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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Three Black Pennys
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2005 [EBook #15135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE BLACK PENNYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Images provided
+by the Million Book Project.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE BLACK PENNYS
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE BLACK PENNYS
+
+
+A NOVEL
+
+
+JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+_By Arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf_
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
+
+ALFRED A. KNOPF
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+_A DEDICATION_
+
+_Dear John Hemphill_
+
+_This is a record and act of memory
+of you at Dower House--of June
+nights on the porch, with the foliage
+of the willow tree powdered against
+the stars; the white-panelled hearth
+of the yellow room in smouldering
+winter dusks; dinner with the candles
+wavering in tepid April airs; and
+the blue envelopment of late September
+noons. A quiet reach like the old
+grey house and green fields, the little
+valleys filled with trees and placid
+town beyond the hill, where the calendar
+of our days and companionship is
+set._
+
+_Joseph Hergesheimer_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I THE FURNACE
+
+II THE FORGE
+
+III THE METAL
+
+
+
+
+I THE FURNACE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly
+wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already
+stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with
+patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening
+underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above
+the hills, wavered against the serene, ashen evening. Howat Penny,
+standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the
+shifting, regular flight would not come close enough for a shot. He
+dropped the butt of his gun to the ground. Then he raised it again,
+examining the hammer; the flint was loose, unsatisfactory. There was a
+probability that it would miss firing.
+
+He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his
+keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened,
+permeating him. He turned his dark, young face toward the transparent,
+green afterglow; the firm eyebrows drawn up at the temples, sombre eyes
+set, too, at a slight angle, a straight nose, impatient mouth and
+projecting chin. Below him, and to the left, a heavy, dark flame and
+silvery smoke were rolling from the stack of Shadrach Furnace. Figures
+were moving obscurely over the way that led from the coal house, set on
+the hill, to the top and opening of the furnace; finishing, Howat Penny
+knew, the charge of charcoal, limestone and iron ore.
+
+Shadrach Furnace had been freshly set in blast; it was on that account
+he was there, to represent, in a way, his father, who owned a half
+interest in the Furnace. However, he had paid little attention to the
+formality; his indifference was especially centred on the tedious
+processes of iron making, which had, at the same time, made his family.
+He had gone far out from the Furnace tract into an utterly uninhabited
+and virginal region, where he had shot at, and missed, an impressive
+buck and killed a small bear. Now, that he had returned, his apathy once
+more flooded him; but he had eaten nothing since morning, and he was
+hungry.
+
+He could go home, over the nine miles of road that bound the Furnace to
+Myrtle Forge and the Penny dwelling; there certain of whatever supper he
+would elect. But, he decided, he preferred something now, less formal.
+There were visitors at Myrtle Forge, Abner Forsythe, who owned the other
+half of Shadrach, his son David, newly back from England and the study
+of metallurgy, and a Mr. Winscombe, come out to the Provinces in
+connection with the Maryland boundary dispute, accompanied by his wife.
+All this Howat Penny regarded with profound distaste; necessary social
+and conversational forms repelled him. And it annoyed his father when he
+sat, apparently morose, against the wall, or retired solitary to his
+room.
+
+He would get supper here; they would be glad to have him at the house of
+Peter Heydrick, the manager of the Furnace. Half turning, he could see
+the dwelling at his back--a small, grey stone rectangle with a narrow
+portico on its solid face and a pale glimmer of candles in the lower
+windows. The ground immediately about it was cleared of brush and little
+trees, affording Peter Heydrick a necessary, unobstructed view of the
+Furnace stack while sitting in his house or when aroused at night. The
+dwelling was inviting, at once slipping into the dusk and emerging by
+reason of the warm glow within. Mrs. Heydrick, too, was an excellent
+cook; there would be plenty of venison, roast partridge, okra soup.
+Afterwards, under a late moon, he could go back to Myrtle Forge; or he
+might stay at the Heydricks all night, and to-morrow kill such a buck as
+he had lost.
+
+The twilight darkened beneath the trees, the surrounding hills lost
+their forms, in the east the distance merged into the oncoming night,
+but the west was still translucent, green. There was a faint movement
+in the leaves by the roadside, and a grey fox crossed, flattened on the
+ground, and disappeared. Howat Penny could see the liquid gleam of its
+eyes as it watched him. From the hill by the coal house came the heavy
+beating of wild turkeys' wings.
+
+He could go to Peter Heydrick's, where the venison would be excellent,
+and Mrs. Heydrick was celebrated for her guinea pickle with cucumbers;
+but ... the Heydricks had no daughter, and the Gilkans had. Thomas
+Gilkan was only a founderman; his house had one room below and a
+partition above; and Mrs. Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to
+Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny Gilkan, erect
+and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could himself, and carry
+her father's clumsy gun all the way.
+
+His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of
+supper, and rested upon the fact that his--his appreciation of her was
+becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it,
+with biting comments, among the charcoal burners. Dan Hesa, although
+younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward
+young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her
+serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among
+the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of
+the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with
+the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive
+in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he
+knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to
+Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior merits
+of the Heydrick table.
+
+That was his character: denial as a child had filled him with
+slow-accumulating rage; later discipline at school had found him utterly
+intractable. Something deep and instinctive within him resisted every
+effort to make him a part of any social organization, however admirable;
+he never formed any personal bonds with humanity in particular. He had
+grown into a solitary being within whom were immovably locked all the
+confidences, the spontaneous expressions of self, that bind men into a
+solidarity of common failings and hopes. He never offered, nor,
+apparently, required, any marks of sympathy; as a fact, he rarely
+expressed anything except an occasional irrepressible scorn lashing out
+at individuals or acts that conspicuously displeased him. This had
+occurred more than once at Myrtle Forge, when assemblymen or members of
+the Provincial Council had been seated at dinner.
+
+It was after such a scene that his mother had witnessed perhaps his only
+attempt at self-explanation. "I am sorry you were disturbed," he had
+pronounced, after standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning
+space; "but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like
+cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't
+manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the
+stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving vaguely
+toward the west, "I'll go out to the Ohio, or the French forts."
+
+That this was not merely a passive but an active state of mind was amply
+expressed by his resolute movement toward Thomas Gilkan's house. He had,
+ordinarily, an unusual liking for the charcoal burners, and had spent
+many nights in their huts, built, like the charring stacks, of mud and
+branches. But, organized by Dan Hesa into an opposition, a criticism of
+his choice of way, they offered an epitome of the conditions he derided
+and assailed.
+
+His feeling for Fanny Gilkan was in the greater part understood,
+measured; there was a certain amount of inchoate, youthful response to
+her sheer physical well being, a vague blur of pleasant sensation at her
+proximity; but beyond that he felt no attraction except a careless
+admiration for her endurance and dexterity in the woods, a certain
+relief in the freedom of her companionship. He had never considered her
+concretely as a possible source of physical pleasure. He was not easily
+excited sexually, and had had few adventures with women; something of
+his contempt, his indifference, removed him from that, too. His emotions
+were deep, vital; and hid beneath a shyness of habit that had grown into
+a suspicious reserve. All bonds were irksome to him, and instinctively
+he avoided the greater with the lesser; instinctively he realized that
+the admission of cloying influences, of the entanglements of sex, would
+more definitely bind him than any generality of society.
+
+It had, he thought, grown dark with amazing rapidity. He could now see a
+feeble light at the Gilkans, ahead and on the right. At the same moment
+a brighter, flickering radiance fell upon the road, the thick foliage of
+the trees. The blast was gathering at Shadrach Furnace. A clear, almost
+smokeless flame rose from the stack against the night-blue sky. It
+illuminated the rectangular, stone structure of the coal-house on the
+hill, and showed the wet and blackened roof of the casting shed below.
+The flame dwindled and then mounted, hanging like a fabulous oriflamme
+on a stillness in which Howat Penny could hear the blast forced through
+the Furnace by the great leather bellows.
+
+He turned in, over the littered ground before the Gilkan house. Fanny
+was standing in the doorway, her straight, vigorous body sharp against
+the glow inside. "Here's Mr. Howat Penny," she called over her shoulder.
+"Is everything off the table? There's not much," she turned to him, "but
+the end of the pork barrel." A meagre fire was burning in the large,
+untidy hearth; battered tin ovens had been drawn aside, and a pair of
+wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back
+against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty
+but for some dull scarred pewter and scraps of salt meat. On the narrow
+stair that led above, a small, touselled form was sleeping--one of the
+cast boys at the Furnace.
+
+A thin, peering woman in a hickory-dyed wool dress moved forward
+obsequiously. "Mr. Penny!" she echoed the girl's announcement; "and here
+I haven't got a thing fit for you. Thomas Gilkan has been too busy to
+get out, and Fanny she'll fetch nothing unless the mood's on her. If I
+only had a fish I could turn over." She brushed the end of the table
+with a frayed sleeve. "You might just take a seat, and I'll look
+around."
+
+Fanny Gilkan listened to her mother with a comprehending smile. Fanny's
+face was gaunt, but her grey eyes were wide and compelling, her mouth
+was firm and bright; and her hair, her father often said, resembled the
+fire at the top of Shadrach. Howat knew that she was as impersonal, as
+essentially unstirred, as himself; but he had a clear doubt of Mrs.
+Gilkan. The latter was too anxious to welcome him to their unpretending
+home; she obviously moved to throw Fanny and himself together, and to
+disparage such suits as honest Dan Hesa's. He wondered if the older
+woman thought he might marry her daughter. And wondering he came to the
+conclusion that the other thing would please the mother almost as well.
+She had given him to understand that at Fanny's age she would know how
+to please any Mr. Howat Penny that chance fortune might bring her.
+
+That some such worldly advice had been poured into Fanny's ears he
+could not doubt; and he admired the girl's obvious scorn of such wiles
+and surrenders. She sat frankly beside him now, as he finished a
+wretched supper, and asked about the country in regions to which she had
+not penetrated. "It's a three days' trip," he finished a recital of an
+excursion of his own.
+
+"I'd like to go," she returned; "but I suppose I couldn't find it
+alone."
+
+He was considering the possibility of such a journey with her--it would
+be pleasant in the extreme--when her mother interrupted them from the
+foot of the stair.
+
+"A sensible girl," she declared, "would think about seeing the sights of
+a city, and of a cherry-derry dress with ribbons, instead of all this
+about tramping off through the woods with a ragged skirt about your
+naked knees."
+
+Fanny Gilkan's face darkened, and she glanced swiftly at Howat Penny. He
+was filling a pipe, unmoved. Such a trip as he had outlined, with Fanny,
+was fastening upon his thoughts. It would at once express his entire
+attitude toward the world, opinion, and the resentful charcoal burners.
+
+"You wouldn't really go," he said aloud, half consciously.
+
+The girl frowned in an effort of concentration, gazing into the thin
+light of the dying fire and two watery tallow dips. Her coarsely spun
+dress, coloured with sassafras bark and darker than the yellow hickory
+stain, drew about her fine shoulders and full, plastic breast. "I'd like
+it," she repeated; "but afterward. There is father--"
+
+She had said father, but Howat Penny determined that she was thinking of
+Dan Hesa; Dan was as strong as himself, if heavier; a personable young
+man. He would make a good husband. But that, he added, was in the
+future; Dan Hesa apparently didn't want to marry Fanny to-morrow, that
+week. Meanwhile a trip with him to the headwaters of a creek would not
+injure her in the least. His contempt of a world petty and iron-bound in
+endless pretence, fanning his smouldering and sullen resentment in
+general, flamed out in a determination to take her with him if possible.
+It would conclusively define, state, his attitude toward "men herding
+like cattle." He did not stop to consider what it might define for Fanny
+Gilkan. In the stir of his rebellious self there was no pause for
+vicarious approximations. If he thought of her at all it was in the
+indirect opinion that she was better without such a noodle as Dan Hesa
+threatened to become.
+
+"I'd get two horses from the Forge," he continued, apparently to his
+mildly speculative self; "a few things, not much would be necessary.
+That gun you carry," he addressed Fanny indirectly, "is too heavy. I'll
+get you a lighter, bound in brass."
+
+She repeated sombrely, leaning with elbows on the table, her chin in her
+hands, "And afterwards--"
+
+"I thought you were free of that," he observed; "it sounds like the
+town women, the barnyard crowd. I thought you were an independent
+person. Certainly," he went on coldly, "you can't mistake my attitude. I
+like you, but I am not in the least interested in any way that--that
+jour mother might appreciate. I am neither a seducer nor the type that
+marries."
+
+"I understand that, Howat," she assured him; "and I think, I'm not sure
+but I think, that what you mean wouldn't bother me either. Anyhow it
+shouldn't spoil the fun of our trip. But no one else in the world would
+believe that simple truth. If you could stay there, in those splendid
+woods or a world like them, why, it would be heaven. But you have to
+come back, you have to live on, perhaps for a great while, in the world
+of Shadrach and Myrtle Forge. I'm not sure that I'd refuse if you asked
+me to go, Howat. I just don't know if a woman can stand alone, for
+that's what it would come to afterward, against a whole lifeful of
+misjudgment. It might be better in the end, for everybody, if she
+continued home, made the best of things with the others."
+
+"You may possibly be right," he told her with a sudden resumption of
+indifference. After all, it was unimportant whether or not Fanny Gilkan
+went with him to the source of the stream he had discovered. Every one,
+it became more and more evident, was alike, monotonous. He wondered
+again, lounging back against the wall, about the French forts, outposts
+in a vast wilderness. There was an increasing friction between the
+Province and France, the legacy of King George's War, but Howat Penny's
+allegiance to place was as conspicuous by its absence as the other
+communal traits. Beside that, beyond Kaskaskia, at St. Navier and the
+North, there was little thought of French or English; the sheer problem
+of existence there drowned other considerations. He would, he thought,
+go out in the spring ... leave Myrtle Forge with its droning anvil, the
+endless, unvaried turning of water wheel, and the facile, trivial
+chatter in and about the house. David Forsythe, back from England in the
+capacity of master of fluxing metals, might acquire his, Howat's,
+interest in the Penny iron.
+
+Fanny Gilkan said, "You'll burn a hole in your coat with that pipe." He
+roused himself, and she moved across the room and pinched the smoking
+wicks. The embers on the hearth had expired, and the fireplace was a
+sooty, black cavern. Fanny, at the candles, was the only thing clearly
+visible; the thin radiance slid over the turn of her cheek; her hovering
+hand was like a cut-paper silhouette. It was growing late; Thomas Gilkan
+would soon be back from the Furnace; he must go. Howat had no will to
+avoid Gilkan, but the thought of the necessary conversational exchange
+wearied him.
+
+The sound of footsteps approached the house from without; it was, he
+thought, slightly annoyed, the founderman; but the progress deflected
+by the door, circled to a window at the side. A voice called low and
+urgent, "Seemy! Seemy!" It was repeated, and there was an answering
+mutter from the stair, a thick murmur and a deep sigh.
+
+The cast boy slipped crumpled and silent in bare feet across the floor.
+"Yes," he called back, rapidly waking.
+
+The voice from without continued, "They're going to start up the Oley."
+
+"What is it?" Fanny demanded.
+
+"The raccoon dogs," the boy paused at the door. "A lot of the furnacemen
+and woodcutters from round about are hunting."
+
+Fanny Gilkan leaned across the table to Howat, her face glowing with
+interest. "Come ahead," she urged; "we can do this anyhow. I like to
+hear the dogs yelping, and follow them through the night. You can bring
+your gun, I'll leave mine back, and perhaps we'll get something really
+big."
+
+Howat himself responded thoroughly to such an expedition; to the mystery
+of the primitive woods, doubly withdrawn in the dark; the calls of the
+others, near or far, or completely lost in a silence of stars; the still
+immensity of a land unguessed, mythical--endless trees, endless
+mountains, endless rivers with their headwaters buried in arctic
+countries beyond human experience, and emptying into the miraculous blue
+and gilded seas of the tropics.
+
+Fanny Gilkan would follow the dogs closely, too, with infinite swing
+and zest. She knew the country better than himself, better almost than
+any one else at the Furnace. He stirred at her urgency, and she caught
+his arm, dragging him from behind the table. She tied a linsey-woolsey
+jacket by its arms about her waist, and put out the candles. Outside the
+blast was steadily in progress at the stack; the clear glow of the flame
+shifted over the nearby walls, glinted on the new yellow of more distant
+foliage, fell in sharp or blurred traceries against the surrounding
+night.
+
+They could hear the short, impatient yelps of the dogs; but, before they
+reached them, the hunt was away. A lantern flickered far ahead, a minute
+blur vanishing through files of trees. Fanny turned to the right,
+mounting an abrupt slope thickly wooded toward the crown. A late moon,
+past full, shed an unsteady light through interlaced boughs, matted
+grape vines, creepers flung from tree to tree; it shone on a hurrying
+rill, a bright thread drawn through the brush. Fanny Gilkan jumped
+lightly from bank to bank. She made her way with lithe ease through
+apparently unbroken tangles. It was Fanny who went ahead, who waited for
+Howat to follow across a fallen trunk higher than his waist. She even
+mocked him gaily, declared that, through his slowness, they were
+hopelessly losing the hunt.
+
+However, the persistent barking of the dogs contrived to draw them on.
+They easily passed the stragglers, left a group gathered about a lantern
+and a black bottle. They caught up to the body of men, but preferred to
+follow a little outside of the breathless comments and main, stumbling
+progress. They stirred great areas of pigeons and countless indifferent
+coveys of partridges barely moved to avoid the swiftly falling feet. But
+no deer crossed near them, and the crashing of a heavy animal through
+the bushes diminished into such a steep gulley that they relinquished
+thought of pursuit. The chase continued for an unusual distance; the
+moon sank into the far, unbroken forest; the stars brightened through
+the darkest hour of the night.
+
+Fanny Gilkan and Howat proceeded more slowly now, but still they went
+directly, without hesitation, in the direction they chose. They crossed
+a log felled over a shallow, hurrying creek; the course grew steeper,
+more densely wooded. "Ruscomb Manor," Fanny pronounced over her
+shoulder. "Since a long way back," he agreed. Finally a sharper,
+stationary clamour announced that the object of the hunt had been
+achieved, and a raccoon treed. They made their way to the dim
+illumination cast on moving forms and a ring of dogs throwing themselves
+upward at the trunk of a tree. There was a concerted cry for "Ebo," and
+a wizened, grey negro in a threadbare drugget coat with a scarlet
+handkerchief about his throat came forward and, kicking aside the dogs,
+commenced the ascent of the smooth trunk that swept up to the obscure
+foliage above. There was a short delay, then a violent agitation of
+branches. A clawing shape shot to the ground, struggled to its feet, but
+the raccoon was instantly smothered in a snarling pyramid of dogs.
+
+Howat Penny was overwhelmingly weary. He had tramped all day, since
+before morning; while now another dawn was approaching, and the hunters
+were at least ten miles from the Furnace. He would have liked to stay,
+sleep, where he was; but the labour of preparing a proper resting place
+would be as great as returning to Shadrach. Besides, Fanny Gilkan was
+with him, with her new, cautious regard for the world's opinion. They
+stood silent for a moment, under a fleet dejection born of the hour and
+a cold, seeping mist of which he became suddenly conscious. The barrel
+of his gun was wet, and instinctively he wiped off the lock. Two men
+passing brushed heavily against him and stopped. "Who is it," one
+demanded, "John Rajennas? By God, it's a long way back to old Shadrach
+with splintering shoes." A face drew near Howat, and then retreated.
+"Oh, Mr. Penny! I didn't know you were up on the hunt." It was, he
+recognized, one of the coaling men who worked for Dan Hesa. The other
+discovered Fanny Gilkan. "And Fanny, too," the voice grew inimical. The
+men drew away, and a sharp whispering fluctuated out of the darkness.
+
+"Come," Howat Penny said sharply; "we must get back or stay out here for
+the rest of the night. I don't mind admitting I'd like to be where I
+could sleep." She moved forward, now tacitly taking a place behind him,
+and he led the return, tramping doggedly in the shortest direction
+possible.
+
+The hollows and stream beds were filled with the ghostly mist, and
+bitterly chill; the night paled slightly, diluted with grey; there was a
+distant clamour of crows. They entered the Furnace tract by a path at
+the base of the rise from where they had started. On the left, at a
+crossing of roads, one leading to Myrtle Forge, the other a track for
+the charcoal sleds, a blacksmith's open shed held a faint smoulder on
+the hearth. The blast from Shadrach Furnace rose perpendicular in the
+still air.
+
+Fanny Gilkan slipped away with a murmur. Howat abandoned all thought of
+returning to Myrtle Forge that night. But it was, he corrected the
+conclusion, morning. The light was palpable; he could see individual
+trees, the bulk of the cast-house, built directly against the Furnace;
+in the illusive radiance the coal house on the hill seemed poised on top
+of the other structures. A lantern made a reddish blur in the
+cast-house; it was warm in there when a blast was in progress, and he
+determined to sleep at once.
+
+Thomas Gilkan, with a fitful light, was testing the sealing clay on the
+face of the Furnace hearth; two men were rolling out the sand for the
+cast over the floor of the single, high interior, and another was
+hammering on a wood form used for stamping the pig moulds. The interior
+was soothing; the lights, blurred voices, the hammering, seemed to
+retreat, to mingle with the subdued, smooth clatter of the turning wheel
+without, the rhythmic collapse of the bellows. Howat Penny was losing
+consciousness when an apparently endless, stuttering blast arose close
+by. He cursed splenetically. It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands
+for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes.
+
+Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning
+lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat
+saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist
+smiting a broad, hard palm. The group shifted, and the countenance of
+the man who had recognized Howat Penny in the woods swam into the pale
+radiance. His lassitude swiftly deserted him, receding before the
+instant resentment always lying at the back of his sullen
+intolerance--they were discussing him, mouthing some foul imputation
+about the past night. Hesa left the cast-house abruptly, followed by the
+charcoal burner; and Howat rose, the length of his rifle thrust forward
+under his arm, and walked deliberately forward.
+
+The daylight was increasing rapidly; and, as he approached, Thomas
+Gilkan extinguished the flame of the lantern. He was a small man, with a
+face parched by the heat of the furnace, and a narrowed, reddened vision
+without eyebrows or lashes. He was, Howat had heard, an unexcelled
+founder, a position of the greatest importance to the quality of metal
+run. There was a perceptible consciousness of this in the manner in
+which Gilkan moved forward to meet Gilbert Penny's son.
+
+"I don't want to give offence," the founderman said, "but, Mr. Penny,
+sir--" he stopped, commenced again without the involuntary mark of
+respect. "Mr. Penny, stay away from my house. There is more that I could
+say but I won't. That is all--keep out of my place. No names, please."
+
+Howat Penny's resentment swelled in a fiery anger at the stupidity that
+had driven Thomas Gilkan into making his request. A sense of humiliation
+contributed to an actual fury, the bitterer for the reason that he could
+make no satisfactory reply. Gilkan was a freedman; while he was
+occupying a dwelling at Shadrach Furnace it was his to conduct as he
+liked. Howat's face darkened--the meagre fool! He would see that there
+was another head founder here within a week.
