“Can I help?” she asked again.
The girl shook her head and the tears welled up in her big eyes.
“Look,” she pointed.
Jane looked and saw between the cherry-tree and the fence what seemed like a rudely made flower-bed strewn over with roses that were ground into the earth.
“Dick did that,” said the girl. “He did it on purpose . . . because it was my garden. Miss Summers had them roses sent her last week . . . twelve great big red ones for her birthday . . . and this morning she said they were done and told me to throw them in the garbage pail. But I couldn’t . . . they were still so pretty. I come out here and made that bed and stuck the roses all over it. I knew they wouldn’t last long . . . but they looked pretty and I pretended I had a garden of my own . . . and now . . . Dick just come out and stomped all over it . . . and laughed.”
She sobbed again. Jane didn’t know who Dick was but at that moment she could cheerfully have wrung his neck with her strong, capable little hands. She put her arm about the girl.
“Never mind. Don’t cry any more. See, we’ll break off a lot of little cherry boughs and stick them all over your bed. They’re fresher than the roses . . . and think how lovely they’ll look in the moonlight.”
“I’m scared to do that,” said the girl. “Miss West might be mad.”
Again Jane felt a thrill of understanding. So this girl was afraid of people, too.
“Well, we’ll just climb up on that big bough that stretches out and sit there and admire it,” said Jane. “I suppose that won’t make Miss West mad, will it?”
“I guess she won’t mind that. Of course she’s mad at me anyhow to-night because I stumbled with a tray of tumblers when I was waiting on the supper table and broke three of them. She said if I kept on like that . . . I spilled soup on Miss Thatcher’s silk dress last night . . . she’d have to send me away.”
“Where would she send you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t anywhere to go. But she says I’m not worth my salt and she’s only keeping me out of charity.”
“What is your name?” asked Jane. They had scrambled up into the cherry-tree as nimbly as pussy cats and its whiteness enclosed and enfolded them, shutting them away into a fragrant world all their own.
“Josephine Turner. But every one calls me Jody.”
Jody! Jane liked that.
“Mine’s Jane Stuart.”
“I thought it was Victoria,” said Jody. “Miss West said it was.”
“It’s Jane,” said Jane firmly. “At least, it’s Jane Victoria but I am Jane. And now” — briskly—”let’s get acquainted.”
Before Jane went back through the gap that night she knew practically all there was to be known about Jody. Jody’s father and mother were dead . . . had been dead ever since Jody was a baby. Jody’s mother’s cousin, who had been the cook at 58, had taken her and was permitted to keep her at 58 if she never let her out of the kitchen. Two years ago Cousin Millie had died and Jody had just “stayed on.” She helped the new cook . . . peeling potatoes, washing dishes, sweeping, dusting, running errands, scouring knives . . . and lately had been promoted to waiting on the table. She slept in a little attic cubby-hole which was hot in summer and cold in winter, she wore cast-off things the boarders gave her and went to school every day there was no extra rush. Nobody ever gave her a kind word or took any notice of her . . . except Dick who was Miss West’s nephew and pet and who teased and tormented her and called her “charity child.” Jody hated Dick. Once when everybody was out she had slipped into the parlour and picked out a little tune on the piano but Dick had told Miss West and Jody had been sternly informed that she must never touch the piano again.
“And I’d love to be able to play,” she said wistfully. “That and a garden’s the only things I want. I do wish I could have a garden.”
Jane wondered again why things were so criss-cross. She did not like playing on the piano but grandmother had insisted on her taking music lessons and she practised faithfully to please mother. And here was poor Jody hankering for music and with no chance at all of getting it.
“Don’t you think you could have a bit of a garden?” said Jane. “There’s plenty of room here and it’s not too shady, like our yard. I’d help you make a bed and I’m sure mother would give us some seeds. . . .”
“It wouldn’t be any use,” said Jody drearily. “Dick would just stomp on it, too.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” said Jane resolutely, “we’ll get a seed catalogue . . . Frank will get me one . . . and have an imaginary garden.”
