1 by Gay street, so Jane always thought, did not live up to its name. Read Free Book Online Page A

Not that there was much chance of talking to mother about anything just now. Never had mother been so brilliant, so gay, so beautifully dressed, so constantly on the go to parties and teas and bridges. Even the goodnight kiss had become a rare thing … or Jane thought it had. She did not know that always when her mother came in late, she tiptoed into Jane’s room and dropped a kiss on Jane’s russet hair … lightly so as not to waken her. Sometimes she cried when she went back to her own room but not often, because it might show at breakfast and old Mrs Robert Kennedy did not like people who cried o’ nights in her house.
    For three weeks the picture and Jane were the best of friends. She took it out and looked at it whenever she could … she told it all about Jody and about her tribulations with her homework and about her love for mother. She even told it her moon secret. When she lay lonely in her bed, the thought of it was company. She kissed it good night and took a peep at it the first thing in the morning.
    Then Aunt Gertrude found it.
    The moment Jane came in from St Agatha’s that day she knew something was wrong. The house, which always seemed to be watching her, was watching her more closely than ever, with a mocking, triumphant malice. Great-grandfather Kennedy scowled more darkly than ever at her from the drawing-room wall. And grandmother was sitting bolt-upright in her chair flanked by mother and Aunt Gertrude. Mother was twisting a lovely red rose to pieces in her little white hands but Aunt Gertrude was staring at the picture grandmother was holding.
    “MY picture!” cried Jane aloud.
    Grandmother looked at Jane. For once her cold blue eyes were on fire.
    “Where did you get this?” she said.
    “It’s mine,” cried Jane. “Who took it out of my drawer? Nobody had any business to do that.”
    “I don’t think I like your manner, Victoria. And we are not discussing a problem in ethics. I asked a question.”
    Jane looked down at the floor. She had no earthly idea why it seemed such a crime to have Kenneth Howard’s picture but she knew she was not going to be allowed to have it any more. And it seemed to Jane that she just could not bear that.
    “Will you be kind enough to look at me, Victoria? And to answer my question? You are not tongue-tied, by any chance, I suppose.”
    Jane looked up with stormy and mutinous eyes.
    “I cut it out of a paper … out of Saturday Evening.”
    “That rag!” Grandmother’s tone consigned Saturday Evening to unfathomable depths of contempt. “Where did you see it?”
    “At Aunt Sylvia’s,” retorted Jane, plucking up spirit.
    “Why did you cut this out?”
    “Because I liked it.”
    “Do you know who Kenneth Howard is?”
    “No.”
    “‘No, grandmother,’ if you please. Well, I think it is hardly necessary to keep the picture of a man you don’t know in your bureau drawer. Let us have no more of such absurdity.”
    Grandmother lifted the picture in both hands. Jane sprang forward and caught her arm.
    “Oh, grandmother, don’t tear it up. You mustn’t. I want it terribly.”
    The moment she said it, she knew she had made a mistake. There had never been much chance of getting the picture back but what little there had been was now gone.
    “Have you gone completely mad, Victoria?” said grandmother … to whom nobody had ever said, “You mustn’t,” in her whole life before. “Take your hand off my arm, please. As for this …” grandmother tore the picture deliberately into four pieces and threw them on the fire. Jane, who felt as if her heart were being torn with it, was on the point of a rebellious outburst when she happened to glance at mother. Mother was pale as ashes, standing there with the leaves of the rose she had torn to pieces strewing the carpet around her feet. There was such a dreadful look of pain in her eyes that Jane shuddered. The look was gone in a moment but Jane could never forget that it had been there. And she knew