The marriage of a Penhallow was always the signal for a gathering of
the Penhallows. From the uttermost parts of the earth they would
come--Penhallows by birth, and Penhallows by marriage and Penhallows
by ancestry. East Grafton was the ancient habitat of the race, and
Penhallow Grange, where “old” John Penhallow lived, was a Mecca to them.
As for the family itself, the exact kinship of all its various branches
and ramifications was a hard thing to define. Old Uncle Julius Penhallow
was looked upon as a veritable wonder because he carried it all in his
head and could tell on sight just what relation any one Penhallow was
to any other Penhallow. The rest made a blind guess at it, for the most
part, and the younger Penhallows let it go at loose cousinship.
In this instance it was Alice Penhallow, daughter of “young” John
Penhallow, who was to be married. Alice was a nice girl, but she and
her wedding only pertain to this story in so far as they furnish a
background for Lucinda; hence nothing more need be said of her.
On the afternoon of her wedding day--the Penhallows held to the
good, old-fashioned custom of evening weddings with a rousing dance
afterwards--Penhallow Grange was filled to overflowing with guests who
had come there to have tea and rest themselves before going down to
“young” John’s. Many of them had driven fifty miles. In the big
autumnal orchard the younger fry foregathered and chatted and coquetted.
Up-stairs, in “old” Mrs. John’s bedroom, she and her married daughters
held high conclave. “Old” John had established himself with his sons and
sons-in-law in the parlour, and the three daughters-in-law were making
themselves at home in the blue sitting-room, ear-deep in harmless family
gossip. Lucinda and Romney Penhallow were also there.
Thin Mrs. Nathaniel Penhallow sat in a rocking chair and toasted her
toes at the grate, for the brilliant autumn afternoon was slightly
chilly and Lucinda, as usual, had the window open. She and plump Mrs.
Frederick Penhallow did most of the talking. Mrs. George Penhallow being
rather out of it by reason of her newness. She was George Penhallow’s
second wife, married only a year. Hence, her contributions to the
conversation were rather spasmodic, hurled in, as it were, by dead
reckoning, being sometimes appropriate and sometimes savouring of a
point of view not strictly Penhallowesque.
Romney Penhallow was sitting in a corner, listening to the chatter of
the women, with the inscrutable smile that always vexed Mrs. Frederick.
Mrs. George wondered within herself what he did there among the women.
She also wondered just where he belonged on the family tree. He was not
one of the uncles, yet he could not be much younger than George.
“Forty, if he is a day,” was Mrs. George’s mental dictum, “but a very
handsome and fascinating man. I never saw such a splendid chin and
dimple.”
Lucinda, with bronze-colored hair and the whitest of skins, defiant of
merciless sunlight and revelling in the crisp air, sat on the sill of
the open window behind the crimson vine leaves, looking out into the
garden, where dahlias flamed and asters broke into waves of purple and
snow. The ruddy light of the autumn afternoon gave a sheen to the waves
of her hair and brought out the exceeding purity of her Greek outlines.
Mrs. George knew who Lucinda was--a cousin of the second generation,
and, in spite of her thirty-five years, the acknowledged beauty of the
whole Penhallow connection.
She was one of those rare women who keep their loveliness unmarred by
the passage of years. She had ripened and matured, but she had not
grown old. The older Penhallows were still inclined, from sheer force of
habit, to look upon her as a girl, and the younger Penhallows hailed her
as one of themselves. Yet Lucinda never aped girlishness; good taste and
a strong sense of humour preserved her amid many temptations thereto.
She was simply a beautiful, fully developed woman, with whom Time had
declared a truce, young with a mellow youth which had nothing to do with
years.
Mrs. George liked and admired Lucinda. Now, when Mrs. George liked and
admired any person, it was a matter of necessity with her to impart her
opinions to the most convenient confidant. In this case it was Romney
Penhallow to whom Mrs. George remarked sweetly:
“Really, don’t you think our Lucinda is looking remarkably well this
fall?”
It seemed a very harmless, inane, well-meant question. Poor Mrs. George
might well be excused for feeling bewildered over the effect. Romney
gathered his long legs together, stood up, and swept the unfortunate
speaker a crushing Penhallow bow of state.
“Far be it from me to disagree with the opinion of a lady--especially
when it concerns another lady,” he said, as he left the blue room.
