Jane of Lantern Hill

  Uncle William read the letter…turned back and read a certain paragraph twice…pursed his lips…folded up the letter and fitted it into its envelope…took off his glasses…put them into their case and laid it down…cleared his throat and reflected. Jane felt that she was going to scream.

  “I suppose,” said Uncle William at last, “that you had better let her go.”

  There was a good deal more said, though Jane said nothing. Grandmother was very angry.

  But Uncle William said, “Andrew Stuart could take her altogether if he had a mind to. And, knowing him for what he is, I think he very likely would if you angered him. I agree with you, mother, that he is only doing this to annoy us, and when he sees that it has not annoyed us and that we are taking it quite calmly he will probably never bother about her again.”

  Jane went up to her room and stood alone in it. She saw with eyes of despair the great, big, unfriendly place.

  She saw herself in the big mirror reflected in another dim, unfriendly room.

  “God,” said Jane distinctly and deliberately, “is no good.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “I think your father and mother might have got on if it hadn’t been for you,” said Phyllis.

  Jane winced. She hadn’t known that Phyllis knew about her father. But it seemed that everybody had known except her. She did not want to talk about him, but Phyllis was bent on talking.

  “I don’t see,” said Jane miserably, “why I made so much difference to them.”

  “Mother says your father was jealous because Aunt Robin loved you so much.”

  This, thought Jane, was a different yarn from the one Agnes Ripley had told. Agnes had said her mother hadn’t wanted her. What was the truth? Perhaps neither Phyllis nor Agnes knew it. Anyhow, Jane liked Phyllis’ version better than Agnes’. It was dreadful to think you ought never to have been born…that your mother wasn’t glad to have you.

  “Mother says,” went on Phyllis, finding that Jane had nothing to say, “that if you lived in the States Aunt Robin could get a divorce easy as wink, but it’s harder in Canada.”

  “What is a divorce?” asked Jane, remembering that Agnes Ripley had used the same word.

  Phyllis laughed condescendingly.

  “Victoria, don’t you know anything? A divorce is when two people get unmarried.”

  “Can people get unmarried?” gasped Jane, to whom it was an entirely new idea.

  “Of course they can, silly. Mother says your mother ought to go to the States and get a divorce, but father says it wouldn’t be legal in Canada, and anyway the Kennedys don’t believe in it. Father says grandmother wouldn’t allow it either, for fear Aunt Robin would just go and marry somebody else.”

  “If…if mother got a divorce does that mean that he wouldn’t be my father anymore?” queried Jane hopefully.

  Phyllis looked dubious.

  “I shouldn’t suppose it would make any difference that way. But whoever she married would be your stepfather.”

  Jane did not want a stepfather any more than she wanted a father. But she said nothing again and Phyllis was annoyed.

  “How do you like the idea of going to P. E. Island, Victoria?”

  Jane was not going to expose her soul to the patronizing Phyllis.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said shortly.

  “I do,” said Phyllis importantly. “We spent a summer there two years ago. We lived in a big hotel on the north shore. It’s quite a pretty place. I daresay you’ll like it for a change.”

  Jane knew she would hate it. She tried to turn the conversation but Phyllis meant to thrash the subject out.

  “How do you suppose you’ll get along with your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He likes clever people, you know, and you’re not very clever, are you, Victoria?”

  Jane did not like being made to feel like a worm. Phyllis always made her feel like that…when she didn’t make her feel like a shadow. And there was not a bit of use in getting mad with her. Phyllis never got mad. Phyllis, everybody said, was such a sweet child…had such a lovely disposition. She just went on condescending. Jane sometimes thought if they could have just one good fight she would like Phyllis better. Jane knew mother was a bit worried because she didn’t make more friends among girls of her own age.

  “You know,” went on Phyllis, “that was one of the things…Aunt Robin thought she couldn’t talk clever enough for him.”

  The worm turned.

  “I am not going to talk any more about my mother…or him,” said Jane distinctly.

