“I . . . I don’t believe it,” she said.
“If that’s how you’re going to talk when I tell you a secret, I’ll never tell you another one, Miss Victoria Stuart,” said Agnes, reddening with rage.
“I don’t want to hear any more,” said Jane.
She would never forget what she had heard. It couldn’t be true . . . it couldn’t. Jane thought the afternoon would never end. St Agatha’s was a nightmare. Frank had never driven so slowly home. The snow had never looked so grimy and dirty along the dingy streets. The wind had never been so grey. The moon, floating high in the sky, was all faded and paper-white but Jane didn’t care if it was never polished again.
An afternoon tea was in progress at 60 Gay when she arrived there. The big drawing-room, decorated lavishly with pale pink snapdragons and tulips and maidenhair fern, was full of people. Mother, in orchid chiffon, with loose trailing lace sleeves, was laughing and chatting. Grandmother, with blue-white diamonds sparkling in her hair, was sitting on her favourite needle-point chair, looking, so one lady said, “Such an utterly sweet silver-haired thing, just like a Whistler mother.” Aunt Gertrude and Aunt Sylvia were pouring tea at a table covered with Venetian lace, where tall pink tapers were burning.
Straight through them all Jane marched to mother. She did not care how many people were there . . . she had one question to ask and it must be answered at once. At once. Jane could not bear her suspense another moment.
“Mummy,” she said, “is my father alive?”
A strange, dreadful hush suddenly fell over the room. A light like a sword flashed into grandmother’s blue eyes. Aunt Sylvia gasped and Aunt Gertrude turned an unbecoming purple. But mother’s face was as if snow had fallen over it.
“Is he?” said Jane.
“Yes,” said mother. She said nothing more. Jane asked nothing more. She turned and went out and up the stairs blindly. In her own room she shut the door and lay down very softly on the big white bearskin rug by the bed, her lace buried in the soft fur. Heavy black waves of pain seemed rolling over her.
So it was true. All her life she had thought her father dead while he was living . . . on that far-away dot on the map which she had been told was the province of Prince Edward Island. But he and mother did not like each other and she had not been wanted. Jane found that it was a very curious and unpleasant sensation to feel that your parents hadn’t wanted you. She was sure that all the rest of her life she would hear Agnes’s voice saying, “You should never have been born.” She hated Agnes Ripley . . . she would always hate her. Jane wondered if she would live to be as old as grandmother and how she could bear it if she did.
Mother and grandmother found her there when everybody had gone.
“Victoria, get up.”
Jane did not move.
“Victoria, I am accustomed to be obeyed when I speak.”
Jane got up. She had not cried . . . hadn’t somebody ages ago said that “Jane never cried” . . . but her face was stamped with an expression that might have wrung anybody’s heart. Perhaps it touched even grandmother, for she said, quite gently for her:
“I have always told your mother, Victoria, that she ought to tell you the truth. I told her you were sure to hear it from someone sooner or later. Your father is living. Your mother married him against my wish and lived to repent it. I forgave her and welcomed her back gladly when she came to her senses. That is all. And in future when you feel an irresistible urge to make a scene while we are entertaining, will you be good enough to control the impulse until our guests are gone?”
“Why didn’t he like me?” asked Jane dully.
When all was said and done, that seemed to be what was hurting most. Her mother might not have wanted her either, to begin with, but Jane knew that mother loved her now.
Mother suddenly gave a little laugh so sad that it nearly broke Jane’s heart.
“He was jealous of you, I think,” she said.
“He made your mother’s life wretched,” said grandmother, her voice hardening.
“Oh, I was to blame, too,” cried mother chokingly.
Jane, looking from one to the other, saw the swift change that came over grandmother’s face.
“You will never mention your father’s name in my hearing or in your mother’s hearing again,” said grandmother. “As far as we are concerned . . . as far as you are concerned . . . he is dead.”
