“My dearest…my very own little girl. You’re home again. Oh, darling, I’ve missed you so…I’ve missed you so.”
Jane hugged mother fiercely…mother as beautiful as ever, her eyes as blue as ever, though…as Jane saw instantly…a little thinner than she had been in June.
“Are you glad to be back, darling?”
“So glad to be with you again, mummy,” and Jane.
“You’ve grown…why, darling, you’re up to my shoulder…and such a lovely tan. But I can never let you go away again…never.”
Jane kept her own counsel about that. She felt curiously changed and grown-uppish as she went through the big lighted station with mother. Frank was waiting with the limousine and they went home through the busy, crowded streets to 60 Gay. 60 Gay was neither busy nor crowded. The clang of the iron gates behind her seemed a knell of doom. She was reentering prison. The great, cold, still house struck a chill to her spirit. Mother had gone on to the dinner and grandmother and Aunt Gertrude were meeting her. She kissed Aunt Gertrude’s narrow, white face and grandmother’s soft, wrinkled one.
“You’ve grown, Victoria,” said grandmother icily. She did not like Jane looking into her eyes on the level. And grandmother saw at a glance that Jane had somehow learned what to do with her arms and legs and was looking entirely too much mistress of herself. “Don’t smile with your lips closed, if you please. I’ve never really been able to see the charm of La Gioconda.”
They had dinner. It was six o’clock. Down home it would be seven. Dad would be…Jane felt she could not swallow a mouthful.
“Will you be good enough to pay attention when I am speaking to you, Victoria?”
“I beg your pardon, grandmother.”
“I am asking you what you wore this summer. I have looked into your trunk and the clothes you took with you don’t seem to have been worn at all.”
“Only the green linen jumper suit,” said Jane. “I wore it to church and the ice-cream social. I had gingham dresses to wear at home. I kept house for father, you know.”
Grandmother wiped her lips daintily with her napkin. It seemed as if she were wiping some disagreeable flavor off them.
“I am not inquiring about your rural activities”…Jane saw grandmother looking at her hands…“It will be wise for you to forget them…”
“But I’m going back next summer, grandmother…”
“Be kind enough not to interrupt me, Victoria. And as you must be tired after your journey, I would advise you to go to bed at once. Mary has prepared a bath for you. I suppose you will be rather glad to get into a real bathtub once more.”
When she had had the whole gulf for a bathtub all summer!
“I must run over and see Jody first,” said Jane…and went. She could not forget her new freedom so quickly. Grandmother watched her go with tightening lips. Perhaps she realized that never again would Jane be quite the meek, overawed Victoria of the old days. She had grown in mind as well as in body.
Jane and Jody had a rapturous reunion. Jody had grown too. She was thinner and taller and her eyes were sadder than ever.
“Oh, Jane, I’m so glad you’re back. It’s been so long.”
“I’m so glad you’re still here, Jody. I was afraid Miss West might have sent you to the orphanage.”
“She’s always saying she will…I guess she will yet. Did you really like the Island so much, Jane?”
“I just loved it,” said Jane, glad that here was at least one person to whom she could talk freely about her Island and her father.
Jane was horribly homesick as she climbed the soft-carpeted stairway to bed. If she were only skipping up the bare, painted steps at Lantern Hill! Her old room had not grown any friendlier. She ran to the window, opened it, and gazed out…but not on starry hills and the moon shining on woodland fields. The clamor of Bloor Street assailed her ears. The huge old trees about 60 Gay were sufficient unto themselves…they were not her friendly birches and spruces. A wind was trying to blow…Jane felt sorry for it…checked here, thwarted there. But it was blowing from the west. Would it blow right down to the Island…to the velvety black night starred with harbor lights beyond Lantern Hill? Jane leaned out of the window and sent a kiss to dad on it.
“And now,” remarked Jane to Victoria, “there will be only nine months to put in.”
CHAPTER 29
“She will soon forget everything about Lantern Hill,” said grandmother.