Overcome by the mordant satire in his tone, Mrs. George glanced
speechlessly at Lucinda. Behold, Lucinda had squarely turned her back on
the party and was gazing out into the garden, with a very decided flush
on the snowy curves of her neck and cheek. Then Mrs. George looked at
her sisters-in-law. They were regarding her with the tolerant amusement
they might bestow on a blundering child. Mrs. George experienced that
subtle prescience whereby it is given us to know that we have put our
foot in it. She felt herself turning an uncomfortable brick-red. What
Penhallow skeleton had she unwittingly jangled? Why, oh, why, was it
such an evident breach of the proprieties to praise Lucinda?
Mrs. George was devoutly thankful that a summons to the tea-table
rescued her from her mire of embarrassment. The meal was spoiled for
her, however; the mortifying recollection of her mysterious blunder
conspired with her curiosity to banish appetite. As soon as possible
after tea she decoyed Mrs. Frederick out into the garden and in the
dahlia walk solemnly demanded the reason of it all.
Mrs. Frederick indulged in a laugh which put the mettle of her festal
brown silk seams to the test.
“My dear Cecilia, it was SO amusing,” she said, a little patronizingly.
“But WHY!” cried Mrs. George, resenting the patronage and the mystery.
“What was so dreadful in what I said? Or so funny? And WHO is this
Romney Penhallow who mustn’t be spoken to?”
“Oh, Romney is one of the Charlottetown Penhallows,” explained Mrs.
Frederick. “He is a lawyer there. He is a first cousin of Lucinda’s and
a second of George’s--or is he? Oh, bother! You must go to Uncle John
if you want the genealogy. I’m in a chronic muddle concerning Penhallow
relationship. And, as for Romney, of course you can speak to him about
anything you like except Lucinda. Oh, you innocent! To ask him if he
didn’t think Lucinda was looking well! And right before her, too! Of
course he thought you did it on purpose to tease him. That was what made
him so savage and sarcastic.”
“But WHY?” persisted Mrs. George, sticking tenaciously to her point.
“Hasn’t George told you?”
“No,” said George’s wife in mild exasperation. “George has spent most
of his time since we were married telling me odd things about the
Penhallows, but he hasn’t got to that yet, evidently.”
“Why, my dear, it is our family romance. Lucinda and Romney are in love
with each other. They have been in love with each other for fifteen
years and in all that time they have never spoken to each other once!”
“Dear me!” murmured Mrs. George, feeling the inadequacy of mere
language. Was this a Penhallow method of courtship? “But WHY?”
“They had a quarrel fifteen years ago,” said Mrs. Frederick patiently.
“Nobody knows how it originated or anything about it except that Lucinda
herself admitted it to us afterwards. But, in the first flush of her
rage, she told Romney that she would never speak to him again as long
as she lived. And HE said he would never speak to her until she spoke
first--because, you see, as she was in the wrong she ought to make the
first advance. And they never have spoken. Everybody in the connection,
I suppose, has taken turns trying to reconcile them, but nobody has
succeeded. I don’t believe that Romney has ever so much as THOUGHT
of any other woman in his whole life, and certainly Lucinda has never
thought of any other man. You will notice she still wears Romney’s ring.
They’re practically engaged still, of course. And Romney said once that
if Lucinda would just say one word, no matter what it was, even if it
were something insulting, he would speak, too, and beg her pardon
for his share in the quarrel--because then, you see, he would not be
breaking his word. He hasn’t referred to the matter for years, but I
presume that he is of the same mind still. And they are just as much in
love with each other as they ever were. He’s always hanging about where
she is--when other people are there, too, that is. He avoids her like a
plague when she is alone. That was why he was stuck out in the blue
room with us to-day. There doesn’t seem to be a particle of resentment
between them. If Lucinda would only speak! But that Lucinda will not
do.”
“Don’t you think she will yet?” said Mrs. George.
Mrs. Frederick shook her crimped head sagely.
“Not now. The whole thing has hardened too long. Her pride will
never let her speak. We used to hope she would be tricked into it by
forgetfulness or accident--we used to lay traps for her--but all to no
effect. It is such a shame, too. They were made for each other. Do you
know, I get cross when I begin to thrash the whole silly affair over
like this. Doesn’t it sound as if we were talking of the quarrel of two
school-children? Of late years we have learned that it does not do to
speak of Lucinda to Romney, even in the most commonplace way. He seems
to resent it.”
“HE ought to speak,” cried Mrs. George warmly. “Even if she were in the
wrong ten times over, he ought to overlook it and speak first.”
“But he won’t. And she won’t. You never saw two such determined mortals.