The prohibition was unnecessary. Jane didn’t want to mention her father’s name again. He had made mother unhappy, and so Jane hated him and put him out of her thoughts completely. There were just some things that didn’t bear thinking of and father was one of them. But the most terrible thing about it all was that there was something now that could not be talked over with mother. Jane felt it between them, indefinable but there. The old perfect confidence was gone. There was a subject that must never be mentioned and it poisoned everything.
She could never bear Agnes Ripley and her cult of “secrets” again and was glad when Agnes left the school, the great Thomas having decided that it was not quite up-to-date enough for his daughter. Agnes wanted to learn tap-dancing.
CHAPTER 6
It was a year now since Jane had learned that she had a father . . . a year in which Jane had just scraped through as far as her grade was concerned. . . . Phyllis had taken the prize for general proficiency in her year and did Jane hear of it! . . . had continued to be driven to and from St Agatha’s, had tried her best to like Phyllis and had not made any great headway at it, had trysted with Jody in the back yard twilights and had practised her scales as faithfully as if she liked it.
“Such a pity you are not fonder of music,” said grandmother. “But of course, how could you be?”
It was not so much what grandmother said as how she said it. She made wounds that rankled and festered. And Jane was fond of music . . . she loved to listen to it. When Mr Ransome, the musical boarder at 58, played on his violin in his room in the evenings, he never dreamed of the two enraptured listeners he had in the back yard cherry-tree. Jane and Jody sat there, their hands clasped, their hearts filled with some nameless ecstasy. When winter came and the bedroom window was shut, Jane felt the loss keenly. The moon was her only escape then and she slipped away to it oftener than ever, in long visitations of silence which grandmother called “sulks.”
“She has a very sulky disposition,” said grandmother.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” faltered mother. The only times she ever dared to contradict grandmother were in defence of Jane. “She’s just rather . . . sensitive.”
“Sensitive!” Grandmother laughed. Grandmother did not often laugh, which Jane thought was just as well. As for Aunt Gertrude, if she had ever laughed or jested it must have been so long ago that nobody remembered it. Mother laughed when people were about . . . little tinkling laughs that Jane could never feel were real. No, there was not much real laughter at 60 Gay, though Jane, with her concealed gift for seeing the funny side of things, could have filled even that big house with laughter. But Jane had known very early that grandmother resented laughter. Even Mary and Frank had to giggle very discreetly in the kitchen.
Jane had shot up appallingly in that year. She was rather more angular and awkward. Her chin was square and cleft.
“It gets more like his every day,” she once heard grandmother saying bitterly to Aunt Gertrude. Jane winced. In her bitter new wisdom she suspected that “his” was her father’s chin and she straightway detested hers. Why couldn’t it have been a pretty rounded one like mother’s?
The year was very uneventful. Jane would have called it monotonous if she had not as yet been unacquainted with the word. There were only three things in it that made much impression on her . . . the incident of the kitten, the mysterious affair of Kenneth Howard’s picture and the unlucky recitation.
Jane had picked the kitten up on the street. One afternoon Frank had been in a great hurry to get somewhere on time for grandmother and mother and he had let Jane walk hom
e from the beginning of Gay Street when he was bringing her from St Agatha’s. Jane walked along happily, savouring this rare moment of independence. It was very seldom she was allowed to walk anywhere alone . . . to walk anywhere at all, indeed. And Jane loved walking. She would have liked to walk to and from St Agatha’s or, since that really was too far, she would have liked to go by street-car. Jane loved travelling on a streetcar. It was fascinating to look at the people in it and speculate about them. Who was that lady with the lovely shimmering hair? What was the angry old woman muttering to herself about? Did that little boy like having his mother clean his face with her handkerchief in public? Did that jolly looking little girl have trouble getting her grade? Did that man have toothache and did he ever look pleasant when he hadn’t it? She would have liked to know all about them and sympathize or rejoice as occasion required. But it was very seldom any resident of 60 Gay had a chance to go on a street-car. There was always Frank with the limousine.
