A Tangled Web (15 page)

“Aw, take the kid,” said Mr. Conway—“he doesn't have much fun.”

So Duncan Dark, being in one of his rare good-humored moods, had taken him.

Brian knew nothing and cared nothing about Aunt Becky. But he wanted a chance to put a little bouquet of wild flowers on his mother's grave—he always did that when he could, because she had no headstone and nobody ever went near her grave. If she had had a stone the line about the broken heart might very well have been inscribed on it also, though Brian knew nothing about that. He only knew he had no father and that he was a disgrace and nobody loved him. Nobody spoke to him at the funeral—though this was not out of unkindness but simply because they did not think of him. If they had thought of it they would have spoken, for they all had forgotten poor Laura Dark's shame and in any case were not, with all their faults and prejudices, cruel enough to visit it on her child. Besides, Duncan Dark himself was very off color, and the clan had little to do with him or his household. But Brian believed it was because he was a disgrace. He would have liked to join the group of boys but he saw in it big Marshall Tracy, who had once taken his scanty lunch from him in school and trampled on it. So he drew back. Anyway, the boys wouldn't welcome him, he knew. He was a shy, delicate, dreamy little creature and the other boys at school tormented him for this. So he had no playmates and was almost always lonely. Sometimes he wished wistfully that he had just one chum. He felt tears come into his eyes when he saw a sweet-looking woman come up to little Ted Penhallow and kiss him. Ted didn't like it, but Brian, who had never been kissed in his life that he could remember, envied him. He wished there was someone who cared enough to kiss him. There seemed to be so much love in the world and none of it for him. “Everybody has some friends but me,” he thought, his heart swelling under his shabby coat. On his way back from putting his little bouquet on his mother's grave, he passed Margaret Penhallow. Margaret would have spoken to him but Brian slipped by her before she could. He liked her looks—her eyes were kind and beautiful—but he was too shy and timid to linger. Margaret, who had once known and liked poor Laura Dark, thought it a pity her child was so sulky and unattractive. Sickly looking, too. But likely Alethea Duncan starved him.

2

Peter Penhallow was at the first clan funeral he had ever attended and had already been held up by indignant Mrs. Lawyer Dark of Summerside, who wanted to know why he hadn't come to her dinner Tuesday night.

“Your dinner—your dinner?” repeated Peter vaguely. “Why, I wasn't hungry.” He had forgotten all about her confounded dinner. He had spent Tuesday evening wondering how he could get possession of Donna Dark. If he had been quite sure of her he would have simply gone to Drowned John and demanded her. But he must be quite sure before he could do that. So now he came boldly up to her at the funeral. She and Virginia were together of course. They had been together the evening before, too, because it had rained. Virginia and Donna had always made it a part of their ritual to spend every rainy evening together. They sat in what Virginia was pleased to call her “den,” perfumed by burning incense—which Virginia defined as a “subtle suggestion of exotic romance.” When Donna tried it once at home Drowned John fired the burner out of the window and told her never to let him smell that damned stink in his house again.

Donna was still trying to be faithful to Barry's memory. Aided by Virginia's sentimentalities she succeeded for an hour in forgetting Peter and remembering Barry. It was like a wind blowing over an almost dead fire and for a brief space fanning one lingering ember into a fitful flame. After she went home she had got out Barry's letters and re-read them for the thousandth time. But they were suddenly lifeless—a casket rifled of its jewels—a vase with the perfume gone—a lamp with its flame blown out. The pulsing, vivid personality that was Peter Penhallow had banished the pale phantom that Barry had become.

Virginia was very suspicious. How dared Peter speak to Donna? He was actually holding out his hand.

And
Donna
was
taking
it.

“I thought you were on your way to South America,” said Donna.

“I've postponed my trip there,” said Peter, staring at her. “I think I'll take it as a honeymoon.”

