“Doesn’t look any too prosperous,” was the comment.
“He’s gone to seed. They say he’s been going the pace,” said William Y. “Drank up everything he made a little faster than he made it.”
“Too handsome to be any good when he was young. That always spoils a man,” growled Sim Dark, who had certainly never been spoiled for that reason.
Joscelyn heard he was home the next evening just as she was starting for church. Aunt Rachel mentioned it casually to Mrs Clifford—”They say Frank Dark’s home again” — and Joscelyn’s head reeled and her universe whirled about her. For a moment she thought she was going to faint, and clutched wildly at the table to steady herself. Frank home — Frank! For a moment ten years folded themselves back like a leaf that is turned in a book and she saw herself, mist-veiled, looking into Frank Dark’s handsome eyes.
“Ain’t you ready yet, Joscelyn?” said Aunt Rachel fretfully. “We’re going to be late. And if we are we won’t get a seat. Everybody will be there to hear Joseph.”
The Rev. Joseph Dark of Montreal was to preach in Bay Silver Church that night and naturally almost every Dark and every Penhallow would be there. They were very proud of Joe. He was the highest salaried minister in Canada — little Joe Dark who used to run around Bay Silver barefooted and work in the holidays for his wealthier relatives. They hadn’t bothered their heads much about him then, but now his occasional visits home were events and when he preached in Bay Silver Church they had to put chairs in the aisles.
Joscelyn walked to the church with her aunt. It was on an October evening as warm as June. A frolicsome little wind was stripping all the gold from the maple trees. The western sky was like a great smoky chrysanthemum over hills that were soft violet and brown. A few early autumnal stars were burning over the misty, shorn harvest fields. A great orange moon was rising over Treewoofe Hill, bringing out a remote, austere quality in its beauty. There was a pleasant smell of damp mould from red ploughed fields. Everybody was ploughing now. Hugh had been ploughing on the big hill field up at Treewoofe all day. Joscelyn knew that he had always loved to plough that hill field. She had seen him from her window and wondered again if he were really going to sell Treewoofe. Every few weeks the rumour revived. Aunt Rachel had mentioned it again that day and it had frettered Joscelyn like a grumbling toothache. But everything was forgotten now in the shock of what she had just heard. She walked as one in a dream. She did not know whether she felt glad or sorry or exultant or — or — afraid. Ay, she did know. She was afraid. Suddenly and horribly afraid. Of seeing Frank.
She did not think there was any danger of seeing him that evening. He would be stopping with his brother Burton at Indian Spring and Burton never came to hear Joseph Dark preach. Joe Dark had married the girl Burt wanted and Burt always ascribed Joe’s success in the ministry to the fact that he knew how to flatter the women. Besides, Burt always averred in his characteristic way that that old church at Bay Silver was lousy with fleas. As Uncle Pippin had once said, Burt Dark was a realistic sort of cuss.
But Joscelyn knew she would meet Frank somewhere and soon. And she was mortally afraid, with a sick, cold, dreadful fear.
They were late; when they reached the church the Reverend Joseph was praying and they waited in the porch that was full of other late-comers. The inner doors were tightly shut and only a sonorous murmur penetrated outwards. Joseph Dark had a beautiful voice and there was something in the faint, unworded rhythm of his prayer that soothed Joscelyn. She rather liked standing there in the porch, listening to it. One could fit one’s own words, one’s own needs, one’s own desires to it.
She did not see Hugh at first. He was standing just behind her, gazing at her with smouldering eyes. Palmer Dark and Homer Penhallow were in the porch also. They had nodded amicably and mentioned the weather. Then they stood hating each other while Joseph prayed. The truce of the jug still held but underneath it the old dear feud rankled. Ambrosine Winkworth sailed in past them and streamed up the aisle, her head held high, her diamond ring on her ungloved hand. Ambrosine had no intention of waiting in the draughty porch until little Joe Dark, whom she had spanked in years gone by, had finished praying. He always prayed too proudly, anyway, Ambrosine thought. Ambrosine never wore gloves now, and she was the happiest woman in the church that night. Envious people said that the airs Ambrosine put on over that ring were simply ridiculous,
“Ain’t she the fine lady now?” whispered Uncle Pippin, sitting on the third step of the gallery stair, beside Big Sam, who had come to find out if there were any truth in the story that Little Sam came to Bay Silver Church every Sunday night to walk home with the Widow Terlizzick.
“What a long tail our cat has,” whispered Big Sam in return.
