When she had finished, grandmother and Aunt Gertrude would bow their heads and repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Jane would try to say it with them, which was a difficult thing, because grandmother was generally two words ahead of Aunt Gertrude. Jane always said, “Amen,” thankfully. The beautiful prayer, haloed with all the loveliness of agelong worship, had become a sort of horror to Jane.
Then Aunt Gertrude would close the Bible and put it back in exactly the same place, to the fraction of a hair, on the center table. Finally Jane had to kiss her and grandmother good-night. Grandmother would always remain sitting in her chair and Jane would stoop and kiss her forehead.
“Good night, grandmother.”
“Good night, Victoria.”
But Aunt Gertrude would be standing by the center table and Jane would have to reach up to her, for Aunt Gertrude was tall. Aunt Gertrude would stoop just a little and Jane would kiss her narrow gray face.
“Good night, Aunt Gertrude.”
“Good night, Victoria,” Aunt Gertrude would say in her thin, cold voice.
And Jane would get herself out of the room, sometimes lucky enough not to knock anything over.
“When I grow up I’ll never, never read the Bible or say that prayer,” she would whisper to herself as she climbed the long, magnificent staircase which had once been the talk of Toronto.
One night grandmother had smiled and said, “What do you think of the Bible, Victoria?”
“I think it is very dull,” said Jane truthfully. The reading had been a chapter full of “knops” and “taches,” and Jane had not the least idea what knops and taches were.
“Ah! But do you think your opinion counts for a great deal?” said grandmother, smiling with paper-thin lips.
“Why did you ask me for it then?” said Jane, and had been icily rebuked for impertinence when she had not had the least intention of being impertinent. Was it any wonder she went up the staircase that night fairly loathing 60 Gay? And she did not want to loathe it. She wanted to love it…to be friends with it…to do things for it. But she could not love it…it wouldn’t be friendly…and there was nothing it wanted done. Aunt Gertrude and Mary Price, the cook, and Frank Davis, the houseman and chauffeur, did everything for it. Aunt Gertrude would not let grandmother keep a housemaid because she preferred to attend to the house herself. Tall, shadowy, reserved Aunt Gertrude, who was so totally unlike mother that Jane found it hard to believe they were even half-sisters, was a martinet for order and system. At 60 Gay everything had to be done in a certain way on a certain day. The house was really frightfully clean. Aunt Gertrude’s cold gray eyes could not tolerate a speck of dust anywhere. She was always going about the house putting things in their places and she attended to everything. Even mother never did anything except arrange the flowers for the table when they had company and light the candles for dinner. Jane would have liked the fun of doing that. And Jane would have liked to polish the silver and cook. More than anything else Jane would have liked to cook. Now and then, when grandmother was out, she hung about the kitchen and watched good-natured Mary Price cook the meals. It all seemed so easy…Jane was sure she could do it perfectly if she were allowed. It must be such fun to cook a meal. The smell of it was almost as good as the eating of it.
But Mary Price never let her. She knew the old lady didn’t approve of Miss Victoria talking to the servants.
“Victoria fancies herself as domestic,” grandmother had once said at the midday Sunday dinner where, as usual, Uncle William Anderson and Aunt Minnie and Uncle David Coleman and Aunt Sylvia Coleman and their daughter Phyllis were present. Grandmother had such a knack of making you feel ridiculous and silly in company. All the same, Jane wondered what grandmother would say if she knew that Mary Price, being somewhat rushed that day, had let Jane wash and arrange the lettuce for the salad. Jane knew what grandmother would do. She would refuse to touch a leaf of it.
“Well, shouldn’t a girl be domestic?” said Uncle William, not because he wanted to take Jane’s part but because he never lost an opportunity of announcing his belief that a woman’s place was in the home. “Every girl should know how to cook.”
“I don’t think Victoria wants very much to learn how to cook,” said grandmother. “It is just that she likes to hang about kitchens and places like that.”
Grandmother’s voice implied that Victoria had low tastes and that kitchens were barely respectable. Jane wondered why mother’s face flushed so suddenly and why a strange, rebellious look gleamed for a moment in her eyes. But only for a moment.
“How are you getting on at St. Agatha’s, Victoria?” asked Uncle William. “Going to get your grade?”
Jane did not know whether she was going to get her grade or not. The fear haunted her night and day. She knew her monthly reports had not been very good…grandmother had been very angry over them and even mother had asked her piteously if she couldn’t do a little better. Jane had done the best she could, but history and geography were so dull and drab. Arithmetic and spelling were easier. Jane was really quite brilliant in arithmetic.
“Victoria can write wonderful compositions, I hear,” said grandmother sarcastically. For some reason Jane couldn’t fathom at all, her ability to write good compositions had never pleased grandmother.
“Tut, tut,” said Uncle William. “Victoria could get her grade easily enough if she wanted to. The thing to do is study hard. She’s getting to be a big girl now and ought to realize that. What is the capital of Canada, Victoria?”
Jane knew perfectly well what the capital of Canada was, but Uncle William fired the question at her so unexpectedly and all the guests stopped eating to listen…and for the moment she couldn’t remember for her life what the name was. She blushed…stammered…squirmed. If she had looked at mother she would have seen that mother was forming the word silently on her lips, but she could not look at anyone. She was ready to die of shame and mortification.
“Phyllis,” said Uncle William, “tell Victoria what the capital of Canada is.”
Phyllis promptly responded.
“Ottawa.”
“O-t-t-a-w-a,” said Uncle William to Jane.
