Jane of Lantern Hill, Page 3

  CHAPTER 4

  Of course it was no time before grandmother knew about Jody. She made a great many sweetly sarcastic speeches about her but she never actually forbade Jane going over to play with her in the yard of 58. Jane was to be a good many years older before she understood the reason for that…understood that grandmother wanted to show anyone who might question it that Jane had common tastes and liked low people.

  “Darling, is this Jody of yours a nice little girl?” mother had asked doubtfully.

  “She is a very nice little girl,” said Jane emphatically.

  “But she looks so uncared for…positively dirty…”

  “Her face is always clean and she never forgets to wash behind her ears, mummy. I’m going to show her how to wash her hair. Her hair would be lovely if it was clean…it’s so fine and black and silky. And may I give her one of my jars of cold cream…I’ve two, you know…for her hands? They’re so red and chapped because she has to work so hard and wash so many dishes.”

  “But her clothes…”

  “She can’t help her clothes. She just has to wear what’s given her and she never has more than two dresses at a time…one to wear every day and one to go to Sunday School in. Even the Sunday School one isn’t very clean…it was Mrs. Bellew’s Ethel’s old pink one and she spilled coffee on it. And she has to work so hard…she’s a regular little slave, Mary says. I like Jody very much, mummy. She’s sweet.”

  “Well,”…mother sighed and gave way. Mother always gave way if you were firm enough. Jane had already discovered that. She adored mother but she had unerringly laid her finger on the weak spot in her character. Mother couldn’t “stand up to” people. Jane had heard Mary say that to Frank one time when they didn’t think she heard and she knew it was true.

  “She’ll go with the last one that talks to her,” said Mary. “And that’s always the old lady.”

  “Well, the old lady’s mighty good to her,” said Frank. ‘‘She’s a gay little piece.”

  “Gay enough. But is she happy?” said Mary.

  “Happy? Of course, mummy is happy,” Jane had thought indignantly…all the more indignantly because, away back in her mind, there was lurking a queer suspicion that mother, in spite of her dances and dinners and furs and dresses and jewels and friends, wasn’t happy. Jane couldn’t imagine why she had this idea. Perhaps a look in mother’s eyes now and then…like something shut up in a cage.

  Jane could go over and play in the yard of 58 in the spring and summer evenings after Jody had finished washing stacks of dishes. They made their “imaginary” garden, they fed crumbs to the robins and the black and gray squirrels, they sat up in the cherry tree and watched the evening star together. And talked! Jane, who could never find anything to say to Phyllis, found plenty to say to Jody.

  There was never any question of Jody coming to play in the yard of 60. Once, early in their friendship, Jane had asked Jody to come over. She had found Jody crying under the cherry tree again and discovered that it was because Miss West had insisted on her putting her old teddy bear in the garbage pail. It was, Miss West said, utterly worn out. It had been patched until there was no more room for patches and even shoe buttons couldn’t be sewn any more into its worn-out eye-sockets. Besides, she was too old to be playing with Teddy Bears.

  “But I’ve nothing else,” sobbed Jody. “If I had a doll, I wouldn’t mind. I’ve always wanted a doll…but now I’ll have to sleep alone away up there…and it’s so lonesome.”

  “Come over to our house and I’ll give you a doll,” said Jane.

  Jane had never cared much for dolls because they were not alive. She had a very nice one which Aunt Sylvia had given her the Christmas she was seven but it was so flawless and well-dressed that it never needed to have anything done for it and Jane had never loved it. She would have loved better a teddy bear that needed a new patch every day.

  She took Jody, wide-eyed and enraptured, through the splendors of 60 Gay and gave her the doll, which had reposed undisturbed for a long time in the lower drawer of the huge black wardrobe in Jane’s room. Then she had taken her into mother’s room to show her the things on mother’s table…the silver-backed brushes, the perfume bottles with the cut-glass stoppers that made rainbows, the wonderful rings on the little gold tray. Grandmother found them there.