+
+But there were many positions in the Province for a man of Gilkan's
+ability, there were few workmen of his sensitive skill with the charge
+and blast. Not only Howat's father, but Abner Forsythe as well, would
+search to the end all cause for the founderman's leaving. And, in
+consequence of that, any detestable misunderstanding must increase. He
+determined, with an effort unaccustomed and arduous, to ignore the
+other; after all Gilkan was but an insignificant mouthpiece for the
+familiar ineptitude of the world at large. Thomas Gilkan might continue
+at the Furnace without interference from him; Fanny marry her stupid
+labourer. Howat had seen symptoms of that last night. He would no longer
+complicate her existence with avenues of escape from a monotony which
+she patently elected.
+
+"Very well, Gilkan," he agreed shortly, choking on his wrath. He turned
+and tramped shortly from the interior. A sudden, lengthening sunlight
+bathed the open and a sullen group of charcoal burners about Dan Hesa.
+Their faces seemed ebonized by the grinding in of particles of blackened
+wood. Some women, even, in gay, primitive clothes, stood back of the
+men. As Howat passed, a low, hostile murmur rose. He halted, and met
+them with a dark, contemptuous countenance, and the murmur died in a
+shuffling of feet in the dry grass. He turned again, and walked slowly
+away, when a broken piece of rough casting hurtled by his head. In an
+overpowering rage he whirled about, throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
+A man detached from the group was lowering his arm; and, holding the
+sights hard on the other's metal-buttoned, twill jacket, Howat pulled
+the trigger. There was only an answering dull, ineffectual click.
+
+The rifle slid to the ground, and Howat stared, fascinated, at the man
+he had attempted to kill. The charcoal burners were stationary before
+the momentary abandon of Howat Penny's temper. "Right at me," the man
+articulated who had been so nearly shot into oblivion. "--saw the hammer
+fall." A tremendous desire to escape possessed Howat; a violent chill
+overtook him; his knees threatened the loss of all power to hold him up.
+He stepped backward, his gun stock trailing over the inequalities of the
+ground; then he swung about, and, in an unbroken silence, stumbled away.
+
+He was not running from anything the charcoal burner might say, do, but
+from a terrifying spectacle of himself; from the vision of a body shot
+through the breast, huddled in the sere underbrush. He was aghast at the
+unsuspected possibility revealed, as it were, out of a profound dark by
+the searing flash of his anger, cold at the thought of such absolute
+self-betrayal. Howat saw in fancy the bald triumph of a society to which
+his act consummated would have delivered him; a society that, as his
+peer, would have judged, condemned, him. Hundreds of faces--faces mean,
+insignificant, or pock-marked--merged into one huge, dominant
+countenance; hundreds of bodies, unwashed or foul with disease, or
+meticulously clean, joined in one body, clothed in the black robe of
+delegated authority, and loomed above him, gigantic and absurd and
+powerful, and brought him to death. Deeper than his horror, than any
+fear of physical consequences, lay the instinctive shrinking from the
+obliteration of his individual being, the loss of personal freedom.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He was possessed by an unaccustomed desire to be at Myrtle Forge;
+usually it was the contrary case, and he was escaping from the
+complicated civilisation of his home; but now the well-ordered house,
+the serenity of his room, appeared astonishingly inviting. Howat
+progressed rapidly past the smithy, and turned to the right, about the
+Furnace dam, a placid and irregular reach of water holding the
+reflection of the trees on a mirror still dulled by a vanishing trace of
+mist, above which the leaves hung in the motionless air, in the aureate
+wash of the early sun, as if they had been pressed from gold foil.
+Beyond the dam the path--he had left the road that connected Forge and
+Furnace for a more direct way--followed the broad, rippling course of
+the Canary, the stream that supplied the life of Myrtle Forge. He
+automatically avoided the breaks in the rough trail; his mind, a dark
+and confused chamber, still lighted by appalling flashes of memory. A
+thing as slight, as incalculable, as a loose flint had been all that
+prevented.... He wondered if Fanny and Thomas Gilkan were right in their
+shared conviction; Fanny half persuaded, but the elder with a finality
+stamped with an accent of the heroic. Whether or not they were right
+didn't concern him, he decided; his only problem was to keep outside
+all such entanglements. And at present he wanted to sleep.
+
+The path left the creek and joined the road that swept about the face of
+the dwelling at Myrtle Forge. The lawn, squarely raised from the public
+way by a low brick terrace, showed the length of house behind the
+dipping, horizontal branches, the beginning, pale gold, of a widespread
+beech. It was a long structure of but two stories, built solidly out of
+a dark, flinty stone with an indefinite pinkish glow against the lush
+sod and sombre, flat greenery of a young English ivy about a narrow,
+stiff portico.
+
+Howat crossed the lawn above the house, where a low wing, holding the
+kitchen and pantries, extended at right angles from the dwelling's
+length. A shed with a flagging of broad stones lay inside the angle,
+where a robust girl with an ozenbrigs skirt caught up on bare legs and
+feet thrust into wooden clogs was scrubbing a steaming line of iron
+pots. He quickly entered the centre hall from a rear door, and mounted,
+as he hoped, without interruption to his room. That interior was
+singularly restful, pleasant, after the confused and dishevelling night.
+
+The sanded floor, patterned with a broom, held no carpet, nor were the
+walls covered, but white and bare save for a number of small, framed
+engravings--a view of Boston Harbour, Queene Anne's Tomb, and some black
+line satirical portrait prints. A stone fireplace, ready for lighting,
+had iron dogs and fender, and a screen lacquered in flowery wreaths on
+a slender black stem. At one side stood a hinge-bound chest, its oak
+panels glassy with age; on the other, an English set of drawers held a
+mirror stand and scattered trifles--razors and gold sleeve-buttons, a
+Barcelona handkerchief, candlesticks and flint, a twist of common,
+pig-tail tobacco; while from a drawer knob hung a banian of bright
+orange Chinese silk with a dark blue cord.
+
+By the side of his curled black walnut bed, without drapery, and set,
+like a French couch, low on three pairs of spiral legs, was a deep
+cushioned chair into which he sank and dragged off his sodden buckskin
+breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision--squat,
+rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with
+apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the floor.... He
+secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool, sibilant folds,
+he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, into an immediate profound
+slumber.
+
+The shadows of late afternoon were once more gathering when he woke. He
+lay, with hands clasped behind his head, watching a roseate glow
+disperse from the room. From without came the faint, clear voice of
+Marta Appletofft, across the road at the farm, calling the chickens; and
+he could hear the querulous whistling of the partridges that invariably
+deserted the fringes of forest to join the domesticated flocks at feed
+time. A sense of well-being flooded him; the project of St. Xavier, the
+French forts, drew far away; never before had he found Myrtle Forge so
+desirable. He was, he thought, growing definitely older. He was
+twenty-five.
+
+A light knock fell on his door, and he answered comfortably, thinking
+that it was his mother. But it was Caroline, his oldest sister. "How you
+have slept," she observed, closing the door at her back; "it was hardly
+nine when you came in, and here it is five. Mother heard you." Caroline
+Penny was a warm, unbeautiful girl with a fine, slender body, two years
+younger than himself. Her colouring was far lighter than Howat's; she
+had sympathetic hazel eyes, an inviting mouth, an illusive depression in
+one cheek that alone saved her from positive ugliness, and tobacco brown
+hair worn low with a long, turned strand. She had on a pewter-coloured,
+informal wrap over a black silk petticoat, lacking hoops, with a cut
+border of violet and silver brocade; and above low, green kid stays with
+coral tulip blossoms worked on the dark velvet of foliage were glimpses
+of webby linen and frank, young flesh.
+
+She came to the edge of the bed, where she sat with a yellow morocco
+slipper swinging from a silk clocked, narrow foot. He liked Caroline,
+Howat lazily thought. Although she did not in the least resemble their
+mother in appearance--she could not pretend to such distinction of
+being--Caroline unmistakably possessed something of the other's
+personality, far more than did Myrtle. She said generally, patently only
+delaying for the moment communications of much greater interest than
+himself, "Where were you last night?" He told her, and she plunged at
+once into a rich store of information.
+
+"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Winscombe are staying on? It's so,
+because of the fever in the city. David and his father stopped all
+night, too, and only left after breakfast. He's insane about London, but
+I could see that he's glad to get back to the Province. Mr. Forsythe is
+very abrupt, but ridiculously proud of him--"
+
+"These Winscombes," Howat interrupted, "what about them? The Forsythes
+are a common occurrence."
+
+"David's been gone more than three years," she replied. "And you should
+hear him talk; he's got a coat with wired tails in his box he's dying to
+wear, but is afraid of his father. Oh, the Winscombes! Well, he's rather
+sweet, sixty or sixty-five years old; very straight up the back, and
+wears the loveliest wigs. His servant fixes them on a stand--he turns
+the curls about little rolls of clay, ties them with paper, and then
+bakes it in the oven like a pudding. The servant is an Italian with a
+long duck's bill of a nose and quick little black eyes. He makes our
+negro women giggle like anything. It's evident he is fearfully
+impertinent. And, what do you think?--he hooks Mrs. Winscombe into her
+stays! Mother says that that isn't anything, really; Mrs. Winscombe is a
+lady of the court, and the most extraordinary happenings go on there.
+You see, mother knows a lot about her family, and it's very good; she's
+part Polish and part English, and her name's Ludowika. She's ages
+younger than her husband.
+
+"Myrtle doesn't like her,--" she stopped midway in her torrent of
+information. "I came in to talk to you about Myrtle," she went on in a
+different voice; "that is, partly about Myrtle, but more of myself and
+of--"
+
+"How long are the others going to stay?" he cut in heedlessly.
+
+"I don't know," she again repressed her own desire; "perhaps they will
+have to go back to Annapolis--don't ask me why--but they hope to sail
+from Philadelphia in a week or so. She has marvellous clothes, and I
+asked her if she would send me some babies from London. You know what
+they are, Howat--little wooden dolls to show off the fashion; but she
+made a harrowing joke, right in front of father and Mrs. Forsythe. The
+things she says are just beyond description; it seems that it's all
+right to talk anyway now if you call it classic. And she has fans with
+pictures and rhymes on, honestly--" words apparently failed her.
+
+Howat laughed. "Little Innocence," he said. He fell silent, thinking of
+their mother. The court, he knew, had been her right, too, by birth; and
+he wondered if, with the reminder of Mrs. Winscombe and her reflections
+of St. James, she regretted her marriage and removal to the Province.
+She was essentially lady, while Gilbert Penny had been the son of a
+small country squire. He had seen a profile of his father as a young
+man, at the time he had first met Isabel Kingsfrere Howat. It was a
+handsome profile, perhaps a shade heavy, but admirably balanced and
+stamped with decisive power. He had characteristically invested almost
+his last shilling in a tract of eight hundred acres in Pennsylvania and
+the passage of himself and his bride to the Province.
+
+It was natural for men so to adventure, but Howat thought of Isabel
+Penny with, perhaps, the only marked admiration he felt for any being.
+There had been a period, short but strenuous, of material difficulties,
+in which the girl--she had been hardly a woman in years--entirely
+unprepared for such a different activity, had been finely competent and
+courageous. This had not endured long because Gilbert Penny had been
+successful almost from the first day of his landing in a new world.
+Chance letters had enlisted the confidence of David Forsythe, a Quaker
+merchant of property and increasing importance; the latter became a part
+owner of an iron furnace situated not far from the Penny holding; he
+assisted Gilbert in the erection of a forge; and in less than twenty
+years Gilbert Penny had grown to be a half proprietor in the Furnace,
+with--
+
+"Howat," Caroline broke in on his thoughts sharply, "I came in, as I
+said, to talk about something very important to me, and I intend to do
+it." Even after that decided announcement she hesitated, a deeper
+colour stained her dear cheeks. "You mustn't laugh at me," she warned
+him; "or think I'm horrid. I can talk to you like this because you seem
+a--a little outside of things, as if you were looking on at a rather
+poorly done play; and you are entirely honest yourself."
+
+He nodded condescendingly, his interest at last retrieved from the
+contemplation of his mother as a young woman.
+
+"It's about David," Caroline stated almost defiantly. "Howat, I think
+I'm very fond of David. No, you mustn't interrupt me. When he went away
+I liked him a lot; but now that he is back, and quite grown up, it's
+more than liking ... Howat. His father brought him out here right away
+he returned, and for a special reason. He was very direct about it; he
+wants David to marry--Myrtle. I heard father--yes, I listened--and him
+talking it over, and our old darling was pleased to death. It's natural,
+Mr. Forsythe is one of the most influential men in the city; and father
+adores Myrtle more than anything else in the world." She paused, and he
+studied her in a growing wonder; suddenly she seemed older, her mouth
+was drawn in a hard line: a new Caroline. "You know Myrtle," she added.
+
+He did, and considered the youngest Penny with a new objectivity. Myrtle
+was an extremely pretty, even a beautiful girl. "You know Myrtle," she
+repeated; "and why father is so blind is more than I can understand.
+She doesn't care a ribbon for truth, she never thinks of anything but
+her own comfort and clothes, and--and she'd make David miserable. Myrtle
+simply can't fancy anybody but herself. That's very different from me,
+Howat; or yourself. You would be a burning lover." He laughed
+incredulously. "And I, well, I know what I feel.
+
+"It's practically made up for David to marry Myrtle, that is, to urge it
+all that's possible; and she will never care for him, while all he
+thinks of now is how good looking she is. I want David, terribly," she
+said, sitting erect with shut hands; "and I will be expected to step
+aside, to keep out of the way while Myrtle poses at him. Oh, I know all
+about it. I see her rehearsing before the glass. Or I will be expected
+to act as a contrast, a plain background, for Myrtle's beauty.
+
+"You see, there is no one I can talk to but yourself. Even mother
+wouldn't understand, completely; and she couldn't be honest about
+Myrtle. The best of mothers, after all, are women; and, Howat, there is
+always a curious formality between women, a little stiffness."
+
+"Well," he demanded, "what do you want me to say, or what did you think
+I might do?"
+
+"I don't know," she admitted, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "I
+suppose I just wanted a little support, or even some encouragement. I
+don't propose to let Myrtle walk off with David and not turn my hand.
+Of course I am not a beauty, but then I'm not a ninny, either. And I
+have a prettier figure; that is, it will still be pretty in ten or
+fifteen years; Myrtle's soft."
+
+"Good heavens," he exclaimed, half serious, "what Indians you all are!"
+
+"I'm quite shameless," she admitted, "and this is really what I
+thought--you can, perhaps, help me sometimes, I don't know how, but he
+will be out here a lot, men talk together--"
+
+"And I can tell him that Myrtle is an utterly untrustworthy person who
+would make him ultimately miserable. I'll remind him that her beauty is
+no deeper than he sees it. But that Caroline there, admirable girl,
+seething with affection in a figure warranted against time or
+accident--" her expression brought his banter to an end. He studied her
+seriously, revolved what she had said. She was right about Myrtle, who
+was undoubtedly a vain and silly little fish. His father's immoderate
+admiration for her had puzzled him as well as the elder sister. He
+remembered that never had he heard their mother express a direct opinion
+of Myrtle; but neither had Isabel Penny shown the slightest question of
+her husband's high regard for their youngest child. She was, he realized
+with a warming of his admiration, beautifully cultivated in the wisdom
+of the world.
+
+Caroline was vastly preferable to Myrtle, he felt that instinctively;
+and he was inclined to give her whatever assistance he could. But this
+would be negligible, and he said so. "You will have to do the trick by
+yourself," he advised her. "I wouldn't pretend to tell you how. As you
+said, you're not a ninny. And Myrtle's none too clever, although she
+will manage to seem so. It's wonderful how she'll pick up a hint or two
+and make a show. You see--she will be talking iron to David as if she
+had been raised in a furnace."
+
+"Men are so senseless!" Caroline exclaimed viciously. She rose. "It's
+been a help only to talk to you, Howat. I knew you'd understand. Supper
+will be along soon. Make yourself into a charmer for Mrs. Winscombe. I'm
+certain she thinks the men out here are frightful hobs." The light had
+dimmed rapidly in the room, and he moved over to the chest of drawers,
+where he lit the candles, settling over them their tall, carved glass
+cylinders.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He dressed slowly, all that Caroline had said, and he thought, tangling
+and disentangling deliberately in his mind. Mrs. Winscombe ... thinking
+there were no presentable men in the Provinces. His hand strayed in the
+direction of a quince-coloured satin coat; but he chose instead a
+commonplace, dun affair with pewter buttons, and carelessly settled his
+shoulders in an unremarkable waistcoat. Then, although he could hear a
+concerted stir of voices below that announced impending supper, he
+slipped into a chair for half a pipe. He was indifferent, not diffident,
+and there was no hesitation in the manner in which he finally approached
+the company seated at supper. His place was, as usual, at his mother's
+side; but opposite him where Myrtle usually sat was a rigid, high
+shouldered man in mulberry and silver, jewelled buckles, and a full,
+powdered wig. He had thin, dark cheeks, a heavy nose above a firm mouth
+with a satirical droop, and small, unpleasantly penetrating eyes. An
+expression of general malice was, however, corrected by a high and
+serene brow.
+
+"Mr. Winscombe," Howat Penny's mother said, "my son." The former bowed
+with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which,
+Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech. He
+was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr. Penny; and that extravagant
+expression, delivered in a slightly harsh, negligent voice, heightened
+the impression of a personality strong and cold; a being as obdurate as
+an iron bar masquerading in coloured satin and formulating pretty
+phrases like the sheen on the surface of a deep November pool. Gilbert
+Penny echoed the introduction at the other end of the table.
+
+Howat saw, in the yellow candlelight, a woman not, he decided, any
+better looking than Caroline, in an extremely low cut gown of scarlet,
+with a rigid girdle of saffron brocade, a fluted tulle ruff tied with a
+scarlet string about a long, slim neck, and a cap of sheer cambric with
+a knot of black ribbons. Her eyes were widely opened and dark, her nose
+short, and her mouth full and petulant. She, too, was conventionally
+adequate; but her insincerity was clearer than her husband's, it was
+pronounced quickly, in an impertinent and musical voice, without the
+slightest pretence of the injection of any interest. Howat Penny felt,
+in a manner which he was unable to place, that she vaguely resembled
+himself; perhaps it lay in her eyebrows slanting slightly toward the
+temples; but it was vaguer, more elusive, than that.
+
+He considered it idly, through the course of supper. At intervals he
+heard her voice, a little, high-pitched laugh with a curious,
+underlying flatness: not of tone, her modulations were delicate and
+exact; but deeper. Again he was dimly conscious of an aspect of her
+which eluded every effort to fix and define. He could not even
+comprehend his dwelling upon the immaterial traits of a strange and
+indifferent woman; he was at a loss to understand how such inquiries
+assailed him. He grew, finally, annoyed, and shut his mind to any
+further consideration of her.
+
+Mrs. Penny was talking with charming earnestness to the man on her other
+hand. The amber radiance flickered over the beautiful curves of her
+shoulders and cast a warm shadow at the base of her throat. She smiled
+at her son; and her face, in spite of its present gaiety, held a
+definite reminder of her years, almost fifty; but when she turned again
+her profile, with slightly tilted nose and delightfully fresh lips and
+chin, was that of a girl no older than Caroline. Howat had often noticed
+this. It was amazing--with that slight movement she would seem to lose
+at once all the years that had accumulated since she was newly married.
+In a second she would appear to leave them all, her mature children, the
+heavy, palpably aging presence of Gilbert Penny, the house and
+obligations that had grown about her, and be remotely young, a stranger
+to the irrefutable proof that her youth had gone. At such moments he was
+almost reluctant to claim her attention, to bring her again, as it were,
+into the present, with so much spent, lapsed: at times he almost
+thought, in that connection, wasted.
+
+She had, in addition to her profile, a spirit of youth that had remained
+undimmed; as if there were within her a reserve warmth, a priceless
+gift, which life had never claimed; and it was the contemplation of that
+which gave Howat the impression that Isabel Penny's life had not fully
+flowered. He had never known her to express a regret of the way she had
+taken; he had never even surprised her in a perceptible retrospective
+dejection; but the conviction remained. Gilbert Penny had been an almost
+faultless husband, tender and firm and successful; but his wife had come
+from other blood and necessities than domestic felicities; she had been
+a part of a super-cultivation, a world of such niceties as the flawless
+courtesy of Mr. Winscombe discussing with her the unhappy passion of the
+Princess Caroline for Lord Hervey.
+
+Howat Penny thought sombrely of love, of the emotion that had
+brought--or betrayed?--Isabel Howat so far away from her birthright. It
+had gripped his sister no less tyrannically; stripping them, he
+considered, of their essential liberty. The thing was clear enough in
+his mind--nothing more than an animal instinct, humiliating to the human
+individual, to breed. It was the mere repetition of nature through the
+working of an automatic law. No such obscure fate, he determined, should
+overtake, obliterate, him. Yet it had involved his mother, a person of
+the first superiority. A slight chill, as if a breath of imminent winter
+had touched him, communicated itself to his heart.
+
+A trivial conversation was in progress across the table between Mrs.
+Winscombe and Myrtle. The latter was an embodiment of the familiar Saxon
+type of beauty; her hair was fair, infinitely pale gold, her complexion
+a delicately mingled crimson and white, her eyes as candidly blue as
+flowers. Her features were finely moulded, and her shoulders, slipping
+out from azure lutestring, were like smooth handfuls of meringue. Her
+voice was always formal, and it sounded stilted, forced, in comparison
+with Mrs. Winscombe's easy periods.
+
+The supper ended, and the company trailed into a drawing room at the
+opposite end of the house from the kitchen wing. Howat delayed, and
+Caroline, urged forward by Mr. Winscombe's sardonically ubiquitous bow,
+half lingered to cast back a glance of private understanding at her
+brother. When he decided reluctantly to follow he was kept back by the
+sound of a familiar explanation in his father's decisive, full tones.
+
+"Howat," he pronounced, obviously addressing the elder Winscombe, "is a
+black Penny. That is what we call them in our family. You see, the
+Pennys, some hundreds of years back, acquired a strong Welsh strain. I
+take it you are familiar with the Welsh--a solitary-living, dark lot.
+Unamenable to influence, reflect their country, I suppose; but lovers
+of music. I have a touch of that. Now any one would think that such a
+blood, so long ago, would have spread out, been diluted, in a thick
+English stock like the Pennys; or at least that we would all have had a
+little, here and there. But nothing of the sort; it sinks entirely out
+of sight for two or three and sometimes four generations; and then
+appears solid, in one individual, as unslacked as the pure, original
+thing. The last one was burned as a heretic in Mary's day; although I
+believe he would have equally stayed Catholic if the affair had been the
+other way around. Opposition's their breath. This boy--"
+
+"You must not figure to yourself, Mr. Winscombe," Mrs. Penny's even
+voice admirably cut in, "that the black is a word of reproach. I think
+we are both at times at a loss with Howat, he is so different from us,
+from the girls; but he is truly remarkable. I have an unusual affection
+for him; really, his honesty is extraordinary."
+
+He ought, he knew, either follow the others into the drawing room or
+move farther away. His father's explanation repelled him; but his
+mother's capital defence--it amounted to that--made it evident to him
+that he should, by his presence, give her what support he could.
