She found no difficulty in talking to anybody on any subject. She liked to play with the young fry but she liked to talk to the older people. She could hold the most enthralling discussions with Step-a-yard on green feed and the price of pork and what made cows chew wood. She walked round Jimmy John’s farm with him every Sunday morning and judged the crops. Uncle Tombstone taught her how to drive a horse and buggy.
“She could cramp a wheel after one showing,” he told the Jimmy Johns.
Step-a-yard, not to be outdone, let her drive a load of hay into Jimmy John’s big barn one day.
“Couldn’t a’ done it better myself. You’ve got a feeling for horses, Jane.”
But Jane’s favorite boy friend was old Timothy Salt who lived down near the harbor’s mouth in a low-eaved house under dark spruces. He had the jolliest, shrewdest old face of wrinkled leather that Jane had ever seen, with deep-sunk eyes that were like wells of laughter. Jane would sit with him for hours while he opened quahaugs and told her tales of old disaster on the sea, fading old legends of dune and headland, old romances of the North Shore that were like misty wraiths. Sometimes other old fishermen and sailors were there swapping yarns. Jane sat and listened and shooed Timothy’s tame pig away when it came too near. The salt winds blew around her. The little waves on the harbor would run so fleetly from the sunset and later on the fishing boats would be bobbing to the moon. Sometimes a ghostly white fog would come creeping up from the dunes, the hills across the harbor would be phantom hills in the mist, and even ugly things would be lovely and mysterious.
“How’s life with ye?” Timothy would say gravely, and Jane would tell him just as gravely that life was very well with her.
Timothy gave her a glass box full of corals and seashells from the West and the East Indies. He helped her drag up flat stones from the shore to make paths in her garden. He taught her to saw and hammer in nails and swim. Jane swallowed most of the Atlantic Ocean learning to swim, or thought she did, but she learned, and ran home, a wet, delighted creature, to brag to dad. And she made a hammock out of barrel staves that was the talk of Lantern Hill.
“That child will stick at nothing,” said Mrs. Snowbeam.
Timothy swung it between two of the spruces for her…dad wasn’t much good at doing things like that, though he told her he would do it if she would get him a rhyme for silver.
Timothy taught her to discern the signs of the sky. Jane had never felt acquainted with the sky before. To stand on Lantern Hill and see the whole sky around you was wonderful. Jane could sit for hours at the roots of the spruces gazing at sky and sea, or in some happy golden hollow among the dunes. She learned that a mackerel sky was a sign of fine weather and mare’s tails meant wind. She learned that red sky at morning foretokened rain, as did the dark firs on Little Donald’s hill when they looked so near and clear. Jane welcomed rain at Lantern Hill. She had never liked rain in the city, but here by the sea she loved it. She loved to listen to it coming down in the night on the ferns outside her window; she liked the sound and the scent and the freshness of it. She loved to get out in it…get sopping wet in it. She liked the showers that sometimes fell across the harbor, misty and purple, when it was quite fine on the Lantern Hill side. She even liked thunderstorms, when they passed out to sea beyond the bar of the shadowy dunes, and didn’t come too close. But one night there was a terrible one. Blue swords of lightning stabbed the darkness…thunder crackled all about Lantern Hill. Jane was crouching in bed, her head buried in a pillow, when she felt dad’s arm go around her. He lifted her up and held her close to him, displacing an indignant pair of Peters.
“Frightened, my Jane?”
“No-o-o,” lied Jane valiantly. “Only…it isn’t decent.”
Dad shouted with laughter.
“You’ve got the word. Thunder like that is an insult to decency. But it will soon pass…it is passing now. ‘The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at His reproof.’ Do you know where that is found, Jane?”
“It sounds like the Bible,” said Jane, as soon as she got her breath after a crash that must have split the hill in two. “I don’t like the Bible.”