Mother wasn’t so sure. She felt the change in Jane, as did everybody. Uncle David’s family thought Jane “much improved.” Aunt Sylvia said Victoria had actually become able to get through a room without danger to the furniture. And Phyllis was a shade less patronizing, though with plenty of room for improvement yet.
“I heard you went barefoot down there,” she said curiously.
“Of course,” said Jane. “All the children do in summer.”
“Victoria has gone quite P. E. Island,” said grandmother with her bitter little smile, much as if she had said, “Victoria has gone quite savage.” Grandmother had already learned a new way to get under Jane’s skin. It was to say little biting things about the Island. Grandmother employed it quite mercilessly. She felt that Jane, in so many respects, had somehow slipped beyond her power to hurt. All the color still went out of Jane in grandmother’s presence but she was not thereby reduced to the old flabbiness. Jane had not been chatelaine of Lantern Hill and the companion of a keen, mature intellect all summer for nothing. A new spirit looked out of her hazel eyes…something that was free and aloof…something that was almost beyond grandmother’s power to tame or hurt. All the venom of her stings seemed unable to touch this new Jane…except when she sneered at the Island.
Because in a very real sense Jane was still living on the Island. This helped to take the edge off her first two weeks of unbearable homesickness. While she was practicing her scales she was listening for the thunder of the breakers on Queen’s Shore; while she ate her meals she was waiting for dad to come in from one of his long hikes with Happy trotting at his heels; when she was alone in the big gloomy house she was companioned by the Peters…who could have imagined that a couple of cats a thousand miles away could be such comforts?…when she lay awake at night she was hearing all the sounds of her Island home. And while she was reading the Bible chapter to grandmother and Aunt Gertrude in that terrible, unchanged drawing-room, she was reading it to dad on the old Watch Tower.
“I should prefer a little more reverence in reading the Bible, Victoria,” said grandmother. Jane had been reading an old Hebrew war tale as father would have read it, with a trumpet clang of victory in her voice. Grandmother looked at her vindictively. It was plain that reading the Bible was no longer a penance to Jane. She seemed positively to enjoy it. And what could grandmother do about it?
Jane had made a list of the months that must pass before her return to the Island on the back of her arithmetic notebook and smiled when she ticked off September.
She had felt very reluctant to go back to St. Agatha’s. But in a short time she found herself saying one day in amazement, “I like going to school.”
She had always felt vaguely left out…excluded…at St. Agatha’s. Now, for some reason unknown to her, she no longer felt so. It was as if she had become a comrade and a leader overnight. The girls of her class looked up to her. The teachers began to wonder why they had never before suspected what a remarkable child Victoria Stuart was. Why, she was simply full of executive ability.
And her studies were no longer a tribulation. They had become a pleasure. She wanted to study as hard as she could, to catch up with dad. Dim ghosts of history…exquisite, unhappy queens…grim old tyrants…had become real…marked poems in the reader she and dad had read together were full of meaning for her…the ancient lands where they had roamed in fancy were places she knew and loved. It was so easy to learn about them. Jane brought home
no more bad reports. Mother was delighted but grandmother did not seem overly pleased. She picked up a letter one day which Jane was writing to Polly Jimmy John, glanced over it, dropped it with disdain.
“Phlox is not spelled f-l-o-x, Victoria. But I suppose it does not matter to your haphazard friends how you spell.”
Jane blushed. She knew perfectly well how to spell phlox but there was so much to tell Polly…to ask Polly…so many messages to send to the people in that far, dear Island by the sea…she just scribbled away furiously without thinking.
“Polly Garland is the best speller at Lantern Corners school,” said Jane.
“Oh, I have no doubt…no doubt whatever…that she has all the backwoods virtues,” said grandmother
Grandmother’s sneers could not poison Jane’s delight in the letters she got from the Island. They came as thick as autumn leaves in Vallambroso. Somebody at Lantern Hill or Hungry Cove or the Corners was always writing to Jane. The Snowbeams sent composite letters, dreadfully spelled and blotted, written paragraph about. They possessed the knack of writing the most amusing things, illustrated along the edges with surprisingly well-done thumbnail sketches by Shingle. Jane always wanted to shriek with laughter over the Snowbeam letters.
