It was a long time before everyone recovered from Alex Margoldsby's party at The Pinery. Gladys Penhallow had drank too much champagne and gotten sick from it. Harold Dark and Adam Penhallow had gotten into a fist-fight over – what else – Rebecca. Not over their own chances with her. They knew they stood no chance now that Paul was on the scene. It was only that Adam had said Paul was after her for the money and Harold, who was Paul's first cousin, had said he wasn't. Adam's nose had been broken in the tussle and it healed crooked, which, Adam felt, spoiled the whole line of his profile.
Charity Penhallow was mortified because old, widower Charlie Dark wouldn't stop mooning over her. She cried bucketsful of tears over the sappy little poems he left in her mailbox. Not happy tears, mind you. She couldn't imagine what had given him the idea that she! And him! Charity was so embarrassed over the whole thing that she didn't dwell on the fact that the latter half of the party – the part after the champagne toast – was rather hazy in memory.
Brian Dark had had 'words' with Junius Penhallow because Junius insulted his wife's family. Brian was not afraid of making a stir when the situation required it and he had called Junius a few choice things – that rankled. Perhaps because they were true. Anyway, his wife and Mrs. Junius had been friends from childhood and now were very chilly to each other. A friendship of thirty years – ruined.
Faith Penhallow and her cousin Gloria were not speaking because Gloria had borrowed Gloria's new silver slippers for the occasion. If that had been all it might have been fine, but Gloria had lost one of them and it was never recovered. Isobel Dark cried for two days because her beau had danced with Rebecca. She had thought she might be safe with him because he wasn't a Dark or Penhallow. But apparently he, too, had decided to throw his hat in the ring. Of course he stood no chance. But Isobel was inconsolable.
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By far the worst rift was between Nelle Dark and Young Sam. No one was exactly sure why. The more astute clansmen thought it was because Young Sam had danced with Rebecca three times. Everyone had thought they were close to making it up, but this was, definitively, a setback. Well, Nelle had almost as much Scotch in her as Young Sam did, and she used it to give him a tongue lashing to every one that would listen.
"Did you see him weeping when the fireworks went off?" she asked Uncle Pippin. "I did. He said they 'skeered' him – how we won the war with a baby like that over there fighting is beyond me. If it had been an army of Young Sams, the Nazis would have licked us for sure. You should have seen him when his pet sparrow died – cried quarts of tears and sang maudlin songs the whole night. I hear he was dead drunk at Alex's party and Clifford and Paul had to cart him bodily home and tuck him into bed. They said he blubbered and was afraid of things being under the bed. Did you ever hear anything like it? A grown man! Afraid of the bogeyman! I ask you. And you'd think he might trim his whiskers for a party, but he didn't and I think it looked positively unkempt. I, for one, don't think his whiskers suit him, and he'd be had pressed to find a girl who does. It's none to pleasant to kiss a man with whiskers like that, let me tell you!"
"Then why did you do it?" asked Uncle Pippin, quite reasonably.
Some of what she said wended its way back to Young Sam, who had plenty to say himself. He roared about it, whiskers bristling.
"So I hear she's insulting my war-record now, is she? Someone should go and show her my V.C. Unpatriotic thing! You know she didn't write me nearly as often as she should have when I was overseas. I was lucky if I got a letter from her every week, and me fighting to defend my homeland – hers too! And when I did get a letter they were such silly, simpering things." Young Sam affected a high-pitched voice. "'Dear Sammy, don't go and get yourself kilt, and by the way, I have knit three socks today.' How's a man supposed to get down to the grit and kill National Socialists when his girl writes him letters like that? As for my sparrow, it was better to me than she ever was, the saucy little miss. It never cared what my middle names was. My sparrow had enough sense to recognize that Beelby and Phemister are good upstanding family names. And a' course I cried when it passed on! What decent man wouldn't cry when one of God's own living things kicks the bucket? As for getting drunk, I won't say a word about that because I'm a gentleman. I don't think it's right for a well-brought up girl to talk about drinking and such. But I will ask you, sir, what is a party for if not for imbibing a little? There wasn't a man there who didn't take a sip and it's just like her to pick on me out of all of them. She doesn't like my whiskers? Well, I'll say nothing except that yellow dress Nelle wore didn't suit her a bit – made her look washed out and downright un-pretty. I'll dance with whomever I please and I don't please her. AND you tell her I ain't never had no complaints about my whiskers from any feminine creature – before or since!"
Then Young Sam sat down right on the front stoop and cried so long and hard that even his mother wouldn't talk to him at supper. And Uncle Pippin laughed the whole way home.
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Norma Dark hadn't written any letters since the one she penned to Paul – that he had not answered. But she had such a lonely night while everyone else was dancing at The Pinery. She stayed awake until the last of the Chinese lanterns was put out – Norma could see them from her bedroom window – and until the last strains of music floated out over the bay. Then she went to her writing desk and wrote a short letter to one of her school chums, who was headmistress now at Summerside High School. A short, bleak, enquiring little letter.
Norma had been to Queens, a century ago it seemed to her now. She had won one of Peter Penhallow's scholarships and was the only of her sisters to go. She had studied so hard, and she had gone on to get her teacher's certificate. Of course, Dark and Penhallow maidens never worked out so she had not needed – but Norma had wanted to show she could get something, even if it was useless. Well, it was only useless in theory. In pratice, she could do something with it. She could use that certificate to get away from Rose River.
Of course, getting away from Rose River meant getting away from Paul, but now that he was with Rebecca – oh, Norma had heard from everyone how they had danced together, how he was at Beechurst every day. Now that the worst had happened she had no reason to stay.
Yes, Norma's friend wrote, they did need teachers. Would Norma come? Norma wrote back that she would – in time for the fall term. It would mean a great deal of work in a short time but she would do it. She must get away – she must leave. She couldn't be here to watch Paul fall more in love with Rebecca every day.
Norma's father said that she might go, but Norma wasn't looking for permission. She was going to go. It was the only way. Her mother seemed unfazed.
"'Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,'" Mrs. David sniffed.
"But 'children are the heritage of the Lord,'" Norma retorted. "Don't forget that! Oh, I know the Bible as well as you do, Mother. You made me read it often enough as punishment. Don't think you can use it as a weapon against me."
She packed her drab little trunk with her drab little dresses, and her books, and the few scant pretty things she had acquired over the years. Her trunk was only half-full, but each thing she put in it seemed to be a brick in the wall she was putting up between her herself and Paul. Soon she would be far away from him and she would have other things to turn her mind to. She welcomed it. Norma had spent a good deal of her life trying to tear down walls between herself and those around her. And now she was building one up willingly.
"It will only keep me from getting hurt," she told herself through numb lips. "I will have some kind of life, even if he doesn't want me."
The only person she thought she would miss at all was Adrienne. Poor, sad Adrienne, who always sat listening and watching and waiting for – something. Who clipped newspaper stories about men who were thought dead for years coming home to their families. Adrienne, who had lost her love, too. In a real, too-final way. But then, Ady had been loved once. Norma had never been loved at all.
"Don't give up on life," she told her sister sternly. "I haven't – and I've never really had any life to live. You have. Don't give up on everything, darling."