"Andrew was angry because I couldn't go out with him as much as before. How could I? It would have been bad for you if I'd taken you and I couldn't leave you. But he didn't care really ... he never did except for a little while at the first. He cared far more for that book of his than for me. He would shut himself up with it for days at a time and forget all about me."
(And yet you think he was the only jealous one.)
"I suppose I simply wasn't capable of living with a genius. Of course, I knew I wasn't clever enough for him. Irene let me see that she thought that. And he cared far more for her than for me...."
(Oh, no, not that ... never that!)
"She had far more influence over him than I had. He told her things before he told me...."
(Because she was always trying to pick them out of him before he was ready to tell any one.)
"He thought me such a child that if he had a plan, he consulted her before he consulted me. Irene made me feel like a shadow in my own house. She liked to humiliate me, I think. She was always sweet and smiling ..."
(She would be!)
"... but she always blew my candles out. She patronized me...."
(Do I know it!)
"'I've noticed,' she would say. That had such a sting as if she'd been spying on me right along. Andrew said I was unreasonable ... I wasn't ... but he always sided with her. Irene never liked me. She had wanted Andrew to marry another girl ... I was told she had said from the first that she knew our marriage would be a failure...."
(And did her best to make it one.)
"She kept pushing us apart ... here a little ... there a little. I was helpless."
(Not if you had had a wee bit of backbone, mummy.)
"Andrew was annoyed because I didn't like her, and yet he hated my family. He couldn't speak of mother without insulting her ... he didn't want me to visit her ... get presents from her ... money ... oh, Jane Victoria, that last year was dreadful. Andrew never looked at me if he could help it."
(Because it hurt him too much.)
"It seemed as if I were married to a stranger. We were always saying bitter things to each other...."
(That verse I read in the Bible last night, "Death and Life are in the power of the tongue" ... it's true ... it's true!)
"Then mother wrote and asked me to come home for a visit. Andrew said, 'Go if you want to' ... just like that. Irene said it would give things a chance to heal up...."
(I can see her smiling when she said it.)
"I went. And ... and ... mother wanted me to stay with her. She could see I was so unhappy...."
(And took her chance.)
"I couldn't go on living with a person who hated me, Jane Victoria ... I couldn't ... so I ... I wrote him and told him I thought it would be better for both of us if I didn't go back. I ... I don't know ... nothing seemed real someway ... if he had written and asked me to go back ... but he didn't. I never heard from him ... till that letter came asking for you."
Jane had kept silence while mother talked, thinking things at intervals, but now she could keep silence no longer.
"He DID write ... he wrote and asked you to come back ... and you never answered ... you never answered, mother."
Mother and daughter looked at each other in the silence of the big, beautiful, unfriendly room.
After a little, mother whispered, "I never got it, Jane Victoria."
They said nothing more about it. Both of them knew quite well what had happened to the letter.
"Mother, it isn't too late yet...."
"Yes, it is too late, dear. Too much has come between us. I can't break with mother again ... she'd never forgive me again ... and she loves me so. I'm all she has...."
"Nonsense!" Jane was as brusque as any Stuart of them all. "She has got Aunt Gertrude and Uncle William and Aunt Sylvia."
"It's ... it's not the same. She didn't love THEIR father. And ... I can't stand up to her. Besides, he doesn't want me any more. We're strangers. And oh, Jane Victoria, life's slipping away ... like that ... through my fingers. The harder I try to hold it, the faster it slips. I've lost you...."
"Never, mother!"
"Yes, you belong more to him than to me now. I don't blame you ... you can't help it. But you'll belong a little more to him every year ... till there'll be nothing left for me."
Grandmother came in. She looked at them both suspiciously.
"Have you forgotten you are dining out, Robin?"
"Yes, I think I had," said mother strangely. "But never mind.... I've remembered now. I ... I shan't forget again."
Grandmother lingered for a moment after mother had gone out.
"What have you been saying to upset your mother, Victoria?"
Jane looked levelly at grandmother.
"What happened to the letter father wrote mother long ago, asking her to go back to him, grandmother?"
Grandmother's cold cruel eyes suddenly blazed.
"So that's it? Do you think it any of your business exactly?"
"Yes, I think it is, since I am their child."
"I did what was right with it ... I burned it. She had seen her mistake ... she had come back to me, as I always knew she would ... I was not going to have her misled again. Don't begin plotting, Victoria. I am a match for you all yet."
"No one is plotting," said Jane. "There is just one thing I want to tell you, grandmother. My father and mother love each other yet ... I KNOW it."
Grandmother's voice was ice.
"They do not. Your mother has been happy all these years till you began stirring up old memories. Leave her alone. She is my daughter ... no outsider shall ever come between us again ... neither Andrew Stuart nor you nor any one. And you will be good enough to remember that."
Chapter 41
The letters came on the afternoon of the last day of March. Jane was not at St Agatha's ... she had had a touch of sore throat the day before and mother thought it was wiser for her to stay home. But her throat was better now and Jane was reasonably happy. It was almost April ... if not quite spring yet, at least the hope of spring. Just a little over two months and she would keep her tryst with June at Lantern Hill. Meanwhile, she was planning some additions to her garden ... for one thing, a row of knightly hollyhocks along the dike at the bottom. She would plant the seeds in August and they would bloom the NEXT summer.
Grandmother and Aunt Gertrude and mother had all gone to Mrs Morrison's bridge and tea, so Mary brought the afternoon mail to Jane who pounced joyfully on three letters for herself. One from Polly ... one from Shingle ... one ... Jane recognized Aunt Irene's copper-plate writing.
She read Polly's first ... a good letter, full of fun and Lantern Hill jokes. There was one bit of news about dad in it ... he was planning a trip to the States very soon ... Boston or New York or somewhere ... Polly seemed rather vague. And Polly wound up with a paragraph that gave Jane a good laugh ... her last laughter for some time ... the last laughter of her childhood, it always seemed to Jane, looking back on it from later years.
Polly wrote: "Mr Julius Evans was awful mad last week, a rat got drowned in his cask of new maple syrup and he made a terrible fuss over such a waste. But dad says he isn't sure it was wasted, so we are getting our syrup from Joe Baldwin's to be on the safe side."
Jane was still laughing over this when she opened Shingle's letter. A paragraph on the second page leaped to her eye.
"Everybody is saying your dad is going to get a Yankee divorce and marry Lilian Morrow. Will she be your mother then? How do you like the idea? I guess she'll be your stepmother ... only that sounds so funny when your own mother is still alive. Will your name be changed? Caraway says not ... but they do such queer things in the States. Anyway, I hope it won't make any difference about you coming to Lantern Hill in the summer."
Jane felt literally sick and cold with agony as she dropped the letter and snatched up Aunt Irene's. She had been wondering what Aunt Irene could be writing to her about ... she knew now.