A Tangled Web

by L. M. Montgomery

  14

  Denzil Penhallow told Margaret she must walk home—he and the wife were going down to have tea with the William Y.’s. Margaret was secretly well pleased. It was only a mile and the month was June. Besides, it would give her a chance to stop and see Whispering Winds.

  Whispering Winds was the small secret which made poor Margaret’s life endurable. It wound in and out of her drab life like a ribbon of rainbows. It was the little house on the Bay Silver side road where Aunt Louisa Dark had lived. At her death, two years ago, it had become the property of her son Richard, who lived in Halifax. It was for sale but nobody had ever wanted to buy it—nobody, that is, except Margaret, who had no money to buy anything and would have been hooted at if it were so much as suspected that she wanted to buy a house. Hadn’t she a perfectly good, ungrudged home with her brother? What in the world would she want with a house?

  Margaret did want it—terribly. She had always loved that little house of Aunt Louisa’s. It was she who gave it the dear secret name of Whispering Winds, and dreamed all kinds of foolish, sweet dreams about it. As soon as she got to the Bay Silver side road, she turned down it and very soon was at the lane of her house—an old, old lane, grassy and deep-rutted, with bleached old gray “longer” fences hemming it in. There were clumps of birches all along it for a little way—then young spruces growing up thickly on either side—then just between them, at the end, the little house, once white, now as gray as the longers. There it was, basking in the late sun—smiling at her with its twinkling windows. Back of it was a steep hill where tossing young maples were whitening in the wind, and off to the right was a glimpse of purple valley. There was an old well in one corner, with an apple tree spilling blossoms over it. A little field off to the right was cool and inviting in the shadow of a spruce wood. The scent of its clover drifted across to Whispering Winds. The air was like a thin golden wine and the quiet was a benediction.

  Margaret caught her breath with the delight of it.

  Whispering Winds was one of those houses you loved the minute you saw them, without being in the least able to tell why—perhaps because its roof-line was so lovely against the green hill. She loved it so. She walked about the old garden, that was beginning to have such a look of neglect. She longed to prune it and weed it and dress it up. That delightful big bed of striped grass was encroaching on the path, those forget-me-nots were simply running wild. They and the house were just crying out for someone to take care of them. The house and the garden belonged together some way—you couldn’t have separated them. The house seemed to grow out of the garden. The shrubs and vines reached up around it to hold it and caress it. If she could just have this house—with a baby in it—she would ask for nothing more. Not even Aunt Becky’s jug. Margaret realized pathetically that she must give up writing poetry for a while, or she might have no chance of the jug. And she still hankered after it. Since she could never have Whispering Winds she wanted the jug. Dandy Dark had always been friendly to her. If it should rest with him to give the jug, she stood a better chance than from Aunt Becky. Cruel old Aunt Becky who had jeered at her and her poor little poems and her old-maidenhood before all the clan. Margaret knew that perhaps she was silly and faded and childish and unimportant and undesired, but it hurt to have it rubbed in so. She never harmed anyone. Why couldn’t they leave her alone? Denzil and Mrs. Denzil were always giving her digs, too, about “single blessedness,” and her nieces and nephews openly laughed at her. But here, in this remote shadowy little garden, she forgot all about it. Things ceased to sting. If she could only stay here forever, where the robins called to one another at evening in the maple wood. Listen to them.

  But it was soon time to go home. Mrs. Denzil would expect her to get the supper for the family and help milk cows. She bade good-bye regretfully to Whispering Winds and went on to the square bare house in a treeless yard where the Denzil Penhallows lived. She went up to her hideous little room looking out on the hen-yard, which she had to share with Gladys Penhallow. Gladys was there with some of her friends, thinking at the top of their voices as usual. It was always noisy. There were never any quiet moments. Margaret’s head ached. She wished she had not gone to Aunt Becky’s levee. It hadn’t done any good. As for the old Pilgrim’s Progress, it could lie on in The Pinery attic for all she cared.

