,” she insisted. “Orphans don’t go to theatres, and Julian has never taken me.”

  He settled back in his seat with much enjoyment.

  “But this is unique!” he said. “What Julian has missed—not taking you to your first theatre! I shall enjoy every minute of such a delightful experience.”

  She thought how different was Luke’s approach, explaining jokes, inviting opinions and taking such obvious pleasure in her enjoyment. Later, sitting opposite him in the fashionable restaurant which he had chosen for supper, she wondered why with him she should feel adult and at ease. He was the same age as Julian but he never made her feel gauche and awkward. He allowed her to choose her own dishes, encouraged her to smoke her first cigarette, and introduced her to his many acquaintances with a flourish which made her feel important.

  “You’re very unusual, you know,” he said, his bright blue eyes flickering over her with interest. “You sit there in your white frock like the good little girl at a party, and all the time I feel there’s mirth and a queer kind if wisdom behind that grave stare of yours. Are you really going to marry Julian?”

  She looked startled, and replied quickly: “Of course.”

  Luke looked amused.

  “Does he make love to you nicely?”

  Jennet sounded surprised.

  “He doesn’t make love to me at all.”

  Luke’s sandy eyebrows twisted sceptically.

  "Not? Doesn’t he even give you a proprietary kiss now and again?”

  “He’s never kissed me in his life,” said Jennet, and added irrelevantly: “Neither has Aunt Emily.”

  An odd expression crossed his face.

  “Julian and Aunt Emily—there’s not much difference for you, is there? I wonder who will eventually wake you up.”

  She regarded him gravely, aware of a faint, familiar stirring, and he added softly: “Someone will, you know. You’re sleeping, my sweet, but only because, like the princess in the fairy-tale, you’ve been shut up alone for a hundred years. Julian is making a dangerous experiment, but he always was a queer fish.”

  She said, lowering her eyes: “I owe him a very great deal—everything, I suppose.”

  Luke looked amused.

  “But not your heart, since he hasn’t asked for it. You’ll find you won’t want to owe him that.”

  He spoke lightly, but she answered with thoughtful seriousness:

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “No excuse; for what?”

  “For evading obligations.”

  “That sounds very virtuous and prim. After all, you didn’t ask to be picked for
Julian’s experiment.”

  “No—but that’s rather like the people who say they didn’t ask to be born. I mean, it doesn’t let you off living decently because you didn’t ask to be born.”

  “You know, you’re wonderful' copy,” he told her slowly. “You’re an almost extinct type, and Julian is another. I’d like to be there when someone applies the match to one or both of you.”

  She moved a little restlessly.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said. “Julian never talks like this.”

  Luke grinned.

  “I bet he doesn’t! How does he talk?”

  Her grin flashed out with enchanting suddenness. “He instructs,” she said demurely, and they both laughed.

  He took her home soon after that, but it was the first of several occasions. When Julian returned to London, he found them established as old friends, and Luke often made the third of a trio when he took Jennet out.

  “What you missed, my dear chap!” Luke told him on his return. “Did you realize that our Galatea had never been to a theatre in her life?”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” Julian replied a little shortly.

  “That was your misfortune, then. It was delightful seeing her reactions, and I must own I spent the evening watching her charming face instead of the stage”

  Julian felt annoyed with himself and annoyed with Luke. It was entirely his own fault that he had missed the pleasure of such an occasion, and the knowledge that Luke’s easy charm had probably added much to the evening’s success did not help to ease his irritation. When Luke further remarked that he had introduced Jennet to one or two friends who were anxious to renew the acquaintance at an early date, he said brusquely:

  “I’m not having Jennet careering round London with Tom, Dick and Harry. She understands that, and won’t, I think, accept invitations from anyone I or Piggy don’t pass.”

  Luke grimaced.

  “Oh, come now, Julian, you can’t adopt that line,” he said. “What’ll all your friends say if you play jailer like some Victorian parent?”

  “I haven’t the slightest interest in what my friends say,” Julian replied indifferently, then added with a rather grim smile: “Though I know very well, my dear fellow, you’ll make a good story out of anything and no doubt dine out on me and my foundling regularly.”