“Oh,” said Donna, looking at him, too. Eyes can say a great deal in a second—especially when they are like twin deep pools with a star in them, as Peter was thinking Donna's were. And what a delicious mouth she had. He knew now that what he had been seeking for all his life was just the chance to kiss that dimpled mouth. To be sure, her nose was slightly irregular—rather too much like Drowned John's. When all was said and done he had seen hundreds of prettier women. But there was a charm about this Donna—a mighty and potent charm. And her voice was such a sweet, throaty, summery drawl. What a voice for love-making! Peter trembled before this slip—Peter who had never known fear. If he had been quite sure of her he would have put his arm around her and walked her out of the graveyard. But he was not sure, and before he knew what had happened Virginia had whisked Donna off to see the Richard Dark family plot, where Barry should have been buried, even if he wasn't, and where there was a monument to his memory. In the next plot to it Ned Powell was buried. Virginia had already knelt there in silent prayer for ten minutes, her long black veil sweeping picturesquely about her.

“I woke up last night thinking I heard him calling my name,” she murmured with tears in her voice. Virginia could infuse tears into her voice at will.

Donna was conscious of a new feeling of disgust and impatience. Was Virginia really any better than old Cousin Matilda Dark, who was always whining about her dear departed husband? When did grief cease to be beautiful and become ridiculous? Donna knew. When it became a second-hand grief—a mere ghost of grief. Yet she had loved Barry very truly. When the word came of his death, her agony had been so great that she had thought it must tear her in pieces. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world to resolve on a dedication of her whole life to his memory.
What
was Virginia reciting as she gazed mournfully at Barry's monument.

Oh, that old verse of Mrs. Browning's—

“Unless you can think when the song is done

No other is soft in the rhythm,

Unless you can feel when left by one

That all other men go with him

Unless you can dream that his faith is fast

In behoving or unbehoving,

Unless you can die when the dream is past

Oh, never call it loving.”

“That's so true of us, isn't it, Donna darling?” sobbed Virginia.

Donna felt still more impatient. Time was when she had thought that verse very beautiful and affecting. Well, it was so still. But not for her. Some mysterious hour of change had struck. All the melancholies and ecstasies of her young love belonged in a volume to which “finis” was at last written. With eyes suddenly made clear by what Donna, if she had ever heard the phrase, might have defined as “the expulsive power of a new affection,” she saw Virginia and herself as they were. The dramatic lovers of grief—nothing else.

“After all, you know,” she said coldly, “neither of us
did
die.”

“No-o,” admitted Virginia reluctantly. “But for weeks after Ned—died—I was tempted to drown myself. I never told you
that
.”

Donna reflected that it must be the only thing Virginia had
not
told her. It suddenly seemed to her that for ten years she had heard of nothing but Virginia's feelings when Ned died. It was an old story and a very boring one. Donna wondered if she were becoming heartless. But really poor Virginia was tiresome. Donna felt thankful she had never talked much about her feelings in Barry's case. She had no silly outpourings to blush over now and she was fortunately ignorant of how many of Virginia's absurdities were imputed to her. She walked away abruptly. After all, Barry's grave was not there. It was foolish to stand, a figure of woe, beside a plot where only his grandfather and grandmother were buried. She didn't believe for a moment that Virginia had ever had the faintest notion of drowning herself. She had been enjoying her weeds and her romantic position as a young war widow—Donna felt herself growing more hateful and cynical every moment—far too much for that.

Aunty But came wandering along—an odd little figure in her rusty black and her queer old bonnet with its rampant spray of imitation osprey. Aunty But was seventy-five but she was, as she claimed, spry as a cricket and still busy most of her time helping babies into the clan. She looked at the headstone of Barry's grandmother and sighed.

“She was his second wife—but she was a very nice woman,” she said. “And hasn't it been a lovely funeral, dears? But—don't you think—a little bit
too
cheerful.”

“Aunt Becky wanted it cheerful,” reminded Donna.

