Nan was determined she wouldn't let this frumpy old harridan put her out. Besides, she had her own hankerings after the jug.
"Oh, no, Aunt Becky darling. I take after father's people. They stay thin, you know."
Aunt Becky did not like being "darlinged."
"Go upstairs and wash that stuff off your lips and cheeks," she said. "I won't have any painted snips around here."
"You... why, you've got rouge on yourself," cried Nan, despite her mother's piteous nudge.
"And who are you to say I should not?" demanded Aunt Becky. "Now, never mind standing there switching your tail at me. Go and do as you're told or else go home."
Nan was minded to do the latter. But Mrs Alpheus was whispering agitatedly at her neck,
"Go, darling, go... do exactly as she tells you... or... or... "
"Or you'll stand no chance of getting the jug," chuckled Aunt Becky, who at eighty-five had ears that could hear the grass grow.
Nan went, sulky and contemptuous, determined that she would get even with somebody for her manhandling by this cantankerous old despot. Perhaps it was at this moment, when Gay Penhallow was entering the room in a yellow dress that seemed woven out of sunshine, that Nan made up her mind to capture Noel Gibson. It was intolerable that Gay of all people should be a witness of her discomfiture.
"Green-eyed girls for trouble," said Uncle Pippin.
"She's a man-eater I reckon," agreed Stanton Grundy.
Gay Penhallow, a slight, blossom-like girl whom only the Family Bible knew as Gabrielle Alexandrina, was shaking Aunt Becky's hand but would not bend down to kiss her as Aunt Becky expected.
"Hey, hey, what's the matter?" demanded Aunt Becky. "Some boy been kissing you? And you don't want to spoil the flavour, hey?"
Gay fled to a corner and sat down. It was true. But HOW did Aunt Becky know it? Noel HAD kissed her the evening before... Gay's first kiss in all her eighteen years... Nan would have hooted over THAT! An exquisite fleeting kiss under a golden June moon. Gay felt that she could NOT kiss any one, especially dreadful old Aunt Becky, after THAT. It would be sacrilege. Never mind if Aunt Becky wouldn't give her the jug. What difference did it make about her old jug, anyway? What difference did anything make in the whole wide beautiful world except that Noel loved her and she loved him?
But something seemed to have come into the now crowded room with the arrival of Gay... something like a sudden quick-passing breeze on a sultry day... something as indescribably sweet and elusive as the fragrance of a forest flower... something of youth and love and hope. Everybody felt inexplicably happier... more charitable... more courageous. Stanton Grundy's lantern-jaws looked less grim and Uncle Pippin momentarily felt that, after all, Grundy had undoubtedly married a Dark and so had a right to be where he was. Miller Dark thought he really would get started on his history next week... Margaret had an inspiration for a new poem... Penny Dark reflected that he was only fifty-two, after all... William Y. forgot that he had a bald spot... Curtis Dark, who had the reputation of being an incurably disagreeable husband, thought his wife's new hat became her and that he would tell her so on the way home. Even Aunt Becky grew less inhuman and, although she had several more shots in her locker and hated to miss the fun of firing them, allowed the remainder of her guests to pass to their seats without insult or innuendo, except that she asked old Cousin Skilly Penhallow how his brother Angus was. All the assembly laughed and Cousin Skilly smiled amiably. Aunt Becky couldn't put HIM out. He knew the whole clan quoted his Spoonerisms and that the one about his brother Angus, now dead for thirty years, never failed to evoke hilarity. The minister had come along that windy morning long ago, after Angus Penhallow's mill-dam had been swept away in the March flood, and had been greeted excitedly by Skilly.
"We're all upset here to-day, Mr MacPherson... ye'll kindly excuse us... my dam brother Angus burst in the night."
"Well, I think everybody is here at last," said Aunt Becky... "everybody I expected, at least, and some I didn't. I don't see Peter Penhallow or the Moon Man, but I suppose one couldn't expect either of them to behave like rational beings."
"Peter IS here," said his sister Nancy Dark eagerly. "He's out on the veranda. You know Peter hates to be cooped up in a room. He's so accustomed to... to... "
"The great open spaces of God's outdoors," murmured Aunt Becky ironically.
"Yes, that's it... that's what I mean... that's what I meant to say. Peter is just as interested in you as any of us, dear Aunt."
"I daresay... if THAT means much. Or in the jug."
"No, Peter doesn't care a particle about the jug," said Nancy Dark, thankful to find solid ground under her feet in this at least.
"The Moon Man's here, too," said William Y. "I can see him sitting on the steps of the veranda. He's been away for weeks... just turned up to-day. Queer how he always seems to get wind of things."
"He was back yesterday evening. I heard him yelping to the moon all last night down at his shanty," boomed Drowned John. "He ought to be locked up. It's a family disgrace the way he carries on, wandering over the whole Island bareheaded and in rags, as if he hadn't a friend in the world to care for him. I don't care if he isn't mad enough for the asylum. He should be under SOME restraint."
Pounce went Aunt Becky.
"So should most of you. Leave Oswald Dark alone. He's perfectly happy on nights when there's a moon, anyhow, and who among us can say that. If we're perfectly happy for an hour or two at a time, it's as much as the gods will do for us. Oswald's in luck. Ambrosine, here's the key of my brass-bound trunk. Go up to the attic and bring down Harriet Dark's jug."
III
While Ambrosine Winkworth has gone for the jug and a hush of excitement and suspense has fallen over the assembled clan, let us look at them a little more closely, partly through Aunt Becky's eyes and partly through our own, and get better acquainted with them, especially with those whose lives were to be more or less affected and altered by the jug. There were all kinds of people there with their family secrets and their personal secrets, their outer lives of which everything... nearly... was known, and their inner lives of which nothing was known... not even to lean, lank Mercy Penhallow, whose lankness and leanness were attributed to the chronic curiosity about every one which gave her no rest day or night. Most of them looked like the dull, sedate folks they were, but some of them had had shocking adventures. Some of them were very beautiful; some were very funny; some were clever; some were mean; some were happy; some were not; some were liked by everybody and some were liked by nobody; some had reached the stodgy plane where nothing more was to be expected from life; and some were still adventurous and expectant, cherishing secret, unsatisfied dreams.
Margaret Penhallow, for instance... dreamy, poetical Margaret Penhallow, who was the clan dressmaker and lived with her brother, Denzil Penhallow, in Bay Silver. Always overworked and snubbed and patronized. She spent her life making pretty clothes for other people and never had any for herself. Yet she took an artist's pride in her work and something in her starved soul sprang into sudden transforming bloom when a pretty girl floated into church in a gown of her making. SHE had a part in creating that beauty. That slim vision of loveliness owed something of its loveliness to HER, "old Margaret Penhallow."
Margaret loved beauty; and there was so little of it in her life. She had no beauty herself, save in her overlarge, strangely lustrous eyes, and her slender hands... the beautiful hands of an old portrait. Yet there was a certain attractiveness about her that had not been dependent on youth and had not left her with the years. Stanton Grundy, looking at her, was thinking that she was more ladylike than any other woman of her age in the room and that, if he were looking for a second wife... which, thank God, he wasn't... Margaret would be the one he'd pick.