“Ain’t you the one for thinking of things?” said Jody admiringly. Jane tasted happiness. It was the first time any one had ever admired her.
CHAPTER 4
Of course it was no time before grandmother knew about Jody. She made a great many sweetly sarcastic speeches about her but she never actually forbade Jane going over to play with her in the yard of 58. Jane was to be a good many years older before she understood the reason for that . . . understood that grandmother wanted to show any one who might question it that Jane had common tastes and liked low people.
“Darling, is this Jody of yours a nice little girl?” mother had asked doubtfully.
“She is a very nice little girl,” said Jane emphatically.
“But she looks so uncared for . . . positively dirty. . . .”
“Her face is always clean and she never forgets to wash behind her ears, mummy. I’m going to show her how to wash her hair. Her hair would be lovely if it was clean . . . it’s so fine and black and silky. And may I give her one of my jars of cold cream. . . . I’ve two, you know . . . for her hands? They’re so red and chapped because she has to work so hard and wash so many dishes.”
“But her clothes. . . .”
“She can’t help her clothes. She just has to wear what’s given her and she never has more than two dresses at a time . . . one to wear every day and one to go to Sunday school in. Even the Sunday school one isn’t very clean . . . it was Mrs Bellew’s Ethel’s old pink one and she spilled coffee on it. And she has to work so hard . . . she’s a regular little slave, Mary says. I like Jody very much, mummy. She’s sweet.”
“Well” . . . mother sighed and gave way. Mother always gave way if you were firm enough. Jane had already discovered that. She adored mother but she had unerringly laid her finger on the weak spot in her character. Mother couldn’t “stand up to” people. Jane had heard Mary say that to Frank one time when they didn’t think she heard and she knew it was true.
“She’ll go with the last one that talks to her,” said Mary. “And that’s always the old lady.”
“Well, the old lady’s mighty good to her,” said Frank. “She’s a gay little piece.”
“Gay enough. But is she happy?” said Mary.
“Happy? Of course, mummy is happy,” Jane had thought indignantly . . . all the more indignantly because, away back in her mind, there was lurking a queer suspicion that mother, in spite of her dances and dinners and furs and dresses and jewels and friends, wasn’t happy. Jane couldn’t imagine why she had this idea. Perhaps a look in mother’s eyes now and then . . . like something shut up in a cage.
Jane could go over and play in the yard of 58 in the spring and summer evenings after Jody had finished washing stacks of dishes. They made their “imaginary” garden, they fed crumbs to the robins and the black and grey squirrels, they sat up in the cherry-tree and watched the evening star together. And talked! Jane, who could never find anything to say to Phyllis, found plenty to say to Jody.
There was never any question of Jody coming to play in the yard of 60. Once, early in their friendship, Jane had asked Jody to come over. She had found Jody crying under the cherry-tree again and discovered that it was because Miss West had insisted on her putting her old Teddy bear in the garbage pail. It was, Miss West said, utterly worn out. It had been patched until there was no more room for patches and even shoe buttons couldn’t be sewn any more into its
worn-out eye-sockets. Besides, she was too old to be playing with Teddy bears.
“But I’ve nothing else,” sobbed Jody. “If I had a doll, I wouldn’t mind. I’ve always wanted a doll . . . but now I’ll have to sleep alone away up there . . . and it’s so lonesome.”
“Come over to our house and I’ll give you a doll,” said Jane.
Jane had never cared much for dolls because they were not alive. She had a very nice one which Aunt Sylvia had given her the Christmas she was seven but it was so flawless and well dressed that it never needed to have anything done for it and Jane had never loved it. She would have loved better a Teddy bear that needed a new patch every day.
