A Tangled Web

by L. M. Montgomery

  In her room Gay undressed by moonlight. She shredded the petals of the white June roses she had worn into the little blue rose-jar on her table. Her father had given her the jar when she was a child and had told her to drop a handful of rose leaves in it for every perfectly happy day she had. The jar was almost full now. There was only room really for one more handful. Gay smiled. She would put that handful in it on her wedding-day and then seal it up forever as a symbol of her girlhood.

  Of course she didn’t sleep. It would be a pity to waste a moment of such a night sleeping. It was nicer to lie awake thinking of Noel. Even planning a little bit about her wedding. It was to be in the fall. Her wedding-dress—satin as creamy as her own skin—“Your skin is like the petal of a white narcissus,” Noel had told her—shimmering silk stockings—laces like sea-foam—one of those slender platinum wedding-rings—“the lovely Mrs. Noel Gibson”—“one of the season’s most charming brides”—a little house somewhere—perhaps one of those darling new bungalows—with yellow curtains like sunshine on its windows and yellow plates like circles of sunshine on its breakfast-table. With Noel opposite.

  “Little love.” She could hear him as he said it under the apple tree, looking down into the pools of darkness that were her eyes. How wonderful and unbelievable it was that out of a whole world of beautiful girls, his for the asking, he should have chosen her.

  Just once she thought of the old Moon Man’s warning—“Don’t be too happy.” That poor old crazy Moon Man. As if one could be too happy! As if God didn’t like to see you happy! Why, people were made for happiness.

  “I’ll always love this night,” thought Gay. “The eighth of June—it will always be the dearest date of the year. I’ll always celebrate it in some dear secret little way of my own.”

  And they would always be together—always. On rough paths and smooth. Dawns and twilights would be more beautiful because they would be together.

  “If I were dead,” thought Gay, “and Noel came and looked at me I’d live again.”

  Next day Nan rang Gay up on the telephone.

  “I think I like your Noel,” Nan said drawlingly. “I think I’ll take him from you.”

  Gay laughed triumphantly.

  “You can’t,” she said.

  5

  Gay was not the only one of the clan who kept vigil that night. Neither Donna nor Peter slept. Mrs. David Dark and Mrs. Palmer Dark lay awake in their shame beside snoring spouses, wondering dumbly why life should be so hard for decent women who had always tried to do what was right. Virginia was awake worrying. Mrs. Toynbee Dark was awake nursing her venom. Pauline Dark was awake wondering if Hugh would really get that divorce. Thora Dark waited anxiously for a drunken, abusive husband to come home. The Sams slept, although both, did they but know it, had cause to be wakeful. Hugh Dark and Roger Penhallow slept soundly. Even William Y. slept, with a poultice on his nose. On the whole, the men seemed to have the best of it, unless Aunt Becky, sleeping so dreamlessly in her grave in the trim Rose River churchyard, evened things up for the women.

  Joscelyn was not sleeping either. She went to bed and tossed restlessly for hours. Finally she rose softly, dressed, and slipped out of the house to the shore. The hollows among the dunes were filled with moonlight. The cool wind nestled in the grasses on the red “capes,” bringing whiffs of the faint, cold, sweet perfumes of night. There was a wash of gleaming ripples all along the shore and a mist mirage over the harbor. Far out she heard the heart-breaking call of the sea that had called for thousands of years.

  She felt old and cold and silly and empty. Suppose Hugh really loved Pauline and wanted to be free. Very well, why not? Did not she love Frank Dark? Why could she not think philosophically, “Well, if Hugh gets a divorce I will be free, too, and perhaps Frank will come back”—no, she could not think that. Such a thought seemed to tarnish and cheapen the high flame of love she had nursed in her heart for years.

  Dawn was breaking over the dunes and little shudders were running through the sand-hill grasses when she went back to the house. She had not dreamed of meeting any one at that early hour, but who should come trotting across Al Griscom’s silent white pasture of morning dew but Aunty But, bent two-double, with her head wrapped in a gray shawl, out of which her bright little eyes peered curiously at Joscelyn. She seemed at once incredibly old and elfinly young.

