Jane of Lantern Hill (15 page)

Between Little Aunt Em and dad she now knew a good deal she had not known before but…

“I'd like to hear mummy's side of it,” was Jane's last thought as she finally fell asleep.

There was a pearllike radiance of dawn over the eastern hills when she awoke…awoke knowing something she had not known when she went to sleep. Dad still loved mother. There was no further question in Jane's mind about that.

Dad was still asleep but she and Happy slipped down the ladder and out. Surely there had never before been a day that dawned so beautifully. The old pasture around the barn was the quietest place Jane had ever seen, and on the grass between the little spruces…spruces by day all right whatever they were by night…were gossamers woven on who knew what fairy loom. Jane was washing her face in morning dew when dad appeared.

“It is the essence of adventure to see the break of a new day, Jane. What may it not be ushering in? An empire may fall today…a baby may be born who will discover a cure for cancer…a wonderful poem may be written…”

“Our car will have to be fixed,” reminded Jane.

They walked a mile to a house and telephoned a garage. Sometime before noon the car was on its legs again.

“Watch our smoke,” said dad.

Home…and the Peters welcoming them back…the gulf singing…Millicent Mary toddling adoringly in at the gate. It was a lovely August day but the Jimmy John wheat-field was tawny gold and September was waiting behind the hills…and September meant Toronto and grandmother and St. Agatha's again where she would be on the edge of things instead of hunting with the pack as here. The ninety-five tomorrows had shrunk to only a few. Jane sighed…then shook herself. What was the matter with her? She loved mother…she longed to see her…but…

“I want to stay with dad,” said Jane.

August slipped into September. Jimmy John began to summer fallow the big pasture field below the pond. Jane liked the look of the fresh red furrows. And she liked Mrs. Jimmy John's flock of white geese swimming about the pond. There had been a time when Jane had kept a flock of white swans on a purple lake in the moon, but now she preferred the geese. Day by day the wheat- and oat-fields became more golden. Then Step-a-yard mowed the Jimmy John wheat. The Peters grew so fat catching evicted field-mice that dad told Jane she would really have to put them on a slimming diet.

Summer was ended. A big storm marked the ending, preceded by a week of curiously still weather. Step-a-yard shook his head and didn't like it. Something uncommon was brewing, he said.

The weather all summer had behaved itself well…days of sun and days of friendly rain. Jane had heard of the North Shore storms and wanted to see one. She got her wish with a vengeance.

One day the gulf changed sulkily from blue to gray. The hills were clear and sharp, foretelling rain. The sky to the northeast was black, the clouds were dark with bitter wind.

“Lots of interesting weather coming…don't hold me responsible for it,” warned Step-a-yard when Jane started home from the Jimmy Johns'. She literally blew along the path and felt that if Lantern Hill hadn't stood in the way she might have emulated Little Aunt Em's reputed exploit of blowing over the harbor. There was a wild, strange, hostile look all over the world. The very trees seemed strangers in the oncoming storm.

“Shut the doors and windows tight, Jane,” said dad. “Our house will just laugh at the east wind.”

The storm broke presently and lasted for two days. The wind that night didn't sound like wind at all…it sounded like the roar of a wild beast. For two days you could see nothing but a swirl of gray rain over a grayer sea…hear nothing but the tremendous music of huge breakers booming against the stubborn rocks of lower Queen's Shore. Jane liked it all after she got used to it. Something in her thrilled to it. And they were very cozy, sitting before their fire of white birchwood those wild nights, while the rain poured against the window and the wind roared and the gulf thundered.

“This is something like, Jane,” said dad puffing at the Old Contemptible with a Peter on either shoulder. “Mankind must have its hearth-fire after all. It's a cold life warming yourself before other people's stoves.”

And then he told Jane that he had decided to keep on living at Lantern Hill.

Jane gave a gasp of joy and relief. At first it had been vaguely understood that when Jane went, dad would shut up Lantern Hill and go to town for the winter; and Jane had consequently been cumbered with certain worries.

What would become of her windowful of geraniums? The Jimmy Johns had enough of their own to look after. Dad would take Happy with him but what about the Peters? And the house itself…the thought of its unlighted windows was unbearable. It would be so lonely…so deserted.

“Oh, dad, I'm so glad…I couldn't bear to think of it missing us. But won't you…how about your meals?”

“Oh, I can get up a bite for myself, I daresay.”

“I'm going to teach you to fry a steak and boil potatoes before I go,” said Jane resolutely. “You can't starve then.”