Aunty But shook her head. But what Aunty But would have said was never known. For at that moment the scandal took place and everybody swarmed to the gate, where there was a great commotion among a crowd of men.
Outside
the graveyard—oh, most providentially outside of it—two men were fighting each other—Percy Dark and David Dark, two hitherto peaceable friends. Going at each other, hatless and coatless, red-faced and furious. Nobody ever knew just what had started the fight except that it was something one of them had said about the jug. From verbal warfare they resorted to fists. Percy was heard to exclaim, “I'll take some of the conceit out of you!” and assaulted first. William Y. tried to stop them and for reward got a whack on the nose that made it bleed profusely and robbed him of his pomposity for a week. Mrs. David Dark fainted and Mrs. Percy was never to go out anywhere the rest of the summer, so ashamed was she. Though at the time she behaved very well. She neither fainted nor had hysterics. Undismayed by William Y.'s fate she got between the two mad creatures and dared David to strike
her.
Before David could accept or refuse the challenge, both he and Percy were caught from behind and frog-marched to their respective cars. The fight was finished but the scandal was not. Before night it was all over the country that two of the Darks had fought at their aunt's funeral over her property and had to be dragged apart by their wives. It took years for them to live it down.

“Thank heaven, the minister was away before they started,” sobbed Mrs. Clifford.

Uncle Pippin pretended to be horrified, but in secret he thought the fight made the funeral more interesting and felt it a pity Aunt Becky wasn't alive to see the prayerful David and the sanctimonious Percy pummeling each other like that. Tempest Dark laughed for the first time since his wife's death.

3

Donna and Virginia walked home together. Virginia contrived to tell Donna some weird tales about Peter—especially those years of his having “gone native” in the East Indies and having several dozens of dark-skinned wives. Donna didn't believe a word of them, but as yet she did not dare to defend Peter. She was not at all sure about him—especially about his attitude to her. Did she really exist for him at all? Until she was certain of that she was not going to commit herself. Let Virginia rave.

“I wonder if it's going to rain,” said Virginia at Drowned John's gate.

“No—no, I'm sure it isn't—it's going to be a lovely evening. The moon will clear away the clouds,” said Donna positively. She really couldn't stand any more of Virginia just then. Besides, she was dreadfully hungry and Virginia, who cared nothing for eating, always contrived to make the hearty Donna feel like a pig.

“I wish there was no moon tonight. I hate moonlight—it always reminds me of things I want to forget,” said Virginia mournfully and inconsistently. For Virginia certainly did not want to forget things. But Virginia never allowed consistency to bother her when she got hold of what she thought a touching phrase. She floated off in her weeds uneasily. Certainly something had come over Donna. But it couldn't be Peter. It was absurd to suppose it could be Peter.

It
was
Peter. Donna knew that at last as she entered Drowned John's stodgy and comfortable home. She was in love with Peter Penhallow. And he, if eyes were to be believed, was in love with her. And what was to be done about it? Drowned John would raise the roof. Both he and Thekla were opposed to her marrying again—marrying anybody. But imagination faltered before the scenes they would make if she tried to marry Peter Penhallow. Well, Peter hadn't asked her to marry him. Perhaps he never would. Who in the world was laughing upstairs? Oh, that fool of a Thekla! Thekla was always trying some new health fad. Just now it was laughing for ten minutes every day. It got on Donna's nerves and she was raspy enough when she went to the supper table. Drowned John was in a bad temper, too. He had come home from the funeral to find his favorite pig sick and couldn't swear about it. Thekla tried to placate him and ordinarily this would have appeased him. He liked to feel that his women-folk felt the need of placating him. But why wasn't Donna doing it? Donna was sitting in an absent silence as if his good or bad temper were nothing to her. Drowned John took his annoyance out in abusing everybody who had been at the funeral—especially Peter Penhallow. He expressed himself forcibly regarding Peter Penhallow

“How would you like him for a son-in-law?” asked Donna.

Drowned John thought Donna was trying to be funny. He barked out a laugh.

“I'd sooner have the devil,” he said, banging the table. “Thekla, is this knife
ever
sharpened? Two women to run this house and a man can't get a decent bread-knife!”

Donna escaped after supper. She could not spend the evening in the house. She was restless and unhappy and lonely. What had Peter meant about taking a honeymoon in South America. Who was to be the bride? Oh, she was tired of everything. Even the very moon looked forlorn—a widow of the skies.