Jane of Lantern Hill (2 page)

“Mummy,” said Jane, as well as her swelled tonsils would let her, “why doesn't grandmother want you to love me?”

“Darling, it isn't like that,” said mother, bending over Jane, her face like a rose in the light of the rose-shaded lamp.

But Jane knew it was like that. She knew why mother seldom kissed her or petted her in grandmother's presence. It made grandmother angry with a still, cold, terrible anger that seemed to freeze the air about her. Jane was glad mother didn't often do it. She made up for it when they were alone together…but then they were so seldom alone together. Even now they would not have very long together, for mother was going out to a dinner party. Mother went out almost every evening to something or other and almost every afternoon too. Jane always loved to get a glimpse of her before she went out. Mother knew this and generally contrived that Jane should. She always wore such pretty dresses and looked so lovely. Jane was sure she had the most beautiful mother in the whole world. She was beginning to wonder how anyone so lovely as mother could have a daughter so plain and awkward as herself.

“You'll never be pretty…your mouth is too big,” one of the girls at St. Agatha's had told her.

Mother's mouth was like a rosebud, small and red, with dimples tucked away at the corners. Her eyes were blue…but not an icy blue like grandmother's. There is such a difference in blue eyes. Mother's were just the color of the sky on a summer morning between the great masses of white clouds. Her hair was a warm, wavy gold and tonight she was wearing it brushed away from her forehead, with little bunches of curls behind her ears and a row of them at the nape of her white neck. She wore a dress of pale yellow taffeta, with a great rose of deeper yellow velvet at one of her beautiful shoulders. Jane thought she looked like a lovely golden princess, with the slender flame of the diamond bracelet on the creamy satin of her arm. Grandmother had given her the bracelet last week for her birthday. Grandmother was always giving mother such lovely things. And she picked out all her clothes for her…wonderful dresses and hats and wraps. Jane did not know that people said Mrs. Stuart was always rather overdressed, but she had an idea that mother really liked simpler clothes and only pretended to like better the gorgeous things grandmother bought for her for fear of hurting grandmother's feelings.

Jane was very proud of mother's beauty. She thrilled with delight when she heard people whisper, “Isn't she lovely?” She almost forgot her aching throat as she watched mother put on the rich brocaded wrap, just the color of her eyes, with its big collar of gray fox.

“Oh, but you're sweet, mummy,” she said, putting up her hand and touching mother's cheek as mother bent down and kissed her. It was like touching a rose-leaf. And mother's lashes lay on her cheeks like silken fans. Some people, Jane knew, looked better further off; but the nearer you were to mother, the prettier she was.

“Darling, do you feel very sick? I hate to leave you but…”

Mother didn't finish her sentence but Jane knew she meant, “Grandmother wouldn't like it if I didn't go.”

“I don't feel very sick at all,” said Jane gallantly. “Mary will look after me.”

But after mother had gone, with a swish of taffeta, Jane felt a horrible lump in her throat that had nothing to do with her tonsils. It would be so easy to cry…but Jane would not let herself cry. Years ago, when she had been no more than five, she had heard mother say very proudly, “Jane never cries. She never cried even when she was a tiny baby.'' From that day Jane had been careful never to let herself cry, even when she was alone in bed at night. Mother had so few things to be proud of in her: she must not let her down on one of those few things.

But it was dreadfully lonely. The wind was howling along the street outside. The tall windows rattled drearily and the big house seemed full of unfriendly noises and whispers. Jane wished Jody could come in and sit with her for a while. But Jane knew it was useless to wish for that. She could never forget the only time Jody had come to 60 Gay.

“Well, anyhow,” said Jane, trying to look on the bright side of things in spite of her sore throat and aching head, “I won't have to read the Bible to them tonight.”

“Them” were grandmother and Aunt Gertrude. Very seldom mother, because mother was nearly always out. But every night before Jane went to bed she had to read a chapter in the Bible to grandmother and Aunt Gertrude. There was nothing in the whole twenty-four hours that Jane hated doing more than that. And she knew quite well that that was just why grandmother made her do it.