Jane walked slowly to prolong the pleasure. It was a cold day in late autumn. It had been miserly of its light from the beginning, with a dim ghost of sun peering through the dull grey clouds, and now it was getting dark and spitting snow. The lights gleamed out: even the grim windows of Victorian Gay were abloom. Jane did not mind the bitter wind but something else did. Jane heard the most pitiful, despairing little cry and looked down to see the kitten, huddled miserably against an iron fence. She bent and picked it up and held it against her face. The little creature, a handful of tiny bones in its fluffed-out Maltese fur, licked her cheek with an eager tongue. It was cold, starving, forsaken. Jane knew it did not belong to Gay Street. She could not leave it there to perish in the oncoming stormy night.
“Goodness sake, Miss Victoria, wherever did you get that?” exclaimed Mary, when Jane entered the kitchen. “You shouldn’t have brought it in. You know your grandmother doesn’t like cats. Your Aunt Gertrude got one once but it clawed all the tassels off the furniture and it had to go. Better put that kitten right out, Miss Victoria.”
Jane hated to be called “Miss Victoria,” but grandmother insisted on the servants addressing her so.
“I can’t put it out in the cold, Mary. Let me give it some supper and leave it here till after dinner. I’ll ask grandmother to let me keep it. Perhaps she will if I promise to keep it out here and in the yard. You wouldn’t mind it round, would you, Mary?”
“I’d like it,” said Mary. “I’ve often thought a cat would be great company . . . or a dog. Your mother had a dog once but it got poisoned and she would never have another.”
Mary did not tell Jane that she firmly believed the old lady had poisoned the dog. You didn’t tell children things like that and anyway she couldn’t be dead sure of it. All she was sure of was that old Mrs Kennedy had been bitterly jealous of her daughter’s love for the dog.
“How she used to look at it when she didn’t know I saw her,” thought Mary.
Grandmother and Aunt Gertrude and mother were taking in a couple of teas that day so Jane knew she could count on at least an hour yet. It was a pleasant hour. The kitten was happy and frolicsome, having drunk milk until its little sides tubbed out almost to the bursting point. The kitchen was warm and cosy. Mary let Jane chop the nuts that were to be sprinkled over the cake and cut the pears into slim segments for the salad.
“Oh, Mary, blueberry pie! Why don’t we have it oftener? You can make such delicious blueberry pie.”
“There’s some who can make pies and some who can’t,” said Mary complacently. “As for having it oftener, you know your grandmother doesn’t care much for any kind of pie. She says they’re indigestible . . . and my father lived to be ninety and had pie for breakfast every morning of his life! I just make it occasional for your mother.”
“After dinner I’ll tell grandmother about the kitten and ask her if I may keep it,” said Jane.
“I think you’ll have your trouble for your pains, you poor child,” said Mary as the door closed behind Jane. “Miss Robin ought to stand up for you more than she does . . . but there, she’s always been under the thumb of her mother. Any way, I hope the dinner will go well and keep the old dame in good humour. I wisht I hadn’t made the blueberry pie after all. It’s lucky she won’t know Miss Victoria fixed the salad . . . what folks don’t know never hurts them.”
The dinner did not go well. There was a tension in the air. Grandmother did not talk . . . evidently some occurrence of the afternoon had put her out. Aunt Gertrude never talked at any time. And mother seemed uneasy and never once tried to pass Jane any of the little signals they had . . . the touched lip . . . the lifted eyebrow . . . the crooked finger . . . that all meant “honey darling” or “I love you” or “consider yourself kissed.”
Jane, burdened by her secret, was even more awkward than usual, and when she was eating her blueberry pie she dropped a forkful of it on the table.
“This,” said grandmother, “might have been excused in a child of five. It is absolutely inexcusable in a girl of your age. Blueberry stain is almost impossible to get out and this is one of my best table-cloths. But of course that is a matter of small importance.”
Jane gazed at the table in dismay. How such a little bit of pie could have spread itself over so much territory she could not understand. And of course it had to be at this inauspicious moment that a little purry furry creature escaped the pursuing Mary, skittered across the dining-room and bounded into Jane’s lap. Jane’s heart descended to her boots.
