Jane of Lantern Hill (5 page)

Jane could never understand the affair of the picture. After her hurt and anger passed away she was just hopelessly puzzled. Why…
why…
should the picture of a perfect stranger matter to anybody at 60 Gay…and to mother, least of all?

She had come across it one day when she was visiting Phyllis. Every once in so long Jane had to spend an afternoon with Phyllis. This one was no more of a success than the former ones had been. Phyllis was a conscientious hostess. She had shown Jane all her new dolls, her new dresses, her new slippers, her new pearl necklace, her new china pig. Phyllis was collecting china pigs and apparently thought anyone “dumb” who was not interested in china pigs. She had patronized and condescended even more than usual. Consequently, Jane was stiffer than usual and both of them were in agonies of boredom. It was a relief to all concerned when Jane picked up a
Saturday
Evening
and buried herself in it, though she was not in the least interested in the society pages, the photographs of brides and debutantes, the stock market, or even in the article,
Peaceful
Readjustment
of
International
Difficulties,
by Kenneth Howard, which was given the place of honor on the front page. Jane had a vague idea that she ought not to be reading
Saturday
Evening.
For some unknown reason grandmother did not approve of it. She would not have a copy of it in her house.

But what Jane did like was the picture of Kenneth Howard on the front page. The moment she looked at it she was conscious of its fascination. She had never seen Kenneth Howard…she had no idea who he was or where he lived…but she felt as if it were the picture of someone she knew very well and liked very much. She liked everything about it…his odd, peaked eyebrows…the way his thick, rather unruly hair sprang back from his forehead…the way his firm mouth tucked in at the corners…the slightly stern look in the eyes which yet had such jolly wrinkles at the corners…and the square, cleft chin which reminded Jane so strongly of something, she couldn't remember just what. That chin seemed like an old friend. Jane looked at the face and drew a long breath. She knew, right off, that if she had loved her father instead of hating him she would have wanted him to look like Kenneth Howard.

Jane stared at the picture so long that Phyllis became curious.

“What are you looking at, Jane?”

Jane suddenly came to life.

“May I have this picture, Phyllis…please?”

“Whose picture? Why…that? Do you know him?”

“No. I never heard of him before. But I like the picture.”

“I don't.” Phyllis looked at it contemptuously. “Why…he's
old.
And he isn't a bit handsome. There's a lovely picture of Norman Tait on the next page, Jane…let me show it to you.”

Jane was not interested in Norman Tait nor any other screen star. Grandmother did not approve of children going to the movies.

“I'd like this picture if I may have it,” she said firmly.

“I guess you can have it,” condescended Phyllis. She thought Jane “dumber” than ever. How she did pity such a dumb girl! “I guess nobody here wants
that
picture. I don't like it a bit. He looks as if he was laughing at you behind his eyes.”

Which was a bit of surprising insight on the part of Phyllis. That was just how Kenneth Howard did look. Only it was nice laughter. Jane felt she wouldn't mind a bit being laughed at like that. She cut the picture carefully out, carried it home, and hid it under the pile of handkerchiefs in her top bureau drawer. She could hardly have told why she did not want to show it to anybody. Perhaps she did not want anyone to ridicule the picture as Phyllis had done. Perhaps it was just because there seemed some strange bond between her and it…something too beautiful to be talked about to anyone, even mother. Not that there was much chance of talking to mother about anything just now. Never had mother been so brilliant, so gay, so beautifully dressed, so constantly on the go to parties and teas and bridges. Even the good-night kiss had become a rare thing…or Jane thought it had. She did not know that always, when her mother came in late, she tiptoed into Jane's room and dropped a kiss on Jane's russet hair…lightly so as not to waken her. Sometimes she cried when she went back to her own room but not often, because it might show at breakfast and old Mrs. Robert Kennedy did not like people who cried o' nights in her house.

For three weeks the picture and Jane were the best of friends. She took it out and looked at it whenever she could…she told it all about Jody and about her tribulations with her homework and about her love for mother. She even told it her moon secret. When she lay lonely in her bed, the thought of it was company. She kissed it good-night and took a peep at it the first thing in the morning.

