Most of the clan who were at The Pinery went home thinking it was all nonsense to talk of Aunt Becky's dying. Anybody as full of vim and devilment as she was would last for years. Roger must be mistaken.
But Roger had, as usual, made no mistake. Less than a week after the famous levee, Aunt Becky died... very quietly and unostentatiously. And tidily. Aunt Becky insisted on dying tidily. She made Ambrosine put on a smooth and spotless spread, tuck all the edges neatly in, and fold back the fresh sheet in unwrinkled purity.
"I've lived clean and I'll die clean," said Aunt Becky, folding her hands on the sheet. "And I'm glad I'm not dying in my sleep. Roger told me I might. I want to have all my wits about me when I die."
She was done with life. As she looked back in this last hour she saw how few things had really mattered. Her hates now seemed trivial and likewise many of her loves. Things she had once thought great, seemed small and a few trifles loomed vastly. Grief and joy had alike ceased to worry her. But she was glad she had told Crosby Dark that she had loved him. Yes, that was a satisfaction. She closed her sunken old eyes and did not open them again.
Of course there was a clan funeral and everybody with one exception came, even Mrs Allan Dark, who was dying of some chronic trouble but had determined... so it was reported... to live until she knew who got the Dark jug. The exception was Tom Dark, who was in bed with a dislocated shoulder. The night before, as he was sitting on his bed, studying if there were any way to wheedle the secret out of Dandy Dark, he had absently put both feet into one pyjama leg. Then when he stood up he fell on the floor in what his terrified wife at first thought was a fit. Very few of the clan sympathized with him as to his resulting shoulder. They thought it served him right for wearing new-fangled duds. If he had had a proper nightshirt on it couldn't have happened.
Thekla Penhallow, who always looked as if her nose were cold, appeared at the funeral in heavy mourning. Some of the other women wondered uneasily if they shouldn't have, too. To be sure, Aunt Becky had hated mourning; she called it "a relic of barbarism." But who knew what Dandy thought about it?
Everything proceeded decently and in order... until just at the last. Aunt Becky, who had never cared for flowers in her life, had her casket heaped with them. But her clan at least respected her wish as regards "made-up" flowers. There was nothing but clusters and bouquets gathered in old homestead gardens and breathing only of the things Aunt Becky had known... and perhaps loved... all her life.
Aunt Becky was sternly handsome in what some considered far too expensive a coffin, with her lace shawl draped about her and her cold white lips forever closed on all the clan secrets she knew... so handsome that her clan, who had thought of her for years only a gaunt unlovely old woman, with straggling hair and wrinkled face, were surprised. Crosby Dark, who had felt ashamed at the levee when she told him she had loved him, now felt flattered. The love of that stately old queen was a compliment. For the rest, they looked a her with interest, respect, and more grief than any of them had expected to feel. With considerable awe as well. She looked as if she might open her eyes with that terrible inquisitorial look of hers and shoot some ghastly question at them. It would be like her.
Very few tears were shed. Mrs Clifford cried; but then she shed gallons at everybody's funeral. And Grace Penhallow cried, which was so unusual that her husband whispered testily, "What are YOU crying for? You always hated her."
"That's why I'm crying," said Grace drearily. She could not explain how futile that old hate seemed to her now. And its futility made her feel sad and temporarily bereft of all things.
The Rev. Mr Trackley conducted the service very fittingly and gracefully, most people considered. Though Uncle Pippin thought, "Oh, you are drawing it rather strong" at some of the phrases used in Mr Trackley's eulogy of the departed. Aunt Becky had hardly been such a saint as THAT. And Drowned John thought shamelessly, when Mr Trackley said the Lord had taken her, "He's welcome to her." William Y. was by no means so sure of it as the minister seemed to be. Aunt Becky, he reflected, had never been a member of the church. But then she was a Penhallow. A Penhallow couldn't go anywhere but to the right place, William Y. felt comfortingly.