  Phyllis sulked a little and the afternoon was a failure. Jane was more thankful than usual when Frank came to take her home.

  Little was being said at 60 Gay about Jane’s going to the Island. How quickly the days flew by! Jane wished she could hold them back. Once, when she had been very small, she had said to mother, “Isn’t there any way we can stop time, mummy?”

  Jane remembered that mother had sighed and said, “We can never stop time, darling.”

  And now time just went stonily on…tick tock, tick tock…sunrise, sunset, ever and ever nearer to the day when she would be torn away from mother. It would be early in June…St. Agatha’s closed earlier than the other schools. Victoria took Jane to Marlborough’s late in May and got some very nice clothes for her…much nicer than she had ever had before. Under ordinary circumstances Jane would have loved her blue coat and the smart little blue hat with its tiny scarlet bow…and a certain lovely frock of white, eyelet-embroidered in red, with a smart red leather belt. Phyllis had nothing nicer than that. But now she had no interest in them.

  “I don’t suppose she’ll have much use for very fine clothes down there,” mother had said.

  “She shall go fitted out properly,” said grandmother. “He shall not need to buy clothes for her, of that I shall make sure. And Irene Fraser shall have no chance to comment. I suppose he has some kind of a hovel to live in or he would not have sent for her. Did anyone ever tell you, Victoria, that it is not proper to butter your whole slice of bread at once? And do you think it would be possible, just for a change, to get through a meal without letting your napkin slip off your knee continually?”

  Jane dreaded meal-times more than ever. Her preoccupation made her awkward and grandmother pounced on everything. She wished she need never come to the table, but, unluckily, one cannot live without eating a little. Jane ate very little. She had no appetite and grew noticeably thinner. She could not put any heart into her studies and she barely made the Senior Third, while Phyllis passed with honors.

  “As was to be expected,” said grandmother.

  Jody tried to comfort her.

  “After all, it won’t be so long. Only three months, Jane.”

  Three months of absence from a beloved mother and three months’ presence with a detested father seemed like an eternity to Jane.

  “You’ll write me, Jane? And I’ll write you if I can get any postage stamps. I’ve got ten cents now…that Mr. Ransome gave me. That will pay for three stamps anyhow.”

  Then Jane told Jody a heart-breaking thing.

  “I’ll write you often, Jody. But I can write mother only once a month. And I’m never to mention him.”

  “Did your mother tell you that?”

  “No, oh, no! It was grandmother. As if I’d want to mention him.”

  “I hunted up P. E. Island on the map,” said Jody, her dark velvet-brown eyes full of sympathy. “There’s such an awful lot of water round it. Ain’t you afraid of falling over the edge?”

  “I don’t believe I’d mind if I did,” said Jane dismally.

  CHAPTER 11

  Jane was to go to the Island with Mr. and Mrs. Stanley, who were going down to visit a married daughter. Somehow Jane lived through the last days. She was determined she would not make an
y fuss because that would be hard on mother. There were no more good-night confidences and caressings…no more little tender, loving words spoken at special moments. But Jane, somehow, knew the two reasons for this. Mother could not bear it, for one thing, and, for another, grandmother was resolved not to permit it. But on Jane’s last night at 60 Gay, mother did slip in when grandmother was occupied by callers below.

  “Mother…mother!”

  “Darling, be brave. After all, it is only three months and the Island is a lovely spot. You may…if I’d known…once I…oh, it doesn’t matter now. Nothing matters. Darling, there’s one thing I must ask you to promise. You are never to mention me to your father.”

  “I won’t,” choked Jane. It was an easy promise. She couldn’t imagine herself talking to him about mother.

  “He will like you better if…if…he thinks you don’t love me too much,” whispered mother. Down went her white lids over her blue eyes. But Jane had seen the look. She felt as if her heart was bursting.

