A Tangled Web

by L. M. Montgomery

  “Little Brian Dark, why are you so frightened of me?” asked the Moon Man. “Have they been telling you false, cruel things about me?”

  Brian nodded. He could not speak but he knew now the things were false.

  “Don’t believe them any longer,” said the Moon Man. “I would hurt nothing, much less a child. Laura Dark’s little child. I knew your mother well. She was a sweet thing and life hurt her terribly. Life is cruel to us all but it was doubly cruel to her. She loved you so much, Brian.”

  Brian’s heart swelled. This was wonderful. He had often wondered if his mother had loved him. He had been afraid she couldn’t, when he was such a disgrace to her.

  “She loved you,” went on the Moon Man dreamily. “She used to kiss your little face and your little feet and your little hands when nobody saw her—nobody but the poor crazy old Moon Man. And she took such good care of you. There wasn’t any baby taken such good care of, not even the rich folks’ babies that came through a golden ring.”

  “But I hadn’t any right to be born,” said Brian. He had heard that so often.

  The Moon Man looked at him curiously.

  “Who knows? I don’t think Edgely Dark had any right to be born when his mother hated and despised his father. But the clan thinks that is all right. It’s a strange world, Brian. Good-night. I cannot stay longer. I have a tryst to keep—she’s rising yonder over that dark hill, my beautiful Queen Moon. We all must have something to love. I have the best thing of all—the silver lady of the skies. Margaret Penhallow has a little gray house down yonder—foolish Margaret who is going to marry and desert her dream. Chris Penhallow loves his violin. He’s given it up just now for the sake of an old shard but he’ll go back to it. Roger Dark and Murray Dark, foolisher still, loving mortal women, disdaining the wisdom of the moon. But not so foolish as if they didn’t love anything. What have you to love, Brian?”

  “Nothing.” Brian felt the tears coming into his eyes.

  The Moon Man shook his head.

  “Bad—very bad. Get something to love quick—or the devil will get hold of you.”

  “Mr. Conway says there isn’t any devil,” said Brian.

  “Not the devil of the Darks and Penhallows—no, there’s no such devil as that. You needn’t be afraid of the clan devil, Brian. But get something to love, child, or else God help you. Good-night. I’m glad I’ve met you.”

  Brian was glad, too, although he didn’t understand more than half the Moon Man had said. Not only because one fear, at least, had gone out of his life but because he knew that his mother had loved him—and had taken good care of him. That seemed wonderful to Brian, who could not remember any one taking care of him in his life. It must be very sweet to be taken care of.

  So he had prayed to his mother, thinking that perhaps she might be able to take a little care of him yet if she knew he needed it so much. Then he had lain down on his poor bed, forgetting to stuff the sweater in the window. Presently there was a little scramble on the roof of the porch outside the loft, a dark little body and two moon-like eyes for a moment poised on the sill against the dim starlight—then a leap to the floor—the pad of tiny paws—a soft furry thing nestling to him—a silken tongue licking his cheek—a little body purring like a small dynamo. Cricket had come.

  Brian gathered the little creature in his arms in rapture. He loved cats and Aunt Alethea would not have one around the place. Now he had a kitten of his own—a dear striped gray thing after his own heart, as he discovered when the dawn came. The kitten stayed with him all night but at the first hint of daylight it was off. Brian thought sadly he would never see it again. But every night since then it had come. Brian had no idea where it came from. It did not belong to the Dollars and there was no other house near. He believed his mother had sent it. She was still taking care of him.

  Brian loved the little cat passionately and knew it loved him. It purred so ecstatically when he petted it. What comfort and companionship he found in it! He was no longer afraid of the rats. They never dared come out when Cricket was there. And he was no longer lonely. He saved bits from his own scanty rations for Cricket, who was thin and evidently got none too much food, although occasionally he would bring a mouse in his own little jaws and eat it daintily on the loft floor. How Cricket enjoyed those morsels and how Brian enjoyed seeing him enjoy them, licking his small chops after them as if to salvage every ghost of flavor. Brian was desperately afraid his aunt would find out about Cricket. Suppose Cricket were to come in the day? But Cricket never came by day. Just at night he came to bring a message of love to a lonely child who had no friends.

