by Sara Seale
Luke laughed.
“How well you know me! But seriously, it’s an intriguing situation—as long as you don’t carry it too far.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that even a little orphanage nobody is a human being. How much do you truthfully know about the real Jennet?”
Julian smiled. He was used to Luke’s theorizing.
“As much as is good for me, I expect,” he replied carelessly. “And by the same token, Luke, don’t you try your merry tricks on my orphan. It would scarcely be fair.”
Luke’s grin grew broader.
“My dear chap, I don’t poach,” he said innocently.
“Don’t you? I seem to remember—” Julian left his sentence unfinished, but his glance was affectionate. Luke had never poached on his preserves—their friendship was of too long standing for anxiety on that score.
But he was piqued all the same by Jennet’s ease with him. Luke could extract from her a naive wittiness which he had seldom seen himself. She could state her opinions eagerly, but with a little sidelong look at Julian as if she expected a snub from that quarter, and Luke’s compliments brought a frequent sparkle to her grave eyes.
“Why don’t you leave her alone?” Luke asked him once, when after a concert they had dropped a silent Jennet at Piggy’s flat and turned into the club for a drink. “If Delius makes her think of lost causes, why not? Why snub the poor child for saying so? The trouble with you is you’re an intellectual snob, and you never used to be.”
Julian smiled reminiscently.
“Jennet once told me the same thing, only she put it in a different way,” he said, remembering their conversations in the orchard.
“I wonder she dared,” laughed Luke, “she has a most unwholesome respect for you.”
“Can respect be unwholesome?” asked Julian lazily.
“Yes, when it’s all you want,” Luke replied unexpectedly, then he leant forward and spoke with probing curiosity. “Is it really all you want, Julian? You didn’t demand respect from Kitty.”
Julian’s face became hard and wary.
“Kitty was just an emotional experience it was healthy to get out of one’s system,” he said.
Luke shook his head.
“And you think you’ve cured that—and earlier disillusionments by cutting out emotion altogether?”
“Perhaps.”
“And yet I should have said you’re very fond of your Galatea.”
Julian moved impatiently.
“Of course I’m fond of her. I wish you’d drop that ridiculous name, Luke—anyhow in front of other people.”
Luke grinned.
“All right, Pygmalion, have it your own way.”
Julian put down his empty glass and got up.
“I’m going home. Can I drop you?” he said, feeling suddenly tired.
Luke rose with him.
“No, thanks, the night is young. I think I’ll go and look up a friend whose husband is attending a city dinner.” He gave Julian a puckish grimace. “It’s a pity you haven’t more friends with husbands at city dinners. You’d be a lot more human,” he said, and sauntered away.
There came a period when Luke was engrossed in a new novel and for days at a time they did not see him. Julian and Jennet lunched alone, and sometimes he went with her to Jeremy’s studio and sat watching her for the greater part of the sitting. Those were always bad days, when Jeremy said her pose stiffened and lost the quality he was trying to catch. Julian made her nervous, and although he never interfered, she felt his unspoken criticism and wished he would go away.
Once, Jeremy threw down his brush impatiently and declared the sitting was finished for the day.
“Something’s happened to her,” he told Julian. “I don’t seem able to catch that quality that so attracted me. It isn’t there any more. What have you been doing to her, Julian? She’s always more difficult when you’re in the studio.”
Julian frowned.
“She’s probably tired. She wasn’t well not so long ago.”
“Are you tired, Jennet?”
Jennet, sitting stiff and discouraged on the model’s throne, shook her head dumbly.
“No, it isn’t that,” Jeremy said, his piercing gaze studying her. “It’s something quenched—that unconscious look she had when she was singing. Sing now, Jennet. Sing that little song about lambs.”
“Oh, no—not in cold blood!” said Jennet, and sent a dismayed look to Julian, who got to his feet.
“I’ll leave you,” he said quietly. “You may get on better without me.”
He limped out of the studio, and Jeremy sat down on the dais at Jennet’s feet.
“Is he the trouble?” he asked, and lighted one of his rank cigarettes.
“He makes me nervous,” she admitted.
“Well, we won’t have him at any more sittings in that case,” he told her. “Julian is a curious young man. He interests me. You both interest me.”
“You knew he took me from an orphanage?” said Jennet suddenly. She liked this old man with his penetrating interest in humanity.
“I had heard something to that effect,” he said, puffing clouds of acrid smoke over his shoulder. “A dangerous experiment—yes, a dangerous experiment.”
“Dangerous? For whom?”
“Perhaps for both of you. I don’t know.”
“I’m to marry him one day,” said Jennet naively. “Did he tell you?”
“So I understood.” His old eyes suddenly searched her face. “What was it in that song that was so important to you?”
She hesitated, trying to formulate the right words. “Comfort—kindness—a sense of belonging,” she said.
“Will you sing it again for me?”