  “You’re up early, Mrs. Dark.”

  Joscelyn hated to be called Mrs. Dark, just as she hated to take a letter out of the post office addressed to “Mrs. Hugh Dark.” Once when she had had to sign some legal document “Joscelyn Dark,” she had thrown down the pen and risen with lips as white as snow. Aunty But was the only one of the clan who ever addressed her as “Mrs. Dark.” And there was no use in snubbing Aunty But.

  “And you, too, Aunty.”

  “Eh, but I’ve never been in bed at all. I’ve been up at Forest Myers’ all night. A little girl there—a fine baby but got the Myers mouth, I’m afraid.”

  “And Alice?”

  “Alice is fine but awful sorry for herself. Yet she didn’t have a bad time at all. No caterwauling to speak of. It’s a pleasure to help a woman like that to a baby. I might have done the same for you in that house up there”—Aunty But waved her hand at distant Treewoofe, taking shape in the pale gray light that was creeping over the hill—“if you hadn’t behaved as you did. I brought babies into that house many a time—I was there when Clara Treverne was born. Such a time! Old Cornelius—but he was young Cornelius then—was crazy wild. You’d have thought nobody’d ever had a baby before. Finally I had to decoy him to the cellar and lock him up, or that child would never have got born. Poor Mrs. Cornelius couldn’t rightly give her mind to it for the racket Cornelius was making. Clara was the last baby at Treewoofe. It’s high time there was some more. But there may be. I’m hearing Hugh is going to get a Yankee divorce. If that’s so Pauline won’t let him slip through her fingers a second time. But she’ll never have the babies you’d have had, Joscelyn. She hasn’t the figger for it.”

  6

  Little Brian Dark had to walk home from the funeral because his Uncle Duncan took a notion to go on to town.

  “Mind ye get the stones picked off the gore-field before milking,” he told him.

  Brian never had a day to play—never even half a day. He was very tired, for he had picked stones all the forenoon since early morning; and he was hungry. To be sure, he was always hungry; but the hunger in his heart was worse than any physical hunger. And there was no monument to his mother. Would he ever be able, when he grew up, to earn enough money to get one?

  When he reached Duncan Dark’s ugly yellow house among its lean trees, he took off his shabby “best suit,” put on his ragged work-garb, and went out to the gore to pick stones. He picked stones until milking time, his back aching as well as his heart. Then he helped Mr. Conway milk the cows. Mr. Conway was the only hired man Brian had ever heard of who was called “Mr.” Mr. Conway said he wouldn’t work for anyone who wouldn’t call him “Mr.” He was as good as any master, by gosh. Brian rather liked Mr. Conway, who looked more like a poet gone to seed than a hired man. He had a shock of wavy, dark auburn hair, a drooping mustache and goatee, and round, brilliant, brown eyes. He was a stranger from Nova Scotia and called himself a Bluenose. Brian often wondered why, for Mr. Conway’s nose was far from blue. Red in fact.

  When milking was over, Aunt Alethea, a tall, fair, slatternly woman, with a general air of shrewishness about her, told him to go down to Little Friday Cove and see if he could get a codfish from one of the Sams.

  “Be smart about it, too,” she admonished him. “None of your dawdling, or the Moon Man will cotch you.”

  What the Moon Man would do when he “cotched” him she never specified, perhaps reasoning that the unknown was always more terrible than the known. Brian’s private opinion was that he would boil him in oil and pick his bones. He w
as more afraid of the Moon Man now than of the devil. Somebody had told him that when a boy had no father, the devil was his father and would come along some night and carry him off. He had been sick with horror many a night after that. But Mr. Conway had told him there was no devil and emphasized it with so many “By goshes” that Brian believed him. He wanted to believe him. But Mr. Conway By-goshed heaven away, too, and that was not so good because it meant he would never see his mother again. Mr. Conway didn’t go so far as to say there was no God. He even admitted there probably was. Somebody had to run things, though he was making a poor job of it.

  “Likely a young God who hain’t learned his business yet, by gosh,” said Mr. Conway.

  Brian was too young himself to be scandalized by this. He rather liked the idea of a young god. He had always thought of God as a stern, bearded Old Man.