+
+At the fireplace Gilbert Penny was lost in conversational depths with
+Mr. Winscombe. About the opening, now closed for the introduction of a
+hearth stove, were tiles picturing in gay glazes the pastoral history
+of Ruth, and above the mantel a long, clear mirror held a similitude of
+brilliant colour--the scarlet of Mrs. Winscombe's gown, Myrtle's azure
+lutestring on a petticoat of ruffled citron spreading over her hoops and
+little white kid slippers with gilt heels, Caroline's flowered Chinese
+silk. The room was large and square, with a Turkey floor carpet, and
+walls hung with paper printed in lavender and black perspectives from
+copper plates. A great many candles had been lighted, on tables and
+mantel, and in lacquer stands. One of the latter, at Mrs. Winscombe's
+side, showed her features clearly.
+
+Howat Penny saw that while she was actually no prettier than Caroline
+she was infinitely more vivid and compelling. Her face held an
+extraordinary potency; her bare arms and shoulders were more insistent
+than his sister's; there was about her a consciousness of the allurement
+of body, frankness in its employment. She made no effort to mask her
+feeling, which at present was one of complete indifference to her
+surroundings; and, not talking, a shadow had settled on her vision.
+Caroline was seated on a little sofa across from the fireplace, and she
+moved her voluminous skirt aside, made a place for him.
+
+"Almost nothing of Annapolis," Mrs. Winscombe replied to a query of what
+she had seen in Maryland. "We were there hardly two weeks, and I hadn't
+recovered from the trip across the sea. When I think of returning God
+knows I'd almost stay here. You wouldn't suppose one person could vent
+so much. I believe Felix went to a Jockey Club, there were balls and
+farces; but I kept in bed." Mrs. Penny asked, "And London--how are you
+amused there now?" The other retied the bow of a garter. "Fireworks,
+Roman candles to Mr. Handel's music, and Italian parties, Villeggiatura.
+Covent Garden with paper lanterns among the trees, seductions--"
+
+Gilbert Penny smote his hands on the chair arms. "This hectoring of our
+commerce will have to rest somewhere!" he declared; "taking the duty
+from pig iron, and then restricting its market to London, is no
+conspicuous improvement. It is those enactments that provide our
+currency with Spanish pieces instead of English pounds. The West Indies
+are too convenient to be overlooked." Mr. Winscombe replied stiffly,
+"The Government is prepared to meet infractions of its law." Mr. Penny
+muttered a period about Germany in England, with a more distant echo of
+Hanoverian whores and deformed firebrands. His guest sat with a harsh,
+implacable countenance framed in the long shadows of his elaborate wig,
+his ornate coat tails falling stiffly on either side of his chair.
+
+Howat, bred in the comparative simplicity of the Province, found the
+foppery of the aging man slightly ridiculous; yet he was aware that Mr.
+Winscombe's essential character had no expression in his satin and
+powder; his will was as rugged and virile as that of any adventuring
+frontiersman clad in untanned hides. He was, Howat decided, at little
+disadvantage with his young wife. He wondered if any deep bond bound the
+two. Their personal feelings were carefully concealed, and in this they
+resembled Isabel Howat, rather than Gilbert, her husband. The latter had
+a habit of expressing publicly his affectionate domestic relations. And
+Howat Penny decided that he vastly preferred the others' reserve.
+
+An awkward silence had developed on top of the brief political
+acerbities. There was no sound but the singing of the wood in the open
+stove. Myrtle had an absent, speculative gaze; Caroline was biting her
+lip; Mrs. Winscombe yawned in the face of the assembly. Gilbert Penny
+suggested cards, but there was no reply. Howat left the room by a door
+that opened on a rock threshold set in the lawn. The night was
+immaculate, still and cold, with stars brightening in the advance of
+winter. He walked about the house. The counting room of the forge was a
+separate stone structure back of the kitchen; and to the right, and
+farther away, was a second small building. The ground fell rapidly down
+to the Forge on the water power below. He could barely discern the
+towering bulk of the water wheel and roofs of the sheds.
+
+He felt uneasy, obscurely and emotionally disturbed. Already Fanny
+Gilkan seemed far away, to have dropped out of his life. He would give
+some gold to the charcoal burner he had attempted to shoot. Mrs.
+Winscombe annoyed him by her attitude toward Myrtle Forge, her
+unvarnished air of condescension. How old was she? A few years more than
+himself, he decided. The Italian hooked her into her stays. A picture of
+this formed in his thoughts and dissolved, leaving behind a faint
+stinging of his nerves. He recalled her bare--naked--arms ... the old
+man, her husband.
+
+She had spoken of Italian parties; he had seen a picture on a fan
+labelled Villeggiatura--a simpering exquisite in a lascivious embrace
+with a frail beauty on the bank of a stream, and a garland of stripped
+loves reeling about a slim, diapered Harlequin. It was a different
+scene, a different world, from the Province; and its intrusion in the
+person of Mrs. Winscombe was like an orris-scented air moving across the
+face of great trees sweeping their virginal foliage into the region of
+strong and pure winds.
+
+He was dimly conscious of the awakening in him of undivined pressures,
+the stirring of attenuated yet persisting influences. He was saturated
+in the space, the sheer, immense simplicity of the wild, hardly touched
+by the narrow strip of inhabited coast. He had given his existence to
+the woods, to hunting cunning beasts, the stoical endurance of blinding
+fatigue; he had scorned the, to him, sophistications of bricks and
+civilization. But now, in the length of an evening, something invidious
+and far different had become sentient in his being. Italian parties, and
+Covent Garden with lanterns among the trees ... Trees clipped and
+pruned, and gravel walks; seductions.
+
+A falling meteor flashed a brilliant arc across the black horizon,
+dropping into what illimitable wilderness? Fireworks set to the shrill
+scraping of violins. One mingled with the other in his blood, fretting
+him, spoiling the serene and sure vigour of youth, binding his feet to
+the obscure past. Yet colouring all was the other, the black Welsh blood
+of the Pennys. Ever since his boyhood he had heard the fact of his
+peculiar inheritance explained, accepted. In the past he had been what
+he was without thought, self-appraisal. But now he recognized an
+essential difference from his family; it came over him in a feeling of
+loneliness, of removal from the facile business of living in general.
+
+For the first time he wondered about his future. It was unguarded by the
+placid and safe engagements of the majority of lives. He would, he knew,
+ultimately possess Myrtle Forge, a part of Shadrach, and a considerable
+fortune. That was his obvious inheritance. But, suddenly, the material
+thing, the actual, grew immaterial, and the visionary assumed a dark and
+enigmatic reality.
+
+Howat abruptly quitted the night of the lawn, his sombre questioning,
+for the house. The candles had been extinguished in the drawing room. A
+square, glass lamp hung at the foot of the stairs; and there he
+encountered a man in a scratch wig, with a long nose flattened at the
+end. He bowed obsequiously--a posturing figure in shirtsleeves with a
+green cloth waistcoat and black legs. The Italian servant, Howat
+concluded. He passed noiselessly, leaving a reek of pomatum and the
+memory of a servile smile. Howat Penny experienced a strong sense of
+distaste, almost depression, at the other's silent proximity. It
+followed him to his room, contaminated his sleep with unintelligible
+whispering, oily and disturbing gestures, and fled only at the widening
+glimmer of dawn.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The sun had almost reached the zenith before Mrs. Winscombe appeared
+from her room. And at the same moment David Forsythe arrived on a spent
+grey mare. He had come over the forty rough miles which separated Myrtle
+Forge from the city in less than five hours. He was a year older than
+Howat, but he appeared actually younger--a candid youth with high colour
+and light, simply tied hair. He had, he told Howat, important messages
+from his father to Mr. Winscombe. The latter and Gilbert Penny were
+conversing amicably in the lower room at the right of the stairway--a
+chamber with a bed that, nevertheless, was used for informal assemblage.
+Mr. Winscombe wore an enveloping banian of russet brocade with deep
+furred cuffs, and a turban of vermilion silk comfortably replacing a
+wigged formality. Under that brilliant colour his face was as yellow as
+an orange.
+
+The written messages were delivered, and David returned to the lawn. The
+day was superb--a crystal cold through which the sun's rays filtered
+with a faintly perceptible glow. Caroline was standing at Howat's side,
+and she gave his hand a rapid pressure as David Forsythe approached.
+"Where's Myrtle?" the latter asked apparently negligently. Howat
+replied, "Still in the agony of fixing her hair--for dinner; she'll be
+at it again before supper." David whistled a vague tune. Caroline added,
+"You've got fearfully dressy yourself, since London." He replied
+appropriately, and then became more serious. "I wish," he told them,
+"that we belonged to the church of England; you know the Penns have gone
+back. It's pretty heavy at home after--after some other things. The
+Quakers didn't use to be so infernally solemn. You should see the swells
+about the Court; the greatest fun. And old George with a face like a
+plum--"
+
+"Don't you find anything here that pleases you?" Caroline demanded with
+asperity.
+
+"Myrtle's all right," he admitted; "not many of them are as pretty."
+
+"I'll tell her you've come," Caroline promptly volunteered; "she won't
+keep you waiting. There she is! No, it's Mrs. Winscombe."
+
+She was swathed in a ruffled lilac cloak quilted with a dull gold
+embroidery; satin slippers were buckled into high pattens of black
+polished wood; and her head, relatively small with tight-drawn hair, was
+uncovered. She was not as compelling under the sun as in candle light,
+he observed. Her face, unpainted, was pale, an expression of petulance
+discernible. Yet she was more potent than any other woman he had
+encountered. "Isn't that the garden?" she asked, waving beyond the end
+of the house. "I like gardens." She moved off in the direction
+indicated; and--as he felt she expected, demanded--he followed slightly
+behind.
+
+A short, steep terrace descended to a formally planted plot, now
+flowerless, enclosed by low privet hedges. There were walks of rolled
+bark, and, against a lower, denser barrier, a long, white bench. The
+ground still fell away beyond; and there was a sturdy orchard, cleared
+of underbrush, with crimson apples among the grey limbs. Beyond, across
+a low, tangled wild, an amphitheatre of hills rose against the sky,
+drawn from the extreme right about the façade of the dwelling. They
+seemed to enclose Myrtle Forge in a natural domain of its own; and,
+actually, Gilbert Penny owned most of the acreage within that immediate
+circle.
+
+Mrs. Winscombe sank on the garden bench, where she sat with a hand
+resting on either side of her. Above them a column of smoke rose from
+the kitchen against the blue. A second, heavier cloud rolled up from the
+Forge below. "They have been repairing the forebay," Howat explained;
+"the Forge has been closed. I'm supposed to be in the counting house."
+
+"You work?" she demanded surprised.
+
+"At the ledger, put things down--what the men are paid, mostly in
+tobacco and shoes, ozenbrigs and molasses and rum; or garters and
+handkerchiefs for the women. Then I enter the pig hauled from Shadrach,
+and the carriage of the blooms."
+
+"I don't understand any of that," she announced.
+
+"It probably wouldn't interest you; the pig's the iron cast at the
+furnace. It's worked in the forges, and hammered into blooms and
+anconies, chunks or stout bars of wrought iron. We do better than two
+tons a week." The sound of a short, jarring blow rose from the Forge, it
+was repeated, became a continuous part of the serene noon. "That's the
+hammer now," he explained. "It goes usually all day and most nights.
+We're used to it, don't hear it; but strangers complain."
+
+"Mr. Forsythe said your father was an Ironmaster, one of the biggest in
+the Province, and I suppose you'll become that too." She gazed about at
+the hills, sheeted in scarlet and yellow, at the wide sunny hollow that
+held Myrtle Forge. "Here," she added in a totally unexpected accent of
+feeling, "it is very beautiful, very big. I thought all the world was
+like St. James or Versailles. I've never been to Poland, my mother's
+family came from there to Paris, but I'm told they have forests and such
+things, too. This is different from Annapolis, that is only an echo of
+London, but here--" she gazed far beyond him into the profound noon.
+
+He recovered slowly from the surprise of her unlooked for speech,
+attitude. Howat studied her frankly, leaning forward with his elbows on
+his knees. Her discontent was paramount. It was deeper than he had
+supposed; like his there were disturbing qualities in her blood,
+qualities at a variance with the obvious part of her being. A sense of
+profound intimacy with her pervaded him.
+
+"This," she continued, "is like a cure at a Bath, a great bath of air
+and light. I should like to stay, I think.... Are you content?"
+
+"It always seemed crowded to me," he admitted. "Usually I get as far
+away as possible, into the woods, the real wilderness. But you heard my
+father last night--I'm a black Penny, a solitary, dark lot. You couldn't
+judge from what I might feel."
+
+"Your father and you are not sympathetic," she judged acutely. "He is
+practical, solid; but it isn't easy to say, even with an explanation,
+what you are. In London--but I'm sick of London. Myrtle Forge. It's
+appalling at night. I'd like to go into the real wilderness, leave off
+my hoops and stays, and bathe in a stream; a water nymph and you ... but
+that's only Watteau again, with a cicisbeo holding my shift and
+stockings. In London you'd be that, a lady's servant of love; but, in
+the Province, I wonder?"
+
+He sat half comprehending her words mingling in his brain with the
+pounding of the trip hammer at the Forge, one familiar and one
+unfamiliar yet not strange sound. Above them, on the lawn, he could see
+Myrtle--through the middle of the day the sun had increased its
+warmth--with skirts like the petals of a fabulous tea rose. The sun
+glinted on the living gold of her hair and bathed an arm white as snow.
+David was there no doubt. His thoughts dwelt for a moment on Caroline,
+then returned to Mrs. Winscombe, to himself. His entire attitude toward
+her, his observations, had been upset, disarmed, by her unexpected air
+of soft melancholy. In her lavender wrap she resembled a drooping branch
+of flowering lilac. She seemed very young; her air of sophistication,
+her sensuality of being, had vanished. Traces of her illness on
+shipboard still lingered darkly under her eyes. Asleep, he suddenly
+thought, her face would be very innocent, purified. This came to him
+involuntarily; there was none of the stinging of the senses she had
+evoked in him the night before. His instinct for preservation from any
+entanglements with life lay dormant before her surrender to influences
+that left her crumpled, without the slightest interest in any exterior
+fact.
+
+A sententious black servant in maroon livery and a bright worsted
+waistcoat announced dinner from the foot of the terrace, and they moved
+slowly toward the house. There was a concerted interest in the faces
+they found already about the table. Howat took his seat at his mother's
+side, Gilbert Penny assisted Mrs. Winscombe. David was placed between
+Caroline and Myrtle. Mr. Winscombe, again formally wigged and coated,
+was absorbed in thought. He said to his hostess, "It's the uncertainty
+that puts me in doubt. Ogle thought the thing thoroughly reviewed, when
+now Hamilton comes out with his damned Indians and Maryland rum.
+Forsythe suggests my presence in Council to-morrow, and it's barely
+possible that there will be a return to Annapolis. While Ludowika--"
+
+"I can't travel another ell over the atrocities they call roads here,"
+Mrs. Winscombe declared. "I expect to die returning to England as it is,
+and I won't put up with any more preliminary torment. You'll have to
+leave me."
+
+"At Myrtle Forge," Gilbert Penny added at once; "at Myrtle Forge as long
+as you like. Unless," he added with a smile, "you prefer the gaiety at
+Abner Forsythe's." A hot colour suffused David's cheeks.
+
+Mr. Winscombe bowed over the table, "I am inclined to take advantage of
+that. Ludowika would be the better without even Quaker gaiety for a
+little." He stopped, turned toward her. "I'd like it immensely," she
+replied simply. "I am sure it would give me back all that I've lost in
+passage. Perhaps," she leaned forward, smiling at Howat, "I could see
+something of what's behind those hills, go into the real Arcadia."
+
+"Out there," said Mr. Penny, "are the Endless Mountains."
+
+The faint, involuntary chill again invaded Howat; suddenly an unfamiliar
+imagery attached to the commonplace phrase uttered by his father--the
+Endless Mountains! It brought back his doubt, his questioning, of life.
+It was the inconceivable term endless, without any finality of ultimate
+rest, without even the arbitrary peace of death, that appalled him. He
+thought of life going on and on, with nothing consummated, nothing
+achieved nor final. He thought of the black Penny who had been burned as
+a heretic to ashes years before; yet Howat was conscious of the martyr's
+bitter stubbornness of soul, alive, still alive and unquenched, in
+himself. He wondered about the heritage to come. There was a further
+belief that it followed exclusively the male line. The Pennys, like many
+another comparatively obscure name, went far back into the primeval soil
+of civilization. If he had no issue the endlessness might be confounded;
+a fatality in his long, dangerous excursions would have vanquished the
+ineradicable Welsh blood. He might have no children; yesterday he would
+have made such a decision; but now he was less sure of himself, of his
+power to will. He was dimly conscious of vast exterior forces and
+traitorous factors within. It was as if momentarily he had been lifted
+to a cloud beyond time, from which he saw the entire, stumbling progress
+of humanity, its beginning hid in humid mist, moving into a nocturnal
+shadow like a thunder bank.
+
+He sat with chin on breast and sombre eyes until his mother laid her
+hand on his shoulder. "Howat," she protested, "you are too glum for the
+comfort of any one near you. I think you must make a pose of being
+black. I'd almost called one of the servants to fiddle in your ear."
+
+Howat smiled at her; he returned slowly to the actual, the particular.
+Mr. Winscombe had pushed back his chair, excusing himself in the
+pressure of necessary preparations. His wife disappeared with him,
+leaving behind the echo of a discussion about Cecco, the Italian
+servant. The women followed, with David at Myrtle's shoulder, leaving
+Howat and Gilbert Penny.
+
+The latter was still a handsome man, with his own hair silvered on a
+ruddy countenance, and a careful taste in clothes. His nose was
+predominant, with a wide-cleft mouth above a square chin. "I had
+thought," he said deliberately, "that you were employed in the counting
+house, but Schwar tells me that it has been a week since you were seen
+there." He raised a broad hand to silence Howat's reply. "While I can
+afford to keep you merely at hunting, the result to the table is so
+meagre that I'm not justified. There is no St. James here, in
+Pennsylvania, no gentlemen supported by the Crown for the purpose of
+amusement. You will have to sail for England if you expect that sort of
+thing." He rose, "You owe an intelligent interest in Myrtle Forge, to
+your sisters and mother, toward all that I have accomplished. It's a
+rich property, and it's growing bigger. Already young Forsythe has a
+list of improvements to be instituted at the Furnace--clerks and a
+manager and new system for carrying on the blast."
+
+"I'm not an iron man," Howat Penny told him, "I'm not a clerk. David
+can take all that over for you, particularly if he marries one of the
+girls."
+
+"What are you?" the elder demanded sharply.
+
+"You ought to know. You explained it fully enough to the Winscombes."
+
+"If it wasn't for that you'd have been dumping slag five years ago. What
+I hoped was that with maturity some sense of obligation would be born
+into you. What is this pretended affection for your mother worth if you
+are unwilling to conserve, make safe, her future, in case I die?" All
+that his father said was logical, just; but it only brought him a
+renewed sense of his impotence before very old and implacable inner
+forces.
+
+"I'll try again," he briefly agreed. "But I warn you, it will do little
+good. There is no pretence in the affection you spoke of, but--but
+something stronger--" he gave up as hopeless the effort to explain all
+that had swept through his mind.
+
+Gilbert Penny abruptly left the room.
+
+It transpired that the Italian servant was to be left at Myrtle Forge;
+he was now assisting the servants in strapping a box behind the chaise
+that was to carry Mr. Winscombe and David to the city. Howat pictured
+the long, supple hands of the Italian hooking Mrs. Winscombe into her
+clothes, and a sudden, hot revulsion clouded his brain. When the
+carriage had gone, and he stood in the contracted space of the counting
+room, before a long, narrow forge book open on a high desk, he was still
+conscious of a strong repulsion. It was idiotic to let such an
+insignificant fact as the Winscombes' man persistently annoy him. But,
+in a manner entirely unaccountable, this Cecco had become a symbol of
+much that was dark, potentially threatening, in his conjectures.
+
+The hammer fell with a full reiteration through the afternoon; the sun,
+at a small window, shifted a dusty bar across inkpots and quills and
+desk to a higher corner. He could hear the dull turning of the wheel and
+the thin, irregular splash of falling water. Other sounds rose at
+intervals--the tramping of mules dragging pig iron from Shadrach, the
+rumble of its deposit by the Forge. Emanuel Schwar entered with a piece
+of paper in his hand. "Eleven hundred weight of number two," he read;
+"at six pounds, and a load of charcoal. Jonas Hupp charged with three
+pairs of woollen stockings, and shoes for Minnie, four shillings more."
+
+Howat mechanically entered the enumerated items, his distaste for such a
+petty occupation mounting until it resembled a concrete power forcing
+him outside into the mellow end of the day. A figure darkened the
+doorway; it was Caroline. "I hardly saw him," she declared hotly.
+"Myrtle hung like a sickly flower in his buttonhole." Her hoops
+flattened as she made her way through the narrow entrance. "There's one
+thing about Myrtle," she continued, "she's frightfully proper in her
+narrow little ideas. Myrtle's a prude. And I promise you I won't be if I
+get a chance at David." She stood with vivid, parted lips, bright eyes;
+almost, Howat thought, charming. Such a spirit in Caroline amazed him;
+he hadn't conceived of its presence. He recognized a phase of his own
+contempt for customary paths, accepted limitations and proprieties.
+"Remember David's Quaker training," he told her in his habitual air of
+jest. "David's been to London," she replied. "I saw him pinch the
+Appletofft girl at the farm."
+
+Again in his room, he changed into more formal clothes than on the
+evening previous; he did this without a definite, conscious purpose; it
+was as if his attitude of mind required a greater suavity of exterior.
+He wore a London waistcoat, a gift from his mother, of magenta worked
+with black petals and black stone buttons; his breeches were without a
+wrinkle, and the tails of his coat, even if they were not wired like
+those David was said to have brought from England, had a not
+unsatisfactory swing.
+
+At supper Mrs. Winscombe sat at his left, Caroline and Myrtle had taken
+their customary places opposite, the elders had not been disturbed. Mrs.
+Winscombe had resumed the animation vanished at noon. She wore green and
+white, with plum-coloured ribbons, and a flat shirred cap tied under her
+chin. The fluted, clear lawn of her elbow sleeves was like a scented
+mist. He was again conscious of the warm seduction, the rare finish, of
+her body, like a flushed marble under wide hoops and dyed silk. She was
+talking to Myrtle about the Court. "I am in waiting with the Princess
+Amelia Sophia," she explained; "I have her stockings. There is a
+frightful racket of music and parrots and German, with old Handel
+bellowing and the King eternally clinking one piece of gold on another."
+
+Gilbert Penny listened with a tightening of his well shaped lips. "It's
+into that chamber pot we pour our sweat and iron," he asserted. Ludowika
+Winscombe studied him. "In England," she said, "the American provinces
+are supposed to lie hardly beyond the Channel, but here England seems to
+be at the other end of the world." Myrtle added, "I'd like it
+immensely."
+
+And Howat thought of Ludowika--he thought of her tentatively as
+Ludowika--in the brilliant setting of tropical silks and birds.
+
+He considered the change that had overtaken his father, English born, in
+the quarter century he had lived in America; the strong allegiance
+formed to ideas fundamentally different from those held at St. James;
+and he wondered if such a transformation would operate in Ludowika if
+she could remain in the Province. It was a fantastic query, and he
+impatiently dismissed it, returning to the contemplation of his mother's
+problematic happiness. He determined to question the latter if a
+permissible occasion arose; suddenly his interest had sharpened toward
+her mental situation. He compared the two women, what he could
+conjecture about Isabel Howat and Ludowika Winscombe; but something
+within him, automatic and certain, whispered that no comparison was
+possible. His mother possessed a quality of spirit that he had never
+found elsewhere; he could see, in spite of their resemblance of blood
+and position, that the elder could never have been merely provocative.
