A Tangled Web

  One day when Joscelyn had been a little girl, she had found herself alone in the parlor, and she had boldly climbed up on a chair and taken the sacred bottle in her hand. It was a pretty bottle with a faceted glass stopper, and Aunt Rachel had tied a bow of blue satin ribbon lovingly around its throat. Somehow Joscelyn had dropped it. Luckily it fell on the soft, velvety, padded roses of one of Mrs. Clifford’s famous hooked rugs. So it did not break. But the stopper came out and before the horrified Joscelyn could leap down and rescue it, every drop of the priceless Jordan water had been spilled. At first Joscelyn was cold with horror. Even at ten she did not think there was anything special or sacred about that water. She had understood too well her father’s satirical speeches about it. But she knew what Aunt Rachel would be like. Then an impish idea entered her mind. Luckily she was alone in the house. She went out and deliberately filled up the bottle from the kitchen water-pail. It looked exactly the same. Aunt Rachel never knew the difference.

  Joscelyn had never told a soul—less for her own sake than for Aunt Rachel’s. That bottle of supposed Jordan water was all that gave any meaning to Aunt Rachel’s life. It was the only thing she really loved—her god, in truth, though she would have been horrified if such a suggestion had ever been made to her.

  As for Joscelyn, she could never have stood Aunt Rachel and her martyr airs at all had it not been for the knowledge of how securely she had her in her power.

  “Where did you put that bottle of St. Jacob’s oil when you housecleaned the pantry?” Aunt Rachel was asking. “I want to rub my joints. There’s rain coming. I shouldn’t have put off my flannels. A body should wear flannel next the skin till the end of June.”

  Joscelyn went silently and got the St. Jacob’s oil.

  18

  Hugh Dark leaned over the gate at Treewoofe for a time before going in, looking at the house dead black on its hill against the dull red sky—the house where he had once thought Joscelyn Penhallow would be mistress. He thought it looked lonely—as if it expected nothing more from life. Yet it had nothing of the desolate peace of a house whose life has been lived. It had an unlived look about it; it had a defrauded defiant air; it had been robbed of its birthright.

  Before his marriage Hugh had liked to stand so and look at his house when he came home, dreaming a young man’s dreams. He imagined coming home to Joscelyn; he would stand awhile before going in, looking up at all its windows whence warm golden lights would be gleaming over winter snows or summer gardens or lovely, pale, clear autumn dusks. He would think of the significance of each window—the dining-room, where his supper would be laid, the kitchen, where Joscelyn was waiting for him, perhaps a dimly lighted window upstairs in a room where small creatures slept. “She is the light of my house,” he would think. Pretty? The word was too cheap and tawdry for Joscelyn. She was beautiful, with the beauty of a warm pearl or a star or a golden flower. And she was his. He would sit with her by rose-red fires on stormy winter nights and wild wet fall evenings, shut in with her for secret happy hours, while the winds howled about Treewoofe. He would walk with her in the twilight orchard on summer nights, and kiss her hair in that soft blue darkness of shadows.

  For years he had not looked at his house when he came home. In a sense he hated it. But tonight he was restless and unhappy. Only after seeing Joscelyn did he realize to the full how empty his life was. Empty like his house. It was always difficult to believe that the incidents of his wedding-night had been real. We can never believe that terrible things really have happened. Years after they have happened we are still incredulous. So it was with Hugh. It simply could not be so. Joscelyn must be in that house, waiting for him to come to her. If he stood here patiently by the gate he would see her at the door looking for him and see the garland gold of her hair shining like a crown in the light behind her.

  Would he get the divorce his mother and sisters were always hinting at? No, he would not. He struck his clenched fist furiously on the gate-post. Frank would come home then and marry Joscelyn. He should never have her.