The funeral procession from The Pinery to the graveyard at Rose River was, so Camilla proudly remarked to Ambrosine that night, the longest that had ever been know in the clan. It was a day of heavy clouds with outbursts of sunshine between them; an occasional grey mist of rain drifted over the spruce barrens down by the harbour, much to the comfort of the superstitious. Aunt Becky was buried in the Theodore Dark plot, beside her husband and children, under a drift of blooming spirea. The old graveyard was full of the pathos of forgotten graves. Men and women of the clan lay there... men and women who had been victorious, and men and women who had been defeated. Their follies and adventures, their gallantries and mistakes, their fortunes and misfortunes, were buried and forgotten with them. And now Aunt Becky had come to take her place among them. People did not hurry away after the grave service had been concluded. A clan funeral was by way of being a bit of a social function as well as a funeral. They broke up into little groups and talked... with rather easier minds than they had brought to the funeral... for Camilla had told them that that dreadful obituary had simply been a hoax on Aunt Becky's part. She had wanted to give them one good final scare.
"Thank God," said William Y., who really hadn't slept anything to speak of since he had heard that obituary read.
Everybody looked at Dandy Dark with a new outward respect. People came up and spoke to him who did not ordinarily notice him unless they fell over him. He felt his importance, as the possessor of a dying trust, but did not presume on it too much. Folks felt sure he knew already who was going to get the jug. If Aunt Becky hadn't told him, no doubt he had steamed the letter open the night after the levee. Artemas Dark while the burial service was going on, was speculating as to whether there were any chance of getting Dandy "lit up" and worming the secret out of him that way. He sadly concluded there wasn't. Dandy had never tasted liquor in his life. Too mean... and unadventurous, thought Artemas. Titus Dark wondered if it would be any good to try the Sams' ouija-board. It was said to do wonderful things. But... would that be tampering with the powers of darkness? He knew Mr Trackley thought so.
Palmer Dark and Homer Penhallow nodded to each other shamefacedly. Young Jimmy Dark meowed very distinctly at this, but Palmer and Homer pretended not to have heard.
"Good thing they've made it up at last," said Uncle Pippin. "Never could see the sense of keeping up a mouldy old scrap like that."
"As for the sense of it, there's no sense in heaps of things we do," said Stanton Grundy. "Life would be tedious without a vendetta or two."
Everybody was on tiptoe. Abel Dark had already begun to finish painting his house and Miller Dark had actually commenced work on his clan history and had a genealogical table neatly made out. Chris Penhallow had never touched a violin. Drowned John and Titus Dark had not sworn for a week... at least nobody had heard them do it. Titus showed the strain but there was no shadow on Drowned John's brow as he strode across the graveyard, trampling on the graves, to look at Jennie's and Emmy's and read his own epitaph. Ambrosine Winkworth wore her diamond ring... most unfitting, it was thought. Mrs Toynbee Dark went faithfully to visit each husband's grave. People said Nan Penhallow might have left the lipstick off for a funeral.
"She's a flip piece," said Rachel Penhallow. "She tries to flirt with every man... why, she even tries to flirt with Pa," said Mrs William Y.
"Little Sam saw her digging clams down at the sea-run in her bathing-suit the other night," said Mercy Penhallow.
"Yes, and I warrant you she'd just as soon dig them with nothing at all on," said Mrs Clifford bitterly. "Such an example for our girls! What did Little Sam think of it?"
"Well, you know what men are," said Mercy. "He said of course it was hardly a decorous garb but she looked all right if she'd had a bit more meat on her legs."
"Dear me!" was all Mrs Clifford could say; but she said it adequately.
Mrs William Y. looked solemnly at Nan, who was wearing a dress Mrs William Y. thought was a sheer impertinence.
"I would like," she said bitterly, "to ask that girl how she would like to meet her God with those bare knees."
"Naked and ashamed," quoted Mrs Clifford vaguely.
"Oh, I think you exaggerate," said Stanton Grundy, passing by. "Naked and NOT ashamed."
"At any rate, she has GOOD knees," said Mrs William Y. majestically. Stanton Grundy was not going to be allowed to sneer unrebuked at any Penhallow.
The little perverse lock stuck up on Hugh's head when he took off his hat for prayer, and Joscelyn had the same irrational impulse to go and smooth it down. Later on she saw Pauline talking to him and looking up at Treewoofe as she talked. Joscelyn resented the latter fact more than the former. Then Sim Penhallow came up and told her he had heard Hugh was going to sell Treewoofe... looking at her to see how she took it. Joscelyn did not let him see the sick dismay which invaded her soul. She took the news impassively, and Sim revenged himself nastily.
