A Tangled Web (2 page)

Aunt Becky was saying to poor Mrs. Paul Dark, who had brought her son into a censorious world in a Ford coupe on the way to the hospital. Uncle Pippin had voiced the general clan feeling on that occasion when he said gloomily,

“Sad mismanagement somewhere.”

A little snicker drifted over the room, and Mrs. Paul made her way to a chair with a burning face. But interest had already shifted from her to Murray Dark, a handsome middle-aged man who was shaking Aunt Becky's hand.

“Well, well, come to get a peep at Thora, hey? She's here—over there beyond Pippin and that Grundy man.”

Murray Dark stalked to a chair, reflecting that when you belonged to a clan like this you really lived a dog's life. Of course he had come to see Thora. Everybody knew that, including Thora herself. Murray cared not a hoot about the Dark jug but he did care tremendously about a chance to look at Thora. He did not have too many of them. He had been in love with Thora ever since the Sunday he had first seen her sitting in the church, the bride of Christopher Dark—drunken ne'er-do-well Chris Dark, with his insidious charm that no girl had ever been able to resist. All the clan knew it, too, but there had never been any scandal. Murray was simply waiting for Chris to pass out. Then he would marry Thora. He was a clever, well-to-do farmer and he had any amount of patience. In time he would attain his heart's desire—though sometimes he wondered a little uneasily how long that devil of a Chris
would
hang on. That family of Darks had such damn' good constitutions. They could live after a fashion that would kill any ordinary man in five years, and flourish for twenty. Chris had been dying by inches for ten years, and there was no knowing how many inches were left of him yet.

“Do get some hair tonic,” Aunt Becky was advising William Y. Penhallow, who even as a baby had looked deadly serious and who had never been called Bill in his life. He had hated Aunt Becky ever since she had been the first person to tell him he was beginning to get bald.

“My dear”—to Mrs. Percy Dark—“it's such a pity you haven't taken more care of your complexion. You had a fairly nice skin when you came to Indian Spring. Why,
you
here?”—this to Mrs. Jim Trent, who had been Helen Dark.

“Of course I'm here,” retorted Mrs. Jim. “Am I so transparent that there's any doubt?”

“It's a long time since you remembered my existence,” snapped Aunt Becky. “But the jug is bringing more things in than the cat.”

“Oh,
I
don't want your jug, I'm sure,” lied Mrs. Jim. Everybody knew she was lying. Only a very foolish person would lie to Aunt Becky, to whom nobody had ever as yet told a lie successfully. But then Mrs. Jim Trent lived at Three Hills, and nobody who lived at Three Hills was supposed to have much sense.

“Got your history finished yet, Miller?” asked Aunt Becky.

Old Miller Dark looked foolish. He had been talking for years of writing a history of the clan but had never got started. It didn't do to hurry these things. The longer he waited the more history there would be. These women were always in such a confounded hurry. He thankfully made way for Palmer Dark, who was known as the man who was proud of his wife.

“Looks as young as ever, doesn't she?” he demanded beamingly of Aunt Becky.

“Yes—if it's any good to look young when you're not—” conceded Aunt Becky, adding by way of a grace note, “Got the beginnings of a dowager's cushion, I see. It's a long time since I saw you, Palmer. But you're just the same, only more so. Well, well, and here's Mrs. Denzil Penhallow. Looking fine and dandy, too. I've always heard a fruit diet was healthy. I'm told you ate all the fruit folks sent in for Denzil when he was sick last winter.”

“Well, what of it?
He
couldn't eat it. Was it to be wasted?” retorted Mrs. Denzil. Jug or no jug,
she
wasn't going to be insulted by Aunt Becky.

Two widows came in together—Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had had her mourning all ready when her third and last husband had died, and Virginia Powell, whose husband had been dead eight years and who was young and tolerably beautiful but who still wore her black and had vowed, it was well known, never to marry again. Not, as Uncle Pippin remarked, that any one was known to have asked her.

Aunt Becky let Mrs. Toynbee off with a coldly civil greeting. Mrs. Toynbee had been known to go into hysterics when snubbed or crossed, and Aunt Becky did not intend to let anyone else usurp the limelight at her last levee. But she gave poor Virginia a jab.

“Is your heart dug up yet?”

Virginia had once said sentimentally, “My heart is buried in Rose River churchyard,” and Aunt Becky never let her forget it.