  How pretty Gay Penhallow had looked today! And so young. What was it like to be eighteen? Margaret had forgotten if she had ever really known. What had been the trouble between Hugh and Joscelyn? And how dared Thora Dark, who had a husband, be so attractive to other men? What would it be like to have a man look at you the way she had seen Murray looking at Thora—though of course he had no business to be looking at another man’s wife like that. Poor Lawson! It was dreadful to see the hunger in Naomi’s eyes. How tickled Ambrosine was over that ring! Margaret did not grudge her the ring. Perhaps Ambrosine felt about it the way she felt about Whispering Winds. Though of course poor old Ambrosine’s hands were too thin and knotty to wear rings. Margaret looked with considerable satisfaction at her own slender, shapely fingers. Nobody could say she hadn’t a pretty hand. Roger Dark was a nice fellow. Why didn’t he get a nice girl for a wife? They said he was crazy about Gay Penhallow, who wouldn’t look at him. There you were again. Love going to waste all around you and you starving for a little. The idea suddenly struck Margaret that God wasn’t fair. She shuddered and dismissed it as a blasphemy. It sounded like something that dreadful Grundy man would say. Poor Cousin Robina! Peter Penhallow, they said, was off on another of his explorations. He always seemed to live life with such gusto. But Margaret did not envy him. She never wanted to go away from home. What she wanted was a place where she could put down roots and grow old quietly. Margaret thought she would not mind growing old if she could be left to do it in peace. It was hard to grow old gracefully when you were always being laughed at because you were not young. But there was only one career for women in her clan. Of course you could be a nurse or a teacher or dressmaker, or something like that, to fill in the time before marriage, but the Darks and Penhallows did not take you seriously.

  15

  “Tell Joscelyn Dark I want to see her before she goes home, Ambrosine,” ordered Aunt Becky.

  Joscelyn had walked the short distance up from Bay Silver and intended to walk back. Palmer Dark had taken her mother and her Aunt Rachel home in his car. She felt that she had about enough of Aunt Becky for one day, but she went back to the bedroom readily enough. After all, the poor old soul was not long for this world.

  Aunt Becky was lying back on her pillows. She was gazing earnestly on a little old tintype hanging on the wall near her bed. The picture was not decorative. At least so Joscelyn thought. But then she did not see it with Aunt Becky’s eyes. Joscelyn saw only a tubby pompous old man, with a fringe of whisker around his face, and a thin, scrawny little woman in a preposterous dress. Aunt Becky saw a big, hearty, high-colored man whose abounding vitality brought a gust of life into every existence and a vivid-eyed girl whose wit and sly mirth had been the spice of every company she was in and whose love affairs were stimulating and piquant. Aunt Becky sighed as she turned to Joscelyn. The fire had gone out of her eyes, the sting out of her voice. She looked exactly what she was—a very old, very ill, very tired woman.

  “Sit down, Joscelyn. You now, I’ve been lying here thinking how many people will be glad when I’m dead? And not one to be sorry. And it seems to me that I wish I’d lived a bit differently, Joscelyn. I’ve always taken my fun out of them—I haven’t spared them—they’re all afraid of me. I’m just an ogress to them. It was fun watching them squirming. But now—I don’t know. I’ve a devilish sort of feeling that I wish I’d been a kind, gentle, stingless creature like—well, like Annette Dark, for instance. Everybody was sorry when she died—though she never said a clever thing in her life. But she was smart enough to die before she got too old. Women should, Joscelyn. I’ve sat up too late. Nobody will miss me.”
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  Joscelyn looked levelly at Aunt Becky. She knew that what Aunt Becky said was true enough in a way. And she sensed the secret bitterness in the old woman’s soul behind all her satire and bravado. She wanted to comfort her without telling a lie. Joscelyn could neither tell nor live a lie—which was what had made a clan existence hard for her.

  “I think, Aunt Becky, that every one of us will miss you a great deal more than you suppose we will—a great deal more than we imagine ourselves. You’re like—like mustard. Sometimes you bite—and a big dose of you is rather awful—”

  “As today, for example,” interjected Aunt Becky with a faint grin.

