Jane of Lantern Hill

  Then came the cat.

  CHAPTER 31

  They had had dinner at 60 Gay and were all in the big drawing room, which even with a fire blazing on the hearth still seemed cold and grim. Frank came in with a basket.

  “It’s come, Mrs. Kennedy,” he said.

  Grandmother took the basket from Frank and opened it. A magnificent white Persian cat was revealed, blinking pale green eyes disdainfully and distrustfully at everybody. Mary and Frank had discussed that cat in the kitchen.

  “Whatever has the old dame got into her noddle now?” said Frank. “I thought she hated cats and wouldn’t let Miss Victoria have one on any consideration. And here she’s giving her one…and it costing seventy-five dollars. Seventy-five dollars for a cat!”

  “Money’s no object to her,” said Mary. “And I’ll tell you what’s in her noddle. I haven’t cooked for her for twenty years without learning to read her mind. Miss Victoria has a cat on that Island of hers. Her grandmother wants to cut that cat out. She isn’t going to have Andrew Stuart letting Miss Victoria have cats when she isn’t allowed to have them here. The old lady is at her wits’ end how to wean Miss Victoria away from the Island and that’s what this cat means. Thinks she…a real Persian, costing seventy-five dollars and looking like the King of All Cats, will soon put the child out of conceit with her miserable common kittens. Look at the presents she give Miss Victoria this Christmas. As if to say, ‘You couldn’t get anything like that from your father!’ Oh, I’m knowing her. But she’s met her match at last, or I’m mistaken. She can’t overcrow Miss Victoria any longer and she’s just beginning to find it out.”

  “This is a Christmas present for you, Victoria,” said grandmother. “It should have been here last night but there was some delay…somebody was ill.”

  Everybody looked at Jane as if they expected her to go into spasms of delight.

  “Thank you, grandmother,” said Jane flatly.

  She didn’t like Persian cats. Aunt Minnie had one…pedigreed smoke-blue…and Jane had never liked it. Persian cats were so deceptive. They looked so fat and fluffy, and then when you picked them up, expecting to enjoy a good satisfying squeeze, there was nothing to them but bones. Anybody was welcome to their Persian cat for all of Jane.

  “Its name is Snowball,” said Grandmother.

  So she couldn’t even name her own cat. But grandmother expected her to like the cat and Jane went to work heroically in the following days trying to like it. The trouble was, the cat didn’t want to be liked. No friendliness ever warmed the pale green fire of its eyes. It did not want to be petted or caressed. The Peters had been lapsters, with eyes of amber, and Jane from the first had been able to talk to them in their own language. But Snowball refused to understand a word she said.

  “I thought…correct me if I’m wrong…that you professed to be fond of cats,” said grandmother.

  “Snowball doesn’t like me,” said Jane.

  “Oh!” said grandmother. “Well, I suppose your taste in cats is on a par with your taste in friends. And I don’t suppose there is very much that can be done about it.”

  “Darling, couldn’t you like Snowball a little more?” pleaded mother, as soon as they were alone. “Just to please your grandmother. She thought you would be delighted. Can’t you pretend to like it?”

  Jane was not very good at pretending. She looked after Snowball faithfully, combed and brushed him every day, saw that he had the right kind of food and plenty of it, saw that he did not get out in the cold and take pneumonia…would not have cared in the least if he had. She liked pussies who went out boldly on their own mysterious errands and later appeared on the doorstep pleading to get in where there was a warm cushion and a drop of cream. Snowball took all her attention as a matter of course, paraded about 60 Gay, waving a plumy tail, and was rapturously adored by all callers.

  “Poor Snowball,” said grandmother ironically.

  At this unlucky point Jane giggled. She couldn’t help it. Snowball looked so little desirous of pity. Sitting on the arm of the chesterfield, he was monarch of all he surveyed and quite happy about it.

  “I like a cat I can hug,” said Jane. “A cat that likes to be hugged.”

  “You forget you are talking to me, not to Jody,” said grandmother.

