Kissing Kin (19 page)

And because he knew now that he would have to tell her, some time soon, that it wouldn’t do, that she couldn’t possibly live there, that they had only been kidding themselves, and because he hadn’t the heart to do it yet and drive that trustful, shining happiness from her face, the look he turned on her was more than ever compassionate and fond, and Jenny dissolved under it into a blissful mist and caught at his hand beside the tray.

“It wasn’t that I
cared
where you came from,” she said
unsteadily
, clinging to him. “I mean, I only cared because it is part of you, and I’ve missed so much of you—if it was just a
manger,
I wouldn’t mind so long as it gave me you!”

“You mustn’t say things like that,” he murmured, surprised and shocked by what seemed to him like sacrilege in her vehemence. “I’m just a—just something the cat brought in.”

“Don’t you talk like that yourself!” she cried, turning angry in a breath as though some third person had belittled him. “I answered that once before, remember?”

“Don’t you stick out your chin at me!” he said delightedly. “Want to scare me into a temperature, or somepun?”

Jenny stood up and removed the tray from his bedside, still bristling, while he lay and grinned, and hope stirred
rebelliously
within him. She was so real, so down to earth, with him. If he got the commission—if he was a good pilot and got his name in the ace class—if he kept all his arms and legs till the end of the war—if Jenny went on feeling this way about him till the end of the war—if a miracle happened …

He might, he supposed, have dared to ask Camilla to marry him, if they had happened to fall in love. Just because Jenny was English was no good reason to treat her differently. Maybe they wouldn’t have to stay in Indian Landing for ever—maybe they could start a better business somewhere else—somewhere bigger—would Jenny like Buffalo? Or would it have to be New York? He wasn’t sure about tackling New York. It was a tough place to get along in. Or maybe he could get a job—like his father had always said he should—a big job building engines, designing engines, maybe—that paid—it would take more schooling than he had had, of course—night school—he’d done it before, he could do it again—he should have worked his way through some college, like his father had wanted him to, instead of tinkering all those engines—would Jenny wait—how long could he ask her to wait—she didn’t realize the difference between them now, but she would if she saw Indian Landing—over here, there was no way she could realize how and where he had grown up….

Raymond took a deep slow breath, and hope had its way. Get well first—get the commission—and then try to talk to Jenny again, try to tell her what it would mean to them both—
try to face her folks at the house called Overcreech—she had mentioned a father more than once, and said she was the only child. Come to think of it, he didn’t know so much about Jenny, except what you could see—except going by
Farthingale
and the presents they gave and the clothes they wore. Indian Landing was bound to be an awful come-down for Jenny. But she was real, Aunt Em would like her …

Get well. Get the commission. Get the war over. Then we’ll see.

Two days later it cleared and warmed up, and the gardens were full of slow figures in hospital blue, limping along the paths, riding in wheeled-chairs, sitting on cushions on the benches in little knots with a Sister’s white coif in attendance.

Raymond made his way with Jenny beside him from his room and down the staircase to his chair and sank into it with relief, quite willing that she should do the rest. She took him out the south door on to the stone-flagged terrace, from where they looked down to the river bank on one side and the formal paths of the sunken garden on the other, with a long lawn between. Jenny unfolded a small stool and sat beside him in the sun, and they talked foolishly for a while in a relaxed state of intimacy which was hampered in the room where the two sick, unheeding men lay.

“There’s Fabrice,” he said out of a companionable silence. “Who’s she got this time?”

“A new one,” Jenny sighed, watching the progress of a strolling couple in the gravel path below—the man on crutches, the nurse beside him with her hand on his arm, her face upturned to his.

“Wasn’ I lucky,” said Raymond, slurring his speech as he was likely to do in moments of emotion. “Wasn’ I lucky to get you for my nurse instead of her!” He smoked a moment, ruminating. “I’d of broken her neck for her inside a week,” he added, “even if I’d been half dead.”

Jenny laughed softly.

“I’m surprised at you,” she said, trying to look it.

“No, but honest,” said Raymond, “what does she think it gets her, to lay it on like that?”

“It gets her what she wants, usually,” Jenny reminded him, and he glanced at her under his lashes.

