Jane of Lantern Hill

by L. M. Montgomery

  Dad was away so there was nothing to take the edge off Phyllis, who was more patronizing than ever.

  “Your garden is quite nice,” she said.

  Jane made a sound remarkably like a snort. Quite nice! When everybody admitted that it was the prettiest garden in the Queen’s Shore district, except the Titus ladies’. Couldn’t Phyllis see the wonder of those gorgeous splashes of nasturtiums, than which there was nothing finer in the county? Didn’t she realize that those tiny red beets and cunning gold carrots were two weeks ahead of anybody else’s for miles around? Could she possibly be in ignorance of the fact that Jane’s pink peonies, fertilized so richly by Step-a-yard’s sheep manure, were the talk of the community? But Jane was a bit ruffled that day anyhow. Aunt Irene and Miss Morrow had been up the day before, having returned from Boston, and Aunt Irene as usual had been sweet and condescending, and as usual had rubbed Jane the wrong way.

  “I’m so glad your father put the telephone in for you…I hoped he would after the little hint I gave him.”

  “I never wanted a telephone,” said Jane, rather sulkily.

  “Oh, but, darling, you should have one, when you’re so much alone here. If anything happened…”

  “What could happen here, Aunt Irene?”

  “The house might take fire…”

  “It took fire last year and I put it out.”

  “Or you might take cramps in swimming. I’ve never thought it…”

  “But if I did I could hardly phone from there,” said Jane.

  “Or if tramps came…”

  “There’s been only one tramp here this summer and Happy bit a piece out of his leg. I was very sorry for the poor man…I put iodine on the bite and gave him his dinner.”

  “Darling, you will have the last word, won’t you? So like your Grandmother Kennedy.”

  Jane didn’t like to be told she was like her Grandmother Kennedy. Still less did she like the fact that, after supper, dad and Miss Morrow had gone off by themselves for a walk to the shore. Aunt Irene looked after them speculatively.

  “They have so much in common…it is a pity…”

  Jane wouldn’t ask what was a pity. But she lay awake for a long time that night and had not quite recovered her poise when Phyllis came, condescending to her garden. But a hostess has certain obligations and Jane was not going to let Lantern Hill down, even if she did make sundry faces at her pots and pans. The supper she got up for Phyllis made that damsel open her eyes.

  “Victoria…you didn’t cook all these things yourself!”

  “Of course. It’s easy as wink.”

  Some of the Jimmy Johns and Snowbeams turned up after supper and Phyllis, whose complacency had been somewhat jarred by that supper, was really quite decent to them. They all went to the shore for a dip, but Phyllis was scared of the tumbling waves and would only sit on the sand and let them break over her while the others frolicked like mermaids.

  “I didn’t know you could swim like that, Victoria.”

  “You ought to see me when the water is calm,” said Jane.

  Still, Jane was rather relieved when it was time for Uncle David and Aunt Sylvia to come for Phyllis. Then the telephone rang and Uncle David was calling from town to say they were delayed by car trouble and wouldn’t likely be able to come till late, so could the Lantern Hill folks see that Phyllis got to the hotel? Oh, yes, yes, indeed, Jane assured them.

  “Dad can’t be back till midnight, so we’ll have to walk,” she told Phyllis. “I’ll go with you…”

  “But it’s four miles to the Harbor Head,” gasped Phyllis.

  “Only two by the short cut across the fields. I know it well.”

  “But it’s dark.”

  “Well, you’re not afraid of the dark, are you?”

  Phyllis did not say whether she was afraid of the dark or not. She looked at Jane’s overalls.

  “Are you going in them?”

  “No, I only wear these around home,” explained Jane patiently. “I was driving in hay all the forenoon. Mr. Jimmy John was away and Punch had a sore foot. I’ll change in a jiffy and we’ll start.”

  Jane slipped into a skirt and one of her pretty sweaters and fluffed a comb through her russet hair. People were beginning to look twice at Jane’s hair. Phyllis looked more than twice at it. It was really wonderful hair. What had come over Victoria anyhow…Victoria whom she used to think so dumb? This tall, arms-and-legs girl, who somehow had ceased to be awkward in spite of arms and legs, was certainly not dumb. Phyllis gave a small sigh; and in that sigh, though neither of them was conscious of it, their former positions were totally reversed. Phyllis, instead of looking down on Jane, looked up to her.