  After three weeks Snowball disappeared. Luckily Jane was at St. Agatha’s or grandmother might have suspected her of conniving at his disappearance. Everybody was away and Mary had left the front door open for a few moments. Snowball went out and apparently wandered into the fourth dimension. A lost-and-found ad had no results.

  “He’s been stole,” said Frank. “That’s what comes of having them expensive cats.”

  “It’s not me that’s sorry. He had to be more pampered than a baby,” said Mary. “And I’m not of the opinion Miss Victoria will break her heart about it either. She’s still hankering after her Peters…she’s not one to change, and the old lady can put that in her pipe and smoke it.”

  Jane couldn’t pretend any great grief and grandmother was very angry. She smoldered for days over it and Jane was uncomfortable. Perhaps she had been ungrateful…perhaps she hadn’t tried hard enough to like Snowball. Anyhow, on the night the big white Persian suddenly materialized on the street corner, as she and mother were waiting for the Bloor car amid a swirl of snow, and wrapped itself around her legs in an apparent frenzy of recognition and hoarse meows, Jane yelped with genuine delight.

  “Mummy…mummy…here’s Snowball.”

  That she and mother should be standing alone on a street corner, waiting for a car on a blustery January night was an unprecedented thing. There had been doings at St. Agatha’s that night…the Senior girls had put on a play and mother had been invited. Frank was laid up with influenza and they had to go with Mrs. Austen. Before the play was half through Mrs. Austen had been summoned home because of sudden illness in her family and mother had said, “Don’t think of us for a moment. Jane and I can go home perfectly well on the streetcars.”

  Jane always loved a ride on a streetcar, and it was twice as much fun with mother. It was so seldom she and mother went anywhere alone. But when they did, mother was such a good companion. She saw the funny side of everything and her eyes laughed to Jane’s when a joke popped its head up. Jane was sorry when they got off at Bloor, for that meant they were comparatively near home.

  “Darling, how can this be Snowball?” exclaimed mother. “It does look like him, I admit…but it’s a mile from home…”

  “Frank always said he’d been stolen, mummy. It must be Snowball…a strange cat wouldn’t make a fuss over me like this…”

  “I shouldn’t have thought Snowball would either,” laughed mother.

  “I expect he’s glad to see a friend,” said Jane. “We don’t know how he’s been treated. He feels awfully thin. We must take him home.”

  “On the street car…”

  “We can’t leave him here. I’ll hold him…he’ll be quiet.”

  Snowball was quiet for a few moments after they entered the car. There were not many people on it. Three boys at the far end sniggered as Jane sat down with her armful of cat. A pudgy child edged away from her in terror. A man with a pimply face scowled at her as if he were personally insulted by the sight of a Persian cat.

  Suddenly Snowball seemed to go quite mad. He made one wild leap out of Jane’s incautiously relaxed arms and went whizzing around the car, hurtling over the seats and hurling himself against the windows. Women shrieked. The pudgy child bounced up and screamed. The pimply-faced man’s hat got knocked off by a wild Snowballian leap, and he swore. The conductor opened the door.

  “Don’t let the cat out,” shrieked breathless, pursuing Jane. “Shut the door…shut it quick…it’s my lost cat and I’m taking it home.”

  “You’d better keep hold of it then,” said the conductor gruffly.

  “Enough is
as good as a feast,” thought Snowball…evidently…for he allowed Jane to nab him. The boys all laughed insultingly as Jane walked back to her seat, looking neither to the right nor to the left. A button had burst off her slipper and she had stumbled and skinned her nose on the handle of a seat. But she was Jane victorious…as well as Victoria.

  “Oh, darling…darling,” said mother, in kinks of laughter…real laughter. When had mother laughed like that? If grandmother saw her!

  “That’s a dangerous animal,” said the pimply-faced man warningly.

  Jane looked at the boys. They made irresistibly comic faces at her and she made faces back. She liked Snowball better than she ever had before. But she did not relax her grip on him until she heard the door of 60 Gay clang behind her.

  “We’ve found Snowball, grandmother,” cried Jane triumphantly. “We’ve brought him home.”

  She released the cat who stood looking squiffily about.

  “That is not Snowball,” said grandmother. “That is a female cat.”