  If Brian had not been so tired he would have enjoyed the walk to Little Friday cove. He loved to watch the harbor lights blossoming out in the blue of the twilight. He loved to watch the mysterious ships sailing out beyond the dunes to who knew what enchanted shores. He picked one that was just going over the bar and went with it in fancy. When he reached Little Friday Cove he found Big Sam alone and rather low in his mind. Trouble was coming; various signs and portents had pointed to it for days. No longer could he be blind to them. Salt, the dog, had howled dismally all Monday of the preceding week. On Tuesday Little Sam had smashed the looking-glass he had shaved by for forty years. On Wednesday Big Sam had failed to pick up a pin he had seen; on Thursday he had walked under Tom Appleby’s ladder at the factory—and on Friday—Friday, mind you—Big and Little Sam between them had contrived to upset the salt at supper.

  Big Sam was determined not to be superstitious. What did spilled salt and broken looking-glasses matter to good Presbyterians? But he did believe in dreams—having Biblical warrant for the same. And he had had a horrible one the night after Aunt Becky died—of seeing the full moon, one moment burning black, the next livid red, coming nearer and nearer the earth. He woke, just as it seemed near enough to be touched, with a howl of agony that shattered the stillness of the spring night at Little Friday Cove for yards around. Big Sam, who had kept a careful and copious diary of his dreams for forty years, looked them all over and concluded that none of them had been as awe-inspiring as this one.

  Then there was that peculiar sound the gulf had been making of late. When the Old Lady of the Gulf skirled like a witch, somebody was going to sup sorrow.

  “Little Sam sneaked off somewheres after supper,” he told Brian. “I kinder thought I’d go up to the run myself and dig some clams. But I didn’t—felt a bit tired. I’m beginning to feel my years. But I’ve got the key of the fish-house and I’ll get a cod out for you. They’re all most too big for you to carry, though. Stay and have a saucer of clam chowder. There’s some left. That man can make chowder, I’ll admit.”

  Brian would have liked the chowder well enough, for his supper had been of the sketchiest description, but it was getting dark. He must get home before it got very dark—he was afraid. He was ashamed of his cowardice, but there it was. Sometimes he thought if anyone really loved him he would not be afraid of so many things. He looked so small and wistful that Big Sam gave the poor little shrimp a nickel to buy a chocolate bar at the Widow Terlizzick’s little store on the way home. But Brian did not stop at the store. He did not like the widow Terlizzick or the noisy crowd of loafers who were always in and around the store on summer nights. He hurried home with his heavy codfish and was told to clear off to bed—he would have to be up at four to help Mr. Conway take some calves to market. Brian would have liked to sit out under the big apple tree for a little while and play his jew’s-harp. He liked the old apple tree. It seemed like a friend to him—a great, kindly fragrant, blooming creature stretching protecting arms over him. And he loved to play on his jew’s-harp. Once he had played on his jew’s-harp in the evening at a house where he was planting potatoes, and two young people—one of them a girl in a white dress—had danced to his playing in the moonlit orchard. It was one of the few memories of beauty in his life. When he played his jew’s-harp now he saw them again—dancing—dancing—dancing. With the grace of wind-blown leaves—white and mystic and lovely—to his elfin tune.

  But Aunt Alethea was inexorable and Brian climbed the ladder to the kitchen loft, where he always slept alone and which he hated. He was afraid of the rats that infested it. There was only one thing he liked about it—from its window he could get a glimpse of the sea and a misty blue headland beyond which were wonderful sunsets. Tonight there was a lovely rose and gold afterlight and the sea was blackly-blue under it. And he could see the pink-shaded lamp in the window of the Dollar house on the other side of the road. He loved to watch it, making a great glowing spot of color in the darkness. When it suddenly went out he felt terribly lonely. Tears came to his eyes. He was such a little creature, alone in a great, dim, hostile world. Brian looked up at the sky. How dark the night was! How fearfully bright the stars!

  “Dear God,” he said softly, “dear Young God, please don’t forget me.”

