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

had a thirst for life that was never quenched—“Life,” he used to say, “that grand glorious adventure we share with the gods.” When he was fourteen he had earned his way around the world, starting out with ten cents and working his passage to Australia on a cattle-ship. Then he had come home—with the skin of a man-eating tiger he had killed himself for his mother’s decorous parlor floor and a collection of magnificent blue African butterflies which became a clan boast—gone back to school, toiled slavishly, and eventually graduated in civil engineering. His profession took him all over the world. When he had made enough money out of a job to keep him for a while, he stopped working and simply explored. He was always daring the unknown—the uncharted—the undiscovered. His family had resigned themselves to it. As Uncle Pippin said, Peter was “not domestic” and they knew now he would never become so. He had had many wild adventures of which his clan knew and a thousand more of which they never heard. They were always expecting him to be killed. “He’ll be clapped into a cooking-pot someday,” said Drowned John, but he did not say it to Peter, for the simple reason that he never spoke to him. There was an old feud between those two Penhallow families, dating back to the day when Jeff Penhallow had killed Drowned John’s dog and hung it up at his gate, because Drowned John’s dog had worried his sheep and Drowned John had refused to believe it or to get rid of his dog. From that day none of Drowned John’s family had had any dealings, verbal or otherwise, with any of Jeff Penhallow’s. Drowned John knocked down and otherwise maltreated in the square at Charlottetown a man who said that Jeff Penhallow’s word was as good as his bond because neither was any good. And Peter Penhallow, meeting a fellow Islander somewhere along the Congo, slapped his face because the said Islander laughed over Thekla Dark having once flavored some gingerbread with mustard. But this was clan loyalty and had nothing whatever to do with personal feeling, which continued to harden and embitter through the years. When Barry Dark, Peter’s cousin and well-beloved chum, told Peter he was going to marry Donna Dark, Peter was neither to hold nor bind. He refused to countenance the affair at all and kicked up such a rumpus that even the Jeff Penhallows thought he was going entirely too far. When the wedding came off, Peter was hunting wapiti in New Zealand, full of bitterness of soul, partly because Barry had married one of the accursed race and partly because he, Peter, being notoriously and incurably left-handed, had not been accepted for overseas service. Barry had been rather annoyed over Peter’s behavior and a slight coolness had arisen between them, which was never quite removed because Barry never came back from the front. This left a sore spot in Peter’s soul which envenomed still further his hatred of Donna Dark.
    Peter had had no intention of coming to Aunt Becky’s levee. He had fully meant to leave that afternoon en route for an exploring expedition in the upper reaches of the Amazon. He had packed and strapped and locked his trunk, whistling with sheer boyish delight in being off once more. He had had a month at home—a month too much. Thank God, no more of it. In a few weeks he would be thousands of miles away from the petty gossips and petty loves and petty hates of the Darks and Penhallows—away from a world where women bobbed their hair and you couldn’t tell who were grandmothers and who were flappers—from behind—and in a place where nobody would ever make moan, “Oh, what will people think of you, Peter, if you do—or don’t do—that?”
    â€œAnd I swear by the nine gods of Clusium that this place will not see me again for the next ten years,” said Peter Penhallow, running downstairs to his