“Not like the Bible? Jane, Jane, this will never do. If anyone doesn’t like the Bible there’s something wrong either with him or with the way he was introduced to it. We must do something about it. The Bible is a wonderful book, my Jane. Full of corking good stories and the greatest poetry in the world. Full of the most amazingly human ‘human nature.’ Full of incredible, ageless wisdom and truth and beauty and common sense. Yes, yes, we’ll see about it. I think the worst of the storm is over…and tomorrow morning we’ll hear the little waves whispering to each other again in the sunlight…and there’ll be a magic of silver wings over the bar when the gulls go out. I shall begin the second canto of my epic on Methuselah’s life and Jane will swither in delightful anguish trying to decide whether to have breakfast indoors or out. And all the hills will be joyful together…more of the Bible, Jane. You’ll love it.”
Perhaps so…though Jane thought it would really need a miracle. Anyhow, she loved dad. Mother still shone on her life, like a memory of the evening star. But dad was…dad!
Jane dropped asleep again and had a terrible dream that she couldn’t find the onions and dad’s socks with the blue toes that needed mending.
CHAPTER 23
After all Jane found it did not require a miracle to make her like the Bible. She and dad went to the shore every Sunday afternoon and he read to her from it. Jane loved those Sunday afternoons. They took their suppers with them and ate them squatted on the sand. She had an inborn love of the sea and all pertaining to it. She loved the dunes…she loved the music of the winds that whistled along the silvery solitude of the sand-shore…she loved the far dim shores that would be jeweled with home-lights on fine blue evenings. And she loved dad’s voice reading the Bible to her. He had a voice that would make anything sound beautiful. Jane thought if dad had had no other good quality at all, she must have loved him for his voice. And she loved the little comments he made as he read…things that made the verses come alive for her. She had never thought that there was anything like that in the Bible. But then, dad did not read about knops and taches.
“‘When all the morning stars sang together’…the essence of creation’s joy is in that, Jane. Can’t you hear that immortal music of the spheres? ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon and thou, moon, in the vale of Ajalon.’ Such sublime arrogance, Jane…Mussolini himself couldn’t rival that. ‘Here shall thy proud waves be stayed’…look at them rolling in there, Jane…‘so far and no further’…the majestic law to which they yield obedience never falters or fails. ‘Give me neither poverty nor riches’…the prayer of Agar, son of Jakeh. A sensible man was Agar, my Jane. Didn’t I tell you the Bible was full of common sense? ‘A fool uttereth all his mind!’ Proverbs is harder on the fool than on anybody else, Jane…and rightly. It’s the fools that make all the trouble in the world, not the wicked. ‘Whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me and more also if aught but death part thee and me!’ The high-water mark of the expression of emotion in any language that I’m acquainted with, Jane…Ruth to Naomi…and all such simple words. Hardly any of more than one syllable…the writer of that verse knew how to marry words as no one else has ever done. And he knew enough not to use too many of them. Jane, the most awful as well as the most beautiful things in the world can be said in three words or less…I love you…he is gone…he is come…she is dead…too late…and life is illumined or ruined. ‘All the daughters of music shall he brought low’…aren’t you a little sorry for them, Jane…those foolish, light-footed daughters of music? Do you think they quite deserved such a humiliation? ‘They have taken away my lord and I know not where they have laid him’…that supreme cry of desolation! ‘As
k for the old paths and walk therein and ye shall find rest.’ Ah, Jane, the feet of some of us have strayed far from the old paths…we can’t find our way back to them, much as we may long to. ‘As cold water to a thirsty soul so is good news from a far country!’ Were you ever thirsty, Jane…really thirsty…burning with fever…thinking of heaven in terms of cold water? I was, more than once. ‘A thousand years in thy sight is but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night!’ Think of a Being like that, Jane, when the little moments torture you. ‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’ The most terrible and tremendous saying in the world, Jane…because we are all afraid of truth and afraid of freedom…that’s why we murdered Jesus.”
Jane did not understand all dad said, but she put it all away in her mind to grow up to. All her life she was to have recurring flashes of insight when she recalled something dad had said. Not only of the Bible but of all the poetry he read to her that summer. He taught her the loveliness of words…dad read words as if he tasted them.
