A Tangled Web (11 page)

“I don't believe Dandy'll have a thing to say about it. Aunt Becky wouldn't let anyone else decide that,” said Titus. “I'd just go for months in misery and not get a da—not get a blessed thing out of it. Besides, Mary, how is anyone going to live with me if I can't swear? When I swear for ten minutes on end a child could eat out of my hand. Isn't that better than bottling it up and thinking murder? Take this horse now. I've just gotter swear at him or he'd never travel. If I talked anything else to him he wouldn't understand what I was saying.”

However, Titus had to promise to try. It would, he reflected, be damned hard. These women were so damned unreasonable. But he'd have a go at it, damned if he wouldn't. The race for the jug was on and devil take the hindmost.

Gay slipped away alone. She knew a certain little ferny corner down the side road where she meant to stop and read Noel's letter. She looked so happy that the Moon Man shook his head at her.

“Take care,” he whispered warningly. “It's dangerous to be too happy—those that sit in the high places don't like it. Look how they hide my Lady from me so much of the time.”

But Gay only laughed at him and ran on down the side path and out by the side gate under the apple blossoms. Gay loved apple blossoms. It always hurt her that they lasted such a little while—such milky, wonderful things with hearts of love's own hue. To be sure, the roses came afterwards. But if one could only have the apple blossoms and the roses, too. Gay felt greedy of beauty. She wanted every kind all at once, now when life itself seemed just on the point of breaking into some marvelous blossom and all the coming days were in a hurry to be born. Youth is like that. It wants everything at once, not realizing that something must be saved for autumn days. Save? Nonsense! Pour it all out now, a libation to the approaching god. Gay did not think this—she only felt it, hurrying down the road, as sweet and virginal as the apple blossoms.

“A nice little cuddler that, if you ask me,” chuckled Stanton Grundy admiringly, giving Uncle Pippin a dig in the ribs.

“I'm not asking you,” said Uncle Pippin irritably.
He
had a sense of the fitness of things. Poke fun at old maids and fat married women if you like, but leave young things like Gay alone. Grundy's vulgar chuckle seemed to debase everything. Hadn't that man
any
reverence for anything? And why didn't he read a few halitosis advertisements? Heaven knew the magazines were full of them.

Gay read her letter in her ferny corner and kissed it and put it back in her bosom. There was only one terrible thing in it. Noel said he could not come out till Saturday. They were going to be extra busy in the bank. Had she to live three whole days without seeing him? Could she? A little cluster of silver daisies growing by a lichened old stone nodded at her. She picked one of them—witch daisies that knew whether your sweetheart loved you or not. Too-wise daisies. Gay pulled away the tiny ivory petals one by one—he loves me—he loves me not—he loves me. Gay took out the letter again and kissed it and put the torn daisy petals into it. She was young and pretty and very much in love. And he loved her. The daisies said so. What a world! The poor Moon Man! As if one could be too happy! As if God didn't like to see you happy! Why, people were made for happiness. And wasn't it the most miraculous thing that out of all the world she and Noel should have met and loved! When there were so many other girls he might have fancied. She seemed to be at the very heart of some exquisite magic that had changed everything in life for her.

13

Donna came out beside Virginia. She had begun to collect her wits, but she did not quite know yet exactly what had taken place. She knew Peter was sitting on the railing, and she meant to sweep past him haughtily in all her dark dignity of widowhood, with lids cast down. But as she passed him she had to look up. They had another momentary unforgettable exchange of eyes. Virginia saw it this time and was vaguely disturbed by it. It did not look like a glance of hatred. She clutched Donna's arm as they went down the steps.

“Donna, I believe that pig of a Peter is falling in love with you.”

“Oh—do you think so—
do
you really think so?” said Donna. Virginia could not understand her tone at all. But it
must
be a horrified one.

“I'm afraid so. Wouldn't it be terrible for you? What a blessing he's leaving for South America tonight. Just
think
what it would be like to have him trying to make love to you.”

