Orphan Bride (22 page)

She knew the old desire for affection, the urge to give and to receive, not from Luke himself, but from some nebulous being only half-conceived, and he felt her tremble beside him.

“Darling, let me teach you these things,” he said quickly. “Give me the right to help you discover those delights which make life so eminently desirable.”

“No,” she said, and drew away from him a little. “No.”

The car stopped in front of Piggy’s flat, and L
uke
touched her cheek with caressing fingers.

“You won’t always be content with your bondage, you know,” he told her. “You, like every other creature, have a right to independence.”

“Blacker’s didn’t teach independence,” she said slowly. “Only a debt to charity. Julian is charity now.”

He looked at her curiously, not at all piqued by her
lack of response
.

“He has an extraordinary influence over you, hasn’t he?” he said. “Are you really so grateful to charity, or can it be, my sweet, that you’re a little in love wit
h
him?”

“No,” said Jennet bleakly as she had answered before, then more violently: “No!”

The warmth and well-being seemed gone from the evening, and even Luke was a stranger.
“Good night,” she said, and her voice sounded lost and», bewildered. She could not even remember to thank him.

“God bless
...
” he said softly, and watched her fumble a little with her latchkey before she slipped inside the house and shut the door gently behind her.

She was glad to see Jeremy again. With him all doubts retreated, and she knew a great sadness that after to-day
,
she would come to the studio no more.

“But of course you will,” he told her. “You are not
j
ust a sitter any more. You’re a friend, and. I hope will
call upon me whenever you like.”

Jeremy had laid down his brushes for the last time and Jennet was stretching on the dais when Julian’s dragging footsteps could be heard on the stairs. Jennet had a queer impression of Luke’s swift passage, light and eager, symbol of his free, untrammelled body, and she turned to Julian in
the doorway, compassion and a fierce resentment at the strong limbs of other men, in the swift, unconscious gesture she made towards him.

Jeremy was watching her, and his eyes went to Julian, who touched her hand in passing, giving it a little shake of greeting.

“And now
,
” the old man said, rubbing his hands to
g
ether in anticipation, “I suppose you want to have a view.”

Julian smiled.

“
Am I allowed audience, now?” he said, limping over to the easel.

“Yes, you’re allowed audience now.” Jeremy took the drape from the portrait.

It was very quiet in the studio. Jennet still sat on the model’s throne, her
e
yes on Julian’s face. He was silent for so long that she gave a little nervous cough, and Jeremy, watching him shrewdly, said:

“You see I was right when I said that you and I would see her differently.”

“Yes,” said Julian slowly, his eyes never leading the portrait. “Yes, you were right.”

Jeremy chuckled.

“You don’t like it? It’s not your conception of her?”

“It wasn’t my conception of her.” Julian, leaning rather heavily on his stick, paused, then stated brusquely: “I like it very much. I want to buy it.”

Jeremy rubbed his nose with a thoughtful gesture.

“I don’t know that I want to sell it,” he replied. “Remember I painted Jennet for my own pleasure.”

“Still,” said Julian with a grin, “you wouldn’t be averse to taking your usual fee for it, I imagine.”

Jeremy pulled the drape over the portrait with a final gesture.

“No,”
he said unexpectedly, “Jennet is not for sale—even to you.”

Julian’s expression altered.

“What do you mean by that remark?”

The old man’s bright blue eyes were round with innocent surprise.

“Just what I said, my dear boy,” he retorted smoothly. “The portrait is not for sale—anyway, at present. Later on, perhaps—well, we’ll see.”

J
ulian did not press the question further, but Jennet thought he looked puzzled, and a little hurt. She was
pinning Lube’s orchids, which she had been made to discard for the sitting, on to the shoulder of her frock.

“Pah! Orchids!” Jeremy exclaimed, watching her, “They’re about as incongruous on you as peacock’s feathers
i
s on a humming-bird!”

“I know,” said Jennet sedately, “but Luke said they give a woman moral uplift.”

Jeremy snorted.

“Luke would! It’s the sort of banal
cliché
he uses in his cheap novels. Now, if you, Julian, only saw fit to buy her an appropriate buttonhole, she wouldn’t feel compelled to rely on the moral uplift of other men!”

Julian looked at her with a strange expression:

“I will,” he said gravely. “If you throw that floral monstrosity into Jeremy’s stove.
I’ll
take you out now and choose you something.”

“Throw away my orchids?
”
she said with swift protest.

“If you will,” said Julian, and she was struck by the
fact that only a short time ago he would have ordered her to take them off, while
now he asked a fav
o
r.

W
ithout another word, she unpinned the flowers, stroked a petal once with a last lingering touch, and dropped them into the stove.

“Thank you,” said Julian unexpectedly,
and
Jennet crossed to where Jeremy stood, silently observing them both, and held out her hand.

“Good-bye, dear Mr
.
Pritchard,” she said. “And thank you for painting me.”

He took her hand and shook it gravely, turning it over and straightening out the slim fingers.

“Nice hands,” he murmured, then ruffled her hair wit
h
an affectionate gesture. “But I’m not going to say good-bye, young lady. I shall see you again plenty of times.
You’re not going back to the country yet, are you?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced at Julian.