She moistened her lips with a nervous tongue and began to sing, faltering at first, then with growing confidence. Halfway through the second verse, Jeremy went back to his easel and took up his brush. He did not speak when she had finished, but worked on absorbed in his canvas until she asked timidly if she might rest.
“Yes, rest—rest, my child,” he cried, flinging down his palette. “I’d rather rest on a true love’s breast ... Yes, it comes back when you sing. Run home, run home, and remember that felicity is to be found in the strangest places.”
She did not understand him, but then she often did not. He talked as much to himself as to her.
“Will it come right now?” she asked.
“Will it come right? Oh, the portrait. Yes, I think it will come right. Good-bye, child—the same time to-morrow.”
If Julian was annoyed at being excluded from the sittings, he made no comment, but only told Jennet not to let Jeremy tire her. He still accompanied her to her singing lessons, but now he would often leave before the hour was up. Occasionally she dined with him at his flat, and she would sing, afterwards listening while he played for her. Then he was kindly and uncritical, playing what she asked for, sometimes smiling at her choice with tender amusement.
She liked to stand at the windows of his quiet room when dusk descended, and watch the dim shapes of silent craft go up and down the river. Then Julian became again a voice in the shadows and she could talk to him. Once he came and stood behind her, and, with an unconscious gesture, drew her head back against his breast.
Her hands slid up to his resting on her shoulders, and he did not draw his own away.
“Julian...” she said, and stopped.
“Well?”
But she did not know what she had been going to say, and fell silent, watching the river.
“What did you want to say?” he asked above her head.
“I don’t know. They will be lighting the lamps at Pennycross now.”
His voice was a little surprised.
“You said that with nostalgia. Are you missing the country?”
“A little.” She laughed. “I never thought I would ever miss the moor—it used to frighten me. I think I must be bad at uprooting. I get used to places and people.”
She sighed.
“Yes, I’m even used to you.”
He laughed, but his hands tightened on her shoulders. “You’re even used to me! That has an ambiguous sound!” He suddenly turned her round to face him, and she could just see the expression on his face in the gathering darkness. “Are you still afraid of me?”
“I was never afraid of you. You just made me nervous.”
“Isn’t it the same thing? Jennet ... I’ve planned for you, thought for you, guarded you ever since that first day in the orphanage. Remember that, will you? You’re all I have.”
That seemed a strange thing for him to say.
“But you have so much,” she said simply. “Money, friends, a status in life.”
“You’re all I have,” he repeated a little roughly. “It’s nearly dark. We’d better have some light.”
She stood very still in the window while he moved about the room switching on lamps. It seemed almost as if, for the first time since she had known him, he was asking something of her instead of demanding. But with light suddenly flooding the room, the strangeness passed. Julian told her she had better get tidy for dinner.
In his bedroom, she found a thick packet of letters on the dressing table and recognized her own writing. She picked them up wonderingly, turning them over in her hands. They were all there, in their right order, those short, stilted little records of nearly a year. She took them with her when she returned to the living room.
“You kept all my letters,” she said, with such amazement that Julian looked up with a frown.
“Where did you find them?” he asked sharply.
“They were on the dressing table.”
He took the letters from her and tapped them carelessly in the palm of his hand.
“I must have forgotten to put them away. I was going through them last night,” he said.
“You were reading my letters last night?” she asked, her eyes enormous, and he replied a little irritably: “You needn’t look so staggered. It’s quite a normal occupation, to go through old letters in an idle hour.”
“They were very dull letters,” she said.
He smiled.
“Very dull!”
“Why did you keep them?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He got up and locked the letters away in his desk. “It was amusing to watch the improvement in caligraphy, if not in style. You don’t express yourself very well, even now, do you, Jennet?”
“You were difficult to write to,” she said. “It always took me a long time.”
He sat down again and viewed her with amusement.
“Why did you never write to me?” she asked.
He regarded her thoughtfully.
“I don’t know, Jennet, unless I had nothing to say that I thought would be of interest.” He had never satisfactorily explained to himself his reluctance to write to her.
“Anything would have interested me,” she told him simply. “You see, I never get any letters.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her.
“Is that the only reason?”
“Well, not the only reason. It would have made it so much easier to write back.”
“I see,” he said. “Well, when you go back to Pennycross, I must try and make an effort.”
“When am I going back?” she asked, quite prepared for him to say to-morrow or next week.
He answered carelessly:
“Oh, not till the end of October, or thereabouts, unless, of course, you get tired of London.”
But she did not think even if she were to get tired of London, he would let her go until he was ready. He had never consulted her in any of his plans.
“We might perhaps run down for a week-end and how they’re getting on,” he said absently.
“Yes, Cousin Julian,” said Jennet, and he looked at her, with surprise.
“Now why on earth have you gone back to that after all this time?” he demanded a little wryly.
She flushed and said apologetically:
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what made me call you that.”
But she did know. Julian in this mood was Cousin Julian again, and she a child awaiting his goodwill.