Donna
did
think of it. A strange shiver of terror and delight went over her from head to foot. She felt thankful that Drowned John bellowed to her that instant to hurry up. She fled to his car, leaving a puzzled and somewhat alarmed Virginia on the steps.
What
had come over Donna?

Mrs. Foster Dark went home and ate her supper under Happy's fiddle hanging on the wall. Murray Dark went home and thought about Thora. Artemas Dark reflected dismally that it wouldn't do for him to get drunk for over a year. Crosby Penhallow and Erasmus spent the evening with their flutes—on the whole happily, although Crosby had to put up with some sly digs from Erasmus about old Becky's being in love with him. Peter Penhallow went home and unpacked his trunk. He had searched the world over for the meaning of life's great secret and now he had found it in one look from Donna Dark's eyes. Was he a fool? Then welcome folly.

Big and Little Sam went home across windy seafìelds, and on the way home Little Sam bought a ticket from little Mosey Gautier for the raffle Father Sullivan was getting up down at Chapel Point to raise funds for the Old Sailors' Home. Big Sam wouldn't buy a ticket.
He
wasn't going to have no truck with Catholics and their doings, and he thought Little Sam might have expended his quarter to far better advantage. They had the heathen to think of.

“No good's going to come of it,” he remarked sourly.

Little Sam went home and, dismissing the old Dark jug from his mind, sat down to read his favorite volume,
Fox's Book of Martyrs,
with the salt wind that even his battered and unromantic heart loved, blowing in at his window. Big Sam went down to the rocks and solaced himself by repeating the first canto of his epic to the gulf.

14

Denzil Penhallow told Margaret she must walk home—he and the wife were going down to have tea with the William Y.'s. Margaret was secretly well pleased. It was only a mile and the month was June. Besides, it would give her a chance to stop and see Whispering Winds.

Whispering Winds was the small secret which made poor Margaret's life endurable. It wound in and out of her drab life like a ribbon of rainbows. It was the little house on the Bay Silver side road where Aunt Louisa Dark had lived. At her death, two years ago, it had become the property of her son Richard, who lived in Halifax. It was for sale but nobody had ever wanted to buy it—nobody, that is, except Margaret, who had no money to buy anything and would have been hooted at if it were so much as suspected that she wanted to buy a house. Hadn't she a perfectly good, ungrudged home with her brother? What in the world would
she
want with a house?

Margaret did want it—terribly. She had always loved that little house of Aunt Louisa's. It was she who gave it the dear secret name of Whispering Winds, and dreamed all kinds of foolish, sweet dreams about it. As soon as she got to the Bay Silver side road, she turned down it and very soon was at the lane of her house—an old, old lane, grassy and deep-rutted, with bleached old gray “longer” fences hemming it in. There were clumps of birches all along it for a little way—then young spruces growing up thickly on either side—then just between them, at the end, the little house, once white, now as gray as the longers. There it was, basking in the late sun—smiling at her with its twinkling windows. Back of it was a steep hill where tossing young maples were whitening in the wind, and off to the right was a glimpse of purple valley. There was an old well in one corner, with an apple tree spilling blossoms over it. A little field off to the right was cool and inviting in the shadow of a spruce wood. The scent of its clover drifted across to Whispering Winds. The air was like a thin golden wine and the quiet was a benediction.

Margaret caught her breath with the delight of it.

Whispering Winds was one of those houses you loved the minute you saw them, without being in the least able to tell why—perhaps because its roof-line was so lovely against the green hill. She loved it so. She walked about the old garden, that was beginning to have such a look of neglect. She longed to prune it and weed it and dress it up. That delightful big bed of striped grass was encroaching on the path, those forget-me-nots were simply running wild. They and the house were just crying out for someone to take care of them. The house and the garden belonged together some way—you couldn't have separated them. The house seemed to grow out of the garden. The shrubs and vines reached up around it to hold it and caress it. If she could just have this house—with a baby in it—she would ask for nothing more. Not even Aunt Becky's jug. Margaret realized pathetically that she must give up writing poetry for a while, or she might have no chance of the jug. And she still hankered after it. Since she could never have Whispering Winds she wanted the jug. Dandy Dark had always been friendly to her. If it should rest with him to give the jug, she stood a better chance than from Aunt Becky. Cruel old Aunt Becky who had jeered at her and her poor little poems and her old-maidenhood before all the clan. Margaret knew that perhaps she
was
silly and faded and childish and unimportant and undesired, but it hurt to have it rubbed in so. She never harmed anyone. Why couldn't they leave her alone? Denzil and Mrs. Denzil were always giving her digs, too, about “single blessedness,” and her nieces and nephews openly laughed at her. But here, in this remote shadowy little garden, she forgot all about it. Things ceased to sting. If she could only stay here forever, where the robins called to one another at evening in the maple wood. Listen to them.

