Dad’s voice was almost savage.
“And then,” said Jane bitterly, “I came . . . and neither of you wanted me . . . and you were never happy again.”
“Never let any one tell you that, Jane. I admit I didn’t want you terribly . . . I was so happy I didn’t want any third party around. But I remember when I saw your big round eyes brighten the first time you picked me out in a roomful of other men. Then I knew how much I wanted you. Perhaps your mother wanted you too much . . . at any rate she didn’t seem to want any one else to love you. You wouldn’t have thought I had any rights in you at all. She was so wrapped up in you that she hadn’t any time or love left for me. If you sneezed she was sure you were taking pneumonia and thought me heartless because I wouldn’t go off the deep end about it. She seemed afraid even to let me hold you for fear I’d drop you. Oh well, it wasn’t all you. I suppose by that time she had found she had married some mythical John Doe of her imagination and that he had turned out to be no dashing hero but just a very ordinary Richard Roe. There were so many things . . . I was poor and we had to live by my budget. . . . I wasn’t going to have my wife live on money her mother sent her. . . . I made her send it back. I will say she was quite willing to. But we began quarrelling over trifles . . . oh, you know I’ve a temper, Jane. I remember once I told her to shut her head . . . but every normal husband says that to his wife at least once in his life, Jane. I don’t wonder that hurt her . . . but she was hurt by so many things I never thought would hurt her. Perhaps I don’t understand women, Jane.”
“No, you don’t,” agreed Jane.
“Eh! What!” Dad seemed a bit startled and only half pleased over Jane’s candid agreement with him. “Well, upon my word . . . well, we won’t argue it. But Robin didn’t understand me either. She was jealous of my work . . . she thought I put it before her. . . . I know she was secretly glad when my book was rejected.”
Jane remembered that mother had thought dad was jealous, too.
“Don’t you think Aunt Irene had something to do with it, dad?”
“Irene? Nonsense! Irene was her best friend. And your mother was jealous of my love for Irene. Your mother couldn’t help being a little jealous . . . her mother was the most jealous creature that ever breathed. It was a disease with her. In the end Robin went back to Toronto for a visit . . . and when she got there, she wrote me that she was not coming back.”
“Oh, dad!”
“Well, I suppose her mother got round her. But she had stopped loving me. I knew that. I didn’t want to see hate growing in the eyes where I had seen love. That is a terrible thing, Jane. So I didn’t answer the letter.”
“Oh, dad . . . if you had . . . if you had asked her . . .”
“I agree with Emerson that the highest price you can pay for a thing is to ask for it. Too high sometimes. A year later I weakened . . . I did write and ask her to come back. I knew it had been as much my fault as hers . . . I’d teased her . . . once I said you had a face like a monkey . . . well, you had, Jane, at that time. . . . I’ll swear you had. I never got any answer. So I knew it was no use.”
A question came into Jane’s head. Had mother ever seen that letter?
“It’s all best as it is, Jane. We weren’t suited to each other. . . . I was ten years her senior and the war had made me twenty. I couldn’t give her the luxuries and good times she craved. She was very . . . wise . . . to discard me. Let’s not discuss it further, Jane. I merely wanted you to know the rights of it. And you must not mention anything I’ve said to your mother. Promise me that, Jane.”
Jane promised dismally. There were so many things she wanted to say and she couldn’t say them. It mightn’t be fair to mother.
But she had to falter, “Perhaps . . . it isn’t too late yet, dad.”
“Don’t get any foolish notions like that into your russet head, my Jane. It is too late. I shall never again ask Mrs Robert Kennedy’s daughter to come back to me. We must make the best of things as they are. You and I love each other . . . I am to be congratulated on that.”
For a moment Jane was perfectly happy. Dad loved her . . . she was sure of it at last.
“Oh, dad, can’t I come back next summer . . . every summer?” she burst out eagerly.
“Do you really want to, Jane?”
“Yes,” said Jane eloquently.
“Then we’ll have it so. After all, if Robin has you in the winter, I should have you in the summer. She needn’t grudge me that. And you’re a good little egg, Jane. In fact, I think we’re both rather nice.”