"You made a sad mess of things there, my girl."
Joscelyn turned her back on him without a word. Sim went off, vowing Hugh was well rid of THAT, and Joscelyn stood looking at Treewoofe, dim and austere and lovely on its distant hill. Oh, surely, surely Hugh would not sell it. But hadn't Pauline once said she wouldn't live on a bleak hill like that for anything?
Exaggerated reports of the value of the jug had already got around and mythical collectors had offered Aunt Becky fabulous sums for it. Another rumour was that it was to be left to the most truthful person in the clan. A group of men standing near the grave discussed it.
"Have we got to live for a year without telling any lies?" said Uncle Pippin sadly, but with a glint of mischief in his young blue eyes.
"There won't be many of us left in that case," said Stanton Grundy.
"US!" grunted Uncle Pippin resentfully to himself.
Penny Dark went as always to look at what he thought the handsomest stone in the graveyard, which had been put up by Stephen Dark to the memory of a wife he hated. The gravestone was considered one of the sights of Rose River. A high pedestal of white marble surmounted by the life-size figure of an angel with outstretched wings. It had cost Stephen Dark... who never gave his wife a cent he could help giving... a thousand dollars. It was much admired by those who had never seen it on a wet day. THEN the water ran down the angel's nose and poured off in a stream.
Penny minced past Margaret Penhallow without even noticing her. She thought his bandy legs bandier than ever and she detested his curly eyebrows.
Adam Penhallow was gloomy and would not be sociable. His wife had had twins the previous day. Not that Adam had anything against the poor twins, but... "that finishes us for the jug. Aunt Becky hated twins," he thought sadly. Murray Dark contrived to visit a few graves with Thora and went home satisfied.
The Moon Man was there, wandering about the graveyard, talking to the dead people in a gruesome way.
"Do you remember Lisa, the first time I kissed you?" he said to the grave of a woman who had been dead for fifteen years. A group of young folks, overhearing him, giggled. To them the Moon Man had always been old and crazy. They could not conceive of him as young and sane, with eager eyes and seeking lips.
"What do you suppose they're thinking of down there?" he asked eerily of William Y., who had never supposed anything about it and shivered at the very idea. Oswald was entirely too friendly with dead people. They were standing by a gravestone on which was a notorious inscription. "She died of a broken heart." The girl whose broken heart was hidden in that neglected corner had been neither Dark nor Penhallow... for which mercy the clan were thankful. But the Moon Man looked at the old lichened stone gently. "If the truth were told, that line could be engraved on many another stone here," he said. "Your mother now... your mother, William Y.... wouldn't it be true on HER stone, too?"
William Y. made off without a reply, and his place was filled by Gay Penhallow, who couldn't help looking pretty in a smart little hat of black velvet pulled down over her happy eyes, with tiny winglike things sticking up at the sides, as if black butterflies had alighted there. Entirely too smart a hat for a funeral, the matrons reflected. But the old Moon Man smiled at her.
"Don't stay too late at the dance to-night," he whispered. "They kept up a dance too late there once... and Satan entered."
His tone made Gay shiver a little. And how did he know she was going to the dance? She had kept it very secret, knowing many of the clan would disapprove of her going to a dance the night after a clan funeral. This queer old Moon Man knew everything.
The Moon Man turned to Amasa Tyler, who was standing near, and said:
"Have you thought out the pattern of your coffin yet? You'll be needing it soon."
Amasa, who was young and in the pink of health, smiled contemptuously. But when Amasa was killed in a motor-car accident a month later, people recalled what the Moon Man had said and shook their heads. How did he know? Say what you like, there was something in this second-sight business.
Nobody, as usual, took any notice of little Brian Dark. He had asked his uncle to take him to the funeral. Duncan Dark had at first refused. But Mr Conway interceded for him.
"Aw, take the kid," said Mr Conway... "he doesn't have much fun."
So Duncan Dark, being in one of his rare good-humoured moods, had taken him.
