A Tangled Web

by L. M. Montgomery

  “He needn’t imagine he’s got the only one in the clan.” Joscelyn felt that she wanted to do something very cruel. She wanted to make someone else feel a little of the pain and humiliation she was enduring.

  “Oh, but he has, Aunt Rachel. I spilled your bottle of Jordan water long ago and filled it up with water from the barn pump. That’s what you’ve been worshiping all these years!”

  2

  One gray November evening Gay carried home a letter from Noel. When the postmaster had handed it out to her, her heart had given a suffocating bound, as it would do, she thought, if she were buried underground and Noel walked by her grave. It was a long time since she had had a letter from him. A long time since she had seen him—not since that bitter night at the Silver Slipper. She did not even hear much about him—her clan were surprisingly considerate in regard to that. Almost too considerate. Their avoidance of all reference to Noel was too pointed. Gay knew what it meant when everybody stopped talking as she entered a room. It hurt her—or her pride. For she had still some pride left in which she tried pitifully to wrap herself from what she thought was the half-pitying, half-contemptuous gaze of her little world. She felt as if everyone must be watching her to see how she took it—watching her around corners—behind window-blinds—across the church.

  And she had still a tormenting secret hope that all would come right yet. Noel must have loved her. It couldn’t have been all pretense. He was just bewitched by Nan’s daring and “differentness” and bold coquetry—by the way she could use her eyes. What if—Gay caught her breath as she hurried along—what if this letter were to tell her he had come to his senses—what if it were asking her to forgive him and take him back? Why else should he have written at all?

  Gay flitted home like a little shadow through the melancholy moonlight of the late autumn night. The distant hills were cold and eerie in the chill radiance. The sea moaned hollowly down on the beach. A lonely wind was looking for something and moaning pitifully because it could not find it. It was a dead world—everything was dead—youth, hope and love were dead. But if Noel’s letter only said what it might say there would be an immediate resurrection. Spring would come back even in gray November and her poor, cold, dead, little heart would beat again. If Noel would only come back to her. She did not care how much he had hurt her—how rottenly he had used her—if he would only come back. Her pride was only for the world. She had no pride as far as Noel was concerned. Only a dreadful longing to have him back.

  She went to her room, when she reached Maywood, and laid the letter on the table. Then sat down and looked at it. She was afraid to open it. She dared not open it yet—she would let herself hope a little longer. She thought of that evening in June when she had gone from Aunt Becky’s levee to read Noel’s letter among the ferns in the shadowy hollow of that little wayside nook. There had been no fear then. How could a few short months have made such a difference in anybody’s life? She wondered dumbly if she could possibly ever have been the happy girl of the lovely apple-blossom-time. Then a whole universe of wonder had been hers, with the Milky Way for a lover’s path. Now it had shrunk to a little room where a pale girl sat staring with piteous dilated eyes at a letter she was afraid to open.

  She recalled the first time she had got a letter from Noel—all the “first times.” The first time they had met—the first time she had danced with him—the first time he had called her “Gay”—the first time his smooth, flushed cheek had rested against hers—the first time she had poked her finger through a little gold curl falling down on his forehead and saw it glistening on her hand like a ring of truth—the first time he had said, “I love you.”

  And then the first time she had doubted him—such a little, little doubt like a tiny stone thrown into a pool. The ripples had widened and widened until they touched the farthest shores of mistrust. And now she could not open her letter.

  “I won’t be such a coward any longer,” said Gay passionately. She snatched it up and opened it. For a few minutes she looked at it. Then she laid it down and looked around her. The room was just the same, it seemed indecent that it should be just the same. She walked a little unsteadily to the open window and sat down on a chair.

  Noel had asked her to release him from his engagement. He was “very sorry” but it would be foolish “to let a boyish mistake ruin three lives.” He had “thought he loved her” but now he “realized that he had not known then what love was.” There was a good deal more of this—Noel had so many apologies and excuses that Gay didn’t bother to read them all. What did they matter? She knew what was in the letter now.