“Dad” . . . Jane had to ask the question . . . she had to go right to the root of the matter . . . “do you . . . love . . . mother still?”
There was a moment of silence during which Jane quaked. Then she heard dad shrug his shoulders in the hay.
“‘The rose that once has blown for ever dies,’” he said.
Jane did not think that was an answer at all but she knew it was all she was going to get.
She turned things over in her mind before she went to sleep. So dad hadn’t sent for her just to annoy mother. But he didn’t understand mother. That habit of his . . . ragging you . . . she, Jane, liked it but perhaps mother hadn’t understood. And father hadn’t liked it because he thought mother neglected him for her baby. And he couldn’t see through Aunt Irene. And was this what mother had cried about that night in the darkness? Jane couldn’t bear to think of mother crying in the dark.
Between Little Aunt Em and dad she now knew a good deal she had not known before but . . .
“I’d like to hear mummy’s side of it,” was Jane’s last thought as she finally fell asleep.
There was a pearl-like radiance of dawn over the eastern hills when she awoke . . . awoke knowing something she had not known when she went to sleep. Dad still loved mother. There was no further question in Jane’s mind about that.
Dad was still asleep but she and Happy slipped down the ladder and out. Surely there had never before been a day that dawned so beautifully. The old pasture around the barn was the quietest place Jane had ever seen, and on the grass between the little spruces . . . spruces by day all right whatever they were by night . . . were gossamers woven on who knew what fairy loom. Jane was washing her face in morning dew when dad appeared.
“It is the essence of adventure to see the break of a new day, Jane. What may it not be ushering in? An empire may fall to-day . . . a baby may be born who will discover a cure for cancer . . . a wonderful poem may be written. . . .”
“Our car will have to be fixed,” reminded Jane.
They walked a mile to a house and telephoned a garage. Some time before noon the car was on its legs again.
“Watch our smoke,” said dad.
Home . . . and the Peters welcoming them back . . . the gulf singing . . . Millicent Mary toddling adoringly in at the gate. It was a lovely August day but the Jimmy John wheat-field was tawny gold and September was waiting behind the hills . . . and September meant Toronto and grandmother and St Agatha’s again where she would be on the edge of things instead of hunting with the pack as here. The ninety-five to-morrows had shrunk to only a few. Jane sighed . . . then shook herself. What was the matter with her? She loved mother . . . she longed to see her . . . but . . .
“I want to stay with dad,” said Jane.
CHAPTER 27
August slipped into September. Jimmy John began to summer fallow the big pasture field below the pond. Jane liked the look of the fresh red furrows. And she liked Mrs Jimmy John’s flock of white geese swimming about the pond. There had been a time when Jane had kept a flock of white swans on a purple lake in the moon, but now she preferred the geese. Day by day the wheat-and oat-fields became more golden. Then Step-a-yard mowed the Jimmy John wheat. The Peters grew so fat catching evicted field-mice that dad told Jane she would really have to put them on a slimming diet.
Summer was ended. A big storm marked the ending, preceded by a week of curiously still weather. Step-a-yard shook his head an
d didn’t like it. Something uncommon was brewing, he said.
The weather all summer had behaved itself well . . . days of sun and days of friendly rain. Jane had heard of the north shore storms and wanted to see one. She got her wish with a vengeance.
One day the gulf changed sulkily from blue to grey. The hills were clear and sharp, foretelling rain. The sky to the north-east was black, the clouds were dark with bitter wind.
“Lots of int’resting weather coming . . . don’t hold me responsible for it,” warned Step-a-yard when Jane started home from the Jimmy Johns’. She literally blew along the path and felt that if Lantern Hill hadn’t stood in the way she might have emulated Little Aunt Em’s reputed exploit of blowing over the harbour. There was a wild, strange, hostile look all over the world. The very trees seemed strangers in the oncoming storm.
“Shut the doors and windows tight, Jane,” said dad. “Our house will just laugh at the east wind.”
