A Tangled Web (35 page)

“It's a funny world,” sighed Uncle Pippin.

“Let's laugh at it then,” said Stanton Grundy.

Old Thomas Ashley was not happy. Somebody had come up to him on the veranda and said archly, “Don't
dare
to say you don't know
me.
” He stared at her in silence, it was the grim lady who had sat under the mantelpiece. No, he didn't know her—and yet—

“I'm Mavis Dark,” she said more archly still.

“Mavis Dark! Impossible!” exclaimed Thomas Ashley.

“Oh,
have
I changed so much?” said Mrs. Clifford poutingly. “Don't you remember that summer you were here?”

Thomas Ashley looked at her. The skin which had been creamy in youth was yellow now—the smooth cheeks were wrinkled—the smooth neck wattled. The sleek, black hair had turned gray—the gracious curves had vanished.

“But—but—you were beautiful then,” stammered poor old Thomas.

“You've changed a little yourself,” Mrs. Clifford reminded him acidly.

Thomas Ashley went away, lamenting a lost dream. He wished he had never heard of the old Dark jug. But his plump, pretty little wife was not ill-pleased. The ghostly rival of thirty years was laid at last. God bless Aunt Becky's jug!

Tempest Dark, his eyes alight with good-humored mockery, had decided that he would keep on living. He had found a job that would give him bread and discovered that existence was possible even without Winnifred.

“After all, life's worth living when a comedy like this is played out,'' he reflected.

“Dang it, I believe there
is
something in prayer after all,” said Dandy, when the last car had driven away.

4

Winter was coming on apace; November wore away. At Treewoofe Hugh and Joscelyn kept glowing fires in every room and laughed at the winds that swirled up from the gulf. Peter and Donna were on their way to Africa. Roger and Gay were not yet home from their honeymoon. Margaret and Brian were nested in Whispering Winds. And one cold evening poor, lonely, hungry Big Sam set out for a walk around the shore to the lighthouse on Bay Silver Point. It was a long walk and he had various rheumatic spots about his anatomy, but there would be some cronies at the lighthouse and Big Sam thought an evening of social intercourse would be better for his nerves than playing tit-tat-to, right hand against left, at home. These short days and long, early-falling evenings were depressing, he admitted. And the Wilkins's shanty was draughty. Perhaps Happy Dark would be at the lighthouse, with his ringing tales of life in the tropic seas. And maybe the lighthouse-keeper's wife might even give them a bite of lunch. But he would not let his thoughts dwell on Little Sam's suet puddings and chowders and hot biscuits. That way madness lay.

There had been a skim of snow that morning, melting into dampness as the sun rose for an hour or two of watery brightness before shrouding himself in clouds. The brief day had grown cold and raw as it wore on and now land and sea lay wrapped in a gray, brooding stillness. Far away Big Sam heard a train-whistle blow distinctly. The Old Lady of the Gulf moaned now and then. A storm was coming up but Big Sam was not afraid of storms. He would come home by the river road; the tide would be too high on his return to come by the Hole-in-the-Wall.

As a matter of fact when he reached the long red headland known as the Hole-in-the-Wall, he blankly realized that the tide was already ahead of him. There was no getting around it. He could not climb its steep rugged sides; and to go back to where a road led down to the shore meant a lot of extra walking.

A daring inspiration came to Big Sam. Since he could not get around the Hole-in-the-Wall, could he go through it? Nobody ever had gone through it. But there had to be a first time for anything. It was certainly bigger than last year. Nothing venture, nothing win.

The Hole-in-the-Wall had begun with a tiny opening through the relatively thin side of the headland. Every year it grew a little larger as the yielding sandstone crumbled under wave and frost. It was a fair size now. Big Sam was small and thin. He reckoned if he could get his head through, the rest of him could follow.

