“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.
CHAPTER 8
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.
CHAPTER 9
The letter was a bolt from the blue. It came one dull morning in early April…but such a bitter, peevish, unlovely April…more like March in its disposition than April. It was Saturday, so there would be no St. Agatha’s, and when Jane wakened in her big black walnut bed she wondered just how she would put in the day, because mother was going to a bridge and Jody was sick with a cold.
Jane lay a little while, looking through the window, where she could see only dull gray sky and old tree tops having a fight with the wind. She knew that in the yard below the window on the north there was still a lingering bank of dirty gray snow. Jane thought dirty snow must be the dreariest thing in the world. She hated this shabby end of winter. And she hated the bedroom where she had to sleep alone. She wished she and mother could sleep together. They could have such lovely times talking to each other with no one else to hear, after they went to bed or early in the morning. And how lovely it would be when you woke up in the night to hear mother’s soft breathing beside you and cuddle to her just a wee bit, carefully, so as not to disturb her.
But grandmother would not let mother sleep with her.
“It is unhealthy for two people to sleep in the same bed,” grandmother had said with her chill, unsmiling smile. “Surely in a house of this size everybody can have a room to herself. There are many people in the world who would be grateful for such a privilege.”
Jane thought she might have liked the room better if it had been smaller. She always felt lost in it. Nothing in it seemed to be related to her. It always seemed hostile, watchful, vindictive. And yet Jane always felt that if she were allowed to do things for it…sweep it, dust it, put flowers in it…she would begin to love it, huge as it was. Everything in it was huge…a huge black walnut wardrobe like a prison, a huge chest of drawers, a huge walnut bedstead, a huge mirror over the massive black marble mantelpiece…except
a tiny cradle which was always kept in the alcove by the fireplace…a cradle that grandmother had been rocked in. Fancy grandmother a baby! Jane just couldn’t.
Jane got out of bed and dressed herself under the stare of several old dead grands and greats hung on the walls. Below on the lawn robins were hopping about. Robins always made Jane laugh…they were so saucy, so sleek, so important, strutting over the grounds of 60 Gay just as if it were any common yard. Much they cared for grandmothers!
Jane slipped down the hall to mother’s room at the far end. She was not supposed to do this. It was understood at 60 Gay that mother must not be disturbed in the mornings. But mother, for a wonder, had not been out the night before, and Jane knew she would be awake. Not only was she awake but Mary was just bringing in her breakfast tray. Jane would have loved to do this for mother but she was never allowed.
Mother was sitting up in bed wearing the daintiest breakfast jacket of tea-rose crêpe de chine edged with cobwebby beige lace. Her cheeks were just the color of her jacket and her eyes were fresh and dewy. Mother, Jane reflected proudly, looked as lovely when she got up in the mornings as she did before she went to bed.
Mother had chilled melon balls in orange juice instead of cereal, and she shared them with Jane. She offered half of her toast too, but Jane knew she must save some appetite for her own breakfast and refused it. They had a lovely time, laughing and talking beautiful nonsense, very quietly, so as not to be overheard. Not that either of them ever put this into words; but both knew.
“I wish it could be like this every morning,” thought Jane. But she did not say so. She had learned that whenever she said anything like that mother’s eyes darkened with pain, and she would not hurt mother for the world. She could never forget the time she had heard mother crying in the night.
She had wakened up with toothache and had crept down to mother’s room to see if mother had any toothache drops. And, as she opened the door ever so softly, she heard mother crying in a dreadful, smothered sort of way. Then grandmother had come along the hall with her candle.
“Victoria, what are you doing here?”
“I have toothache,” said Jane.
“Come with me and I will get you some drops,” said grandmother coldly.
Jane went…but she no longer minded the toothache. Why was mother crying? It couldn’t be possible she was unhappy…pretty, laughing mother. The next morning at breakfast mother looked as if she had never shed a tear in her life. Sometimes Jane wondered if she had dreamed it.
Jane put the lemon verbena salts into the bath water for mother and got a pair of new stockings, thin as dew gossamers, out of the drawer for her. She loved to do things for mother and there was so little she could do.
She had breakfast alone with grandmother, Aunt Gertrude having had hers already. It is not pleasant to eat a meal alone with a person you do not like. And Mary had forgotten to put salt in the oatmeal.
“Your shoelace is untied, Victoria.”
That was the only thing grandmother said during the meal. The house was dark. It was a sulky day that now and then brightened up a little and then turned sulkier than ever. The mail came at ten. Jane was not interested in it. There was never anything for her. Sometimes she thought it would be nice and exciting to get a letter from somebody. Mother always got no end of letters…invitations and advertisements. This morning Jane carried the mail into the library where grandmother and Aunt Gertrude and mother were sitting. Jane noticed among the letters one addressed to her mother in a black, spiky handwriting which Jane was sure she had never seen before. She hadn’t the least idea that that letter was going to change her whole life.
Grandmother took the letters from her and looked them over as she always did.
“Did you close the vestibule door, Victoria?”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, grandmother.”
