A Tangled Web (20 page)

It would, of course, have been more romantic if she had had consumption or brain fever or angina pectoris. But a veracious chronicler can tell only the truth. Donna Dark had measles and nearly died of them.

Once the rumor drifted to the distracted Peter that she
had
died. And he couldn't even see her. When he tore down to Rose River nobody answered his knock and the doors were locked and the lower windows shuttered. Peter thought of simply standing on the step and yelling until somebody had to come; but he was afraid any excitement might hurt Donna. Roger came along and tried to calm him down.

“Donna's not dead. She's a very sick girl yet and needs careful nursing, but I think she's out of danger. I was afraid of pneumonia. Don't be an ass, Peter. Go home and take things coolly till Donna recovers. Drowned John can't prevent your marrying her, though he'll make everything as unpleasant as he can, no doubt.”

“Roger, were you ever in love with anyone?” groaned Peter. “No, you couldn't have been. You wouldn't be such a cold-blooded fish if you were. Besides, you'd have fallen in love with Donna. I can't understand why everyone isn't in love with Donna. Can you?”

“Easily,” said Roger coolly.

“Oh, you like them buxom, I suppose,” sneered Peter, “like Sally William Y.—or just out of the cradle like Gay Penhallow. Roger, you don't know what it's like to be in love. It's hellish—and heavenly—and terrible—and exquisite. Oh, Roger, why don't you fall in love?”

Roger had never been in any danger of falling in love with Donna Dark. As a matter of fact he only half liked her and her poses, not realizing that the latter were only a pitiful device for filling an empty life. And he only half liked Peter. But he was sorry for him.

“I'll take a message to Donna for you—”

“A letter—”

“No. She couldn't read it. Her eyes are very bad—”

“Look here, Roger. I've got to see Donna—by the sacred baboon I've got to. Have a heart, Roger—smuggle me in. They'll have to open the door for you, and once I'm inside the devil himself shan't get me out till I've seen Donna—that Thekla is quite capable of murdering her—the whole pack are worrying her—that fiend of a Virginia is with her night and day, I hear, poisoning her mind against me.”

“Stop gibbering, Peter. Think what effect a fracas in the house would have on Donna. It would set her back weeks if it didn't kill her. Thekla is a capital nurse whatever else she is—and Donna's mind is too full of you to be poisoned by anybody—through all her delirium she raved about you—you should have seen Drowned John's face.”

“Was she delirious—my poor darling? Oh, Roger Penhallow, are you keeping anything back from me? I met the Moon Man coming down. He looked at me strangely. They say the old dud has second sight—he knows when people are going to die. Pneumonia has always been fatal to that family—Donna's mother died of it. For God's sake, tell me the truth—”

“Peter Penhallow, if you don't clear out of this at once I'll kick you twice—once for myself and once for Drowned John. Donna is going to be all right. You act as if you were the only man in the world who was ever in love before.”

“I am,” said Peter.
“You
don't know a thing about love, Roger. They tell me you were in love with Gay Penhallow. Well, I'd never be a cradle-snatcher but if I were, Noel Gibson shouldn't have taken her from me—that tailor's mannequin. You're a white-livered hound, Roger, no blood in your veins.”

“I've some sense in my noodle,” said Roger drily.

“Which proves that you don't know anything about love,” said Peter triumphantly. “Nobody's sensible if he's in love. It's a divine madness, Roger. Oh, Roger, I've never liked you over and above but I feel now as if I couldn't part from you. To think that you'll see Donna in a few minutes—oh, tell her—tell her—”

“Heaven grant me patience!” groaned Roger. “Peter, go out and get into my car and count up to five hundred slowly. I'll tell Donna anything you like and I'll bring back her message and then I'll take you home. It's not safe for you to be out alone—you damn fool,” concluded Roger under his breath.

“Roger—have you any idea how a man—”

“Tut—tut, Peter, you're not a man at all just now—you're only a state of mind.”