  There was no light in the house. His old housekeeper must be away. Hugh went in sullenly, not by the front door, though it was nearest. He knew that it was locked. He had locked it behind Joscelyn on their wedding-night and it had never been opened since. He went in by the kitchen door and lit a lamp. He was restless. He went all over the house—the dusty ill-kept house. It was lonely and unsatisfied. The chairs wanted to be sat upon. The mirrors wanted to reflect charming faces. The rooms wanted children to go singing through them. The walls wanted to re-echo to laughter. There had been no laughter in this house since that wedding-night—no real laughter. A house without remembered laughter is a pitiful thing. He came finally to the square front hall where the ashes of the bridal fire were still in the grate. His housekeeper had her orders never to meddle with anything in the front hall. The dust lay thick over everything. The mirror was turned to the wall. He hated it because it had once reflected her face and would reflect it no more forever. The clock on the mantelpiece was not going. It had stopped that night and had never been wound again. So time had stopped for Hugh Dark when he had looked at Joscelyn and realized that she was no longer his.

  On the mantelpiece, just before the clock, a wedding-ring and a small diamond ring were lying. They had been there ever since Joscelyn had stripped them from her fingers.

  The moonlight was looking in through the glass of the front door like a white hopeless face. Hugh recalled an old saying he had heard or read somewhere—“God had made a fool of him.”

  Ay, verily God had made a fool of him.

  He would go out and roam about in the night as he often did to drive away haunting thoughts. In the house he could think of nothing but Joscelyn. Outside he could think of his plans for making money out of his farm and the possibilities that were looming up for him in local politics. But first he must feed his cat. The poor beast was hungry, crouched on the kitchen doorstep looking at him accusingly. It was not the cat he and Joscelyn were reputed to have quarreled over.

  “At least,” thought Hugh bitterly, “a cat always knows its own mind.”

  19

  So Aunt Becky’s famous last “levee” was over with all its comedy and tragedy, its farce and humor, its jealousies and triumphs; and it may be concluded that very few people went home from it as happy as they went to it. The two Sams, perhaps, who were untroubled by love or ambition and had no suspicion of the dark clouds already lowering over their lives—Gay Penhallow—and maybe Peter, who was tearing the bowels out of his trunk. He had said to Nancy on the way home:

  “Nancy—Nancy, I’ve fallen in love—I have—I have—and it’s glorious. Why did I never fall in love before?”

  Nancy caught her breath as Peter whirled around a corner on two wheels.

  “What do you mean? And who is it?”

  “Donna Dark.”

  “Donna Dark!” Nancy gasped again as Peter shaved old Spencer Howey’s team by the merest fraction of an inch. “Why, Peter, I thought you always hated her.”

  “So did I. But, dearest of Nancys, have you never heard the proverb, ‘Hate is only love that has missed its way’?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Wheels Within Wheels

  1

  Most of the clan who were at The Pinery went home thinking it was all nonsense to talk of Aunt Becky’s dying. Anybody as full of vim and devilment as she was would last for years. Roger must be mistaken.

  But Roger had, as usual, made no mistake. Less than a week after the famous levee, Aunt Becky died—very quietly and unostentatiously. And tidily. Aunt Becky insisted on dying tidily. She made Ambrosine put on a smooth and spotless spread, tuck all the edges neatly in, and fold back the fresh sheet in unwrinkled purity.

  “I’ve lived clean and I’ll die clean,” said Aunt Becky, folding her hands on the sheet. “And I’m glad I’m not dying in my sleep. Roger told me I might. I want to have
all my wits about me when I die.”

  She was done with life. As she looked back in this last hour she saw how few things had really mattered. Her hates now seemed trivial and likewise many of her loves. Things she had once thought great seemed small and a few trifles loomed vastly. Grief and joy had alike ceased to worry her. But she was glad she had told Crosby Dark that she had loved him. Yes, that was a satisfaction. She closed her sunken old eyes and did not open them again.

  Of course there was a clan funeral and everybody with one exception came, even Mrs. Allan Dark, who was dying of some chronic trouble but had determined—so it was reported—to live until she knew who got the Dark jug. The exception was Tom Dark, who was in bed with a dislocated shoulder. The night before, as he was sitting on his bed, studying if there were any way to wheedle the secret out of Dandy Dark, he had absently put both feet into one pajama leg. Then when he stood up he fell on the floor in what his terrified wife at first thought was a fit. Very few of the clan sympathized with him as to his resulting shoulder. They thought it served him right for wearing new-fangled duds. If he had had a proper nightshirt on it couldn’t have happened.

