“Dad,” said Jane.
Mother gave a little choked cry. Grandmother wheeled on her furiously.
“Perhaps,” she said icily, “you think he should have called you.”
“He should,” said Jane.
CHAPTER 40
At the end of a blue and silver day in March, Jane was doing her lessons in her room and feeling reasonably happy. She had had a rapturous letter from Jody that morning…all Jody’s letter were rapturous…giving her lots of interesting news from Queen’s Shore…she had had a birthday the week before and was now in her leggy teens…and two bits of luck had come her way that afternoon. Aunt Sylvia had taken her and Phyllis with her on a shopping expedition, and Jane had picked up two delightful things for Lantern Hill…a lovely old copper bowl and a comical brass knocker for the glass-paned door. It was the head of a dog with his tongue hanging waggishly out and a real dog-laugh in his eyes.
The door opened and mother came in, ready dressed for a restaurant dinner party. She wore the most wonderful sheath dress of ivory taffeta, with a sapphire velvet bow at the back and a little blue velvet jacket over her lovely shoulders. Her slippers were blue, with slender golden heels, and she had her hair done in a new way…a sleek, flat top to her head and a row of tricksy little curls around her neck.
“Oh, mums, you are perfectly lovely,” said Jane, looking at her with adoring eyes. And then she added something she had never intended to say…something that seemed to rush to her lips and say itself.
“I do wish dad could see you now.”
Jane pulled herself up in dire dismay. She had been told never to mention dad to mother…and yet she had done it. And mother was looking as if she had been struck in the face.
“I do not suppose,” said mother bitterly, “that he would be at all interested in the sight.”
Jane said nothing. There seemed to be nothing she could say. How did she know whether dad would be interested or not? And yet…and yet…she was sure he still loved mother.
Mother sat down on one of the chintz chairs and looked at Jane.
“Jane,” she said, “I am going to tell you something about my marriage. I don’t know what you have heard about the other side of it…there was another side, of course…but I want you to hear my side. It is better you should know. I should have told you before…but…it hurt me so.”
“Don’t tell it now, if it hurts you, darling,” said Jane earnestly. (Thinking…I know more about it than you suppose already.)
“I must. There are some things I want you to understand…I don’t want you to blame me too much…”
“I don’t blame you at all, mother.”
“Oh, I was to blame a great deal…I see that now when it is too late. I was so young and foolish…just a careless, happy little bride. I…I…ran away to be married to your father, Jane.”
Jane nodded.
“How much do you know, Jane?”
“Just that you ran away and were very happy at first.”
“Happy? Oh, Jane Victoria, I was…I was…so happy. But it really was…a very unfortunate marriage, dearest.”
(That sounds like something grandmother said.)
“I shouldn’t have treated mother so…I was all she had left after my father died. But she forgave me…”
(And set herself to work to make trouble between you and dad.)
“But we were happy that first year, Jane Victoria. I worshiped Andrew…that smile of his…you know his smile…”
(Do I know it?)
“We had such fun together…reading poetry by driftwood fires down at the harbor…we always made a rite of lighting those fires…life was wonderful. I used to welcome the days then as much as I shrink from them now. We had only one quarrel that first year…I forget what it was about…something silly…I kissed the frown on his forehead and all was well again. I knew there was no woman in the world so happy as I was. If it could have lasted!”
“Why didn’t it last, mother?”
“I…I hardly know. Of course I wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but I don’t think it was that. I couldn’t cook, but our maid didn’t do so badly and Little Aunt Em used to come in and help. She was a darling. And I couldn’t keep accounts straight ever…I would add up a column eight times and get a different answer every time. But Andrew just laughed over that. Then you were born…”
“And that made all the trouble,” cried Jane, in whom that bitter thought had persisted in rankling.
“Not at first…oh, Jane Victoria darling, not at first. But Andrew never seemed the same after…”
(I wonder if it wasn’t you who had changed, mother.)
“He was jealous of my love for you…he was, Jane Victoria…”
(Not jealous…no, not jealous. A little hurt…he didn’t like to be second with you after he had been first...he thought he came second then.)
“He used to say ‘your child’…‘your daughter’ as if you weren’t his. Why, he used to make fun of you. Once he said you had a face like a monkey.”
(And no Kennedy can take a joke.)
“You hadn’t…you were the cutest little thing. Why, Jane Victoria darling, you were just a daily miracle. It was such fun to tuck you in at night…to watch you when you were asleep.”
(And you were just a darling big baby yourself, mother.)
“Andrew was angry because I couldn’t go out with him as much as before. How could I? It would have been bad for you if I’d taken you and I couldn’t leave you. But he didn’t care really…he never did except for a little while at the first. He cared far more for that book of his than for me. He would shut himself up with it for days at a time and forget all about me.”
(And yet you think he was the only jealous one.)
“I suppose I simply wasn’t capable of living with a genius. Of course, I knew I wasn’t clever enough for him. Irene let me see that she thought that. And he cared far more for her than for me…”
(Oh, no, not that…never that!)