Back in the shadowy corner Stanton Grundy loomed, lean and taciturn. He had never been able to hear Joe Dark preach before. Something had always prevented. But now his chance had come to see the man his Robina had secretly loved all her life. Robina, who was now a handful of ashes in an urn in the churchyard outside — all ashes, even to the heart that had belonged to Joseph Dark instead of to its lawful owner, Stanton Grundy. Donna Dark and her father were there, although Drowned John was never over-anxious to hear Joe preach. Not that he had anything against Joe. But he thought it might give him a swelled head if too many of his own clan went to hear him. However, Donna was set on coming and Drowned John gave in. Drowned John was by way of getting into the habit of giving in now and then to Donna. It eased things up a bit. In the month that had passed, gossip about Peter and Donna had died down. There had been a good deal of it at first and much wonderment as to why everything had stopped so suddenly. Drowned John did not vex himself wondering why. It was very simple. He had ordered Donna to discard the fellow and she had of course obeyed. Some thought Peter’s behaviour that notable Sunday had disgusted Donna. Virginia thought that dear Donna’s higher nature had reasserted itself. Though Virginia did not get a great deal of comfort out of that. Dear Donna was frightfully changed, there was no doubt about it. So cynical. She laughed at Virginia’s sentimental memories. She said that if Barry had lived they would probably have fought like cat and dog, half the time. At home Donna’s behaviour was rather like that of a ladylike tigeress by times. Then Drowned John was driven to the reflection that life might have been more comfortable if he had let Peter have her. And there was no longer any fun in her. There had used to be a good bit when Virginia wasn’t around. In short, she would, he confided to his pigs, neither gee nor haw.
Kate Muir was there, buxom and rosy and overdressed as usual, with the three little black curls every one made fun of lying sleekly and flatly on her forehead. Murray Dark was there, waiting impatiently for Joe to get through, that he might go in and look at Thora for an hour. Percy Dark and David Dark were there, but they glowered gloomily past each other. They had never “spoken” since their fight at the funeral and by heck, they never would speak, jug or no jug. Tempest Dark was there because he had been a crony of Joe’s in boyhood and still liked the beggar in spite of his priestly ways.
All in all, it was an odd mélange of passions — hates and hopes and fears — that waited in the old church porch at Bay Silver for Joseph Dark to finish his seemingly interminable prayer.
Joscelyn had a love for Bay Silver Church — a tranquil old grey church among its sunken graves and mossy gravestones. She was glad the graveyard had never been ironed out and standardized like the one at Rose River.
Outside, the moon was shining calmly on the tombstones and the Moon Man was wandering about among them. Occasionally he stopped and told a dead crony something. Occasionally he bowed to the moon. Occasionally he would come to the porch door or a church window and peer in. Later on when the congregation sang he would sing, too. But he would never enter a church door.
“What’s Joe so damn’ long about?” thought Drowned John impatiently. He dared not swear in words but, thank God, thought was still free.
Frank Dark was in the porch, stan
ding under the little hanging lamp, before Joscelyn saw him. He stood there, beaming rather fatuously around him. Joscelyn stared at him with eyes in which dawning horror struggled with amazement. This could not be Frank Dark — oh, this could never be the slim, gallant stripling to whom she had so suddenly lost her heart on her wedding night. This could not be the man she had loved in secret for ten years. This! Fat; half-bald; nose red; eyes puffy and bloodshot; sallow jowls; shabby. With failure written all over him. She saw him as he was; worse — as he had always been under all the charm of his vanished youth. Paltry — crude — cheap. She gazed at him in the stubborn incredulity with which we face the fact of a sudden death. It could not be! It could not be for this that she had torn Hugh’s life in shreds and lost Treewoofe forever? Joscelyn wondered if it were she who was laughing — certainly some one was laughing. It was Hugh, behind her. A strange little laugh with nothing of mirth in it. So Hugh saw what she was seeing. Joscelyn wondered if there were any deeper depths of shame to which she could descend.
Hugh’s laugh drew Frank’s attention to them. He smiled broadly and came forward with outstretched hand, effusive and gushing.
“Hugh — and Joscelyn! How do you do! How do you do! My, it’s good to see all you folks again. You don’t look a day older, Joscelyn — handsomer than ever. It don’t seem possible it’s ten years since I danced at your wedding. How time does fly!”
Joscelyn felt sure she was in a nightmare. She must wake up. This ridiculous, hideous situation couldn’t be real. She saw Hugh shaking hands with Frank — Frank whom he had vowed to thrash if he ever set eyes on him again. Now he would disdain to do it. Joscelyn saw the disdain in his eyes — in his bitter mouth. Thrash this poor creature for whom his bride had thrown him over. The idea was farcical.
“And how’s the family?” said Frank with a sly wink.