“Well, that’s all right with us,” he remarked. “Isn’t it?”

“It most decidedly is,” said Jenny, and touched his hand briefly. “Darling—I want you to know. I’m not in love with you because I lost Gerald. I’m in love with you
in
spite
of losing Gerald, which is much harder. And I’d be in love with you even if I hadn’t lost Gerald, and wouldn’t that have been a mess!”

“You would?”

She turned her face to him in the sunlight.

“You know I would.”

It was the sort of cue, though unconsciously given, that the men of her acquaintance would have risen to with appropriate gallantry and an apt reply. Raymond, being deeply moved, allowed it to pass in silence, his eyes on the figures below them, all near enough for recognition but far enough to be out of earshot. And when he spoke it was with the exasperating irrelevance she had learned that he used to cover his own emotion when it had got too much for him.

“Which one is the duke’s daughter?” he asked.

“Wh-what?” said Jenny stupidly.

“Camilla said one of the nurses here was a duke’s daughter. I’ve always wondered which one she was.”

“Why?” groped Jenny.

“Well—I was interested. She’d come next below a princess, wouldn’t she?”

“I—suppose so. A long way below.”

“Do you know her?”

“Pretty well,” said Jenny helplessly.

“Will you point her out to me some time?”

“You might be disappointed.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s—only me,” said Jenny apologetically.

There was no sound at all from him, but the impact of his realization drained the colour from his face and froze on to it an expression of sullen resentment. At last his eyes turned from her slowly, out across the gardens, as though she was no longer there.

“I—thought you knew that,” said Jenny, and her voice sounded small and hurried in his silence. “It didn’t occur to me that you didn’t. That is—Father was at the Christmas party—I thought you knew he was my father.”

Raymond got out a cigarette and lighted it lefthanded with the lighter which was a present from Virginia. He used it with the carelessness of habit now, but with a still unfailing
satisfaction
. He said nothing. He felt sick with shock and the necessity to revise a number of ideas very swiftly without letting it show on the outside.

“Raymond, what’s the matter? I didn’t mean it to sound as though I was trying to—to play a joke on you, or anything, I honestly didn’t know you hadn’t got it straight. It’s not
important
, anyway, why do you—why on earth are you so angry?”

He made a move as though to rise, and she laid a quick hand on his shoulder, holding him in the chair.

“Please don’t get up. if you walk into the house they’ll notice and ask questions. Why are you like this? Raymond,
look
at me, I don’t understand—”

He looked at her remotely, from a great distance.

“I’d like to go back to the room,” he said.

“But we can’t talk there—”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“But—
why
does it matter to you so much?” she cried, bewildered. “It’s no crime in this country to be a duke’s daughter, it’s done every day!” She flung out both hands in a little funny, futile gesture, trying to laugh into his rocky face. “Can’t you ever forgive me?”

“For not telling me who you are? No.”

“But why
should
I
tell
you, I’d have felt an awful fool
suddenly to say, out of the blue, By the way, I’m Apethorpe’s daughter. There’d be no point in that, why do you
mind
so much?”

“You let me fall in love with you.”

“
Let
you! Well, I like that! I fell in love myself! What’s that got to do with it?”

“The girl I fall in love with, I want to be able to ask her to marry me. She might say No, because I had a dud arm, or because she didn’t want to live in a place like Indian Landing. But at least I could ask her.”

“Well, go ahead and
ask
her, and see what happens!”

He turned from her again silently, letting out a gusty sigh of smoke, looking out across the gardens, waiting to be allowed to return to the sanctuary of his bed.

“Is it because you think my father’s got a lot of money and you haven’t?” Jenny asked anxiously. “Because a title doesn’t mean money any more, you know. Actually, we’re poor as church mice, and after the war we shall probably have to let Overcreech the year round and live in a pokey flat in London. Nobody’s going to mind if you’re poor. I’m poor too.”

“You don’t understand,” he said wearily, not looking at her.

“No, I don’t!” cried Jenny. “Please try to explain!”

He turned to her then, squared round to face her, not touching her, half a world between them.