  The cool evening air was heavy with dew when they started. The winds were folded among the shadowy glens. The spice ferns were fragrant in the corners of the upland pastures. It was so calm and still you could hear all kinds of far-away sounds…a cart rattling down Old Man Cooper’s Hill…muted laughter from Hungry Cove…an owl on Big Donald’s hill calling to an owl on Little Donald’s hill. But it got darker and darker. Phyllis drew close to Jane.

  “Oh, Victoria, isn’t this the darkest night that ever was!”

  “Not so very. I’ve been out when it was darker.”

  Jane was not in the least scared, and Phyllis was much impressed. Jane felt that she was impressed…Jane knew she was scared…Jane began to like Phyllis.

  They had to climb a fence and Phyllis fell over it, tore her dress and skinned her knee. So Phyllis couldn’t even climb a fence, thought Jane…but thought it kindly, protectively.

  “Oh, what’s that?” Phyllis clutched Jane.

  “That? Only cows.”

  “Oh, Victoria, I’m so scared of cows. I can’t pass them…I can’t…suppose they think…”

  “Who cares what a cow thinks?” said Jane superbly. She had forgotten that she had once been fussy about cows and their opinion of her.

  And Phyllis was crying. From that moment Jane lost every shred of her dislike of Phyllis. Phyllis, patronizing and perfect in Toronto, was very different from a terrified Phyllis in a back pasture on an Island hill.

  Jane put her arm around her. “Come on, honey. The cows won’t even look at you. Little Donald’s cows are all friends of mine. And then it’s just a walk through that bit of woods and we’ll be at the hotel.”

  “Will you…walk between me…and the cows?” sobbed Phyllis.

  Phyllis, holding tightly to Jane, was safely convoyed past the cows. The little wood lane that followed was terribly dark but it was short, and at its end were the lights of the hotel.

  “You’re all right now. I won’t go in,” said Jane. “I must hurry home to get some supper ready for father. I always like to be there when he comes home.”

  “Victoria! Are you going back alone?”

  “Of course. How else would I go?”

  “If you’d wait…father would drive you home when he comes…”

  Jane laughed.

  “I’ll be at Lantern Hill in half an hour. And I love walking.”

  “Victoria, you’re the very bravest girl I ever saw in my life,” said Phyllis earnestly. There wasn’t a trace of patronage in her tone. There was never to be again.

  Jane had a good time with herself on the walk back. The dear night brooded over her. Little wings were folded in nest homes, but there was wild life astir. She heard the distant bark of a fox…the sound of tiny feet in the fern…she saw the pale glimmer of night moths and took friendly counsel with the stars. Almost they sang, as if one star called to another in infinite harmony. Jane knew them all. Dad had given her lessons in astronomy all summer, having discovered that the only constellation she knew was the Big Dipper.

  “This won’t do, my Jane. You must know the stars. Not that I blame you for not being well acquainted with them. Humanity in its great
lighted cities is shut out from the stars. And even the country folk are too used to them to realize their wonder. Emerson says something somewhere about how marvelous a spectacle we should deem them if we saw them only once in a thousand years.”

  So, with dad’s field-glasses, they went star hunting on moonless nights, and Jane became learned in lore of far-off suns.

  “What star shall we visit tonight, Janelet? Antares…Fomalhaut…Sirius?”

  Jane loved it. It was so wonderful to sit out on the hills with dad in the dark and the beautiful aloneness while the great worlds swung above them in their appointed courses. Polaris, Arcturus, Vega, Capella, Altair…she knew them all. She knew where to look for Cassiopeia enthroned on her jeweled chair, for the Milk Dipper upside down in the clear southwest, for the great Eagle flying endlessly across the Milky Way, for the golden sickle that reaped some harvest of heaven.

  “Watch the stars whenever you are worried, Jane,” said dad. “They’ll steady you…comfort you…balance you. I think if I had watched them…years ago…but I learned their lesson too late.”