He lay down and cautiously began squirming through. It was tighter than he had thought. The sides seemed suddenly very thick. All at once Big Sam decided that he was not cut out for a pioneer. He would go back out to the road. He tried to. He could not move. Somehow his coat had got ruckled up around his shoulders and jammed him tight. Vainly he twisted and writhed and tugged. The big rock seemed to hold him as in a grip of iron. The more he struggled the tighter he seemed to get wedged in. Finally he lay still with a cold sweat of horror breaking over him. His head was through the Hole-in-the-Wall. His shoulders were tight in it. His legs—where
were
his legs? There was no sensation in them, but they were probably hanging down the rock wall on the hinder side.

What a position to be in! On a lonely shore on a fast-darkening November night with a storm coming up. He would never live through it. He would die of heart-failure before morning, like old Captain Jobby who tried to climb through a gate when he was drunk, and stuck there.

Nobody could see him and it was no use to yell. Before him, as behind him, was nothing but a curving, shadowy cove bounded by another headland. No house, no human being in sight. Nevertheless, Big Sam yelled with what little breath he had left.

“Wouldn't you just as soon sing as make that noise?” queried Little Sam, sticking his head around the huge boulder that screened him.

Big Sam stared at the familiar spidery nose and huge mustache. Of all the men in River and Cove to catch him in this predicament, that it would be Little Sam! What the devil was he doing, squatted here a mile away from home on such a night?

“I wasn't aimin' to sing, not being afflicted as some folks are,” said Big Sam sarcastically. “I was just trying to fill my lungs with air.”

“Why don't you come all the way through?” jeered Little Sam, coming around the boulder.

'Cause I can't, and you know it,” said Big Sam savagely. “Look here, Samuel Dark, you and I ain't friends but I'm a human being, ain't I?”

“There are times when I can see a distant resemblance to one in you,” acknowledged Little Sam, sitting calmly down on a jut of the boulder.

“Well, then in the name of humanity help me out of this.”

“I dunno's I can,” said Little Sam dubiously. “Seems to me the only way'd be to yank you back by the legs and I can't git round the cape to do that.”

“If you can get a good grip on my shoulders or my coat you can yank me out this way. It only wants a good pull. I can't get my arms free to help myself.”

“And I dunno's I will,” went on Little Sam as if he had not been interrupted.

“You—dunno's—you—
wil
l
! D'ye mean to say you'll leave me here to die on a night like this? Well, Sam Dark—”

“No; I ain't aiming to do that. It'll be your own fault if you're left here. But you've got to show some signs of sense if I'm going to pull you out. Will you come home and behave yourself if I do?”

“If you want me to come home you know all you've got to do,” snapped Big Sam. “Shoot out your Roarer.”

“Aurorer stays,” said Little Sam briefly.

“Then I stay, too.” Big Sam imitated Little Sam's brevity—partly because he had very little breath to use for talking at all.

Little Sam took out his pipe and proceeded to light it.

“I'll give you a few minutes to reflect 'fore I go. I don't aim to stay long here in the damp. I dunno how a little wizened critter like you'll stand it all night. Anyway, you'll have some feeling after this for the poor camel trying to get through the needle's eye.”

“Call yourself a Christian?” sneered Big Sam.

“Don't be peevish now. This ain't a question of religion—this is a question of common sense,” retorted Little Sam.

Big Sam made a terrific effort to free himself but not even a tremor of the grim red headland was produced thereby.

“You'll bust a blood-vessel in one of them spasms,” warned Little Sam. “You'd orter see yourself with your red whiskers sticking out of that hole. And I s'pose the rest of you's sticking out of the other side. Beautiful rear view if anyone comes along. Not that anyone likely will, this time o' night. But if you're still alive in the morning I'm going to get Prince Dark to take a snap of your hind legs. Be sensible, Sammy. I've got pea soup for supper—hot pea soup.”

“Take your pea soup to hell,” said Big Sam.

Followed a lot of silence. Big Sam was thinking. He knew where his extremities were now, for the cold was nipping them like a weasel. The rock around him was hard as iron. It was beginning to rain and the wind was rising. Already the showers of spray were spuming up from the beach. By morning he would be dead or gibbering.

