Authors: L. M. Montgomery
Donna walked along the winding drive by Rose River till she reached a little point running out into it. It was covered by an old orchard with an old ruined house in the middle of it. The Courting-House Uncle Pippin had named it, because spoony couples were in the habit of sitting on its steps; but there were none there when Donna reached it. She was just in time to meet Peter Penhallow, who had tied his boat to a bough and was coming up the old mossy path. They looked at each other, knowing it was Fate.
Peter had gone home from the funeral in a mood of black depression. What particular kind of an ass was he! Donna had deliberately turned her back on him and gone to weep at Barry's graveâor at least his gravestone. Her heart was still buried there. Peter had laughed when he had first heard Donna had said that. But he laughed no longer. It was now a tragedy.
In his despair he rushed to young Jeff's boat and began rowing down the river. He had some mad romantic notion of rowing down far enough to see Donna's light. Peter was so love-sick that there was no crazy juvenile thing he would not do. The day grew dimmer and dimmer. At first the river was of pale gold; then it was dim silverâthen like a waiting woman in the darkness. Along its soft velvet shores home-lights twinkled out. He, Peter, had no home. No home except where Donna was. Where she was would always be home for him. And then he saw her coming up the winding drive.
When they came to their senses they were sitting side by side on the steps of the Courting-House between two white blooming spirea bushes. Peter had said, “Good-evening,” when what he had wanted to say was, “Hail, goddess.” Donna could never recall what she said.
About them was nightâand faint starlightâand scented winds. A dog was taking the countryside into his confidence two farms away.
Donna knew now that Peter loved her. She would share the flame and wonder that was his lifeâshe would know the lure in the thought of treading where no white woman's foot had ever trodâthey would gaze together on virgin mountain tops climbing upward into sunset skiesâthey would stand on peaks in Darienâthey would spend nights together in the jungleâhot, scented, spicy nightsâor under desert starsâdidn't she hear the tinkling of camel-bells?
“I think I've been drunk ever since I saw you at Aunt Becky's leveeâa week agoâa year agoâa lifetime ago,” said Peter. “Drunk with the devilish magic of you, girl. And to think I've been hating you all my life!
You
!
”
Donna sighed with rapture. She must keep this moment forever. Adventureâmysteryâloveâthe three most significant words in any languageâwere to be hers again. She was for the time being as perfectly, youngly, fearlessly happy as if she had never learned the bitter lesson that joy could die. She couldn't think of anything to say, but words did not seem to be necessary. She knew she was very beautifulâshe had put on beauty like a garment. And the night was beautifulâand the sunken old rotten steps were beautifulâand the dog was beautiful. As for Peterâhe was just Peter.
“Isn't that a jolly wind?” said Peter, as it blew around them from the river. “I hate an evening when there's no wind. It seems so dead. I always feel ten times more alive when there's a wind blowing.”
“So do I,” said Donna.
Then they spent some rapturous silent minutes reflecting how wonderful it was that they should both love wind.
The moon came out from behind a cloud. Silver lights and ebon shadows played all about the old orchard. Peter had been silent so long that Donna had to ask him what he was thinking of. Just for the sake of hearing his dear voice again.
“Watch that dark cloud leaving the moon,” said Peter, who had no notion of making love in the common way. “It's as good as an eclipse.”
“How silvery it will be on the moon side,” said Donna dreamily. “It must be wonderful.”
“When I get my aeroplane we'll fly up in it when there's a cloud like that and see it from the moon side,” said Peter, who had never thought of getting an aeroplane before but knew now he must have one and sweep in it with Donna through the skies of dawn. “And I'll get you the Southern Cross for a brooch. Or would you prefer the belt of Orion for a girdle?”
“Oh,” said Donna. She stood up and held out her arms to the moon. Perhaps she knew she had very beautiful arms, shining like warm marble through the sleeves of her filmy black dress. “I wish I could fly up there now.”
“With me?” Peter had risen, too, and snatched at the dark blossom of her loveliness. He kissed her again and again. Donna returned his kissesâshamelessly, Virginia would have said. But there was no thought of Virginia or Barry or old feuds. They were alone in their exquisite night of moonlight and shadow and glamour.