  Thekla Penhallow, who always looked as if her nose were cold, appeared at the funeral in heavy mourning. Some of the other women wondered uneasily if they shouldn’t have, too. To be sure, Aunt Becky had hated mourning; she called it a “relic of barbarism.” But who knew what Dandy thought about it?

  Everything proceeded decently and in order—until just at the last. Aunt Becky, who had never cared for flowers in her life, had her casket heaped with them. But her clan at least respected her wish as regards “made-up” flowers. There was nothing but clusters and bouquets gathered in old homestead gardens and breathing only of the things Aunt Becky had known—and perhaps loved—all her life.

  Aunt Becky was sternly handsome in what some considered far too expensive a coffin, with her lace shawl draped about her and her cold white lips forever closed on all the clan secrets she knew—so handsome that her clan, who had thought of her for years only as a gaunt unlovely old woman, with straggling hair and wrinkled face, were surprised. Crosby Dark, who had felt ashamed at the levee when she told him she had loved him, now felt flattered. The love of that stately old queen was a compliment. For the rest, they looked at her with interest, respect, and more grief than any of them had expected to feel. With considerable awe as well. She looked as if she might open her eyes with that terrible inquisitorial look of hers and shoot some ghastly question at them. It would be like her.

  Very few tears were shed. Mrs. Clifford cried; but then she shed gallons at everybody’s funeral. And Grace Penhallow cried, which was so unusual that her husband whispered testily, “What are you crying for? You always hated her.”

  “That’s why I’m crying,” said Grace drearily. She could not explain how futile that old hate seemed to her now. And its futility made her feel sad and temporarily bereft of all things.

  The Rev. Mr. Trackley conducted the service very fittingly and gracefully, most people considered. Though Uncle Pippin thought, “Oh, you are drawing it rather strong” at some of the phrases used in Mr. Trackley’s eulogy of the departed. Aunt Becky had hardly been such a saint as that. And Drowned John thought shamelessly, when Mr. Trackley said the Lord had taken her, “He’s welcome to her.” William Y. was by no means so sure of it as the minister seemed to be. Aunt Becky, he reflected, had never been a member of the church. But then she was a Penhallow. A Penhallow couldn’t go anywhere but to the right place, William Y. felt comfortingly.

  The funeral procession from The Pinery to the graveyard at Rose River was, so Camilla proudly remarked to Ambrosine that night, the longest that had ever been known in the clan. It was a day of heavy clouds with outbursts of sunshine between them; an occasional gray mist of rain drifted over the spruce barrens down by the harbor, much to the comfort of the superstitious. Aunt Becky was buried in the Theodore Dark plot, beside her husband and children, under a drift of blooming spirea. The old graveyard was full of the pathos of forgotten graves. Men and women of the clan lay there—men and women who had been victorious, and men and women who had been defeated. Their follies and adventures, their gallantries and mistakes, their fortunes and misfortunes, were buried and forgotten with them. And now Aunt Becky had come to take her place among them. People did not hurry away after the grave service had been concluded. A clan funeral was by way of being a bit of a social function as well as a funeral. They broke up into little groups and talked—with rather easier minds than they had brought to the funeral—for Camilla had told them that that dreadful obituary had simply been a hoax on Aunt Becky’s part. She had wanted to give them one good final scare.

  “Thank God,” said William Y., who really hadn’t slept anything to speak of since he had heard that obituary read.

  Everybody looked at Dandy Dark with a new outward respect. People came up and spoke to him who did not ordinarily notice him unless they fell over him. He felt his importance, as the possessor of a dying trust, but did not presume on it too much. Folks felt sure he knew already who was going to get the jug. If Aunt Becky hadn’t told him, no doubt he had steamed the letter open the night after the levee. Artemas Dark, while the burial service was going on, was speculating as to whether there were any chance of getting Dandy “lit up” and worming the secret out of him that way. He sadly concluded there wasn’t. Dandy had never tasted liquor in his life. Too mean—and unadventurous, thought Artemas. Titus Dark wondered if it would be any good to try the Sams’ ouija-board. It was said to do wonderful things. But—would that be tampering with the powers of darkness? He knew Mr. Trackley thought so.

