Of course, mother couldn’t stand up to Aunt Irene…mother couldn’t stand up to anyone. Jane bit deep into a juicy apple rather savagely.
“I wonder,” she said, as if more to herself than to Little Aunt Em, “if father and mother would have been happier if they had married other people.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” said Aunt Em sharply. “They was meant for each other, whatever spoiled it. Don’t you go thinking different, Jane Stuart. ’Course they fought. Who don’t? The times I’ve had with my first and second! If they’d been let alone they’d likely have worked it out sooner or later. At the last, when you was rising three, your ma went to Toronto to visit the old madam and never come back. That’s all anybody knows about it, Jane Stuart. Your pa sold the house and went for a trip round the world. Leastwise, that’s what they said, but I ain’t believing the world is round. If it was, when it turned round all the water would fall out of the pond, wouldn’t it? Now, I’m going to get you a bite to eat. I’ve got some cold ham and pickled beets and there’s red currants in the garden.”
They ate the ham and beets and then went out to the garden for the currants. The garden was an untidy little place, sloping to the south, which somehow contrived to be pleasant. There was honeysuckle over the paling…“to bring the hummingbirds,” said Little Aunt Em…and white and red hollyhocks against the dark green of a fir coppice and rampant tiger lilies along the walk. And one corner was rich in pinks.
“Nice out here, ain’t it?” said Little Aunt Em. “It’s a fine, marvelous world…oh, it’s a very fine, marvelous world. Don’t you like life, Jane Stuart?”
“Yes,” agreed Jane heartily.
“I do. I smack my lips over life. I’d like to go on living forever and hearing the news. Always a tang to the news. Some of these days I’m going to scrape up enough spunk to go in a car. I’ve never done it yet, but I will. Mrs. Big Donald says it’s the dream of her life to go up in an airyplane but I draw the line at sky-hooting. What if the engine stopped going while you was up there? How are you going to get down? Well, I’m glad you come, Jane Stuart. We’re both wove out of the same yarn.”
Little Aunt Em gave Jane a bunch of pansies and a handful of geranium slips when she went away.
“It’s the right time of the moon to plant them,” she said. “Good-bye, Jane Stuart. May you never drink out of an empty cup.”
Jane walked home slowly, thinking over several things. She loved being out alone at night. She liked the great white clouds that occasionally sailed over the stars. She felt, as she always felt when alone with the night, that she shared some lovely secret with the darkness.
Then the moon rose…a great, honey-hued moon. The fields all about were touched with her light. The grove of pointed firs on an eastern hill was like a magic town of slender steeples. Jane tripped along gaily, singing to herself while her black shadow ran before her on the moonlit road. And then, just around a turn, she saw cows before her. One of them, a big black one with a strange white face, was standing squarely in the middle of the road.
Jane came out in gooseflesh. She could not try to pass those cows…she could not. The only thing to do was to execute a flanking movement by climbing the fence into Big Donald’s pasture and going through it until she was past the cows. Ingloriously, Jane did so. But half-way along the field she suddenly stopped.
“How can I blame mother for not standing up to grandmother when I can’t stand up to a few cows?” she thought.
She turned and went back. She climbed the fence into the road. The cows were still there. The white-faced one had not moved. Jane set her teeth and walked on with steady, gallant eyes. The cow did not budge. Jane went past it, head in air. When she was beyond the last cow, she turned and looked back. Not a cow of them had paid her the slightest attention.
“To think I was afraid of you,” said Jane contemptuously.
And there was Lantern Hill and the silver laughter of the harbor underneath the moon. Jimmy John’s little red heifer was in the yard and Jane drove it out fearlessly.
Dad was scribbling furiously when she peeped into the study. Ordinarily Jane would not have interrupted him, but she remembered that there was something she ought to tell him.
“Dad, I forgot to tell you the house caught fire this afternoon.”
Dad dropped his pen and stared at her.
“Caught fire?”
“Yes, from a spark that fell on the roof. But I went up with a pail of water and put it out. It only burned a little hole. Uncle Tombstone will soon fix it. The Snowbeams were awful mad they missed it.”
Dad shook his head helplessly.
“What a Jane!” he said.
Jane, having discharged her conscience and being hungry again after her walk, made a meal off a cold fried trout and went to bed.
CHAPTER 26
“I like a patch of excitement about once a week,” dad would say and then they would get into the old car, taking Happy with them and leaving milk for the Peters, traveling east, west and sideways, as the road took them. Monday was generally the day for these gaddings. Every day meant something at Lantern Hill. Tuesday Jane mended, Wednesday she polished the silver, Thursday she swept and dusted downstairs, Friday upstairs, Saturday she scrubbed the floor and did extra baking for Sunday. On Monday, as dad said, they just did fool things.
They explored most of the Island that way, eating their meals by the side of the road whenever they felt hungry. “For all the world like a pair of gypsies,” condescended Aunt Irene smilingly. Jane knew Aunt Irene held her responsible for the vagabondish ways dad was getting into now. But Jane was beginning to fence herself against Aunt Irene by a sturdy little philosophy of her own. Aunt Irene felt it, though she couldn’t put it into words. If she could have, she would have said that Jane looked at her and then, quietly and politely, shut some door of her soul in her face.