Brian knew nothing and cared nothing about Aunt Becky. But he wanted a chance to put a little bouquet of wild flowers on his mother's grave... he always did that when he could, because she had no headstone and nobody ever went near her grave. If she had had a stone the line about the broken heart might very well have been inscribed on it also, though Brian knew nothing about that. He only knew he had no father and that he was a disgrace and nobody loved him. Nobody spoke to him at the funeral... though this was not out of unkindness but simply because they did not think of him. If they had thought of it they would have spoken, for they had all forgotten poor Laura Dark's shame and in any case were not, with all their faults and prejudices, cruel enough to visit it on her child. Besides, Duncan Dark himself was very off colour, and the clan had little to do with him or his household. But Brian believed it was because he was a disgrace. He would have liked to join the group of boys, but he saw in it big Marshall Tracy, who had once taken his scanty lunch from him in school and trampled on it. So he drew back. Anyway, the boys wouldn't welcome him, he knew. He was a shy, delicate, dreamy little creature and the other boys at school tormented him for this. So he had no playmates and was almost always lonely. Sometimes he wished wistfully that he had just one chum. He felt tears coming into his eyes when he saw a sweet-looking woman come up to little Ted Penhallow and kiss him. Ted didn't like it, but Brian, who had never been kissed in his life that he could remember, envied him. He wished there was some one who cared enough to kiss him. There seemed to be so much love in the world and none of it for him.
"Everybody has some friends but me," he thought, his heart swelling under his shabby coat. On his way back from putting his little bouquet on his mother's grave, he passed Margaret Penhallow. Margaret would have spoken to him but Brian slipped by her before she could. He liked her looks... her eyes were kind and beautiful... but he was too shy and timid to linger. Margaret, who had once known and liked poor Laura Dark, thought it a pity her child was so sulky and unattractive. Sickly-looking, too. But likely Alethea Duncan starved him.
II
Peter Penhallow was at the first clan funeral he had ever attended and had already been held up by indignant Mrs Lawyer Dark of Summerside, who wanted to know why he hadn't come to her dinner Tuesday night.
"Your dinner... your dinner?" repeated Peter vaguely. "Why, I wasn't hungry." He had forgotten all about her confounded dinner. He had spent Tuesday evening wondering how he could get possession of Donna Dark. If he had been quite sure of her he would have simply gone to Drowned John and demanded her. But he must be quite sure before he could do that. So now he came boldly up to her at the funeral. She and Virginia were together of course. They had been together the evening before, too, because it had rained. Virginia and Donna had always made it a part of their ritual to spend every rainy evening together. They sat in what Virginia was pleased to call her "den," perfumed by burning incense... which Virginia defined as a "subtle suggestion of exotic romance." When Donna tried it once at home Drowned John fired the burner out of the window and told her never to let him smell that damned stink in his house again.
Donna was still trying to be faithful to Barry's memory. Aided by Virginia's sentimentalities she succeeded for an hour in forgetting Peter and remembering Barry. It was like a wind blowing over an almost dead fire and for a brief space fanning one lingering ember into a fitful flame. After she went home she had got out Barry's letters and re-read them for the thousandth time. But they were suddenly lifeless... a casket rifled of its jewels... a vase with the perfume gone... a lamp with its flame blown out. The pulsing, vivid personality that was Peter Penhallow had banished the pale phantom that Barry had become.
Virginia was very suspicious. How dared Peter speak to Donna? He was actually holding out his hand.
AND DONNA WAS TAKING IT.
"I thought you were on your way to South America," said Donna.
"I've postponed my trip there," said Peter, staring at her. "I think I'll take it as a honeymoon."
"Oh," said Donna, looking at him, too. Eyes can say a great deal in a second... especially when they are like twin deep pools with a star in them, as Peter was thinking Donna's were. And what a delicious mouth she had. He knew now that what he had been seeking for all his life was just the chance to kiss that dimpled mouth. To be sure, her nose was slightly irregular... rather too much like Drowned John's. When all was said and done he had seen hundreds of prettier women. But there was a charm about this Donna... a mighty and potent charm. And her voice was such a sweet, throaty, summery drawl. What a voice for love-making! Peter trembled before this slip... Peter who had never known fear. If he had been quite sure of her he would have put his arm around her and walked her out of the graveyard. But he was not sure, and before he knew what had happened Virginia had whisked Donna off to see the Richard Dark family plot, where Barry should have been buried, even if he wasn't, and where there was a monument to his memory. In the next plot to it Ned Powell was buried. Virginia had already knelt there in silent prayer for ten minutes, her long black veil sweeping picturesquely about her.
