Jane of Lantern Hill (3 page)

At present Jane reflected that she was lucky to get a drumstick. Uncle William was quite capable of giving her the neck by way of rebuking her for not knowing the capital of Canada. However, Aunt Sylvia very kindly gave her a double portion of turnip. Jane loathed turnip.

“You don't seem to have much appetite, Victoria,” said Aunt Sylvia reproachfully when the mound of turnip had not decreased much.

“Oh, I think Victoria's
appetite
is all right,” said grandmother, as if it were the only thing about her that
was
all right. Jane always felt that there was far more in what grandmother said than in the words themselves. Jane might have broken her record for never crying then and there, she felt so utterly wretched, had she not looked at mother. And mother was looking so tender and sympathetic and understanding that Jane spunked up at once and simply made no effort to eat any more turnip.

Aunt Sylvia's daughter Phyllis, who did not go to St. Agatha's but to Hillwood Hall, a much newer but even more expensive school, could have named not only the capital of Canada but the capital of every province in the Dominion. Jane did not like Phyllis. Sometimes Jane thought drearily that there must be something the matter with her when there were so many people she didn't like. But Phyllis was so condescending…and Jane hated to be condescended to.

“Why don't you like Phyllis?” grandmother had asked once, looking at Jane with those eyes that, Jane felt, could see through walls, doors, everything, right into your inmost soul. “She is pretty, lady-like, well-behaved and clever;…everything that you are not,” Jane felt sure grandmother wanted to add.

“She patronizes me,” said Jane.

“Do you really know the meaning of all the big words you use, my dear Victoria?” said grandmother. “And don't you think that…possibly…you are a little jealous of Phyllis?”

“No, I don't think so,” said Jane firmly. She knew she was not jealous of Phyllis.

“Of course, I must admit she is very different from that Jody of yours,” said grandmother. The sneer in her voice brought an angry sparkle into Jane's eyes. She could not bear to hear anyone sneer at Jody. And yet what could she do about it?

She and Jody had been pals for a year. Jody matched Jane's eleven years of life and was tall for her age too…though not with Jane's sturdy tallness. Jody was thin and weedy and looked as if she had never had enough to eat in her life…which was very likely the case, although she lived in a boarding house…58 Gay, which had once been a fashionable residence and was now just a dingy three-story boarding house.

One evening in the spring of the preceding year Jane was out in the back yard of 60 Gay, sitting on a rustic bench in an old disused summer-house. Mother and grandmother were both away and Aunt Gertrude was in bed with a bad cold, or else Jane would not have been sitting in the back yard. She had crept out to have a good look at the full moon…(Jane had her own particular reasons for liking to look at the moon)…and the white-blossoming cherry tree over in the yard of 58. The cherry tree, with the moon hanging over it like a great pearl, was so beautiful that Jane felt a queer lump in her throat when she looked at it…almost as if she wanted to cry. And then…somebody really was crying over in the yard of 58. The stifled, piteous sounds came clearly on the still, crystal air of the spring evening.

Jane got up and walked out of the summer-house and around the garage, past the lonely dog-house that had never had a dog in it…at least, in Jane's recollection…and so to the fence that had ceased to be iron and become wooden paling between 60 and 58. There was a gap in it behind the dog-house where a slat had been broken off amid a tangle of creeper, and Jane, squeezing through it, found herself in the untidy yard of 58. It was still quite light, and Jane could see a girl huddled at the root of the cherry tree, sobbing bitterly, her face in her hands.

“Can I help you?” said Jane.

Though Jane herself had no inkling of it, those words were the keynote of her character. Anyone else would probably have said, “What is the matter?” But Jane always wanted to help: and, though she was too young to realize it, the tragedy of her little existence was that nobody ever wanted her help…not even mother, who had everything heart could wish.

The child under the cherry tree stopped sobbing and got on her feet. She looked at Jane and Jane looked at her and something happened to both of them. Long afterwards Jane said, “I knew we were the same kind of folks.” Jane saw a girl of about her own age, with a very white little face under a thick bang of black hair cut straight across her forehead. The hair looked as if it had not been washed for a long time but the eyes underneath it were brown and beautiful, though of quite a different brown from Jane's. Jane's were goldy-brown like a marigold, with laughter lurking in them, but this girl's were very dark and very sad…so sad that Jane's heart did something queer inside of her. She knew quite well that it wasn't right that anybody so young should have such sad eyes.