  She sat at her window all night. She could not sleep and she did not want to sleep. It would be so terrible to awake and remember again. There was nothing in the world but cold, pale moonlight. Would she ever forget that dreadful white, unpitying moon above the waiting woods—the mournful sound of the wind rustling the dead leaves on the trees, this chilly November night? There was nothing left for her in life—nothing—nothing. It was just as the Moon Man had warned her—she had been too happy.

  She thought the night would never end. Yet when the trees began to shiver in the wind of dawn she shrank from it. She could not hear this dawn—all other dawns she could bear but not this one. And it was such a wonderful dawn—a thing of crimson and gold and quivering splendor—of flames and wings and mystery—such a dawn as should break only over a happy world on a happy morning for happy people. It was an insult to her misery.

  “I could live through this morning if there were to be no more mornings,” thought Gay drearily. Those interminable mornings, stretching before her, year after year, year after year, till she was old and lean and faded and bitter like Mercy Penhallow. The very thought of them made Gay feel desperate. She shivered.

  “Will I ever get used to pain?” she thought.

  Gay told her mother quite calmly that afternoon that she had broken her engagement with Noel. Mrs. Howard wisely said very little and less wisely made Gay’s favorite cake with spice frosting for supper. It did not heal Gay’s broken heart; it only made Gay hate spice cake for the rest of her life.

  Mercy recommended fresh air and an iron tonic. William Y. said he hoped Noel Gibson would get enough of that little wasp of a Nan before she was through with him.

  “Remember you’re a Penhallow. They don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves,” cautioned Cousin Mahala kindly. Gay looked at her with sick eyes. She had gone on smiling, that day, before the clan until she could smile no more. But she did not mind Cousin Mahala seeing into her soul. Cousin Mahala understood.

  “Cousin Mahala, how can I go on living? Just tell me how—that’s all I want to know now. Because I have to live, it seems.”

  Cousin Mahala shook her head.

  “I can’t—nobody can. And you’d only think me heartless and unfeeling if I told you you’d get over this. But I will tell you something I’ve never told anyone before. Do you see that little field over there between Drowned John’s farm and the shore road? Well, I lay there among the clover all night, thirty years ago, agonizing because Dale Penhallow didn’t want me. I didn’t see how I was to go on living either. And now I never pass that field without thanking my lucky stars he didn’t.”

  Gay shrank into herself. After all, Cousin Mahala didn’t understand. Nobody understood.

  Nobody but Roger. Roger came along that evening to find Gay huddled on the veranda steps in the twilight, feeling like some poor little cat freezing before a merciless locked door. She looked up at him with her terrible, tortured young eyes, over the fur collar as he sat down beside her, her face one little, white, pinched note of pain—the face that was meant for laughter.

  “Gay—my poor little Gay,” he cried. “What have they been doing to you?”

  Gay laid her tired head down on his shoulder.

  “Roger,” she whispered, “will you take me for a drive in your car? A fast drive—I don
’t care how fast—a long drive—I don’t care how long—right through the sunset if you like—and don’t talk to me.”

  They had their long and fast drive—so fast that they nearly ran over Uncle Pippin at the turn of the Indian Spring road. He skipped nimbly out of their way and looked after them, chuckling.

  “So Roger’s out for the rebound,” he said. “He always was a cool sort of devil. Knew how to wait.”

  But Uncle Pippin didn’t understand either. Roger just then was feeling that it would be a delightful sensation to find Noel Gibson’s throat between his fingers. And Gay wasn’t feeling anything. She was numb. But that was better than suffering. She seemed to leave pain behind her as she swooped along the road, the lights flashing on dark woods and tossing trees and frosted ferns and alluring dunes—on—on—on through the night—across the world—not having to talk—not having to smile—conscious only of the sweep of free, cold wind in her face and Roger’s dark strength beside her at the wheel. This big, quiet, gentle Roger, with his softly luminous eyes and his slim brown hands. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be there beside her. When they went back—when they stopped—pain would run to meet her again. But this relief was blessed. If only they need never stop—if they could go on and on like this forever—over the hills—down into the valleys of night—along the windy shores of starlit rivers—past the curls of foam on long, shadowy beaches, in the beautiful darkness that was like a cool draught for a fevered soul to drink! If only they need never turn back!