“Any of that jam left yet?” asked Aunt Becky slyly of Mrs. Titus Dark, who had once gathered blueberries that grew in the graveyard and preserved them. Lawyer Tom Penhallow, who had been found guilty of appropriating his clients' money, was counted less of a clan disgrace. Mrs. Titus always considered herself an ill-used woman. Fruit had been scarce that year—she had five men to cater for who didn't like butter—and all those big luscious blueberries going to waste in the lower corner of the Bay Silver graveyard. There were
very
few graves there; it was not the fashionable part of the graveyard.

“And how's your namesake?” Aunt Becky was asking Mrs. Emily Frost. Kennedy Penhallow, who had been jilted by his cousin, Emily, sixty-five years before, had called his old spavined mare after her to insult her. Kennedy, happily married for many years to Julia Dark, had forgotten all about it, but Emily Frost,
née
Penhallow, had never forgotten or forgiven.

“Hello, Margaret; going to write a poem about this? ‘Weary and worn and sad the train rattled on,'” Aunt Becky went off into a cackle of laughter and Margaret Penhallow, her thin, sensitive face flushing pitifully and her peculiarly large, soft, gray-blue eyes filling with tears, went blindly to the first vacant chair. Once she had written rather awful little poems for a Summerside paper, but never after a conscienceless printer had deleted her punctuation marks, producing that terrible line which haunted the clan forever afterwards like an unquiet ghost which refused to be laid. Margaret could never feel safe from hearing it quoted somewhere with a snicker or a bellow. Even here at Aunt Becky's death-bed levee it must be dragged up. Perhaps Margaret still wrote poems. A little shell-covered box in her trunk might know something about that. But the public press knew them no more, much to the clan's thankfulness.

“What's the matter with you, Penny? You're not as good-looking as you generally believe you are.”

“Stung on the eye by a bee,” said Pennycuik Dark sulkily. He was a fat, tubby little fellow with a curly gray beard and none-too-plentiful curly hair. As usual, he was as well-groomed as a cat. He still considered himself a gay young wag, and felt that nothing but the jug could have lured him into a public appearance under the circumstances. Just like this devilish old woman to call the attention of the world to his eye. But he was her oldest nephew and he had a right to the jug which he would maintain, eye or no eye. He always felt that his branch of the family had been unjustly done out of it two generations back. In his annoyance and excitement he sat down on the first vacant chair he spied, and then to his dismay discovered that he was sitting beside Mrs. William Y., of whom he had the liveliest terror ever since she had asked him what to do for a child who had worms. As if he, Pennycuik Dark, confirmed bachelor, knew anything about either children or worms.

“Go and sit in that far corner by the door so that I can't smell that damn' perfume. Even a poor old nonentity like myself has a right to pure air,” Aunt Becky was telling poor Mrs. Artemas Dark, whose taste in perfumes had always annoyed Aunt Becky. Mrs. Artemas
did
use them somewhat too lavishly, but even so, the clan reflected as a unit, Aunt Becky was employing rather strong language for a woman—especially on her death-bed. The Darks and the Penhallows prided themselves on keeping up with the times, but they were not so far advanced as to condone profanity in a woman.
That
was still taboo. The joke of it was that Aunt Becky herself had always been down on swearing and was supposed to hold in special disfavor the two clansmen who habitually swore—Titus Dark because he couldn't help it and Drowned John Penhallow, who could help it but didn't want to.

The arrival of Mrs. Alpheus Penhallow and her daughter created a sensation. Mrs. Alpheus lived in St. John and happened to be visiting her old home in Rose River when Aunt Becky's levee was announced. She was an enormously fat woman with a rather deplorable penchant for wearing bright colors and over-rich materials, who had been very slim and beautiful in a youth during which she had been no great favorite with Aunt Becky. Mrs. Alpheus expected some unpleasant greeting from Aunt Becky and meant to take it with a smile, for she wanted badly to get the jug, and the walnut bed into the bargain, if the fates were propitious. But Aunt Becky, though she said to herself that Annabel Penhallow's dress was worth more than her carcass, let her off very leniently with,

“Humph! Smooth as a cat's ear, just as always,” and looked past her at Nan Penhallow, about whom clan gossip had been very busy ever since her arrival in Rose River. It was whispered breathlessly that she wore pajamas and smoked cigarettes. It was well known that she had plucked eyebrows and wore breeches when she rode or “hiked,” but even Rose River was resigned to that. Aunt Becky saw a snakey hipless thing with a shingle bob and long barbaric earrings. A silky, sophisticated creature in a smart black satin dress who instantly made every other girl in the room seem outmoded and Victorian. But Aunt Becky took her measure on the spot.