They always went into the drawing room for the reading and Jane invariably shivered as she entered it. That huge, elaborate room, so full of things that you could hardly move about in it without knocking something over, always seemed cold even on the hottest night in summer. And on winter nights it
was
cold. Aunt Gertrude took the huge family Bible, with its heavy silver clasp, from the marble-topped center table and laid it on a little table between the windows. Then she and grandmother sat, one at each end of the table, and Jane sat between them at the side, with Great-grandfather Kennedy scowling down at her from the dim old painting in its heavy, tarnished gilt frame, flanked by the dark blue velvet curtains. That woman on the street had said that Grandfather Kennedy was a nice friendly man, but his father couldn't have been. Jane always thought candidly that he looked as if he would enjoy biting a nail in two.

“Turn to the fourteenth chapter of
Exodus,
” grandmother would say. The chapter varied every night, of course, but the tone never did. It always rattled Jane so that she generally made a muddle of finding the right place. And grandmother, with the hateful little smile which seemed to say, “So you can't even do this as it should be done,” would put out her lean, crêpey hand, with its rich old-fashioned rings, and turn to the right place with uncanny precision. Jane would stumble through the chapter, mispronouncing words she knew perfectly well just because she was so nervous. Sometimes grandmother would say, “A little louder, if you please, Victoria. I thought when I sent you to St. Agatha's they would at least teach you to open your mouth when reading even if they couldn't teach you geography and history.” And Jane would raise her voice so suddenly that Aunt Gertrude would jump. But the next evening it might be, “Not quite so loud, Victoria,
if
you please. We are not deaf.” And poor Jane's voice would die away to little more than a whisper.

When she had finished, grandmother and Aunt Gertrude would bow their heads and repeat the Lord's Prayer. Jane would try to say it with them, which was a difficult thing, because grandmother was generally two words ahead of Aunt Gertrude. Jane always said, “Amen,” thankfully. The beautiful prayer, haloed with all the loveliness of agelong worship, had become a sort of horror to Jane.

Then Aunt Gertrude would close the Bible and put it back in exactly the same place, to the fraction of a hair, on the center table. Finally Jane had to kiss her and grandmother good-night. Grandmother would always remain sitting in her chair and Jane would stoop and kiss her forehead.

“Good night, grandmother.”

“Good night, Victoria.”

But Aunt Gertrude would be standing by the center table and Jane would have to reach up to her, for Aunt Gertrude was tall. Aunt Gertrude would stoop just a little and Jane would kiss her narrow gray face.

“Good night, Aunt Gertrude.”

“Good night, Victoria,” Aunt Gertrude would say in her thin, cold voice.

And Jane would get herself out of the room, sometimes lucky enough not to knock anything over.

“When I grow up I'll never, never read the Bible or say that prayer,” she would whisper to herself as she climbed the long, magnificent staircase which had once been the talk of Toronto.

One night grandmother had smiled and said, “What do you think of the Bible, Victoria?”

“I think it is very dull,” said Jane truthfully. The reading had been a chapter full of “knops” and “taches,” and Jane had not the least idea what knops and taches were.

“Ah! But do you think your opinion counts for a great deal?” said grandmother, smiling with paper-thin lips.

“Why did you ask me for it then?” said Jane, and had been icily rebuked for impertinence when she had not had the least intention of being impertinent. Was it any wonder she went up the staircase that night fairly loathing 60 Gay? And she did not want to loathe it. She wanted to love it…to be friends with it…to do things for it. But she could not love it…it
wouldn't
be friendly…and there was nothing it wanted done. Aunt Gertrude and Mary Price, the cook, and Frank Davis, the houseman and chauffeur, did everything for it. Aunt Gertrude would not let grandmother keep a housemaid because she preferred to attend to the house herself. Tall, shadowy, reserved Aunt Gertrude, who was so totally unlike mother that Jane found it hard to believe they were even half-sisters, was a martinet for order and system. At 60 Gay everything had to be done in a certain way on a certain day. The house was really frightfully clean. Aunt Gertrude's cold gray eyes could not tolerate a speck of dust anywhere. She was always going about the house putting things in their places and she attended to everything. Even mother never did anything except arrange the flowers for the table when they had company and light the candles for dinner. Jane would have liked the fun of doing that. And Jane would have liked to polish the silver and cook. More than anything else Jane would have liked to cook. Now and then, when grandmother was out, she hung about the kitchen and watched good-natured Mary Price cook the meals. It all seemed so easy…Jane was sure she could do it perfectly if she were allowed. It must be such fun to cook a meal. The smell of it was almost as good as the eating of it.