The girl wore a dreadful old blue dress that had certainly never been made for her. It was too long and too elaborate and it was dirty and grease-spotted. It hung on the thin little shoulders like a gaudy rag on a scarecrow. But the dress mattered nothing to Jane. All she was conscious of was those appealing eyes.

“Can I help?” she asked again.

The girl shook her head and the tears welled up in her big eyes.

“Look,” she pointed.

Jane looked and saw between the cherry tree and the fence what seemed like a rudely made flower-bed strewn over with roses that were ground into the earth.

“Dick did that,” said the girl. “He did it on purpose…because it was my garden. Miss Summers had them roses sent her last week…twelve great big red ones for her birthday…and this morning she said they were done and told me to throw them in the garbage pail. But I couldn't…they were still so pretty. I come out here and made that bed and stuck the roses all over it. I knew they wouldn't last long…but they looked pretty and I pretended I had a garden of my own…and now…Dick just come out and stomped all over it…and
laughed
.”

She sobbed again. Jane didn't know who Dick was, but at that moment she could cheerfully have wrung his neck with her strong, capable little hands. She put her arm about the girl.

“Never mind. Don't cry any more. See, we'll break off a lot of little cherry boughs and stick them all over your bed. They're fresher than the roses…and think how lovely they'll look in the moonlight.”

“I'm scared to do that,” said the girl. “Miss West might be mad.”

Again Jane felt a thrill of understanding. So this girl was afraid of people too.

“Well, we'll just climb up on that big bough that stretches out and sit there and admire it,” said Jane. “I suppose that won't make Miss West mad, will it?”

“I guess she won't mind that. Of course she's mad at me anyhow tonight because I stumbled with a tray of tumblers when I was waiting on the supper table and broke three of them. She said if I kept on like that…I spilled soup on Miss Thatcher's silk dress last night…she'd have to send me away.”

“Where would she send you?”

“I don't know. I haven't anywhere to go. But she says I'm not worth my salt and she's only keeping me out of charity.”

“What is your name?” asked Jane. They had scrambled up into the cherry tree as nimbly as pussy cats and its whiteness enclosed and enfolded them, shutting them away into a fragrant world all their own.

“Josephine Turner. But everyone calls me Jody.”

Jody! Jane liked that.

“Mine's Jane Stuart.”

“I thought it was Victoria,” said Jody. “Miss West said it was.”

“It's Jane,” said Jane firmly. “At least it's Jane Victoria but
I
am Jane. And now”…briskly…“let's get acquainted.”

Before Jane went back through the gap that night she knew practically all there was to be known about Jody. Jody's father and mother were dead…had been dead ever since Jody was a baby. Jody's mother's cousin, who had been the cook at 58, had taken her and was permitted to keep her at 58 if she never let her out of the kitchen. Two years ago Cousin Millie had died and Jody had just “stayed on.” She helped the new cook…peeling potatoes, washing dishes, sweeping, dusting, running errands, scouring knives…and lately had been promoted to waiting on the table. She slept in a little attic cubby-hole which was hot in summer and cold in winter, she wore cast-off things the boarders gave her and went to school every day there was no extra rush. Nobody ever gave her a kind word or took any notice of her…except Dick, who was Miss West's nephew and pet, and who teased and tormented her and called her “charity child.” Jody hated Dick. Once when everybody was out she had slipped into the parlor and picked out a little tune on the piano, but Dick had told Miss West and Jody had been sternly informed that she must never touch the piano again.

“And I'd love to be able to play,” she said wistfully. “That and a garden's the only things I want. I do wish I could have a garden.”

Jane wondered again why things were so crisscross. She did not like playing on the piano, but grandmother had insisted on her taking music lessons and she practiced faithfully to please mother. And here was poor Jody, hankering for music and with no chance at all of getting it.