“Jane, you'll beat your husband…I know you will. It is no use trying to teach me to cook. Remember our first porridge. I daresay the Jimmy Johns won't see me starve. I'll arrange for one good meal a day there. Yes, I'm staying on here, Jane. I'll keep the heart of Lantern Hill beating for you. I'll water the geraniums and see that the Peters don't get rheumatism in their legs. But I can't imagine what the place will be like without you…”

“You
will
miss me a little, won't you, dad?”

“A little! My Jane is trying to be humorous. But one consolation is that I'll likely get a little real work done on my Methuselah epic. I won't have so many interruptions. And I'll be able to growl without getting dirty looks.”

“You may just have one growl a day,” grinned Jane. “Oh, I'm so glad I made lots of jam. The pantry is full of it.”

It was the next night dad showed her the letters. He was at his desk with Second Peter snoozing at his feet when Jane went in after washing the supper dishes. He was leaning his head on his hand and Jane thought with a sudden pang that he looked old and tired. The cat with the green spots and the diamond eyes was winking at him.

“Where did you get that cat, dad?”

“Your mother gave it to me…for a joke…before we were married. We saw it in a shop-window and were taken by the weirdness of it. And here…here are some letters I wrote her, Jane…one week she and her mother went over to Halifax. I found them tonight when I was cleaning out a drawer. I've been laughing at myself…the bitterest kind of laughter in the world. You'll laugh, too, Jane. Listen…
‘Today I tried to write a poem to you, Robin, but it is not finished because I could not find words fine enough, as a lover could not find raiment dainty enough for his bride. The old words that other men have used in singing to their loves seemed too worn and common for you. I wanted new words, crystal clear or colored only by the iris of light. Not words that have been stamped and stained with all the hues of other men's thoughts'…
wasn't I a sentimental fool, Jane?
‘I watched the new
moon tonight, Robin. You told me you always watched the new moon set. It has been a bond between us ever since'…‘Oh, how dear and human and girlish and queenly you are…half saint and half very womanly woman'…‘It is so sweet to do something for one we love, even if it be only opening a door for her to pass through or handing her a book'…‘you are like a rose, my Robin…like a white tea-rose by moonlight…
'”

“I wonder if anyone will ever compare me to a rose,” thought Jane. It didn't seem likely. She couldn't think of any flower she resembled.

“She didn't care enough about those letters to take them with her, Jane. After she went away I found them in the drawer of the little desk I had given her.”

“But she didn't know she wasn't coming back then, dad.”

Second Peter snarled as if he had been pushed aside by a foot.

“Didn't she? I think she did.”

“I'm sure she didn't,” Jane was sure, though she couldn't have given any reason for her sureness. “Let me take them back to her.”

“No!” Dad brought his hand down so heavily on his desk that he hurt himself and winced. “I'm going to burn them.”

“Oh, no, no.” Somehow Jane couldn't bear to think of those letters being burned. “Give them to me, dad. I won't take them to Toronto…I'll leave them in my table drawer…but please don't burn them.”

“Well!” Dad pushed the letters over to her and picked up a pen, as if dismissing the subject of the letters and her at the same time. Jane went out slowly, looking back at him. How she loved him…she loved even his shadow on the wall…his lovely clear-cut shadow. How could mother ever have left him?

The storm spent itself that night with a wild red sunset and a still wilder northwest wind…the wind of fine weather. The beach was still a maelstrom of foam the next day and the shadows of wild black clouds kept tearing over the sands, but the rain had ceased and the sun shone between the clouds. The harvest fields were drenched and tangled, the ground in the Jimmy John orchard was covered with apples…and the summer was ended. There was an undefinable change over everything that meant autumn.

Those last few days were compounded of happiness and misery for Jane. She did so many things she loved to do and would not do again until next summer…and next summer seemed a hundred years away. It was funny…She hadn't wanted to come and now she didn't want to go. She cleaned everything up and washed every dish in the house and polished all the silver and scoured Mr. Muffet and Company till their faces shone. She felt lonely and left out when she heard the Jimmy Johns and the Snowbeams talking about the cranberrying in October, and when dad said, “I wish you could see those maples over yonder against that spruce hill in two weeks' time,” and she realized that in two weeks' time there would be a thousand miles between them…well, it seemed to her that she just couldn't bear it.

Aunt Irene came out one day when Jane was house-cleaning furiously.

“Aren't you tired of playing at housekeeping yet, lovey?”

But that true Aunt Irenian touch could not disturb Jane.

“I'm coming back next summer,” said Jane triumphantly.

Aunt Irene sighed.

“I suppose that would be nice…in some ways. But so many things may happen before then. It's a whim of your father's to live here now, but we don't know when he'll take another. Still, we can always hope for the best, can't we, lovey?”