“I can’t get near to her, Andrew,” she complained.
Dad laughed.
“Jane likes a clear space round her…as I do.”
They did not often include Charlottetown in their Mondays, but one day in late August they pacified Aunt Irene by having supper with her. Another lady was there…a Miss Morrow to whom Jane took no great fancy…perhaps because when she smiled at Jane she looked too much like a toothpaste advertisement. Perhaps because dad seemed to like her. He and she laughed and chaffed a great deal. She was tall and dark and handsome, with rather prominent brown eyes. And she tried so hard to be nice to Jane that it was almost painful.
“Your father and I have always been great friends. So we should be friends too.”
“An old sweetheart of your father’s, lovey,” Aunt Irene whispered to Jane when Miss Morrow had gone, attended to the gate by father. “If your mother hadn’t come along…who knows? Even yet…but I don’t know if a United States divorce would be legal in P. E. Island.”
They stayed in to see a picture and it was late when they left for home. Not that that mattered. The Peters wouldn’t care.
“We’ll take the Mercer road home,” said dad. “It’s a base-line road and not many houses along it, but I’m told it’s simply lousy with leprechauns. Perhaps we’ll manage to see one, skipping madly out of reach of the car lights. Keep your eyes peeled, Jane.”
Leprechauns or no leprechauns, the Mercer road was not a very good place to be cast away in. As they were rocking joyously down a dark narrow hill, shadowy with tall firs and spruces, the car stopped short, never to go again…at least, not until something decisive had been done to its innards. So dad decided after much fruitless poking and probing.
“We’re ten miles from a garage and one from the nearest house where everyone will be asleep, Jane. It’s after twelve. What shall we do?”
“Sleep in the car,” said Jane coolly.
“I know a better plan. See that old barn over there? It’s Jake Mallory’s back barn and full of h
ay. I’ve a yen for sleeping in a hay loft, Jane.”
“I think that will be fun,” agreed Jane.
The barn was in a pasture field that had “gone spruce.” Tiny trees were feathering up all over it…at least, they looked like trees in the soft darkness. Maybe they were really leprechauns, squatting there. There was a loft filled with clover hay and they lay down on it before the open window where they could watch the stars blazing down. Happy lay cuddled up to Jane and was soon dreaming blissfully of rabbits.
Jane thought father had gone to sleep too. Somehow, she couldn’t sleep; she didn’t especially want to. She was at one and the same time very happy and a little miserable. Happy because she was there with dad under the spell of the moonless night. Jane rather liked a night with no moon. You got closer to the secret moods of the fields then; and there were such beautiful mysterious sounds on a dark night. They were too far inland to hear the haunting rhythm of the sea, but there were whispers and rustles in the poplars behind the barn…“there’s magic in the poplars when the wind goes through,” remembered Jane…and sounds like fairy footsteps pattering by. Who knew but that the elves were really out in the fern? And each far wooded hill with a star for its friend seemed listening…listening…couldn’t you hear it too, if you listened? Jane had never, before she came to the Island, known how beautiful night could be.
But along with all this she was thinking of what Aunt Irene had said about Miss Morrow and a United States divorce. Jane felt that she was haunted by those mysterious United States divorces. Hadn’t Phyllis talked of them? Jane wished peevishly that the United States would keep their divorces at home.
Little Aunt Em had told her father could have had lots of girls. Jane rather liked to speculate on those girls father might have had, secure in the knowledge that he could never have them now. But Miss Morrow made them seem disagreeably real. Had dad held her hand a shade too long when he said good-bye? Somehow, life was all snarled up.
Jane suppressed several sighs and then allowed one to escape her. Instantly dad turned over and a lean, strong hand touched hers.
“It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that something is bothering my superior Jane. Tell Happy about it and I’ll listen in.”
Jane lay very still and silent. Oh, if she could only tell him everything—find out everything she wanted so much to know! But she couldn’t. There was a barrier between them.
“Did your mother teach you to hate me, Jane?”
Jane’s heart gave a bound that almost choked her. She had promised mother that she wouldn’t mention her name to dad and she had kept that promise. It was dad who had done the mentioning. Would it be wrong to allow him?
Jane decided then and there to take a chance on it.
“No, oh, no, dad. I didn’t even know you were alive until about a year and a half ago.”
“You didn’t! Ah, that would be your grandmother’s doings. And who told you then that I was?”
“A girl in school. And I thought you couldn’t have been good to mother or she wouldn’t have…left…you and I did hate you then for that. But nobody ever told me to hate you…only grandmother said you had sent for me just to annoy mother. You didn’t…did you, dad?”
“No. I may be selfish, Jane, no doubt I am…I was told so more than once…but I’m not so selfish as that. I thought you were being brought up to hate me and I didn’t think that fair. I thought you ought to have a chance to like me if you could. That was why I sent for you. Your mother and I made a failure of our marriage, Jane, as many other young fools have done. That is the bare bones of it.”