“‘Glimpses of the moon’…one of the immortal phrases of literature, Jane. There are phrases with sheer magic in them…”
“I know,” said Jane. “‘On the road to Mandalay’…I read that in one of Miss Colwin’s books…and ‘horns of elfland faintly blowing!’ That gives me a beautiful ache.”
“You have the root of the matter in you, Jane. But, oh, my Jane, why…why…did Shakespeare leave his wife his second best bed?”
“Perhaps because she liked it best,” said Jane practically.
“‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings’…to be sure. I wonder if that eminently sane suggestion has ever occurred to the commentators who have agonized over it. Can you guess who the dark lady was, Jane? You know when a poet praises a woman she is immortal…witness Beatrice…Laura…Lucasta…Highland Mary. All talked about hundreds of years after they are dead because great poets loved them. The weeds are growing over Troy but we remember Helen.”
“I suppose she didn’t have a big mouth,” said Jane wistfully.
Dad kept a straight face.
“Not too small a one, Jane. You couldn’t imagine goddess Helen with a rosebud mouth, could you?”
“Is my mouth too big, dad?” implored Jane. “The girls at St. Agatha’s said it was.”
“Not too big, Jane. A generous mouth…the mouth of a giver, not a taker…a frank, friendly mouth…with very well cut corners, Jane. No weakness about them…you wouldn’t have eloped with Paris, Jane, and made all that unholy mess. You would have been true to your vows, Jane…in spirit as well as in letter, even in this upside-down world.”
Jane had the oddest feeling that dad was thinking of mother, not of Argive Helen. But she was comforted by what he said about her mouth.
Dad did not always read from the masters. One day he took to the shore a thin little volume of poems by Bernard Freeman Trotter.
“I knew him overseas…he was killed…listen to his song about the poplars, Jane.
“‘And so I sing the poplars and when I come to die
I will not look for jasper walls but cast about my eye
For a row of wind-blown poplars against an English sky.’
“What will you want to see when you get to heaven, Jane?”
“Lantern Hill,” said Jane.
Dad laughed. It was so delightful to make dad laugh…and so easy. Though a good many times Jane didn’t know exactly what he was laughing at. Jane didn’t mind that a bit…but sometimes she wondered if mother had minded it.
One evening after dad had been spouting poetry until he was tired, Jane said timidly, “Would you like to hear me recite, dad?”
She recited The Little Baby of Mathieu. It was easy…dad made such a good audience.
“You can do it, Jane. That was good. I must give you a bit of training along that line too. I used to be rather good at interpreting the habitant myself.”
“Someone she did not like used to be rather good at reading habitant poetry”…Jane remembered who had said that. She understood another thing now.
Dad had rolled over to where he could see their house in a gap in the twilit dunes.
“I see the Jimmy Johns’ light…and the Snowbeam light at Hungry Cove…but our house is dark. Let’s go home and light it up, Jane. And is there any of that applesauce you made for supper left?”
So they went home together and dad lighted his gasoline lamp and sat down at his desk to work on his epic of Methuselah…or something else…and Jane got a candle to light her to bed. She liked a candle better than a lamp. It went out so graciously…the thin trail of smoke…the smoldering wick, giving one wild little wink at you before it left you in the dark.
When dad had converted Jane to the Bible, he set about making history and geography come alive for her. She had told him she always found those subjects hard. But soon history no longer seemed a clutter of dates and names in some dim, cold antiquity but became a storied road of time when dad told her old tales of wonder and the pride of kings. When he told the simplest incident with the sound of the sea in his voice, it seemed to take on such a coloring of romance and mystery that Jane knew she could never forget it. Thebes…Babylon…Tyre…Athens…Galilee…were places where real folks lived…folks she knew. And, knowing them, it was easy to be interested in everything pertaining to them. Geography, which had once meant merely a map of the world, was just as fascinating.