"I woke up last night thinking I heard him calling my name," she murmured with tears in her voice. Virginia could infuse tears into her voice at will.
Donna was conscious of a new feeling of disgust and impatience. Was Virginia really any better than old Cousin Matilda Dark, who was always whining about her dear departed husband? When did grief cease to be beautiful and become ridiculous? Donna knew. When it became a secondhand grief... a mere ghost of grief. Yet she had loved Barry very truly. When the word came of his death, her agony had been so great that she had thought it must tear her in pieces. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world to resolve on a dedication of her whole life to his memory. WHAT was Virginia reciting as she gazed mournfully at Barry's monument?
Oh, that old verse of Mrs Browning's...
Unless you can think when the song is done No other is soft in the rhythm, Unless you can feel when left by one That all other men go with him, Unless you can dream that his faith is fast In behoving or unbehoving, Unless you can die when the dream is past... Oh, never call it loving.
"That's so true of us, isn't it, Donna darling?" sobbed Virginia.
Donna felt still more impatient. Time was when she had thought that verse very beautiful and affecting. Well, it was so still. But not for her. Some mysterious hour of change had struck. All the melancholies and ecstasies of her young love belonged in a volume to which "finis" was at last written. With eyes suddenly made clear by what Donna, if she had ever heard the phrase, might have defined as "the expulsive power of a new affection," she saw Virginia and herself as they were. The dramatic lovers of grief... nothing else.
"After all, you know," she said coldly, "neither of us DID die."
"No-o," admitted Virginia reluctantly. "But for weeks after Ned... died... I was tempted to drown myself. I never told you THAT."
Donna reflected that it must be the only thing Virginia had NOT told her. It suddenly seemed to her that for ten years she had heard of nothing but Virginia's feelings when Ned died. It was an old story and a very boring one. Donna wondered if she were becoming heartless. But really poor Virginia was tiresome. Donna felt thankful she had never talked much about her feelings in Barry's case. She had no silly outpourings to blush over now and she was fortunately ignorant of how many of Virginia's absurdities were imputed to her. She walked away abruptly. After all, Barry's grave was not there. It was foolish to stand, a figure of woe, beside a plot where only his grandfather and grandmother were buried. She didn't believe for a moment that Virginia had ever had the faintest notion of drowning herself. She had been enjoying her weeds and her romantic position as a young war widow... Donna felt herself growing more hateful and cynical every moment... far too much for that. Aunty But came wandering along... an odd little figure in her rusty black and her queer old bonnet with its rampant spray of imitation osprey. Aunty But was seventy-five, but she was, as she claimed, spry as a cricket and still busy most of her time helping babies into the clan. She looked at the headstone of Barry's grandmother and sighed.
"She was his second wife... but she was a very nice woman," she said. "And hasn't it been a lovely funeral, dears? But... don't you think... a little bit TOO cheerful?"
"Aunt Becky wanted it cheerful," reminded Donna.
Aunty But shook her head. But what Aunty But would have said was never known. For at that moment the scandal took place and everybody swarmed to the gate, where there was a great commotion among a crowd of men. OUTSIDE the graveyard... oh, most providentially outside of it... two men were fighting each other... Percy Dark and David Dark, two hitherto peaceful friends. Going at each other, hatless and coatless, red-faced and furious. Nobody ever knew just what had started the fight except that it was something one of them had said about the jug. From verbal warfare they resorted to fists. Percy was heard to exclaim, "I'll take some of the conceit out of you!" and assaulted first. William Y. tried to stop them and for reward got a whack on the nose that made it bleed profusely and robbed him of his pomposity for a week. Mrs David Dark fainted and Mrs Percy was never to go out anywhere the rest of the summer, so ashamed was she. Though at the time she behaved very well. She neither fainted nor had hysterics. Undismayed by William Y.'s fate she got between the two mad creatures and dared David to strike HER. Before David could accept or refuse the challenge, both he and Percy were caught from behind and frog-marched to their respective cars. The fight was finished but the scandal was not. Before night it was all over the country that two of the Darks had fought at their aunt's funeral over her property and had to be dragged apart by their wives. It took years for them to live it down.