The storm broke presently and lasted for two days. The wind that night didn’t sound like wind at all . . . it sounded like the roar of a wild beast. For two days you could see nothing but a swirl of grey rain over a greyer sea . . . hear nothing but the tremendous music of huge breakers booming against the stubborn rocks of lower Queen’s Shore. Jane liked it all after she got used to it. Something in her thrilled to it. And they were very cosy, sitting before their fire of white birchwood those wild nights, while the rain poured against the window and the wind roared and the gulf thundered.
“This is something like, Jane,” said dad puffing at the Old Contemptible with a Peter on either shoulder. “Mankind must have its hearth-fire after all. It’s a cold life warming yourself before other people’s stoves.”
And then he told Jane that he had decided to keep on living at Lantern Hill.
Jane gave a gasp of joy and relief. At first it had been vaguely understood that when Jane went dad would shut up Lantern Hill and go to town for the winter; and Jane had consequently been cumbered with certain worries.
What would become of her windowful of geraniums? The Jimmy Johns had enough of their own to look after. Dad would take Happy with him but what about the Peters? And the house itself . . . the thought of its unlighted windows was unbearable. It would be so lonely . . . so deserted.
“Oh, dad, I’m so glad . . . I couldn’t bear to think of it missing us. But won’t you . . . how about your meals?”
“Oh, I can get up a bite for myself, I daresay.”
“I’m going to teach you to fry a steak and boil potatoes before I go,” said Jane resolutely. “You can’t starve then.”
“Jane, you’ll beat your husband . . . I know you will. It is no use trying to teach me to cook. Remember our first porridge. I daresay the Jimmy Johns won’t see me starve. I’ll arrange for one good meal a day there. Yes, I’m staying on here, Jane. I’ll keep the heart of Lantern Hill beating for you. I’ll water the geraniums and see that the Peters don’t get rheumatism in their legs. But I can’t imagine what the place will be like without you. . . .”
“You will miss me a little, won’t you, dad?”
“A little! My Jane is trying to be humorous. But one consolation is that I’ll likely get a little real work done on my Methuselah epic. I won’t have so many interruptions. And I’ll be able to growl without getting dirty looks.”
“You may just have one growl a day,” grinned Jane. “Oh, I’m so glad I made lots of jam. The pantry is full of it.”
It was the next night dad showed her the letters. He was at his desk with Second Peter snoozing at his feet when Jane went in after washing the supper dishes. He was leaning his head on his hand and Jane thought with a sudden pang that he looked old and tired. The cat with the green spots and the diamond eyes was winking at him.
“Where did you get that cat, dad?”
“Your mother gave it to me . . . for a joke . . . before we were married. We saw it in a shop-window and were taken by the weirdness of it. And here . . . here are some letters I wrote her, Jane . . . one week she and her mother went over to Halifax. I found them to-night when I was cleaning out a drawer. I’ve been laughing at myself . . . the bitterest kind of laughter in the world. You’ll laugh, too, Jane. Listen . . . ‘To-day I tried to write a poem to you, Robin, but it is not finished because I could not find words fine enough, as a lover could not find raiment dainty enough for his bride. The old words that other men have used in singing to their loves seemed too worn and common for you. I wanted new words, crystal clear or coloured only by the iris of light. Not words that have been stamped and stained with all the hues of other men’s thoughts’ . . . wasn’t I a sentimental fool, Jane? . . . ‘I watched the new moon to-night, Robin. You told me you always watched the new moon set. It has been a bond between us ever since. . . . Oh, how dear and human and girlish and queenly you are . . . half saint and half very womanly woman. . . . It is so sweet to do something for one we love, even if it be only opening a door for her to pass through or handing her a book. . . . You are like a rose, my Robin . . . like a white tea-rose by moonlight. . . .”
“I wonder if any one will ever compare me to a rose,” thought Jane. It didn’t seem likely. She couldn’t think of any flower she resembled.
“She didn’t care enough about those letters to take them with her, Jane. After she went away I found them in the drawer of the little desk I had given her.”
“But she didn’t know she wasn’t coming back then, dad.”
Second Peter snarled as if he had been pushed aside by a foot.
“Didn’t she? I think she did.”