+Such distinctions, he divined, were the result of qualities mysterious
+and deeply concealed. Love, that he had once dismissed as the principle
+of blind procreation, became more complex, enigmatic. He had no
+increased desire to experience it, with the inevitable loss of personal
+liberty; but he began to be conscious of new depths, unexpected
+complications, in human relationship.
+
+He was not so sure of himself.
+
+They had moved to the less formal of the rooms used as places of
+gathering. The bed in a corner was hung in blue shalloon over ruffled
+white muslin, and there was blue at the windows. Against the wall a
+clavichord, set aside as obsolete, raised its dusky red ebony box on
+grooved legs. Myrtle was seated at it picking out an air from
+Belshazzar. She held each note in a silvery vibration that had the
+fragility of old age. Ludowika was by the fire, quartered across a
+corner; there was no stove, and the wood burning in the opening sent out
+frequent, pungent waves of smoke. She coughed and cursed. "Positively,"
+she declared, "I'll turn salt like a smoked herring."
+
+She rose, her gaze resting on Howat. "I must go out," she continued;
+"breathe." He was strangely reluctant to accompany her, his feet were
+leaden. Nevertheless, in a few moments he found himself at her side on
+the lawn. Her sophistication had again disappeared, beneath the stars
+drawn across the hills, over Myrtle Forge. There was a pause in the
+hammering below. "Take me down there," she commanded.
+
+He led the way on a beaten path that dropped sharply to a bridge of hewn
+logs crossing the spent water. The Forge, a long shed following the
+stream, was open on the opposite side; an enclosure of ruddy, vaporous
+gloom with pools of molten colour, clangorous sounds. The bubbling,
+white cores of three raised and hooded hearths were incessantly agitated
+with long rods by blackened and glistening shapes. At intervals a
+flushing rod was withdrawn from a fire and plunged in a trough of water;
+a cloud of ghostly steam arose, a forgeman's visage momentarily
+illuminated like a copper mask. A grimy lantern was hung above the
+anvil, its thin light falling on the ponderous head of the trip hammer
+suspended at right angles from a turning cogged shaft projection through
+the wall.
+
+The hearths, set in a row beyond the anvil, had at their back an
+obscure, mechanical stir, accompanied by the audible suction of squat,
+drum bellows. The labour was halted at a fire; half naked anatomies,
+herculean shoulders and incredible arms, gathered about its mouth with
+hooked bars. An incandescent mass was lifted, born, rayed in an
+intolerable white heat, into the air. A hammer was swung upon it; and,
+as if the metal were sentient, a violet radiance scintillated where the
+blow had fallen. The pasty iron was carried to the anvil, the hooks
+dropped for wide-jawed tongs; the trip hammer moved up and fell. The
+hardening metal darkened to a carnation from which chips scattered like
+gorgeous petals. The carnation faded under ringing blows; the petals,
+heaping in the penumbra under foot, were as vividly blue as gentians.
+The colour vanished from the solidifying bloom ... It was ashen, black.
+The hammering continued.
+
+A sense of the vast and antique simplicity of the forging, a feeling of
+hammering the earth itself into the superior purposes of man, enveloped
+Howat. He forgot for the moment his companion, lost in a swelling pride
+of Myrtle Forge, of his father's fibre--the iron of his character like
+the iron he successfully wrought. He could grasp Gilbert Penny's
+accomplishment here, take fire at its heroic quality; a thing he found
+impossible in the counting room above, recording such trivial details as
+wool stockings for Jonas Rupp. He could be a forgeman, he thought, but
+never a clerk; and in that limitation he realized that he was inferior
+to his father. There were aspects of himself beyond such discipline and
+control.
+
+Ludowika Winscombe grasped his arm. "Come away," she begged; "it's--it's
+savage, like Vulcan and dreadful, early legends." She hurried him,
+clinging to his arm, over the ascent to the orderly lawn, the tranquil
+shine of candle-lit windows. There, with her hood fallen from her head,
+she sat on a stone step.
+
+"You frighten me, a little," she confessed. "Are you at all like--like
+that below inside of you? I have a feeling that you might be. If you
+were one of the men about Vauxhall you'd be kissing me now ... if I
+liked you. But, although I do like you, I wouldn't kiss you for an
+emerald buckle." He recognized that she spoke seriously; her voice bore
+no connective suggestion. Kisses, it appeared, were no more to her than
+little flowers which she dealt out casually where she pleased. Yet the
+idea, with its intimate sensual implications, stayed in his thoughts. He
+considered kissing her, holding her mouth against his; and he was
+conscious of a sharp return of his stinging sense of her bodily
+seductiveness.
+
+At the same time an obscure uneasiness, rebellion, possessed him; it was
+the old, familiar feeling of revolt, of distaste for imprisoning
+circumstance. It came to him acutely, almost as if a voice had whispered
+in his ear, warning him, urging him into the wild, to escape threatening
+catastrophe. He determined to leave Myrtle Forge in the morning, to
+return to the stream he had followed into the serene heart of the woods.
+There he would stay until--until Ludowika Winscombe had gone. Howat had
+no especial sense of danger from her; only for the moment she typified
+the entire world of trivial artifice. He gazed at her with a conscious
+detachment possible because of the rarity in his existence of such
+figures as hers.
+
+She had risen, and her cloak fallen upon the grass. Howat could see her
+face beneath hair faintly powdered with silver dust and the ruffled
+patch of white tied pertly under her chin. Her smoothly turning
+shoulders, filmed in lawn, and low bodice crowned an extravagant
+circumference of ruffled silk and rosettes. Against the night of the
+Province, the invisible but felt presence of immutable hills, she was
+like a puppet, a grotesque figure of comedy. He regarded her sombrely
+from the step, his chin cupped in a hand.
+
+But, again, she surprised him, speaking entirely out of the character he
+had assigned her, in a spirit that seemed utterly incongruous, but which
+was yet warm with conviction. "I want to explain a great deal to you,"
+she said, "that really isn't explainable. It isn't sensible, and yet it
+is the strongest feeling I remember. It's about here and you and me. You
+can't picture my life, and so you don't know how strange this is, how
+different from all I've ever lived.
+
+"I think I told you I was born in Paris--you see some of us came to
+France when Louis took a Polish princess, and there my mother married an
+English gentleman. Well, it was always the Court, in France and in
+England. Always the Court--do you know what that means? It's a place
+where women are pretty pink and white candies that men are always
+picking over. It's a great bed with a rose silk counterpane and closed
+draperies. Champagne and music and scent and masques. Little plays with
+the intrigue in the audience; favours behind green hedges. I was in it
+when I was fourteen, and I had a lover the first year. He showed me how
+to make pleasure. Don't think that I was indifferent to this," she added
+directly; "that I wanted to escape it. I wasn't; I didn't. Only beneath
+everything I had a feeling of not being completely satisfied; I
+wanted--oh, not very strongly--something else, for an hour. At times the
+air seemed choking; and inside of me, but not in my body, I seemed
+choking too. I used to think about the Polish forests, and that would
+help a little."
+
+She resumed the place at his side, with her silk billowing against his
+knee. "This is it," she declared, her face set against the illimitable,
+still dark. "I recognized it only a little while ago. I think
+unconsciously I came to America hoping to find it; there was nothing at
+Annapolis, but here--" she drew a breath as deep, he noted, as her stays
+would permit. "It includes you, somehow," she continued; "as if you were
+the voice. What I said coming away from the Forge, about dreading you,
+was only momentary. I have another feeling, premonition--" she broke
+off, her manner changed. "All the Court believes in signs: Protestantism
+and vampires.
+
+"It seems unreal here; I mean St. James and all that was so
+tremendously important; incredibly stupid--the Princess Amelia's
+stockings. But you can't imagine the jealousy. Every bit of it shall go
+out of my thoughts. You'll help me, a harmless magic. I'll be as simple
+as that girl across the road, with the red cheeks, in a single slip. You
+must call me Ludowika; Ludowika and Howat. I'm not so terribly old, only
+twenty-nine."
+
+"I am going away to-morrow," he informed her; "I won't be back before
+you leave."
+
+A slight frown gathered about her eyes. Her face was very close to his.
+"But I don't like that either," she replied. "You were to be a part of
+it, its voice; excursions in the woods. Is it necessary, your absence?"
+
+He knew that it was not; and suddenly he was seized with the conviction
+that he would not go. It was as if, again, a voice outside him had
+informed him of the fact. But if there were no reason for his going
+there was as little for his remaining at Myrtle Forge; that was, so far
+as Ludowika Winscombe was concerned. He had been untouched by all that
+she had said; untouched except for a faint involuntary shiver as she had
+spoken of premonition. And that had vanished instantaneously. There was
+his duty in the counting house. But he was forced to admit to himself
+the insufficiency of that reason; it was too palpably false.
+
+He had not been moved by the intent of what she had said, but his
+imagination had been stirred, as if by the touch of delicate, pointed
+fingers, at her description of Court--a bed with a silk counterpane ...
+behind clipped greenery. He recalled the fan with its painted
+Villeggiatura, the naked, wanton loves. "Something different," she half
+repeated, with a sigh, an accent, of longing. Howat heard her with
+impatience; it was absurd to try to picture her tramping in the
+wilderness, breaking her way hour after hour through thorned underbrush,
+like Fanny Gilkan. She wouldn't progress a hundred yards in her unsteady
+pattens and fragile clothes.
+
+Suddenly the Italian servant appeared absolutely noiselessly at her
+side, speaking a ridiculous, oily gibberish. "At once," she replied. She
+turned to Howat. "My bed has been prepared. Are you going to-morrow?"
+
+"No," he answered awkwardly. She turned and left without further words.
+The servant walked behind her, resembling an unnatural shadow.
+
+The metallic clamour at the anvil rose and fell, diminished by the
+interposed bulk of the dwellings, ceaselessly forging the Penny iron,
+the Penny gold. He thought of himself as metal under the hammer; or
+rather ore at the furnace: he hadn't run clear in the casting; there
+were bubbles, bubbles and slag. Endless refinements--first the furnace
+and then the forge and then the metal. A contempt for the lesser degrees
+possessed him, for a flawed or clumsy forging, for weakness of the
+flesh, the fatality of easy surrender. An overwhelming, passionate
+emotion swept him to his feet, clenched his hands, filled him with a
+numbing desire to reach the last purification.
+
+The mood sank into an inexplicable nostalgia; he dragged the back of a
+hand impatiently across his vision. His persistent indifference, the
+inhibition that held him in a contemptuous isolation, again possessed
+him, Howat, a black Penny. A last trace of his emotion, caught in the
+flood of his paramount disdain, vanished like a breath of warm mist. He
+entered the house and mounted to his room; the stairs creaked but that
+was the only sound audible within. His candles burned without their
+protecting glasses in smooth, unwavering flames. When they were
+extinguished the darkness flowed in and blotted out familiar objects,
+folded him in a cloak of invisibility, obliterated him in sleep. As he
+lost consciousness he heard the trip hammer dully beating out Penny
+iron, Penny gold; beating out, too, the Penny men ... Slag and metal and
+ruffled muslin, roman candles and stars.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+There came to him in the counting house, the following afternoon,
+rumours and echoes of the day's happenings. David Forsythe had arrived
+after dinner, and there had been word from Mr. Winscombe; he would be
+obliged to return to Maryland, and trusted that Ludowika would not be an
+onerous charge. David was to take Myrtle and Caroline back with him to
+the city, for an exemplary Quaker party. "There's no good asking you,"
+he told Howat, lounging in the door of the counting room. David was
+flushed, his sleeve coated with dust. "Caroline," he exclaimed, "is as
+strong as a forgeman; she upset me on the grass as quickly as you
+please, hooked her knee behind me, and there I was. She picked me up,
+too, and laughed at me," he stopped, lost in thought. "Myrtle's really
+beautiful," he said again; "Caroline's not a thing to look at, and yet,
+do you know, a--a man looks at her. She is wonderfully graceful."
+
+Howat gave Caroline the vigorous stamp of his brotherly approval. "She
+understands a lot, for a girl," he admitted. "Of course Myrtle's a
+particular peach, but I'd never go to her if a buckle--" he stopped
+abruptly as Myrtle appeared at David's side. "Isn't he industrious?"
+she said indifferently. "You'd never guess how father's at him. Have you
+heard, Howat--Mrs. Winscombe will be here perhaps a month. It's a wonder
+you haven't gone away, you are so frightfully annoyed by people. Last
+night you were with her over an hour on the lawn. I could see that
+father thought it queer; but I explained to him that court women never
+thought of little things like, well, husbands."
+
+Howat gazed at her coldly, for the first time conscious that he actually
+disliked Myrtle. He made up his mind, definitely, to assist Caroline as
+far as possible. She was absurd, criticizing Mrs. Winscombe. "Where," he
+demanded, "did you get all that about courts? And your sudden, tender
+interest in husbands? That's new, too. You're not thinking of one for
+yourself, are you? He'd never see you down in the morning."
+
+A bright, angry colour flooded her cheeks. "You are as coarse as
+possible," she declared. "I'm sure I wish you'd stay away altogether
+from Myrtle Forge; you've never been anything but a bother." She left
+abruptly. "Sweet disposition." Howat grinned. "You are seeing family
+life as it's actually lived." Later his thoughts returned to what she
+had said about Ludowika Winscombe; he recalled the latter's speech,
+seated on the doorstep; some stuff about a premonition. Myrtle had
+suggested that he was interested in her. What ridiculous nonsense! If
+his father said anything on that score the other would discover that he
+was no longer a boy. Besides, such insinuations were a breach of
+hospitality. How Mrs. Winscombe would laugh at them if she suspected
+Myrtle's cheap folly.
+
+She had asked him to call her Ludowika. He decided that he would; really
+he couldn't get out of it now. It would do no harm. Ludowika! It was a
+nice name; undoubtedly Polish. He thought again about what she had said
+of Polish forests, the dissatisfaction that had followed her for so many
+years. A lover at fourteen. A surprising sentence formed of itself in
+his brain.--She had never had a chance. That pasty court life had
+spoiled her. It had no significance for himself; he was simply revolving
+a slightly melancholy fact.
+
+Felix Winscombe was a sere figure, yet he was extraordinarily full of a
+polished virility, rapier-like. Howat could see the dark, satirical face
+shadowed by the elaborate wig, the rigid figure in precise, foppish
+dress. He heard Winscombe's slightly harsh, dominant voice. His position
+in England was, he knew, secure, high. Ludowika had been very sensible
+in marrying him. That was the way, Howat Penny told himself, that
+marriage should be consummated. He would never marry. David Schwar
+appeared with a sheaf of papers, which he himself proceeded to docket,
+and Howat left the counting room.
+
+He met Ludowika almost immediately; she advanced more simply dressed
+than he had ever seen her before. She pointed downward to the water
+flashing over the great, turning wheel. "Couldn't we walk along the
+rill? There's a path, and it's beautiful in the shadow." The stream
+poured solid and green through the narrow, masoned course of the
+forebay, sweeping in a lucent arc over the lip of the fall. An earthen
+path followed the artificial channel through a dense grove of young
+maples, seeming to hold the sun in their flame-coloured foliage. Myrtle
+Forge was lost, the leaves shut out the sky; underfoot some were already
+dead. The wilderness marched up to the edges of the meagre clearings.
+
+Ludowika walked ahead, without speech; irregular patches of ruddy light
+slid over her flared skirt. Suddenly she stopped with an exclamation;
+the trees opened before them on the broad Canary sweeping between flat
+rocks, banks bluely green. Above, the course was broken, swift; but
+where they stood it was tranquil again, and crystal clear. Yellow rays
+plunging through the unwrinkled surface gilded the pebbles on the
+shallower bottom. A rock, broad and flat, extended into the stream by
+the partial, diagonal dam that turned the water into Myrtle Forge; and
+Ludowika found a seat with her slippers just above the current. Howat
+Penny sat beside her, then dropped back on the rocks, his hands clasped
+behind his head.
+
+A silence intensified by the whispering stream enveloped them. He
+watched a hawk, diminutive on the pale immensity above. "Heavens,"
+Ludowika finally spoke, "how wonderful ... just to sit, not to be
+bothered by--by things. Just to hear the water. Far away," she said
+dreamily; "girl."
+
+From where he lay he could see her arms, beautiful and bare, lost in
+soft Holland above the elbows; he could see the roundness of her body
+above the lowest of stays. Suddenly she fascinated him; he visualized
+her sharply, as though for the first time--a warm, intoxicating entity.
+He was profoundly disturbed, and sat erect; the stream, the woods,
+blurred in his vision. He felt as if his heart had been turned
+completely over in his body; the palms of his hands were wet. He had a
+momentary, absurd impulse to run, beyond Shadrach Furnace, beyond any
+distance he had yet explored, farther even than St. Xavier. Ludowika
+Winscombe gazed in serene, unconscious happiness before her. He felt
+that his face was crimson, and he rose, moved to the water's edge, his
+back toward her. He was infuriated at a trembling that passed over him,
+damned it in a savage and inaudible whisper.
+
+What particularly appalled him was the fact that his overmastering
+sensation came without the slightest volition of his own. He had had
+nothing to do with it, his will was powerless. He was betrayed like a
+fortified city whose gate had been thrown open by an unsuspected, a
+concealed, traitor inside. In an instant he had been invaded, his being
+levelled, his peculiar pride overthrown. He thought even that he heard a
+dull crash, as if something paramount had irremediably fallen,
+something that should have been maintained at any cost, until the end of
+life.
+
+Howat felt a sudden hatred of his companion; but that quickly
+evaporated; he discovered that she had spread, like a drop of carmine in
+a goblet of water, through his every nerve. By God, but she had become
+himself! In the space of a breath she was in his blood, in his brain;
+calling his hands about her, toward her smooth, beautiful arms. She was
+the scent in his nostrils, the sound a breeze newly sprung up stirred
+out of the leaves. A profound melancholy spread over him, a deep
+sadness, a conviction of loss. Ludowika was singing softly:
+
+"Last Sunday at St. James's prayers
+--dressed in all my whalebone airs."
+
+He had come on disaster. The realization flashed through his
+consciousness and was engulfed in the submerging of his being in the
+overwhelming, stinging blood that had swept him from his old security.
+Yet he had been so detached from the merging influences about him, his
+organization had been so complete in its isolation, his egotism so
+developed, that a last trace of his entity lingered sentient, viewing as
+if from a careened but still tenable deck the general submergence. His
+thoughts returned to the automatic operation of the consummation
+obliterating his person, the inexorable blind movement of the thing in
+which he had been caught, dragged into the maw of a supreme purpose. It
+was, of course, the law of mere procreation which he had before
+contemptuously recognized and dismissed; a law for animals; but he was
+no longer entirely an animal. Already he had considered the possibility
+of an additional force in the directing of human passion, founded on
+something beyond the thirst of flesh, founded perhaps on soaring
+companionships, on--on--The condition, the term, he was searching for
+evaded him.
+
+He thought of the word love; and he was struck by the vast inaccuracy of
+that large phrase. It meant, Howat told himself, literally nothing: what
+complex feeling Isabel Penny might have for her husband, Caroline's
+frank desire for David Forsythe, Myrtle's meagre emotion, Fanny Gilkan's
+sense of Hesa and life's necessary compromises, his own collapse--all
+were alike called love. It was not only a useless word but a dangerous
+falsity. It had without question cloaked immense harm, pretence; it had
+perpetuated old lies, brought them plausibly, as if in a distinguished
+and reputable company, out of past superstitions and credulity; the real
+and the meaningless, the good and the evil, hopelessly confused.
+
+They were seated at supper, four of them only; Isabel and Gilbert Penny,
+and, opposite him, Ludowika. Occasionally he would glance at her,
+surreptitiously; his wrists would pound with an irregular, sultry
+circulation; longing would harass him like the beating of a club. She,
+it seemed to him, grew gayer, younger, more simple, every hour.
+Happiness, peace, radiated in her gaze, the gestures of her hands. Howat
+wondered at what moment he would destroy it. Reprehensible. A moment
+must come--soon--when emotion would level his failing reserve, his
+falling defences. He thrilled at the thought of the inevitable
+disclosure. Would she fight against it, deny, satirize his tumult; or
+surrender? He couldn't see clearly into that; he didn't care. Then he
+wondered about the premonition of which she had spoken, deciding to ask
+her to be more explicit.
+
+An opportunity occurred later. Gilbert Penny had gone down to the Forge
+store, his wife had disappeared. Ludowika Winscombe and Howat were
+seated in the drawing room. Only a stand of candles was lit at her
+elbow; her face floated like a pale and lovely wafer against the
+billowing shadows of the chamber. The wood on the iron hearth was
+charring without flame. He questioned her bluntly, suddenly, out of a
+protracted silence. She regarded him speculatively, delaying answer.
+Then, "I couldn't tell you like this, now; it would be too silly; you
+would laugh at me. I hadn't meant to say even what I did. I'd prefer to
+ignore it."
+
+"What did you mean, what premonition came to you?" he insisted crudely.
+
+She seemed to draw away from him, increase in years and an attitude of
+tolerant amusement. Only an immediate reply would save them, he
+realized. He leaned forward unsteadily, with clenched hands. "I warned
+you," she proceeded lightly; "and if you do laugh my pride will suffer."
+In spite of her obvious determination to speak indifferently her voice
+grew serious, "I had a feeling that you mustn't kiss me, that
+this--America, the Province, Myrtle Forge, you, were for something
+different. You see, I had always longed for a peculiar experience,
+release, and when it came, miraculously, I thought, it must not be
+spoiled, turned into the old, old thing. That was all. It was in my
+spirit," she added almost defiantly, as if that claim might too be
+susceptible of derision.
+
+He settled back into his chair, turning upon her a gloomy vision.
+Whatever penalty threatened them, he knew, must fall. Nothing existing
+could keep him from it. He felt a fleet sorrow for her in the inevitable
+destruction of the release for which she had so long searched, her new
+peace, so soon to be smashed. All sorrow for himself had gone under.
+Isabel Penny returned to the drawing room, and moved about, her flowered
+silk at once gay and obscure in the semidarkness. "The fire, Howat," she
+directed; "it's all but out." He stirred the logs into a renewed blaze.
+
+A warm gilding flickered over Ludowika; she smiled at him, relaxed,
+content. He was surprised that she could not see the tumultuous feeling
+overpowering him. He had heard that women were immediately aware of
+such emotion. But he realized that she had been lulled into a false
+sense of security, of present immunity from "the old, old thing," by her
+own placidity. He did not know when his mother left the room. He
+wondered continuously when it would happen, when the bolt would fall,
+what she would do. Howat was hot and cold, and possessed by a subtle
+sense of improbity, a feeling resembling that of a doubtful advance
+through the dark, for a questionable end. This was the least part of
+him, insignificant; his passion grew constantly stronger, more brutal.
+In a last, vanishing trace of his superior consciousness he recognized
+that the thing must have happened to him as it did; it was the price of
+his more erect pride, his greater contempt, his solitary and unspent
+state.
+
+She rose suddenly and announced that she was about to retire. It saved
+them for the moment, for that day; he muttered something
+incomprehensible and she was gone.