"Thank heaven, the minister was away before they started," sobbed Mrs Clifford.
Uncle Pippin pretended to be horrified, but in secret he thought the fight made the funeral more interesting and felt it a pity that Aunt Becky wasn't alive to see the prayerful David and the sanctimonious Percy pumelling each other like that. Tempest Dark laughed for the first time since his wife's death.
III
Donna and Virginia walked home together. Virginia contrived to tell Donna some weird tales about Peter... especially those yarns of his having "gone native" in the East Indies and having several dozens of dark-skinned wives. Donna didn't believe a word of them, but as yet she did not dare to defend Peter. She was not at all sure about him... especially about his attitude to her. Did she really exist for him at all? Until she was certain of that she was not going to commit herself. Let Virginia rave.
"I wonder if it's going to rain," said Virginia at Drowned John's gate.
"No... no, I'm sure it isn't... it's going to be a lovely evening. The moon will clear away the clouds," said Donna positively. She really couldn't stand any more of Virginia just then. Besides, she was dreadfully hungry and Virginia, who cared nothing for eating, always contrived to make the hearty Donna feel like a pig.
"I wish there was no moon to-night. I hate moonlight... it always reminds me of things I want to forget," said Virginia mournfully and inconsistently. For Virginia certainly did not want to forget things. But Virginia never allowed consistency to bother her when she got hold of what she thought a touching phrase. She floated off in her weeds uneasily. Certainly something had come over Donna. But it couldn't be Peter. It was absurd to suppose it could be Peter.
It WAS Peter. Donna knew that at last as she entered Drowned John's stodgy and comfortable home. She was in love with Peter Penhallow. And he, if eyes were to be believed, was in love with her. And what was to be done about it? Drowned John would raise the roof? Both he and Thekla were opposed to her marrying again... marrying anybody. But imagination faltered before the scenes they would make if she tried to marry Peter Penhallow. Well, Peter hadn't asked her to marry him. Perhaps he never would. Who in the world was laughing upstairs? Oh, that fool of a Thekla! Thekla was always trying some new health fad. Just now it was laughing for ten minutes every day. It got on Donna's nerves and she was raspy enough when she went to the supper-table. Drowned John was in a bad temper, too. He had come home from the funeral to find his favourite pig sick and couldn't swear about it. Thekla tried to placate him and ordinarily this would have appeased him. He liked to feel that his women-folk felt the need of placating him. But why wasn't Donna doing it? Donna was sitting in an absent silence as if his good or bad temper were nothing to her. Drowned John took his annoyance out in abusing everybody who had been at the funeral... especially Peter Penhallow. He expressed himself forcibly regarding Peter Penhallow.
"How would you like him for a son-in-law?" asked Donna.
Drowned John thought Donna was trying to be funny. He barked out a laugh.
"I'd sooner have the devil," he said, banging the table. "Thekla, is this knife EVER sharpened? Two women to run this house and a man can't get a decent bread-knife!"
Donna escaped after supper. She could not spend the evening in the house. She was restless and unhappy and lonely. What had Peter meant about taking a honeymoon in South America. Who was to be the bride? Oh, she was tired of everything. The world was tired of everything. Even the very moon looked forlorn... a widow of the skies.
Donna walked along the winding drive by Rose River till she reached a little point running out into it. It was covered by an old orchard with an old ruined house in the middle of it. The Courting-House Uncle Pippin had named it, because spoony couples were in the habit of sitting on its steps; but there were none there when Donna reached it. She was just in time to meet Peter Penhallow, who had tied his boat to a bough and was coming up the old mossy path. They looked at each other, knowing it was Fate.
Peter had gone home from the funeral in a mood of black depression. What particular kind of an ass was he! Donna had deliberately turned her back on him and gone to weep at Barry's grave... or at least his gravestone. Her heart was still buried there. Peter had laughed when he had first heard Donna had said that. But he laughed no longer. It was now a tragedy.