  She stood in the doorway and looked at them. You could feel the silence spreading through the room like a cold, smothering wave.

  “What does this mean, Victoria…if I am allowed to ask?”

  “This is…Jody,” faltered Jane. “I brought her over to give her my doll. She hasn’t any.”

  “Indeed? And you have given her the one your Aunt Sylvia gave you?”

  Jane at once realized that she had done something quite unpardonable. It had never occurred to her that she was not at liberty to give away her own doll.

  “I have not,” said grandmother, “forbidden you to play with this…this Jody in her own lot. What is in the blood is bound to come out sooner or later. But…if you don’t mind…please don’t bring your riffraff here, my dear Victoria.”

  Her dear Victoria got herself and poor hurt Jody away as best she could, leaving the doll behind them. But grandmother did not get off scot-free for all that. For the first time the worm turned. Jane paused for a moment before she went out of the door and looked straight at grandmother with intent, judging brown eyes.

  “You are not fair,” she said. Her voice trembled a little but she felt she had to say it, no matter how impertinent grandmother thought her. Then she followed Jody down and out with a strange feeling of satisfaction in her heart.

  “I ain’t riffraff,” said Jody, her lips quivering. “Of course I’m not like you…Miss West says you’re people but my folks were respectable. Cousin Millie told me so. She said they always paid their way while they were alive. And I work hard enough for Miss West to pay my way.”

  “You aren’t riffraff and I love you,” said Jane. “You and mother are the only people in the whole world I love.”

  Even as she said it, a queer little pang wrung Jane’s heart. It suddenly occurred to her that two people out of all the millions in the world…Jane never could remember the exact number of millions, but she knew it was enormous…were very few to love.

  “And I like loving people,” thought Jane. “It’s nice.”

  “I don’t love anybody but you,” said Jody, who forgot her hurt feelings as soon as Jane got her interested in building a castle out of all the old tin cans in the corner of the yard. Miss West hoarded her tin cans for a country cousin who made some mysterious use of them. He had not been in all winter, and there were enough cans to build a towering structure. Dick kicked it down next day, of course, but they had had the fun of building it. They never knew that Mr. Torrey, one of the 58 boarders who was a budding architect, saw the castle, gleaming in the moonlight, when he was putting his car in the garage and whistled over it.

  “That’s rather an amazing thing for those two kids to build,” he said.

  Jane, who should have been asleep, was lying wide awake that very moment, going on with the story of her life in the moon, which she could see through her window.

  Jane’s “moon secret,” as she called it, was the one thing she hadn’t shared with mother and Jody. She couldn’t, somehow. It was her very own. To tell about it would be to destroy it. For three years now Jane had been going on dream voyages to the moon. It was a shimmering world of fancy where she lived very splendidly and sated some deep thirst in her soul at unknown, enchanted springs among its shining silver hills. Before she had found the trick of going to the moon, Jane had longed to get into the looking glass as Alice did. She used to stand so long before her mirror hoping for the miracle to happen that Aunt Gertrude said Victoria was the vainest child she had ever seen.

  “Really?” said grandmother, as if mildly inquiring what Jane could possibly
have to be vain about.

  Eventually Jane had sadly concluded that she could never get into the looking-glass world, and then one night, when she was lying alone in her big unfriendly room, she saw the moon looking in at her through one of the windows…the calm, beautiful moon that was never in a hurry; and she began to build for herself an existence in the moon, where she ate fairy food and wandered through fairy fields, full of strange white moon-blossoms, with the companions of her fancy.

  But even in the moon Jane’s dreams ran true to the ruling passion. Since the moon was all silver it had to be polished every night. Jane and her moon friends had no end of fun polishing up the moon, with an elaborate system of rewards and punishments for extra good polishers and lazy ones. The lazy ones were generally banished to the other side of the moon…which Jane had read was very dark and very cold. When they were allowed back, chilled to the bone, they were glad to warm themselves up by rubbing as hard as they could. Those were the nights when the moon seemed brighter than usual. Oh, it was fun! Jane was never lonely in bed now except on nights when there was no moon. The dearest sight Jane knew was the thin crescent in the western sky that told her her friend was back. She was supported through many a dreary day by the hope of going on a moon spree at night.

