Jane of Lantern Hill

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 letters 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 worshipped 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 harbour ... 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 any one.)

"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.)

"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 ... 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 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 any more. 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 any one. And you will be good enough to remember that."