“So this is Hannah,” she remarked, hitting instinctively on Nan's sore spot. Nan would rather have been slapped than called Hannah. “Well—well—well!” Aunt Becky's “wells” were a crescendo of contempt mingled with pity. “I understand you consider yourself a modern. Well, there were girls that chased the boys in my time, too. It's only names that change. Your mouth looks as if you'd been making a meal of blood, my dear. But see what time does to us. When you're forty you'll be exactly like this”—with a gesture toward Mrs. Alpheus' avoirdupois.

Nan was determined she wouldn't let this frumpy old harridan put her out. Besides, she had her own hankerings after the jug.

“Oh, no, Aunt Becky darling. I take after father's people. They stay thin, you know.”

Aunt Becky did not like being “darlinged.”

“Go upstairs and wash that stuff off your lips and cheeks,” she said. “I won't have any painted snips around here.”

“You—why, you've got rouge on yourself,” cried Nan, despite her mother's piteous nudge.

“And who are you to say I should not?” demanded Aunt Becky. “Now, never mind standing there switching your tail at me. Go and do as you're told or else go home.”

Nan was minded to do the latter. But Mrs. Alpheus was whispering agitatedly at her neck,

“Go, darling, go—do exactly as she tells you—or—or—”

“Or you'll stand no chance of getting the jug,” chuckled Aunt Becky, who at eighty-five had ears that could hear the grass grow.

Nan went, sulky and contemptuous, determined that she would get even with somebody for her manhandling by this cantankerous old despot. Perhaps it was at this moment, when Gay Penhallow was entering the room in a yellow dress that seemed woven out of sunshine, that Nan made up her mind to capture Noel Gibson. It was intolerable that Gay of all people should be a witness of her discomfiture.

“Green-eyed girls for trouble,” said Uncle Pippin.

“She's a man-eater, I reckon,” agreed Stanton Grundy.

Gay Penhallow, a slight, blossom-like girl whom only the Family Bible knew as Gabrielle Alexandrina, was shaking Aunt Becky's hand but would not bend down to kiss her as Aunt Becky expected.

“Hey, hey, what's the matter?” demanded Aunt Becky. “Some boy been kissing you? And you don't want to spoil the flavor, hey?”

Gay fled to a corner and sat down, it was true. But
how
did Aunt Becky know it? Noel
had
kissed her the evening before—Gay's first kiss in all her eighteen years—Nan would have hooted over
that
! An exquisite fleeting kiss under a golden June moon. Gay felt that she could
not
kiss any one, especially dreadful old Aunt Becky, after
that.
Never mind if Aunt Becky wouldn't give her the jug. What difference did it make about her old jug, anyway? What difference did anything make in the whole wide beautiful world except that Noel loved her and she loved him?

But something seemed to have come into the now crowded room with the arrival of Gay—something like a sudden quick-passing breeze on a sultry day—something as indescribably sweet and elusive as the fragrance of a forest flower—something of youth and love and hope. Everybody felt inexplicably happier—more charitable—more courageous. Stanton Grundy's lantern-jaws looked less grim and Uncle Pippin momentarily felt that, after all, Grundy had undoubtedly married a Dark and so had a right to be where he was. Miller Dark thought he really would get started on his history next week—Margaret had an inspiration for a new poem—Penny Dark reflected that he was only fifty-two, after all—William Y. forgot that he had a bald spot—Curtis Dark, who had the reputation of being an incurably disagreeable husband, thought his wife's new hat became her and that he would tell her so on the way home. Even Aunt Becky grew less inhuman and, although she had several more shots in her locker and hated to miss the fun of firing them, allowed the remainder of her guests to pass to their seats without insult or innuendo, except that she asked old Cousin Skilly Penhallow how his brother Angus was. All the assembly laughed and Cousin Skilly smiled amiably. Aunt Becky couldn't put
him
out. He knew the whole clan quoted his Spoonerisms and that the one about his brother Angus, now dead for thirty years, never failed to evoke hilarity. The minister had come along that windy morning long ago, after Angus Penhallow's mill-dam had been swept away in the March flood, and had been greeted excitedly by Skilly.