A Tangled Web (17 page)

It wasn't all Mercy had to say but Mrs. Howard deftly changed the unwelcome subject by switching to Aunt Becky's jug. Had Mercy heard? Two of Mrs. Adam Penhallow's boarders at Indian Spring, Gerald Elmslie and Grosset Thompson, had quarreled with each other over the jug and left. It was hard on Mrs. Adam, who found it hard enough to make both ends meet.

“But what on earth made Gerald and Grosset quarrel over the jug?” asked Mercy. “
They're
nothing to do with it.”

“Oh, Gerald is keeping company with Vera Dark and Grosset is engaged to Sally Penhallow,” was the sufficient explanation. But that would not fill Mrs. Adam's lean purse.

“It's my opinion that jug will drive somebody crazy yet,” said Mercy.

Gay was watching for Noel at the gate, under an old spruce tree that was like a grim, black sorrowful priest. Evenings out of mind she had watched for him so. She could distinctly hear on the calm evening air Drowned John's Olympian laughter echoing along the shore down at Rose River and she resented it. When she came her to dream of Noel, only the loveliest of muted sounds should be heard—the faintest whisper of trees—the half-heard, half-felt moan of the surf—the airiest sigh of wind. It was the dearest half-hour of the whole day—this faint, gold, dusky one just before it got truly dark. She wanted to keep it wholly sacred to Noel—she was young and in love and it was spring, remember. So of course Drowned John had to be bellowing and Roger had to come stepping up behind her and stand beside her, looking down at her. Tall, grim, scarred Roger! At least Gay thought him grim, contrasting his thin face and mop of dark red hair with Noel's smoothness and sleekness. Yet she liked Roger very much and would have liked him more if her clan had not wanted her to marry him.

Roger looked at her—at the trim, shining, golden-brown head of her. Her fine black brows. Her fan-lashed, velvety eyes. That dimple just below the delightful red mouth of hers. That creamy throat above her golden dress. She was as shy and sweet and willful as April, this little Gay. Who could help loving her? Her very look said, “Come and love me.” What a soft, gentle little voice she had—one of the few women's voices he had ever heard with pleasure. He was very critical as regards women's voices, and very sensitive to them. Nothing hurt him quite so much as an unlovely voice—not even unloveliness of face.

She had something in her hand for him, if she would but open her hand and give it. He had ceased to hope she ever would. He knew the dream behind her lashes was not for him. He knew perfectly well that she was waiting there for another man, compared to whom he, Roger, was a mere shadow and puppet. Suddenly he realized that he had lived thirty-two years against Gay's eighteen.

Why on earth, he wondered, had he to love Gay when there were dozens of girls who would jump at him, as he knew perfectly well? But there it was. He did love her. And he wanted her to be happy. He was glad that in such a world anyone could be as happy as Gay was. If that Gibson boy didn't
keep
her happy!

“This old gate is still here. I thought your mother was going to have it taken away.”

“I wouldn't let her,” said Gay. “This is
my
gate. I love it.”

“I like any gate,” said Roger whimsically. “A gate is a luring thing—a promise. There may be something wonderful beyond and you are not shut out. A gate is a mystery—a symbol. What would we find, you and I, Gay, if we opened that gate and went through?”

“A little green sunset hollow of white violets,” laughed Gay. “But we're not going through, Roger—there's a dew on the grass and I'd spoil my new slippers.”

She looked at him as she laughed—only for a moment, but that was the moment Noel's car flashed around the curve and she missed it. When she went back to the house, leaving Roger at the unopened gate, she found Noel sitting beside Nan on the steps. They had never met before but already they seemed to have known each other all their lives. And Nan was looking up at Noel with the eyes that instantly melted men but were not quite so effective with women. A strange, icy, little ripple ran all over Gay.

“I've just been asking Noel if he waves his hair with the curling-tongs,” said Nan in her lazy, impudent voice.

Gay forgot her shivers and all other unpleasant things as she drifted through the dances. Noel said delicious things to her and looked things still more delicious; and when halfway through it she sat out a dance with Noel in a shadowy corner of the balcony her cup brimmed full. For Noel whispered a question and Gay, smiling, blushing, yet with a queer little catch in her throat, and eyes strangely near to tears, whispered her answer. They were no longer “almost” engaged.