She took Jody, wide-eyed and enraptured, through the splendours of 60 Gay and gave her the doll which had reposed undisturbed for a long time in the lower drawer of the huge black wardrobe in Jane’s room. Then she had taken her into mother’s room to show her the things on mother’s table . . . the silver-backed brushes, the perfume bottles with the cut-glass stoppers that made rainbows, the wonderful rings on the little gold tray. Grandmother found them there.
She stood in the doorway and looked at them. You could feel the silence spreading through the room like a cold, smothering wave.
“What does this mean, Victoria . . . if I am allowed to ask?”
“This is . . . Jody,” faltered Jane. “I . . . I brought her over to give her my doll. She hasn’t any.”
“Indeed? And you have given her the one your Aunt Sylvia gave you?”
Jane at once realized that she had done something quite unpardonable. It had never occurred to her that she was not at liberty to give away her own doll.
“I have not,” said grandmother, “forbidden you to play with this . . . this Jody in her own lot. What is in the blood is bound to come out sooner or later. But . . . if you don’t mind . . . please don’t bring your riff-raff here, my dear Victoria.”
Her dear Victoria got herself and poor hurt Jody away as best she could, leaving the doll behind them. But grandmother did not get off scot-free for all that. For the first time the worm turned. Jane paused for a moment before she went out of the door and looked straight at grandmother with intent, judging brown eyes.
“You are not fair,” she said. Her voice trembled a little but she felt she had to say it, no matter how impertinent grandmother thought her. Then she followed Jody down and out with a strange feeling of satisfaction in her heart.
“I ain’t riff-raff,” said Jody, her lips quivering. “Of course I’m not like you. . . . Miss West says you’re people . . . but my folks were respectable. Cousin Millie told me so. She said they always paid their way while they were alive. And I work hard enough for Miss West to pay my way.”
“You aren’t riff-raff and I love you,” said Jane. “You and mother are the only people in the whole world I love.”
Even as she said it a queer little pang wrung Jane’s heart. It suddenly occurred to her that two people out of all the millions in the world . . . Jane never could remember the exact number of millions but she knew it was enormous . . . were very few to love.
“And I like loving people,” thought Jane. “It’s nice.”
“I don’t love anybody but you,” said Jody, who forgot her hurt feelings as soon as Jane got her interested in building a castle out of all the old tin cans in the corner of the yard. Miss West hoarded her tin cans for a country cousin who made some mysterious use of them. He had not been in all winter and there were enough cans to build a towering structure. Dick kicked it down next day, of course, but they had had the fun of building it. They never knew that Mr Torrey, one of the 58 boarders who was a budding architect, saw the castle, gleaming in the moonlight, when he was putting his car in the garage and whistled over it.
“That’s rather an amazing thing for those two kids to build,” he said.
Jane, who should have been asleep, was lying wide awake that very moment, going on with the story of her life in the moon which she could see through her window.
Jane’s “moon secret,” as she called it, was the one thing she hadn’t shared with mother and Jody. She couldn’t, somehow. It was her very own. To tell about it would be to destroy it. For three years now Jane had been going on dream voyages to the moon. It was a shimmering world of fancy where she lived very splendidly and sated some deep thirst in her soul at unknown, enchanted springs among its shining silver hills. Before she had found the trick of going to the moon, Jane had longed to get into the looking-glass as Alice did. She used to stand so long before her mirror hoping for the miracle to happen that Aunt Gertrude said Victoria was the vainest child she had ever seen.
“Really?” said grandmother, as if mildly inquiring what Jane could possibly have to be vain about.
Eventually Jane had sadly concluded that she could never get into the looking-glass world, and then one night, when she was lying alone in her big unfriendly room, she saw the moon looking in at her through one of the windows . . . the calm, beautiful moon that was never in a hurry; and she began to build for herself an existence in the moon, where she ate fairy food and wandered through fairy fields, full of strange white moon-blossoms, with the companions of her fancy.
