Orphan Bride (17 page)

But her tears were now the tears of relief. She could not stop crying.

“It wasn’t,” she said. “You didn’t understand, and I couldn’t explain.”

“Well, never mind. I did understand, and I
’
m sorry you’ve missed your friend so much. I expect that’s what got my goat, really.” He stroked the wet head pressed so close against his breast.

“No, it wasn’t that. That’s what you didn’t understand.”

“No? What was it, then?”

But she sighed and could not tell him. She was so tired, and he so strangely different. Peace and a sense of home-coming filled her and she rested against his breast, and her tears ceased.

“It’s like the song,” she said.

“The song?” Her forehead was burning despite her chilled body, and he wondered if she was a little lightheaded.

“ ‘No man shall uncomfort thee.’ The last verse,” she said. “That’s what I’ve always thought it meant, but not you—never you. The fawn was
part of it, too—that’s why I minded so when it was broken.”

He laid a hand for a moment on her forehead.

“Don’t try and puzzle it out now,” he said, feeling a little anxious. “We must try and find our way back and get you into a hot bath. You won’t be afraid to move now I’m with you, will you?”

She drew away out of his arms.

“No
,
” she said, and a violent fit of shivering took her. “I’m not afraid now.”

Homer was back with his search-party when they got back and Mrs. Dingle stood at the door giving instructions. When she saw Jennet, she hugged her, crying:

“
Yo
u
poor little toad! You’m leakin’ wet! I’m sorry I broke your old china trade, but, there, ’tes done, and
w
hat’s broke can’t be mended, leastways not often.”

Jennet began to cry again.

“And you won’t really leave?” she sobbed.

“Of course I won’t leave,” Mrs. Dingle asserted with mock indignation. “There’s no woman on the moor but me would stay in this mazed house for long, come to that.”

Julian thanked and paid the men for their trouble, and Mrs. Dingle took them off to the kitchen for tea and pasties. Emily came hurrying to the door and drove Jennet inside.

“Really, Jennet,” she said, “for one usually so tractable, you’ve caused a lot of trouble. Homer trudging to the village and back at his age, and Julian with his leg. You should have come back the moment you saw fog coming up, as I’ve told you many times before. Rushing out of the house on a day like this with no coat just because of a little
u
pset—”

“Not now, Aunt Emily,” Julian said quietly, “Whisky, hot milk and bed at once. I think she’s got a chill.”

Most of the night he sat up with Jennet, stoking the fire, and listening to her disjointed little sentences which sometimes made sense to him, but more often did not. By the morning he looked worn out with pain, but Jennet was sleeping, and the bright marks of fever had faded.

“She’ll do till the doctor comes,” he said, looking down at the bed with weary but still watchful eyes. “We should have got him out last night, somehow, despite that damned fog. I’m rather afraid of pneumonia.”

“Go and rest,” Emily said gently. “There’s nothing more you can do, and I think she’s going to be all right. Humans are very like dogs. Sleep and warmth soon put them right.”

Old Dr. Smale came after breakfast, stated that his patient had narrowly missed pneumonia, but once the effects of shock and a bad chill had worn off, she would soon be about again.

“She’s run down—needs a change, I should
say,
”
he told Emily. “Ought to meet more young people. She’s mopey.”

“But there’s no serious trouble, is there?” asked Julian, frowning.

“None at all. Just run down as I said,” the doctor answered brusquely, and turned back to Emily. “Get her away for a bit. You’re very isolated out here. Give her some interest—let her train for a job or something just to give her occupation.

“Well, Jennet’s future is really settled,” began Emily brightly, and Julian broke in smoothly:

“I think Doctor Smale is probably right. She needs a change.”

The doctor shot him a look as if he would have liked to have said: “What the devil’s it got to do with you?” He did not like Julian, whom he considered a high-handed and arrogant young man, and if he had not long ago dismissed him as a cold fish, he would have suspected that he had been upsetting the girl by making love to her.

He addressed himself entirely to Emily, ignoring Julian, gave instructions and wrote prescriptions, and bustled off saying he would look in after a couple of days.

“Keep her quiet,” he flung back over his shoulder. “I seem to remember my patient had a slight upset before when this young man was staying in the house.”