They get it from their grandfather on the mother’s side--old Absalom
Gordon. There is no such stubbornness on the Penhallow side. His
obstinacy was a proverb, my dear--actually a proverb. What ever he said,
he would stick to if the skies fell. He was a terrible old man to swear,
too,” added Mrs. Frederick, dropping into irrelevant reminiscence. “He
spent a long while in a mining camp in his younger days and he never got
over it--the habit of swearing, I mean. It would have made your blood
run cold, my dear, to have heard him go on at times. And yet he was a
real good old man every other way. He couldn’t help it someway. He
tried to, but he used to say that profanity came as natural to him as
breathing. It used to mortify his family terribly. Fortunately, none of
them took after him in that respect. But he’s dead--and one shouldn’t
speak ill of the dead. I must go and get Mattie Penhallow to do my hair.
I would burst these sleeves clean out if I tried to do it myself and I
don’t want to dress over again. You won’t be likely to talk to Romney
about Lucinda again, my dear Cecilia?”
“Fifteen years!” murmured Mrs. George helplessly to the dahlias.
“Engaged for fifteen years and never speaking to each other! Dear heart
and soul, think of it! Oh, these Penhallows!”
Meanwhile, Lucinda, serenely unconscious that her love story was being
mouthed over by Mrs. Frederick in the dahlia garden, was dressing for
the wedding. Lucinda still enjoyed dressing for a festivity, since the
mirror still dealt gently with her. Moreover, she had a new dress.
Now, a new dress--and especially one as nice as this--was a rarity with
Lucinda, who belonged to a branch of the Penhallows noted for being
chronically hard up. Indeed, Lucinda and her widowed mother were
positively poor, and hence a new dress was an event in Lucinda’s
existence. An uncle had given her this one--a beautiful, perishable
thing, such as Lucinda would never have dared to choose for herself, but
in which she revelled with feminine delight.
It was of pale green voile--a colour which brought out admirably the
ruddy gloss of her hair and the clear brilliance of her skin. When she
had finished dressing she looked at herself in the mirror with frank
delight. Lucinda was not vain, but she was quite well aware of the fact
of her beauty and took an impersonal pleasure in it, as if she were
looking at some finely painted picture by a master hand.
The form and face reflected in the glass satisfied her. The puffs and
draperies of the green voile displayed to perfection the full, but not
over-full, curves of her fine figure. Lucinda lifted her arm and touched
a red rose to her lips with the hand upon which shone the frosty glitter
of Romney’s diamond, looking at the graceful slope of her shoulder and
the splendid line of chin and throat with critical approval.
She noted, too, how well the gown became her eyes, bringing out all the
deeper colour in them. Lucinda had magnificent eyes. Once Romney had
written a sonnet to them in which he compared their colour to ripe
blueberries. This may not sound poetical to you unless you know or
remember just what the tints of ripe blueberries are--dusky purple in
some lights, clear slate in others, and yet again in others the misty
hue of early meadow violets.
“You really look very well,” remarked the real Lucinda to the mirrored
Lucinda. “Nobody would think you were an old maid. But you are. Alice
Penhallow, who is to be married to-night, was a child of five when you
thought of being married fifteen years ago. That makes you an old maid,
my dear. Well, it is your own fault, and it will continue to be your own
fault, you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed!”
She flung her train out straight and pulled on her gloves.
“I do hope I won’t get any spots on this dress to-night,” she reflected.
“It will have to do me for a gala dress for a year at least--and I have
a creepy conviction that it is fearfully spottable. Bless Uncle Mark’s
good, uncalculating heart! How I would have detested it if he had given
me something sensible and useful and ugly--as Aunt Emilia would have
done.”
They all went to “young” John Penhallow’s at early moonrise. Lucinda
drove over the two miles of hill and dale with a youthful second cousin,
by name, Carey Penhallow. The wedding was quite a brilliant affair.
Lucinda seemed to pervade the social atmosphere, and everywhere she went
a little ripple of admiration trailed after her like a wave. She was
undeniably a belle, yet she found herself feeling faintly bored and was
rather glad than otherwise when the guests began to fray off.
“I’m afraid I’m losing my capacity for enjoyment,” she thought, a little
drearily. “Yes, I must be growing old. That is what it means when social
functions begin to bore you.”
It was that unlucky Mrs. George who blundered again. She was standing on
the veranda when Carey Penhallow dashed up.
“Tell Lucinda that I can’t take her back to the Grange. I have to
drive Mark and Cissy Penhallow to Bright River to catch the two o’clock
express. There will be plenty of chances for her with the others.”