But even in the moon Jane’s dreams ran true to the ruling passion. Since the moon was all silver it had to be polished every night. Jane and her moon friends had no end of fun polishing up the moon, with an elaborate system of rewards and punishments for extra good polishers and lazy ones. The lazy ones were generally banished to the other side of the moon . . . which Jane had read was very dark and very cold. When they were allowed back, chilled to the bone, they were glad to warm themselves up by rubbing as hard as they could. Those were the nights when the moon seemed brighter than usual. Oh, it was fun! Jane was never lonely in bed now except on nights when there was no moon. The clearest sight Jane knew was the thin crescent in the western sky that told her her friend was back. She was supported through many a dreary day by the hope of going on a moon spree at night.
CHAPTER 5
Up to the age of ten Jane had believed her father was dead. She could not recall that anybody had ever told her so, but if she had thought about it at all she would have felt quite sure of it. She just did not think about it . . . nobody ever mentioned him. All she knew about him was that his name must have been Andrew Stuart, because mother was Mrs Andrew Stuart. For anything else, he might as well never have existed as far as Jane was concerned. She did not know much about fathers. The only one she was really acquainted with was Phyllis’s father, Uncle David Coleman, a handsome, oldish man with pouches under his eyes, who grunted at her occasionally when he came to Sunday dinners. Jane had an idea his grunts were meant to be friendly and she did not dislike him, but there was nothing about him that made her envy Phyllis for having a father. With a mother so sweet and adorable and loving, what did one want of a father?
Then Agnes Ripley came to St Agatha’s. Jane liked Agnes well enough at first, though Agnes had stuck her tongue out at Jane rather derisively on the occasion of their first meeting. She was the daughter of somebody who was called “the great Thomas Ripley” . . . he had built “railroads and things” . . . and most of the St Agatha’s girls paid court to her and plumed themselves if she noticed them. She was much given to “secrets,” and it came to be thought a great honour among the St Agathians if Agnes told you a secret. Therefore Jane was conscious of a decided thrill when one afternoon on the playground Agnes came up to her and said, darkly and mysteriously, “I know a secret.”
“I know a secret” is probably the most intriguing phrase in the world. Jane surrendered to its allure.
“Oh, tell me,” she implored. She wanted to be admitted to that charmed inner circle of girls who had been told one of Agnes’s secrets; and she wanted to know the secret for its own sake. Secrets must always be wonderful, beautiful things.
Agnes wrinkled up her fat little nose and looked important.
“Oh, I’ll tell you some other time.”
“I don’t want to hear it some other time. I want to hear it now,” pleaded Jane, her marigold eyes full of eager radiance.
Agnes’s little elfish face, framed in its straight brown hair, was alive with mischief. She winked one of her green eyes at Jane.
“All right. Don’t blame me if you don’t like it when you hear it. Listen.”
Jane listened. The towers of St Agatha’s listened. The shabby streets beyond listened. It seemed to Jane that the whole world listened. She was one of the chosen . . . Agnes was going to tell her a secret.
“Your father and mother don’t live together.”
Jane stared at Agnes. What she had said didn’t make any sense.
“Of course they don’t live together,” she said. “My father is dead.”
“Oh, no, he isn’t,” said Agnes. “He’s living down in Prince Edward Island. Your mother left him when you were three years old.”
Jane felt as if some big cold hand were beginning to squeeze her heart.
“That . . . isn’t . . . true,” she gasped.
“’Tis, too. I heard Aunt Dora telling mother all about it. She said your mother married him just after he came back from the war, one summer when your grandmother took her down to the Maritimes. Your grandmother didn’t want her to. Aunt Dora said everybody knew it wouldn’t last long. He was poor. But it was you that made the most trouble. You should never have been born. Neither of them wanted you, Aunt Dora said. They fought like cat and dog after that and at last your mother just up and left him. Aunt Dora said she would likely have divorced him only divorces are awful hard to get in Canada and anyhow all the Kennedys think divorce is a dreadful thing.”
The hand was gripping Jane’s heart so tightly now that she could hardly breathe.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 511