Then Miss Semple asked her if she would recite.
Jane jumped at the idea. She knew she could recite rather well. Here was a chance to make mother proud of her and show grandmother that all the money she was spending on Jane's education was not being wholly wasted.
Jane picked a poem she had long liked in spite, or perhaps because, of its habitant English, "The Little Baby of Mathieu," and plunged enthusiastically into learning it. She practised it in her room ... she murmured lines of it everywhere until grandmother asked her sharply what she was muttering about all the time. Then Jane shut up like a clam. Nobody must suspect ... it was to be a "surprise" to them all. A proud and glad surprise for mother. And perhaps even grandmother might feel a little pleased with her if she did well. Jane knew she would meet with no mercy if she didn't do well.
Grandmother took Jane down to a room in Marlborough's big department store ... a room that had panelled walls, velvety carpets and muted voices ... a room that Jane didn't like, somehow. She always felt smothered in it. And grandmother got her a new dress for the concert. It was a very pretty dress ... you had to admit grandmother had a taste in dresses. A dull green silk that brought out the russet glow of Jane's hair and the gold-brown of her eyes. Jane liked herself in it and was more anxious than ever to please grandmother with her recitation.
She was terribly worried the night before the concert. Wasn't she a little hoarse? Suppose it got worse? It did not ... it was all gone the next day. But when Jane found herself on the concert platform facing an audience for the first time, a nasty little quiver ran down her spine. She had never supposed there would be so many people. For one dreadful moment she thought she was not going to be able to utter a word. Then she seemed to see Kenneth Howard's eyes, crinkling with laughter at her. "Never mind them. Do your stuff for ME," he seemed to be saying. Jane got her mouth open.
The St Agatha staff were quite amazed. Who could have supposed that shy, awkward Victoria Stuart could recite any poem so well, let alone a habitant one? Jane herself was feeling the delight of a certain oneness with her audience ... a realization that she had captured them ... that she was delighting them ... until she came to the last verse. Then she saw mother and grandmother just in front of her. Mother, in her lovely new blue fox furs, with the little wine hat Jane loved tilted on one side of her head, was looking more frightened than proud, and grandmother ... Jane had seen that expression too often to mistake it. Grandmother was furious.
The last verse, which should have been the climax, went rather flat. Jane felt like a candle-flame blown out, though the applause was hearty and prolonged, and Miss Semple behind the scenes whispered, "Excellent, Victoria, excellent."
But there were no compliments on the road home. Not a word was said ... that was the dreadful part of it. Mother seemed too frightened to speak and grandmother preserved a stony silence. But when they got home she said:
"Who put you up to that, Victoria?"
"Put me up to what?" said Jane in honest bewilderment.
"Please don't repeat my questions, Victoria. You know perfectly well what I mean."
"Is it my recitation? No one. Miss Semple asked me to recite, and I picked the recitation myself because I liked it," said Jane. It might even be said she retorted it. She was hurt ... angry ... a little "pepped up" because of her success. "I thought it would please you. But you are never pleased with anything I do."
"Don't be cheaply theatrical, please," said grandmother. "And in future if you HAVE to recite," very much as she might have said, "if you have to have smallpox" ... "please choose poems in decent English. I do not care for patois."
Jane didn't know what patois was, but it was all too evident that she had made a mess of things somehow.
"Why was grandmother so angry, mummy?" she asked piteously, when mother came in to kiss her good night, cool, slim and fragrant, in a dress of rose crêpe with little wisps of lace over the shoulders. Mother's blue eyes seemed to mist a little.
"Someone she ... did not like ... used to be ... very good at reading habitant poetry. Never mind, heart's delight. You did splendidly. I was proud of you."
She bent down and took Jane's face in her hands. Mother had such a dear way of doing that.
So, in spite of everything, Jane went very happily through the gates of sleep. After all, it does not take much to make a child happy.
Chapter 9
The letter was a bolt from the blue. It came one dull morning in early April ... but such a bitter, peevish, unlovely April ... more like March in its disposition than April. It was Saturday, so there would be no St Agatha's and when Jane wakened in her big black walnut bed she wondered just how she would put in the day because mother was going to a bridge and Jody was sick with a cold.
Jane lay a little while, looking through the window, where she could see only dull grey sky and old tree tops having a fight with the wind. She knew that in the yard below the window on the north there was still a lingering bank of dirty grey snow. Jane thought dirty snow must be the dreariest thing in the world. She hated this shabby end of winter. And she hated the bedroom where she had to sleep alone. She wished she and mother could sleep together. They could have such lovely times talking to each other with no one else to hear, after they went to bed or early in the morning. And how lovely it would be when you woke up in the night to hear mother's soft breathing beside you and cuddle to her just a wee bit, carefully, so as not to disturb her.
But grandmother would not let mother sleep with her.
"It is unhealthy for two people to sleep in the same bed," grandmother had said with her chill, unsmiling smile. "Surely in a house of this size everybody can have a room to herself. There are many people in the world who would be grateful for such a privilege."
Jane thought she might have liked the room better if it had been smaller. She always felt lost in it. Nothing in it seemed to be related to her. It always seemed hostile, watchful, vindictive. And yet Jane always felt that if she were allowed to do things for it ... sweep it, dust it, put flowers in it ... she would begin to love it, huge as it was. Everything in it was huge ... a huge black walnut wardrobe like a prison, a huge chest of drawers, a huge walnut bedstead, a huge mirror over the massive black marble mantelpiece ... except a tiny cradle which was always kept in the alcove by the fireplace ... a cradle that grandmother had been rocked in. Fancy grandmother a baby! Jane just couldn't.
Jane got out of bed and dressed herself under the stare of several old dead grands and greats hung on the walls. Below on the lawn robins were hopping about. Robins always made Jane laugh ... they were so saucy, so sleek, so important, strutting over the grounds of 60 Gay just as if it were any common yard. Much they cared for grandmothers!
Jane slipped down the hall to mother's room at the far end. She was not supposed to do this. It was understood at 60 Gay that mother must not be disturbed in the mornings. But mother, for a wonder, had not been out the night before and Jane knew she would be awake. Not only was she awake but Mary was just bringing in her breakfast tray. Jane would have loved to do this for mother but she was never allowed.
Mother was sitting up in bed wearing the daintiest breakfast jacket of tea-rose crêpe de Chine edged with cobwebby beige lace. Her cheeks were just the colour of her jacket and her eyes were fresh and dewy. Mother, Jane reflected proudly, looked as lovely when she got up in the mornings as she did before she went to bed.