A Tangled Web

by L. M. Montgomery

  4

  Gay Penhallow was sitting next to Margaret and was not thinking of the jug at all. She did not want the jug, though her mother was wild about it. Spring was singing in her blood and she was lost in glamorous recollections of Noel’s kiss—and equally glamorous anticipations of Noel’s letter, which she had got at the post-office on her way up. As she heard it crackle in its hiding place she felt the little thrill of joy which had tingled over her when old Mrs. Conroy had passed it out to her—his wonderful letter held profanely between a mail-order catalogue and a millinery advertisement. She had not dreamed of getting a letter, for she had seen him—and been kissed—only the night before. Now she had it, tucked away under her dress, next to her white satin skin, and all she wished was that this silly old levee was over and she was away somewhere by herself, reading Noel’s letter. What time was it? Gay looked at Aunt Becky’s solemn old grandfather clock that had ticked off the days and hours of four forgotten generations and was still ticking them relentlessly off for the fifth. Three! At half-past three she must think of Noel. They had made a compact to think of each other every afternoon at exactly half-past three. Such a dear, delightful, foolish compact—because was she not thinking of Noel all the time? And now she had his kiss to think about—that kiss which it seemed everyone must see on her lips. She had thought about it all night—the first night of her life she had never slept for joy. Oh, she was so happy! So happy that she felt friendly to everybody—even to the people she had never liked before. Pompous old William Y. with his enormous opinion of himself—lean, curious, gossipy Mercy Penhallow—overtragic Virginia Powell with her tiresome poses—Drowned John, who had shouted two wives to death—Stanton Grundy, who had cremated poor Cousin Robina and who always looked at everybody as if he were secretly amused. One didn’t like a person who was amused at everybody. Dapper Penny Dark, who thought he was witty when he called eggs cackleberries—Uncle Pippin with his old jaws always chewing something—most of all poor piteous Aunt Becky herself. Aunt Becky was going to die soon and no one was sorry. Gay was so sorry because she wasn’t sorry that the tears came to her eyes. Yet Aunt Becky had been loved once—courted once—kissed once—ridiculous and unbelievable as it seemed now. Gay looked curiously at this solitary old crone who had once been young and beautiful and the mother of little children. Could that old wrinkled face ever have been flower-like? Would she, Gay, ever look like that? No, of course not. Nobody whom Noel loved would ever grow old and unlovely.

  She could see herself in the oval mirror that hung on the wall over Stanton Grundy’s head, and she was not dissatisfied with the reflection. She had the coloring of a tea-rose, with golden-brown hair, and eyes to match it—eyes that looked like brown marigolds flecked with glints of gold. Long black lashes and eyebrows that might have been drawn in soot, so finely dark were they against her face. And there was a delicious spot here and there on her skin, like a little drop of gold—sole survivor of the freckles that had plagued her in childhood. She knew quite well that she was counted the beauty of the whole clan—“the prettiest girl that walked the aisles of Rose River Church,” Uncle Pippin averred gallantly. And she always looked the least little bit timid and frightened, so men always wanted to assure her there was nothing to be frightened of and she had more beaus than you could shake a stick at. But there had never been anyone who really mattered but Noel. Every lane in Gay’s thoughts today turned back to Noel. Fifteen minutes past three. Just fifteen more minutes and she would be sure that Noel was thinking of her.

  There was a tiny dark fleck or two on Gay’s happiness. For one, she knew all the Penhallows rather disapproved of Noel Gibson. The Darks were more tolerant—after all, Noel’s mother had been a Dark, although a rather off-color one. The Gibsons were considered a cut or two beneath the Penhallows. Gay knew very well that her clan wanted her to marry Dr. Roger Penhallow. She looked across the room at him in kindly amusement. Dear old Roger, with his untidy mop of red hair, his softly luminous eyes under straight heavy brows and his long, twisted mouth with a funny quirk in the left corner—who was thirty if he were a day. She was awfully fond of Roger. Somehow, there was a good tang to him. She could never forget what he had done for her at her first dance. She had been so shy and awkward and plain—or was sure she was. Nobody asked her to dance till Roger came and swept her out triumphantly and paid her such darling compliments that she bloomed out into beauty and confidence—and the boys woke up—and handsome Noel Gibson from town singled her out for attention. Oh, she was very, very fond of Roger—and very proud of him. A fourth cousin who had been a noted ace in the war Gay so dimly remembered and had brought down fifty enemy planes. But as a husband—Gay really had to laugh. Besides, why should anyone suppose he wanted to marry her? He had never said so. It was just one of those queer ideas that floated about the clan at times—and had a trick of turning out abominably correct. Gay hoped this one wouldn’t. She would hate to hurt Roger. She was so happy she couldn’t bear to think of hurting anyone.