The last day came. Jane packed her trunk, not forgetting a jar of very special wild-strawberry jam she was taking home to mother and two dozen russet apples Polly Snowbeam had given her for her own and Jody's consumption. Polly knew all about Jody and sent her her love.

They had a chicken dinner—the Ella twin and the George twin had brought the birds over with Miranda's compliments, and Jane wondered when she would have a slice off the breast again. In the afternoon she went down alone to say good-bye to the shore. She could hardly bear the loneliness of the waves lapping on the beach. The sound and the tang and the sweep of the sea would not let her go. She knew the fields and the windy golden shore were a part of her. She and her Island understood each other.

“I belong here,” said Jane.

“Come back soon. P. E. Island needs you,” said Timothy Salt, offering her the quarter of an apple on the point of his knife. “You will,” he added. “The Island's got into your blood. It does that to some folks.”

Jane and dad had expected a last quiet evening together but instead there was a surprise party. All Jane's particular friends, old and young, came, even Millicent Mary who sat in a corner all the evening, staring at Jane and never spoke a word. Step-a-yard came and Timothy Salt and Min and Min's ma and Ding-dong Bell and the Big Donalds and the Little Donalds and people from the Corners that Jane didn't know knew her.

Everyone brought her a farewell gift. The Snowbeams clubbed together and brought her a white plaster of Paris plaque to hang on her bedroom wall. It cost twenty-five cents and had a picture of Moses and Aaron on it in blue turbans and red gowns…and Jane saw grandmother looking at it! Little Aunt Em could not come but she sent word to Jane Stuart that she would save some hollyhock seeds for her. They had a very gay evening, although all the girls cried after they had sung, “For she's a jolly good fellow.” Shingle Snowbeam cried so much into the tea towel with which she was helping Polly dry the dishes that Jane had to get a dry one out.

Jane did not cry but she was thinking, “It's the last good time I'll have for ages. And everybody has been so lovely to me.”

“You don't know how much I'm feeling this, Jane, right here in my heart,” said Step-a-yard, patting his stomach.

Dad and Jane sat up a little while after the folks had gone.

“They love you here, Jane.”

“Polly and Shingle and Min are going to write to me every week,” said Jane.

“You'll get the news of the Hill and the Corners then,'' said dad gently. “You know I can't write to you, Jane…not while you're living in that house.”

“And grandmother won't let me write to you,” said Jane sadly.

“But as long as you know there's a dad and I know there's a Jane, it won't matter too much, will it? I'll keep a diary, Jane, and you can read it when you come next summer. It will be like getting a bundle of letters all at once. And while we'll think of each other in general quite often, let's arrange one particular time for it. Seven o'clock in the evening here is six in Toronto. At seven o'clock every Saturday night I'll think of you and at six you think of me.”

It was like dad to plan something like that.

“And, dad, will you sow some flower seeds for me next spring? I won't be here in time to do it. Nasturtiums and cosmos and phlox and marigolds…oh, Mrs. Jimmy John will tell you what to get, and I'd like a little patch of vegetables, too.”

“Consider it done, Queen Jane.”

“And can I have a few hens next summer, dad?”

“Those hens are hatched already,” said dad.

He squeezed her hand.

“We've had a good time, haven't we, Jane?”

“We've
laughed
so much together,” said Jane, thinking of 60 Gay where there was no laughter. “You won't forget to send for me next spring, will you, dad?”

“No,” was all dad said. No is sometimes a horrible word, but there are times when it is beautiful.

They had to get up early the next morning because dad was going to drive Jane to town to catch the boat train and meet a certain Mrs. Wesley who was going to Toronto. Jane thought she could travel very well by herself but for once dad was adamant.

The morning sky was red with trees growing black against it. The old moon was visible, like a new moon turned the wrong way, above the birches on Big Donald's hill. It was still misty in the hollows. Jane bade every room farewell and just before they left dad stopped the clock.

“We'll start it again when you come back, Janekin. My watch will do me for the winter.”

The purring Peters had to be said good-bye to, but Happy went to town with them. Aunt Irene was at the station and so was Lilian Morrow, the latter all perfume and waved hair. Dad seemed glad to see her; he walked up and down the platform with her. She called him “'Drew.” You could hear the apostrophe before it like a coo or a kiss. Jane could have done very well without Miss Morrow to see her off.

Aunt Irene kissed her twice and cried.

“Remember you always have a friend in
me,
lovey”…as if she thought Jane had no other.

“Don't look so woebegone, dear,” smiled Lilian Morrow. “Remember you're going home.”