  “But you do give a tang to things. They’d be flat without you. And you seem like—I don’t know how to put it—the very essence of Dark and Penhallow. We won’t be half so much a clan when you’re gone. You’ve always made history for us somehow. If this had been an ordinary afternoon—if we’d come here and you’d been nice to us—”

  “And fed you—”

  “We’d have all gone away and forgotten the afternoon. There’d be nothing in it to remember. But this afternoon will be remembered—and talked about. When the girls are old women they’ll tell their grandchildren about it—you’ll live by it fifty years after you’re in your grave, Aunt Becky.”

  “I have often thought it would be a frightfully dull world if everybody were perfectly good and sweet,” conceded Aunt Becky. “I guess it’s only because I’m tired that I’m wishing I’d been more like Annette. She was as sweet and good and unexciting as they make ’em. She never said a naughty word in her life. And I was far handsomer than she was, mind you. But Crosby loved her. Now, Joscelyn, here’s a queer thing. You heard what I said today. There was a time I’d have given my soul if Crosby had loved me—I’d have given and done anything—except be like Annette. Not even for Crosby would I have been willing to be like Annette—even though now I’m getting childish and wishing I had been. I’d rather sting people than bore them, after all. But—”

  Aunt Becky paused and looked earnestly at Joscelyn. Joscelyn had held her own well. She was very good-looking. The evening light, falling through the window behind her, made a tremendous primrose nimbus around her shapely head. But her eyes—Aunt Becky wanted to solve the haunting mystery of Joscelyn’s eyes.

  “I didn’t keep you here to talk about my own feelings. I’m going to die. And I’m not afraid of death. Isn’t it strange? I was once so afraid of it. But before I die I want to ask you something. I’ve never asked you before—do me that justice. What went wrong between you and Hugh?”

  Joscelyn started—flushed—paled—almost rose from her chair.

  “No—sit down. I’m not going to try to make you tell if you don’t want to. It isn’t curiosity, Joscelyn. I’m done with that. I feel I’d just like to know the truth before I die. I remember your wedding. Hugh was the happiest-looking groom I ever saw. And you seemed very well pleased with yourself, too—when you came in first, at least. I remember thinking you were made for each other—the sort of people who should marry—and found a home—and have children. And I would like to know what wrecked it all.”

  Joscelyn sat silent a few minutes longer. Oddly enough, she was conscious of a strange desire to tell Aunt Becky everything. Aunt Becky would understand—she was sure Aunt Becky would understand. For ten years she had lived in an atmosphere of misunderstanding and disapproval and suspicion. She had not minded it, she thought—the inner flame which irradiated life had been her protection. But today she felt oddly that she had, after all, minded it more than she had supposed. There was a soreness in her spirit that seemed old, not new. She would tell Aunt Becky. No one else would ever know. It was a confidence to the grave itself. And it might help her—heal her. She bent forward and began to speak in a low, intense voice. Aunt Becky lay and listened movelessly until Joscelyn had finished it.

  “So that was it,” she said, when the passionate voice had ceased. “Something none of us ever thought of. I never thought of it. I thought perhaps it was something quite small. So many of the tragedies of life come from little, silly, ridiculous things. Nobody ever knew why Roger Penhallow hanged himself forty years ago—nobody but me. He did it because he was eighteen years old and his father spanked him. Ah, the things I know of this clan! All the things I said today were things everyone knows. But I didn’t say a word about scores of things nobody dreams I know. But weren’t you very cruel, Joscelyn?”

  “What else could I have done?” said Joscelyn. “I couldn’t have done anything else.”

  “Not with that Spanish blood in you, I suppose. At least we’ll blame it on the Spanish blood. Everything that isn’t right in your branch of the Penhallows is laid at the door of that Spanish blood. Peter Penhallow and his hurry to be born, for instance. It must be the Spanish blood that makes you all fall in love with such terrible suddenness. Most of Captain Martin’s descendants have been lovers at sight or not at all. I thought you’d escaped that curse—Hugh took so long courting you. Have you ever felt sorry you did it, Joscelyn?”

  “No—no—no,” cried Joscelyn.

  “Two ’no’s’ too many,” said Aunt Becky.