  He lay down on his hard little mattress. He was glad there was no moonlight yet. Moonlit nights in the loft frightened him. The things hanging from the rafters took on such queer shapes. And that hole in the wall of the loft that opened into the unfloored attic of the main house—it was dreadful on moonlit nights, when it looked so black and menacing. Who knew what might pop out of a hole like that? When it was dark he could not see it. It was a long while before he fell asleep. But at last he did—just about the time that Little Sam came home to Little Friday Cove.

  7

  Little Sam had heard at the funeral that the raffle for which he had bought the ticket from Mosey Gautier, was to be held that night. So after supper he thought he might as well saunter around to Chapel Point and see if he had any luck.

  He had.

  Big Sam was sound asleep in his bunk, with Mustard rolled up in a golden ball on his stomach. Little Sam unwrapped something from the parcel he was carrying, looked at it rather dubiously, shook his head, and tried the effect of it on the clock shelf. Something in him liked it. Something else was uneasy.

  “She’s got a real fine fìgger,” he reflected, with a speculative glance at the unconscious Big Sam. “But I dunno what he’ll think of her—I dunno. Nor the minister.”

  These considerations did not keep Little Sam awake. He fell asleep promptly and Aurora, goddess of the dawn, kept her vigil on the clock shelf through the hours of darkness, and was the first thing on which Big Sam’s eyes rested when he opened them in the morning. There she stood, her lithe lovely form poised on tiptoe, smitten by a red-gold beam from the sun that was rising across the harbor.

  “What the devil is that?” said Big Sam, thinking this was another dream. He flung himself out of his bunk, upsetting an indignant cat, and walked across the room.

  “It ain’t a dream,” he said incredulously. “It’s a statoo—a naked statoo.”

  Salt, who had been curled up at Little Sam’s feet, bounded to the floor after Mustard. He liked Mustard well enough but he wasn’t going to have her sitting there on the floor grinning at him. The resultant disturbance awoke Little Sam, who sat up drowsily and inquired what the row was about.

  “Samuel Beelby Dark,” said Big Sam ominously, “what’s that up there?”

  “Samuel Phemister Dark,” returned little Sam mockingly, “that’s an alabaster statooette—genuine alabaster. I drew it for fifth prize at the Chapel lottery last night. Pretty, ain’t it?”

  “Pretty?” Big Sam’s voice boomed out. “Pretty! It’s indecent and obscene, that’s what it is. You take it right down and fire it out in the gulf as far as you can fire it.”

  If Big Sam had not thus flown off the handle it is probable that Little Sam would have done exactly that, being somewhat uneasy over the look of the thing generally and what Mr. Trac
kley might say about it. But he was not going to be bullied into it by that little runt of a Big Sam and he’d let him see it.

  “Oh, I guess not,” he retorted coolly. “I guess it’s going to stay right there. Stop yelping now and let your hair curl.”

  Big Sam’s scanty love-locks showed no signs of curling but his red beard fairly crackled with indignation. He began striding about the room in a fine rage, biting his right hand and then his left. Salt fled one way and Mustard another, leaving the Sams to fight it out.

  “’Taint right to have any kind of statoos, let alone naked ones. It’s agin God’s law. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven immidge—’”

  “Good gosh, I ain’t made it and I ain’t worshiping it—”

  “That’ll come—that’ll come. And a Catholic geegaw at that. S’pose likely it’s the Virgin Mary.”

  Little Sam looked doubtful. He had been bred up in a good old Presbyterian hatred of Catholics and all their ways and works, but somehow he didn’t think even they would go so far as to represent the Virgin Mary entirely unclothed.

  “No, ’taint. I think her name’s there at the bottom—Aurorer. Just a gal, that’s all.”

  “Do you think the Apostle Paul ever carried anything like that around with him?” demanded Big Sam. “Or”—as an afterthought that might carry more weight with Little Sam—“poor dear old Aunt Becky, who isn’t cold in her grave yet?”

  “Not likely. St. Paul was kind of a woman-hater like yourself. As for Aunt Becky, we ain’t in the running for her jug, so why worry? Now stop chewing your fists and pretend you’re grown up even if you ain’t, Sammy. See if you can dress yourself like a man.”