“Listen,” he said quietly. “Listen, now, and let’s not talk about it again. Indian Landing is a one-horse town that nobody ever heard of. My father kept the livery stable and feed store, and I had a machine shop at the back. A little while before he died we put in a gasoline pump and I began to do automobile repairs. We were going to open up a garage annex. We’d bought the land, and we’d ordered the lumber to build when he died. I gave up the idea and went into the army. When I go back I expect to build that garage, the way we planned it, and operate it the best I can without him. The house we lived in is mine now, a little way down the street, and Aunt Emma is still there to cook my meals and look after me. We haven’t got even
one maid, we never could afford to hire any help for her. The house has ten rooms and a bathroom, and we wired it for electricity ourselves a few years ago. It’s pretty old and by the time I get back it will be all out of repair. I’ll have to work on it myself, my father taught me how to do things, I don’t have to call in the plumber and the carpenter and so on. You see—if I’m ever going to get anywhere beyond that garage I’ve got to go back to school when I get out of the army. I want to design and build engines, but I don’t know enough, I have to learn more mathematics and a lot of things you never heard of. It would be years before I could give you a better house, or a good car, or the kind of clothes you’re used to. You’d be the wife of a common garage mechanic in greasy overalls, if you married me, how long would you last at that?”

“For ever,” said Jenny, looking down at her hands in her lap. “If you wanted me.”

“You haven’t got any idea what you’re talking about,” he said roughly. “It was crazy enough, anyway, when I thought you were just anybody, like Camilla or—or Virginia. I let myself be that crazy, against my own judgment—I tried to think that when I got my commission and did some flying it might be all right. But I knew better all along. And I know better now, and so do you.”

Bright tears were dropping down on her clasped hands in the sunlight. She kept her head down, unable to speak.

“Don’t cry,” he said more gently after a moment. “I’m sorry I spoke so harsh, but I don’t like to feel like a fool.”

She drew a long, shaky breath, but made no other move.

“There’s no reason for you to feel like that,” she said. “
I
knew who I am, all along. It doesn’t make any difference to
me
.”

“It does to me.”

“You see, I don’t—care where I live,” said Jenny through quivering lips, “if you’re there too. I don’t care what I wear. I’ll learn to cook and be a help to your Aunt Emma, and I could learn to make my own clothes. You wouldn’t have to be ashamed of me, I could learn.” And when astonishment left
him silent she hurried on, looking down at her glistening fingers. “This is me, Jenny Keane, without my ducal pride—asking you to give me a chance to go on loving you. When this war is over, if it ever is, dukes aren’t going to matter, there won’t be any big houses like Overcreech left to us, death duties will take them all—nobody’s going to care whose daughter I am, and we needn’t tell them in America, nobody would have to know.”

“But, dear—” And at the old loving note in his voice again she raised her face, shining with tears, piteous with hope, and his heart turned and cramped inside him and he threw away the stub of his cigarette because the hand that held it was shaking. “—can’t you understand, it’s because of
you
that I can’t do it, you couldn’t live like that, I couldn’t ask you to.”

“What’s wrong with living like that?”

“You aren’t used to it, you couldn’t—”

“I wasn’t used to amputations and bed-pans and people dying in my hands, when this war began. But I am now. I’m used to being a nurse. After that you can’t scare me with Indian Landing! And I don’t care if it’s the outskirts of hell, I’d be with you!”

“Oh, poor Jenny,” said Raymond, making no move to touch her, and she gave him her tear-wet fingers clasped tensely round his.

“Don’t hold it against me,” she pleaded, trying to smile. “I know you think I’d be useless and homesick and an expense, but I wouldn’t. If we were hard up, I’d get a job while you went to school—everybody’s going to have to get a job when the war is over, nobody’s going to have any money. I wouldn’t be a nuisance, truly I wouldn’t!”

He sat a long moment looking down at her hands on his. Then he said slowly, “Do you remember one night at
Farthingale
while I was sick there, Virginia came in with a letter she’d just got, and told about that fellow who had married some girl out of a tea-shop? And you both said how it wouldn’t do, because she didn’t even know how to speak right, and how upset his family was because he’d thrown away his prospects?”