When they came to their senses they were sitting side by side on the steps of the Courting-House between two white blooming spirea bushes. Peter had said, “Good-evening,” when what he had wanted to say was, “Hail, goddess.” Donna could never recall what she said.
About them was night—and faint starlight—and scented winds. A dog was taking the countryside into his confidence two farms away.
Donna knew now that Peter loved her. She would share the flame and wonder that was his life—she would know the lure in the thought of treading where no white woman’s foot had ever trod—they would gaze together on virgin mountain tops climbing upward into sunset skies—they would stand on peaks in Darien—they would spend nights together in the jungle—hot, scented, spicy nights—or under desert stars—didn’t she hear the tinkling of camel-bells?
“I think I’ve been drunk ever since I saw you at Aunt Becky’s levee—a week ago—a year ago—a lifetime ago,” said Peter. “Drunk with the devilish magic of you, girl. And to think I’ve been hating you all my life! You!”
Donna sighed with rapture. She must keep this moment forever. Adventure—mystery—love—the three most significant words in any language—were to be hers again. She was for the time being as perfectly, youngly, fearlessly happy as if she had never learned the bitter lesson that joy could die. She couldn’t think of anything to say, but words did not seem to be necessary. She knew she was very beautiful—she had put on beauty like a garment. And the night was beautiful—and the sunken old rotten steps were beautiful—and the dog was beautiful. As for Peter—he was just Peter.
“Isn’t that a jolly wind?” said Peter, as it blew around them from the river. “I hate an evening when there’s no wind. It seems so dead. I always feel ten times more alive when there’s a wind blowing.”
“So do I,” said Donna.
Then they spent some rapturous silent minutes reflecting how wonderful it was that they should both love wind.
The moon came out from behind a cloud. Silver lights and ebon shadows played all about the old orchard. Peter had been silent so long that Donna had to ask him what he was thinking of. Just for the sake of hearing his dear voice again.
“Watch that dark cloud leaving the moon,” said Peter, who had no notion of making love in the common way. “It’s as good as an eclipse.”
“How silvery it will be on the moon side,” said Donna dreamily. “It must be wonderful.”
“When I get my aeroplane we’ll fly up in it when there’s a cloud like that and see it from the moon side,” said Peter, who had never thought of getting an aeroplane before but knew now he must have one and sweep in it with Donna through the skies of dawn. “And I’ll get you the Southern Cross for a brooch. Or would you prefer the belt of Orion for a girdle?”
“Oh,” said Donna. She stood up and held out her arms to the moon. Perhaps she knew she had very beautiful arms, shining like warm marble through the sleeves of her filmy black dress. “I wish I could fly up there now.”
“With me?” Peter had risen, too, and snatched at the dark blossom of her loveliness. He kissed her again and again. Donna returned his kisses—shamelessly, Virginia would have said. But there was no thought of Virginia or Barry or old feuds. They were alone in their exquisite night of moonlight and shadow and glamour.
“With me?” asked Peter again.
“With you,” answered Donna between kisses.
Peter laughed down into her eyes triumphantly.
“I’m the only man in the world you could ever love,” he said arrogantly and truthfully. “How soon can we be married?”
“Tee-hee—how very romantic!” tittered Mrs. Toynbee Dark, who had been standing for ten minutes at the corner of the old house watching them with sinister little black eyes.
“Ho, ho, my pet weasel, so you’re there,” said Peter. “Rejoice with me, widow of Toynbee, Donna has promised to marry me.”
“So her heart has had a resurrection,” said Mrs. Toynbee. “It’s an interesting idea. But what will Drowned John say about it?”
4
Peter and Donna were not the only pair whose troth was plighted that night. The phrase was Gay’s—she thought it sounded much more wonderful than just getting engaged. Nan, who was to go to the dance with Gay and Noel, went home with her from the funeral and on the way told Gay that her mother had decided to stay on the island until the matter of the jug was settled.
“She says she won’t go back to St. John till it’s known who is to get it. Poor mums! She’ll certainly go loco if she doesn’t. Dad is to be in China most of the year on business, so he won’t miss us. We’re taking the rooms at The Pinery Aunt Becky had. To think when life is so short I must be buried here for a year. It’s poisonous.”
Gay felt a little dashed. She didn’t know why it chilled her to hear that Nan was going to stay around, but it did. She did not talk much and was rather relieved when they reached Maywood. Maywood had been one of the show-places of the clan when Howard Penhallow was alive, but it had gone to seed since—the shingles curled up a bit—the veranda roof was sagging—it needed paint badly. The grounds had run wild. But it had beauty of a sort yet, nestled under its steep hill of dark spruces with the near shore in its sapphire of sky and wave, and Gay loved it. It hurt and angered her when Nan called it a picturesque old ruin.
But she forgot all about Nan and her prickles as she dressed for the dance. It was delightful to make herself beautiful for Noel. She would wear her dress of primrose silk and her new, high-heeled fairy slippers. She always felt she was beautiful when she put on that dress. To slip such a lovely golden gown over her head—give her bobbed hair shake like a daffodil tossing in the wind—and then look at the miracle.
All very fine till Nan slipped in and stood beside her—purposely perhaps. Nan in a wispy dress you could crumple in your hand—a shining, daring gown of red with a design of silver grapes all over it—hair with a fillet of silver-green leaves, starred with one red bud, around her sleek, ash-gold head. Gay felt momentarily quenched.
“I look homemade beside her, that’s the miserable truth,” she thought. “Pretty, oh, yes, but homemade.”