“We must talk about that,” he said non-committally.
“You’re having dinner with me
a
t the flat tonight, and we can settle a few things. Come along if we’re to get that posy before the florist’s close.”

In the flat he poured her out a glass of sherry and put it on a small table by the electric fire, and watched her unpi
n
his flowers from her coat and fasten them with great care to her frock.

“Oh, by the way,” he said, “Luke was here this afternoon. He left this for you. Said you’d promised to read the first chapters of his new novel.” He picked up a large
Manila envelope from the desk and gave it to her. “It can keep you busy while I'm having a bath. I won’t be longer than I can help.”

He limped out of the room and she sat down by the fire and drew the neat sheets of typescript from the envelope. Julian, she knew, was unable to hurry over bathing and dressing. There would be time and to spare to read Luke’s manuscript while she waited.

For a long time there was no sound in the quiet room but the crisp crackle of the
pages as she slowly turned them. She read on to the end, her glass of sherry forgotten, and her face as she quietly put the typescript back in its envelope had a pinched, hurt look.

It was all there, the amusingly sketched-in impression of the gauche, plain little girl fro
m
an institution, the pathetic plea for love and affection in any form, the pitiful ripening of what Luke intended to be the first
affaire.
Even her own words were there, whole slices of their recent conversations, and the absurd reluctance which he imagined sprang from a shy timidity. The story stopped abruptly at a point where the young girl was about to succumb to the charms and persuasions of a man who was obviously Luke himself, and she remembered him saying to her:
“
...
let me teach you these things
...
don’t deny your own fulfilment
...
” And she might have listened. If it had not been for that debt to charity, she might have listened and given her first starved affections to someone who only probed emotion with a skilful pen to stir up copy. Julian, bathed and changed, and freshly shaved, came back, apologizing for being so long, and she glanced at the clock. She had
b
een unaware of the passing of time.

“You haven’t drunk your sherry,” he remarked with surprise, and she picked up the glass and drained it off, making him raise his eyebrows. “That’s no way to drink good sherry,” he said, amused.
“
You tossed it off like an old gin addict.”

He took her glass and refilled it, and as he handed it back to her, he looked at her more closely.

“Are you feeling all right? You’re rather flushed,” he said.

She took the glass from him, pushing Luke’s manuscript into a corner of the sofa.

“Quite all right, thank you. I expect it’s the fire.”

“I expect it’s the sherry!
”
he retorted. “Drink this one more slowly or it will go to your head. What’s Luke’s latest masterpiece like?”

“Very amusing,” she replied.

Her manner puzzled him a little. “You aren’t losing your heart a little to Luke, are you, Jennet?” he asked casually.

“To Luke?” She jerked her glass and a little of its contents spilled on her frock.

“I just wondered.
You’ve seen a good deal of him of late and his attentions have been very flattering to someone as young as you are.”
Julian paused, and his eyes rested on her still face. “Luke’s manner can be rather misleading to the inexperienced, although I’d trust him to behave himself properly where you are concerned.”

She raised grave eyes to his.

“I think,” s
h
e said slowly, “you either trust people too much or not enough.”

He regarded her thoughtfully.

“What do you mean by that
!
”

“Well, you don’t trust me at all—to wear the right clothes, know the right people
make decisions—almost everything.”

He laughed.

“What a child you are! That’s scarcely the proper meaning of trust.”

She was silent, feeling, as so often, that she had said something stupid.

Later they
broug
h
t
their coffee back to the living room, and Jennet said:

“Did you really like the portrait, Julian?”

“Very much,” he replied, but he would not enlarge the subject.

“I suppose,” she said tentatively, “I’ll be going back to Pennycross soon.”

“
Do you want to go back?”

“Yes—no—I don’t really know.”

“
I think,” said Julian, easing himself more comfortably into his chair, “we’ll get married pretty soon.
”

Jennet stared at him. He had said it so casually that at first she thought she must have been mistaken. As she made no reply he looked across at her and observing her astonished face, laughed.

“Don’t look so amazed,” he said. “After all, you’ve always known that was the idea.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said in a small voice. “But not for a long time.”

His eyes were thoughtful.

“I had meant to wait,” he admitted. “But lately—well, I think we’ve hung about quite long enough—don’t you agree?”

“How—how soon?” she asked.

“Round about Christmas. It’s November now—you’ve known me a year—that’s long enough, don’t you think?”

A year, thought Jennet. A year of planning, of strict supervision; a year of moulding into the right frame.

“I don’t think a year would ever be long enough,” she said carefully. “I don’t really know you, Julian.
”

He felt his freshly shaven chin.

“Sometimes I think I don’t know you very well, either, Jennet,” he said humorously. “And I’ve come to the conclusion that we’d do better not to wait much longer. You’re very young, I know, but I’ve taught you all I can without a more definite status. You’re nearly eighteen. I think we’ll get married.”

There seemed to be nothing for her to say. She had always accepted the idea that she would eventually marry Julian, and if, in her own mind, she had placed the notion in the far future, it was only because he himself had treated her so much as a child.

“Haven’t you anything to say?” he demanded, a little piqued at her apparent lack of interest.

She cleared her throat nervously.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“W
ell, aren’t you interested in your future—where you’ll live and things like that?”