Paris gossip had reached St. Mary’s Plains. I had thought it so far away, so safe. I was mistaken. Many acquaintances had been going back and forth across the Atlantic carrying information, more or less correct, of my doings. The fact that my husband was no longer living with me was variously interpreted. Had I come rushing home for refuge that first summer they would have been on my side, but I had not. I seemed to have cynically accepted his liaison with another woman and was brazenly continuing my worldly life.
My Aunt Patience, as I came gradually to realize, had been the person least affected by these tales. She lived the life of a hermit, wrapped up in her studies, and had refused to listen to gossip. “I guess Jane herself tells me what she wants me to know,” she had said to more than one busybody, but of course I suspected nothing of all this on arrival. I had gone to America because of an unquenchable longing to be with my own people, but I was not without a certain feeling of pride. I was scarcely fatuous enough to consider myself as a martyr, but it did seem to me that I had suffered through no fault of my own and had taken my troubles with a respectable calm. Philibert was still wandering about Europe with Bianca. I had heard nothing from him directly. An occasional message reached me through his solicitors, that was all. I had continued to carry on. I was keeping my promise to your mother.
My Aunt Patty came to New York to meet my steamer. I saw her from the deck, before the ship was in dock, a powerful figure, something elemental about her, reducing others to insignificance; I waved. She looked at me but made no sign; she did not recognize me. As I came down the gangway I saw her peering about in the crowd still searching, and when I walked up to her and said “Aunt Patty, it’s me, Jane,” she dropped her large black handbag and gave a gasp. She of course was the same, only more so, bigger and grander, with her black mackintosh flapping, her bonnet askew and wisps of grey hair hanging down, a grand old scarecrow. How she hugged me, her long arms round me, people jostling us. That was a blissful moment. I was perfectly happy for that moment, a child at rest and comforted.
Then she said, “Where’s your baby?”
“I didn’t bring her, Aunt.”
“Oh!” Her face fell.
“I couldn’t, Aunt, such a long trip for such a short visit, and her father wouldn’t let her come.”
“I see.” She shut her grim lips. It was clear that she was very disappointed.
We were to take the train that night for St. Mary’s Plains. There was some confusion about my luggage and trouble about getting it across the city. I seemed to have a great deal. A great deal too much, my Aunt said. Celestine had a difference of opinion with the porters and scolded them in her high, voluble, native tongue. My Aunt did not know what to make of Celestine.