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.
CHAPTER 13
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.”
CHAPTER 14
Jane found that waiting for something pleasant was very different from waiting for something unpleasant. Mrs. Stanley would not have known her with the laughter and sparkle in her eyes. If the forenoon seemed long it was only because she was in such a hurry to be with dad again…and away from Aunt Irene. Aunt Irene was trying to pump her…about grandmother and mother and her life at 60 Gay. Jane was not going to be pumped, much to Aunt Irene’s disappointment. Questioned she ever so cleverly, Jane had a disconcerting “yes” or “no” for every question and still more disconcerting silence for suggestive remarks that were disguised questions.
“So your grandmother Kennedy is good to you, Janie?”
“Very good,” said Jane unflinchingly. Well, grandmother was good to her. There were St. Agatha’s and the music lessons and the pretty clothes, the limousine and the balanced meals as evidence. Aunt Irene had looked carefully at all her clothes.
“She never had any use for your father, you know, Janie. I thought perhaps she might take her spite out on you. It was really she that made all the trouble between him and your mother.”
Jane said nothing. She would not talk about that secret bitterness to Aunt Irene. Aunt Irene gave up in disgust.
Dad came back at noon without his car but with a horse and buggy.
“It’s going to take all day to fix it. I’m borrowing Jed Carson’s rig and he’ll take it back when he brings the car and Jane’s trunk out tomorrow. Did you ever have a buggy ride, my Jane?”
“You’re not going without your dinners,” said Aunt Irene.
Jane enjoyed that dinner, having eaten next to nothing ever since she left Toronto. She hoped dad wouldn’t think her appetite terrible. For all she knew he was poor…that car hadn’t looked like wealth…and another mouth to fill might be inconvenient. But dad himself was evidently enjoying his dinner…especially that chocolate peppermint cake. Jane wished she knew how to make chocolate peppermint cake, but she made up her mind that she would never ask Aunt Irene how to make it.
Aunt Irene made a fuss over dad. She purred over him…actually purred. And dad liked her purring and her honey-sweet phrases just as well as he had liked her cake. Jane saw that clearly.
“It isn’t really fair to the child to take her out to that Brookview boarding house of yours,” said Aunt Irene.
“Who knows but I’ll get a house of my own for the summer?” said dad. “Do you think you could keep house for me, Jane?”
“Yes,” said Jane promptly. She could. She knew how a house should be kept even if she had never kept one. There are people who are born knowing things.
“Can you cook?” asked Aunt Irene, winking at dad, as if over some delicious joke. Jane was pleased to see that dad did not wink back. And he saved her the ordeal of replying.
“Any descendant of my mother’s can cook,” he said. “Come, my Jane, put on thy beautiful garments and let’s be on our way.”
As Jane came downstairs in her hat and coat she could not help hearing Aunt Irene in the dining room.
“She’s got a secretive strain in her, Andrew, that I confess I don’t like.”
“Knows how to keep her own counsel, eh?” said dad.
“It’s more than that, Andrew. She’s deep…take my word for it, she’s deep. Old Lady Kennedy will never be dead while she is alive. But she is a very dear little girl for all that, Andrew…we can’t expect her to be faultless…and if there is anything I can do for her you have only to let me know. Be patient with her, Andrew. You know she’s never been taught how to love you.”
Jane fairly gritted her teeth. The idea of her having to be taught “how to love” dad! It was…why, it was funny! Jane’s annoyance with Aunt Irene dissolved in a little chuckle, as low-pitched and impish as an owl’s.
“Do be careful of poison ivy,” Aunt Irene called after them as they drove away. “I’m told there is so much of it in Brookview. Do take good care of her, Andrew.”
“You’ve got it wrong end foremost, Irene, like all women. Anyone could see with half an eye that Jane is going to take care of me.”
A blithe soul was Jane as they drove away. The glow at her heart went with her across the Island. She simply could not believe that only a few hours had elapsed since she had been the most miserable creature in the world. It was jolly to ride in a buggy, just behind a little red mare whose sleek hams Jane would have liked to bend forward and slap. She did not eat up the long, red miles as a car would have done, but Jane did not want them eaten up. The road was full of lovely surprises…a glimpse of far-off hills that seemed made of opal dust…a whiff of wind that had been blowing over a clover field…brooks that appeared from nowhere and ran off into green shadowy woods where long branches of spicy fir hung over the laced water…great white cloud mountains towering up in the blue sky…a hollow of tipsy buttercups…a tidal river unbelievably blue. Everywhere she looked there was something to delight her. Everything seemed just on the point of whispering a secret of happiness. And there was something else…the sea tang in the air. Jane sniffed it for the first time…sniffed again…drank it.
“Feel in my right-hand pocket,” said dad.
Jane explored and found a bag of caramels. At 60 Gay she was not allowed to eat candy between meals…but 60 Gay was a thousand miles away.
“We’re neither of us much for talking, it seems,” said dad.
“No, but I think we entertain each other very well,” said Jane, as distinctly as she could with her jaws stuck together with caramel.
Dad laughed. He had such a nice understanding laugh.
“I can talk a blue streak when the spirit moves me,” he said. “When it doesn’t, I like people to let me be. Y
ou’re a girl after my own heart, Jane. I’m glad I was predestined to send for you. Irene argued against it. But I’m a stubborn dud, my Jane, when I take a notion into my noddle. It just occurred to me that I wanted to get acquainted with my daughter.”
Dad did not ask about mother. Jane was thankful he did not…and yet she knew it was all wrong that he did not. It was all wrong that mother had asked her not to speak of her to him. Oh, there were too many things all wrong but one thing was indisputably and satisfyingly right. She was going to spend a whole summer with dad and they were here together, driving over a road which had a life of its own that seemed to be running through her veins like quicksilver. Jane knew that she had never been in any place or any company that suited her so well.
The most delightful drive must end.
“We’ll soon be at Brookview,” said dad. “I’ve been living at Brookview this past year. It is still one of the quiet places of the earth. I’ve a couple of rooms over Jim Mead’s store. Mrs. Jim Meade gives me my meals and thinks I’m a harmless lunatic because I write.”
“What do you write, dad?” asked Jane, thinking of Peaceful Adjustments of International Difficulties.
“A little of everything, Jane. Stories…poems…essays…articles on all subjects. I even wrote a novel once. But I couldn’t find a publisher. So I went back to my pot-boilers. Behold a mute inglorious Milton in your dad. To you, Jane, I will confide my dearest dream. It is to write an epic on the life of Methuselah. What a subject! Here we are.”
“Here” was a corner where two roads crossed and in the corner was a building which was a store at one end and a dwelling place at the other. The store end was open to the road but the house end was fenced off with a paling and a spruce hedge. Jane learned at once and forever the art of getting out of a buggy and they went through a little white gate, with a black wooden decoy duck on one of its posts, and up a red walk edged with ribbon grass and big quahaug shells.