  The sky at sunrise was blood-red, but it soon darkened into sullen gray. At noon a drizzle set in. “I think the weather is sorry at your going away,” said Jody. “Oh, Jane, I’ll miss you so. And…I don’t know if I’ll be here when you come back. Miss West says she’s going to put me in an orphanage, and I don’t want to be put in an orphanage, Jane. Here’s the pretty shell Miss Ames brought from the West Indies for me. It’s the only pretty thing I have. I want you to have it because if I go to the orphanage I s’pose they’ll take it away from me.”

  The train left for Montreal at eleven that night and Frank took Jane and her mother to the station. She had kissed grandmother and Aunt Gertrude good-bye dutifully.

  “If you meet your Aunt Irene Fraser down on the Island, remember me to her,” said grandmother. There was an odd little tone of exultation in her voice. Jane felt that grandmother had got the better of Aunt Irene in some way, at some time, and wanted it rubbed in. It was as if she had said, “She will remember me.” And who was Aunt Irene?

  60 Gay seemed to scowl at her as they drove away. She had never liked it and it had never liked her, but she felt drearily as if some gate of life were shut behind her when the door closed. She and mother did not talk as they drove along over the elfish underground city that comes into view under the black street on a rainy night. She was determined she would not cry and she did not. Her eyes were wide with dismay but her voice was cool and quiet as she said good-bye. The last Robin Stuart saw of her was a gallant, indomitable little figure waving to her as Mrs. Stanley herded her into the door of the Pullman.

  They reached Montreal in the morning and left at noon on the Maritime Express. The time was to come when the very name of Maritime Express was to thrill Jane with ecstasy, but now it meant exile. It rained all day. Mrs. Stanley pointed out the mountains but Jane was not having any mountains just then. Mrs. Stanley thought her very stiff and unresponsive and eventually left her alone…for which Jane would have thanked God, fasting, if she had ever heard of the phrase. Mountains! When every turn of the wheels was carrying her further away from mother!

  The next day they went down through New Brunswick, lying in the gray light of a cheerless rain. It was raining when they got to Sackville and transferred to the little branch line that ran down to Cape Tormentine.

  “We take the car ferry there across to the Island,” Mrs. Stanley explained. Mrs. Stanley had given up trying to talk to her. She thought Jane quite the dumbest child she had ever encountered. She had not the slightest inkling that Jane’s silence was her only bulwark against wild, rebellious tears. And Jane would not cry.

  It was not actually raining when they reached the Cape. As they went on board the car ferry the sun was hanging, a flat red ball, in a rift of clouds to the west. But it soon darkened down again. There was a gray choppy strait under a gray sky with dirty rags of clouds around the edges. By the time they got on the train again it was pouring harder than ever. Jane had been seasick on the way across and was now terribly tired. So this was P. E. Island…this rain-drenched land where the trees cringed before the wind and the heavy clouds seemed almost to touch the fields. Jane had no eyes for blossoming orchard or green meadow or soft-bosomed hills with scarfs of dark spruce across their shoulders. They would be in Charlottetown in a couple of hours, so Mrs. Stanley said, and her father was to meet her there. Her father, who didn’t love her, as mother said, and who lived in a hovel, as grandmother said. She knew nothing else about him. She wished she knew something…anything. What did he look like? Would he have pouchy eyes like Uncle David? A thin, sewed-up mouth like Uncle William? Would he wink at the end of every sentence like old Mr. Doran when he came to call on grandmother?

  She was a thousand miles away from mother and felt as if it were a million. Terrible waves of loneliness went over her. The train was pulling into the station.

  “Here we are, Victoria,” said Mrs. Stanley in a tone of relief.

  CHAPTER 12

  As Jane stepped from the train to the platform a lady pounced on her with a cry of “Is this Jane Victoria…can this be my dear little Jane Victoria?”

  Jane did not like to be pounced on…and just then she was not feeling like anybody’s Jane Victoria.

  She drew herself away and took in the lady with one of her straight, deliberate glances. A very pretty lady of perhaps forty-five or fifty, with large, pale blue eyes and smooth ripples of auburn hair around her placid, creamy face. Was this Aunt Irene?

  “Jane, if you please,” she said politely and distinctly.