  The second little fleck was Nan Penhallow. Gay had never been too fond of Nan Penhallow, though they had been chums of a sort, ever since childhood, when Nan would come to the Island with her father and mother for summer vacations. Gay never forgot the first day she and Nan had met. They were both ten years old; and Nan, who was even then counted a beauty, had dragged Gay to a mirror and mercilessly pointed out all the contrasts. Gay had never thought of her looks before, but now she saw fatally that she was ugly. Thin and sunburned and pale—freckles galore—hair bleached too light a shade by Rose River sunshine—funny, black unfaded eyebrows that looked as if they had just lighted on her face—how Nan made fun of those eyebrows! Gay was unhappy for years because she believed in her plainness. It had taken many a compliment to convince her that she had grown into beauty. As years went by she did not like Nan much better. Nan, with her subtle, mysterious face, her ashgold hair, her strange liquid emerald eyes, her thin red lips, who was not now really half as pretty as Gay but had odd exotic charms unknown to Rose River. How she patronized Gay—“You quaint child,”—“So Victorian.” Gay did not want to be quaint and Victorian. She wanted to be smart and up-to-date and sophisticated like Nan. Though not exactly like Nan. She didn’t want to smoke. It always made her think of that dreadful old Mrs. Fidele Blacquiere down at the harbor and old mustached Highland Janet at Three Hills, who were always smoking big black pipes like the men. And then—Noel didn’t like girls who smoked. He didn’t approve of them at all. Nevertheless, Gay, deep down in her heart, was glad the visit of the Alpheus Penhallows to Rose River was to be a brief one this summer. Mrs. Alpheus was going to a more fashionable place.

  5

  Hugh Dark and Joscelyn Dark (née Penhallow) were sitting on opposite sides of the room, never looking at each other, and seeing and thinking of nothing but each other. And everybody looked at Joscelyn and wondered as they had wondered for ten years, what terrible secret lay behind her locked lips.

  The affair of Hugh and Joscelyn was the mystery and tragedy of the clan—a mystery that no one had ever been able to solve, though not for lack of trying. Ten years before, Hugh Dark and Joscelyn Penhallow had been married after an eminently respectable and somewhat prolonged courtship. Joscelyn had not been too easily won. It was a match which pleased everybody, except Pauline Dark, who was mad about Hugh, and Mrs. Conrad Dark, his mother, who had never liked Joscelyn’s branch of the Penhallows.

  It had been a gay, old-fashioned evening wedding, according to the best Penhallow tradition. Everybody was there to the fourth degree of relationship, and everyone agreed that they had never seen a prettier bride or a more indisputable happy and enraptured bridegroom. After the supper and the festivities were over, Hugh had taken his bride home to “Treewoofe,” the farm he had bought at Three Hills. As to what had happened between the time when Joscelyn, still wearing her veil and satin in the soft coolness and brilliance of the September moonlight—a whim of Hugh’s, that, who had some roma
ntic idea of leading a veiled and shimmering bride over the threshold of his new home—had driven away from her widowed mother’s house at Bay Silver and the time when, three hours later, she returned to it on foot, still in her disheveled bridal attire, no one ever knew or could obtain the least inkling in spite of all their prying and surmising. All Joscelyn would ever say, even to her distracted relatives, was that she could never live with Hugh Dark. As for Hugh, he said absolutely nothing and very few people ever dared say anything to him.

  Failing to discover the truth, surmise and gossip ran riot. All sorts of explanations were hinted or manufactured—most of them ridiculous enough. One was that Hugh, as soon as he got his bride home, told her that he would be master. He told her certain rules she must keep. He would have no woman bossing him. The story grew till it ran that Hugh, by way of starting in properly, had made or tried to make Joscelyn walk around the room on all fours just to teach her he was head of the house. No girl of any spirit, especially Clifford Penhallow’s daughter, would endure such a thing. Joscelyn had thrown her wedding-ring at him and flown out of the house.