At this moment George Penhallow, holding his rearing horse with
difficulty, shouted for his wife. Mrs. George, all in a flurry, dashed
back into the still crowded hall. Exactly to whom she gave her message
was never known to any of the Penhallows. But a tall, ruddy-haired girl,
dressed in pale green organdy--Anne Shirley from Avonlea--told Marilla
Cuthbert and Rachel Lynde as a joke the next morning how a chubby little
woman in a bright pink fascinator had clutched her by the arm, and
gasped out: “Carey Penhallow can’t take you--he says you’re to look out
for someone else,” and was gone before she could answer or turn around.
Thus it was that Lucinda, when she came out to the veranda step, found
herself unaccountably deserted. All the Grange Penhallows were gone;
Lucinda realized this after a few moments of bewildered seeking, and
she understood that if she were to get to the Grange that night she must
walk. Plainly there was nobody to take her.
Lucinda was angry. It is not pleasant to find yourself forgotten and
neglected. It is still less pleasant to walk home alone along a country
road, at one o’clock in the morning, wearing a pale green voile. Lucinda
was not prepared for such a walk. She had nothing on her feet save
thin-soled shoes, and her only wraps were a flimsy fascinator and a
short coat.
“What a guy I shall look, stalking home alone in this rig,” she thought
crossly.
There was no help for it, unless she confessed her plight to some of the
stranger guests and begged a drive home. Lucinda’s pride scorned such
a request and the admission of neglect it involved. No, she would walk,
since that was all there was to it; but she would not go by the main
road to be stared at by all and sundry who might pass her. There was a
short cut by way of a lane across the fields; she knew every inch of it,
although she had not traversed it for years.
She gathered up the green voile as trimly as possible, slipped around
the house in the kindly shadows, picked her way across the side lawn,
and found a gate which opened into a birch-bordered lane where the
frosted trees shone with silvery-golden radiance in the moonlight.
Lucinda flitted down the lane, growing angrier at every step as the
realization of how shamefully she seemed to have been treated came home
to her. She believed that nobody had thought about her at all, which was
tenfold worse than premeditated neglect.
As she came to the gate at the lower end of the lane a man who was
leaning over it started, with a quick intake of his breath, which, in
any other man than Romney Penhallow, or for any other woman than Lucinda
Penhallow, would have been an exclamation of surprise.
Lucinda recognized him with a great deal of annoyance and a little
relief. She would not have to walk home alone. But with Romney
Penhallow! Would he think she had contrived it so purposely?
Romney silently opened the gate for her, silently latched it behind her,
and silently fell into step beside her. Down across a velvety sweep of
field they went; the air was frosty, calm and still; over the world lay
a haze of moonshine and mist that converted East Grafton’s prosaic hills
and fields into a shimmering fairyland. At first Lucinda felt angrier
than ever. What a ridiculous situation! How the Penhallows would laugh
over it!
As for Romney, he, too, was angry with the trick impish chance had
played him. He liked being the butt of an awkward situation as little as
most men; and certainly to be obliged to walk home over moonlit fields
at one o’clock in the morning with the woman he had loved and never
spoken to for fifteen years was the irony of fate with a vengeance.
Would she think he had schemed for it? And how the deuce did she come to
be walking home from the wedding at all?
By the time they had crossed the field and reached the wild cherry lane
beyond it, Lucinda’s anger was mastered by her saving sense of humour.
She was even smiling a little maliciously under her fascinator.
The lane was a place of enchantment--a long, moonlit colonnade adown
which beguiling wood nymphs might have footed it featly. The moonshine
fell through the arching boughs and made a mosaic of silver light and
clear-cut shadow for the unfriendly lovers to walk in. On either side
was the hovering gloom of the woods, and around them was a great silence
unstirred by wind or murmur.
Midway in the lane Lucinda was attacked by a sentimental recollection.
She thought of the last time Romney and she had walked home together
through this very lane, from a party at “young” John’s. It had been
moonlight then too, and--Lucinda checked a sigh--they had walked hand
in hand. Just here, by the big gray beech, he had stopped her and kissed
her. Lucinda wondered if he were thinking of it, too, and stole a look
at him from under the lace border of her fascinator.
But he was striding moodily along with his hands in his pockets, and his
hat pulled down over his eyes, passing the old beech without a glance
at it. Lucinda checked another sigh, gathered up an escaped flutter of
voile, and marched on.
