Read Online A Tangled Web by L. M. Montgomery - Free Book Online Page A

its influence. For one infinitesimal moment Joscelyn and Hugh looked at each other—Margaret Penhallow was young again—Virginia put her hand over Donna’s in a convulsive grasp—Thora Dark moved restlessly—and a strange expression flickered over Lawson Dark’s face. Uncle Pippin caught it as it vanished and felt his scalp crinkle. For just a second he thought Lawson was remembering.
    Even Drowned John found himself recalling how pretty and flower-like Jennie had been when he married her. What a hell of a pity one couldn’t stay always young.
    Everyone present knew the romantic story of the old Dark jug. Harriet Dark, who had been sleeping for one hundred years in a quaint English churchyard, had been a slim fair creature with faint rose cheeks and big gray eyes, in 1826, with a gallant sea-captain for a lover. And this lover, on what proved to be his last voyage, had sailed to Amsterdam and there had caused to be made the jug of scroll and verse and true-lover’s knot for a birthday gift to his Harriet, it being the fashion of the time to give the lady of your heart such a robust and capacious jug. Alas for true loves and true lovers! On the voyage home the Captain was drowned. The jug was sent to the brokenhearted Harriet. Hearts did break a hundred years ago, it is said. A year later Harriet, her spring of love so suddenly turned to autumn was buried in the Aldboro churchyard and the jug passed into the keeping of her sister, Sarah Dark, who had married her cousin, Robert Penhallow. Sarah, being perhaps of a practical and unromantic turn of mind, used the jug to hold the black currant jam for the concoction of which she was noted. Six years later, when Robert Penhallow decided to emigrate to Canada, his wife carried the jug with her, full of black currant jam. The voyage was long and stormy; the currant jam was all eaten; and the jug was broken by some mischance into three large pieces. But Sarah Penhallow was a resourceful woman. When she was finally settled in her new home, she took the jug and mended it carefully with white lead. It was done thoroughly and lastingly but not exactly artistically. Sarah smeared the white lead rather lavishly over the cracks, pressing it down with her capable thumb. And in a good light to this very day the lines of Sarah Penhallow’s thumb could be clearly seen in the hardened spats of white lead.
    Thereafter for years Sarah Penhallow kept the jug in her dairy, filled with cream skimmed from her broad, golden-brown, earthenware milk pans. On her deathbed she had given it to her daughter Rachel, who had married Thomas Dark. Rachel Dark left it to her son Theodore. By this time it had been advanced to the dignity of an heirloom and was no longer degraded to menial uses. Aunt Becky kept it in her china cabinet, and it was passed around and its story told at all clan gatherings. It was said a collector had offered Aunt Becky a fabulous sum for it. But no Dark or Penhallow would ever have dreamed of selling such a household god. Absolutely it must remain in the family. To whom would Aunt Becky give it? This was the question everyone in the room was silently asking; Aunt Becky alone knew the answer and she did not mean to be in any hurry to give it. This was her last levee; she had much to do and still more to say before she came to the question of the jug at all. She was going to take her time about it and enjoy it. She knew perfectly well that what she was going to do would set everybody by the ears, but all she regretted was that she would not be alive to see the sport. Look at all those female animals with their eyes popping out at the jug! Aunt Becky began to laugh and laughed until her bed shook.
    â€œI think,” she said, finally, wiping the tears of mirth from her eyes, “that a solemn assembly like this should be opened with prayer.”
    This was by way of being a bombshell. Who but Aunt Becky would have thought of such a thing? Everybody