  Judging from grandmother’s tone it was evident that there was something very disgraceful about a female cat!

  The owner of the female cat was eventually discovered through another lost-and-found and no more Persians appeared at 60 Gay. Jane had ticked off December, and January was speeding away. The Lantern Hill news was still absorbing. Everybody was skating…on the pond or on the little round, tree-shadowed pool beyond the Corners…Shingle Snowbeam had been queen in a Christmas concert and had worn a crown of scalloped tin; the new minister’s wife could play the organ; the Jimmy John baby had eaten all the blooms off Mrs. Jimmy John’s Christmas cactus, every last one of them; Mrs. Little Donald had had her gobbler for Christmas dinner…Jane remembered that magnificent white gobbler with the coral-red wattles and accorded him a meed of regret; Uncle Tombstone had butchered Min’s ma’s pig and Min’s ma had sent a roast to dad; Min’s ma had got a new pig to bring up, a nice pink pig exactly like Elder Tommy; Mr. Spragg’s dog at the Corners had bit the eye out of Mr. Loney’s dog and Mr. Loney was going to law about it; Mrs. Angus Scatterby, whose husband had died in October, was disappointed over the result. “It’s not so much fun being a widow as I expected,” she was reported to have said; Sherwood Morton had gone into the choir and the managers had put a few more nails in the roof…Jane suspected Step-a-yard of that joke; there was wonderful coasting on Big Donald’s hill; her dad had got a new dog, a fat white dog named Bubbles; her geraniums were blooming beautiful…“and me too far away to see them,” thought Jane with a pang; William MacAllister had had a fight with Thomas Crowder because Thomas told William he didn’t like the whiskers William would have had if he had had whiskers; they had had a silver thaw…Jane could see it…ice jewels…the maple wood a thing of unearthly splendor…every stalk sticking up from the crusted snow of the garden a spear of crystal; Step-a-yard was mudding…what on earth was mudding?…she must find out next summer; Mr. Snowbeam’s pig-house roof had blown off…“if he’d nailed the ridge-pole firmly on last summer when I advised him to, this wouldn’t have happened,” thought Jane virtuously; Bob Woods had fallen on his dog and sprained his back…was it Bob’s back or the dog’s that was sprained?…Caraway Snowbeam had to have her tonsils out and was putting on such airs about it; Jabez Gibbs had set a trap for a skunk and caught his own cat; Uncle Tombstone had given all his friends an oyster supper; some said Mrs. Alec Carson at the Corners had a new baby, some said she hadn’t.

  What had 60 Gay to offer against the color and flavor of news like that? Jane ticked January off.

  February was stormy. Jane spent many a blustery evening, while the wind howled up and down Gay Street, poring over seed catalogs, picking out things for dad to plant in the spring. She loved to read the description of the vegetables and imagine she saw rows of them at Lantern Hill. She copied down all Mary’s best recipes to make them for dad next summer…dad who was likely at this very moment to be sitting cozily by their own fireside with two happy dogs curled up at his feet and outside a wild white night of drifting snow. Jane ticked off February.

  CHAPTER 32

  When Jane ticked off March she whispered “Just two and a half months more.” Life went on outwardly the same at 60 Gay and St. Agatha’s. Easter came and Aunt Gertrude, who had refused sugar in her tea all through Lent, took it again. Grandmother was buying the loveliest spring clothes for mother, who seemed rather indifferent to them. And Jane was beginning to hear her Island calling to her in the night. On a wild, wet morning in late April the letter came. Jane, who had been watching for it for weeks and was beginning to feel a bit worried, carried it in to mother with the face of

  “One to whom glad news is sent

  “From the far country of his home after long banishment.”

  Mother was pale as she took it and grandmother was suddenly flushed.

  “Another letter from Andrew Stuart?” said grandmother, as if the name blistered her lips.

  “Yes,” said mother faintly. “He…he says Jane Victoria must go back to him for the summer…if she wants to go. She is to make her own choice.”

  “Then,” said grandmother, “she will not go.”

  “Of course you won’t go, darling?”

