1 (12 page)

“Come over whenever you can, dear,” Mrs Jimmy John told her. Mrs Jimmy John thought Jane pretty young to be keeping house for anybody. “If there’s any way we can help you, we’ll be glad to.”

“Will you teach me how to make bread?” said Jane coolly. “We can get it at the Corners of course but dad likes home-made bread. And what kind of cake flour would you recommend?”

Jane got acquainted with the Snowbeams also that week. The Solomon Snowbeams were a rather neglected rapscallion family who lived in a ramshackle house where the spruce barrens ran down to a curve of the harbour shore known as Hungry Cove. Nobody knew how Solomon Snowbeam contrived to feed his family … he fished a little and “worked out” a little and shot a little. Mrs Snowbeam was a big, pink, overblown woman and Caraway Snowbeam, “Shingle” Snowbeam, Penny Snowbeam and “Young John” Snowbeam were impudent, friendly little creatures who certainly did not looked starved. Millicent Mary Snowbeam, aged six, was neither impudent nor friendly. Millicent Mary was, so Polly Garland told Jane, not all there. She had blank, velvety nut-brown eyes … all the Snowbeams had beautiful eyes … reddish golden hair and a dazzling complexion. She could sit for hours without speaking—perhaps that was why the chattering Jimmy Johns thought her not all there—with her fat arms clasped around her fat knees. She seemed to be possessed of a dumb admiration for Jane and haunted Lantern Hill all that summer, gazing at her. Jane did not mind her.

If Millicent Mary did not talk, the rest of the Snowbeams made up for it. At first they were inclined to resent Jane a bit, thinking she must know everything because she came from Toronto and would be putting on airs about it. But when they discovered she hardly knew anything … except the little Uncle Tombstone had taught her about clams … they became very friendly. That is to say, they asked innumerable questions. There was no false delicacy about any of the Snowbeams.

“Does your pa put live people in his stories?” asked Penny.

“No,” said Jane.

“Everybody round here says he does. Everybody’s scared he’ll put them in. He’d better not put US in if he doesn’t want his snoot busted. I’m the toughest boy in Lantern Hill.”

“Do you think you are interesting enough to put in a story?” asked Jane.

Penny was a little scared of her after that.

“We’ve been wanting to see what you looked like,” said Shingle, who wore overalls and looked like a boy but wasn’t, “because your pa and ma are divorced, ain’t they?”

“No,” said Jane.

“Is your pa a widow then?” persisted Shingle.

“No.”

“Does your ma live in Toronto?”

“Yes.”

“Why doesn’t she live here with your pa?”

“If you ask me any more questions about my parents,” said Jane, “I’ll get dad to put you into one of his stories—every one of you.”

Shingle was cowed but Caraway took up the tale.

“Do you look like your mother?”

“No. My mother is the most beautiful woman in Toronto,” said Jane proudly.

“Do you live in a white marble house at home?”

“No.”

“Ding-dong Bell said you did,” said Caraway in disgust. “Ain’t he the awful liar? And I s’pose you don’t have satin bedspreads either?”

“We have silk ones,” said Jane.

“Ding-dong said you had satin.”

“I see the butcher bringing your dinner up the lane,” said Young John. “What are you having?”

“Steak.”

“My stars! We never have steak … nothing but bread and molasses and fried salt pork. Dad says he can’t look a pig in the face ‘thout grunting and mam says let him bring her home something else and she’ll be mighty glad to cook it. Is that a cake you’re making? Say, will you let me lick out the pan?”

“Yes, but stand back from the table. Your shirt is all over chaff,” ordered Jane.

“Ain’t you the bossy snip?” said Young John.

“Foxy-head,” said Penny.

They all went home mad because Jane Stuart had insulted Young John. But they all came back next day and forgivingly helped her weed and clean up her garden. It was hard work and it was a hot day so that their brows were wet with honest sweat long before they had done it to Jane’s taste. If anybody had made them work as hard as that they would have howled to high heaven; but when it was for fun … why, it WAS fun.

Jane gave them the last of Mrs Meade’s cookies. She meant to try a batch of her own next day anyhow.