And her eyebrows looked so black and heavy beside the narrower line over Nan’s subtle eyes. But Gay plucked up heart—the faint rose of her cheeks under the dark stain of her lashes was not make-up and say what you might about smartness, that curl of Nan’s in front of her ear looked exactly like a side-whisker. Gay forgot Nan again as she ran down to the gate in the back of the garden whence she could see the curve in the Charlottetown road around which Noel’s car must come.
She saw Mercy Penhallow and her mother in the glass porch as she ran. And she knew that quite likely they were clapper-clawing Noel—Mercy, anyhow. When Gay had first begun to go about with Noel, her whole clan lifted their noses and keened. If people only wouldn’t interfere so in one’s life! The idea of them insinuating that Noel wasn’t good enough for her—those inbred Darks and Penhallows! Don’t dare marry outside of the Royal Family! Gay tossed her head in a fine scorn of them as she flitted through the garden on her slender and golden feet.
Mercy Penhallow had not yet begun on Noel. She and Mrs. Howard had been discussing the funeral in all its details. Now Mercy’s pale watery eyes were fixed on Nan, who was on the front veranda smoking a cigarette to the scandal of all Rose River folks who happened to go by.
“She must think her back beautiful—she shows so much of it,” said Mercy. “But then it’s old-fashioned to be modest.”
Mrs. Howard smiled tolerantly. Mrs. Howard, her clan thought, was too tolerant. That was why matters had gone so far between Gay and Noel Gibson.
“She’s going to the dance at the Charlottetown Country Club with Gay and Noel. I would have preferred Gay not to have gone, the night after the funeral—but the young people of today don’t feel as we used to do about such things.”
“The whole world is dancing mad,” snapped Mercy. “The young fry of today have neither manners nor morals. As for Nan, she’s out to catch a man, they say. Boys on the brain—running after them all the time, I’m told.”
“The girls of our time let the boys do the running,” smiled Mrs. Howard. “It was more fun, I think—one could stop when one wanted to be caught.”
Mercy, who had never been “caught,” whether she wanted to be or not, sniffed.
“I suppose Gay is still crazy after Noel?” she said. “Why don’t you put a stop to that, Lucilla?”
Mrs. Howard looked distressed.
“How can I? Gay knows I don’t like him. But the child is infatuated. Why, when I said something to her about his pedigree she said, ‘Mother dear, Noel isn’t a horse.’”
“And Roger is just mad about her!” moaned Mercy. “A splendid fellow with gobs of money. He could give her everything—”
“Except happiness,” said Mrs. Howard sadly. But she said it only in thought and Mercy prattled on.
“Noel hasn’t a penny beyond his salary and I doubt if he’ll ever have more. Besides, what are those Gibsons? Merely mushrooms. I wonder what her poor father would have thought of it.”
Mrs. Howard sighed. She was not as worldly as some of her clan. She did not want Gay to marry Roger, when she did not love him, simply because he had money. And it was not one of her counts against Noel that he had none. His Gibsonness mattered more. Mrs. Howard knew her Gibsons as Gay could never know them. And she had, in spite of Gay’s quip about the pedigree, an old-fashioned conviction about what was bred in the bone. The first time she had seen Noel she had thought, “A boy shouldn’t know how to use his eyes like that. And he has the Gibson mouth.”
But she couldn’t bear to quarrel with Gay. Gay was all she had. Mercy didn’t understand. It wasn’t so simple “putting a stop” to things. Gay had a will of her own under all her youth and her sweetness, and Mrs. Howard couldn’t bear to make her child unhappy.
“Maybe he’s only flirting with her,” was Mercy’s response to the sigh. “The Gibsons are very fickle.”
Mrs. Howard didn’t like that either. It was unthinkable that a Gibson should be “only flirting” with a Penhallow. She resented the insinuation that Gay might be tossed aside.
“I’m afraid he’s only too much in earnest and I think—I’m pretty sure—they’re almost engaged already.”
“Almost engaged. Lucilla dear, talk sense. Either people are engaged or they are not. And if Gay were my daughter—”
Mrs. Howard hid a smile. She couldn’t help thinking that if Gay had been Mercy’s daughter neither Noel nor any other boy might have bothered her much. Poor Mercy! She was so very plain. With that terrible dewlap! And a face in which the features all seemed afraid of each other. Mrs. Howard felt for her the complacent pity of a woman who had once been very pretty herself and was still agreeable to look upon.
Mrs. Howard was by all odds the most popular woman in the clan. Wherever she was she always seemed to be in the right place without making any fuss about it. She generally got the best of any argument because she never argued—she only smiled. She did not know anything about a great many things, but she knew a great deal about loving and cooking and a woman can go far on that. She was no paw-and-claw friend, giving a dig now and a pat then, as so many were; and there was something about her that made people want to tell her their secrets—their beautiful secrets. Aunt Becky had always flattered herself that she knew all the clan secrets before anybody else, but Mrs. Howard knew many things before Aunt Becky did.
Even Stanton Grundy, who seldom spoke well of a woman because he had a reputation for sardonic humor to keep up, had been heard to say of Mrs. Howard that for once God knew what He was about when He made a woman.
Some of the clan thought Mrs. Howard dressed too gay for a widow of her age, but Mrs. Howard only laughed at this.
“I always liked bright colors and I’ll wear them till I die,” she told them. “You can bury me in black if you want to, but as long as breath’s in me I’ll wear blue.”
“Talking of Roger,” said Mercy, “he’s looking miserable of late. Thin as a lath. Is he worrying over Gay? Or overworking?”
“A little of both, I’m afraid. Mrs. Gateway died last week. No one on earth could have saved her, but Roger takes it terribly hard when he loses a patient.”
“He’s got more feeling than most doctors,” said Mercy. “Gay’s a blind little goose if she passes him over for Noel, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
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.