"We'll have three good neighbours up here," said Joscelyn. "The wind... and the rain... and the stars. They can come close to us here. All my life, Hugh, I've longed to live on a hill. I can't breathe in the valley."
Turning round she could see, past the other end of the hall that ran right through the house, the lovely old-fashioned garden behind... and behind it again the orchard in bloom. Their home, haunted by no ghosts of the past... only by wraiths of the future. Unborn eyes would look out of its windows... unborn voices sing in its rooms... unborn feet run lightly in the old orchard. Beautiful to-morrows... unknown lovely years were waiting there for them. Friends would come to them... hands of comrades would knock at their door... silken gowns would rustle through their chambers... there would be companionship and good smacking jests such as their clan loved. What a home they would make of Treewoofe! All the richness and ripeness of life would be theirs.
Joscelyn saw their faces reflected in the long mirror that was hanging over the fireplace in the corner. A mirror with an intriguing black cat a-top of it which had been brought out from Cornwall and sold with the house. Young, happy, merry faces against a background of blue sky and crystal air. Hugh put his arm about her neck and drew her cheek close to his.
"That's an old looking-glass, honey. It has reflected many a woman's face. But never, never one so beautiful as my queen's."
The wedding was in September. Milly, Joscelyn's harum-scarum younger sister, was bridesmaid. Frank Dark was best man. Joscelyn had never seen Frank Dark. He lived in Saskatchewan, where his father, Cyrus Dark, had gone when his family were small, and where Frank and Hugh had been cronies during the years Hugh had spent in the west. But he came east for the wedding, arriving there only on the afternoon of the day itself. Joscelyn saw him for the first time when her Uncle Jeff swept in with her and left her standing by the side of her waiting groom. Joscelyn raised her eyes to look at Hugh... and instead found herself looking past him straight into Frank Dark's eyes as he gazed with open curiosity at this bride of Hugh's.
Frank Dark was "dark by name and dark by nature" as the clan said. He had black, satiny hair, a thin olive-hued face and dark liquid eyes. A very handsome fellow, Frank Dark. Beside him, Hugh looked rather overgrown and raw-boned and unfinished. And at that moment Joscelyn Penhallow knew that she had never loved Hugh Dark, save with the affection of a good comrade. She loved Frank Dark, whom she had never seen until that minute.
The ceremony was well begun before Joscelyn realized what had happened. She always believed that if she had realized it a moment sooner she could have stopped the marriage somehow... anyhow... it did not matter how, so long as it was only stopped. But Hugh was saying, "I will" when she came to her senses... and Frank's shadow was on the floor before her as she said, "I will" herself, without knowing exactly what she was saying. Another moment and she was Hugh Dark's wife... Hugh Dark's wife in the throes of a wild passionate love for another man. And Hugh at that moment was making a vow in his heart that no pain, no sorrow, no heartache should ever touch her life if he could prevent it.
Joscelyn never knew how she got through the evening. It always seemed a nightmare of remembrance. Hugh kissed her on her lips... tenderly... possessively. The husband's kiss against which Joscelyn found herself suddenly in wild rebellion. Milly gave her a tear- wet peck next, and then Frank Dark, easy, debonair Frank Dark, bent forward with a smile and good-wishes for Hugh's wife on his lips and kissed her lightly on the cheek. It was the first and last time he ever touched her; but to-day, ten years after, that kiss burned on Joscelyn's cheek as she thought of it.
There was an orgy of kissing after that. At Dark and Penhallow weddings everybody kissed the bride and everybody else who could or would be kissed. Joscelyn, bewildered and terrified, had yet one clear thought in her mind... no one... NO ONE must kiss the cheek where Frank's kiss had fallen. She gave them her lips or her left cheek blindly, but she kept the right to him. On and on they came with their good wishes and their tears or laughter... Joscelyn felt her mother's tears, she felt her bones almost crack in Drowned John's grip, she heard old Uncle Erasmus whisper one of the smutty little jokes he always got off at weddings, she saw Mrs Conrad's cold venomous face... no kiss from Mrs Conrad... she saw Pauline Dark's pale, quivering lips... Pauline's kiss was as cold as the grave... she heard jolly old Aunt Charlotte whispering, "Tell him he's wonderful at least once a week." It was all a dream... she must wake presently.
The ordeal of well-wishing over, the ordeal of supper came. Joscelyn was laughed at because she could not eat. Uncle Erasmus made another smutty jest and was punished by his wife's sharp elbow. After supper Hugh took his bride home. The rest of the young folks, Frank Dark among them, stayed at Bay Silver to dance the night away. Joscelyn went out with only a cloak over her bridal finery. Hugh had asked her to go home with him so.
The drive to Treewoofe had been very silent. Hugh sensed that somehow she did not want to talk. He was so happy he did not want to talk himself. Words might spoil it. At Treewoofe he lifted her from the buggy and led her by the hand... how cold the hand was. She was frightened, his little love... across the green before the house and over the threshold of his door. He turned to welcome her with the little verse of poetry he had composed for the occasion. Hugh had the knack of rhyme that flickered here and there in the clan, sometimes emerging in very unexpected brainpans. He had pictured himself doing this a hundred times... leading in a white-veiled, silk-clad bride... but not a bride with such white lips and such wide, horror-filled eyes. For the first time, Hugh realized that here was something most terribly wrong. This was not the pretty shrinking and confusion of the happy bride.
They stood in the entrance hall at Treewoofe and looked at each other. A fire was flickering in the fireplace... Hugh had lighted it with his own hands before he left and bade his hired boy to keep it alive... and the rosy flamelight bathed the hall and fell over his lovely golden bride... his no more.
"Joscelyn... my darling... what is wrong?"
She found her voice.
"I can't live with you, Hugh."
"Why not?"
She told him. She loved Frank Dark and loving him she could be wife to no other man. Now her eyes were no longer blue or green or grey, but a flame.
There was a terrible hour. In the end Hugh set open the door and looked at her, white anger falling over his face like a frost. One only word he said:
"Go."
Joscelyn had gone, wraithlike in her shimmer of satin and tulle, out into the cold September moonlight silvering over Treewoofe Hill. She had half walked, half run home to Bay Silver in a certain wild triumph. As she went past the graveyard, her own people buried there seemed to be reaching out after her to pluck her back. Not her father, though. He lay very quiet in his grave... quieter than he had ever lain in life. There had been Spanish blood in HIM. Mrs Clifford Penhallow could have told you that. Her clan thought... she thought herself... that she had had a hard life with Clifford's vagaries. Though when she became a widow she found there were a good many harder things he had fended from her.