Jane had already decided that there was never a garden in the world like hers. She was crazy about it. An early, old-fashioned yellow rose-bush was already in bloom. Shadows of poppies danced here and there. The stone dike was smothered in wild rose-bushes starred with crimson bud-sheaths. Pale lemon lilies and creamy June lilies grew in the corners. There were ribbon-grass and mint, bleeding-heart, prince’s feather, southernwood, peonies, sweet balm, sweet may, sweet-william, all with sated velvet bees humming over them. Aunt Matilda Jollie had been content with old-fashioned perennials and Jane loved them too, but she made up her mind that by hook or crook she would have some annuals next summer. Jane, at the beginning of this summer, was already planning for next.

In a very short time she was to be full of garden lore and was always trying to extract information about fertilizers from anybody who knew. Mr Jimmy John gravely advised well-rotted cow manure and Jane dragged basketfuls of it home from his barnyard. She loved to water the flowers … especially when the earth was a little dry and they drooped pleadingly. The garden rewarded her … she was one of those people at whose touch things grow. No weed was ever allowed to show its face. Jane got up early every morning to weed. It was wonderful to wake as the sun came over the sea.

The mornings at Lantern Hill seemed different from the mornings anywhere else—more morningish. Jane’s heart sang as she weeded and raked and hoed and pruned and thinned out.

“Who taught you these things, woman?” asked dad.

“I think I’ve always known them,” said Jane dreamily.

The Snowbeams told Jane their cat had kittens and she could have one. Jane went down to choose. There were four and the poor lean old mother cat was so proud and happy. Jane picked a black one with a pansy face—a really pansy face, so dark and velvety, with round golden eyes. She named it Peter on the spot. Then the Jimmy Johns, not to be outdone, brought over a kitten also. But this kitten was already named Peter and the Ella twin wept frantically over the idea of anybody changing it. So dad suggested calling them First Peter and Second Peter—which Mrs Snowbeam thought was sacrilegious. Second Peter was a dainty thing in black and silver, with a soft white breast. Both Peters slept at the foot of Jane’s bed and swarmed over dad the minute he sat down.

“What is home without a dog?” said dad, and got one from old Timothy Salt at the harbour mouth. They named him Happy. He was a slim white dog with a round brown spot at the root of his tail, a brown collar and brown ears. He kept the Peters in their place and Jane loved him so much it hurt her.

“I like living things around me, dad.”

Dad brought home the ship clock with the dog. Jane found it useful to time meals by, but as far as anything else was concerned there was really no such thing as time at Lantern Hill.

By the end of a week Jane knew the geography and people of Lantern Hill and Lantern Corners perfectly. Every hill seemed to belong to somebody … Big Donald’s hill … Little Donald’s hill … Old Man Cooper’s hill. She could pick out Big Donald Martin’s farm and Little Donald Martin’s farm. Every household light she could see from the hill-top had its own special significance. She knew just where to look to see Min’s ma’s light sparkle out every night from the little white house in a misty fold of the hills. Min herself, an owl-eyed gipsy scrap, full of ginger, was already a bosom friend of Jane’s. Jane knew that Min’s colourless ma was entirely unimportant except as a background for Min. Min never would wear shoes or stockings in summer and her bare feet twinkled over the red roads to Lantern Hill every day. Sometimes Elmer Bell, better known as Ding-dong, came with her. Ding-dong was freckled and his ears stuck out but he was popular, though pursued through life by some scandalous tale of having sat in his porridge when he was an infant. When Young John wanted to be especially annoying he yelled at Ding-dong, “Sot in your porridge, you did— sot in your porridge!”

Elmer and Min and Polly Garland and Shingle and Jane were all children of the same year and they all liked each other and snubbed each other and offended each other and stood up for each other against the older and younger fry. Jane gave up trying to believe she hadn’t always been friends with them. She remembered the woman who had called Gay Street dead. Well, Aunt Matilda Jollie’s house wasn’t dead. It was alive, every inch of it. Jane’s friends swarmed all over it.

“You’re so nice you ought to have been born in P. E. Island,” Ding-dong told her.

“I was,” said Jane triumphantly.

One day a blue two-wheeled cart lumbered up the lane and left a big packing-box in the yard.

“A lot of my mother’s china and silver are in that, Jane,” said dad. “I thought you might like to have them. You were named after her. They’ve been packed up ever since …”

Dad suddenly stopped and the frown that Jane always wanted to smooth out came over his brow.

“They’ve been packed up for years.”