  CHAPTER 5

  Up to the age of ten Jane had believed her father was dead. She could not recall that anybody had ever told her so, but if she had thought about it at all she would have felt quite sure of it. She just did not think about it…nobody ever mentioned him. All she knew about him was that his name must have been Andrew Stuart, because mother was Mrs. Andrew Stuart. For anything else, he might as well never have existed as far as Jane was concerned. She did not know much about fathers. The only one she was really acquainted with was Phyllis’ father, Uncle David Coleman, a handsome, oldish man with pouches under his eyes, who grunted at her occasionally when he came to Sunday dinners. Jane had an idea his grunts were meant to be friendly and she did not dislike him, but there was nothing about him that made her envy Phyllis for having a father. With a mother so sweet and adorable and loving, what did one want of a father?

  Then Agnes Ripley came to St. Agatha’s. Jane liked Agnes well enough at first, though Agnes had stuck her tongue out at Jane rather derisively on the occasion of their first meeting. She was the daughter of somebody who was called “the great Thomas Ripley”…he had built “railroads and things”…and most of the St. Agatha’s girls paid court to her and plumed themselves if she noticed them. She was much given to “secrets,” and it came to be thought a great honor among the St. Agathians if Agnes told you a secret. Therefore Jane was conscious of a decided thrill when one afternoon on the playground Agnes came up to her and said, darkly and mysteriously, “I know a secret.”

  “I know a secret” is probably the most intriguing phrase in the world. Jane surrendered to its allure.

  “Oh, tell me,” she implored. She wanted to be admitted to that charmed inner circle of girls who had been told one of Agnes’ secrets; and she wanted to know the secret for its own sake. Secrets must always be wonderful, beautiful things.

  Agnes wrinkled up her fat little nose and looked important.

  “Oh, I’ll tell you some other time.”

  “I don’t want to hear it some other time. I want to hear it now,” pleaded Jane, her marigold eyes full of eager radiance.

  Agnes’ little elfish face, framed in its straight brown hair, was alive with mischief. She winked one of her green eyes at Jane.

  “All right. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it when you hear it. Listen.”

  Jane listened. The towers of St. Agatha’s listened. The shabby streets beyond listened. It seemed to Jane that the whole world listened. She was one of the chosen…Agnes was going to tell her a secret.

  “Your father and mother don’t live together.”

  Jane stared at Agnes. What she had said didn’t make any sense.

  “Of course they don’t live together,” she said. “My father is dead.”

  “Oh, no, he isn’t,” said Agnes. “He’s living down in Prince Edward Island. Your mother left him when you were three years old.”

  Jane felt as if some big cold hand were beginning to squeeze her heart.

  “That…isn’t…true,” she gasped.

  “’Tis too. I heard Aunt Dora telling mother all about it. She said your mother married him just after he came back from the war, one summer when your grandmother took her down to the Maritimes. Your grandmother didn’t want her to. Aunt Dora said everybody knew it wouldn’t last long. He was poor. But it was you that made the most trouble. You should never have been born. Neither of them wanted you, Aunt Dora said. They fought like cat and dog after that, and at last your mother just up and left him. Aunt Dora said she would likely have divorced him, only divorces are awful hard to get in Canada, and anyhow all the Kennedys think divorce is a dreadful thing.”

  The hand was gripping Jane’s heart so tightly now that she could hardly breathe.

  “I…I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “If that’s how you’re going to talk when I tell you a secret, I’ll never tell you another one, Miss Victoria Stuart,” said Agnes, reddening with rage.

  “I don’t want to hear any more,” said Jane.