“I’m sure she didn’t.” Jane was sure, though she couldn’t have given any reason for her sureness. “Let me take them back to her.”
“No!” Dad brought his hand down so heavily on his desk that he hurt himself and winced. “I’m going to burn them.”
“Oh, no, no.” Somehow Jane couldn’t bear to think of those letters being burned. “Give them to me, dad. I won’t take them to Toronto . . . I’ll leave them in my table drawer . . . but please don’t burn them.”
“Well!” Dad pushed the letters over to her and picked up a pen, as if dismissing the subject of the letters and her at the same time. Jane went out slowly, looking back at him. How she loved him . . . she loved even his shadow on the wall . . . his lovely clear-cut shadow. How could mother ever have left him?
The storm spent itself that night with a wild red sunset and a still wilder north-west wind . . . the wind of fine weather. The beach was still a maelstrom of foam the next day and the shadows of wild black clouds kept tearing over the sands, but the rain had ceased and the sun shone between the clouds. The harvest fields were drenched and tangled, the ground in the Jimmy John orchard was covered with apples . . . and the summer was ended. There was an indefinable change over everything that meant autumn.
CHAPTER 28
Those last few days were compounded of happiness and misery for Jane. She did so many things she loved to do and would not do again until next summer . . . and next summer seemed a hundred years away. It was funny. She hadn’t wanted to come and now she didn’t want to go. She cleaned everything up and washed every dish in the house and polished all the silver and scoured Mr Muffet and Company till their faces shone. She felt lonely and left out when she heard the Jimmy Johns and the Snowbeams talking about the cranberrying in October, and when dad said, “I wish you could see those maples over yonder against that spruce hill in two weeks’ time,” and she realized that in two weeks’ time there would be a thousand miles between them . . . well, it seemed to her that she just couldn’t bear it.
Aunt Irene came out one day when Jane was house-cleaning furiously.
“Aren’t you tired of playing at housekeeping yet, lovey?”
But that true Aunt Irenian touch could not disturb Jane.
“I’m coming back next summer,” said Jane triumphantly.
Aunt Irene sighed.
“I suppose that would be nice . . . in some ways. But so many thi
ngs may happen before then. It’s a whim of your father’s to live here now, but we don’t know when he’ll take another. Still, we can always hope for the best, can’t we, lovey?”
The last day came. Jane packed her trunk, not forgetting a jar of very special wild-strawberry jam she was taking home to mother and two dozen russet apples Polly Snowbeam had given her for her own and Jody’s consumption. Polly knew all about Jody and sent her her love.
They had a chicken dinner — the Ella twin and the George twin had brought the birds over with Miranda’s compliments, and Jane wondered when she would have a slice off the breast again. In the afternoon she went down alone to say good-bye to the shore. She could hardly bear the loneliness of the waves lapping on the beach. The sound and the tang and the sweep of the sea would not let her go. She knew the fields and the windy golden shore were a part of her. She and her Island understood each other.
“I belong here,” said Jane.
“Come back soon. P. E. Island needs you,” said Timothy Salt, offering her the quarter of an apple on the point of his knife. “You will,” he added. “The Island’s got into your blood. It does that to some folks.”
Jane and dad had expected a last quiet evening together but instead there was a surprise party. All Jane’s particular friends, old and young, came, even Mary Millicent who sat in a corner all the evening, staring at Jane, and never spoke a word. Step-a-yard came and Timothy Salt and Min and Min’s ma and Ding-dong Bell and the Big Donalds and the Little Donalds and people from the Corners that Jane didn’t know knew her.
Every one brought her a farewell gift. The Snowbeams clubbed together and brought her a white plaster of Paris plaque to hang on her bedroom wall. It cost twenty-five cents and had a picture of Moses and Aaron on it in blue turbans and red gowns . . . and Jane saw grandmother looking at it! Little Aunt Em could not come but she sent word to Jane Stuart that she would save some hollyhock seeds for her. They had a very gay evening, although all the girls cried after they had sung, “For she’s a jolly good fellow.” Shingle Snowbeam cried so much into the tea towel with which she was helping Polly to dry the dishes that Jane had to get a dry one out.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 523