Home! “Home is where the heart is.” Jane had heard or read that. And she knew she was leaving her heart on the Island with dad, to whom she presently said good-bye with all the anguish of all the good-byes that have ever been said in her voice.

Jane watched the red shores of the Island from the boat until they were only a dim blue line against the sky. And now to be Victoria again!

When Jane went through the gates of the Toronto station, she heard a laugh she would have known anywhere. There was only one such laugh in the world. And there was mother, in a lovely new crimson velvet wrap with a white fur collar and underneath a dress of white chiffon embroidered with brilliants. Jane knew this meant that mother was going out to dinner…and she knew grandmother had not allowed mother to break her engagement for the sake of spending Jane's first evening home with her. But mother, smelling of violets, was holding her tight, laughing and crying.

“My dearest…my very own little girl. You're home again. Oh, darling, I've missed you so…I've missed you so.”

Jane hugged mother fiercely…mother as beautiful as ever, her eyes as blue as ever, though…as Jane saw instantly…a little thinner than she had been in June.

“Are you glad to be back, darling?”

“So
glad to be with you again, mummy,” and Jane.

“You've grown…why, darling, you're up to my shoulder…and such a lovely tan. But I can never let you go away again…never.”

Jane kept her own counsel about that. She felt curiously changed and grown-uppish as she went through the big lighted station with mother. Frank was waiting with the limousine and they went home through the busy, crowded streets to 60 Gay. 60 Gay was neither busy nor crowded. The clang of the iron gates behind her seemed a knell of doom. She was reentering prison. The great, cold, still house struck a chill to her spirit. Mother had gone on to the dinner and grandmother and Aunt Gertrude were meeting her. She kissed Aunt Gertrude's narrow, white face and grandmother's soft, wrinkled one.

“You've grown, Victoria,” said grandmother icily. She did not like Jane looking into her eyes on the level. And grandmother saw at a glance that Jane had somehow learned what to do with her arms and legs and was looking entirely too much mistress of herself. “Don't smile with your lips closed, if you please. I've never really been able to see the charm of
La
Gioconda
.”

They had dinner. It was six o'clock. Down home it would be seven. Dad would be…Jane felt she could not swallow a mouthful.

“Will you be good enough to pay attention when I am speaking to you, Victoria?”

“I beg your pardon, grandmother.”

“I am asking you what you wore this summer. I have looked into your trunk and the clothes you took with you don't seem to have been worn at all.”

“Only the green linen jumper suit,” said Jane. “I wore it to church and the ice-cream social. I had gingham dresses to wear at home. I kept house for father, you know.”

Grandmother wiped her lips daintily with her napkin. It seemed as if she were wiping some disagreeable flavor off them.

“I am not inquiring about your rural activities”…Jane saw grandmother looking at her hands…“It will be wise for you to forget them…”

“But I'm going back next summer, grandmother…”

“Be kind enough not to interrupt me, Victoria. And as you must be tired after your journey, I would advise you to go to bed at once. Mary has prepared a bath for you. I suppose you will be rather glad to get into a real bathtub once more.”

When she had had the whole gulf for a bathtub all summer!

“I must run over and see Jody first,” said Jane…and went. She could not forget her new freedom so quickly. Grandmother watched her go with tightening lips. Perhaps she realized that never again would Jane be quite the meek, overawed Victoria of the old days. She had grown in mind as well as in body.

Jane and Jody had a rapturous reunion. Jody had grown too. She was thinner and taller and her eyes were sadder than ever.

“Oh, Jane, I'm so glad you're back. It's been so long.”

“I'm so glad you're still here, Jody. I was afraid Miss West might have sent you to the orphanage.”

“She's always saying she will…I guess she will yet. Did you really like the Island so much, Jane?”

“I just loved it,” said Jane, glad that here was at least one person to whom she could talk freely about her Island and her father.

Jane was horribly homesick as she climbed the soft-carpeted stairway to bed. If she were only skipping up the bare, painted steps at Lantern Hill! Her old room had not grown any friendlier. She ran to the window, opened it, and gazed out…but not on starry hills and the moon shining on woodland fields. The clamor of Bloor Street assailed her ears. The huge old trees about 60 Gay were sufficient unto themselves…they were not her friendly birches and spruces. A wind was trying to blow…Jane felt sorry for it…checked here, thwarted there. But it was blowing from the west. Would it blow right down to the Island…to the velvety black night starred with harbor lights beyond Lantern Hill? Jane leaned out of the window and sent a kiss to dad on it.

“And now,” remarked Jane to Victoria, “there will be only nine months to put in.”