  And this night, too, Cricket came, just as Brian was beginning to feel really frightened that he was not coming.

  “Darling Cricket.” Brian reached under his flat chaff pillow and drew out the bit of meat he had saved from his dinner. Hungry as he was himself, he never thought of eating it. He listened with a heart full of happiness to Cricket crunching it in the darkness and fell asleep with the kitten cuddled on his breast.

  7

  It was spring again and Gay Penhallow was walking over a road she had walked with Noel a year ago—and remembering it. Calmly remembering it! Gay had reached the stage where she remembered these things calmly, as things that had happened long ago to somebody who was a quite different person. Some of the old sweetness had come back into life. One couldn’t be altogether hopeless in spring. She was actually enjoying the charm of the May evening; she was conscious of the fact that she had on a very becoming new dress of young-leaf green with a little scarlet sweater. She wondered if Roger would like it.

  All the familiar things that had once made life sweet were beginning to make it sweet again. Yet there was always that little heartache under it all. A year ago she and Noel had walked down this road on just such an evening. There had been a misty new moon, just as tonight; there had been the same gay little wind in the tree-tops and the same little smoky shadows under the young, white, wild cherry trees. And their steps and hearts had beaten time together and Gay had been thrilled with a rapture she would know no more.

  She saw old Erasmus Dark whitewashing the trunks of his apple trees as she passed by his orchard, and envied him a little—done with all passions of life. Drowned John, Uncle Pippin and Stanton Grundy were talking at the latter’s gate as she went by. Gay smiled at Uncle Pippin, whom she liked, and the radiance of it fell alike over Drowned John, whom she liked only moderately, and on Stanton Grundy, whom she did not like at all because he always seemed to be so cynically skeptical of the existence of things that were pure and lovely and of good report. She did not know that Grundy’s glance followed her admiringly.

  “An eyeful, eh—an eyeful,” he remarked, nudging Uncle Pippin.

  Drowned John nodded agreement. A thoroughbred, every inch of her. Showed her knees too much, of course. But at any rate knees that could be shown. Not like Virginia Powell’s knees—knocks that affronted the daylight.

  When Roger’s car flashed past them and picked up Gay at the curve of the road, the three weather-beaten old farmers smiled quite sympathetically.

  “Looks as if that would be a match yet,” said Grundy.

  “Fine—fine—except—isn’t he a little too old for her?” asked Uncle Pippin anxiously.

  “A husband older than herself would be a good thing for Gay,” said Drowned John.

  “If she marries Roger, will it be for love or loneliness?” queried Grundy drily.

  “Love,” said Drowned John, with an air of knowing all about it. “She’s in love with Roger now, whether she knows it or not.”

  “I reckon she can love,” said Grundy. “Some women can love and some can’t, you know—just as some can cook and some can’t.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing kissing never goes out of fashion,” said Uncle Pippin.

  Roger thought Gay looked like a slim green dryad as she stood against
the trees at the curve in the road. In spite of the new moon and the shadows and the faint stars, she made him think of morning. There was always something of the dawn about her; her very hair seemed to laugh; the little rosy lobes of her ears looked like unfolded apple blossoms. And she was gazing at him with just the very eyes a dryad should have.

  “Hop in, Gay,” he ordered laconically. Gay hopped, thinking what a delightful voice Roger had, even when he spoke curtly.

  “Going anywhere in particular?”

  “No. I just came out for a walk to escape Mrs. Toynbee. She was at Maywood for supper and I nearly died of her.”

  “It’s only female mosquitoes that bite,” said Roger cheerfully. “Where’ll we go?”

  “The shore road and step on the juice,” laughed Gay.

  The shore road. Had Gay forgotten the last time they went along it? They whirled past the blueberry barrens and the maple clearings, past the Silver Slipper and the big empty hotel, on down to where the dunes lay, darkly soft against a silvery sea. Roger stopped his car and they sat in silence for a while—one of those silences Gay loved. It was so easy to be silent with Roger. There had never been any silence with Noel—Noel was too much of a talker to like silence.