  3

  Pennycuik Dark was on his way to propose to Margaret Penhallow. Though he had made up his mind to do it in September, it was not done yet. Every morning Penny thought he would go up to Denzil’s that evening and have done with it. But every evening he found an excuse to defer it. He might never have gone at all had it not been for the gravy stains on the tablecloth. Penny, who was as neat as one of his own cats, could not endure a mussy tablecloth. Old Aunt Ruth was getting inexcusably careless. It was high time the house had a proper mistress.

  “I’ll go this evening and get it over,” said Penny desperately.

  He dressed and shaved as for a solemn rite, wondering uneasily what it would be like to have someone there in the room, watching him shave.

  “It may be all right when a fellow gets used to it,” sighed poor Penny.

  He walked up to Denzil’s—no use wasting gas on a two-mile errand—wondering what the people he met would say if they knew what he was out for. Mrs. Jim Penhallow’s great flock of snowy geese in a dun, wet November field—white as snow in the autumnal twilight—hissed at him as he passed. Penny reflected that he might as well buy a goose for the wedding-supper from Mrs. Jim as not. She might let him have it a bit cheaper, since they were first cousins.

  At Denzil’s gate he paused. It was not too late yet to back out. He might still return home a free man. But the gravy stains! And the jug! Penny lifted the gate latch firmly. The Rubicon was crossed.

  “By ginger, this makes me feel queer,” thought Penny. He found he was perspiring.

  The amazing, the ununderstandable thing was that Margaret did not jump at him. When she had finally disentangled his meaning—for Penny went all to pieces at the crucial moment—forgot every word of the speech he had so carefully composed and rehearsed and floundered terribly—realizing that Pennycuik Dark was actually proposing marriage to her, she asked rather primly for time to consider it. This flabbergasted Penny. He, who had not had the least doubt that he would go home an engaged man, found himself going home nothing of the sort. He was so indignant that he wished he had never mentioned the matter to her. Gracious Peter, suppose she wouldn’t have him after all! Ridicule would be his portion all the rest of his life. And she had wanted a week to make up her mind—to make up her mind whether or no to marry him, Pennycuik Dark! Did anyone ever know the like?

  Margaret really passed as disagreeable a week as Penny did. One day she thought she would marry Penny; the next she thought she couldn’t. In spite of her desire for marriage in the abstract she found that in the concrete, as represented by little dapper Penny Dark, it was not wholly desirable. It would have amazed Penny, who had no small opinion of his own good looks, had he known that Margaret thought his bodily presence contemptible and his chubby pimply little face positively ugly—and worse than ugly, rather ridiculous. To wake up every morning and see that face beside you. To listen to his funny vulgar stories and his great haw-haws over them! To hear him yelling to Baal if he had a hangnail. To think it a joke, as he still did, when he stuck out his foot and tripped somebody up. To be always called “Marg’ret.”

  Then she didn’t like his fussy, lace-trimmed house. Too many jigarees on it. So different from little gray Whispering Winds, veiled in trees. Margaret felt positive anguish when she realized that marriage meant the surrender of all the mystery and music and magic that was Whispering Winds. She would be too far away from it even for occasional visits. She could never again nourish a dear, absurd little hope that it might sometime be hers.

  And she must give up certain imaginary love affairs with imaginary lovers, such as she had been fond of dreaming. She felt that it would be wrong, when she was married, to dream those romantic love-affairs. She must “keep her only” to Penny then. And she knew he would never consent to her adopting a baby. He detested children.