Jane knew perfectly well that he had started to say, “ever since your mother went away,” or words to that effect. She had a sudden realization of the fact that this was not the first time dad had helped fix up a home … not the first time he had been nicely excited over choosing wallpaper and curtains and rugs. He must have had it all before with mother. Perhaps they had had just as much fun over it as dad and she were having now … more. Mother must have been sweet over fixing up her own home. She never had anything to say over the arrangements at 60 Gay. Jane wondered where the house dad and mother had lived in was … the house where she had been born. There were so many things she would have liked to ask dad if she had dared. But he was so nice. How could mother ever have left him?

It was great fun unpacking Grandmother Stuart’s box. There were lovely bits of glass and china in it … Grandmother Stuart’s dinner-set of white and gold … slender-stemmed glass goblets … quaint pretty dishes of all kinds. And silver! A tea-set, forks, spoons—“Apostle” spoons—salt-cellars.

“That silver does need cleaning,” said Jane in rapture. What fun she would have cleaning it and washing up all those dainty and delicate dishes. Polishing up the moon was nothing to this. In fact, the moon life had lost its old charm. Jane had enough to do keeping her house spotless without going on moon sprees. Anyhow, the Island moons never seemed to need polishing.

There were other things in the box … pictures and a delightful old framed motto worked in blue and crimson wool. “May the peace of God abide in this house.” Jane thought this was lovely. She and dad had endless palavers as to where the pictures should go, but eventually they were all hung and made such a difference.

“As soon as you hang a picture on a wall,” said dad, “the wall becomes your friend. A blank wall is hostile.”

They hung the motto in Jane’s room and every night when she went to bed and every morning when she got up Jane read it over like a prayer.

The beds blossomed out in wonderful patchwork quilts after that box came home. There were three of them that Grandmother Stuart had pieced … an Irish Chain, a Blazing Star and a Wild Goose. Jane put the Wild Goose on dad’s bed, the blue Irish Chain on her own, and the scarlet Blazing Star on the boot-shelf against the day when they would have a bed for the spare-room.

They found a bronze soldier on horseback in the box and a shiny brass dog. The soldier went up on the clock-shelf but dad said the dog must go on his desk to keep his china cat in order. Dad’s desk had been brought from Mr Meade’s and was set up in the “study” … an old shining mahogany desk with sliding shelves and secret drawers and pigeonholes. The cat sat on one corner … a white, green-spotted cat with a long snaky neck and gleaming diamond eyes. For some reason Jane could not fathom, dad seemed to prize the thing. He had carried it all the way from Brookview to Lantern Mill in his hand so that it shouldn’t get broken.

Jane’s own particular booty was a blue plate with a white bird flying across it. She would eat every meal off it after this. And the old hour-glass, with its golden sands, on its walnut base was charming.

“Early eighteenth century,” said dad. “My great-grandfather was a U. E. Loyalist and this hour-glass was about all he had when he came to Canada … that and an old copper kettle. I wonder … yes, here it is. More polishing for you, Jane. And here’s an old bowl of blue and white striped china. Mother mixed her salads in it.”

“I’ll mix mine in it,” said Jane.

There was a little box at the very bottom of the big box. Jane pounced on it.

“Dad, what’s this?”

Dad took it from her. There was a strange look on his face.

“That? Oh, that’s nothing.”

“Dad, it’s a Distinguished Service Medal! Miss Colwin had one in her room at St Agatha’s … her brother won it in the Great War. Oh, dad, you … you …”

Jane was breathless with pride over her discovery.

Dad shrugged his shoulders.

“You can never deceive your faithful Jane, says she. I won it at Passchendaele. Once I was proud of it. It seemed to mean something when … throw it out.”

Dad’s voice was oddly savage but Jane was not afraid of it … any more than she was afraid of his quick brief spurts of temper. Just a flash and a snap like lightning from a summer cloud, then sunshine again. He had never been angry with her but he and Uncle Tombstone had had a spat or two.

“I won’t throw it out. I’m going to keep it, dad.”

Dad shrugged.

“Well, don’t let me see it then.”

Jane put it on her bureau and gloated over it every day. But she was so excited over the contents of the box that she put icing sugar instead of salt in the Irish stew she made for dinner and her humiliation robbed her for a time of her high delight in life. Happy liked the stew, though.