CHAPTER T W E L V E
By the middle of October, Jennet’s portrait was nearly finished, and she was sorry. She had come to look forward to her visits to the studio, and without Julian’s watchful presence she Could relax and enjoy her talks with Jeremy. She had grown very fond of the old man, and she responded to the affection which lay behind his wise understanding.
Julian would sometimes come and fetch her after a sitting. But Jeremy would not let him see the portrait.
“Oh, no, my dear boy! With your critical eye you would be wanting me to alter the shape of her nose or the color of her hair,” he said. “Don’t forget this is not a commissioned work. I’m doing it for my own pleasure.”
Julian laughed, but he looked a little disconcerted.
“My dear Jeremy! I shouldn’t dream of criticizing so eminent an artist,” he protested.
“Oh, yes, you would, when it has to do with your protégée,” Jeremy retorted shrewdly. “I suspect that you and I have a very different conception of Jennet on canvas.”
Julian raised his eyebrows.
“You alarm me! I shall begin to think you’ve conceived her in some futuristic style if you go on like this. What does the victim think of herself?”
“She hasn’t seen herself,” Jeremy said, and rubbed his hands together with delight at his own double meaning. “No, she hasn’t seen herself.”
Julian lingered on at the studio one day, reluctant to take Jennet away. There was a quality about her here in the failing light of the studio that he wanted to remember and call to life again. She leant against Jeremy’s shoulder with a naturalness that was wholly charming, and watching them both Julian thought that they should have been father and daughter, and he realized for perhaps the first time what Jennet had missed in life. He got to his feet abruptly.
“Time to go,” he said. “We’re dining out, and Luke is joining us.”
“Luke?” She had not known she would see Luke. It was a delightful finish to a pleasant day.
She went with Julian, curbing her eager steps to his slow progress down the stairs, and at the bottom he stopped and said surprisingly:
“You wanted to run, didn’t you? Run and jump down the stairs two at a time.”
“How did you know?”
“Every impatient nerve in your body told me so.”
She looked up at him, expecting to see the old bitter disgust in his face at his own crippled state, and she remembered him saying: “Don’t ever give me pity.” She did not know what reply to make, but his eyes, when she met them, held no bitterness, only a great weariness.
“Come along,” he said gently. “We shall be late for dinner.”
He seemed unusually silent throughout the meal and allowed Luke to take most leads in the conversation. Jennet, aware of a change in Julian, wondered if he was in particular pain. For a moment she resented Luke with his easy gaiety, and his sound supple limbs, and like Emily, she wondered why these two were friends.
“You’re looking sad,” Luke said. “Let me buy you some champagne. We’ll put it on Julian’s bill.”
He filled her glass and topped up his own and Julian’s. “To all orphans, especially Miss Jennet Brown,” he said, raising his glass. “I like her in white, don’t you, Julian? She has a very fragile, virginal air.”
Jennet was used to Luke’s audacities by now, but she glanced at Julian a little anxiously. He scarcely seemed to be listening, however, although he raised his glass to her with a smile.
People were beginning to dance, and Luke said, pushing aside his empty coffee cup:
“Well, what shall we do with the rest of our evening? Would you both like to come back to my flat, and have a riotous evening listening to the last chapters of my newest novel? Jennet might find
herself in it.”
Julian beckoned for the bill.
“I’m going home, if you don’t mind. I’m a bit tired,” he said. “Why don’t you two stay on here and dance?”
“Dance?” said Jennet, looking thoroughly startled. Luke sat back and said nothing, his bright eyes darting from one to the other of them.
“Yes, dance,” said Julian casually. “You’ve always wanted to, haven’t you?”
Jennet was silent, looking at him with a puzzled expression, but Luke said with charming gallantry:
“Well, that’s a privilege I’ve been waiting for for a long time. Come along, my pretty. Say good night to your host and haste to the ball.”
Julian did not wait to see them go on to the floor, but, without a backward glance, limped slowly to the door.
At first, Jennet was too occupied in following Luke’s unaccustomed steps to make any comment, then as she settled down to the rhythm and the knowledge that he was an expert partner, she wrinkled her forehead and remarked:
“I don t understand.”
“What don’t you understand, my sweet? My complicated steps?”
“No. Julian wanting me to dance. He’s never allowed me to before.”
Luke brushed his cheek against her hair.
“Well, he couldn’t keep up that attitude for ever. It wasn’t reasonable,” he told her.
“It was from his point of view. He can’t dance himself.”
“Isn’t that making him out rather a selfish monster?” She stumbled, and he held her more tightly. “Concentrate, darling. Take the gifts the gods send you and enjoy yourself.”
“I’m afraid of treading on your toes,” she said, laughing.
“You won’t tread on my toes,” he reassured her. “You’re a natural dancer. You only want a little practice. Don’t talk.”
She obeyed him and soon she found that concentration was not necessary. The delight of the dance took her, making her feel a little light-headed. Luke, at last insisting on a rest, laughed at her affectionately.
“You’ve taken to it like a drunk to drink,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “Perhaps Julian was right to discourage such an alarming vice!”
