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 and didn't like it. Something uncommon was brewing, he said.