For the rest of the evening Gay floated—or seemed to float—in a rosy mist of something too rare and exquisite even to be called by so common a name as happiness. They left Nan at The Pinery on their way back and drove on to Maywood alone. They lingered over saying good-bye. It was such a sweet pleasure because they would meet so soon again. They stood under the big, late-blooming apple tree at the turn of the walk, among the soft, trembling shadows of the moonlit leaves. All around and beyond was a delicate, unreal moonlit world. The night was full of mystery and wonder; there never had—there never could have been—such a night before. Gay wondered as she gave her lips, red as the Rose of Love itself, to Noel, how many lovers all over the world were standing thus entranced—how many vows were being whispered thus in the starlight. The old tree suddenly waved its boughs over them as if in blessing. So many lovers had stood beneath it—it had screened so many kisses. Many of the lips that had kissed were ashes now. But the miracle of love renewed itself every springtime.

In her room Gay undressed by moonlight. She shredded the petals of the white June roses she had worn into the little blue rose-jar on her table. Her father had given her the jar when she was a child and had told her to drop a handful of rose leaves in it for every perfectly happy day she had. The jar was almost full now. There was only room really for one more handful. Gay smiled. She would put that handful in it on her wedding-day and then seal it up forever as a symbol of her girlhood.

Of course she didn't sleep. It would be a pity to waste a moment of such a night sleeping. It was nicer to lie awake thinking of Noel. Even planning a little bit about her wedding. It was to be in the fall. Her wedding-dress—satin as creamy as her own skin—“Your skin is like the petal of a white narcissus,” Noel had told her—shimmering silk stockings—laces like sea-foam—one of those slender platinum wedding-rings—“the lovely Mrs. Noel Gibson”—“one of the season's most charming brides”—a little house somewhere—perhaps one of those darling new bungalows—with yellow curtains like sunshine on its windows and yellow plates like circles of sunshine on its breakfast-table. With Noel opposite.

“Little love.” She could hear him as he said it under the apple tree, looking down into the pools of darkness that were her eyes. How wonderful and unbelievable it was that out of a whole world of beautiful girls, his for the asking, he should have chosen
her.

Just once she thought of the old Moon Man's warning—“Don't be too happy.” That poor old crazy 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.

“I'll always love this night,” thought Gay. “The eighth of June—it will always be the dearest date of the year. I'll always celebrate it in some dear secret little way of my own.”

And they would always be together—always. On rough paths and smooth. Dawns and twilights would be more beautiful because they would be together.

“If I were dead,” thought Gay, “and Noel came and looked at me I'd live again.”

Next day Nan rang Gay up on the telephone.

“I think I like your Noel,” Nan said drawlingly. “I think I'll take him from you.”

Gay laughed triumphantly.

“You can't,” she said.

5

Gay was not the only one of the clan who kept vigil that night. Neither Donna nor Peter slept. Mrs. David Dark and Mrs. Palmer Dark lay awake in their shame beside snoring spouses, wondering dumbly why life should be so hard for decent women who had always tried to do what was right. Virginia was awake worrying. Mrs. Toynbee Dark was awake nursing her venom. Pauline Dark was awake wondering if Hugh would really get that divorce. Thora Dark waited anxiously for a drunken, abusive husband to come home. The Sams slept, although both, did they but know it, had cause to be wakeful. Hugh Dark and Roger Penhallow slept soundly. Even William Y. slept, with a poultice on his nose. On the whole, the men seemed to have the best of it, unless Aunt Becky, sleeping so dreamlessly in her grave in the trim Rose River churchyard, evened things up for the women.

Joscelyn was not sleeping either. She went to bed and tossed restlessly for hours. Finally she rose softly, dressed, and slipped out of the house to the shore. The hollows among the dunes were filled with moonlight. The cool wind nestled in the grasses on the red “capes,” bringing whiffs of the faint, cold, sweet perfumes of night. There was a wash of gleaming ripples all along the shore and a mist mirage over the harbor. Far out she heard the heart-breaking call of the sea that had called for thousands of years.

She felt old and cold and silly and empty. Suppose Hugh really loved Pauline and wanted to be free. Very well, why not? Did not
she
love Frank Dark? Why could she not think philosophically, “Well, if Hugh gets a divorce
I
will be free, too, and perhaps Frank will come back”—no, she could not think that. Such a thought seemed to tarnish and cheapen the high flame of love she had nursed in her heart for years.