+
+Isabel Penny returned and took Mrs. Winscombe's place before the fire.
+She spoke trivially, at random intervals. A great longing swept over him
+to tell his mother everything, try to find an escape in her wise
+counsel; but his emotion seemed so ugly that he could not lay it before
+her. Besides, he had a conviction that it would be hopeless: he was
+gone. She was discussing Ludowika now. "Really," she said, "they seem
+very well matched, a good arrangement." She was referring, he realized,
+to the Winscombes' experience. He never thought of Felix Winscombe as
+married, Ludowika's husband; he had ceased to think of him at all. The
+present moment banished everything else. "She has a quality usually
+destroyed by life about a Court," the leisurely voice went on; "she
+seems quite happy here, for a little, in a way simple. But, curiously
+enough, she disturbs your father. He can't laugh with her as he usually
+does with attractive women."
+
+It was natural, Howat thought, that Gilbert Penny should be uneasy
+before such a direct reminder of the setting from which he had taken
+Isabel Howat. It was a life, memories, in which the elder had no part;
+that consciousness dictated a part of his father's bitterness toward St.
+James, the Royal Government. But Gilbert Penny had never had serious
+reason to dread it. His wife had left it all behind, permanently,
+without, apparently, a regret. He had a sudden, astonishing community of
+feeling with the older man; a momentary dislike of St. James,
+Versailles, the entire, treacherous, silk mob. A lover at fourteen!
+Howat damned such a betrayal with a bitterness whose base lay deeply
+buried in sex jealousy.
+
+"I am glad," the other continued, "that you are not susceptible; I
+suppose you'll be off hunting in a day or more; Mrs. Winscombe is bright
+wine for a young man. Women like her play at sensation, like eating
+figs." He thought contemptuously what nonsense was talked in connection
+with feminine intuition; it was nothing more than a polite chimera,
+like all the other famous morals and inhibitions supposed to serve and
+direct mankind.
+
+He wondered once more about his mother, what the course of her life had
+been--happily occupied, filled, or merely self-contained, hiding much in
+a deep, even flow? Her head was turned away from him, and he could see
+the girlish profile, the astonishing illusion of youth renewed. Howat
+wanted to ask her how she had experienced, well--love, since there was
+no other word. It had come to her quickly, he knew; her affair with
+Gilbert Penny had been headlong, or else it would not have been at all;
+yet he felt she had not been the victim of such a tyranny as mastered
+himself. But, perhaps, after all, secretly, every one was--just
+animal-like. He repudiated this firmly, at once. He himself had felt
+that he was not entirely animal.
+
+"The girls," Isabel Penny said, "will be gallopading now. Myrtle has a
+new dress, her father gave it to her, an apricot mantua."
+
+"He's really idiotic about Myrtle," Howat declared irritably. His mother
+glanced swiftly at him. She made no comment. "Now Caroline! It's
+Caroline who ought to marry David Forsythe."
+
+"Such things must fall out as they will."
+
+God, that was true enough, terribly true! He rose and strode into the
+farther darkness of the drawing room, returning to the fireplace,
+marching away again. He saw the white glimmer of Ludowika's arms; he
+had a vision of her tying the broad ribbon about her rounded, silken
+knee. "... a man now," his mother's voice was distant, blurred.
+"Responsibilities; your father--" He had heard this before without being
+moved; but suddenly the words had a new actuality; he was a man now,
+that was to say he stood finally, irrevocably, alone, beyond assistance,
+advice. He had never heeded them; he had gone a high-handed, independent
+way, but the others had been there; unconsciously he had been aware of
+them, even counted on them. Now they had vanished.
+
+Caroline and Myrtle, bringing David with them again, returned on the
+following morning. It seemed to Howat that the former was almost lovely;
+she had a gayer sparkle, a clearer colour, than he had ever seen her
+possess before. On the other hand, Myrtle was dull; the dress, it
+seemed, had not been the unqualified success she had hoped for.
+Something newer had arrived in the meantime from London. Ludowika, it
+developed, had one of the later sacques in her boxes; but that, she said
+indifferently, must be quite dead now. It seemed to Howat that she too
+regarded Myrtle without enthusiasm. Ludowika and Myrtle had had very
+little to say to each other; Myrtle studied Mrs. Winscombe's apparel
+with a keen, even belligerent, eye; the other patronized the girl in a
+species of half absent instruction.
+
+The sky was flawless, leaden blue; the sunlight fell in an enveloping
+flood over the countryside, but it was pale, without warmth. There was
+no wind, not a leaf turned on the trees--a sinuous sheeting of the
+country-side like red-gold armour. But Howat knew that at the first stir
+of air the leaves would be in stricken flight, the autumn accomplished.
+Caroline dragged him impetuously down into the garden, among the brown,
+varnished stems of the withered roses, the sere, dead ranks of scarlet
+sage. "He hugged me," she told him; "I was quite breathless. It was in a
+hall, dark; but he didn't say anything. What do you think?" There was
+nothing definite that he might express; and he patted her shoulder. He
+had a new kinship with Caroline; Howat now understood her tempest of
+feeling, concealed beneath her commonplace daily aspect.
+
+Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high
+desk in the counting house. Strangely his energy of being communicated
+itself to the prosaic work before him. It was, he suddenly felt,
+important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not
+do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the
+Penny iron. He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume;
+and money of his own. He found a savage pleasure in recording every
+detail put before him. He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of
+charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped
+to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in
+which London limited the Province's industries. For the first time he
+was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a
+personal concern in its output. He had always visualized it as
+automatically prosperous, a cause of large, inexact pride; but now it
+was all near to him; he considered the competition rapidly increasing
+here, and the jealous menace over seas.
+
+His final trace of careless youth had gone; he felt the advent of the
+constant apprehension that underlies all maturity, a sense of the
+proximity of blind accident, evil chance, disaster. At last he was
+opposed to life itself, with an immense stake to gain, to hold; in the
+midst of a seething, treacherous conflict arbitrarily ended by death.
+There was no cringing, absolutely no cowardice, in him. He was glad that
+it was all immediately about him; he was arrogant in pressing forward to
+take what he wanted from existence. He forgot all premonitions, doubt
+was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika
+Winscombe. She was something he would, had to, have.
+
+David Forsythe sat across the back of a chair in Howat's room as the
+latter dressed in the rapidly failing light. David had smuggled his
+London coat with the wired tails out to Myrtle Forge, and had the
+stiffened portion now spread smoothly out on either side. His cheerful,
+freshly-coloured face was troubled; he seemed constantly on the point of
+breaking into speech without actually becoming audible. Howat was
+thinking of Ludowika. It would happen to-night, he knew. He was at once
+apprehensive and glad.
+
+"You knew," David ventured finally, "that I'm supposed to ask Myrtle to
+marry me. That is, your father and mine hoped I would. Well," he drew a
+deep breath, "I don't think I shall. Of course, she is one of the
+prettiest girls any one ever saw, and she's quite bright--it's wonderful
+what she has picked up about the Furnace, but yet--" his speech suddenly
+ran out. With an effort Howat brought himself back from his own vastly
+more important concern. "Yes?" he queried, pausing with his fingers in
+the buttonholes of a mulberry damask coat. "I have decided to choose, to
+act, for myself," David announced; "this is a thing where every man must
+be absolutely free.--Caroline can have me if she likes."
+
+Howat could not avoid a momentary, inward flicker of amusement at David
+Forsythe's absolute freedom of choice. He felt infinitely older than the
+other, wiser in the circuitous mysteries of being. He pounded David on
+the back, exclaimed, "Good!"
+
+"I don't know whether to speak to Abner," the other proceeded
+unfilially, "or the great Penny first. I don't care too much for either
+job. It would be pleasanter to go to Caroline. I have an idea she
+doesn't exactly dislike me."
+
+"Perhaps I oughtn't to tell you," Howat replied gravely; "but Caroline
+thinks a lot of you. She has admitted it to me--"
+
+David Forsythe danced agilely about the more serious figure; he kicked
+Howat gaily from behind, ironically patted his cheek. "Hell's buttons!"
+he cried. "Why didn't you tell me that before? You cast iron ass! I'll
+marry Caroline if I have to take her to a charcoal burner's hut. She
+would go, too."
+
+Howat Penny gripped the other's shoulder, faced him with grim
+determination. "Do you fully realize that Myrtle Forge, Shadrach, will
+be us? They will be ours and our wives' and childrens'. We must stand
+together, David, whatever happens, whatever we may, personally, think.
+The iron is big now, but it is going to be great. We mustn't fail, fall
+apart. We'll need each other; there's going to be trouble, I think."
+
+David put out his hand. "I didn't know you felt like that, Howat," he
+replied, the effervescent youth vanished from him too. "It's splendid.
+We'll hammer out some good blooms together. And for the other, nothing
+shall ever make a breach between us."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+They went down to the supper table silently, absorbed in thought. David
+was placed where Mr. Winscombe had been seated, on Mrs. Penny's right,
+and next to Myrtle. Gilbert Penny maintained a flow of high spirits; he
+rallied every one at the table with the exception of, Howat noted,
+Ludowika. Her hair was simply arranged and undecorated, she wore
+primrose with gauze like smoke, an apparently guileless bodice with
+blurred, warm suggestions of her fragrant body. Howat was conscious of
+every detail of her appearance; she was stamped, as she was that
+evening, indelibly on his inner being. He turned toward her but little,
+addressed to her only the most perfunctory remarks; he was absorbed in
+the realization that the most fateful moment he had met was fast
+approaching. His father's cheerful voice continued seemingly
+interminably; now it was a London beauty to which he affected to believe
+David had given his heart. The latter replied stoutly:
+
+"I brought that back safely enough; it's here the danger lies.
+Humiliating to cross the ocean and then be lost in Canary Creek."
+
+Gilbert Penny shot an obvious, humorous glance at Myrtle. She did not
+meet it, but sat with lowered gaze. Caroline made a daring "nose" at
+Howat; but he too failed to acknowledge her message. David's affair had
+sunk from his thoughts. The drawing room was brilliantly lighted: there
+was a constant stir of peacock silk, of yellow and apple green and coral
+lutestring, of white shoulders, in the gold radiance of candles like
+stiff rows of narcissi. Caroline drifted finally into the chamber back
+of the dining room, and they could hear the tenuous vibrations of the
+clavichord. Soon David had disappeared. The elder Penny discovered
+Myrtle seated sullenly at her mother's side; and, taking her arm, he
+escorted her in the direction of the suddenly silenced music.
+
+Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace. She smiled at
+Howat as he moved closer to her. She never did things with her hands, he
+noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little
+heaps of white. She sat motionless, her arms at rest. His mother seemed
+far away. The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room
+wavered in his vision. Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of
+intoxicating, yellow wine. He had a curious sensation of floating in
+air, of tea roses. It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she
+still realized nothing.... She must know now, any minute. Howat saw that
+his mother had gone.
+
+He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her. She
+raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened. Then her expression
+changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand. Her breast
+rose and fell, sharply, once. Howat picked her up by the shoulders and
+crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him. Ludowika's
+skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.
+
+Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa. She
+hadn't struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her
+countenance, only a deep trouble. "Howat," she said softly, "you
+shouldn't have done that. It was brutal, selfish. You--you knew, after
+all that I told you; the premonition--" she broke off, anger shone
+brighter in her eyes. "How detestable men are!" She turned away from
+him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa. Unexpectedly he was
+almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on
+the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.
+
+He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I
+was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with
+bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here,
+that you were different; that feeling in my heart--but it's gone now,
+dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I
+would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single
+little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing
+new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the
+world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see,
+I learned it all quite young.
+
+"I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if
+you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself." She
+appeared older, the Mrs. Winscombe who had first come to Myrtle Forge;
+her mouth was flippant. "The eternal Suzanna," she remarked, "the
+monotonous elders or younger." He paid little heed to her words; the
+coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like
+the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above
+her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement
+of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.
+
+"I didn't choose it," he told her; "it's ruined all that I was. Now, I
+don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about--if
+there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here
+with--as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My
+feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the
+end. There isn't any, I think." He pressed her hands to his throat with
+a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained
+her cheeks, and her breath caught. "Endless," he repeated, losing the
+word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode
+over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat
+returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his
+nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid;
+she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its
+wrist.
+
+"I think it is something in myself," she said presently; "something a
+little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat
+Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. God, I'd like to be that
+girl across the road, in the barnyard." He was back at the fire again
+when Gilbert Penny entered the room. The latter dropped a palm on
+Howat's shoulder.
+
+"Schwar says the last sow metal was faulty," he declared; "the
+Furnace'll need some attention with Abner Forsythe deeper in the
+Provincial affairs. Splendid thing David's back. Look for a lot from
+David." Howat hoped desperately that Ludowika would not leave, go to her
+room, while his father was talking. "David says you have an
+understanding, will do great things. I hope so. I hope so. I won't damn
+him as an example but he will do you no harm. That is, if he touches
+your confounded person at all. A black Penny, Mrs. Winscombe," he said,
+turning to the figure spread in pale silk on the sofa. "Fortunate for
+you to have no such confounded, stubborn lot on your hands. Although,"
+he added laughingly, "Felix Winscombe's no broken reed. But this boy of
+mine--you might think he had been run out of Shadrach," he tapped a
+finger on Howat's back. "Not like those fellows about the Court, anyway.
+They tell me he'll go fifty miles through the woods in a day. Now if we
+could only keep that at the iron trade--"
+
+His father went on insufferably, without end. Howat withdrew stiffly
+from the other's touch. Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika.
+She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated. An immense
+tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer passion vapourized into a
+poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling. He was protective; his jaw set
+rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world. He had
+a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and
+silver buttons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage,
+confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him. Inexplicable
+tremors assailed him, vast fears. His father's deliberate voice
+destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and
+yellow flowers, the suave interior. The others had returned. He heard
+Ludowika speaking; she laughed. His tension relaxed. Suddenly he was
+flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling,
+delightful water. He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose.
+Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.
+
+There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him
+to declare himself to Ludowika. He was vaguely conscious of his mother's
+scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable
+surmising. His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to
+feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the
+consideration of an announcement of his passion for Ludowika Winscombe,
+a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world. But for
+the present he must be careful. This, the greatest event that had
+befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a
+black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his
+convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening.
+His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven
+fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his
+scorn.
+
+As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room. Myrtle took
+her place on the sofa. Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at
+the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own
+council. David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat. Caroline gaily laid
+her arm across her mother's shoulder and propelled her from the room.
+David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less
+clumsy, took his departure. He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow
+of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light.
+Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly. "Howat," she said
+in a small voice, "it's--it's, that is, David loves me. Whatever do you
+suppose father and Myrtle will say?"
+
+"What do you think David is saying to Myrtle now?" he asked drily. "I am
+glad, Caroline; everything worked out straight for you. David is a
+damned good Quaker. For some others life isn't so easy." She laid a warm
+hand on his shoulder. "I wish you were happy, Howat." A slight
+irritation seized him at the facile manner in which she radiated her
+satisfaction, and he moved away. "David's going back to-night. I wish he
+wouldn't," she said troubled. "That long, dark way. Anything might
+happen. But he has simply got to be at his father's office in the
+morning. He is going to speak to him first, see what will be given us at
+the Furnace."
+
+"It should be quite a family party at breakfast," Howat predicted.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+He was entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face
+seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition
+after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared
+suddenly, "I hate David Forsythe!" Gilbert Penny was obviously startled.
+Caroline half rose, as if she had finished breakfast; but she sat down
+again with an expression of determination. Howat looted about from his
+removed place of being. "I do!" Myrtle repeated. "At first he seemed to
+like--I mean I liked him, and then everything changed, got horrid. Some
+one interfered." Resentment, suspicion, dominated her, she grew shrill
+with anger. "I saw him making faces at Howat, as if he and Howat, as if
+Howat had, well--"
+
+"Don't generalize," said Howat coolly; "be particular."
+
+"As if you had deliberately spoiled any chance, yes," she declared
+defiantly, "any chance I had."
+
+"That's ridiculous," Gilbert Penny declared. "What," he asked his wife,
+"are they all driving at?" She professed herself equally puzzled. "Howat
+would say nothing disadvantageous to young Forsythe. He knows what we
+all hope." Caroline suddenly leaned forward, speaking in a level voice:
+"This has nothing to do with Howat, but with me. I am going to tell you
+at once, so that you can all say what you wish, get as angry as you
+like, and then accept what--what had to be. David and I love each other;
+we are going to be married."
+
+Gilbert Penny's surprise slowly gave place to a dark tide suffusing his
+countenance. "You and David," he half stuttered, "getting married--like
+that." Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily
+without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness
+from which she watched the conflicts of her family. "I know I'm
+fearfully bold, yes, indecent," Caroline went on, "and undutiful,
+impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me,
+later. But I won't apologize for loving David."
+
+"Incredible," her father pronounced. "A girl announcing, without the
+slightest warrant or authority, that she intends to marry. And trampling
+on her sister's heart in the bargain." Howat expostulated, "What does it
+matter which he marries? The main affair is to consolidate the
+families." The elder glared at him. "Be silent!" he commanded. Howat
+Penny's ever present resentment rose to the surface. "I am not a girl,"
+he stated; "nor yet a nigger. And, personally, I think David was
+extremely wise."
+
+"I was sure of it," Myrtle cried; "he--he has talked against me, helped
+Caroline behind my back." She sobbed thinly, with her arm across her
+eyes. "If I thought anything like that had occurred," their father
+asserted, "Howat would--" he paused, gazing heavily about at his family.
+
+Howat's ill temper arose. "Yes--?" he demanded with a sharp inflection.
+"Be still, Howat," his mother said unexpectedly. "This is all very
+regrettable, Gilbert," she told her husband; "but it is an impossible
+subject of discussion." Gilbert Penny continued hotly, "He wouldn't stay
+about here." She replied equably, "On the contrary, Howat shall be at
+Myrtle Forge until he himself chooses to leave."
+
+Howat was conscious of a surprise almost as moving as that pictured on
+his father's countenance. He had never heard Isabel Penny speak in that
+manner before; perhaps at last she would reveal what he had long
+speculated over--her true, inner situation. But he saw at once that he
+was to be again disappointed; the speaker was immediately enveloped in
+her detachment, the air that seemed almost one of a spectator in the
+Penny household. She smiled deprecatingly. How fine she was, Howat
+thought. Gilbert Penny did not readily recover from his consternation;
+his surprise had notably increased to that. His mouth was open, his face
+red and agitated. "Before the children, Isabel," he complained. "Don't
+know what to think. Surely, surely, you don't uphold Howat? Outrageous
+conduct if it's true. And Myrtle so gentle, never hurt any one in her
+life." Myrtle circled the table, and found a place in his arms. "If they
+had only told me," she protested. "If Caroline--" He patted her flushed
+cheeks. "Don't give it another thought," he directed; "a girl as pretty
+as you! I'll take you to London, where you'll have a string of men, not
+Quakers, fine as peacocks." He bent his gaze on his son.
+
+"Didn't I tell you last evening that the cast metal has been light?" he
+demanded. "Must I beg you to go to the Furnace? Or perhaps that too
+conflicts with your mother's fears for you. There are stumps in the
+road." There was a whisper of skirts at the door, and Ludowika Winscombe
+stood smiling at them. Myrtle turned her tear-swollen face upon her
+father's shoulder. Howat wondered if Ludowika had slept. He endeavoured
+in vain to discover from her serene countenance something of her
+thoughts of what had occurred. He had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"I can go to Shadrach as soon as Adam saddles a horse," he told his
+father. "You were curious about the Furnace," he added to Ludowika,
+masking the keen anxiety he felt at what was to follow; "it's a sunny
+day, a pleasant ride." She answered without a trace of feeling other
+than a casual politeness. "Thank you, since it will be my only
+opportunity. I'll have to change." She was gazing, Howat discovered,
+lightly at Isabel Penny. "I must get the figures from Schwar," his
+father said. Before he left the room he moved to his wife's side, rested
+his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a reassuring nod.
+Howat saw that, whatever it might be, the bond between them was secure,
+stronger than any differences of prejudices or blood, more potent than
+time itself. The group, the strain, about the table, broke up.
+
+The horses footed abreast over the road that crossed the hills and
+forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace.
+Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her
+face muffled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression
+she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His passion mounted
+and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its tide.
+Howat said at last:
+
+"Are you still so angry at life, at yourself?"
+
+"No," she replied; "I slept that foolishness away. I must have sounded
+like a character in _The Lying Valet._" Her present mood obscurely
+troubled him; he infinitely preferred her in the pale crumpled silk and
+candle light of the evening before. "I wish I could tell you what I
+feel," he said moodily.
+
+"Why not?" she replied. "It's the most amusing thing possible. You
+advance and I seem to retreat; you reach forward and grasp--my fan, a
+handful of petticoat; you protest and sulk--"
+
+"Perhaps in Vauxhall," he interrupted her savagely, "but not here, not
+like that, not with me. This is not a gavotte. I didn't want it; I tried
+to get away; but it, you, had me in a breath. At once it was all over.
+God knows what it is. Call it love. It isn't a thing under a hedge, I
+tell you that, for an hour. It's stronger than anything else that will
+ever touch me, it will last longer.... Like falling into a river.
+Perhaps I'm different, a black Penny, but what other men take like
+water, a woman, is brandy for me. I'm--I'm not used to it. I haven't
+wanted Kate here and Mary there; but only you. I've got to have you," he
+said with a marked simplicity. "I've got to, or there will be a bad
+smash."
+
+Ludowika rode silently, hid in her mask. He urged his horse closer to
+her, and laid a hand on her swaying shoulder. "I didn't choose this," he
+repeated; "the blame's somewhere else." He felt a tremor run through
+her. "Why say blame?" she finally answered. "I hate moralities and
+excuses and tears. If you are set on being gloomy, and talking to heaven
+about damnation, take it all away from me." A shadow moved across the
+countryside, and he saw clouds rising out of the north. A sudden wind
+swept through the still forest, and immediately the air was aflame with
+rushing autumn leaves. They fell across Howat's face and eddied about
+the horses' legs. The grey bank deepened in space, the sun vanished; the
+wind was bleak. It seemed to Howat Penny that the world had changed,
+its gold stricken to dun and gaunt branches, in an instant. The road
+descended to the clustered stone houses about Shadrach Furnace.
+
+The horses were left under the shed of the smithy at the primitive cross
+roads. Thomas Gilkan had gone to the river about a purchase of casting
+sand, but expected to be back for the evening run of metal. Fanny was
+away, Howat learned, visiting Dan Hesa's family. They would, of course,
+have dinner at the Heydricks; and the latter sent a boy home to prepare
+his wife. Ludowika and Howat aimlessly followed the turning road that
+mounted to the coal house. A levelled and beaten path, built up with
+stone, led out to the top of the stack, where a group of sooty figures
+were gathered about the clear, almost smokeless flame of the blast.
+Below they lingered on the grassy edge of the stream banked against the
+hillside and flooding smoothly to the clamorous fall and revolving wheel
+by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter
+spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their
+dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a
+dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace,
+voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows,
+dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.
+
+Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her
+arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an
+abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was
+drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid
+embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.
+
+At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The
+house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on
+the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the
+length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared
+into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep
+embrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road,
+and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led
+above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland apron and
+worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards
+while Heydrick and their guests dined.
