Free 1 by Gay street, so Jane always thought, did not live up to its name. Page B

appraised and in spite of Aunt Irene’s kindness of voice and manner she sensed that there was something in the appraisal not wholly friendly.
    “You are not at all like your mother. She was the prettiest thing I ever saw. You are like your father, darling. And now we must have a bite of supper.”
    “Oh, no, please no,” cried Jane impulsively. She knew she couldn’t swallow a mouthful … it was misery to think of trying.
    “Just a bite … just one little bite,” said Aunt Irene persuasively as if coaxing a baby. “There’s such a nice chocolate peppermint cake. I really made it for your father. He’s just like a boy in some ways, you know … such a sweet tooth. And he has always thought my chocolate cakes just about perfection. Your mother did try so hard to learn to make them like mine … but … well, it’s a gift. You have it or you haven’t. One really couldn’t expect a lovely little doll like her to be a cook … or a manager either for that matter and I told your father that often enough. Men don’t always understand, do they? They expect everything in a woman. Sit here, Janie.”
    Perhaps the “Janie” was the last straw. Jane was not going to be “Janied.”
    “Thank you, Aunt Irene,” she said very politely and very resolutely, “but I can’t eat anything and it wouldn’t be any use at all to try. Please may I go to bed?”
    Aunt Irene patted her shoulder.
    “Of course, you poor darling. You’re all tired out and everything so strange. I know how hard it is for you. I’ll take you right upstairs to your room.”
    The room was very pretty, with hangings of basket-weave rose-patterned cretonne and a silk-covered bed so smooth and sleek that it looked as if it had never been slept in. But Aunt Irene deftly removed the silk spread and turned down the sheets.
    “I hope you’ll have a good sleep, lovey. You don’t know what it means to me to have you sleeping under my roof … Andrew’s little girl … my only niece. And I was always so fond of your mother … but … well, I don’t quite think she ever really liked me. I always felt she didn’t, but I never let it make any difference between us. She didn’t like to see me and your father talking much together … I always realized that. She was so much younger than your father … a mere child … it was natural for him to turn to me for advice as he’d always been used to do. He always talked things over with me first. She was a little jealous, I think … she could hardly help that, being Mrs Robert Kennedy’s daughter. Never let yourself be jealous, Janie. It wrecks more lives than anything else. Here’s a puff, lovey, if you’re chilly in the night. A wet night in P. E. Island is apt to be cool. Good night, lovey.”
    Jane stood alone in the room and looked about her. The bed lamp had a lamp-shade painted with roses with a bead fringe. For some reason Jane couldn’t endure that lamp-shade. It was too smooth and pretty just like Aunt Irene. She went to it and put out the light. Then she went to the window. Beat, beat went the rain on the panes. Splash, splash went the rain on the roof of the veranda. Beyond it Jane could see nothing. Her heart swelled. This black, alien, starless land could never be home to her.
    “If I only had mother,” she whispered. But, though she felt that something had taken her life and torn it apart, she did not cry.

13
    Jane was so tired after the preceding sleepless nights on the train that she went to sleep almost at once. But she wakened while it was still night. The rain had ceased. A bar of shining light lay across her bed. She slipped out from between Aunt Irene’s perfumed sheets and went to the window. The world had changed. The sky was cloudless and a few shining, distant stars looked down on the sleeping town. A tree not far away was all silvery bloom. Moonlight was spilling over everything from a full moon that hung like an enormous bubble over what must be a bay or harbour and there