“With me?” asked Peter again.
“With you,” answered Donna between kisses.
Peter laughed down into her eyes triumphantly.
“I'm the only man in the world you could ever love,” he said arrogantly and truthfully. “How soon can we be married?”
“Tee-heeâhow very romantic!” tittered Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had been standing for ten minutes at the corner of the old house watching them with sinister little black eyes.
“Ho, ho, my pet weasel, so you're there,” said Peter. “Rejoice with me, widow of Toynbee, Donna has promised to marry me.”
“So her heart has had a resurrection,” said Mrs. Toynbee. “It's an interesting idea. But what will Drowned John say about it?”
4
Peter and Donna were not the only pair whose troth was plighted that night. The phrase was Gay'sâshe thought it sounded much more wonderful than just getting engaged. Nan, who was to go to the dance with Gay and Noel, went home with her from the funeral and on the way told Gay that her mother had decided to stay on the island until the matter of the jug was settled.
“She says she won't go back to St. John till it's known who is to get it. Poor mums! She'll certainly go loco if
she
doesn't. Dad is to be in China most of the year on business, so he won't miss us. We're taking the rooms at The Pinery Aunt Becky had. To think when life is so short I must be buried here for a year. It's poisonous.”
Gay felt a little dashed. She didn't know why it chilled her to hear that Nan was going to stay around, but it did. She did not talk much and was rather relieved when they reached Maywood. Maywood had been one of the show-places of the clan when Howard Penhallow was alive, but it had gone to seed sinceâthe shingles curled up a bitâthe veranda roof was saggingâit needed paint badly. The grounds had run wild. But it had beauty of a sort yet, nestled under its steep hill of dark spruces with the near shore in its sapphire of sky and wave, and Gay loved it. It hurt and angered her when Nan called it a picturesque old ruin.
But she forgot all about Nan and her prickles as she dressed for the dance. It was delightful to make herself beautiful for Noel. She would wear her dress of primrose silk and her new, high-heeled fairy slippers. She always felt she was beautiful when she put on that dress. To slip such a lovely golden gown over her headâgive her bobbed hair shake like a daffodil tossing in the windâand then look at the miracle.
All very fine till Nan slipped in and stood beside herâpurposely perhaps. Nan in a wispy dress you could crumple in your handâa shining, daring gown of red with a design of silver grapes all over itâhair with a fillet of silver-green leaves, starred with one red bud, around her sleek, ash-gold head. Gay felt momentarily quenched.
“I look
homemade
beside her, that's the miserable truth,” she thought. “Pretty, oh, yes, but homemade.”
And her eyebrows looked so black and heavy beside the narrower line over Nan's subtle eyes. But Gay plucked up heartâthe faint rose of her cheeks under the dark stain of her lashes was not make-up and say what you might about smartness, that curl of Nan's in front of her ear looked exactly like a side-whisker. Gay forgot Nan again as she ran down to the gate in the back of the garden whence she could see the curve in the Charlottetown road around which Noel's car must come.
She saw Mercy Penhallow and her mother in the glass porch as she ran. And she knew that quite likely they were clapper-clawing NoelâMercy, anyhow. When Gay had first begun to go about with Noel, her whole clan lifted their noses and keened. If people only wouldn't interfere so in one's life! The idea of them insinuating that Noel wasn't good enough for herâthose inbred Darks and Penhallows! Don't dare marry outside of the Royal Family! Gay tossed her head in a fine scorn of them as she flitted through the garden on her slender and golden feet.
Mercy Penhallow had not yet begun on Noel. She and Mrs. Howard had been discussing the funeral in all its details. Now Mercy's pale watery eyes were fixed on Nan, who was on the front veranda smoking a cigarette to the scandal of all Rose River folks who happened to go by.
“She must think her back beautifulâshe shows so much of it,” said Mercy. “But then it's old-fashioned to be modest.”
Mrs. Howard smiled tolerantly. Mrs. Howard, her clan thought, was too tolerant. That was why matters had gone so far between Gay and Noel Gibson.
“She's going to the dance at the Charlottetown Country Club with Gay and Noel. I would have preferred Gay not to have gone, the night after the funeralâbut the young people of today don't feel as we used to do about such things.”