  The moon had gone down and the world lay in the starlight. Starlight is a strange thing and not to be taken as a matter of course. Roger suddenly fell under its magic and did something he hadn’t seen himself doing for a long time yet.

  “Gay,” he said coolly, “I always do one wild thing every spring. I’m going to do this spring’s tonight. I’m going to ask you to marry me.”

  Gay flushed beautifully—then turned very white.

  “Oh, Roger—must you?” she said.

  “Yes. I must. I can’t stand this any longer. Either you’ve got to marry me, Gay—or we must stop—all this.”

  “All this.” All their jolly drives and talks together. All the vivid companionship that had helped her through the otherwise unbearable months behind. Gay felt desperately that she could not lose it. She was so afraid of life. It is dreadful and unnatural to be afraid of life in youth. But it had played her such a trick. She must have someone to help her face it again. She didn’t want to marry anyone, but if she had to, it might as well be Roger. He needed someone to take care of him—he worked so hard.

  “You know I don’t—love you, Roger,’’ she whispered. “Not in that way. “

  “Yes, I know. That makes no difference,” said Roger mendaciously.

  “Then—” Gay drew a long sigh—“then I’ll marry you, Roger—whenever you please.”

  “Thank you, dear,” said Roger in a strangely quiet voice. Inside he was a seething volcano of joy and exultation. She would be his—his at last. He’d soon teach her to forget that popinjay. Love him. She’d love him fast enough—he’d see to that when the time came. Gay, darling adorable little Gay was his, with her wind-blown curls and her marigold eyes and the slim little feet that were made for dancing. Roger could have knelt and kissed those little feet. But he did not even kiss her lips. Only her little hands when he lifted her from the car at the end of their drive. Roger was wise—the time for kisses had not come yet. Gay was glad he did not kiss her. Even yet her lips seemed to belong to Noel. She went up to her room very quietly and sat for a long time behind her white curtains. She felt a little tired but content. Only she wished she could just find herself married to Roger without any preliminaries. The clan would be so odiously pleased. Their complacency would be hard to bear. What was it Mercy had said to her one day lately—“You’ll find Roger will be the best for keeps”? No doubt he would be, but Gay knew if Roger and Noel were standing there before her, hers for the taking, to which one she would turn. Yet Roger, knowing this, still wanted to marry her.

  Gay did one foolish secret thing before she went to sleep. She took the little rose-bowl, where the last rose leaves had been dropped on the night she was engaged to Noel, and went down with it to the gate at the side of the garden. The field before her was Artemas Dark’s and the garden behind her was her mother’s. But this wee green corner was hers; she dug out a hole under the trees with a trowel and buried the little rose-jar, patting the earth on the grave tenderly. All her childhood and girlhood were in it—all the happiness she had ever known. No matter what life held for her with Roger, there would be no more rose leaves for the little Wedgwood jar. It was sacred to something that was dead.

  8

  Penny and Margaret were not married yet. It was to have been in the spring; but when spring came Penny thought they’d better put it off to the fall. There were some alterations to make in the house; a new porch would be built and a hardwood floor laid in the dining-room. Margaret was very willing. She was no more eager for the happy day than Penny was.

  In reality Penny was a rather miserable man. At times he fairly oozed dejection.

  “Dash it,” he informed the two Peters gloomily, “I’ve lost my enthusiasm.”

  He didn’t want to break up his old habits—his comfortable ways of life. As for Aunt Ruth, certainly she had her faults. But he was used to them; it would be easier to put up with them than to get used to Margaret’s new virtues. There wasn’t really any danger of his dying in the night. He was good for twenty years yet.

  He began to have horrible nightmares, in which he really found himself married—sewed up fast and hopelessly. It was an infernal sensation. He began to lose weight and a hunted look came into his eyes. Margaret was quite unconscious of this but the clan at large were not so blind, and bets were exchanged at the blacksmith’s forge as to whether Penny’s affair would ever come to a climax or not. The odds were against it, the general opinion being that Penny was simply stringing Margaret along until the matter of the jug should be decided.