Elder Tommy had the mumps…fancy Elder Tommy with the mumps…Shingle had fancied it in a few sidesplitting curves…The tail-board of Big Donald’s cart had come out when he was going up Little Donald’s hill and all his turnips had rolled out and down the hill and was he mad! The pigs had got into the Corners graveyard; Min’s ma was making a silk quilt…Jane immediately began saving patches for Min’s ma’s quilt…Ding-dong’s dog had torn the whole seat out of Andy Pearson’s second best trousers, the frost had killed all the dahlias, Step-a-yard was having boils, there had been a lovely lot of funerals this fall, old Mrs. Dougald MacKay had died and people who were at the funeral said she looked perfectly gorgeous, the Jimmy Johns’ baby had laughed at last, the big tree on Big Donald’s hill had blown down…Jane was sorry for that, she had loved that tree…“we miss you just awful, Jane”…“Oh Jane, we wish you could be here for Hallowe’en night.”
Jane wished it too. If one could but fly in the darkness over rivers and mountains and forests to the Island for just that one night! What fun they would have running round putting turnip and pumpkin Jack-o’-lanterns on gateposts and perhaps helping to carry off somebody’s gate.
“What are you laughing at, darling?” asked mother.
“A letter from home,” said Jane thoughtlessly.
“Oh, Jane Victoria, isn’t this your home?” cried mother piteously.
Jane was sorry she had spoken. But she had to be honest. Home! A little house looking seaward…a white gull…ships going up and down…spruce woods…misty barrens…salt air cold from leagues of gulf…quiet…silence. That was home…the only home she knew. But she hated to hurt mother. Jane had begun to feel curiously protective about mother…as if, somehow, she must be shielded and guarded. Oh, if she could only talk things over with her mother…tell her everything about dad…find out everything. What fun it would be to read those letters to mother! She did read them to Jody. Jody was as much interested in the Lantern Hill folks as Jane herself. She began sending messages to Polly and Shingle and Min.
The elms around 60 Gay turned a rusty yellow. Far away the red leaves would be falling from the maples…the autumn mists would be coming in from the sea. Jane opened her notebook and ticked off October.
November was a dark, dry, windy month. Jane scored a secret triumph over grandmother one week of it.
“Let me make the croquettes for lunch, Mary,” she begged one day. Mary consented very skeptically, remembering that there was plenty of chicken salad in the refrigerator if the croquettes were ruined. They were not. They were everything croquettes should be. Nobody knew who had made them, but Jane had the fun of watching folks eat them. Grandmother took a second helping.
“Mary seems to have learned how to make croquettes properly at last,” she said.
Jane wore a poppy on Armistice Day because dad was a D.S. She was hungry to hear about him but she would not ask her Island correspondents. They must not know she and dad did not exchange letters. But sometimes there was a bit about him in some of the letters…perhaps only a sentence or two. She lived for and by them. She got up in the night to reread the letters they were in. And every Saturday afternoon she shut herself up in her room and wrote him a letter which she sealed up and asked Mary to hide in her trunk. She would take them all to dad next summer and let him read them while she read his diary. She made a little ritual of dressing up to write to dad. It was delightful to be writing to him, while the wind howled outside, to father so far away and yet so near, telling him everything you had done that week, all the little intimate things you loved.
The first snow came one afternoon as she wrote, in flakes as large as butterflies. Would it be snowing on the Island? Jane hunted up the morning paper and looked to see what the weather report in the Maritimes was. Yes…cold, with showers of snow…clearing and cold at night. Jane shut her eyes and saw it. Great soft flakes falling over the gray landscape against the dark spruces…her little garden a thing of fairy beauty…egg flakes in the empty robin’s nest she and Shingle knew of…the dark sea around the white land. “Clearing and cold at night.” Frosty stars gleaming out in still frostier evening blue over quiet fields thinly white with snow. Would dad remember to let the Peters in?