“The whole world is dancing mad,” snapped Mercy. “The young fry of today have neither manners nor morals. As for Nan, she's out to catch a man, they say. Boys on the brainârunning after them all the time, I'm told.”
“The girls of our time let the boys do the running,” smiled Mrs. Howard. “It was more fun, I thinkâone could stop when one wanted to be caught.”
Mercy, who had never been “caught,” whether she wanted to be or not, sniffed.
“I suppose Gay is still crazy after Noel?” she said. “Why don't you put a stop to that, Lucilla?”
Mrs. Howard looked distressed.
“How can I? Gay knows I don't like him. But the child is infatuated. Why, when I said something to her about his pedigree she said, âMother dear, Noel isn't a horse.'”
“And Roger is just mad about her!” moaned Mercy. “A splendid fellow with gobs of money. He could give her
everything
â”
“Except happiness,” said Mrs. Howard sadly. But she said it only in thought and Mercy prattled on.
“Noel hasn't a penny beyond his salary and I doubt if he'll ever have more. Besides, what are those Gibsons? Merely mushrooms. I wonder what her poor father would have thought of it.”
Mrs. Howard sighed. She was not as worldly as some of her clan. She did not want Gay to marry Roger, when she did not love him, simply because he had money. And it was not one of her counts against Noel that he had none. His Gibsonness mattered more. Mrs. Howard knew her Gibsons as Gay could never know them. And she had, in spite of Gay's quip about the pedigree, an old-fashioned conviction about what was bred in the bone. The first time she had seen Noel she had thought, “A boy shouldn't know how to use his eyes like that. And he has the Gibson mouth.”
But she couldn't bear to quarrel with Gay. Gay was all she had. Mercy didn't understand. It wasn't so simple “putting a stop” to things. Gay had a will of her own under all her youth and her sweetness, and Mrs. Howard couldn't bear to make her child unhappy.
“Maybe he's only flirting with her,” was Mercy's response to the sigh. “The Gibsons are very fickle.”
Mrs. Howard didn't like that either. It was unthinkable that a Gibson should be “only flirting” with a Penhallow. She resented the insinuation that Gay might be tossed aside.
“I'm afraid he's only too much in earnest and I thinkâI'm pretty sureâthey're almost engaged already.”
“Almost engaged. Lucilla dear, talk sense. Either people are engaged or they are not. And if Gay were
my
daughterâ”
Mrs. Howard hid a smile. She couldn't help thinking that if Gay had been Mercy's daughter neither Noel nor any other boy might have bothered her much. Poor Mercy! She was so very plain. With that terrible dewlap! And a face in which the features all seemed afraid of each other. Mrs. Howard felt for her the complacent pity of a woman who had once been very pretty herself and was still agreeable to look upon.
Mrs. Howard was by all odds the most popular woman in the clan. Wherever she was she always seemed to be in the right place without making any fuss about it. She generally got the best of any argument because she never arguedâshe only smiled. She did not know anything about a great many things, but she knew a great deal about loving and cooking and a woman can go far on that. She was no paw-and-claw friend, giving a dig now and a pat then, as so many were; and there was something about her that made people want to tell her their secretsâtheir beautiful secrets. Aunt Becky had always flattered herself that she knew all the clan secrets before anybody else, but Mrs. Howard knew many things before Aunt Becky did.
Even Stanton Grundy, who seldom spoke well of a woman because he had a reputation for sardonic humor to keep up, had been heard to say of Mrs. Howard that for once God knew what He was about when He made a woman.
Some of the clan thought Mrs. Howard dressed too gay for a widow of her age, but Mrs. Howard only laughed at this.
“I always liked bright colors and I'll wear them till I die,” she told them. “You can bury me in black if you want to, but as long as breath's in me I'll wear blue.”
“Talking of Roger,” said Mercy, “he's looking miserable of late. Thin as a lath. Is he worrying over Gay? Or overworking?”
“A little of both, I'm afraid. Mrs. Gateway died last week. No one on earth could have saved her, but Roger takes it terribly hard when he loses a patient.”
“He's got more feeling than most doctors,” said Mercy. “Gay's a blind little goose if she passes him over for Noel, that's all I've got to say.”