mother. She said nothing more. Jane asked nothing more. She turned and went out and up the stairs blindly. In her own room she shut the door and lay down very softly on the big white bearskin rug by the bed, her face buried in the soft fur. Heavy black waves of pain seemed rolling over her.
So it was true. All her life she had thought her father dead while he was livingâ¦on that faraway dot on the map which she had been told was the province of Prince Edward Island. But he and mother did not like each other and she had not been wanted. Jane found that it was a very curious and unpleasant sensation to feel that your parents hadnât wanted you. She was sure that all the rest of her life she would hear Agnesâ voice saying, âYou should never have been born.â She hated Agnes Ripleyâ¦she would always hate her. Jane wondered if she would live to be as old as grandmother and how she could bear it if she did.
Mother and grandmother found her there when everybody had gone.
âVictoria, get up.â
Jane did not move.
âVictoria, I am accustomed to being obeyed when I speak.â
Jane got up. She had not criedâ¦hadnât somebody ages ago said that âJane never cried?ââ¦but her face was stamped with an expression that might have wrung anybodyâs heart. Perhaps it touched even grandmother, for she said, quite gently for her.
âI have always told your mother, Victoria, that she ought to tell you the truth. I told her you were sure to hear it from someone sooner or later. Your father is living. Your mother married him against my wish and lived to repent it. I forgave her and welcomed her back gladly when she came to her senses. That is all. And in future when you feel an irresistible urge to make a scene while we are entertaining, will you be good enough to control the impulse until our guests are gone?â
âWhy didnât he like me?â asked Jane dully.
When all was said and done, that seemed to be what was hurting most. Her mother might not have wanted her either, to begin with, but Jane knew that mother loved her now.
Mother suddenly gave a little laugh so sad that it nearly broke Janeâs heart.
âHe was jealous of you, I think,â she said.
âHe made your motherâs life wretched,â said grandmother, her voice hardening.
âOh, I was to blame, too,â cried mother chokingly.
Jane, looking from one to the other, saw the swift change that came over grandmotherâs face.
âYou will never mention your fatherâs name in my hearing or in your motherâs hearing again,â said grandmother. âAs far as we are concernedâ¦as far as you are concernedâ¦he is dead.â
The prohibition was unnecessary. Jane didnât want to mention her fatherâs name again. He had made mother unhappy, and so Jane hated him and put him out of her thoughts completely. There were just some things that didnât bear thinking of, and father was one of them. But the most terrible thing about it all was that there was something now that could not be talked over with mother. Jane felt it between them, indefinable but there. The old perfect confidence was gone. There was a subject that must never be mentioned, and it poisoned everything.
She could never bear Agnes Ripley and her cult of âsecretsâ again, and was glad when Agnes left the school, the great Thomas having decided that it was not quite up-to-date enough for his daughter. Agnes wanted to learn tap-dancing.
CHAPTER 6
It was a year now since Jane had learned that she had a fatherâ¦a year in which Jane had just scraped through as far as her grade was concernedâ¦Phyllis had taken the prize for general proficiency in her year and did Jane hear of it!â¦had continued to be driven to and from St. Agathaâs, had tried her best to like Phyllis and had not made any great headway at it, had trysted with Jody in the backyard twilights, and had