  Palmer Dark and Homer Penhallow nodded to each other shamefacedly. Young Jimmy Dark meowed very distinctly at this, but Palmer and Homer pretended not to have heard.

  “Good thing they made up at last,” said Uncle Pippin. “Never could see the sense of keeping up a moldy old scrap like that.”

  “As for the sense of it, there’s no sense in heaps of things we do,” said Stanton Grundy. “Life would be tedious without a vendetta or two.”

  Everybody was on tiptoe. Abel Dark had already begun to finish painting his house and Miller Dark had actually commenced work on his clan history and had a genealogical table neatly made out. Chris Penhallow had never touched a violin. Drowned John and Titus Dark had not sworn for a week—at least nobody had heard them do it. Titus showed the strain but there was no shadow on Drowned John’s brow as he strode across the graveyard, trampling on the graves, to look at Jennie’s and Emmy’s, and read his own epitaph. Ambrosine Winkworth wore her diamond ring—most unfitting, it was thought. Mrs. Toynbee Dark went faithfully to visit each husband’s grave. People said Nan Penhallow might have left the lipstick off for a funeral.

  “She’s a flip piece,” said Rachel Penhallow.

  “She tries to flirt with every man—why, she even tries to flirt with Pa,” said Mrs. William Y.

  “Little Sam saw her digging clams down at the sea-run in her bathing-suit the other night,” said Mercy Penhallow.

  “Yes, and I warrant you she’d just as soon dig them with nothing at all on,” said Mrs. Clifford bitterly. “Such an example for our girls! What did Little Sam think of it?”

  “Well, you know how men are,” said Mercy. “He said of course it was hardly a decorous garb but she’d have looked all right if she’d had a bit more meat on her legs.”

  “Dear me!” was all Mrs. Clifford could say; but she said it adequately.

  Mrs. William Y. looked solemnly at Nan, who was wearing a dress Mrs. William Y. thought was a sheer impertinence.

  “I would like,” she said bitterly, “to ask that girl how she would like to meet her God with those bare knees.”

  “Naked and ashamed,” quoted Mrs. Clifford vaguely.

  “Oh, I think you exaggerate,” said Stanton Grundy, passing by. “Naked and not ashamed.”

 
“At any rate, she has good knees,” said Mrs. William Y. majestically. Stanton Grundy was not going to be allowed to sneer unrebuked at any Penhallow.

  The little perverse lock stuck up on Hugh’s head when he took off his hat for prayer, and Joscelyn had the same irrational impulse to go and smooth it down. Later on she saw Pauline talking to him and looking up at Treewoofe as she talked. Joscelyn resented the latter fact more than the former. Then Sim Penhallow came up and told her he had heard Hugh was going to sell Treewoofe—looking at her to see how she took it. Joscelyn did not let him see the sick dismay which invaded her soul. She took the news impassively, and Sim revenged himself nastily.

  “You made a sad mess of things there, my girl.”

  Joscelyn turned her back on him without a word. Sim went off, vowing Hugh was well rid of that, and Joscelyn stood looking at Treewoofe, dim and austere and lovely on its distant hill. Oh, surely, surely Hugh would not sell it. But hadn’t Pauline once said she wouldn’t live on a bleak hill like that for anything?

  Exaggerated reports of the value of the jug had already got around and mythical collectors had offered Aunt Becky fabulous sums for it. Another rumor was that it was to be left to the most truthful person in the clan. A group of men standing near the grave discussed it.

  “Have we got to live for a year without telling any lies?” said Uncle Pippin sadly, but with a glint of mischief in his young blue eyes.

  “There won’t be many of us left in that case,” said Stanton Grundy.

  “Us!” grunted Uncle Pippin resentfully to himself.

  Penny Dark went as always to look at what he thought the handsomest stone in the graveyard, which had been put up by Stephen Dark to the memory of a wife he hated. The gravestone was considered one of the sights of Rose River. A high pedestal of white marble surmounted by the life-size figure of an angel with outstretched wings. It had cost Stephen Dark—who never gave his wife a cent he could help giving—a thousand dollars. It was much admired by those who had never seen it on a wet day. Then the water ran down the angel’s nose and poured off in a stream.