Donna's convalescence was a tedious affair and not a very happy one. As soon as Drowned John suspected that Roger was fetching and carrying messages between Donna and Peter, he showed him to the door and sent for another doctor. Virginia haunted her pillow night and day and various relatives of the clique—a clan within a clan—came and went and “talked things over.” Donna listened because she was too weak to argue. And all the talking-over in the world couldn't alter facts.

“You never loved Barry,” sobbed Virginia. “It was only his uniform you loved.”

“I did love Barry. But now I love Peter,” said Donna.

“‘The mind has a thousand eyes,'” began Virginia—and finished the quotation. The trouble was she had quoted it so often before that it was rather stale to Donna.

“Love isn't done—for me. It's beginning all over again.”

“I
don't
understand,” said Virginia helplessly, “how you can be so fickle, Donna. It's a complete mystery to me. But
my
feelings have always been so very deep. I wonder you still keep poor Barry's picture over your dressing-table. Doesn't he look at you reproachfully?”

“No. Barry seems like a good old pal. He seems to say, ‘I'm glad you've found someone to give you the happiness I can't now.' Virginia, we've been foolish and morbid—”

“I won't have you use such a word,” sobbed Virginia. “I'm not morbid—I'm
true.
And you've broken our pact. Oh, Donna, how
can
you desert me? We've been through so many sad—and beautiful—and terrible things together. How
can
you break the bond?”

“Virginia, darling, I'm not breaking the bond. We can always be friends—dear friends—”

“Peter will take you away from me,” sobbed Virginia. “He'll drag you all over the world—you'll never have any settled home, Donna—or any position in society.”

“There'll be some adventure in marrying Peter,” conceded Donna in a tone of satisfaction.

“And he'll never allow you to have any interest outside of him. He'll tell you what you are to think. He must possess exclusively.”

“I don't want any interest outside of him,” said Donna.

“You to say that—you who were Barry's wife—his
wife.
Why, to hear you talk—it might just as well have been someone else who was Barry's wife.”

“Well, to be honest, Virginia, that's exactly the way I do feel about it. I'm
not
the girl who was married to Barry—I'm an entirely different creature. Perhaps I've drunk from some fairy pool of change, Virginia. I can't help it—and I don't want to help it. All I want just now is to have Peter come in and kiss me.”

An aggravating sentence popped into Donna's head. She uttered it to annoy Virginia, who was annoying her.

“You've no idea how divinely Peter can kiss, Virginia.”

“I've no doubt he has had plenty of practice,” said Virginia bitterly. “As for me—
I
have my memories of Ned's kisses.”

Donna permitted herself a pale smile. Ned Powell had had a little full red mouth with a little brown mustache above it. The very thought of being kissed by such a mouth had always made Donna shudder. She couldn't understand how Virginia could ever bear it.

“You can laugh,” said Virginia coldly. “I suppose you can laugh now at everything we have held sacred. But
I
happen to know that Peter Penhallow said that you were a nice little thing and he could have you for the asking.”

“I don't believe he said it,” retorted Donna, “but if he did—why not? It's quite true, you know.”

Virginia went away crying. She told Drowned John that it was useless for her to come again;
she
had no longer any influence over Donna.

“I knew that opal would bring me bad luck.”

Drowned John banged a table and glared at her. Drowned John went about those days banging tables. Drowned John was in an atrocious humor with everything and everybody, and determined to make them feel it. Had a father no rights at all? This was all it came to—all your years of sacrifice and care. They flouted you—just flouted you. They thought they could marry any fool fellow they pleased. Women were the very dickens. He had tamed his own two but the young ones were beyond him.

“She shall never marry him—never.”

“She means to,” said Virginia.

“She doesn't mean it—she only thinks she does,” shouted Drowned John. Drowned John always thought that if he contradicted loud enough, people would come to believe him.