“But why…why…mother is so sweet…”
“You don’t need to tell me how sweet she is, Jane. When I first saw her, I was just out of the mud and stench and obscenity of the trenches and I thought that she was a creature from another star. I had never been able to understand the Trojan war before that. Then I realized that Helen of Troy might have been worth fighting for if she were like my Robin of the golden hair. And her eyes. All blue eyes are not beautiful, but hers were so lovely that they made you feel that no eyes other than blue were worth looking at. Her lashes did things to me you wouldn’t believe. She wore a green dress the first time I saw her…well, if any other girl had worn the dress, it would have been a green dress and nothing more: On Robin it was magic…mystery…the robe of Titania. I would have kissed the hem of it.”
“And did she fall in love with you, dad?”
“Something like that. Yes, she must have loved me for a while. We ran away, you know…her mother had no use for me. I don’t think she’d have liked any man who took Robin from her…but I was poor and a nobody so I was quite impossible.
“I asked Robin one moonlight night to come away with me. The old moonlight enchantment did not fail. Never trust yourself in moonlight, Superior Jane. If I’d my way I’d lock everybody up on moonlight nights. We went to live at the Harbor Head and we were happy…why, I found a new word for sweetheart every day…I discovered I was a poet…I babbled of pools and grots, Jane…yes, we were happy that first year. I’ve always got that…the gods themselves can’t take that from me.”
Dad’s voice was almost savage.
“And then,” said Jane bitterly, “I came…and neither of you wanted me…and you were never happy again.”
“Never let anyone tell you that, Jane. I admit I didn’t want you terribly…I was so happy I didn’t want any third party around. But I remember when I saw your big round eyes brighten the first time you picked me out in a roomful of other men. Then I knew how much I wanted you. Perhaps your mother wanted you too much…at any rate she didn’t seem to want anyone else to love you. You wouldn’t have thought I had any rights in you at all. She was so wrapped up in you that she hadn’t any time or love left for me. If you sneezed she was sure you were taking pneumonia and thought me heartless because I wouldn’t go off the deep end about it. She seemed afraid even to let me hold you for fear I’d drop you. Oh well, it wasn’t all you. I suppose by that time she had found she had married some mythical John Doe of her imagination and that he had turned out to be no dashing hero but just a very ordinary Richard Roe. There were so many things…I was poor and we had to live by my budget…I wasn’t going to have my wife live on money her mother sent her…I made her send it back. I will say she was quite willing to. But we began quarreling over trifles…oh, you know I’ve a temper, Jane. I remember once I told her to shut her head…but every normal husband says that to his wife at least once in his life, Jane. I don’t wonder that hurt her…but she was hurt by so many things I never thought would hurt her. Perhaps I don’t understand women, Jane.”
“No, you don’t,” agreed Jane.
“Eh! What!” Dad seemed a bit startled and only half pleased over Jane’s candid agreement with him. “Well, upon my word…well, we won’t argue it. But Robin didn’t understand me either. She was jealous of my work…she thought I put it before her…I know she was secretly glad when my book was rejected.”
Jane remembered that mother had thought dad was jealous too.
“Don’t you think Aunt Irene had something to do with it, dad?”
“Irene? Nonsense! Irene was her best friend. And your mother was jealous of my love for Irene. Your mother couldn’t help being a little jealous…her mother was the most jealous creature that ever breathed. It was a disease with her. In the end Robin went back to Toronto for a visit…and when she got there, she wrote me that she was not coming back.”
“Oh, dad!”
“Well, I suppose her mother got round her. But she had stopped loving me. I knew that. And I didn’t want to see hate growing in the eyes where I had seen love. That is a terrible thing, Jane. So I didn’t answer the letter.”
“Oh, dad…if you had…if you had asked her…”
“I agree with Emerson that the highest price you can pay for a thing is to ask for it. Too high sometimes. A yea
r later I weakened…I did write and ask her to come back. I knew it had been as much my fault as hers…I’d teased her…once I said you had a face like a monkey…well, you had, Jane, at that time…I’ll swear you had. I never got any answer. So I knew it was no use.”
A question came into Jane’s head. Had mother ever seen that letter?
“It’s all best as it is, Jane. We weren’t suited to each other…I was ten years her senior and the war had made me twenty. I couldn’t give her the luxuries and good times she craved. She was very…wise…to discard me. Let’s not discuss it further, Jane. I merely wanted you to know the rights of it. And you must not mention anything I’ve said to your mother. Promise me that, Jane.”
Jane promised dismally. There were so many things she wanted to say and she couldn’t say them. It mightn’t be fair to mother.
But she had to falter, “Perhaps…it isn’t too late yet, dad.”
“Don’t get any foolish notions like that into your russet head, my Jane. It is too late. I shall never again ask Mrs. Robert Kennedy’s daughter to come back to me. We must make the best of things as they are. You and I love each other…I am to be congratulated on that.”