Jane ticked off November.
CHAPTER 30
Christmas had never meant a great deal to Jane. They always did the same things in the same way. There were neither tree nor stockings at 60 Gay and no morning celebration because grandmother so decreed. She said she liked a quiet forenoon and she always went to the service at St. Barnabas’, though, for some queer reason of her own, she always wanted to go alone that day. Then they all went for lunch to Uncle William’s or Uncle David’s and there was a big family dinner at night at 60 Gay, with the presents on display. Jane always got a good many things she didn’t want especially and one or two she did. Mother always seemed even a little gayer on Christmas than on any other day…too gay, as if, Jane in her new wisdom felt, she were afraid of remembering something if she stopped being gay for a moment.
But the Christmas season this year had a subtle meaning for Jane it had never possessed before. There was the concert at St. Agatha’s for one thing, in which Jane was one of the star performers. She recited another habitant poem and did it capitally…because she was reciting to an audience of one a thousand miles away and didn’t care a hoot for grandmother’s scornful face and compressed lips. The last number was a tableau in which four girls represented the spirits of the four seasons kneeling around the Christmas spirit. Jane was the spirit of autumn, with maple leaves in her russet hair.
“Your granddaughter is going to be a very handsome girl,” a lady told grandmother. “She doesn’t resemble her lovely mother, of course, but there is something very striking about her face.”
“Handsome is as handsome does,” said grandmother in a tone which implied that, judged by that standard, Jane hadn’t the remotest chance of good looks. But Jane didn’t hear it and wouldn’t have cared if she had. She knew what dad thought about her bones.
Jane could not send presents to the Island…she had no money to buy them. An allowance was something Jane had never had. So she wrote a special letter to all her friends instead. They sent her little gifts which gave her far more delight than the fine ones she got in Toronto.
Min’s ma sent her a packet of summer savory.
“Nobody here cares for summer savory,” said grandmother, meaning that she didn’t. “We prefer sage.”
“Mrs. Jimmy John always uses savory in her stuffing and so do Min’s ma and Mrs. Big Donald,” said Jane.
“Oh, no doubt we are sadly behind the times,” said grandmother, and when Jane opened the packet of spruce-g
um Young John had sent her, grandmother said, “Well, well, so ladies chew gum nowadays. Other times, other manners.”
She picked up the card Ding-dong had sent Jane. It had on it the picture of a blue and gold angel under which Ding-dong had written, “This looks like you.”
“I have always heard,” said grandmother, “that love is blind.”
Grandmother certainly had the knack of making you feel ridiculous.
But even grandmother did not disdain the bundle of driftwood old Timothy Salt expressed up. She let Jane burn it in the fireplace on Christmas eve, and mother loved the blue and green and purple flames. Jane sat before it and dreamed. It was a very cold night…a night of frost and stars. Would it be as cold on the Island and would her geraniums freeze? Would there be a thick white fur on the windows at Lantern Hill? What kind of a Christmas would dad have? She knew he was going to Aunt Irene’s for dinner. Aunt Irene had written Jane a note to accompany her gift of a very pretty knitted sweater and told her so. “With a few of his old friends,” said Aunt Irene.
Would Lilian Morrow be among the old friends? Somehow Jane hoped not. There was always a queer little formless, nameless fear in her heart when she thought of Lilian Morrow and her caressing “’Drew.”
Lantern Hill would be empty on Christmas. Jane resented that. Dad would take Happy with him and the poor Peters would be all alone.
Jane had one thrill on Christmas Day nobody knew anything about. They went to lunch at Uncle David’s and there was a copy of Saturday Evening in the library. Jane pounced on it. Would there be anything of dad’s in it? Yes, there was. Another front page article on The Consequences of Confederation in Regard to the Maritime Provinces. Jane was totally out of her depth in it, but she read every word of it with pride and delight.