In his despair he rushed to young Jeff's boat and began rowing down the river. He had some mad romantic notion of rowing down far enough to see Donna's light. Peter was so love-sick that there was no crazy juvenile thing he would not do. The day grew dimmer and dimmer. At first the river was of pale gold; then it was dim silver... then like a waiting woman in the darkness. Along its soft velvet shores home-lights twinkled out. He, Peter, had no home. No home except where Donna was. Where she was would always be home for him. And then he saw her coming up the winding drive.
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 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 moments 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 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?"
IV
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 a 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 filet of silver-green leaves, starred with one red bud, around her sleek, ash-gold head. Gay felt momentarily quenched.
"I look HOME-MADE beside her, that's the miserable truth," she thought. "Pretty, oh, yes, but home-made."
And her eyebrows looked so black and heavy beside the narrow 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 to-day don't feel as we used to do about such things."
"The whole world is dancing mad," snapped Mercy. "The young fry of to-day 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 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 humour 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 colours 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 quarrelled 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'VE 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 here 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 wilful 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 any one 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 half way 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.
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.
V
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 harbour. 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 grey 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 grey 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 Treewoofe 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."
VI
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 afternoon 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 any one 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 moustache 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 was more afraid of the Moon Man now than of the devil. He had once been dreadfully afraid 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 harbour 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 somewhere's 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 any one 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 little 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. To-night 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 colour 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.
VII
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 figger," he reflected, with a speculative glance at the unconscious Big Sam. "But I dunno what he'll think of her... I really 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 harbour.
"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 Trackley 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.
"'Tain't 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 worshipping it... "
"That'll come... that'll come. And a Catholic gee-gaw 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, 'tain't. 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."
"Thank you. Thank you." Big Sam became ominously calm. "I'm entirely satisfied to be classed with the Apostle Paul. My conscience guides MY conduct, you ribald old thing!"
"Been making a meal of the dictionary, it seems," retorted Little Sam, yanking his pants off their nail, "and it don't seem to have agreed with your stomach. Better take a dose of sody. Your conscience, as you call it, hasn't nothing to do with it... only your prejurdices. Look at that writing man. Hain't he got half a dozen of them statoos in his summer shanty up the river?"
"If he's a fool... and wuss... is that any reason why you should be? Think of that and your immortal soul, Sam Dark."
"This ain't my day for thinking," retorted the imperturbable Little Sam. "Now that you've blown off your steam, just set the porridge pot on. You'll feel better when you've had your breakfast. Can't 'preciate works of art properly on an empty stomach, Sammy."
Big Sam glared at him. Then he grabbed the porridge pot, yanked open the door, and hurled the pot through it. The pot bounded and clattered and leaped down the rocks to the sandy cove below. Salt and Mustard fled out after it.
"Some day you'll drive me too far," said Little Sam darkly. "You're just a narrow-minded, small-souled old maid, that's what you are. If you hadn't a dirty mind you wouldn't be throwing a fit 'cause you see a stone woman's legs. Your own don't look so artistic, prancing around in that shirt-tail, let me tell you. You really ought to wear pyjamas, Sammy."
"I fired your old pot out to show you I'm in earnest," roared Big Sam. "I tell you I won't have no naked hussy in this house, Sam Dark. I ain't over-squeamish but I draw the line at naked weemen."
"Yell louder, can't you? It's MY house," said Little Sam.
"Oh, it is, is it? Very well. VERY well. I'll tell you this right here and now. It ain't big enough for me and you and your Roarer."
"You ain't the first person that idee's occurred to," said Little Sam. "I've had too many tastes of your jaw of late."
Big Sam stopped prancing and tried to look as dignified as a man with nothing on but a shirt can look, as he laid down the ultimatum he never doubted would bring Little Sam to his senses.
"I've stood all I'm a-going to. I've stood them skulls of yours for years but I tell you right here and now, Sam Dark, I won't stand for that atrocity. If it's to remain... I leave."
"As for leaving or staying, suit yourself. Aurorer stays there on that clock shelf," retorted Little Sam, striding out and down the rocks to rescue his maltreated porridge pot.