+
+Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it
+seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by
+the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They
+were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The
+charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the
+cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled
+through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were
+unsteady, inexact.
+
+The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some
+scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant
+before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had
+taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they
+protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was
+restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's
+cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she
+took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with
+Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance. They stood for a while in
+the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for
+the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom
+of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure
+moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of
+rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling
+emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the
+murky interior.
+
+A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles
+accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on
+the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.
+Ludowika looked within. "For storing," Howat told her. Inside were piled
+sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.
+Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the
+door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly,
+and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms; then Ludowika
+stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders. She rested
+against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the
+ceiling. "For storage," he said again. He thought his throat had closed,
+and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was
+above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. "You
+see," he muttered; "things for the store ... the men, wool stockings,
+handkerchiefs ... against their pay." The drumming rain was scarcely a
+foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and
+canvas-sewed bales about the walls. "Ludowika," Howat said. He
+stopped--she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was
+individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.
+
+A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his
+blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices,
+somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses
+waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Winscombe. No, by God, never
+that last again!
+
+He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool
+shock of the rain. Ludowika was muffled in her cloak. Howat could see a
+renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about
+the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to
+call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to
+wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly
+the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which
+the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out
+of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans
+of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the
+fluid iron.
+
+Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up
+at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an
+expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond
+Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road.
+A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it
+would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new
+difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He
+searched his feelings curiously.
+
+The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without
+remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced
+none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over
+no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable
+then to think of Felix Winscombe except as a person generally
+unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without
+any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed
+wig, now absent in Maryland, had no importance in the passionate
+situation that had arisen between Ludowika and himself. Felix Winscombe
+would of course have to be met, dealt with; but so would a great many
+other exterior conditions.
+
+Ludowika, in her linen mask, was enigmatic, a figure of mystery. A
+complete silence continued between them; at times they ambled with his
+hand on her body; then the inequalities of the road forced them apart.
+The clouds dissolved, the sky was immaculate, green, with dawning stars
+like dim white flowers. A faint odour of the already mouldering year
+rose from the wet earth. Suddenly Ludowika dragged the mask from her
+face. Quivering with intense feeling she cried:
+
+"I'm glad, Howat! Howat, I'm glad!"
+
+He contrived to put an arm about her, crush her to him for a precarious
+moment. "We have had an unforgettable day out of life," she continued
+rapidly; "that is something. It has been different, strangely apart,
+from all the rest. The rain and that musty little store house and the
+wonderful iron; a memory to hold, carry away--"
+
+"To carry where?" he interrupted. "You must realize that I'll never let
+you go now. I will keep you if we have to go beyond the Endless
+Mountains. I will keep you in the face of any man or opposition
+created."
+
+A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. "I am
+afraid of myself, Howat," she told him; "all that I have been, my
+life--against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different.
+Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while I have needed this.
+Howat, do you think so? Do you think I could forget so much, drop the
+past from me, be all new and happy?"
+
+He reassured her, only half intent upon the burden of her words. He
+utterly disregarded anything provisional in their position; happiness or
+unhappiness were unconsidered in the overwhelming determination that she
+should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain.
+The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient
+gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily
+censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid,
+unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place
+comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the
+complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the elder at
+breakfast. His mother, Howat gladly felt, would give him the sympathy of
+a wise, broad understanding. David and Caroline would interpose no
+serious objection. Felix Winscombe remained; a virile figure in spite of
+his years; a man of assured position and a bitter will.
+
+He determined to speak on the day that Felix Winscombe returned from
+Annapolis; there would be no concealment of what had occurred, and no
+hypocrisy. A decent regret at Winscombe's supreme loss. The other would
+not relinquish Ludowika without a struggle. Who would? It was
+conceivable that he would summon the assistance of the law, conceivable
+but not probable; the situation had its centre in a purely personal
+pride. Nothing essential could be won legally. A physical encounter was
+far more likely. Howat thought of that coldly. He had no chivalrous
+instinct to offer himself as a sop to conventional honour. In any
+struggle, exchange of shots, he intended to be victorious.... He would
+have the naming of the conditions.
+
+"It's beautiful here," Ludowika broke into his speculations; "the great
+forests and Myrtle Forge. I can almost picture myself directing servants
+like your mother, getting supplies out of the store, and watching the
+charcoal and iron brought down to the Forge. The sound of the hammer has
+become a part of my dreams. And you, Howat--I have never before had a
+feeling like this for a man. There's a little fear in it even. It must
+be stronger than the other, than Europe; I want it to be." They could
+see below them the lighted windows at Myrtle Forge. The horses turned
+unguided into the curving way across the lawn. A figure stood
+obsequiously at the door; it was, Howat saw with deep automatic
+revulsion, the Italian servant. He wondered again impatiently at the
+persistently unpleasant impression the other made on him. Gilbert Penny
+was waiting in the hall, and Howat told him fully the result of his
+investigation.
+
+His father nodded, satisfied. "You are taking hold a great bit better,"
+he was obviously pleased. "We must go over the whole iron situation with
+the Forsythes. It's time you and David stepped forward. I am getting
+bothered by new complications; the thing is spreading out so
+rapidly--steel and a thousand new methods and refinements. And the
+English opposition; I'm afraid you'll come into that."
+
+Ludowika did not again appear that evening, and Howat sat informally
+before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline.
+Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled,
+almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his
+father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from
+just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he
+be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black
+Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious
+spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be
+a subject to it always. All the elements of his captivity lay so
+entirely outside of him, beyond his power to measure or comprehend, that
+a feeling of helplessness came over him. He again had the sense of being
+swept twisting in an irresistible flood. But his confusion was dominated
+by one great assurance--nothing should deprive him of Ludowika. An
+intoxicating memory invaded him, touched every nerve with delight and a
+tyrannical hunger. His fibre seemed to crumble, his knees turn to dust.
+Years ago he had been poisoned by berries, and limpness almost like this
+had gone softly, treacherously, through him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+They entered into a period of secret contentment and understanding.
+Ludowika displayed a grave interest in the details of the house and iron
+at Myrtle Forge; he explained the processes that resulted in the wrought
+blooms despatched by tons in the lumbering, mule-drawn wagons. They
+explored the farm, where she listened approvingly to the changes he
+proposed making, kitchen gardens to be planted, the hedges of roses and
+gravelled paths to be laid--for her. She suggested an Italian walk,
+latticed above, with a stone seat, and was indicating a corner that
+might be transformed into a semblance of an angle of Versailles, when,
+suddenly, she stopped, and clasped his wrist.
+
+"No! No!" she exclaimed, with surprising energy. "We'll have no France,
+no court, here, but only America; only you and myself, with no past, no
+memories, but just the future." How that was to be realized neither of
+them considered; they avoided all practical issues, difficulties. They
+never mentioned Felix Winscombe's name. However, a long communication
+came from him for his wife. She read it thoughtfully, in the drawing
+room, awaiting dinner. No one else but Howat was present, and he was
+standing with his hand on her shoulder. "Felix hasn't been well," she
+remarked presently. "For the first time he has spoken to me of his age.
+The Maryland affair drags, and that has wearied him."
+
+"What does he say about returning?" Howat bluntly asked.
+
+"Shortly, he hopes; that is, in another ten days. He says there is a
+good ship, the _Lindamira_, by the middle of November." Howat said,
+"Excellent." Ludowika gazed at him swiftly. "It will be difficult." His
+face became grim, but he made no direct reply. A silence fell on the
+room through which vibrated the blows of the trip hammer at the Forge.
+The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the
+counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a
+note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A
+flexibility that seemed entirely without bones. His eyes were jet slits,
+his lips shaven and mobile; a wig was repulsively saturated with scented
+grease. Yet it was not in actual details that he oppressed Howat; but by
+the vague suggestion of debasing commendations, of surreptitious
+understanding, insinuations. He seemed, absurdly, unreal, a symbol the
+intent of which Howat missed; he suppressed an insane movement to touch
+the Italian, discover if he was actually before him.
+
+He reread Ludowika's note whenever he was not actually employed in
+recording, until he was obliged to conceal it in the Forge book.
+
+Later Abner Forsythe arrived with David, and there was a stir of
+preparing rooms and communication with the farm. David's mother was
+dead, and Abner conducted the wedding negotiations with the Pennys. "I
+thought it would be the pretty little one," he said at the table, with a
+Quaker disregard of small niceties of feeling; "but, Gilbert, any girl
+of yours would be more than the young men of the present deserve." It
+was a difficult conversation for every one but Ludowika and Abner
+Forsythe. A greater ease appeared after supper. David and Caroline
+disappeared in the direction of the clavichord, from which sounded some
+scattered, perfunctory measures. The two elder men returned, over a
+decanter of French spirits, to the inevitable and engrossing subject of
+iron and the Crown regulations; Myrtle sat stiffly before the fireplace
+with Isabel Penny; and Howat moved up and across the room, his gaze
+lying on Ludowika, spread in an expanse of orange chiffon and bold
+silver tracery on the small sofa.
+
+She smiled at him once, but, for the most part, she was lost in revery.
+Ludowika had a fan, to hold against the fire; and her white fingers were
+playing with its polished black sticks and glazed paper printed with an
+ornamental bar of music. A faint colour stained her cheeks as he watched
+her, and set his heart tumultuously beating. He told himself over and
+over, with an unabated sense of wonder, that she was his. He longed for
+the moment when they could discard all pretence and be frankly,
+completely, together. That must happen after Felix Winscombe arrived.
+Meanwhile he was forced to content himself with a look, a quick or
+lingering contact of fingers, the crush of her body against his
+momentarily in a passage. They had returned once to the rock where he
+had first been intoxicated by her; in a strangling wave of emotion he
+had taken her into his arms; but she had broken away. The width of the
+stream and screen of trees had apparently disconcerted Ludowika, and she
+contrived to make him feel inexcusably young, awkward.
+
+But usually he dominated her; there was a depth to his passion that
+achieved patience, the calmness of unassailable fortitude. She gazed at
+him often with a surprise that bordered on fear; again she would delight
+in his mastery, beg him to hold her forever safe against the past. He
+reassured her of his ability and determination to accomplish that; there
+was not the shadow of a doubt in his own mind. He was more troubled now
+than formerly; but he was eager for the climax to pass, impatient to
+claim his own.
+
+As if a dam had been again thrown across the flood of his emotions he
+felt them mounting, growing more and more irrepressible. He slept in
+feverish snatches, with gaps in which he stared wide-eyed into the dark,
+trying to realize his coming joy, visualizing Ludowika, a brilliant
+apparition of flowing silk, on the night. He thought of the store house
+at the Furnace, of the rain beating on the roof, and Ludowika ... God,
+if that old man would only return, go, leave them! The clouds vanished
+and left the nights emerald clear, the constellations glittered in
+frosty immensities of silence. He stood at the open window with his
+shoulders bare, revelling in the cold air that flowed over him, defying
+winter, death itself. The moon waned immutably.
+
+David was now at Shadrach Furnace, living with the Heydricks, and the
+necessities that brought him to Myrtle Forge were endless. He was
+absolutely happy, and Howat watched him with mingled longing and envy.
+His affair, darker, more tragic in spite of a consummation that must be
+joyous, seemed infinitely more mature. Caroline was a nice enough girl,
+but Ludowika was supremely fascinating. David amused him:
+
+"Caroline is a miracle. Of course there are prettier, and Mrs. Winscombe
+has more air; but none has Caroline's charming manner. Of course, you
+have noticed it. Even a thick-headed brother couldn't miss that. We have
+plans for you, too. And it's no good your looking glum; we'll glum you."
+
+The amusement faded from Howat's countenance, and he listened sullenly
+to the end of the raillery. His temper was growing daily more uneven,
+the delight had largely left his reflections. His passion had become too
+insistent for happy conjecturing; the visions of Ludowika now only
+tormented him. Her eyes were like burning sapphires, her warm palms
+caressed his face; he was increasingly gaunt and shadowed. Once he gave
+a note for her to the Italian servant, loathing the hand that adroitly
+covered the folded sheet, the other's oblique smile; but she sent back
+word that she was suffering from a headache. He began to plan so that he
+would intercept her in unexpected places. She, too, was passionate in
+her admissions; but, somehow, some one always stumbled toward them, or
+they were summoned from beyond. He began to feel that this was not mere
+chance, but desired, deliberately courted, by Ludowika. Very well, he
+would end it all, as it were, with a shout when Felix Winscombe came
+back.
+
+When Felix Winscombe came back!
+
+He was, too, increasingly aware of his mother's scrutiny. Howat was
+certain that Isabel Penny had surmised a part of his feeling for
+Ludowika. He didn't greatly care; any one might know, he thought
+contemptuously. It had destroyed his sympathetic feeling for his mother,
+the only considerate bond that had existed with his family.
+Unconsciously he placed her on one side of a line, the other held only
+Ludowika and himself.
+
+He explained this to her in a sere reach of the garden. It was
+afternoon, the sun low and a haze on the hills. Ludowika had on a
+scarlet wrap, curiously vivid against the withered, brown aspect of the
+faded flower stems. "You and me," he repeated. She gazed, without
+answering, at the barrier of hills that closed in Myrtle Forge. From
+the thickets came the clear whistling of partridges, intensifying the
+unbroken tranquillity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was
+suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive
+forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a
+corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling
+always intensified by the thought of England. "The Province," he said
+disjointedly, "a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road
+this morning? Perhaps five with their women, some pack horses, kitchen
+tins and hide tents. The men wore buckskin, and furred caps, and the
+women's skirts were sewed leather. One was tramping along with a feeding
+baby. Well, God knows where they have been, how many days they have
+walked; their shoes were in shreds. And their faces, thin and serious,
+have looked steadily over rifles at death. The women, too. You'll only
+get them here, in a big country, a new--"
+
+"They were terrible," Ludowika declared; "savage. I was glad when they
+were by. The baby at the woman's great breast!" she shuddered at the
+memory. "Like animals."
+
+He gazed at her with a slight surprise; he had never heard her speak so
+bitterly. He saw her more clearly than ever before; as if her words had
+illuminated her extraordinary delicacy of being, had made visible all
+the infinite refinements of which she was the result. He had a
+recurrence of his sense of her incongruity here, balanced on polished
+black pattens, against the darkening hills. The sun disappeared, there
+was a cool flare of yellow light, and a feeling of impending evening.
+The hills were indigo, the forest a dimmer gold, a wind moved audible in
+the dry leaves.
+
+Ludowika gasped. "It's so--so huge," she said, "all the lonely miles. At
+times I can't bear to think of it." A faint dread invaded him. "Last
+night, when I couldn't sleep, a thing howled in the woods. And I got
+thinking of those naked men at the Forge, with their eyes rimmed in
+black, and--and--"
+
+He disregarded the publicity of their position and put an arm about her
+shoulders, in an overwhelming impulse to calm and reassure her; but she
+slipped away. "I'll be all right again," she promised; "but I think it's
+more cheerful with the candles. We'll get your sister to play Belshazzar
+and pretend we're across the green from St. James."
+
+A mood darker than any he had lately known settled over him. It was
+natural for Ludowika to be lonely, at first; but in a little she would
+grow to love the wild like himself. She must. The Province was to be her
+life. He was standing before the fire in the informal chamber beyond the
+dining room, watching his mother's vigorous hands deftly engaged in
+embroidery. There was no one present, and a sudden, totally desperate
+recklessness possessed him. Isabel Penny said:
+
+"Mr. Winscombe will be here shortly."
+
+"I wish it would be to-night," he declared. She raised her calm gaze
+with brows arched in inquiry. "There is something--" he broke off. "She
+belongs to me," he said in a low, harsh voice, "and not to that old
+man."
+
+Mrs. Penny secured her needle, and put the colourful web aside. She was,
+as he had been sure she would be, entirely composed, admirable. Her
+questioning look grew keener. "I was afraid of that," she admitted
+simply; "after the first. It is very unpleasant and difficult. This is
+not London, and your father will make no allowances. You are not any
+easier to bend, Howat. With Mrs. Winscombe--" she paused, "I am not
+certain. But there is no doubt about the husband."
+
+"She belongs to me," he reiterated sullenly.
+
+"There is no need for you to make yourself offensively clear. I know
+something of details of that kind. I told you once that they might mean
+only a very little to--to certain women. I am not prepared to judge
+about that. But I know you, what bitter feeling you are capable of. You
+are a very pure man, Howat; and for that reason such an occurrence would
+tear you up and across. There is no use in begging you to be cautious,
+diplomatic. Mr. Winscombe, too, is very determined; he has many
+advantages--maturity, coldness, experience. He won't spare you, either.
+It's excessively unfortunate."
+
+"I'll get it over as quickly as possible. I didn't want the thing to
+happen, it wasn't from any choice; it hit me like a bullet. Nothing else
+is of the slightest importance. I've gone over this again and again;
+I'll tell him and let him try what he can. Ludowika's gone from--from
+the fireworks and fiddles and stinking courts; I've got her, and, by
+God, I'll keep her!"
+
+"Talk quietly; you can't shout yourself into this. Are you certain that
+Mrs. Winscombe really finds the courts--stinking? I remember, at first,"
+she stopped. Even in the midst of his passion he listened for what
+revelation she might make; but none followed. She was silent for a
+minute. "They become a habit," she said finally; "love, loves, become a
+habit. Only men brought up in the same atmosphere can understand. At
+first Felix Winscombe will be infuriated with you for speaking, then he
+will realize more, and the trouble will follow. Are you certain that you
+have comprehended? It would be stupid to mistake an episode, you would
+succeed only in making yourself ridiculous."
+
+He lifted up both his hands and closed them with a quivering, relentless
+force.
+
+"Truly," Isabel Penny remarked, "truly I begin to be sorry for her.
+There is something she has yet to learn about men. Nothing can be said;
+and that is what your father will not penetrate. Howat, I am even a
+little afraid ... now. That, I believe, is unusual for me. It's your
+blackness, like powder. The explosion can kill. Nothing may be said.
+Life drags us along by the hair."
+
+Her questions about Ludowika joined to the memory of the latter's
+revulsion from the primitive conditions of the Province and added to the
+heaviness of his heart. He mentally denied his mother's suggestions,
+drove them from him, but they left a faint enduring sting, a vague
+unrest. His passion for Ludowika swelled, dominated, him; he forgot
+everything but his own, supreme desire. Nothing else stood before its
+flood; all thought of Ludowika's final happiness was lost with the other
+detritus. The tense closing of his hands had symbolized his feeling, his
+intent. He held her in a manner as nakedly primitive as the inchoate
+sexuality of the emotion that had engulfed him.
+
+Ludowika did not appear for supper, and he was possessed by a misery of
+vague apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a
+token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped
+the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately,
+without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his
+room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply,
+only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the
+affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court
+adventure. It was the Italian servant, Howat decided; and immediately he
+recognized why he disliked the other--it was because he expressed an
+aspect of slyness that lay over Ludowika and himself. He put that from
+him, too; but it was like brushing away cobwebs. His hunger for Ludowika
+increased all the while; it became more burningly material, insatiable
+and concrete.
+
+On the day following she clung to him, when opportunity offered, with a
+desperate energy of emotion. "You must hold me tighter," she told him.
+Her mood rapidly changed, and she complained of the eternal, pervasive
+fall of the forge hammer. "It will drive me mad," she declared almost
+wildly. "I can't bear to think of its going on and on, year after year;
+listening to it--" He heard her with sombre eyes. She had come to the
+counting house, empty for the moment but for themselves, and stood with
+her countenance shadowed by a frown. "If the hammer stops," he replied,
+waving his hand largely, "all this, the Pennys, stop, too. I'm afraid
+that sound of beating out iron will be always wrought through our lives.
+You will get accustomed to it--"
+
+Her expression grew petulant, resentful. "Do you mean that we couldn't,
+perhaps, go to England, if--if I wanted?" He moved closer to her,
+brushing the circumference of her skirt. "You asked me to hold you, to
+keep you from the past; and I am going to do it. London is all that you
+wish to forget; it must go completely out of your life ... never finger
+you again." A faint dread that deepened almost to antagonism was
+visible on her countenance. "I suppose to men talk like that seems a
+sign of strength, of possession; but it doesn't impress women, really.
+You see, women give, or else--there is nothing."
+
+"I had no thought of impressing you," he said simply; "I only repeated
+what came into my mind, what I mean. It would be a mistake for me to
+take you to England, and make both of us miserable. Beside, there is
+more to tend here than I'll ever accomplish." She objected, "But other
+people, workmen, will do the actual labour. Surely you are not going to
+keep on with anything so vulgar--" she indicated the office and desks.
+Her features sharpened with contempt. "I'll not be a clerk," he told her
+gravely. "But I am responsible for a great deal. You should understand
+that for you showed it to me. Most of what I am now has been you." He
+reached out his hands to her in a wave of tenderness, but she evaded
+him. She stood irresolute for a moment and then abruptly turned and
+disappeared.
+
+A white rim of new moon grew visible at the edge of dusk, and he stood
+gazing at it before he entered the dwelling. A dull unrest had become
+part of his inner tumult, a premonition falling over him like an
+advancing shadow. But above all his vague fears rose the knowledge that
+he would never let Ludowika go from him; that was the root of his being.
+Now she could never leave him. It was natural, he assured himself again,
+that she should feel doubts at first; everything here was so different
+from the life she had known; and women were variable. He would have to
+understand that, learn to accommodate himself to changing, surface
+moods, immovable underneath.
+
+She had put on for supper, he saw, a daring dress; and her expression
+was that which he had first noted, indifferent, slightly scoffing. Her
+shoulders and arms gleamed under fragile gauze, her bodice was hardly
+more than a caress of silk. He watched her every movement, and got a
+sort of satisfaction from the knowledge that she grew increasingly
+disturbed at his unwavering scrutiny. His mother's attitude toward Mrs.
+Winscombe had not changed by a shade, an inflection; she was correctly
+cordial in her slightly distant manner.
+
+In the ebb and flow of the evening Howat was left with Ludowika for a
+little, and he bent over her, kissing her sharply. She was coldly
+unresponsive; and he kissed her again, trying vainly to bring some
+warmth to her lips. She did not avoid him actually, but he felt that
+something in her, essential, slipped aside from his caress. His emotion
+changed to a mounting anger. "You will have to get over this now or
+later," he asserted. She said surprisingly, "Felix will be home this
+week." He stood with an arm half raised, his head turned, as he had been
+arrested by her period.
+
+"Well?" he demanded stupidly. Her tone had been beyond his
+comprehension. "Felix," she went on, apparently at random, "is very
+satisfactory." Something of her intent penetrated his stunned faculties.
+He advanced toward her dark with rage. "And if he is," he replied, "it
+will do him no good. It will do you no good, if you think--" he broke
+off from an accession of emotion. "What damned thing are you thinking
+of?"
+
+"The Princess Amelia's stockings," she answered pertly.
+
+"You'll never put them on her again, like any dirty chamber maid."
+
+"Felix, the end of this week," she repeated.
+
+"I'll kill him," Howat whispered; "if he lifts a hand I'll shoot him
+through the head. This was forced on me; some one else, responsible, can
+pay." Her chin was up, her expression mocking. "Ridiculous, like any
+cloddish countryman." She walked deliberately away, seated herself in a
+graceful eddy of panniered silk.