  CHAPTER 36

  “Aunt Elmira is dying again,” said Ding-dong cheerfully.

  Jane was helping Ding-dong shingle his father’s small barn. Doing it very well too, and getting no end of a kick out of it. It was such fun to be away up in the air where you could see over the whole countryside under its gay and windy clouds, and keep easy tabs on what your neighbors were doing.

  “Is she very bad this time?” asked Jane, hammering diligently.

  Jane knew all about Aunt Elmira and her dying spells. She took one every once in so long and it had really become a nuisance. Aunt Elmira picked such inconvenient times for dying. Always when something special was in the offing, Aunt Elmira decided to die and sometimes seemed so narrowly to escape doing it that the Bells held their breaths. Because Aunt Elmira did really have a heart condition that was not to be depended on, and who knew but that sometime she really would die?

  “And the Bells don’t want her to die,” Step-a-yard had told Jane. “They need her board…her annuity dies with her. Besides, she’s handy to look after things when the Bells want to go gadding. And I won’t say but they’re real fond of her too. Elmira is a good old scout when she isn’t dying.”

  Jane knew that. She and Aunt Elmira were excellent friends. But Jane had never seen her when she was dying. She was too weak to see people then, she averred, and the Bells were afraid to risk it. Jane, with her usual shattering insight, had her own opinion about these spells of Aunt Elmira’s. She could not have expressed it in terms of psychology, but she once told dad that Aunt Elmira was just trying to get square with something and didn’t know it. She felt rather than knew that Aunt Elmira liked pretty well to be in the limelight and, as she grew older, resented more and more the fact that she was gently but inexorably being elbowed out of it. Near dying was one way of regaining the center of the stage for a time at least. Not that Aunt Elmira was a conscious pretender. She always honestly thought she was dying, and very melancholy she was about it. Aunt Elmira was not at all willing to give up the fascinating business of living.

  “Awful,” said Ding-dong. “Mother says she’s worse than she’s ever seen her. Dr. Abbott says she’s lost the will to live. Do you know what that means?”

  “Sort of,” admitted Jane cautiously.

  “We try to keep her cheered up but she’s awful blue. She won’t eat and she doesn’t want to take her medicine and ma’s at her wit’s end. We had everything planned for Brenda’s wedding and now we don’t know what to do.”

  “She hasn’t died so often before,” comforted Jane.

  “But she’s stayed in bed for weeks and weeks and said every day would be her last. Aunt Elmira,” said Ding-dong reflectively, “has bid me a last good-bye seven times. Now, how can folks have a big wedding if their aunt is dying? And Brenda wants a splash. She’s marrying into the Keyes and she says the Keyes expect it.”

  Mrs. Bell asked Jane to have dinner with them, and Jane stayed because dad was away for the day. She watched Brenda arrange a tray for Aunt Elmira.

  “I’m afraid she won’t eat a bit of it,” said Mrs. Bell anxiously. She was a tired-looking, pleasant-faced woman with kind, faded eyes, who worried a great deal over everything. “I don’t know what she lives on. And she’s so low in her spirits. That goes with the attacks, of course. She says she’s too tired to make any effort to get better, poor thing. It’s her heart, you know. We all try to keep her cheered up and never tell her anything to worry her. Brenda, mind you don’t tell her the white cow choked to death this morning. And if she asks what the doctor said last night, tell her he thinks she’s going to be all right soon. My father always said we should never tell sick people anything but the truth, but we must keep Aunt Elmira cheered up.”

  Jane did not join Ding-dong as soon as dinner was over. She hung about mysteriously till Brenda had come downstairs, reporting that Aunt Elmira couldn’t touch a mouthful, and had taken her mother out to settle some question about the amount of wool to be sent to the carding mill. Then Jane sped upstairs.

  Aunt Elmira was lying in bed, a tiny, shrunken creature with elf-locks of gray hair straggling about her wrinkled face. Her tray was on the table, untouched.

  “If it isn’t Jane Stuart!” said Aunt Elmira in a faint voice. “I’m glad someone hasn’t forgotten me. So you’ve come to see the last of me, Jane?”