  Others had it that Joscelyn had left Hugh because he wouldn’t promise to give up a cat she had hated “And now,” as Uncle Pippin said mournfully, “the cat is dead.” Some averred they had quarreled because Joscelyn had criticized his grammar. Some that she had found out he was an infidel. “You know, his grandfather reads those horrid Ingersoll books. And Hugh had them all on a shelf in his bedroom.” Some that she had contradicted him. “His father was like that, you know. Couldn’t tolerate the least contradiction. If he only said, ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow,’ it put him in a fury if you said you thought it would be fair.”

  Then Hugh had told Joscelyn she was too proud—he wasn’t going to put up with it any longer. He had danced to her piping for three years but, by heck, the tune was going to be changed. Well, of course Joscelyn was proud. The clan admitted that. No woman could have carried such a wonderful crown of red-gold on her head without some pride to hold it up. But was that any excuse for a bridegroom setting wide open the door of his house and politely telling his bride to take her damned superior airs back where they belonged?

  The Darks would have none of these crazy yarns. It was not Hugh’s fault at all. Joscelyn had confessed she was a kleptomaniac. It ran in her family. A fourth cousin of her mother’s was terrible that way. Hugh had the welfare of generations unborn to think of. What else could he do?

  Darker hints obtained.

  After all, though these little yarns were circulated and giggled over, few really believed there was a grain of truth in them. Most of the clan felt sure that Joscelyn’s soft rose-red lips were fast shut on some far more terrible secret than a silly quarrel over cats or grammar. She had discovered something undoubtedly. But what was it?

  She had found a love letter some other woman had written him and gone mad with jealousy. After all, Joscelyn’s great-grandmother had been a Spanish girl from the West Indies. Spanish blood, you know. All the vagaries of Joscelyn’s branch of the Penhallows were attributed to the fact of that Spanish great-grandmother. Captain Alec Penhallow had married her. She died leaving him only one son—luckily. But that son had a family of eight. And they were all kittle cattle to handle. So intense in everything. Whatever they were, they were ten times more so than anyone else would be.

  No, it was worse than a letter. Joscelyn had discovered that Hugh had another wife. Those years out west. Hugh had never talked much about them. But at the last he broke down and confessed.

  Nothing of the sort. That child down at the harbor, though. It was certain some Dark was its father. Perhaps Hugh—

  Naturally, it made a dreadful scandal and sensation. The clan nearly died of it. It had been an old clan saying that nothing ever happened in Bay Silver. Rose River had a fire. Three Hills had an elopement. Even Indian Spring years ago had an actual murder. But nothing ever happened in Bay Silver. And now something had happened with a vengeance.

  That Joscelyn should behave like this! If it had been her rattle-brained sister Milly! They were always expecting Milly to do crazy things, so they were prepared to forgive her. But they had never thought of Joscelyn doing a crazy thing so they could not forgive her for amazing them. Not that it seemed to matter much to Joscelyn whether they forgave her or not. No entreaty availed to budge her an inch. “Her father was like that, you know,” Mrs. Clifford Penhallow wept. “He was noted for never changing his mind.”

  “Joscelyn evidently changed hers after she went up to Treewoofe that night,” somebody replied. “What happened, Mavis? Surely you, her mother, ought to know.”

  “How can I know when she won’t tell me?” wailed Mrs. Clifford. “None of you have ever had any idea how stubborn Joscelyn really is. She simply says she will never go back to Hugh and not another word will she say. She won’t even wear her wedding-ring.” Mrs. Clifford thought this was really the worst thing in it all. “I never saw anyone so unnaturally obstinate.”

  “And what in the world are we to call her?” wailed the clan. “She is Mrs. Dark. Nothing can alter that.”

  Nothing could alter it in Prince Edward Island, where there had been only one divorce in sixty years. Nobody ever thought of Hugh and Joscelyn being divorced. One and all, Darks and Penhallows, would have expired of the disgrace of it.

  In ten years the matter had naturally simmered down, though a few people kept wondering if the wife from the west would ever turn up. The state of affairs was accepted as something permanent and immutable. People even forgot to think about it, except when, as rarely happened, they saw Hugh and Joscelyn in the same room. Then they wondered fruitlessly again.

  Hugh was a very fine-looking man—far handsomer now at thirty-five than he had been at twenty-five, when he was rather lank and weedy. He gave you a feeling that he was able to do anything—a feeling of great, calm power. He had gone on living at Treewoofe with an old aunt keeping house for him, and in agricultural circles he was regarded as a coming man. It was whispered that the Conservative party meant to bring him out as a candidate at the next election of the Provincial House. Yet his eyes with their savage bitterness were the eyes of a man who had failed, and nobody had ever heard him laugh since that mysterious wedding-night.