“Where did that cat come from?” demanded grandmother.
“I mustn’t be a coward,” thought Jane desperately.
“I found it on the street and brought it in,” she said bravely . . . defiantly, grandmother thought. “It was so cold and hungry . . . look how thin it is, grandmother. Please may I keep it? It’s such a darling. I won’t let it trouble you . . . I’ll . . .”
“My dear Victoria, don’t be ridiculous. I really supposed you knew we do not keep cats here. Be good enough to put that creature out at once.”
“Oh, not out on the street, grandmother, please. Listen to the sleet . . . it would die.”
“I expect you to obey me without argument, Victoria. You cannot have your own way all the time. Other people’s wishes must be considered occasionally. Please oblige me by making no further fuss over a trifle.”
“Grandmother,” began Jane passionately. But grandmother lifted a little wrinkled, sparkling hand.
“Now, now, don’t work yourself into a state, Victoria. Take that thing out at once.”
Jane took the kitten to the kitchen.
“Don’t worry, Miss Victoria. I’ll get Frank to put it in the garage with a rug to lie on. It will be quite comfy. And to-morrow I’ll find a good home for it at my sister’s. She’s fond of cats.”
Jane never cried, so she was not crying when mother slipped rather stealthily into her room for a good-night kiss. She was only tense with rebellion.
“Mummy, I wish we could get away . . . just you and I. I hate this place, mummy, I hate it.”
Mother said a strange thing and said it bitterly: “There is no escape for either of us now.”
CHAPTER 7
Jane could never understand the affair of the picture. After her hurt and anger passed away she was just hopelessly puzzled. Why . . . why . . . should the picture of a perfect stranger matter to anybody at 60 Gay . . . and to mother, least of all?
She had come across it one day when she was visiting Phyllis. Every once in so long Jane had to spend an afternoon with Phyllis. This one was no more of a success than the former ones had been. Phyllis was a conscientious hostess. She had shown Jane all her new dolls, her new dresses, her new slippers, her new pearl necklace, her new china pig. Phyllis was collecting china pigs and apparently thought any one “dumb” who was not interested in china pigs. She had patronized and condescended even more than usual. Consequently Jane was stiffer than usual and both of them were in agonies of boredom. It was a relief to all concerned when
Jane picked up a Saturday Evening and buried herself in it, though she was not in the least interested in the society pages, the photographs of brides and debutantes, the stock market or even in the article, “Peaceful Adjustment of International Difficulties,” by Kenneth Howard, which was given a place of honour on the front page. Jane had a vague idea that she ought not to be reading Saturday Evening. For some unknown reason grandmother did not approve of it. She would not have a copy of it in her house.
But what Jane did like was the picture of Kenneth Howard on the front page. The moment she looked at it she was conscious of its fascination. She had never seen Kenneth Howard . . . she had no idea who he was or where he lived . . . but she felt as if it were the picture of someone she knew very well and liked very much. She liked everything about it . . . his odd peaked eyebrows . . . the way his thick rather unruly hair sprang back from his forehead . . . the way his firm mouth tucked in at the corners . . . the slightly stern look in the eyes which yet had such jolly wrinkles at the corners . . . and the square, cleft chin which reminded Jane so strongly of something, she couldn’t remember just what. That chin seemed like an old friend. Jane looked at the face and drew a long breath. She knew, right off, that if she had loved her father instead of hating him she would have wanted him to look like Kenneth Howard.
Jane stared at the picture so long that Phyllis became curious.
“What are you looking at, Jane?”
Jane suddenly came to life.
“May I have this picture, Phyllis . . . please?”
“Whose picture? Why . . . that? Do you know him?”
“No. I never heard of him before. But I like the picture.”
“I don’t.” Phyllis looked at it contemptuously. “Why . . . he’s old. And he isn’t a bit handsome. There’s a lovely picture of Norman Tait on the next page, Jane . . . let me show it to you.”
Jane was not interested in Norman Tait nor any other screen star. Grandmother did not approve of children going to the movies.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 512