But it was soon time to go home. Mrs. Denzil would expect her to get the supper for the family and help milk cows. She bade good-bye regretfully to Whispering Winds and went on to the square bare house in a treeless yard where the Denzil Penhallows lived. She went up to her hideous little room looking out on the hen-yard, which she had to share with Gladys Penhallow. Gladys was there with some of her friends, thinking at the top of their voices as usual. It was always noisy. There were never any quiet moments. Margaret's head ached. She wished she had not gone to Aunt Becky's levee. It hadn't done any good. As for the old
Pilgrim's
Progress,
it could lie on in The Pinery attic for all she cared.

How pretty Gay Penhallow had looked today! And so young. What was it like to be eighteen? Margaret had forgotten if she had ever really known. What had been the trouble between Hugh and Joscelyn? And how dared Thora Dark, who had a husband, be so attractive to other men? What would it be like to have a man look at you the way she had seen Murray looking at Thora—though of course he had no business to be looking at another man's wife like that. Poor Lawson! It was dreadful to see the hunger in Naomi's eyes. How tickled Ambrosine was over that ring! Margaret did not grudge her the ring. Perhaps Ambrosine felt about it the way
she
felt about Whispering Winds. Though of course poor old Ambrosine's hands
were
too thin and knotty to wear rings. Margaret looked with considerable satisfaction at her own slender, shapely fingers. Nobody could say she hadn't a pretty hand. Roger Dark was a nice fellow. Why didn't he get a nice girl for a wife? They said he was crazy about Gay Penhallow, who wouldn't look at him. There you were again. Love going to waste all around you and you starving for a little. The idea suddenly struck Margaret that God wasn't fair. She shuddered and dismissed it as a blasphemy. It sounded like something that dreadful Grundy man would say. Poor Cousin Robina! Peter Penhallow, they said, was off on another of his explorations. He always seemed to live life with such gusto. But Margaret did not envy him. She never wanted to go away from home. What she wanted was a place where she could put down roots and grow old quietly. Margaret thought she would not mind growing old if she could be left to do it in peace. It was hard to grow old gracefully when you were always being laughed at because you were not young. But there was only one career for women in her clan. Of course you could be a nurse or a teacher or dressmaker, or something like that, to fill in the time before marriage, but the Darks and Penhallows did not take you seriously.

15

“Tell Joscelyn Dark I want to see her before she goes home, Ambrosine,” ordered Aunt Becky.

Joscelyn had walked the short distance up from Bay Silver and intended to walk back. Palmer Dark had taken her mother and her Aunt Rachel home in his car. She felt that she had about enough of Aunt Becky for one day, but she went back to the bedroom readily enough. After all, the poor old soul was not long for this world.

Aunt Becky was lying back on her pillows. She was gazing earnestly on a little old tintype hanging on the wall near her bed. The picture was not decorative. At least so Joscelyn thought. But then she did not see it with Aunt Becky's eyes. Joscelyn saw only a tubby pompous old man, with a fringe of whisker around his face, and a thin, scrawny little woman in a preposterous dress. Aunt Becky saw a big, hearty, high-colored man whose abounding vitality brought a gust of life into every existence and a vivid-eyed girl whose wit and sly mirth had been the spice of every company she was in and whose love affairs were stimulating and piquant. Aunt Becky sighed as she turned to Joscelyn. The fire had gone out of her eyes, the sting out of her voice. She looked exactly what she was—a very old, very ill, very tired woman.