“She had far more influence over him than I had. He told her things before he told me…”
(Because she was always trying to pick them out of him before he was ready to tell anyone.)
“He thought me such a child that, if he had a plan, he consulted her before he consulted me. Irene made me feel like a shadow in my own house. She liked to humiliate me, I think. She was always sweet and smiling…”
(She would be!)
“…but she always blew my candles out. She patronized me…”
(Do I know it!)
“‘I’ve noticed,’ she would say. That had such a sting, as if she’d been spying on me right along. Andrew said I was unreasonable…I wasn’t…but he always sided with her. Irene never liked me. She had wanted Andrew to marry another girl…I was told she had said from the first that she knew our marriage would be a failure…”
(And did her best to make it one.)
“She kept pushing us apart…here a little…there a little. I was helpless.”
(Not if you had had a wee bit of backbone, Mummy.)
“Andrew was annoyed because I didn’t like her, and yet he hated my family. He couldn’t speak of mother without insulting her…he didn’t want me to visit her…get presents from her…money…oh, Jane Victoria, that last year was dreadful. Andrew never looked at me if he could help it.”
(Because it hurt him too much.)
“It seemed as if I were married to a stranger. We were always saying bitter things to each other…”
(That verse I read in the Bible last night, “Death and Life are in the power of the tongue”…it’s true…it’s true!)
“Then mother wrote and asked me to come home for a visit. Andrew said, ‘Go if you want to’…just like that. Irene said it would give things a chance to heal up…”
(I can see her smiling when she said it.)
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“I went. And…and…mother wanted me to stay with her. She could see I was so unhappy…”
(And took her chance.)
“I couldn’t go on living with a person who hated me, Jane Victoria…I couldn’t…so…I wrote him and told him I thought it would be better for both of us if I didn’t go back. I…I don’t know…nothing seemed real someway…if he had written and asked me to go back…but he didn’t. I never heard from him…till that letter came asking for you.”
Jane had kept silence while her mother talked, thinking things at intervals, but now she could keep silence no longer.
“He did write…he wrote and asked you to come back…and you never answered…you never answered, mother.”
Mother and daughter looked at each other in the silence of the big, beautiful, unfriendly room.
After a little mother whispered, “I never got it, Jane Victoria.”
They said nothing more about it. Both of them knew quite well what had happened to the letter.
“Mother, it isn’t too late yet…”
“Yes, it is too late, dear. Too much has come between us. I can’t break with mother again…she’d never forgive me again…and she loves me so. I’m all she has…”
“Nonsense!” Jane was as brusque as any Stuart of them all. “She has got Aunt Gertrude and Uncle William and Aunt Sylvia.”
“It’s…it’s not the same. She didn’t love their father. And…I can’t stand up to her. Besides, he doesn’t want me anymore. We’re strangers. And oh, Jane Victoria, life’s slipping away…like that…through my fingers. The harder I try to hold it, the faster it slips. I’ve lost you…”
“Never, mother!”
“Yes, you belong more to him than to me now. I don’t blame you…you can’t help it. But you’ll belong a little more to him every year…till there’ll be nothing left for me.”
Grandmother came in. She looked at them both suspiciously.
“Have you forgotten you are dining out, Robin?”
“Yes, I think I had,” said mother strangely. “But never mind…I’ve remembered now. I…I shan’t forget again.”
Grandmother lingered for a moment after mother had gone out.
“What have you been saying to upset your mother, Victoria?”
Jane looked levelly at grandmother.
“What happened to the letter father wrote mother long ago, asking her to go back to him, grandmother?”
Grandmother’s cold cruel eyes suddenly blazed.
“So that’s it? Do you think it any of your business exactly?”
“Yes, I think it is, since I am their child.”
“I did what was right with it…I burned it. She had seen her mistake…she had come back to me, as I always knew she would…I was not going to have her misled again. Don’t begin plotting, Victoria. I am a match for you all yet.”
“No one is plotting,” said Jane, “There is just one thing I want to tell you, grandmother. My father and mother love each other yet…I know it.”
Grandmother’s voice was ice.
“They do not. Your mother has been happy all these years, till you began stirring up old memories. Leave her alone. She is my daughter…no outsider shall ever come between us again…neither Andrew Stuart nor you nor anyone. And you will be good enough to remember that.”
CHAPTER 41
The letters came on the afternoon of the last of March. Jane was not at St. Agatha’s…she had had a touch of sore throat the day before and mother thought it was wiser for her to stay home. But her throat was better now and Jane was reasonably happy. It was almost April…if not quite spring yet, at least the hope of spring. Just a little over two months and she would keep her tryst with June at Lantern Hill. Meanwhile, she was planning some additions to her garden…for one thing, a row of knightly hollyhocks along the dyke at the bottom. She would plant the seeds in August and they would bloom the next summer.
Grandmother and Aunt Gertrude and mother had all gone to Mrs. Morrison’s bridge and tea, so Mary brought the afternoon mail to Jane, who pounced joyfully on three letters for herself. One from Polly…one from Shingle…one…Jane recognized Aunt Irene’s copper-plate writing.