  “For all the world like her grandmother Kennedy, Andrew,” Aunt Irene told her brother the next morning.

  Aunt Irene laughed…an amused little gurgle.

  “You dear funny child! Of course it can be Jane. It can be just whatever you like. I am your Aunt Irene. But I suppose you’ve never heard of me?”

  “Yes, I have.” Jane kissed Aunt Irene’s cheek obediently. “Grandmother told me to remember her to you.”

  “Oh!” Something a little hard crept into Aunt Irene’s sweet voice. “That was very kind of her…very kind indeed. And now I suppose you’re wondering why your father isn’t here. He started…he lives out at Brookview, you know…but that dreadful old car of his broke down halfway. He phoned in to me that he couldn’t possibly get in tonight but would be along early in the morning and would I meet you and keep you for the night. Oh, Mrs. Stanley, you’re not going before I’ve thanked you for bringing our dear little girl safely down to us. We’re so much obliged to you.”

  “Not at all. It’s been a pleasure,” said Mrs. Stanley, politely and untruthfully. She hurried away, thankful to be relieved of the odd, silent child who had looked all the way down as if she were an early Christian martyr on her path to the lions.

  Jane felt herself alone in the universe. Aunt Irene did not make a bit of difference. Jane did not like Aunt Irene. And she liked herself still less. What was the matter with her? Couldn’t she like anybody? Other girls liked some of their uncles and aunts at least.

  She followed Aunt Irene out to the waiting taxi.

  “It’s a terrible night, lovey…but the country needs rain…we’ve been suffering for weeks…you must have brought it with you. But we’ll soon be home. I’m so glad to have you. I’ve been telling your father he ought to let you stay with me anyhow. It’s really foolish of him to take you out to Brookview. He only boards there, you know…two rooms over Jim Meade’s store. Of course, he comes to town in the winter. But…well, perhaps you don’t know, Jane darling, how very determined your father can be when he makes up his mind.”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” said Jane desperately.

  “I suppose not. I suppose your mother has never talked to you about him?”

  “No,” Jane answered reluctantly. Somehow, Aunt Irene’s question seemed charged with hidden meaning. Jane was to learn that this was characteristic of Aunt Irene’s quest
ions. Aunt Irene squeezed Jane’s hand…which she had held ever since she had helped her into the taxi…sympathetically.

  “You poor child! I know exactly how you feel. And I couldn’t feel it was the right thing for your father to send for you. I’m sure I don’t know why he did it. I couldn’t fathom his motive…although your father and I have always been very close to each other…very close, lovey. I am ten years older than he is and I’ve always been more like a mother to him than a sister. Here we are at home, lovey.”

  Home! The house into which Jane was ushered was cozy and sleek, just like Aunt Irene herself but Jane felt about as much at home as a sparrow alone on an alien housetop. In the living room Aunt Irene took off her hat and coat, patted her hair, and put her arm around Jane.

  “Now let me look you over. I hadn’t a chance in the station. And I haven’t seen you since you were three years old.”

  Jane didn’t want to be looked over and shrank back a little stiffly. She felt that she was being appraised, and in spite of Aunt Irene’s kindness of voice and manner she sensed that there was something in the appraisal not wholly friendly.

  “You are not at all like your mother. She was the prettiest thing I ever saw. You are like your father, darling. And now we must have a bite of supper.”

  “Oh, no, please no,” cried Jane impulsively. She knew she couldn’t swallow a mouthful…it was misery to think of trying.

  “Just a bite…just one little bite,” said Aunt Irene persuasively, as if coaxing a baby. “There’s such a nice chocolate peppermint cake. I really made it for your father. He’s just like a boy in some ways, you know…such a sweet tooth. And he has always thought my chocolate cakes just about perfection. Your mother did try so hard to learn to make them like mine…but…well, it’s a gift. You have it or you haven’t. One really couldn’t expect a lovely little doll like her to be a cook…or a manager either, for that matter, and I told your father that often enough. Men don’t always understand, do they? They expect everything in a woman. Sit here, Janie.”