  He had had one keen greedy look at Joscelyn when he had paused a moment in the doorway. He had not seen her for a long time. The tragic years had passed over her without dimming her beauty. Her hair, massed round her head in shining defiant protest against the day of bobs, was as wonderful as ever. She had left her roses behind her—her cheeks were pale. But the throat he had once kissed so tenderly and passionately was as exquisite and ivory-like as ever, and her great eyes, that were blue or green or gray as the mood took her, were as lustrous and appealing, as defiant and ecstatic as they had been when she had looked down at him in the hall up at Treewoofe, that night ten years before. Hugh clenched his hands and set his lips. That lean fox of a Stanton Grundy was watching him—everybody was always watching him. The bridegroom jilted on his wedding night. From whom his bride had run in supposed horror or rebellion over three miles of dark solitary road. Well, let them watch and let them guess. Only he and Joscelyn knew the truth—the tragic absurd truth that had separated them.

  Joscelyn had seen Hugh when he came into the room. He looked older; that unmanageable lock of dark hair was sticking up on the crown of his head as usual. Joscelyn knew she wanted to go over and coax it down. Kate Muir was sitting beside him ogling him; she had always detested and despised Kate Muir, née Kate Dark, who had been an ugly swarthy little girl and was now an ugly swarthy little widow with more money than she knew what to do with. Having married for money, Joscelyn reflected contemptuously, she had a right to it. But was that any excuse for her sitting in Hugh’s pocket and gazing up at him as if she thought him wonderful. She knew that Kate had once said, “I always told Hugh she wouldn’t make him a suitable wife.” Joscelyn shivered sli
ghtly and locked her slender hands, on which was no wedding-ring, a little more tightly on her knee. She was not—never had been—sorry for what she had done ten years ago. She couldn’t have done anything else, not she, Joscelyn Penhallow, with that touch of Spanish blood in her. But she had always felt a little outside of things and the feeling had deepened with the years. She seemed to have no part or lot in the life that went on around her. She learned to smile like a queen, with lips not eyes.

  She saw her face reflected in the glass beside Gay Penhallow and suddenly thought that she looked old. Gay, wearing her youth like a golden rose, was so happy, so radiant, as if lighted by some inner flame. Joscelyn felt a queer new pang of envy. She had never envied anyone in all these ten years, borne up by the rapture of a certain strange, spiritual, sacrificial passion and renunciation. All at once, she felt an odd flatness, as if her wings had let her down. A chill of consternation and fright swept over her. She wished she had not come to this silly levee. She cared nothing about the old Dark jug, though her mother and Aunt Rachel both wanted it. She would not have come if she had thought Hugh would be there. Who would have expected him? Surely he didn’t want the jug. She would have despised him if she thought he did. No doubt he had had to bring his mother and his sister, Mrs. Jim Trent. They were both glowering at her. Her sisters-in-law, Mrs. Penny Dark and Mrs. Palmer Dark, were pretending not to see her. She knew they all hated her. Well, it didn’t matter. After all, could you blame them, considering the insult she had offered to the House of Dark? No, it didn’t matter—Joscelyn wondered a little dreamily if anything mattered. She looked at Lawson Dark, with the V.C. he had won at Amiens pinned on his breast, in his wheelchair behind Stanton Grundy, for ten years a paralytic from shell-shock. At Naomi Dark beside him, with her patient, haggard face and her dark, hollow eyes in which still burned the fires of the hope that kept her alive. Joscelyn was amazed to find suddenly stirring in her heart a queer envy of Naomi Dark. Why should she envy Naomi Dark, whose husband didn’t recognize her—never had recognized her since his return from the war? His mind was normal in every other respect, but he had forgotten all about the bride he had met and married only a few weeks before his departure for the front. She knew Naomi lived by the belief that Lawson would remember her someday. Meanwhile she took care of him and worshiped him. Lawson had grown quite fond of her as a nurse, but no recollection ever came to him of his sudden love and his brief honeymoon. Yet Joscelyn envied her. She had had something. Life had not been an empty cup for her, whatever bitter brew was mingled in it. Even Mrs. Foster Dark had something to live for. Happy Dark had run away from home years ago, leaving a note—“I’ll come back sometime, Mother.” Mrs. Foster would never lock her door at night lest Happy come, and it was well known that she always left a supper on the table for him. Nobody else believed Happy would ever come back—the young devil was undoubtedly dead years ago and good riddance! But the hope kept Mrs. Foster going, and Joscelyn envied her.