She read Polly’s first…a good letter, full of fun and Lantern Hill jokes. There was one bit of news about dad in it…he was planning a trip to the States very soon…Boston or New York or somewhere…Polly seemed rather vague. And Polly wound up with a paragraph that gave Jane a good laugh…her last laughter for some time…the last laughter of her childhood, it always seemed to Jane, looking back on it from later years.
Mr. Julius Evans was awful mad last week,
wrote Polly.
A rat got drowned in his cask of new maple syrup and he made a terrible fuss over such a waste. But dad says he isn’t sure it was wasted, so we are getting our syrup from Joe Baldwin’s to be on the safe side.
Jane was still laughing over this when she opened Shingle’s letter. A paragraph on the second page leaped to her eye.
Everybody is saying your dad is going to get a Yankee divorce and marry Lilian Morrow. Will she be your mother then? How do you like the idea? I guess she’ll be your stepmother…only that sounds so funny when your own mother is still alive. Will your name be changed? Caraway says not…but they do such queer things in the States. Anyway, I hope it won’t make any difference about you coming to Lantern Hill in the summer.
Jane felt literally sick and cold with agony as she dropped the letter and snatched up Aunt Irene’s. She had been wondering what Aunt Irene could be writing to her about…she knew now.
The letter told Jane that Aunt Irene suspected that her brother Andrew intended going to the States and living there long enough to get a U.S. divorce.
Of course, it may not be true, lovey. He hasn’t told me. But it is all over the country, and where there is so much smoke there must be some fire, and I think you ought to be prepared, lovey. I know that several of his friends advised him long ago to get a divorce. But as he never discussed it with me, I have given no advice for or against. For some reason I am at a loss to understand, he has shut me out of his confidence these past two years. But I have felt that the state of his affairs has long been very unsatisfactory. I’m sure you won’t worry over this…I wouldn’t have told you if I thought it would worry you. You have too much good sense…I’ve often remarked how old you were for your years. But of course, if it is true, it may make some difference to you. He might marry again.
If you have seen a candle flame blown out, you will know what Jane looked like as she went blindly to the window. It was a dark day with occasional showers of driving rain. Jane looked at the cruel, repellent, merciless street but did not see it. She had never felt such dreadful shame…such dreadful misery. Yet it seemed to her she ought to have known what was coming. There had been a hint or two last summer…she remembered Lilian Morrow’s caressing “’Drew” and dad’s pleasure in her company. And now…if this hideous thing were true, she would never spend a summer at Lantern Hill again. Would they dare to live at Lantern Hill? Lilian Morrow her mother! Nonsense! Nobody could be her mother except mother. The thing was unthinkable. But Lilian Morrow would be father’s wife.
This had all been going on in these past weeks when she had been so happy, looking forward to June.
“I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel glad again,” thought Jane drearily. Everything was suddenly meaningless…she felt as if she were far removed from everything…as if she were looking at life and people and things through the big end of Timothy Salt’s telescope. It seemed years since she had laughed over Polly’s tale of Mr. Evans’ wasted…or unwasted…maple syrup.
Jane walked the floor of her room all the rest of that afternoon. She dared not sit down for a moment. It seemed that as long as she kept moving, her pain marched with her and she could bear it. If she were to stop, it would crush her. But by dinne
r-time Jane’s mind had begun to function again. She must know the truth and she knew what she must do to learn it. And it must be done at once.
She counted the money she had left from father’s gift. Yes, there was just enough for a one-way ticket to the Island. Nothing left over for meals or a Pullman but that did not matter. Jane knew she would neither eat nor sleep until she knew. She went down to her dinner, which Mary had spread for her in the breakfast room, and tried to eat something lest Mary should notice.
Mary did.
“Your throat worse, Miss Victoria?”
“No, my throat is all right,” said Jane. Her voice sounded strange in her ears…as if it belonged to someone else. “Do you know what time mother and grandmother will be home, Mary?”
“Not till late, Miss Victoria. You know your grandmother and Aunt Gertrude are going to dinner at your Uncle William’s, meeting some of your grandmother’s old friends from the west, and your mother is going to a party. She won’t be home till after midnight, but Frank goes for the old lady at eleven.”
The International Limited left at ten. Jane had all the time she needed. She went upstairs and packed a small hand grip with some necessities and a box of gingersnaps that were on her bedroom table. The darkness outside the window seemed to look in at her menacingly. The rain spat against the panes. The wind was very lonely in the leafless elms. Once Jane had thought the rain and the wind were friends of hers, but they seemed enemies now. Everything hurt her. Everything in her life seemed uprooted and withered. She put on her hat and coat, picked up her bag, went to mother’s room and pinned a little note on a pillow, and crept down the stairs. Mary and Frank were having their dinner in the kitchen and the door was shut. Very quietly Jane telephoned for a taxi; when it came, she was waiting outside for it. She went down the steps of 60 Gay and out of the grim iron gates for the last time.
“The Union Station,” she told the taxi-driver. They moved swiftly away over the wet street that looked like a black river with drowned lights in it. Jane was going to ask for the truth from the only one who could tell it to her…her father.