Jane felt that they were all, except mother, watching her for something to find fault with, and now Aunt Sylvia Coleman put on a pair of nose-glasses attached to a long black ribbon and looked at Jane through them as if wishing to be sure what a girl who didn’t know the capital of her country was really like. Jane, under the paralyzing influence of that stare, dropped her fork, and writhed in anguish when she caught grandmother’s eye. Grandmother touched her little silver bell.
“Will you bring Miss Victoria another fork, Davis?” she said in a tone implying that Jane had had several forks already.
Uncle William put the piece of white chicken meat he had just carved off on the side of the platter. Jane had been hoping he would give it to her. She did not often get white meat. When Uncle William was not there to carve, Mary carved the fowls in the kitchen and Frank passed the platter around. Jane seldom dared to help herself to white meat because she knew grandmother was watching her. On one occasion when she had helped herself to two tiny pieces of breast grandmother had said,
“Don’t forget, my dear Victoria, that there are other people who might like a breast slice too.”
At present Jane reflected that she was lucky to get a drumstick. Uncle William was quite capable of giving her the neck by way of rebuking her for not knowing the capital of Canada. However, Aunt Sylvia very kindly gave her a double portion of turnip. Jane loathed turnip.
“You don’t seem to have much appetite, Victoria,” said Aunt Sylvia reproachfully when the mound of turnip had not decreased much.
“Oh, I think Victoria’s appetite is all right,” said grandmother, as if it were the only thing about her that was all right. Jane always felt that there was far more in what grandmother said than in the words themselves. Jane
might have broken her record for never crying then and there, she felt so utterly wretched, had she not looked at mother. And mother was looking so tender and sympathetic and understanding that Jane spunked up at once and simply made no effort to eat any more turnip.
Aunt Sylvia’s daughter Phyllis, who did not go to St. Agatha’s but to Hillwood Hall, a much newer but even more expensive school, could have named not only the capital of Canada but the capital of every province in the Dominion. Jane did not like Phyllis. Sometimes Jane thought drearily that there must be something the matter with her when there were so many people she didn’t like. But Phyllis was so condescending…and Jane hated to be condescended to.
“Why don’t you like Phyllis?” grandmother had asked once, looking at Jane with those eyes that, Jane felt, could see through walls, doors, everything, right into your inmost soul. “She is pretty, lady-like, well-behaved and clever;…everything that you are not,” Jane felt sure grandmother wanted to add.
“She patronizes me,” said Jane.
“Do you really know the meaning of all the big words you use, my dear Victoria?” said grandmother. “And don’t you think that…possibly…you are a little jealous of Phyllis?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Jane firmly. She knew she was not jealous of Phyllis.
“Of course, I must admit she is very different from that Jody of yours,” said grandmother. The sneer in her voice brought an angry sparkle into Jane’s eyes. She could not bear to hear anyone sneer at Jody. And yet what could she do about it?
CHAPTER 3
She and Jody had been pals for a year. Jody matched Jane’s eleven years of life and was tall for her age too…though not with Jane’s sturdy tallness. Jody was thin and weedy and looked as if she had never had enough to eat in her life…which was very likely the case, although she lived in a boarding house…58 Gay, which had once been a fashionable residence and was now just a dingy three-story boarding house.
One evening in the spring of the preceding year Jane was out in the back yard of 60 Gay, sitting on a rustic bench in an old disused summer-house. Mother and grandmother were both away and Aunt Gertrude was in bed with a bad cold, or else Jane would not have been sitting in the back yard. She had crept out to have a good look at the full moon…(Jane had her own particular reasons for liking to look at the moon)…and the white-blossoming cherry tree over in the yard of 58. The cherry tree, with the moon hanging over it like a great pearl, was so beautiful that Jane felt a queer lump in her throat when she looked at it…almost as if she wanted to cry. And then…somebody really was crying over in the yard of 58. The stifled, piteous sounds came clearly on the still, crystal air of the spring evening.
Jane got up and walked out of the summer-house and around the garage, past the lonely dog-house that had never had a dog in it…at least, in Jane’s recollection…and so to the fence that had ceased to be iron and become wooden paling between 60 and 58. There was a gap in it behind the dog-house where a slat had been broken off amid a tangle of creeper, and Jane, squeezing through it, found herself in the untidy yard of 58. It was still quite light, and Jane could see a girl huddled at the root of the cherry tree, sobbing bitterly, her face in her hands.
“Can I help you?” said Jane.
Though Jane herself had no inkling of it, those words were the keynote of her character. Anyone else would probably have said, “What is the matter?” But Jane always wanted to help: and, though she was too young to realize it, the tragedy of her little existence was that nobody ever wanted her help…not even mother, who had everything heart could wish.
The child under the cherry tree stopped sobbing and got on her feet. She looked at Jane and Jane looked at her and something happened to both of them. Long afterwards Jane said, “I knew we were the same kind of folks.” Jane saw a girl of about her own age, with a very white little face under a thick bang of black hair cut straight across her forehead. The hair looked as if it had not been washed for a long time but the eyes underneath it were brown and beautiful, though of quite a different brown from Jane’s. Jane’s were goldy-brown like a marigold, with laughter lurking in them, but this girl’s were very dark and very sad…so sad that Jane’s heart did something queer inside of her. She knew quite well that it wasn’t right that anybody so young should have such sad eyes.
The girl wore a dreadful old blue dress that had certainly never been made for her. It was too long and too elaborate and it was dirty and grease-spotted. It hung on the thin little shoulders like a gaudy rag on a scarecrow. But the dress mattered nothing to Jane. All she was conscious of was those appealing eyes.
“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 tonight 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 everyone 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 parlor 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 crisscross. She did not like playing on the piano, but grandmother had insisted on her taking music lessons and she practiced 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 catalog…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 anyone had ever admired her.
Jane of Lantern Hill Page 2
