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Page 27
She did not report it.
JANE
I
Having retired to a hospital to sulk, Jane remained there. The
family came and sat by her bed uncomfortably and smoked, and finally
retreated with defeat written large all over it, leaving Jane to the
continued possession of Room 33, a pink kimono with slippers to
match, a hand-embroidered face pillow with a rose-coloured bow on
the corner, and a young nurse with a gift of giving Jane daily the
appearance of a strawberry and vanilla ice rising from a meringue of
bed linen.
Jane's complaint was temper. The family knew this, and so did
Jane, although she had an annoying way of looking hurt, a gentle
heart-brokenness of speech that made the family, under the
pretence of getting a match, go out into the hall and swear softly
under its breath. But it was temper, and the family was not
deceived. Also, knowing Jane, the family was quite ready to
believe that while it was swearing in the hall, Jane was biting
holes in the hand-embroidered face pillow in Room 33.
It had finally come to be a test of endurance. Jane vowed to stay
at the hospital until the family on bended knee begged her to emerge
and to brighten the world again with her presence. The family, being
her father, said it would be damned if it would, and that if Jane
cared to live on an�mic chicken broth, oatmeal wafers and massage
twice a day for the rest of her life, why, let her.
The dispute, having begun about whether Jane should or should not
marry a certain person, Jane representing the affirmative and her
father the negative, had taken on new aspects, had grown and
altered, and had, to be brief, become a contest between the
masculine Johnson and the feminine Johnson as to which would take
the count. Not that this appeared on the surface. The masculine
Johnson, having closed the summer home on Jane's defection and gone
back to the city, sent daily telegrams, novels and hothouse grapes,
all three of which Jane devoured indiscriminately. Once, indeed,
Father Johnson had motored the forty miles from town, to be told
that Jane was too ill and unhappy to see him, and to have a glimpse,
as he drove furiously away, of Jane sitting pensive at her window in
the pink kimono, gazing over his head at the distant hills and
clearly entirely indifferent to him and his wrath.
So we find Jane, on a frosty morning in late October, in triumphant
possession of the field--aunts and cousins routed, her father
sulking in town, and the victor herself--or is victor feminine?--and
if it isn't, shouldn't it be?--sitting up in bed staring blankly at
her watch.
Jane had just wakened--an hour later than usual; she had rung the
bell three times and no one had responded. Jane's famous temper
began to stretch and yawn. At this hour Jane was accustomed
to be washed with tepid water, scented daintily with violet,
alcohol-rubbed, talcum-powdered, and finally fresh-linened, coifed
and manicured, to be supported with a heap of fresh pillows and fed
creamed sweet-bread and golden-brown coffee and toast.
Jane rang again, with a line between her eyebrows. The bell was not
broken. She could hear it distinctly. This was an outrage! She would
report it to the superintendent. She had been ringing for ten
minutes. That little minx of a nurse was flirting somewhere with one
of the internes.
Jane angrily flung the covers back and got out on her small bare
feet. Then she stretched her slim young arms above her head, her
spoiled red mouth forming a scarlet O as she yawned. In her
sleeveless and neckless nightgown, with her hair over her shoulders,
minus the more elaborate coiffure which later in the day helped
her to poise and firmness, she looked a pretty young girl,
almost--although Jane herself never suspected this--almost an
amiable young person.
Jane saw herself in the glass and assumed immediately the two lines
between her eyebrows which were the outward and visible token of
what she had suffered. Then she found her slippers, a pair of
stockings to match and two round bits of pink silk elastic of
private and feminine use, and sat down on the floor to put them on.
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