Breakfast was a gloomy meal. Big Sam looked very determined, but Little Sam was not worried. They had had a worse row than this last week, when he had caught Big Sam stealing a piece of raisin pie he had put away for his own snack. But when the silent meal was over and Big Sam ostentatiously dragged an old, battered, bulging valise out from under his bunk and began packing his few chattels into it, Little Sam realized that the crisis was serious. Well, all right... all right. Big Sam needn't think he could bully HIM into giving up Aurorer. He had won her and he was going to keep her and Big Sam could go to Hades. Little Sam really thought Hades. He had picked up the word in his theological reading and thought it sounded more respectable than hell.
Little Sam watched Big Sam stealthily out of his pale woolly eyes as he washed up the dishes and fed Mustard, who came scratching at the window-pane. The morning's sunlit promise had been delusive and it was now, as Little Sam reflected testily, one of them still, dark, misty mornings calculated to dampen one's spirits. This was what came of ladders and looking-glasses.
Big Sam packed his picture of Laurier and the model of a ship, with crimson hull and white sails, that had long adorned the crater- cornered shelf above his bunk. These were indisputably his. But when it came to their small library there was difficulty.
"Which of these books am I to take?" he demanded frostily.
"Whichever you like," said Little Sam, getting out his baking- board. There were only two books in the lot he cared a hoot about, anyhow. Foxe's Book of Martyrs and The Horrible Confession and Execution of John Murdoch (one of the Emigrants who lately left this country) who was hanged at Brockville (Upper Canada) on the 3rd day of September last for the inhuman Murder of His own brother.
When Little Sam saw Big Sam pack the latter in his valise, he had much ado to repress a grisly groan.
"I'm leaving you the Martyrs and all the dime novels," said Big Sam defensively. "What about the dog and cat?"
"You'd better take the cat," said Little Sam, measuring out flour. "It'll match your whiskers."
This suited Big Sam. Mustard was his favourite.
"And the weegee-board?"
"Take it. I don't hold no dealings with the devil."
Big Sam shut and strapped his valise, put the reluctant Mustard into a bag, and with the bag over his shoulder and his Sunday hat on his head he strode out of the house and down the road without even a glance at Little Sam, who was ostentatiously making raisin pie.
Little Sam watched him out of sight still incredulously. Then he looked at the white, beautiful cause of all the mischief exulting on the clock itself.
"Well, he didn't get you out, my beauty, and I'm jiggered if he's ever going to. No, siree. I've said it and I'll stick to it. Anyhow, my ears won't have to ache any longer, listening to that old epic of his. And I can wear my earrings again."
Little Sam really thought Big Sam would come back when he had cooled down. But he underrated the strength of Big Sam's principles or his stubbornness. The first thing he heard was that Big Sam had rented Tom Wilkins' old shanty at Big Friday Cove and was living there. But not with Mustard. If Big Sam did not come back Mustard did. Mustard was scratching at the window three days after his ignominious departure in a bag. Little Sam let him in and fed him. It wasn't his fault if Big Sam couldn't keep his cat. He, Little Sam, wasn't going to see no dumb animal starve. Mustard stayed home until one Sunday when Big Sam, knowing Little Sam was safely in church, and remembering Homer Penhallow's tactics, came down to Little Friday Cove and got him. All to no purpose. Again Mustard came back... and yet again. After the third attempt Big Sam gave it up in bitterness of soul.
"Do I want his old yaller flannel cat?" he demanded of Stanton Grundy. "God knows I don't. What hurts my feelings is that he KNEW the critter would go back. That's why he offered him so free. The depth of that man! I hear he's going round circulating mean, false things about me and saying I'll soon be sick of living on salt codfish and glad to sneak back for a smell of good cooking. He'll see... he'll see. I ain't never made a god of my stomach as HE does. You should have heard the riot he raised because I et a piece of mouldy old raisin pie he'd cached for himself the greedy pig. And saying it'll be too lonesome at Big Friday for one of my gabby propensities. Yessir, he said them words. Me, lonesome! This place just suits me down to the ground. See the scenery. I'm a lover of nature, sir, my favourite being the moon. And them contented cows up on the Point pasture... I could gaze at 'em by the hour. THEY'RE all the society I want, sir... present comp'ny always excepted. Not," added Big Sam feelingly, "but what Little Sam had his p'ints. The plum puddings that man could make! And them clam chowders of his stuck to the ribs better'n most things. But I had my soul to think of, hadn't I? And my morals?"