“Hates my guts, doesn’t he?” grinned Julian as they watched the doctor hurry to his car. “That was a nasty parting crack of his. I believe he thinks I have designs on the child!”

Emily smiled, then looked tired. The situation did not always seem as simple as it had at first appeared to her.

“Where will you send her?” she asked. She had long ago given up the pretence that it was she who made plans for Jennet.

“Well, I think it’s probably a good time for that postponed visit to London,” Julian replied. “Jeremy will be back in town in a week or so, and he can start the sittings. Aunt Emily, does she ever talk about that young man?”

“What young man?” Emily looked bewildered. “Jennet doesn’t know any young men.”

“That young boy she picked up on the moor.”

Emily laughed.

“That boy! No, never. I imagine she’s forgotten him.” Julian traced a pattern on the carpet with his stick.

“I wonder if I made a mistake in forbidding that friendship,” he said slowly. “I wonder if I made a mistake in isolating her so much.”

Emily looked at him oddly. It was unlike Julian to have doubts about anything.

“
Well,” she said uncertainly, “she will have to stand on her own feet one of these days. You can’t keep her wrapped in cotton-wo
o
l for ever.”

He looked up.

“I can keep her in cotton-wool, as you call it,
until I marry her,” he said.

“And then?”

“And then—well, things will be different,” he said obscurely.

Emily glanced at him curiously.

“What put the boy into your head again?” she asked. “That was all so long ago, and never really amounted, to anything.”

“Something she said about that china atrocity that got broken, but I think I jumped to the wrong conclusion,” Julian replied. “She talked a lot last night about the ornament being a symbol, and about a song called ‘Searching for Lambs’ that she sings sometimes. But she never talked about the young man. Well, I think I’ll go and sleep for the rest of
the day, Aunt Emily. Call me if I’m wanted.” She watched him leave the room and heard the slow, painful drag of his
foot on the stairs. It had been a gruelling twenty-four hours for him, but, curiously enough, pain had not made him irritable.

Jennet awoke from her sleep and la
y
in that pleasant lassitude which is the aftermath of a high temperature.

The fog had lifted, but no sun shone, and staring at the fire, she imagined herself back on that other occasion when she had lain in the tester bed and Julian had sat beside her. Then it had been April, Frankie was still a painful memory, and she had nearly thrown a plate of spinach at Julian.

So much and yet so little had happened since then. She and Julian had had those queer conversations in the orchard, their companionship had grown and dwindled according to his moods. Sometimes the gap widened so that she stood far off, a child waiting for chiding or approval. Sometimes, as yesterday, it was so narrow that she
f
elt she could leap across into certainty and understanding.

She and Julian
...
she and Julian
...
how everything returned to that. Never, she thought, had any one lived so solitary a life, dependent
o
n one person, and one person only. Yesterday she had lain against his breast, and he was not Julian, but some other stranger who was
yet no stranger. To-day he would look at her
with critical eyes and she would be a child again, awkward and to
n
gue-tied
.

Emily looked in at seven with a hot drink.
“
Time for temperatures and medicine,” she said, shak
i
ng up the bottle vigorously. “How do you feel?”

“Much better, thank you. My headache’s nearly gone. Aunt Emily, I want to say I’m sorry for making a fuss—about the fawn, I mean.”

“Yes, well
—
” Emily sounded non-plussed. She never
had been sure what all the storm was about. “It was all a
l
ittle misunderstanding. Mrs. Dingle is sorry, too.”

“And she’s not leaving, is she?”

“
No, she’s not leaving, though, I must say, Jennet, if she
had
it would all have been a little unnecessary, wouldn’t it? But there, the weather had been trying for all of us, and Julian, though he doesn’t realize it, doesn’t always make things easy in the house.”

“Where is he?” asked Jennet
.

“Sleeping, I hope,” said Emily briskly. “Don’t you
know he sat up with you nearly all night?”

“Did he?”

Jennet’s impressions of the night were confused. She
remembered someone stoking the fire, and stroking her
forehead when the
p
ain was bad. Well, of course, Julian understood about pain. She should have known those firm, authoritative fingers were his.

Emily glanced at her sharply, mistaking confusion for indifference.