But Mary Price never let her. She knew the old lady didn't approve of Miss Victoria talking to the servants.

“Victoria fancies herself as domestic,” grandmother had once said at the midday Sunday dinner where, as usual, Uncle William Anderson and Aunt Minnie and Uncle David Coleman and Aunt Sylvia Coleman and their daughter Phyllis were present. Grandmother had such a knack of making you feel ridiculous and silly in company. All the same, Jane wondered what grandmother would say if she knew that Mary Price, being somewhat rushed that day, had let Jane wash and arrange the lettuce for the salad. Jane knew what grandmother would do. She would refuse to touch a leaf of it.

“Well, shouldn't a girl be domestic?” said Uncle William, not because he wanted to take Jane's part but because he never lost an opportunity of announcing his belief that a woman's place was in the home. “Every girl should know how to cook.”

“I don't think Victoria wants very much to learn how to cook,” said grandmother. “It is just that she likes to hang about kitchens and places like that.”

Grandmother's voice implied that Victoria had low tastes and that kitchens were barely respectable. Jane wondered why mother's face flushed so suddenly and why a strange, rebellious look gleamed for a moment in her eyes. But only for a moment.

“How are you getting on at St. Agatha's, Victoria?” asked Uncle William. “Going to get your grade?”

Jane did not know whether she was going to get her grade or not. The fear haunted her night and day. She knew her monthly reports had not been very good…grandmother had been very angry over them and even mother had asked her piteously if she couldn't do a little better. Jane had done the best she could, but history and geography were so dull and drab. Arithmetic and spelling were easier. Jane was really quite brilliant in arithmetic.

“Victoria can write wonderful compositions, I hear,” said grandmother sarcastically. For some reason Jane couldn't fathom at all, her ability to write good compositions had never pleased grandmother.

“Tut, tut,” said Uncle William. “Victoria could get her grade easily enough if she wanted to. The thing to do is study hard. She's getting to be a big girl now and ought to realize that. What is the capital of Canada, Victoria?”

Jane knew perfectly well what the capital of Canada was, but Uncle William fired the question at her so unexpectedly and all the guests stopped eating to listen…and for the moment she couldn't remember for her life what the name was. She blushed…stammered…squirmed. If she had looked at mother she would have seen that mother was forming the word silently on her lips, but she could not look at anyone. She was ready to die of shame and mortification.

“Phyllis,” said Uncle William, “tell Victoria what the capital of Canada is.”

Phyllis promptly responded.

“Ottawa.”

“O-t-t-a-w-a,” said Uncle William to Jane.

Jane felt that they were all, except mother, watching her for something to find fault with, and now Aunt Sylvia Coleman put on a pair of nose-glasses attached to a long black ribbon and looked at Jane through them as if wishing to be sure what a girl who didn't know the capital of her country was really like. Jane, under the paralyzing influence of that stare, dropped her fork, and writhed in anguish when she caught grandmother's eye. Grandmother touched her little silver bell.

“Will you bring Miss Victoria
another
fork, Davis?” she said in a tone implying that Jane had had several forks already.

Uncle William put the piece of white chicken meat he had just carved off on the side of the platter. Jane had been hoping he would give it to her. She did not often get white meat. When Uncle William was not there to carve, Mary carved the fowls in the kitchen and Frank passed the platter around. Jane seldom dared to help herself to white meat because she knew grandmother was watching her. On one occasion when she had helped herself to two tiny pieces of breast grandmother had said,

“Don't forget, my dear Victoria, that there are other people who might like a breast slice too.”