  “I want to tell you the exact truth,” said Joscelyn slowly. “It is quite true—I’ve never been sorry I did do it. You can’t be sorry you did a thing you have to do. But I have been sorry—not many times but all the time—that I had to do it. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to hurt Hugh like that—and I did want to have Treewoofe. I want it yet—you don’t know how much I want Treewoofe—and all the lovely life I had planned to have there. It was dreadful to have to give it up. But I couldn’t do anything else, Aunt Becky—I couldn’t.”

  “Well, God bless you, child. The less we say about it the better. You’ll probably hate me tonight because you’ve told me this. You’ll feel I tricked you into it by being old and pitiful.”

  “No, you didn’t trick me. I wanted to tell you. I don’t know why—but I wanted to. And I’m glad you don’t blame me too much, Aunt Becky.”

  “I don’t blame you at all. I might even believe you were right if I were young enough to believe it. God save us all, what a world it is! The things that happen to people—things without rhyme or reason! Frank has never married, has he? Do you think it happened to him, too?”

  Joscelyn’s face crimsoned.

  “I don’t know. He went away the next morning, you know. Sometimes I think it might have—because—when I looked at him—oh, Aunt Becky, you remember that absurd thing Virginia Penhallow said about the first time she met Ned Powell. The whole clan has laughed over it. ‘The moment I looked into his eyes I knew he was my predestined mate.’ Of course it was ridiculous. But, Aunt Becky, that was just the way I felt, too.”

  “Of course.” Aunt Becky nodded understandingly. “We all feel those things. They’re not ridiculous when we feel them. It’s only when we put them into words that they’re ridiculous. They’re not meant to be put in words. Well, when I couldn’t get the man I wanted, I just decided to want the man I could get. That was Craig Penhallow’s way of looking at it, too. Ever hear the story of Craig Penhallow and the trees in Treewoofe lane, Joscelyn?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’ve noticed—haven’t you—something odd about the spruce trees up and down that lane? There’s a gap in them every once in so long.”

  Joscelyn nodded. Aunt Becky could not tell her much she didn’t know about the appearance of the trees in Treewoofe lane.

  “Thirty years ago old Cornelius Treverne owned Treewoofe. Craig was courting his daughter Clara. And one night Clara turned him down. Hard. Craig was furious. He flung himself out of the house and stormed down the lane. Poor old Cornelius had spent that whole day setting out a hedge of little spruce trees all along both sides of that long lane. A hard day’s work, mind you. And what do you think Craig did by way of relieving his feelings? As he stalked along he would tear
up a handful of old Cornelius’ trees on the right hand—a few steps more—up would come a bunch on the left. He kept that up all the way down the lane. You can imagine what it looked like when he got to the end of it. And you can imagine what old Cornelius felt when he saw it next morning. He never got time to replant the trees—Cornelius was a great hand to put things off. He was a good man—painfully good. It was a blessing he hadn’t sons, or they’d certainly have gone to the bad by way of keeping up the family average. But he was no hustler. So the trees that were left grew up as they were. As for Craig, by the time he had finished with the lane he felt a lot better. There were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it—Maggie Penhallow was just as handsome as Clara Treverne. Or at least she managed her eyes and hands so well, she passed for handsome. You see, Craig was like me. He decided to be sensible. Perhaps your way is wiser, Joscelyn—and perhaps we’re all fools together with the Moon Man’s high-seated gods laughing at us. Joscelyn—I don’t know whether I should tell you this—but I think I should, for I don’t think you know, and the things we don’t know sometimes hurt us horribly, in spite of the old proverb. All Hugh’s family are at him to go to the States and get a divorce. It’s been done several times, you know. People brag that Prince Edward Island hasn’t had but one divorce since Confederation. Stuff and nonsense! It’s had a dozen.”

  “But—but—they’re not really legal—here, are they?” stammered Joscelyn.

  “Legal enough. They’re winked at, anyhow. Mind, I don’t say Hugh is going to do it. But they’re at him—they’re at him. Times have changed a bit these last ten years. No easy divorce for us—but in Hugh’s case they’d condone it. Mrs. Jim Trent is the moving spirit behind it, I understand. She lived so long in the States she got their view-point. And she and Pauline Dark are as friendly just now as two cats lapping from the same saucer. Pauline’s as much in love with Hugh as she ever was, you know.”