Then Aunt Gertrude found it.

The moment Jane came in from St. Agatha's that day she knew something was wrong. The house, which always seemed to be watching her, was watching her more closely than ever, with a mocking, triumphant malice. Great-grandfather Kennedy scowled more darkly than ever at her from the drawing-room wall. And grandmother was sitting bolt-upright in her chair, flanked by mother and Aunt Gertrude. Mother was twisting a lovely red rose to pieces in her little white hands, but Aunt Gertrude was staring at the picture grandmother was holding.

“My
picture!” cried Jane aloud.

Grandmother looked at Jane. For once her cold blue eyes were on fire.

“Where did you get this?” she said.

“It's mine,” cried Jane. “Who took it out of my drawer? Nobody had any business to do that.”

“I don't think I like your manner, Victoria. And we are not discussing a problem in ethics. I asked a question.”

Jane looked down at the floor. She had no earthly idea why it seemed such a crime to have Kenneth Howard's picture but she knew she was not going to be allowed to have it anymore. And it seemed to Jane that she just could not bear that.

“Will you be kind enough to look at me, Victoria? And to answer my question? You are not tongue-tied, by any chance, I suppose.”

Jane looked up with stormy and mutinous eyes.

“I cut it out of a paper…out of
Saturday
Evening
.”

“That rag!” Grandmother's tone consigned
Saturday
Evening
to unfathomable depths of contempt. “Where did you see it?”

“At Aunt Sylvia's,” retorted Jane, plucking up spirit.

“Why did you cut
this
out?”

“Because I liked it.”

“Do you know who Kenneth Howard is?”

“No.”

“No, grandmother, if you please. Well, I think it is hardly necessary to keep the picture of a man you don't know in your bureau drawer. Let us have no more of such absurdity.”

Grandmother lifted the picture in both hands. Jane sprang forward and caught her arm.

“Oh, grandmother, don't tear it up. You
mustn't
. I want it terribly.”

The moment she said it, she knew she had made a mistake. There had never been much chance of getting the picture back but what little there had been was now gone.

“Have you gone completely mad, Victoria?” said grandmother…to whom nobody had ever said, “You mustn't,” in her whole life before. “Take your hand off my arm, please. As for
this…
” Grandmother tore the picture deliberately into four pieces and threw them on the fire. Jane, who felt as if her heart were being torn with it, was on the point of a rebellious outburst when she happened to glance at mother. Mother was pale as ashes, standing there with the leaves of the rose she had torn to pieces strewing the carpet around her feet. There was such a dreadful look of pain in her eyes that Jane shuddered. The look was gone in a moment but Jane could never forget that it had been there. And she knew she could not ask mother to explain the mystery of the picture. For some reason she could not guess at, Kenneth Howard meant suffering to mother. And somehow that fact stained and spoiled all her beautiful memories of communion with the picture.

“No sulks now. Go to your room and stay there till I send for you,” said grandmother, not altogether liking Jane's expression. “And remember that people who belong here do not read
Saturday
Evening
.”

Jane had to say it. It really said itself.

“I don't belong here,” said Jane. Then she went to her room, which was huge and lonely again, with no Kenneth Howard smiling at her from under the handkerchiefs.

And this was another thing she could not talk over with mother. She felt just like one big ache as she stood at her window for a long time. It was a cruel world…with the very stars laughing at you…twinkling mockingly at you.

“I wonder,” said Jane slowly, “if
anyone
was ever happy in this house.”

Then she saw the moon…the new moon, but not the thin silver crescent the new moon usually was. This was just on the point of sinking into a dark cloud on the horizon and it was large and dull-red. If ever a moon needed polishing up, this one did. In a moment Jane had slipped away from all her sorrows…two hundred and thirty thousand miles away. Luckily grandmother had no power over the moon.

Then there was the affair of the recitation.

They were getting up a school program at St. Agatha's to which only the families of the girls were invited. There was to be a short play, some music and a reading or two. Jane had secretly hoped to be given a part in the play, even if it were only one of the many angels who came and went in it, with wings and trailing white robes and homemade halos. But no such good luck. She suspected that it was because she was rather bony and awkward for an angel.