“Let’s go to India,” dad would say…and they went…though Jane would sew buttons on dad’s shirts all the way. Min’s ma was hard on buttons. Soon Jane knew all the fair lands far, far away as she knew Lantern Hill…or so it seemed to her after she had journeyed through them with father.
“Someday, Jane, you and I will really go and see them. The Land of the Midnight Sun…doesn’t that phrase fascinate you, Jane?…far Cathay…Damascus…Samarkand…Japan in cherry-blossom time…Euphrates among its dead empires…moonrise over Karnak…lotus vales in Kashmir…castles on the banks of the Rhine. There’s a villa in the Apennines…‘the cloudy Apennines’…I want you to see, my Jane. Meanwhile, let’s draw a chart of Lost Atlantis.”
“Next year I’ll be beginning French,” said Jane. “I think I’ll like that.”
“You will. You’ll wake up to the fascination of languages. Think of them as doors opening into a stately palace for you. You’ll even like Latin, dead and all as it is. Isn’t a dead language rather a sad thing, Janet? Once it lived and burned and glowed. People said loving things in it…bitter things…wise and silly things in it. I wonder who was the very last person to utter a sentence in living Latin. Jane, how many boots would a centipede need if a centipede needed boots?”
That was dad all over. Tender…serious…dreamy…and then a tag of some delightful nonsense. But Jane knew just how grandmother would have liked that.
Sundays were interesting at Lantern Hill not only because of the Bible readings with dad but because she went to the Queen’s Shore church with the Jimmy Johns in the mornings. Jane liked it tremendously. She put on the little green linen jumper dress grandmother had bought her and carried a hymn-book proudly. They went across the fields by a path that wound around the edge of Big Donald’s woods, through a cool back pasture where sheep grazed, down the road past Min’s ma’s house, where Min joined them, and finally along a grassy lane to what was called “the little south church”…a small white building set in a grove of beech and spruce where lovable winds seemed always purring. Anything less like St. Barnabas’ could hardly be imagined, but Jane liked it. The windows were plain glass and you could see out of them right into the woods and past the big wild cherry tree that grew close up to the church. Jane wished she could have seen it in blossom time. All the people had what Step-a-yard called their Sunday faces on and Elder Tommy Perkins looked so solemn and otherworldly that Jane found it almost impossible to believe that he was the same man as the jolly To
mmy Perkins of weekdays. Mrs. Little Donald always passed her a peppermint over the top of the pew, and though Jane didn’t like peppermints, she seemed to like that one. There was, she reflected, something so nice and religious about its flavor.
For the first time Jane could join in the singing of the hymns and she did it lustily. Nobody at 60 Gay had ever supposed Jane could sing; but she found that she could at least follow a tune and was duly thankful therefor, as otherwise she would have felt like an outsider at the Jimmy Johns’ “sing-songs” in their old orchard on Sunday evenings. In a way Jane thought the sing-songs the best part of Sunday. All the Jimmy Johns sang like linnets and everybody could have his or her favorite hymn in turn. They sang what Step-a-yard, who carried a tremendous bass, called “giddier hymns” than were sung in church, out of little dog-eared, limp-covered hymn-books. Sometimes the stay-at-home dog tried to sing too. Beyond them was the beauty of a moonlit sea.
They always ended up with God Save the King and Jane went home, escorted to the door of Lantern Hill by all the Jimmy Johns and the three dogs who didn’t stay at home. Once dad was sitting in the garden, on the stone seat Timothy Salt had built for her, smoking his Old Contemptible and “enjoying the beauty of the darkness,” as he said. Jane sat down beside him and he put his arm around her. First Peter prowled darkly around them. It was so still they could hear the cows grazing in Jimmy John’s field and so cool that Jane was glad of the warmth of father’s tweed arm across her shoulders. Still and cool and sweet…and in Toronto at that moment everyone was gasping in a stifling heat wave, so the Charlottetown paper had said yesterday. But mother was with friends in Muskoka. It was poor Jody who would be smothering in that hot little attic room. If only Jody were here!