Something in the electric silence that followed gave Frank time to think. There was a titter from some ill-bred young cub by the door. Frank had never heard the sequel to the wedding at which he had danced. But he felt he had put his foot in it somehow. Probably they had no family and were sensitive about it. His tongue was always getting him into trouble. But hang it, if they hadn’t a family they ought to have. Hugh needn’t glower like that. As for Joscelyn, she had always been a high and mighty piece of goods. But she needn’t be looking at him as if he were some kind of a new and fancy worm. The airs some people gave themselves made him tired.
The Reverend Joseph had concluded his prayer and with a sigh of relief the waiting group passed into the church. Joscelyn, who only wanted to run — and run — and run, had to follow Aunt Rachel in and sit quietly through a sermon of which she heard not one word. She felt as if she had been stripped naked to the gaze of a world that was laughing at her shame. It was of no avail to tell herself that no one but Hugh ever knew or suspected that she had loved Frank Dark — or something she had believed Frank Dark to be. The feeling of naked humiliation persisted. How Hugh must be mocking her! “You flouted me for this! What do you think of your bargain?”
Hugh was not thinking anything of the sort. He thought Frank Dark a pretty poor specimen of a man — not worth all the hatred he had lavished on him — but he did not know that Joscelyn saw what he did. After all, Frank was still handsome in a florid way and women’s tastes were odd enough. Hugh was another who did not hear much of Joseph Dark’s sermon. All the old bitterness and anger of his wedding-night was surging up in his soul again. What a mess had been made of his life — through no fault of his own. There were a dozen girls he might have had; some of them were in the church that night. He looked at them all and decided that, after all, he’d rather have Joscelyn. Just as things were — Joscelyn with that glorious sweep of red-gold hair over her pale, proud face. If she were not his, at least she was no other man’s. Nor could be. She could never divorce him. Hugh ground his teeth in savage triumph. Frank Dark should never get her — never!
Big Sam, with Little Sam sitting across from him, gazing at the buxom Widow Terlizzick like, Big Sam vowed to himself, an intoxicated dog, did not hear much of the sermon either. Which was a pity because it was a remarkably good sermon — brilliant, eloquent, scholarly. Joseph Dark’s listeners sat spellbound. He played skilfully on their emotions — perhaps a shade too skilfully — and they responded as a harp responds to the wind. They felt caught away from sordid things to hill-tops of vision and splendour; life, for the time being at least, became a thing of beauty to be beautifully lived; and few there were who did not feel a throb of glad conviction when the speaker, leaning earnestly over the desk and addressing individually every member of his audience, said thrillingly:
“And never, even in your darkest and most terrible moments, forget that the world belongs to God,” closing the Bible, as he spoke with a thunderclap of victory.
Of the few was Stanton Grundy. He smiled sardonically as he went out.
“The devil has a corner or two yet,” he said to Uncle Pippin.
“Gosh, but that was a sermon though,” said Uncle Pippin admiringly.
“He can preach,” conceded Grundy grudgingly. “I wonder how much of it he believes himself.”
Which was unfair to Joseph Dark, who believed every word he preached — while he was preaching it, at all events — and surely could not be justly blamed because Robina Dark had, all unasked, given him the heart that should have belonged only to her liege lord, Stanton Grundy.
“Frank Dark’s got terrible fat,” said Aunt Rachel as she and Joscelyn walked home. “He’s following in the footsteps of his father. He weighed three hundred and fifty-two pounds afore he died. I mind him well.”
Joscelyn writhed. Aunt Rachel had always possessed the knack of making everything she mentioned supremely ridiculous. Joscelyn’s romantic love for Frank Dark was dead — dead past any possibility of a resurrection. It had died as suddenly as it had been born, there in the porch of Bay Silver Church. But she could have wished, for her own sake, to be able to look upon the corpse with some reverence — some pity — some saving wish that it could have been otherwise. It was dreadful to have to mock herself over dead love — to hear others mocking. Dreadful to think of having wasted on Frank Dark the years that should have been given to bearing Hugh’s children and building a home for him and for them at Treewoofe. Dreadful to think that all the passion and devotion and high renunciation of those processional years had been squandered on a man who had simply become a person likely to “weigh three hundred and fifty-two pounds before he died.” Joscelyn would have laughed at herself except for the fact that she knew if she began to laugh she would never be able to stop. All the world would laugh at her if it knew. Even the tall, wind-writhen lombardies against the moonlit clouds above William Y.’s place, seemed to be pointing derisive fingers at her. She hated the stars that twinkled at her — the chilly, foolish night-wind that whined mockingly — the round hill shoulders over the bay that were shaking with merriment. What was Aunt Rachel saying? Something about Penny Dark being more conceited than ever since he had got Aunt Becky’s bottle of Jordan water.
“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 some one 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 worshipping all these years!”
II
One grey 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 refere
nce 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 every one 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 pretence. 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 grey 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.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 500