  “Then he’ll squirm out of it some way, slick and clever,” said Stanton Grundy. “Penny’s nobody’s fool.”

  Penny, however, felt like a fool. And when the incident of the merry-go-round occurred he felt more keenly than ever that Margaret would never do for a wife.

  The merry-go-round affair did make considerable of a stir. More people than Penny were scandalized. It was certainly an odd thing for a woman of Margaret’s age to do. Had she no dignity? No sense of the fitness of things? No realization that she was a Penhallow?

  The merry-go-round was in the park in town. Margaret found herself looking wistfully at it one evening when Penny had taken her in for a drive and had gone to park his car before they settled down to listen to the band concert. Neither he nor Margaret cared for band concerts but hang it, a fellow had to do something to pass the time when he took his girl out.

  Margaret had hankered all her life for a ride on the merry-go-round. There was something about it that fascinated her. She thought it would be delightful to mount one of those gay little horses and spin madly round and round. But she had never really thought of doing it. It was only a bright impossible dream.

  Then she saw little Brian Dark looking at it longingly. Mr. Conway had brought Brian in and had gone off and left him. He did not mind giving the kid a drive but he had no money to waste on him, by gosh. Brian thought it would be a wonderful thing to have a ride on the merry-go-round. His little face was so wistful that Margaret smiled at him and said,

  “Would you like a ride, Brian?”

  “Oh, yes,” whispered Brian. “But I haven’t any money.”

  “Here’s the dime,” said Margaret. “Take it and have a good ride.”

  For a moment Brian was radiant. Then his face clouded over.

  “Thank you,’’ he stammered, “but—I guess—I don’t know—I guess I’m a little scared to go alone,” he concluded desperately.

  Margaret could never quite understand and explain just what did come over her. The inhibitions of years fell away.

  “Come with me. I’ll go with you,” she said.

  And that was how Penny, returning
a moment later, saw a sight that paralyzed him with horror. Margaret—his Margaret—spinning furiously about on the merry-go-round—up and down—round and round—riding for dear life and riding astride. Her hat had fallen off and her loosened hair blew wildly round her face. Penny gave an agonized yelp but Margaret neither heard nor heeded. She was having the time of her life—she was—why, she was drunk or exactly like it, Penny thought in disgust. Her eyes were shining, her face was flushed. When the ride was ended Margaret wouldn’t get off. She paid for herself and Brian for another ride—and then another. At the end of the third her senses returned to her and she got off dazedly. It did not need Penny’s expression to make her thoroughly ashamed of herself.

  “Oh, Penny—I’m sorry—I don’t know what got into me,” she gasped.

  “You made a nice exhibition of yourself,” said Penny coldly.

  “I know—I know—but oh—” for a moment that graceless exultation swept over Margaret again—“Oh, Penny, it was glorious. Why don’t you try it yourself?”

  “No, thank you.” Penny was very dignified all the rest of the evening, and he snubbed Margaret on the way home. Margaret took it meekly, recognizing his right and his just grievance. But she was not so meek when Mrs. Denzil tackled her a few days later about it. They had an actual fight over it. Margaret was by no means as unassertive as she used to be. Sometimes she spoke her mind with astonishing vim. Getting engaged, Mrs. Denzil told her, seemed to have gone to her head. Denzil soon settled them. He wasn’t going to have any ructions among his womenfolk. He told Margaret she’d better mind her P’s and Q’s or she wouldn’t get Penny after all. This did not alarm Margaret quite as much as Denzil expected. There were times when Margaret, in spite of her trousseau dresses and silk stockings, and the glamour of being Mrs., almost wished she had never promised to marry Penny—times when she wondered if it were not possible somehow to escape marrying him. She always concluded rather sadly that it wasn’t. Nobody would believe anything but that Penny had thrown her over and Margaret couldn’t face that. It would be too humiliating. She must go through with it.