“You left it open yesterday. Robin, here is a letter from Mrs. Kirby…likely about that bazaar. Remember it is my wish that you have nothing to do with it. I do not approve of Sarah Kirby. Gertrude, here is one for you from Cousin Mary in Winnipeg. If it is about that silver service she avers my mother left her, tell her I consider the matter closed. Robin, here is…”
Grandmother stopped abruptly. She had picked up the black-handed letter and was looking at it as if she had picked up a snake. Then she looked at her daughter.
“This is from…him,” she said.
Mother dropped Mrs. Kirby’s letter and turned so white that Jane involuntarily sprang toward her, but was barred by grandmother’s outstretched arm.
“Do you wish me to read it for you, Robin?”
Mother trembled piteously but she said, “No…no…let me…”
Grandmother handed the letter over with an offended air and mother opened it with shaking hands. It did not seem as if her face could turn whiter than it was, but it did as she read it.
“Well?” said grandmother.
“He says,” gasped mother, “that I must send Jane Victoria to him for the summer…that he has a right to her sometimes…”
“Who says?” cried Jane.
“Do not interrupt, Victoria,” said grandmother. “Let me see that letter, Robin.”
They waited while grandmother read it. Aunt Gertrude stared unwinkingly ahead of her with her cold, gray eyes in her long, white face. Mother had dropped her head in her hands. It was only three minutes since Jane had brought the letters in, and in those three minutes the world had turned upside down. Jane felt as if a gulf had opened between her and all humankind. She knew now without being told who had written the letter.
“So!” said grandmother. She folded the letter up, put it in its envelope, laid it on her table and carefully wiped her hands with her fine lace handkerchief.
“You won’t let her go, of course, Robin.”
For the first time in her life Jane felt at one with grandmother. She looked imploringly at mother with a curious feeling of seeing her for the first time…not as a loving mother or affectionate daughter but as a woman…a woman in the grip of some terrible emotion. Jane’s heart was torn by another pang in seeing mother suffer so.
“If I don’t,” she said, “he may take her from me altogether. He could, you know. He says…”
“I have read what he says,” said grandmother, “and I still tell you to ignore that letter. He is doing this simply to annoy you. He cares nothing for her…he never cared for anything but his scribbling.”
“I’m afraid…” began mother again.
“We’d better consult William,” said Aunt Gertrude suddenly. “This needs a man’s advice.”
“A man!” snapped grandmother. Then she seemed to pull herself up. “You may be right, Gertrude. I shall lay the matter before William when he comes to supper tomorrow. In the meantime we shall not discuss it. We shall not allow it to disturb us in the least.”
Jane felt as if she were in a nightmare the rest of the day. Surely it must be a dream…surely her father could not have written her mother that she must spend the summer with him, a thousand miles away in that horrible Prince Edward Island, which looked on the map to be a desolate little fragment in the jaws of Gaspé and Cape Breton…with a father who didn’t love her and whom she didn’t love.
She had no chance to say anything about it to mother…grandmother saw to that. They all went to Aunt Sylvia’s luncheon…mother did not look as if she wanted to go anywhere…and Jane had lunch alone. She couldn’t eat anything.
“Does your head ache, Miss Victoria?” Mary asked sympathetically.
Something was aching terribly but it did not seem to be her head. It ached all the afternoon and evening and far on into the night. It was still aching when Jane woke the next morning with a sickening rush of remembrance. Jane felt that it might help the ache a little if she could only have a talk with mother, but when she tr
ied mother’s door it was locked. Jane felt that mother didn’t want to talk to her about this, and that hurt worse than anything else.
They all went to church…an old and big and gloomy church on a downtown street where the Kennedys had always gone. Jane was rather fond of going to church for the not very commendable reason that she had some peace there. She could be silent without someone asking her accusingly what she was thinking of. Grandmother had to let her alone in church. And if you couldn’t be loved, the next best thing was to be let alone.
Apart from that Jane did not care for St. Barnabas’. The sermon was beyond her. She liked the music and some of the hymns. Occasionally there was a line that gave her a thrill. There was something fascinating about coral strands and icy mountains, tides that moving seemed asleep, islands that lifted their fronded palms in air, reapers that bore harvest treasures home and years like shadows on sunny hills that lie.
But nothing gave Jane any pleasure today. She hated the pale sunshine that sifted down between the chilly, grudging clouds. What business had the sun even to try to shine while her fate hung in the balance like this? The sermon seemed endless, the prayers dreary, there was not even a hymn line she liked. But Jane put up a desperate prayer on her own behalf.
“Please, dear God,” she whispered, “make Uncle William say I needn’t be sent to him.”
Jane had to live in suspense as to what Uncle William would say until the Sunday supper was over. She ate little. She sat looking at Uncle William with fear in her eyes, wondering if God really could have much influence over him. They were all there…Uncle William and Aunt Minnie, Uncle David and Aunt Sylvia, and Phyllis; and after supper they all went to the library and sat in a stiff circle while Uncle William put on his glasses and read the letter. Jane thought everyone must hear the beating of her heart.