  But there were certain advantages. She would be a wedded wife with a home and social standing such as she had never possessed. Nobody would ever say to her again, “Not married yet—well—well?” She would have a car of her own to ride in—or her husband’s own. Margaret reminded herself very sensibly that she could not expect to have a man made for her. She knew most of the clan would think she was in luck to get Penny. Yet, as she worked all that week at Sally Y.’s nasturtium-colored chiffon dress, watching it grow to a thing of flame and loveliness under her fingers, she “swithered,” as she expressed it. She just couldn’t make up her mind to marry Penny, somehow. Finally she remembered that she would certainly have no chance of Aunt Becky’s jug if she stayed an old maid. That tipped the balance. She sat down and wrote a note to Penny. Determined to infuse a little sentiment into her acceptance, she merely sent him a copy of some Bible verse—Ruth’s immortal reply to Naomi. At first Penny didn’t know what the deuce it meant. Then he concluded that she had accepted him. He and Second Peter looked at each other with an air of making up their minds to the inevitable.

  He went up to see Margaret, trying to feel that it was the happiest day of his life. He thought it his duty to kiss her and he did. Neither enjoyed it.

  “I s’pose there isn’t any particular hurry about getting married,” he said. “It’s a cold time of year. Better wait till spring.”

  Margaret agreed almost too willingly. She had had her white night after she had mailed her letter to Penny. She went to Whispering Winds and walked about it until midnight to recover her serenity. But she was now resigned to being Mrs. Pennycuik Dark. And she could have the winter to plan her trousseau. She would have a nice one. She had never had pretty clothes. Life, as far back as she could look, had been as dull and colorless in clothes as in everything else. She would have a wedding-dress of frost-gray silk with silvery stockings. She had never had a pair of silk stockings in her life.

  Altogether Margaret was much more contented than Penny, who when he went home had to brew himself a jorum of hot, bitter tea before he could look his position squarely in the face. Sadly he admitted that he was not as happy as he ought to be.

  “Things,” Penny gloomily told the two Peters, “will never be the same again.”

  The affair surprised the clan but was generally approved. “The jug’s responsible for that,” said Dandy Dark when he heard of it.

  Margaret suddenly found herself of considerable importance. Penny was well-off; she was doing well for herself. She rather enjoyed this in a shy way but Penny writhed when people congrat
ulated him. He thought they had their tongues in their cheeks. The story went that when Stanton Grundy said to Penny, “I hear you’re engaged,” Penny had turned all colors and said feebly, “Well, it’s not—not an engagement exactly—more like—like an experiment.” But nobody knows to this day whether Penny really said it or not. The general opinion is that Stanton Grundy made it up.

  The affair made less of a sensation than it might have, had it not coincided with Gresham Dark’s discovery that his wife, after eighteen childless years, was going to present him with an heir. Gresham, who belonged to the excitable Spanish branch, quite lost his head over it. He rushed around, buttonholing people at church and auctions to tell them about it. The women of the clan could have killed him but the men chuckled.

  “I suppose you can’t blame that on the jug,” said Uncle Pippin.

  4

  Early in December Frank Dark’s engagement to Mrs. Katherine Muir was announced in the local papers. It surprised nobody; all had seen in what quarter the wind was setting from the first week after Frank’s arrival home. Frank, they thought, had feathered his nest well. Kate was a cut or two socially above what he had any right to expect. Her face was rather the worse for wear and she was a bit bossy. But she had the cash. That was what Frank was after. Of Kate’s wisdom they had a poorer opinion. She was, it was thought, taking a risk. But Frank was not going west again. He was going to buy a farm—with Kate’s money?—and settle down among his clan. He would likely go pretty straight, surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses. To be sure, on the day he married his plump widow, it was easy to see he was three sheets in the wind. But public opinion excused him. A man must have some courage even if it were only Dutch courage, to tackle Kate.