Bets were up in the clan about it. Some, like Stanton Grundy, thought it wouldn't last. “The hotter the fire the quicker it's over,” said Stanton Grundy. Some thought Drowned John would never yield and some thought he'd likely crumple up at the last. And some thought it didn't matter a hoot whether he did or not. Peter Penhallow would take his own wherever he found it. To poor Donna, lying wearily in bed or reclining in an easy-chair, trying to endure the unfeeling way in which day followed day without Peter, they came with advice and innuendo and gossip. Peter had said, when Aunt But asked him how it was he was caught at last, “Oh, I just got tired of running.” Peter, when a boy, had shot a pea at an elder in the church. Peter had flung a glass of water in his schoolmaster's face. Peter had taken a wasp's nest to prayer-meeting. Peter had set loose a trapped rat when the Sewing Circle met at his mother's house. They dragged up all the things they knew that Peter had done. And there were so many things he must have done that they knew nothing about.

“If you marry a rover like Peter what are you going to do with your family?” Mrs. William Y. wanted to know.

“Oh, we're only going to have two children. A boy first and then a girl for good measure,” said Donna. “We can manage to tote that many about with us.”

Mrs. William Y. was horrified. But Mrs. Artemas, who had come with her, only remarked calmly,

“I couldn't ever get them to come in order that way.”

“If
I
was a widow-woman I wouldn't be fool enough to want to marry again,” said Mrs. Sim Dark bitterly.

“That family of Penhallows are always doing such unexpected things and Peter is the worst of them,” mourned Mrs. Wilbur Dark.

“But if your husband does unexpected things at least he wouldn't bore you,” said Donna. “I could endure anything but boredom.”

Mrs. Wilbur did not know what Donna meant by her husband's boring her. Of course men were tiresome at times. She told her especial friends that she thought the measles had gone to Donna's brain. They did that sometimes, she understood.

Dandy Dark came and asked her ominously how she thought Aunt Becky would have liked her taking a second helping after all her fine protestations.

“Aunt Becky liked consistency, that she did,” said Dandy, who had a fondness for big words and used more of them than ever now that he was trustee of the jug.

This sounded like a threat. Donna pouted.

“Dandy,” she coaxed, “you might tell
me
who's to get the jug—if you know. I wouldn't tell a soul.”

Dandy chuckled.

“I've lost count how often that's been said to me the past month. No use, Donna. Nobody's going to know more about that jug than Aunt Becky told them until the time comes. A dying trust”—Dandy was very important and solemn—“is a sacred thing. But think twice before you marry Peter, Donna—think twice.”

“Oh, Aunty Con, some days I just hate life,” Donna told a relative for whom she had some love. “And then again some days I just love it.”

“That's the way with us all,” said plump Aunty Con placidly.

Donna stared at her in amazement. Surely Aunty Con could never either love or hate life.

“Oh, Aunty Con, I'm really miserable. I seem to get better so slowly. And Peter and I can't get a word to each other. Father is so unreasonable—he seems to smell brimstone if anyone mentions Peter's name. Thekla is barely civil to me—though she
was
an angel when I was really ill—and Virginia is sulking. I—I get so blue and discouraged—”

“You ain't real well yet,” said Aunty Con soothingly. “Don't you worry, Donna. As soon as you're real strong Peter Penhallow will find a way. Rest you with that.”

Donna looked out of her open window over her right shoulder into the July night. A little wet new moon was hanging over a curve of Rose River. There were sounds as if a car were dying in the yard. Nobody had told Donna that Peter came down to Drowned John's gate every night—where his father had hung the dog—and made all the weird noises possible with his claxon, but Donna suddenly felt he was very near her. She smiled. Yes, Peter would find a way.

3

Gay Penhallow could never quite remember when the first faint shadow fell across her happiness. It stole towards her so subtly. If you looked straight at it—it wasn't there. But turn away your eyes and out of the corners you could see it—a little nearer—still a little nearer—waiting to pounce.

Everything had been so wonderful at first. The weeks were not made up of days at all. Sunday was a flame, Monday a rainbow, Tuesday a perfume, Wednesday a bird-song, Thursday a wind-dance, Friday laughter, and Saturday—Noel always came Saturday night, whatever other night he missed—was something that was the soul of all the other six.

But now—the days were becoming just days again.