Then Miss Semple asked her if she would recite.

Jane jumped at the idea. She knew she could recite rather well. Here was a chance to make mother proud of her and show grandmother that all the money she was spending on Jane's education was not being wholly wasted.

Jane picked a poem she had long liked in spite…or perhaps because…of its
habitant
English,
The
Little
Baby
of
Mathieu,
and plunged enthusiastically into learning it. She practiced it in her room…she murmured lines of it everywhere until grandmother asked her sharply what she was muttering about all the time. Then Jane shut up like a clam. Nobody must suspect…it was to be a “surprise” to them all. A proud and glad surprise for mother. And perhaps even grandmother might feel a little pleased with her if she did well. Jane knew she would meet with no mercy if she didn't do well.

Grandmother took Jane down to a room in Marlborough's big department store…a room that had paneled walls, velvety carpets and muted voices…a room that Jane didn't like, somehow. She always felt smothered in it. And grandmother got her a new dress for the concert. It was a very pretty dress…you had to admit grandmother had a taste in dresses. A dull green silk that brought out the russet glow of Jane's hair and the gold-brown of her eyes. Jane liked herself in it and was more anxious than ever to please grandmother with her recitation.

She was terribly worried the night before the concert. Wasn't she a little hoarse? Suppose it got worse? It did not…it was all gone the next day. But when Jane found herself on the concert platform facing an audience for the first time, a nasty little quiver ran down her spine. She had never supposed there would be so many people. For one dreadful moment she thought she was not going to be able to utter a word. Then she seemed to see Kenneth Howard's eyes, crinkling with laughter at her. “Never mind them. Do your stuff for
me
,” he seemed to be saying. Jane got her mouth open.

The St. Agatha staff were quite amazed. Who could have supposed that shy, awkward Victoria Stuart could recite any poem so well, let alone a
habitant
one? Jane herself was feeling the delight of a certain
oneness
with her audience…a realization that she had captured them…that she was delighting them…until she came to the last verse. Then she saw mother and grandmother just in front of her. Mother, in her lovely new blue fox furs, with the little wine hat Jane loved tilted on one side of her head, was looking more frightened than proud, and grandmother…Jane had seen that expression too often to mistake it. Grandmother was furious.

The last verse, which should have been the climax, went rather flat. Jane felt like a candle-flame blown out, though the applause was hearty and prolonged, and Miss Semple behind the scenes whispered, “Excellent, Victoria, excellent.”

But there were no compliments on the road home. Not a word was said…that was the dreadful part of it. Mother seemed too frightened to speak and grandmother preserved a stony silence. But when they got home she said,

“Who put you up to that, Victoria?”

“Put me up to what?” said Jane in honest bewilderment.

“Please don't repeat my questions, Victoria. You know perfectly well what I mean.”

“Is it my recitation? No one. Miss Semple asked me to recite, and I picked the recitation myself because I liked it,” said Jane. It might even be said she retorted it. She was hurt…angry…a little “pepped up” because of her success. “I thought it would please you. But you are never pleased with anything I do.”

“Don't be cheaply theatrical, please,” said grandmother. “And in future, if you
have
to recite”…very much as she might have said, “if you
have
to have smallpox”…“please choose poems in decent English.
I
do not care for
patois
.
”

Jane didn't know what
patois
was, but it was all too evident that she had made a mess of things somehow.

“Why
was grandmother so angry, mummy?” she asked piteously, when mother came in to kiss her good-night, cool, slim, and fragrant, in a dress of rose crêpe with little wisps of lace over the shoulders. Mother's blue eyes seemed to mist a little.

“Someone she…did not like…used to be…very good at reading
habitant
poetry. Never mind, heart's delight. You did splendidly. I was proud of you.”

She bent down and took Jane's face in her hands. Mother had such a dear way of doing that.

So, in spite of everything, Jane went very happily through the gates of sleep. After all, it does not take much to make a child happy.