Jane of Lantern Hill (1937)

Chapter 8

Then there was the affair of the recitation.

They were getting up a school programme at St Agatha's to which only the families of the girls were invited. There were to be a short play, some music and a reading or two. Jane had secretly hoped to be given a part in the play, even if it were only one of the many angels who came and went in it, with wings and trailing white robes and home-made haloes. But no such good luck. She suspected that it was because she was rather bony and awkward for an angel. 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.