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

jeweled harbor and a glorious wind that had never known fetters, blowing right up from the gulf—Peter loved wind—and a big tree of apple blossom that was fairer to look upon than any woman’s face had ever seemed to Peter. The clan wrote Peter down as a woman-hater, but he was nothing of the sort. The only woman he hated was Donna Dark; he was simply not interested in women and had never tried to be because he felt sure no woman would ever be willing to share the only life he could live. And as for giving up that life and adopting a settled existence, the idea simply could never have occurred to Peter. Women regretted this, for they found him very attractive. Not handsome but “so distinguished, you know.” He had gray eagle eyes, that turned black in excitement or deep feeling. Women did not like his eyes—they made them uncomfortable—but they thought his mouth very beautiful and even liked it for its strength and tenderness and humor. As Uncle Pippin said, the clan would likely have been very fond of Peter Penhallow if they had ever had any chance to get acquainted with him. As it was, he remained only a tantalizing hop-out-of-kin, out of whose goings-on they got several vicarious thrills and of whom they were proud because his explorations and discoveries had won him fame—“notoriety,” Drowned John called it—but whom they never pretended to understand and of whose satiric winks they were all a little afraid. Peter hated sham of any kind; and a clan like the Penhallows and the Darks were full of it. Had to be, or they couldn’t have carried on as a clan at all. But Peter never made any allowances for that.
    â€œLook at Donna Dark,” he was wont to sneer. “Pretending to be devoted to Barry’s memory when all the time she’d jump at a second husband if there was any chance of one.”
    Not that Peter ever did look at Donna. He had never seen her since she was a child of eight, sitting across from him in church on the last Sunday he had been there before he ran away on the cattle-ship. But people reported what he said to Donna and Donna had it in for him. She never expected any such good luck as a chance to get square. But one of her day-dreams was that in some mysterious and unthinkable way Peter Penhallow should fall in love with her and sue for her hand, only to be spurned with contumely. Oh, how she would spurn him! How she would show him that she was “a widow indeed.” Meanwhile she had to content herself with hating him as bitterly as Drowned John himself could hate.
    Peter, who was by trade a civil engineer and by taste an explorer, had been born in a blizzard and had nearly been the death of three people in the process—his mother, to begin with, and his father and the doctor, who were blocked and all but frozen to death on that night of storm. When they were eventually dug out and thawed out Peter was there. And never, so old Aunty But averred, had such an infant been born. When she had carried him out to the kitchen to dress him, he had lifted his head of his own power and stared all around the room with bright eager eyes. Aunty But had never seen anything like it. It seemed uncanny and gave her such a turn that she let Peter drop. Luckily he landed unhurt on a cushion of the lounge, but it was the first of many narrow shaves. Aunty But always told with awe that Peter had not cried when he came into the world, as all properly behaved babies do.
    â€œHe seemed to like the change,” said Aunty But. “He’s a fine, healthy child but”—and Aunt But shook her head forebodingly. The Jeff Penhallows did not bother over her “buts.” She had got her nickname from them. But they lived to think that her foreboding on this occasion was justified.
    Peter continued to like change. He had been born with the soul of Balboa or Columbus. He felt to the full the lure of treading where no human foot had ever trod. He