  “Not go! But I must go! I promised I’d go back,” cried Jane.

  “Your…your father will not hold you to that promise. He says expressly that you can choose as you please.”

  “I want to go back,” said Jane. “I’m going back.”

  “Darling,” said mother imploringly, “don’t go. You grew away from me last summer. If you go again I’ll lose more of you…”

  Jane looked down at the carpet and her lips set in a line that had an odd resemblance to grandmother’s.

  Grandmother took the letter from mother, glanced at it, and looked at Jane.

  “Victoria,” she said, quite pleasantly for her, “I think you have not given the matter sufficient thought. I say nothing for myself…I have never expected gratitude…but your mother’s wishes ought to carry some weight with you, Victoria…” grandmother’s voice grew sharper…“please do me the courtesy of looking at me while I am speaking to you.”

  Jane looked at grandmother…looked her straight in the eyes, unquailingly, unyieldingly. Grandmother seemed to put a certain unusual restraint on herself. She still spoke pleasantly.

  “I have not mentioned this before, Victoria, but I decided some time ago that I would take you and your mother for a trip to England this summer. We will spend July and August there. You will enjoy it, I know. I think that, between a summer in England and a summer in a hut in a country settlement on Prince Edward Island, even you could hardly hesitate.”

  Jane did not hesitate. “Thank you, grandmother. It is very kind of you to offer me such a lovely trip. I hope you and mother will enjoy it. But I would rather go to the Island.”

  Even Mrs. Robert Kennedy knew when she was beaten. But she could not accept defeat gracefully.

  “You get that stubborn will of yours from your father,” she said, her face twisted with anger. For the moment she looked simply like a very shrewish old spitfire. “You grow more like him every day of your life…you’ve got his very chin.”

  Jane was thankful she had got a will from someone. She was glad she looked like dad…glad her chin was like his. But she wished mother were not crying.

  “Don’t waste your tears, Robin,” said grandmother, turning scornfully from Jane. “It’s the Stuart coming out in her…you could expect nothing else. If she prefers her trumpery friends down there to you, there is nothing you can do about it. I have said all I intend to say on the matter.”

  Mother stood up and dabbed her tears away with a cobwebby handkerchief.

  “Very well, dear,” she said brightly and hardly. “You have made your choice. I agree with your grandmother that there is nothing more to be said.”

  She went out, leaving Jane wi
th a heart that was almost breaking. Never in her life had mother spoken to her in that hard, brittle tone. She felt as if she had been suddenly pushed far, far away from her. But she did not regret her choice. She had no choice really. She had to go back to dad. If it came to choosing between him and mother…Jane rushed to her room, flung herself down on the big white bearskin, and writhed in a tearless agony no child should ever have to suffer.

  It was a week before Jane was herself again, although mother, after that bitter little outburst, had been as sweet and loving as ever. When she had come in to say good-night she had held Jane very tightly and silently.

  Jane hugged her mother closer to her.

  “I have to go, mother…I have to go…but I do love you…”

  “Oh, Jane, I hope you do…but sometimes you seem so far away from me that you might as well be beyond Sirius. Don’t… don’t let anyone ever come between us. That is all I ask.”

  “No one can…no one wants to, mother.”

  In one way, it occurred to Jane, that was not strictly true. She had known for a long while that grandmother would like very well to come between them if she could only bring it about. But Jane also knew that by “no one” mother meant dad, and so her answer was true.

  There was a letter from Polly Garland the last day of April…a jubilant Polly.

  We’re all so glad you’re coming back this summer, Jane. Oh, Jane, I wish you could see the pussy willows in our swamp.

  Jane wished so too. And there were other fascinating bits of news in Polly’s letter. Min’s ma’s cow was worn out and Min’s ma was going to get a new one. Polly had a hen setting on nine eggs…Jane could see nine real live wee baby chicks running round. Well, father had promised her some hens this summer…Step-a-yard had told Polly to tell her it was a great spring and even the roosters were laying; the baby had been christened William Charles and was toddling round everywhere and getting thin; Big Donald’s dog had been poisoned, had had six convulsions, but had recovered.