“Don't you think you could have a bit of a garden?” said Jane. “There's plenty of room here and it's not too shady, like our yard. I'd help you make a bed and I'm sure mother would give us some seeds…”

“It wouldn't be any use,” said Jody drearily. “Dick would just stomp on it too.”

“Then I'll tell you,” said Jane resolutely, “we'll get a seed catalog…Frank will get me one…and have an
imaginary
garden.”

“Ain't you the one for thinking of things?” said Jody admiringly. Jane tasted happiness. It was the first time anyone had ever admired her.

Of course it was no time before grandmother knew about Jody. She made a great many sweetly sarcastic speeches about her but she never actually forbade Jane going over to play with her in the yard of 58. Jane was to be a good many years older before she understood the reason for that…understood that grandmother wanted to show anyone who might question it that Jane had common tastes and liked low people.

“Darling, is this Jody of yours a nice little girl?” mother had asked doubtfully.

“She is a
very
nice little girl,” said Jane emphatically.

“But she looks so uncared for…positively dirty…”

“Her face is always clean and she
never
forgets to wash behind her ears, mummy. I'm going to show her how to wash her hair. Her hair would be lovely if it was clean…it's so fine and black and silky. And may I give her one of my jars of cold cream…I've two, you know…for her hands? They're so red and chapped because she has to work so hard and wash so many dishes.”

“But her clothes…”

“She can't help her clothes. She just has to wear what's given her and she never has more than two dresses at a time…one to wear every day and one to go to Sunday School in. Even the Sunday School one isn't very clean…it was Mrs. Bellew's Ethel's old pink one and she spilled coffee on it. And she has to work so hard…she's a regular little slave, Mary says. I like Jody very much, mummy. She's
sweet
.”

“Well,”…mother sighed and gave way. Mother always gave way if you were firm enough. Jane had already discovered that. She adored mother but she had unerringly laid her finger on the weak spot in her character. Mother couldn't “stand up to” people. Jane had heard Mary say that to Frank one time when they didn't think she heard and she knew it was true.

“She'll go with the last one that talks to her,” said Mary. “And that's always the old lady.”

“Well, the old lady's mighty good to her,” said Frank. ‘‘She's a gay little piece.”

“Gay enough. But is she happy?” said Mary.

“Happy? Of course, mummy is happy,” Jane had thought indignantly…all the more indignantly because, away back in her mind, there was lurking a queer suspicion that mother, in spite of her dances and dinners and furs and dresses and jewels and friends, wasn't happy. Jane couldn't imagine why she had this idea. Perhaps a look in mother's eyes now and then…like something shut up in a cage.

Jane could go over and play in the yard of 58 in the spring and summer evenings after Jody had finished washing stacks of dishes. They made their “imaginary” garden, they fed crumbs to the robins and the black and gray squirrels, they sat up in the cherry tree and watched the evening star together. And talked! Jane, who could never find anything to say to Phyllis, found plenty to say to Jody.

There was never any question of Jody coming to play in the yard of 60. Once, early in their friendship, Jane had asked Jody to come over. She had found Jody crying under the cherry tree again and discovered that it was because Miss West had insisted on her putting her old teddy bear in the garbage pail. It was, Miss West said, utterly worn out. It had been patched until there was no more room for patches and even shoe buttons couldn't be sewn any more into its worn-out eye-sockets. Besides, she was too old to be playing with Teddy Bears.

“But I've nothing else,” sobbed Jody. “If I had a doll, I wouldn't mind. I've always wanted a doll…but now I'll have to sleep alone away up there…and it's so lonesome.”

“Come over to our house and I'll give you a doll,” said Jane.

Jane had never cared much for dolls because they were not alive. She had a very nice one which Aunt Sylvia had given her the Christmas she was seven but it was so flawless and well-dressed that it never needed to have anything done for it and Jane had never loved it. She would have loved better a teddy bear that needed a new patch every day.

She took Jody, wide-eyed and enraptured, through the splendors of 60 Gay and gave her the doll, which had reposed undisturbed for a long time in the lower drawer of the huge black wardrobe in Jane's room. Then she had taken her into mother's room to show her the things on mother's table…the silver-backed brushes, the perfume bottles with the cut-glass stoppers that made rainbows, the wonderful rings on the little gold tray. Grandmother found them there.

