Jane of Lantern Hill (7 page)

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 any 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.

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 questions. 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.”

Perhaps the “Janie” was the last straw. Jane was not going to be “Janied.”

“Thank you, Aunt Irene,” she said very politely and very resolutely, “but I can't eat anything and it wouldn't be any use at all to try. Please may I go to bed?”

Aunt Irene patted her shoulder.

“Of course, you poor darling. You're all tired out and everything so strange.
I
know how hard it is for you. I'll take you right upstairs to your room.”

The room was very pretty, with hangings of basket-weave berosed cretonne and a silk-covered bed so smooth and sleek that it looked as if it had never been slept in. But Aunt Irene deftly removed the silk spread and turned down the sheets.

“I hope you'll have a good sleep, lovey. You don't know what it means to me to have you sleeping under my roof…Andrew's little girl…my only niece. And I was always so fond of your mother…but…well, I don't quite think she ever really liked me. I always
felt
she didn't, but I never let it make any difference between us. She didn't like to see me and your father talking much together…I always realized that. She was so much younger than your father…a mere child…it was natural for him to turn to me for advice, as he'd always been used to do. He always talked things over with me first. She was a little jealous, I think…she could hardly help that, being Mrs. Robert Kennedy's daughter.
Never
let yourself be jealous, Janie. It wrecks more lives than anything else. Here's a puff, lovey, if you're chilly in the night. A wet night in P. E. Island is apt to be cool. Good night, lovey.”

Jane stood alone in the room and looked about her. The bed lamp had a lamp-shade painted with roses with a bead fringe. For some reason, Jane couldn't endure that lampshade. It was too smooth and pretty, just like Aunt Irene. She went to it and put out the light. Then she went to the window. Beat, beat went the rain on the panes. Splash, splash went the rain on the roof of the veranda. Beyond it Jane could see nothing. Her heart swelled. This black, alien, starless land could never be home to her.

“If I only had mother,” she whispered. But, though she felt that something had taken her life and torn it apart, she did not cry.

Jane was so tired after the preceding sleepless nights on the train that she went to sleep almost at once. But she wakened while it was still night. The rain had ceased. A bar of shining light lay across her bed. She slipped out from between Aunt Irene's perfumed sheets and went to the window. The world had changed. The sky was cloudless and a few shining, distant stars looked down on the sleeping town. A tree not far away was all silvery bloom. Moonlight was spilling over everything from a full moon that hung like an enormous bubble over what must be a bay or harbor, and there was one splendid, sparkling trail across the water. So there was a moon in P. E. Island too. Jane hadn't really believed it before. And polished to the queen's taste. It was like seeing an old friend. That moon was looking down on Toronto as well as P. E. Island. Perhaps it was shining on Jody, asleep in her little attic room, or on mother coming home late from some gay affair. Suppose she were looking at it at this very moment! It no longer seemed a thousand miles to Toronto.

The door opened and Aunt Irene came in, in her nightdress.

“Lovey, what is the matter? I heard you moving about and was afraid you were ill.”

“I just got up to look at the moon,” said Jane.

“You
funny
childy! Haven't you seen moons before? You gave me a real fright. Now go back to bed like a darling. You want to look bright and fresh for father when he comes, you know.”

Jane didn't want to look bright and fresh for anybody. Was she always to be spied upon? She got into bed silently and was tucked in for the second time. But she could not sleep again.

Morning comes at last, be the night ever so long. The day that was to be such a marvelous day for Jane began like any other. The mackerel clouds…only Jane didn't know then they
were
mackerel clouds…in the eastern sky began to take fire. The sun rose without any unusual fuss. Jane was afraid to get up too early for fear of alarming Aunt Irene again, but at last she rose and opened the window. Jane did not know she was looking out on the loveliest thing on earth…a June morning in Prince Edward Island…but she knew it all seemed like a different world from last night. A wave of fragrance broke in her face from the lilac hedge between Aunt Irene's house and the next one. The poplars in a corner of the lawn were shaking in green laughter. An apple tree stretched out friendly arms. There was a faraway view of daisy-sprinkled fields across the harbor where white gulls were soaring and swooping. The air was moist and sweet after the rain. Aunt Irene's house was on the fringe of the town and a country road ran behind it…a road almost blood-red in its glistening wetness. Jane had never imagined a road colored like that.

“Why…why…P.E. Island is a pretty place,” thought Jane half grudgingly.

Breakfast was the first ordeal, and Jane was no hungrier than she had been the night before.

“I don't think I can eat anything, Aunt Irene.”