  Jane did not contradict her. She sat down on a chair and looked very sadly at Aunt Elmira, who waved a clawlike hand at her tray.

  “I haven’t a speck of appetite, Jane. And it’s just as well…ah me, it’s just as well. I feel they begrudge me every bite I eat.”

  “Well,” said Jane, “you know times are hard and prices low.”

  Aunt Elmira hadn’t quite expected this. A spark came into her queer little amber eyes.

  “I’m paying my board,’’ she said, “and I earned my keep years before I started doing that. Ah well, I’m of no consequence to them now, Jane. We’re not, after we get ill.”

  “No, I suppose not,” agreed Jane.

  “Oh, I know too well I’m a burden to everyone. But it won’t be for long, Jane, it won’t be for long. The hand of death is on me, Jane. I realize that if nobody else does.”

  “Oh, I think they do,” said Jane. “They’re in a hurry to get the barn shingled before the funeral.”

  The spark in Aunt Elmira’s eyes deepened.

  “I s’pose they’ve got it all planned out, have they?” she said.

  “Well, I did hear Mr. Bell saying something about where he would dig the grave. But maybe he meant the white cow’s. I think it was the cow’s. It choked to death this morning, you know. And he said he must have the south gate painted white before…something…but I didn’t just catch what.”

  “White? The idea! The gate has always been red. Well, why should I worry? I’m done with it all. You don’t worry over things when you’re listening for the footfall of death, Jane. Shingling the barn, are they? I thought I heard hammering. That barn didn’t need shingling. But Silas was always extravagant when there’s no one to check him up.”

  “It’s only the shingles that cost. The work won’t cost anything. Ding-dong and I are doing it.”

  “I s’pose that’s why you’ve got your overalls on. Time was I couldn’t abide a girl in overalls. But what does it matter now? Only you shouldn’t go barefoot, Jane. You might get a rusty nail in your foot.”

  “It’s easier getting round the roof with no shoes. And little Sid got a rusty nail in his foot yesterday although he had shoes on.”

  “They never told me! I daresay they’ll let that child have blood-poisoning when I’m not round to look after him. He’s my favorite too. Ah, well it won’t be long now…they know where I want to be buried…but they might have waited till I was dead to talk of grave-digging.”

 
“Oh, I’m sure it was the cow,” said Jane. “And I’m sure they’ll give you a lovely funeral. I think dad would write a beautiful obituary for you if I asked him.”

  “Oh, all right, all right, that’s enough about it anyway. I don’t want to be buried till I am dead. Did they give you a decent bite of dinner? Nettie is kindhearted, but she isn’t the best cook in the world. I was a good cook. Ah, the meals I’ve cooked in my time, Jane…the meals I’ve cooked!”

  Jane missed an excellent opportunity to assure Aunt Elmira she would cook many more meals.

  “The dinner was very nice, Aunt Elmira, and we had such fun at it. Ding-dong kept making speeches and we laughed and laughed.”

  “They can laugh and me dying!” said Aunt Elmira bitterly. “And pussy-footing round in here with faces as long as today and tomorrow, pretending to be sorry. What was them dragging noises I’ve been hearing all the forenoon?”

  “Mrs. Bell and Brenda were rearranging the furniture in the parlor. I expect they are getting it ready for the wedding.”

  “Wedding? Did you say wedding? Whose wedding?’’

  “Why, Brenda’s. She’s going to marry Jim Keyes. I thought you knew.”

  “’Course I knew they were going to be married sometime…but not with me dying. Do you mean to tell me they’re going ahead with it right off?”

  “Well, you know it’s so unlucky to put a wedding off. It needn’t disturb you at all, Aunt Elmira. You’re up here in the ell all by yourself and…”

  Aunt Elmira sat up in bed.

  “You hand me my teeth,” she ordered. “They’re over there on the bureau. I’m going to eat my dinner and then I’m going to get up if it kills me. They needn’t think they’re going to sneak a wedding off me. I don’t care what the doctor says. I’ve never believed I was half as sick as he made out I was anyhow. Half the valuable stock on the place dying and children having blood-poisoning and red gates being painted white! It’s time somebody showed them!”