Dawn was breaking over the dunes and little shudders were running through the sand-hill grasses when she went back to the house. She had not dreamed of meeting any one at that early hour, but who should come trotting across Al Griscom's silent white pasture of morning dew but Aunty But, bent two-double, with her head wrapped in a gray shawl, out of which her bright little eyes peered curiously at Joscelyn. She seemed at once incredibly old and elfinly young.

“You're up early, Mrs. Dark.”

Joscelyn hated to be called Mrs. Dark, just as she hated to take a letter out of the post office addressed to “Mrs. Hugh Dark.” Once when she had had to sign some legal document “Joscelyn Dark,” she had thrown down the pen and risen with lips as white as snow. Aunty But was the only one of the clan who ever addressed her as “Mrs. Dark.” And there was no use in snubbing Aunty But.

“And you, too, Aunty.”

“Eh, but I've never been in bed at all. I've been up at Forest Myers' all night. A little girl there—a fine baby but got the Myers mouth, I'm afraid.”

“And Alice?”

“Alice is fine but awful sorry for herself. Yet she didn't have a bad time at all. No caterwauling to speak of. It's a pleasure to help a woman like that to a baby. I might have done the same for you in that house up there”—Aunty But waved her hand at distant Treewoofe, taking shape in the pale gray light that was creeping over the hill—“if you hadn't behaved as you did. I brought babies into that house many a time—I was there when Clara Treverne was born. Such a time! Old Cornelius—but he was young Cornelius then—was crazy wild. You'd have thought nobody'd ever had a baby before. Finally I had to decoy him to the cellar and lock him up, or that child would never have got born. Poor Mrs. Cornelius couldn't rightly give her mind to it for the racket Cornelius was making. Clara was the last baby at Treewoofe. It's high time there was some more. But there may be. I'm hearing Hugh is going to get a Yankee divorce. If that's so Pauline won't let him slip through her fingers a second time. But she'll never have the babies you'd have had, Joscelyn. She hasn't the figger for it.”

6

Little Brian Dark had to walk home from the funeral because his Uncle Duncan took a notion to go on to town.

“Mind ye get the stones picked off the gore-field before milking,” he told him.

Brian never had a day to play—never even half a day. He was very tired, for he had picked stones all the forenoon since early morning; and he was hungry. To be sure, he was always hungry; but the hunger in his heart was worse than any physical hunger. And there was no monument to his mother. Would he ever be able, when he grew up, to earn enough money to get one?

When he reached Duncan Dark's ugly yellow house among its lean trees, he took off his shabby “best suit,” put on his ragged work-garb, and went out to the gore to pick stones. He picked stones until milking time, his back aching as well as his heart. Then he helped Mr. Conway milk the cows. Mr. Conway was the only hired man Brian had ever heard of who was called “Mr.” Mr. Conway said he wouldn't work for anyone who wouldn't call him “Mr.” He was as good as any master, by gosh. Brian rather liked Mr. Conway, who looked more like a poet gone to seed than a hired man. He had a shock of wavy, dark auburn hair, a drooping mustache and goatee, and round, brilliant, brown eyes. He was a stranger from Nova Scotia and called himself a Bluenose. Brian often wondered why, for Mr. Conway's nose was far from blue. Red in fact.

When milking was over, Aunt Alethea, a tall, fair, slatternly woman, with a general air of shrewishness about her, told him to go down to Little Friday Cove and see if he could get a codfish from one of the Sams.

“Be smart about it, too,” she admonished him. “None of your dawdling, or the Moon Man will cotch you.”

What the Moon Man would do when he “cotched” him she never specified, perhaps reasoning that the unknown was always more terrible than the known. Brian's private opinion was that he would boil him in oil and pick his bones. He was more afraid of the Moon Man now than of the devil. Somebody had told him that when a boy had no father, the devil was his father and would come along some night and carry him off. He had been sick with horror many a night after that. But Mr. Conway had told him there was no devil and emphasized it with so many “By goshes” that Brian believed him. He wanted to believe him. But Mr. Conway By-goshed heaven away, too, and that was not so good because it meant he would never see his mother again. Mr. Conway didn't go so far as to say there was no God. He even admitted there probably was. Somebody had to run things, though he was making a poor job of it.