Past the lane a range of three silvery harvest fields sloped down to
Peter Penhallow’s brook--a wide, shallow stream bridged over in the
olden days by the mossy trunk of an ancient fallen tree. When Lucinda
and Romney arrived at the brook they gazed at the brawling water
blankly. Lucinda remembered that she must not speak to Romney just in
time to prevent an exclamation of dismay. There was no tree! There was
no bridge of any kind over the brook!
Here was a predicament! But before Lucinda could do more than
despairingly ask herself what was to be done now, Romney answered--not
in words, but in deeds. He coolly picked Lucinda up in his arms, as
if she had been a child instead of a full grown woman of no mean
avoirdupois, and began to wade with her through the water.
Lucinda gasped helplessly. She could not forbid him and she was so
choked with rage over his presumption that she could not have spoken
in any case. Then came the catastrophe. Romney’s foot slipped on a
treacherous round stone--there was a tremendous splash--and Romney and
Lucinda Penhallow were sitting down in the middle of Peter Penhallow’s
brook.
Lucinda was the first to regain her feet. About her clung in
heart-breaking limpness the ruined voile. The remembrance of all her
wrongs that night rushed over her soul, and her eyes blazed in the
moonlight. Lucinda Penhallow had never been so angry in her life.
“YOU D--D IDIOT!” she said, in a voice that literally shook with rage.
Romney meekly scrambled up the bank after her.
“I’m awfully sorry, Lucinda,” he said, striving with uncertain success
to keep a suspicious quiver of laughter out of his tone. “It was
wretchedly clumsy of me, but that pebble turned right under my foot.
Please forgive me--for that--and for other things.”
Lucinda deigned no answer. She stood on a flat stone and wrung the water
from the poor green voile. Romney surveyed her apprehensively.
“Hurry, Lucinda,” he entreated. “You will catch your death of cold.”
“I never take cold,” answered Lucinda, with chattering teeth. “And it is
my dress I am thinking of--was thinking of. You have more need to hurry.
You are sopping wet yourself and you know you are subject to colds.
There--come.”
Lucinda picked up the stringy train, which had been so brave and buoyant
five minutes before, and started up the field at a brisk rate. Romney
came up to her and slipped his arm through hers in the old way. For
a time they walked along in silence. Then Lucinda began to shake with
inward laughter. She laughed silently for the whole length of the field;
and at the line fence between Peter Penhallow’s land and the Grange
acres she paused, threw back the fascinator from her face, and looked at
Romney defiantly.
“You are thinking of--THAT,” she cried, “and I am thinking of it. And we
will go on, thinking of it at intervals for the rest of our lives. But
if you ever mention it to me I’ll never forgive you, Romney Penhallow!”
“I never will,” Romney promised. There was more than a suspicion of
laughter in his voice this time, but Lucinda did not choose to resent
it. She did not speak again until they reached the Grange gate. Then she
faced him solemnly.
“It was a case of atavism,” she said. “Old Grandfather Gordon was to
blame for it.”
At the Grange almost everybody was in bed. What with the guests
straggling home at intervals and hurrying sleepily off to their rooms,
nobody had missed Lucinda, each set supposing she was with some other
set. Mrs. Frederick, Mrs. Nathaniel and Mrs. George alone were up. The
perennially chilly Mrs. Nathaniel had kindled a fire of chips in the
blue room grate to warm her feet before retiring, and the three women
were discussing the wedding in subdued tones when the door opened
and the stately form of Lucinda, stately even in the dragged voile,
appeared, with the damp Romney behind her.
“Lucinda Penhallow!” gasped they, one and all.
“I was left to walk home,” said Lucinda coolly. “So Romney and I came
across the fields. There was no bridge over the brook, and when he was
carrying me over he slipped and we fell in. That is all. No, Cecilia, I
never take cold, so don’t worry. Yes, my dress is ruined, but that is of
no consequence. No, thank you, Cecilia, I do not care for a hot drink.
Romney, do go and take off those wet clothes of yours immediately. No,
Cecilia, I will NOT take a hot footbath. I am going straight to bed.
Good night.”
When the door closed on the pair the three sisters-in-law stared at
each other. Mrs. Frederick, feeling herself incapable of expressing her
sensations originally, took refuge in a quotation:
“‘Do I sleep, do I dream, do I wonder and doubt? Is things what they
seem, or is visions about?’”
“There will be another Penhallow wedding soon,” said Mrs. Nathaniel,
with a long breath. “Lucinda has spoken to Romney AT LAST.”
“Oh, WHAT do you suppose she said to him?” cried Mrs. George.
“My dear Cecilia,” said Mrs. Frederick, “we shall never know.”
They never did know.