+
+A cold torment succeeded his rage; he had the feeling of being
+hopelessly trapped, stifling in his passion. He followed her. "Ludowika,
+this is horrible, so soon. I am willing to think that I am to blame;
+stupid; no experience. You will have to be patient with me. Naturally
+everything, now--" he broke off and wandered to a window, holding aside
+the draperies, gazing out into the night. The sky was so luminous that
+the barriers of surrounding hills were printed clearly against starry
+space. The forest swept about in a dark veil; nowhere could be seen a
+glimpse of habitation. He heard the wavering cry of an owl.
+
+The Province, immense, secretive! Paper lanterns strung in parks, hid
+music, provocative smiles only playing with the heart! It was
+tremendously unfortunate. Why must they suffer so unreasonably?
+Something, he was certain, had gone wrong; it lay both within them and
+outside; a force diverted, a purpose unaccomplished. It bent, broke,
+them like two twigs; they were no more than two bubbles, momentarily
+reflecting the sky, on a profound depth. A wind stirred, oppressed them,
+and they were gone. A great pity for Ludowika took its place in his
+feelings. He was sorry for himself. Suddenly the rustle of her skirts
+approached.
+
+An infinitely seductive, warm arm crept about his neck; she abandoned
+herself to a ruthless embrace. "It's been wonderful, Howat; and--and it
+isn't over, yet. Nothing lasts, it's a mistake to demand too much. We
+must take what we may. Perhaps, even, later--in London. No, don't
+interrupt me. After all, I'm wiser than you are. I was swept away for a
+little. Impossibilities. I am what I am. I was always that, inside of
+me. If the longing I told you about had been stronger, it, and not the
+court, would have made me; but it was no more than a glimpse seen from a
+window, a thing far away. I'd never reach it. This, now, has been the
+best of me, all."
+
+He had a mingled sense of the truth and futility of her words. It was
+as if his passion stood apart from them, dominating them, lashing him
+with desire. Nothing she might say, no necessity nor effort, could free
+them. The uselessness of words smote him. She spoke again, an urgent
+flow of dulcet sound against his ear; but it was without meaning, lost
+in the drumming of his blood. The stir of feet approached, and he
+released her, moving to the fireplace. It was Caroline. She stopped
+awkwardly, advancing a needless explanation of a trivial errand from the
+doorway, and vanished.
+
+His position at Myrtle Forge was fast becoming impossible. There would
+be an explosion now at any moment. He took the fire tongs and idly
+rearranged the wood on the hearth. The flames blazed more brightly,
+their reflection squirmed over the lacquer frames on the walls, gleamed
+richly on polished black walnut, and fell across the Turkey floor
+carpet. It even reached through the pale candle light and flickered on
+Ludowika's dull red gown, flowered and clouded with blue. She was turned
+away from him, against the window; her shoulders drooped in an attitude
+of dejection. The flames died away again.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Ludowika's manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and,
+Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient
+air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to
+him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive.
+She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband. Felix Winscombe,
+she thought, would mean--escape. He used the word deliberately,
+realizing that that now expressed her attitude toward the Province,
+toward him. It made no difference in his feeling for her, his
+determination that nothing should take her from him. His power of
+detachment vanished; he became utterly the instrument of his passion.
+
+He didn't press upon her small expressions of his emotion; somehow,
+without struggle, she had made them seem foolish; beyond that they were
+inadequate. He was conscious of the approach of a great climax; his
+feeling was above the satisfaction of trivial caresses. Soon, he told
+himself, soon he would absolutely possess her, for as long as they
+lived. Ultimately she must be happy with him. He thought the same things
+in a ceaseless round; he walked almost without sight, discharging
+mechanically the routine of daily existence; answering inevitable
+queries in a perfunctory, dull voice. Myrtle Forge made a distant
+background of immaterial colours and sounds for the slightly mocking
+figure of Ludowika.
+
+In mid-afternoon David arrived with a face stung scarlet by beating
+wind, and a clatter of hoofs. He immediately found Gilbert Penny, and
+the two men sat together with grave faces, lowered voices. Howat, who
+had left the counting house at the sound of the hurried approach, caught
+a few words as he drew near the others:
+
+"... a bad attack, crumpled him up. Coming out from the city now." They
+were talking about Felix Winscombe, who, it appeared, had been assaulted
+by a knife-like pain; and was returning to Myrtle Forge. "Watlow saw no
+reason why it should be dangerous," David continued; "he thinks perhaps
+it came from unusual exertions, entertaining. A little rest, he says. He
+thinks the Winscombes will be able to sail on the _Lindamira_ as they
+planned."
+
+Ludowika listened seriously to Gilbert Penny's few, temperate words of
+preparation. "He has had a pain like that before," she told them. "It
+always passes away. Felix is really very strong, in spite of his age. He
+won't ordinarily go to bed, but I'll insist on that now, simply for
+rest." Felix Winscombe appeared at the supper hour. He was helped out
+of Abner Forsythe's leather-hung chaise, and assisted into the house.
+Howat saw him under the hanging lamp in the hall; with a painful
+surprise he realized that he was gazing at the haggard face of an old
+man. Before he had never connected the thought of definite age with Mr.
+Winscombe. The man's satirical virility had forbidden any of the
+patronage unconsciously extended to the aged.
+
+A trace of his familiar, mocking smile remained, but it was tremulous;
+it required, Howat saw, great effort. An involuntary admiration
+possessed him for the other's unquenchable courage. The latter protested
+vehemently against being led to his room by Ludowika; but she ignored
+his determination to go into supper, swept him away with a firm arm
+about his waist.
+
+The house took on the slightly strange and disordered aspect of illness;
+voices were grave, low; in the morning Howat learned that Felix
+Winscombe had had another vicious attack in the night. Dr. Watlow
+arrived, and demanded assistance. Howat Penny, in the room where
+Ludowika's husband lay exhausted in a bed canopied and draped in gay
+India silk, followed Watlow's actions with a healthy feeling of
+revulsion. The doctor bared Winscombe's spare chest, then filled a
+shallow, thick glass with spirits; emptying the latter, he set fire to
+the interior of the glass; and, when the blue flame had expired, clapped
+the cupped interior over the prostrate man's heart. There was, it
+seemed, little else that could be done; bleeding was judged for the
+once unexpeditious.
+
+An effort at commonplace conversation was maintained at dinner. Ludowika
+openly discussed the arrangements for their return to London. Felix
+Winscombe had rallied from the night; his wife said that it was
+difficult to restrain him. The most comfortable provisions, she
+continued, had been made for their passage on the _Lindamira_. Howat
+heard her without resentment. He had no wish to contradict her
+needlessly even in thought; he was immovably fixed. Mr. Winscombe's
+debilitated return had completely upset his intentions. An entirely
+different proceeding would now be demanded, but with an identical end.
+What pity he felt for the elder had no power to reach or alter his
+passion.
+
+He returned to the counting house, and worked methodically through the
+afternoon, with an increasing sense of being involved in an irresistible
+movement. This gave him a feeling almost of tranquillity; from the
+beginning he had not been responsible. In the face of illness the
+Italian servant proved utterly undependable; he cringed, stricken with
+dread, from the spectacle of suffering. And when late in the day Mr.
+Winscombe, partially drugged with opium, grew consciously weaker,
+Howat's assistance was required.
+
+Ludowika now remained in the room with her husband, and there was a
+discreet movement in and out by various members of the household.
+Isabel Penny remained for an hour, Caroline took her place, Myrtle
+fluttered uncertainly in the doorway. Through the evening Felix
+Winscombe lay propped on pillows, his head covered by a black gros de
+Naples cap. His keen personality waned and revived on his long, yellow
+countenance. At one side wigs stood in a row on blocks, a brilliant,
+magenta coat lay in a huddle on a chair. At intervals he spoke, in a
+thinner, higher voice than customary, petulantly uneasy, or with a
+familiar, sardonic inflection. At the latter Ludowika would grow
+immensely cheered. She entirely ignored Howat on the occasions when he
+was in the room. He saw her mostly bent over leather boxes, into which
+disappeared her rich store of silk and gold brocades, shoes of purple
+morocco, soft white shifts. Howat watched her without an emotion visible
+on his sombre countenance.
+
+Occasionally Mr. Winscombe's tenuous fingers dipped into a snuff box of
+black enamel and brilliants, and he lifted his hand languidly. The man's
+vitality, his sheer determination, were extraordinary. Even now he was
+far from impotence. He had, Howat had learned, completely dominated the
+Provincial Councils, forced a mutual compromise and agreement on them.
+He spoke of still more complicated affairs awaiting him in England. He
+damned the Italian's "white liver," and threatened to leave him in
+America. Dr. Watlow had been forced to return to the city.
+
+Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his
+feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it
+easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about
+their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his
+personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the
+future of the Penny iron. They might live in one of the outlying stone
+dwellings at the Forge ... for the present. He was glad that Gilbert
+Penny, that he, was rich. Ludowika could continue to dress in rare
+fabrics, to step in elaborate pattens over the common earth. That could
+not help but influence, assuage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in
+the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive assemblies were open to
+them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of
+Mr. Winscombe's bitter humour. In the past he had repudiated them with
+the utmost scorn. In the past--dim shapes, scenes, that appeared to have
+occurred years before, but which in reality reached to last month,
+trooped through his mind. Youth had vanished like a form dropping behind
+a hill. He looked back; it was gone; his feet hurried forward into the
+unguessed future; anxiety joined him; the scent that was Ludowika
+accompanied him, an illusive figure. He reached toward it.
+
+He was standing at the foot of the bed where Felix Winscombe lay. The
+latter was restless, and complained of pains in his arms, reaching down
+to his fingers. Ludowika bent over him, her face stamped with concern.
+She regarded Howat with a new expression--narrowed eyes and a glimmer of
+flawless teeth: a look he had never foreseen there; but it was impotent
+before the thing that was. It had, however, the effect of intensifying
+his desire, his passion for her fragility of silk and flesh. He would
+kiss her hate on her mouth.
+
+She sat by the bedside, and Howat took a place opposite her. Candles
+burned on a highboy, on a table at his back; and their auriferous light
+flowed in about the bedstead. The latter was draped from the canopy to
+the bases of the posts in a bright printing of pheasants and
+conventional thickets--cobalt and ruby and orange; and across a heavy
+counterpane half drawn up stalked a row of panoplied Indians in clipped
+zephyr. It was a nebulous enclosure with the shadows of the hangings
+wavering on the coloured wool and cold linen, on the long, seamed
+countenance of the prostrate man.
+
+A clock in the hall struck slowly--it needed winding--ten blurred notes.
+Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the
+hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without;
+wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a
+blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's
+face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ...
+Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name,
+and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but
+soundless lips--Ludowika Penny.
+
+Her husband lay with his eyes closed, his head bowed forward on his
+chest, as if in sleep. At irregular intervals small, involuntary
+contractions of pain twitched at his mouth. At times, too, he muttered
+noiselessly. Extraordinary. Ludowika and Felix Winscombe and himself,
+Howat Penny. A world peopled only by them; the silence of the room
+dropped into infinite space, bottomless time. A sudden dread of such
+vast emptiness seized Howat; he felt that he must say something,
+recreate about them the illusion of safe and familiar spaces and walls.
+It seemed that he was unable to speak; a leaden inhibition lay on his
+power of utterance. He made a harsh sound in his throat, loud and
+startling. Felix Winscombe raised his head, and Ludowika cried faintly.
+Then silence again folded them.
+
+Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs--the
+furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and
+himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with
+his mother. She was astonishingly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika
+and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompassing the
+magnitude of his passion; she had not realized his new patience and
+determination. He found himself counting the gorgeous birds in the
+bed-hangings--twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and stopped
+abruptly.
+
+It had grown chilly in the room, and Ludowika had an India cashmere
+shawl about her shoulders. The sombre garnets and blues hid the tinsel
+gaiety of her gown and her bare shoulders. She appeared older than he
+had ever seen her before. Her face, carefully studied, showed no trace
+of beauty; her eyes were heavy, her lips dark; any efforts of animation
+were suspended. She showed completely the effect of her life in courts
+and a careless prodigality of hours and emotions. Howat, seeing all
+this, felt only a fresh accession of his hunger for her; she was far
+more compelling than when romantically viewed as a moon.
+
+He sat with his chin propped on a palm; she was rigidly upright with her
+arms at her sides; Felix Winscombe moved higher on the pillows. His eyes
+glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred
+ceaselessly with weaving fingers. Howat could almost feel Ludowika's
+hatred striking at him across the bed. He smiled at her, and she faced
+him with an expression of stony unresponse. He thought luxuriantly of
+her in his arms, with the rain beating on the store house roof; he
+caught the odours of the damp, heaped merchandise, the distant clamour
+in the casting shed. He had a brutal impulse to lean forward and remind
+her of what had occurred, of the fact that she was his; he wanted to
+fling it against her present detachment, to mock her with it. Then he
+would crush her against his heart. Felix Winscombe raised up on an
+elbow, distorting the row of sanguinary Indians.
+
+Ludowika moved to the edge of the bed, and put a firm, graceful arm
+about him. A grey shadow of pain fell on Mr. Winscombe's features. The
+silence was absolute. He seemed to be waiting in an attitude of mingled
+dread and resolution. He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on
+his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika's support. She
+sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes.
+
+Slowly the lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat
+started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless
+suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm. Howat watched him
+in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath.
+Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony
+gathering on Felix Winscombe's countenance, but a corresponding sense of
+complete helplessness settled like a leaden coffin about him. The other
+became unrecognizable; his face seemed to be set in an unnatural grin.
+His head drew back on a thin, corded neck, and a faint gasping for air
+stirred in the shadows. Even Howat felt the pain to be unendurable, and
+Ludowika, white as milk, had risen to her feet. She stood with a hand
+half raised beneath a fringed corner of the India shawl.
+
+It was incredible that the sufferer's agony should increase, but it was
+apparent that it did remorselessly. All humanity was obliterated in an
+excruciating spasm over which streamed some meagre tears. Mr.
+Winscombe's arms raised and dropped; and, suddenly relaxed, he slipped
+down upon the pillows. Immediately the torment vanished from his
+countenance; it became peaceful, released. The familiar mockery of the
+mouth came back. The head, slightly turned, seemed to regard Ludowika
+with contentment and interrogation. Howat was conscious of a relief
+almost as marked as that on the face before him. He had gripped his
+hands until they ached. The tension in the room, too, seemed spent. He
+was about to address a reassuring period to Ludowika, when, at a glimpse
+of her expression, the words died on his lips.
+
+He bent over the bed, with his hand on a ridged, still chest; he gazed
+down at flaccid eyes, a dropped chin. Felix Winscombe was dead.
+
+Howat raised up slowly, facing the woman through the draperies. She was
+gazing in an incredulous, shocked surprise at the limp, prostrate body
+capped in black gros de Naples. A shuddering fear passed over her, and
+then her eyes met those of Howat Penny. Even separated from him by the
+bed she drew away as if from his touch. He saw that she had forgotten
+the dead man in a sharp realization of the portent of the living. She
+glanced about the room in the panic of a trapped lark, an abject
+fright, searching for an escape.
+
+He realized that there was none; Ludowika now belonged to him
+absolutely; he was as remorseless as the pain that had killed Felix
+Winscombe. Below the automatic sensations of the moment Howat was
+conscious of utter satisfaction. A miracle had given Ludowika to him; in
+the passing of a breath all his difficulty had been ended. She was alone
+with him in a province of forests and iron and stars. He would make her
+forget the gardens of fireworks and scraping violins; but forget or not
+she was his ... Ludowika Penny.
+
+
+
+
+II THE FORGE
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Jasper Penny stood at a window of his bed room, his left arm carried in
+a black silk handkerchief, gazing down at the long, low roof of Myrtle
+Forge, built by his great, great grandfather Gilbert over a hundred and
+ten years before. It was February, and he could hear the ringing blows
+of axes, cutting the ice out of the forebay to liberate the water power
+for the completion of a forging of iron destined to be rolled into
+tracks for the slowly lengthening Columbia Steam Railway System. It was
+midday, a grey sky held a brighter, diffused radiance where the veiled
+sun hung without warmth, and the earth was everywhere frozen
+granite-like. He could see beyond the Forge shed heaped charcoal, and
+the black mass seemed no more dead than the ground or bare, brittle
+trees sweeping down and up to where, on encircling hills, they were
+lifted sharply against the cloudy monotony.
+
+He was ordinarily impervious to the influence of weather, the more
+depressing aspects of nature; but now he was conscious of a dejection
+communicated, in part at least, he felt, by the bleak prospect without.
+Another, and infinitely more arresting, reason for this feeling had just
+stirred his thoughts--for the first time he was conscious of the
+invidious, beginning weariness of accumulating years. He was hardly past
+forty, and he impatiently repudiated the possibility that he was
+actually declining; in fact he had not yet reached the zenith of his
+capabilities, physical or mental; yet his broken arm, slow in mending,
+the pain, had unquestionably depleted him more than a similar accident
+ten years ago. Not only this, but, during the forced inaction, his mind
+had definitely taken a different cast; considerations that had seemed to
+constitute the main business of existence had lately faded before
+preoccupations and feelings ignored until now.
+
+Jasper Penny saw, objectively, not so much the surrounding circumstance
+as his own former acts and emotions; detached from his habitual being by
+hardly more than a month his past was posed before his critical
+judgment. Looked at in this manner his life appeared crowded with
+surprisingly meaningless gestures and words, his sheer youth an
+incomprehensible revolt. A greater part of that had been lately
+expressed by his mother, when he had returned to Myrtle Forge with an
+arm broken by a fall in a railroad coach travelling to Philadelphia. She
+had said, shaking her head with tightened lips:
+
+"I warned you plenty against those train brigades. It isn't safe nor
+sensible with a good horse service convenient. But then you have always
+been a knowing, head-strong boy and man.... A black Penny."
+
+How she would get along without that last phrase he was at a loss to
+conjecture, from his first consciousness he recalled it, now a term of
+reproach and now extenuation. Only a few weeks before she had repeated
+it in precisely the same tone of mingled admonition and complaint that
+had greeted his most boyish mishaps. He had grown so accustomed to it,
+not only from Gilda Penny but from every one familiar with the Pennys
+and their history, that it had become part of his automatic entity.
+Jasper--a black Penny.
+
+The course of his thoughts turned back to the earliest episodes
+remembered in that connection, to a time in which the especial quality
+had necessarily freest play. Now he characterized it as mere uninformed
+wildness; but he still recalled the tremendous impatience with which he
+had met the convenient enclosure of a practicable, organized society.
+Even at Myrtle Forge, where--in contrast to dwelling in the confines of
+a city--he had had a rare amount of actual freedom, a feeling of
+constriction had sent him day after day into the woods, hunting or
+merely idle along the upper reaches of still unsullied streams. Yet it
+had been an especial kind of wildness; he owed that recognition to his
+vanished youth. The term generally included champagne parties and the
+companionship of various but similar ladies of the circus or opera
+house. But nothing of that had then entered into his deep-rooted
+rebellion. He had had merely a curious passion for complete
+independence, an innate turning from street-bound affairs and men to the
+isolation and physical accomplishment of arduous excursions on horses or
+foot. He had, then, avoided, even dreaded, women. And that instinct, he
+told himself, shifting his injured arm to a more comfortable position,
+had been admirably founded.
+
+The ax blows ceased; from his position he could just see the top of the
+great wheel that drove the Forge trip hammer; and slowly the rim
+blurred, commencing to turn. The forebay was open. A pennant of black
+smoke, lurid with flaming cinders, twisted up in the motionless air. The
+hammer fell once, experimentally, with a faint jar, and a grimy figure
+shovelled charcoal into a barrow.
+
+His mind soon returned to the point where it had been deflected by the
+movement at the Forge; he could even visualize his mature boyhood--a
+straight, arrogant figure, black certainly, with up-sloping brows and an
+outthrust chin. And that, he thought, not without complacency, was not
+very far from a description of himself at present. There were, of
+course, the whiskers, severely trimmed on his spare face, and showing,
+in certain lights, a glimmer of silver; but he was as upright, as
+comfortably lean, now as then. He was still capable of prolonged
+physical exertion.... It was ridiculous to think of himself as
+definitely aging. Yet he was past forty, and the years seemed to go far
+more swiftly than at twenty-one.
+
+Women! The silent pronouncement included the smallest plural
+possible--only two; but it seemed to Jasper Penny that they comprised
+all the variations, the faults and virtues, of their entire sex. With a
+certain, characteristic formality, propriety, he considered his wife
+first, now a year dead. He wondered if she had found the orthodox and
+concrete heaven in the frequent ecstatic contemplation of which so much
+of her life had been spent. It had been that fine superiority to the
+material that had first attracted him to her, a quality of shining
+enthusiasm, of reflected inspiration from a vision, however trite, of
+eternal hymning; and it had been that same essence which finally held
+them apart through the greater number of their married years. Phebe's
+health, slowly ebbing, had drawn her farther and farther from the known
+world in general and the affairs and being of her husband in particular;
+her last strength had gone in the hysteria of protracted religious
+emotion, during which she had become scarcely more to Jasper Penny than
+an attenuated, rapt invalid lingering in his house.
+
+Her pale, still presence was usurped by a far different, animated and
+colourful, figure. He thought of Essie Scofield, of all that she
+paramountly held and expressed, with a reluctance that had lately,
+almost within the past week, grown to resemble resentment, if not actual
+irritation. Yet, however, casting back through the years, in his present
+remoteness, he was able to recreate her and his emotions as they had
+first, irresistibly moved together. The absolute opposite of Phebe,
+already withdrawing into her religious, incorporeal region, Essie
+Scofield had immediately swept him into the whirlpool of her vivid,
+physical personality. Before her the memory of his wife faded into
+insignificance. But there was no mere retrospect in the considering of
+Essie; very much alive she presented, outside the Penny iron, the one
+serious preoccupation, complication, of his future.
+
+At the time when he had first admitted, welcomed, her claim on him, he
+had felt a sudden energy in which he had recognized a play of the traits
+of a black Penny. Here was a satisfactory, if necessarily private,
+exercise of his inborn contempt for the evident hypocrisy, the
+cowardice, of perfunctory inhibitions and safe morals. That, however,
+had been speedily lost in his rocketing passion, flaring out of a quiet
+continence into giddy spaces of unrestraint. Essie, after a momentary
+surrender, had attempted retreat, expressing a doubt of the durability
+of their feeling; she had, in fact, made it painfully clear that she
+wished to escape from the uncomfortable volume of his fervour; but he
+had overborne her caution--her wisdom, he now expressed it.
+
+That, more than anything else, brought before him the undeniable passage
+of time, the fact that he was rapidly accomplishing middle age--the
+total extinguishing of an emotion which he had felt must outlast life.
+It had gone, and with it his youth. Of course, he had recognized that he
+was no longer thirty; he had been well aware of his years, but only
+during the last few weeks had there been the slight, perceptible
+dragging down.... On the black walnut dressing stand past the window lay
+a letter he had received from Essie that morning; it contained her usual
+appeal for an additional sum of money--he gave her, formally, six
+thousand dollars a year; and the manner of the demand, for the
+necessities of their daughter, showed his sharpened perceptions that she
+had never really experienced the blindness of a generous emotion.
+Eunice, the child, was incontrovertible proof of that--no more than an
+additional lever for her to swing.