“I don’t think you probably realize what a strain you put Julian to,” she remarked a little severely.
“
He looked positively grey this morning.”

“Oh
...
” It was a soft little sound full of compassion and a child-like wonder.

“I hope,” continued Emily with a severity she did not really feel, “you don’t go upsetting Julian. You owe him a great deal of consideration, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” She smiled suddenly. “I don’t mean to upset him, but he does pounce so, and then it’s often too late to explain.”

Emily looked at her suspiciously. Surely the child wasn’t laughing at Julian?

“Well, you’d better not talk any more. You’re looking flushed. Good night, my dear. H you want anything, just ring your
little hand-bell.”

“Good night, Aunt Emily, and please say good night to Julian for me.”

But Julian came himself to say good night.

He stood by the bed, leaning on
hi
s stick in his familiar attitude, and rested a cool hand on her forehead.

“
Head better tonight?” he
asked.

“Much better. Aunt Emily says you stayed up with me all night,” Jennet said. “It was very good of you.”

He smiled.

“Don’t you remember?”

“I remember someone stroking my head. It was
w
onderful.”

“The pain was bad last night, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it was.”

Her eyes seemed much too big for her face and the delicate skin still bore the dark smudges of exhaustion.

“Pain can be hell, can’t it?” he said simply, so that she was able to say a little timidly
.

“And you—your leg. Was it bad today?”

“So-so,” he replied non-committally, but he did not shy away from her compassion as upon those other occasions.

“I wish,” she said shyly,
and caught his hand, “I could do something for you, too.”

He looked at her, a little at a loss for a reply, then he gave her fingers a squeeze and gently covered her hands with the sheet.

“Perhaps you can—some day,” he said, and straightened his back. “Well, go to sleep now. I’m off to bed myself. Good night.”

“Good night, Julian, and thank you
.”

They were pleasant days of drifting, those days upstairs in the room which was now so familiar. Julian wandered in and out, and often she slept while he sat and read and woke to find him watching her, his book o
n
his knee.

One day he went up to London for the night, and returned with a neatly packed parcel which he tossed on to the bed. Inside the wrappings, carefully padded wi
th
cotton-wool, was a beautiful little model of a fawn in
blown-glass.

“Not, I’m afraid, in any way a substitute for the other,” he said, “but I hope the symbolic, mantle will attach itself just the same.”

Jennet lifted the fawn to the light, holding it with careful fingers. No, it was scarcely a substitute. It was the most exquisite and fragile thing she had ever seen.
I
t was not Frankie’s fawn, but it might still be a symbol, a symbol she would recognize one day
.”

“
It’s perfectly beautiful,” she said with
awe.
“Thank you so very much,” she went on. “Did you up to London especially to get it?”

“Not really. I had various matters to attend to,” he answered casually. He seemed pleased and in some
queer
way relieved that she liked his present, but he never asked
her anything more about the china fawn, and perhaps she could not have explained if
he had.

He brought her messages from Luke and
Piggy and told her they were both looking forward to seeing her in London.

“In London?” she asked, her th
in
cheeks flushing.

“You haven’t forgotten you’re to be painted by one
of our most eminent artists, have you?”

“
No. I thought you had.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I told you we would wait for the autumn. Now old Smale has recommended a change, so it all fits in very well
.”

She gave a little wriggle of excitement.

“So you like
the idea, do you?” Julian remarked.
“
Been stuck out here on the moor too long?”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” said Jennet quickly, “but I love the town and—and people round me and—I can’t explain.”

He grinned at her.

“There are all sorts of things you can’t explain, aren’t there, my fou
n
dling?” he said.

He had never called her that before and it gave her an odd sensation, as though he had gone to the Battersea Dogs’
Home and bought her for five shillings.

“I’ve arranged
everything with Piggy who’ll have you as a P.G. and keep an eye on you when I’m not there to do it myself,” he continued. “There’s going to be no gallivanting with una
u
thorized persons, mind, and you’ll have plenty to do. I promised you good singing lessons, didn’t I? With Jeremy’s sittings and odd concerts and things, you’ll be pretty busy.”

“Yes,” said Jennet. “And will I do anything else?”

“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 j
u
st 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. “Af
f
ection—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
li
ght 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
i
n and bade her sleep well.