  She would never forget what she had heard. It couldn’t be true…it couldn’t. Jane thought the afternoon would never end. St. Agatha’s was a nightmare. Frank had never driven so slowly home. The snow had never looked so grimy and dirty along the dingy streets. The wind had never been so gray. The moon, floating high in the sky, was all faded and paper-white but Jane didn’t care if it was never polished again.

  An afternoon tea was in progress at 60 Gay when she arrived there. The big drawing-room, decorated lavishly with pale pink snap-dragons and tulips and maidenhair fern, was full of people. Mother, in orchid chiffon, with loose, trailing lace sleeves, was laughing and chatting. Grandmother, with blue-white diamonds sparkling in her hair, was sitting on her favorite needlepoint chair, looking, so one lady said, “Such an utterly sweet silver-haired thing, just like a Whistler mother.” Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Sylvia were pouring tea at a table covered with Venetian lace, where tall pink tapers were burning.

  Straight through them all Jane marched to mother. She did not care how many people were there…she had one question to ask and it must be answered at once. At once. Jane could not bear her suspense another moment.

  “Mummy,” she said, “is my father alive?”

  A strange, dreadful hush suddenly fell over the room. A light like a sword flashed into grandmother’s blue eyes. Aunt Sylvia gasped and Aunt Gertrude turned an unbecoming purple. But mother’s face was as if snow had fallen over it.

  “Is he?” said Jane.

  “Yes,” said mother. She said nothing more. Jane asked nothing more. She turned and went out and up the stairs blindly. In her own room she shut the door and lay down very softly on the big white bearskin rug by the bed, her face buried in the soft fur. Heavy black waves of pain seemed rolling over her.

  So it was true. All her life she had thought her father dead while he was living…on that faraway dot on the map which she had been told was the province of Prince Edward Island. But he and mother did not like each other and she had not been wanted. Jane found that it was a very curious and unpleasant sensation to feel that your parents hadn’t wanted you. She was sure that all the rest of her life she would hear Agnes’ voice saying, “You should never have been born.” She hated Agnes Ripley…she would always hate her. Jane wondered if she would live to be as old as grandmother and how she could bear it if she did.

  Mother and grandmother found her there when everybody had gone.

  “Victoria, get up.”

  Jane did not move.

  “Victoria, I am accustomed to being obeyed when I speak.”

  Jane got up. She had not cried…hadn’t s
omebody ages ago said that “Jane never cried?”…but her face was stamped with an expression that might have wrung anybody’s heart. Perhaps it touched even grandmother, for she said, quite gently for her.

  “I have always told your mother, Victoria, that she ought to tell you the truth. I told her you were sure to hear it from someone sooner or later. Your father is living. Your mother married him against my wish and lived to repent it. I forgave her and welcomed her back gladly when she came to her senses. That is all. And in future when you feel an irresistible urge to make a scene while we are entertaining, will you be good enough to control the impulse until our guests are gone?”

  “Why didn’t he like me?” asked Jane dully.

  When all was said and done, that seemed to be what was hurting most. Her mother might not have wanted her either, to begin with, but Jane knew that mother loved her now.

  Mother suddenly gave a little laugh so sad that it nearly broke Jane’s heart.

  “He was jealous of you, I think,” she said.

  “He made your mother’s life wretched,” said grandmother, her voice hardening.

  “Oh, I was to blame, too,” cried mother chokingly.

  Jane, looking from one to the other, saw the swift change that came over grandmother’s face.

  “You will never mention your father’s name in my hearing or in your mother’s hearing again,” said grandmother. “As far as we are concerned…as far as you are concerned…he is dead.”

  The prohibition was unnecessary. Jane didn’t want to mention her father’s name again. He had made mother unhappy, and so Jane hated him and put him out of her thoughts completely. There were just some things that didn’t bear thinking of, and father was one of them. But the most terrible thing about it all was that there was something now that could not be talked over with mother. Jane felt it between them, indefinable but there. The old perfect confidence was gone. There was a subject that must never be mentioned, and it poisoned everything.