“But you must, lovey. I'm going to love you but I'm not going to spoil you. I expect you've always had a little too much of your own way. Your father may be along almost any minute now. Sit right down here and eat your cereal.”

Jane tried. Aunt Irene had certainly prepared a lovely breakfast for her. Orange juice…cereal with thick golden cream…dainty triangles of toast…a perfectly poached egg…apple jelly between amber and crimson. There was no doubt Aunt Irene was a good cook. But Jane had never had a harder time choking down a meal.

“Don't be so excited, lovey,” said Aunt Irene with a smile, as to some very young child who needed soothing.

Jane did not think she was excited. She had merely a queer, dreadful, empty feeling which nothing, not even the egg, seemed able to fill up. And after breakfast there was an hour when Jane discovered that the hardest work in the world is waiting. But everything comes to an end, and when Aunt Irene said, “There's your father now,” Jane felt that everything
had
come to an end.

Her hands were suddenly clammy but her mouth was dry. The ticking of the clock seemed unnaturally loud. There was a step on the path…the door opened…someone was standing on the threshold. Jane stood up but she could not raise her eyes…she could not.

“Here's your baby,” said Aunt Irene. “Isn't she a little daughter to be proud of, 'Drew? A bit too tall for her age, perhaps, but…”

“A russet-haired jade,” said a voice.

Only four words…but they changed life for Jane. Perhaps it was the voice more than the words…a voice that made everything seem like a wonderful secret just you two shared. Jane came to life at last and looked up.

Peaked eyebrows…thick reddish-brown hair springing back from his forehead…a mouth tucked in at the corners…squared cleft chin…stern hazel eyes with jolly-looking wrinkles around them. The face was as familiar to her as her own.

“Kenneth Howard,” gasped Jane. She took a quite unconscious step towards him.

The next moment she was lifted in his arms and kissed. She kissed him back. She had no sense of strangerhood. She felt at once the call of that mysterious kinship of soul which has nothing to do with the relationships of flesh and blood. In that one moment Jane forgot that she had ever hated her father. She liked him…she liked everything about him from the nice tobaccoey smell of his heather-mixture tweed suit to the firm grip of his arms around her. She wanted to cry, but that was out of the question, so she laughed instead…rather wildly, perhaps, for Aunt Irene said tolerantly, “Poor child, no wonder she is a little hysterical.”

Father set Jane down and looked at her. All the sternness of his eyes had crinkled into laughter.

“Are you hysterical, my Jane?” he said gravely.

How she loved to be called “my Jane” like that!

“No, father,” she said with equal gravity. She never spoke of him or thought of him as “he” again.

“Leave her with me a month and I'll fatten her up,” smiled Aunt Irene.

Jane felt a quake of dismay. Suppose father
did
leave her. Evidently father had no intention of doing anything of the sort. He pulled her down on the sofa beside him and kept his arm about her. All at once everything was all right.

“I don't believe I want her fattened up. I like her bones.” He looked at Jane critically. Jane knew he was looking her over and didn't mind. She only hoped madly that he would like her. Would he be disappointed because she was not pretty? Would he think her mouth too big? “Do you know you have nice little bones, Janekin?”

“She's got her Grandfather Stuart's nose,” said Aunt Irene. Aunt Irene evidently approved of Jane's nose, but Jane had a disagreeable feeling that she had robbed Grandfather Stuart of his nose. She liked it better when father said,

“I rather fancy the way your eyelashes are put on, Jane. By the way, do you like to be Jane? I've always called you Jane but that may be just pure cussedness. You've a right to whatever name you like. But I want to know which name is the real
you
and which the shadowy little ghost.”

“Oh, I'm Jane,” cried Jane. And was she glad to be Jane!

“That's settled then. And suppose you call me dad? I'm afraid I'd make a terribly awkward father, but I think I could be a tolerable dad. Sorry I couldn't get in last night, but my jovial, disreputable old car died right on the road. I managed to restore it to life this morning…at least long enough to hop into town like a toad…our mode of traveling added to the gaiety of P. E. Island…but I'm afraid it's got to go into a garage for a while. After dinner we'll drive across the Island, Jane, and get acquainted.”

“We're acquainted now,” said Jane simply. It was true. She felt that she had known dad for years. Yes, “dad” was nicer than “father.” “Father” had unpleasant associations…she had hated father. But it was easy to love dad. Jane opened the most secret chamber of her heart and took him in…nay, found him there. For dad was Kenneth Howard and Jane had loved Kenneth Howard for a long, long time.

“This Jane person,” dad remarked to the ceiling, “knows her onions.”