She stood in the doorway and looked at them. You could feel the silence spreading through the room like a cold, smothering wave.

“What does this mean, Victoria…if I am allowed to ask?”

“This is…Jody,” faltered Jane. “I brought her over to give her my doll. She hasn't any.”

“Indeed? And you have given her the one your Aunt Sylvia gave you?”

Jane at once realized that she had done something quite unpardonable. It had never occurred to her that she was not at liberty to give away her own doll.

“I have not,” said grandmother, “forbidden you to play with this…this
Jody
in her own lot. What is in the blood is bound to come out sooner or later. But…if you don't mind…please don't bring your riffraff here, my dear Victoria.”

Her dear Victoria got herself and poor hurt Jody away as best she could, leaving the doll behind them. But grandmother did not get off scot-free for all that. For the first time the worm turned. Jane paused for a moment before she went out of the door and looked straight at grandmother with intent, judging brown eyes.

“You are not fair,” she said. Her voice trembled a little but she felt she
had
to say it, no matter how impertinent grandmother thought her. Then she followed Jody down and out with a strange feeling of satisfaction in her heart.

“I ain't riffraff,” said Jody, her lips quivering. “Of course I'm not like you…Miss West says you're
people
but my folks were respectable. Cousin Millie told me so. She said they always paid their way while they were alive. And
I
work hard enough for Miss West to pay
my
way.”

“You aren't riffraff and I love you,” said Jane. “You and mother are the only people in the whole world I love.”

Even as she said it, a queer little pang wrung Jane's heart. It suddenly occurred to her that two people out of all the millions in the world…Jane never could remember the exact number of millions, but she knew it was enormous…were very few to love.

“And I like loving people,” thought Jane. “It's
nice
.”

“I don't love anybody but you,” said Jody, who forgot her hurt feelings as soon as Jane got her interested in building a castle out of all the old tin cans in the corner of the yard. Miss West hoarded her tin cans for a country cousin who made some mysterious use of them. He had not been in all winter, and there were enough cans to build a towering structure. Dick kicked it down next day, of course, but they had had the fun of building it. They never knew that Mr. Torrey, one of the 58 boarders who was a budding architect, saw the castle, gleaming in the moonlight, when he was putting his car in the garage and whistled over it.

“That's rather an amazing thing for those two kids to build,” he said.

Jane, who should have been asleep, was lying wide awake that very moment, going on with the story of her life in the moon, which she could see through her window.

Jane's “moon secret,” as she called it, was the one thing she hadn't shared with mother and Jody. She couldn't, somehow. It was her very own. To tell about it would be to destroy it. For three years now Jane had been going on dream voyages to the moon. It was a shimmering world of fancy where she lived very splendidly and sated some deep thirst in her soul at unknown, enchanted springs among its shining silver hills. Before she had found the trick of going to the moon, Jane had longed to get into the looking glass as
Alice
did. She used to stand so long before her mirror hoping for the miracle to happen that Aunt Gertrude said Victoria was the vainest child she had ever seen.

“Really?” said grandmother, as if mildly inquiring what Jane could possibly have to be vain about.

Eventually Jane had sadly concluded that she could never get into the looking-glass world, and then one night, when she was lying alone in her big unfriendly room, she saw the moon looking in at her through one of the windows…the calm, beautiful moon that was never in a hurry; and she began to build for herself an existence in the moon, where she ate fairy food and wandered through fairy fields, full of strange white moon-blossoms, with the companions of her fancy.

But even in the moon Jane's dreams ran true to the ruling passion. Since the moon was all silver it had to be polished every night. Jane and her moon friends had no end of fun polishing up the moon, with an elaborate system of rewards and punishments for extra good polishers and lazy ones. The lazy ones were generally banished to the other side of the moon…which Jane had read was very dark and very cold. When they were allowed back, chilled to the bone, they were glad to warm themselves up by rubbing as hard as they could. Those were the nights when the moon seemed brighter than usual. Oh, it was fun! Jane was never lonely in bed now except on nights when there was no moon. The dearest sight Jane knew was the thin crescent in the western sky that told her her friend was back. She was supported through many a dreary day by the hope of going on a moon spree at night.