But it was bitter to knuckle under to Little Sam and that white-limbed hussy on the clock shelf. Big Sam tried to pluck a little honor from the jaws of defeat.

“If I come back, will you promise not to marry that fat widow?”

Little Sam concealed all evidence of triumph.

“I ain't promising nothing—but I ain't marrying
any
widow, fat
or
lean.”

“I s'pose that means she wouldn't have you.”

“She didn't get the chance to have me or not have me. I ain't contracting any alliance with the House of Terlizzick, maid
or
widow. Well, I'm for home and pea soup. Coming, Sammy?”

Big Sam emitted a sigh, partly of exhaustion, partly of surrender. Life was too complicated. He was beaten.

“Pull me out of this damn' hole,” he said sourly, “and I don't care how many naked weemen you have round.”

“One's enough,” said Little Sam.

He got a grip somehow of Big Sam's coat over his shoulders and tugged manfully. Big Sam howled. He was sure his legs were being torn off at the hips. Then he found that they were still attached to his body, standing on the rock beside Little Sam.

“Wring your whiskers out and hurry,” said Little Sam. “I'm afraid that pea soup'll be scorched. It's sitting on the back of the stove.”

5

This was comfort now—with the cold rain beating down outside and the gulf beginning to bellow. The stove was purring a lyric of beech and maple, and Mustard was licking her beautiful family under it.

Big Sam drew a long breath of satisfaction. There were many things to be talked over with Little Sam—incidents they could discuss with the calm detachment of those who lived on the fringe of the clan only. What name had really been in the envelope Dandy's pig had eaten. The uncanny miracle of Lawson Dark's restoration. The fact that Joscelyn Dark had got over her long fit of the sulks. The wedding of Peter and Donna and all the expense Drowned John must have gone to. All the things that had or had not happened in the clan because of Aunt Becky's jug. And some amazing yarn of Walter Dark's black cat that had fallen into a gallon of gasoline and come out white.

Really the pea soup was sublime.

After all, them earrings rather became Little Sam. Balanced the mustache, so to speak. And Aurorer—but what was the matter with Aurorer?

“What you bin doing with that old heathen graven immidge of yours?” demanded Big Sam, setting down half drunk his cup of militant tea with a thud.

“Give her a coat of bronze paint,” said Little Sam proudly. “Looks real tasty, don't it? Knew you'd be sneaking home some of these long-come-shorts and thought I'd show you I could be consid'rate of your principles.”

“Then you can scrape it off again,” said Big Sam firmly. “Think I'm going to have an unclothed nigger sitting up there? If I've gotter be looking at a naked woman day in and day out, I want a white one for decency's sake.”

L. M. Montgomery achieved international fame in her lifetime that endures well over a century later. A prolific writer, she published some 500 short stories and poems and twenty novels. Most recognized for
Anne
of
Green
Gables
, her work has been hailed by Mark Twain, Margaret Atwood, Madeleine L'Engle, and Duchess Kate, to name a few. Today, Montgomery's novels, journals, letters, short stories, and poems are read and studied by general readers and scholars from around the world. Her writing appeals to people who love beauty and to those who struggle against oppression.

Discover beautiful new editions of the beloved Anne series

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Avonlea

Anne of the Island

Anne of Windy Poplars

Anne's House of Dreams

Anne of Ingleside

• • •

“One of the most extraordinary girls that ever came out of an ink pot.” —
New York Times

“The dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice.” —Mark Twain

• • •

For more information on the L. M. Montgomery titles, visit
sourcebooks.com
.

Find a new heroine in the Emily trilogy

Emily of New Moon

Emily Climbs

Emily's Quest

• • •

“I loved Emily.” —Madeleine L'Engle

• • •

For more information on the L. M. Montgomery titles, visit
sourcebooks.com
.

And don't miss more classic favorites from L. M. Montgomery

The Blue Castle

Magic for Marigold

Pat of Silver Bush

Mistress Pat

Jane of Lantern Hill

A Tangled Web

For more information on the L. M. Montgomery titles, visit
sourcebooks.com
.