+
+His face darkened, and he moved his shoulder impatiently, as if to throw
+off a burden grown unendurable. But it was fastened immovably--his
+responsibility was as baldly apparent as the February noon, its greyness
+now blotted by a wind-driven, metallic shift of snow.
+
+He had been criminally negligent of Eunice. This realization was
+accompanied by no corresponding warmth of parenthood; there was no
+quickening of blood at the thought of his daughter, but only a newborn
+condemnation of his neglected, proper pride. He had, thoughtlessly,
+descended to a singularly low level of conduct. And it must abruptly
+terminate. Jasper Penny had not seen Eunice for seven, nine, months; he
+would remedy this at once, supervise advantages, a proper place, for
+her. Afterward Essie and himself could make a mutually satisfactory
+agreement.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Throughout an excellent dinner, terrapin and bass, wild turkey with
+oysters and fruit preserved in white brandy, he maintained a sombre
+silence. His mother, on the right, her sister opposite--Phebe's place
+seemed scarcely emptier than when she had actually occupied it--held an
+intermittent verbal exchange patently keyed to Jasper Penny's mood. They
+were women with yellow-white, lace-capped hair, blanched eyebrows and
+lashes, and small, quick eyes on hardy, reddened faces. Gilda Penny was
+slightly the larger, more definite; Amity Merken had a timid, almost
+furtive, expression in the opulence of the Penny establishment, while
+Gilda was complacent; but otherwise the two women were identical. Their
+dresses were largely similar--Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire
+silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from
+shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline to the floor. Lace
+fell about their square, capable hands, and Gilda wore broad, locked
+bracelets checked in black and gold.
+
+Sherry, in blue cut decanters stoppered with gilt, gave place to port.
+An épergne of glass and burnished ormolu, in the form of supporting oak
+leaves, with numerous sockets for candles, was set, filled with fruit,
+in the centre of the table; silver lustre plates were laid; but Jasper
+Penny heedlessly fingered the stem of a wine glass. He said suddenly,
+"I'm going to the city this afternoon."
+
+"Is it safe yet?" his mother queried doubtfully. "Hadn't you better wait
+till to-morrow, when you can drive easily, or without stopping at a
+tavern?"
+
+He looked up impatiently. "I shall go by the railroad," he stated
+decisively. "Can't you understand that, with the future of iron almost
+dependent on steam, it is the commonest foresight for me to patronize
+such customers as the Columbia Railway! I have no intention of adding to
+the ignorant prejudice against improved methods of travelling."
+
+"There's your arm," she insisted with spirit.
+
+"An untried engine. The Hecla works along smoothly at twenty miles an
+hour." Amity cast a glance of swift appeal at her sister, but Gilda
+Penny persisted. "Ungodly," was the term she selected. Jasper ignored
+her. He had decided to straighten the tangled affair of Eunice at once;
+he would see Essie that evening, arrive at an understanding about the
+child's future. It would be even more difficult to terminate his
+connection with Essie herself. That, he now recognised, was his main
+desire. The affair had actually died before Phebe; but its onerous
+consequences remained, blighting the future.
+
+The future! It was that, he now discovered, which occupied him, rather
+than the past. A new need had become apparent, a restless desire
+analogous to the urge of seeking youth. Jasper Penny was aware of a
+great dissatisfaction, a vast emptiness, in his existence; he had a
+feeling of waste growing out of the sense of hurrying years. Somehow,
+obscurely, he had been cheated. He almost envied the commonality of men,
+not, like himself, black Pennys, impatient of assuaging relationships
+and beliefs. Yet this, too, turned into another phase of his
+inheritance--his need was not material, concrete, it had no worldly,
+graspable implications, and his general contempt was not less but
+greater. He wished to bring a final justification to his isolation
+rather than lose himself in the wide, undistinguished surge of living.
+
+"You'll stop at the Jannans?" his mother queried.
+
+"I think not, probably Sanderson's Hotel, Stephen is giving a ball
+to-night for Graham and his wife. I have some important transactions."
+Not an echo of his affair with Essie Scofield had, he knew, penetrated
+to Myrtle Forge. It was a most fortunate accident. The vulgarity
+consequent upon discovery would have been unbearable. Stephen Jannan,
+his cousin, a lawyer of wide city connections, must have learned
+something of the truth; but Stephen, properly, had said nothing; a
+comfortable obscurity had hid him from gabbled scandal. Now, soon, it
+would all be over. Unconsciously he drew a deeper breath of relief, of
+prospective freedom.
+
+The Hecla, a wooden barrelled engine with a tall, hinged stack, drew its
+brigade of canary-coloured chariot cars forward with a rapid bumping
+over inequal rails. Jasper Penny's seat, number nineteen, was
+fortunately in the centre, close by the stove, where a warmth hung that
+failed to reach to the doors. Lost in speculation the journey was both
+long and vague. Twilight deepened within the car, and two flickering
+candles were lit at either end, their pallid light serving only to cast
+thin, climbing shadows over the rocking, box-like interior. At irregular
+intervals the train stopped with a succession of subsiding crashes, and
+started again at the blowing of a horn; passengers would leave or enter;
+or it would prove to be merely a halt to take on cut and piled wood fuel
+for the engine.
+
+Finally the train brigade reached the inclined plane leading to the
+river and city; the engine was detached, and the cars, fastened to a
+hemp cable, were lowered spasmodically to where a team of mules drew
+them through a gloomy, covered bridge echoing to the slow hoof falls and
+creaking of loose planks. Jasper Penny fastened the elaborate frogs of
+his heavily furred overcoat over his injured arm, and with a florid
+bandanna wiped the cinders from his silk hat.
+
+The coaches rolled into the station shed, where he changed, taking a
+swaying Mulberry Street omnibus to Fourth, and Sanderson's Hotel. It was
+a towering, square structure of five stories, with a columned white
+portico, and high, divided steps. The clerk, greeting him with a precise
+familiar deference, directed him to a select suite with a private
+parlour, a sombre chamber of red plush, dark walls and thickly draped,
+long windows. There he sat grimly contemplating a distasteful prospect.
+He knew the casual, ill-prepared dinners presided over by Essie, the
+covertly insolent man servant; and an overpowering reluctance came upon
+him to sit again at her table. But the confusion of the hotel ordinary
+repelled him too: he had seen in passing a number of men who would
+endeavour to force his opinion on the specie situation or speculation in
+canals. He rose and pulled sharply at the tasselled bell rope, ordering
+grilled pheasant, anchovy toast and champagne to be served where he sat.
+
+Jasper Penny ate slowly, partly distracted by the market reports in the
+_U.S. Gazette_. Ninety-two and a half had been offered for Schuylkill
+Navigation, only fifteen for the West Chester Railroad, but Philadelphia
+and Trenton had gone to ninety-eight; while a three and a half dividend
+had been declared on the French Town Turnpike and Railway Company. He
+was annoyed afresh by the persistent refusal of the Government to award
+the mail to the Reading Steam System. His thoughts returned to Eunice,
+his daughter, the coming scene--it would at least be that--with Essie
+Scofield.
+
+It was but a short distance from the hotel to where Essie lived, over
+Fourth Street to Cherry; and almost immediately he turned by the three
+story brick dwelling at the corner and was at her door. The servant, in
+an untidy white jacket, stood stupidly blocking the narrow hall, until
+Jasper Penny with an angry impatience waved him aside. There were other
+silk hats and coats, and a woman's fringed wrap, on the stand where he
+left his stick and outer garments; and from above came a peal of mingled
+laughter. The presence of others, now, was singularly inopportune; it
+would be no good waiting for their departure--here such gatherings
+almost invariably drew out until dawn; and he abruptly decided that,
+after a short interval, he would give Essie to understand that he wished
+to talk to her privately.
+
+A young woman with a chalk-white face and oleaginous bandeaux of dead
+black hair, in scarlet and green tartan over an extravagant crinoline,
+was seated on a sofa between two men, each with an arm about her waist
+and wine glasses elevated in their free hands. Essie was facing them
+from a circular floor hassock, in a blue satin, informal robe over
+mussed cambric ruffles, heelless nonchalants, and her hair elaborately
+dressed with roses, white ribbons and a short ostrich feather. Her body,
+at once slim and full, was consciously seductive, and her face, slightly
+swollen and pasty in the shadows, bore the same, heedless unrestraint.
+Her dark, widely-opened eyes, an insignificant nose and shortly curved,
+scarlet lips, held almost the fixed, painted impudence of a cynically
+debased doll. She turned and surveyed Jasper Penny with a petulant,
+silent inquiry, and whatever gaiety was in progress abruptly terminated
+as he advanced into the room.
+
+"You never let me know you'd be here," Essie complained; "but I suppose
+I ought to be glad to see you anyway--after four months without a line.
+Jasper, Mr. Daniel Culser." The younger of the men on the sofa, a
+stolidly handsome individual with hard, blue eyes, rose with an
+over-emphasized composure. "Mr. Penny, extremely pleased." Jasper Penny
+was irritated by the other's instant identification, and he nodded
+bluntly. "Lambert Babb and Myrtilla Lewis," Essie continued
+indifferently. Babb, an individual of inscrutable age, with ashen
+whiskers and a blinking, weak vision in a silvery face, was audibly
+delighted. Myrtilla Lewis smiled professionally over her expanse of
+bewildering silk plaid. "Wine in the cooler," Essie added, and Daniel
+Culser moved to where a silver bucket reposed by a tray of glasses and
+broken, sugared rusks. Jasper Penny refused the offered drink, and found
+a chair apart from the others. A moody silence enveloped him which he
+found impossible to break, and an increasing uneasiness spread over the
+room.
+
+"Well," Essie Scofield commanded, "say something. You look as black as
+an Egyptian. What'll my friends think of you? I suppose it doesn't
+matter any more what it is to me; but you might play at being polite."
+
+"Don't chip at a man like that," Myrtilla advised. "Mr. Penny has a
+right to talk or not." She smiled more warmly at him, and he saw that
+she had had too much champagne. The room reeked with the thin, acrid
+odour of the wine, and a sickly perfume of vanilla essence. Essie, as
+usual, had a glass of her favourite drink--orange juice and French
+brandy--on the floor beside her, the brandy bottle and fresh oranges
+conveniently near. His repulsion for her deepened until it seemed as if
+actual fingers were compressing his throat, stopping his breath. He
+wondered suddenly how far he was responsible for her possible
+degeneration. But he had not been the first; her admission of that fact
+had in the beginning attracted him to an uncommon frankness in her
+peculiar make-up. He was willing to assume his fault, to pay for it,
+whatever payment was possible, and escape.... Not only from her, but
+from all that she embodied, from himself--what he had been--as much as
+anything else.
+
+"You are an Ironmaster," Mr. Babb finally announced; "in fact, one of
+our greatest manufacturers. Now, Mr. Penny, what is your personal
+opinion of engine as against the public coach? Will the railroad survive
+the experimental stage, and are such gentlemen as yourself behind it?"
+
+"I saw in the _Ledger_ some days back," Daniel Culser added, "that your
+arm had been broken travelling by steam."
+
+"One had nothing to do with the other," Jasper stated tersely, ignoring
+Babb's query, "but was entirely my own fault." The conversation lagged
+painfully again, during which Essie skilfully compounded another mixture
+of spirits and thick, yellow juice. She grew sullen with resentment at
+Jasper Penny's attitude, and exchanged enigmatic glances with Culser.
+The liquor brought a quick flush to her slightly pendulous cheeks, and
+she was enveloped in an increasing bravado. "Penny's a solemn old boy,"
+she announced generally. Lambert Babb attempted to embrace Myrtilla,
+but, her gaze on the newcomer, she pushed him away. "You got to be a
+gentleman with me," she proclaimed with a patently unsteady dignity. "My
+grandfather was a French noble."
+
+"What I'd like to know," Essie remarked, "is what's his granddaughter?"
+
+"Better'n you!" Myrtilla heatedly asserted; "one who'd appreciate a real
+man, and not be playing about private with a tailor's dummy." Daniel
+Culser's face grew noticeably pinker. "I'm going," Myrtilla continued,
+rising. "Mr. Penny, I'd be happy to meet you under more social
+conditions. Here I cannot remain for--for reasons. I might be tempted
+to--" Mr. Babb caught her arm under his, and, at an imperious gesture
+from Essie, piloted her from the room. Culser rose.
+
+"Don't go, Dan," Essie Scofield told him defiantly. But Jasper Penny
+maintained a silence that forced the younger man to make a stiff exit.
+"Well," Essie demanded, flinging herself on the deserted sofa, "now
+you've spoiled my evening. Why did you come at all if you couldn't
+behave genteel?"
+
+"Where, exactly, is Eunice?" he asked abruptly.
+
+She glanced at him with an instant masking of her resentment. "I've told
+you a hundred times--in the house of a very respectable clergyman. My
+letter was clear enough; she's had bronchitis, and there's the doctor,
+and--"
+
+"Just where is Eunice?" he repeated, interrupting her aggrieved recital.
+
+"Where I put her," her voice grew shrill. "You haven't asked to see her
+for near a year, you haven't even pretended an interest in--in your own
+daughter. I've done the best I could; you know I don't like children
+around; but I have attended to as much of my duty as you. Now you come
+out and insist on being unpleasant all in an hour. Why didn't you write?
+I'd had her here for you. Come back in two or three days."
+
+"To-morrow," he replied. "I am going to see her in the morning."
+
+"You just ain't. I did the best I knew, but, if it isn't all roses,
+you'll blame everything on me. I will have Eunice fetched--"
+
+"Where is she?" he asked still again, wearily.
+
+Every instinct revolted against the degradation into which he had
+blindly walked. His youth had betrayed him, involving him, practically a
+different man, in a payment which he realized had but commenced.... To
+escape. He had first thought of that with the unconscious conviction
+that the mere wish carried its fulfilment. In fact, it would be
+immensely difficult; a man, he saw, could not sever himself so casually
+from the past; it reached without visible demarcation into the present,
+the future. All was a piece, one with another; and Essie Scofield was
+drawn in a vivid thread through the entire fabric of his being.
+
+Yet the need, the longing forward, so newly come into his consciousness,
+persisted, grew--it had become the predominate design of his weaving.
+Through this he recognized a reassertion of his pride, the rigid pride
+of a black Penny, which, in the years immediately past, had been
+overwhelmed by a temporary inner confusion. Beyond forty men returned to
+their inheritance, their blood; this fact echoed vaguely among his
+memories of things heard; and he felt in himself its measure of truth.
+His distaste for a largely muddled, pandering society, for men huddled,
+he thought, like domestic animals, returned in choking waves. In the
+maculate atmosphere of flat wine and stale cologne he had a sharp
+recurrence of the scent of pines, lifting warmly in sunny space.
+
+He produced a morocco bound note book, a gold pencil; and, with the
+latter poised, directed a close interrogation at Essie. Her face flushed
+with an ungovernable anger, and she pressed a hand over her labouring
+heart. "Get her then; out Fourth Street, Camden; the Reverend Mr.
+Needles. But afterwards don't come complaining to me. You ought to have
+seen to her; you've got the money, the influence. And you have done
+nothing, beyond some stinking dollars ... wouldn't even name her. Eunice
+Scofield, a child without--"
+
+All that she had said was absolutely true, just.
+
+"I suppose you'll even think I didn't give her the sums you sent; that
+damned Needles has been bleeding me, suspects something." She stopped
+from a lack of breath; her darkened face was purplish, in the shadows.
+"I haven't been well, either--a fierce pain here, in my heart."
+
+It was the brandy, he told her; she should leave the city, late wine
+parties, go back into the country. "Go back," she echoed bitterly.
+"Where? How?" He winced--the past reaching inexorably into the future.
+Jasper Penny made no attempt to ignore, forget, his responsibility; he
+admitted it to her; but at the same time the tyrannical hunger increased
+within him--the mingled desire for fresh paths and the nostalgia of the
+old freedom of spirit. But life, that had made him, had in the same
+degree created Essie; neither had been the result of the other; they had
+been swept together, descended blindly in company, submerged in the
+passion that he had thought must last forever, but which had burned to
+ashes, to nothing more than a vague sense of putrefaction in life.
+
+"Thank you," he said formally, putting away the note book. "Something,
+of course, must be done; but what, I can only say after I have seen
+Eunice. I am, undoubtedly, more to blame than yourself."
+
+"I suppose, in this holy strain, you'll end by giving her all and me
+nothing."
+
+"... what you are getting as long as you live?"
+
+"That's little enough, when I hear how much you have, what all that iron
+is bringing you. Why, you could let me have twenty, thirty thousand, and
+never know it."
+
+"If you are unable to get on, that too will be rectified."
+
+"You are really not a bad old thing, Jasper," she pronounced, mollified.
+"At one time--do you remember?--you said if ever the chance came you
+would marry me. Ah, you needn't fear, I wouldn't have you with all your
+iron, gold. I--" she stopped abruptly, uneasily. "Not a bad old thing,"
+she repeated, moving to secure a half-full glass.
+
+"Why do you call me old?" he asked curiously.
+
+"I hadn't thought of it before," she admitted; "but, this evening, you
+looked so solemn, and there is grey in your hair, that all at once you
+seemed like an old gentleman. Now Dan Culser," she hesitated, and then
+swept on, "he's what you'd name young." At Daniel Culser's age, he told
+himself, he, Jasper Penny, could have walked the other blind; and now
+Essie Scofield was calling him old; she had noticed the grey in his
+hair. He rose to go, and she came close to him, a clinging, soft thing
+of flesh faintly reeking with brandy. "I have a great deal to pay, where
+money goes I don't know, even a little would be a help." He left some
+gold in her hand, thankful to purchase, at that slight price, a
+momentary release.
+
+Outside Cherry Street was blackly cold, a gas lamp at the corner shed a
+watery, contracted illumination. He made his way back toward the hotel,
+but a sudden reluctance to mount to his lonely chambers possessed him.
+Before the glimmering marble façade he took out his watch, a pale gold
+efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes.
+The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing,
+at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house
+flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he
+determined to proceed and have a cigar with Stephen.
+
+He walked briskly up Mulberry Street to Sixth and there turned to the
+left. Jasper Penny soon passed the shrouded silence of Independence
+Square, with the new Corinthian doorway of the State House showing
+vaguely through the irregularly grouped ailanthus trees. Beyond, the
+brick wall with its marble coping and high iron fence reached, on the
+opposite side, to the Jannan corner. The length of the brick dwelling,
+with white arched windows and coursings faced the vague emptiness of
+Washington Square, closed for the winter.
+
+Inside the hall was bright and filled with the pungent warmth of fat
+hearth coal. A servant, with a phrase of recognition, directed him
+above, to a room burdened with masculine greatcoats and silk hats. There
+an attendant told him that Mr. Jannan was below. Jasper Penny had no
+intention of becoming a participant in the hall, but neither did he
+propose to linger among wraps, listening to the supercilious chatter of
+young men in the extreme mode of bright blue coats, painfully tight
+black trousers with varnished pumps and expanses of ankle in grey silk.
+One, inspecting him through an eyeglass on a woven hair guard, expressed
+a pointed surprise at Jasper Penny's informal garb. "Christoval!" he
+ejaculated. "It approaches an insult to the da-da-darlings." Another
+commenced to sing a popular minstrel air:
+
+"Blink--a--ho--dink! Ah! Ho!
+
+"Roley Boley--Good morning Ladies all!"
+
+Jasper Penny abruptly descended to a small room used for smoking. Young
+men, he thought impatiently, could no longer even curse respectably.
+They lisped like females at an embroidery frame. When he was young,
+younger, he corrected himself, he could have outdrunk, outridden.... His
+train of thought was abruptly terminated by a group unexpectedly
+occupying the smoking room. He saw Stephen Jannan, his wife Liza, the
+newly married young Jannans, and a strange woman in glacé muslin and a
+black Spanish lace shawl about her shoulders. Stephen greeted him
+cordially. "Jasper, just at the moment for a waltz with--with Susan."
+The stranger blushed painfully, made an involuntary movement backward,
+and Liza Jannan admonished her husband. "Do you know Miss Brundon,
+Jasper?" she asked.
+
+Jasper Penny bowed, and Miss Brundon, with an evident effort, smiled,
+her shy, blue eyes held resolutely on his countenance. She at once
+slipped into the background, talking in a low, clear voice to Graham
+Jannan's wife; while the older men enveloped themselves in a fragrant
+veil of cigars. "Come, Mary, Susan," Mrs. Jannan directed, "out of this
+horrid, masculine odour." Accompanied by her son the women left, and
+Stephen turned to his cousin. "Thought, of course, you knew Susan
+Brundon," he remarked. "A school mistress, but superior, and a lady. Has
+a place on Spruce Street, by Raspberry Alley, for select younger girls;
+unique idea, and very successful, I believe."
+
+Jasper Penny said comfortably, "Humm!" The other continued, "I want
+Graham to get out to Shadrach Furnace as soon as may be. That old stone
+house the foremen have occupied is nearly fixed for him. I am very well
+content, Jasper, to have him in the iron trade, with you practically at
+its head. No deliberate favours, remember, and I have told him to look
+for nothing. But, at the same time--you comprehend: folly not to push
+the boy on fast as possible. No reason for us all to go through with
+the hardships of the first Gilbert and his times. Must have been
+fatiguing, the wilderness and English troubles and all that."
+
+"Splendid, I should say," Jasper Penny replied. He repeated satirically
+the conversation he had heard above. "Makes me ill. You will remember
+there was a Howat, son of our original settler--now he must have been a
+lad! Married some widow or other; wild at first, but made iron in the
+end."
+
+"A black Penny, Jasper; resembled you. Personally, I like it better
+now." Jasper Penny surveyed with approbation Stephen's full, handsome
+presence. Jannan was a successful, a big, man. Well, so was he too. But
+he thought with keen longing of the time when he was twenty-one, and
+free, free to roam self-sufficient. He thought of that Howat Penny of
+which they had spoken, black as he was black in the family tradition; he
+had seen Hesselius's portrait of the other; and, but for the tied hair
+and continental buff, it might have been a replica of himself. It was
+curious--that dark strain of Welsh blood, cropping out undiminished,
+concrete, after generations. The one to hold it before Howat had been
+burned in Mary's time, in the sixteenth century, dead almost three
+hundred years. Jasper had a sudden, vivid sense of familiarity with the
+Howat who had married some widow or other. His mind returned to his own,
+peculiar problem, to Essie Scofield, to the burden with which he had
+encumbered himself, the payment that faced him for--for his sheer
+youth. He said abruptly, belated:
+
+"You fit the present formal ease of society, Stephen; you like it and it
+likes you. In a superficial way I have done well enough, but
+underneath--" his voice sank into silence. A profound, familiar
+dejection seized him; incongruously he thought of Miss Brundon's
+delicate shrinking from the mere contact of the amenities of speech.
+Super-sensitive. "I must go," he announced, and refused Stephen Jannan's
+invitation for the night.
+
+"Stay for some supper, anyhow," the other insisted, and, a hand on his
+arm, led him past the doors open upon the dancing.
+
+Chandeliers, great coruscating pendants of glass prisms and candles,
+glittered above the expanse of whirling crinoline and blue coats,
+vermilion turbans, gilt feathers and flowered hair. The light fell on
+shoulders as white and elegantly sloping as alabaster vases, draped in
+rose and citron, in blanched illusion frosted and looped with silver; on
+bouquets of camellias swinging from jewelled chains against ruffled and
+belled skirts swaying about the revealed symmetry of lacy silk stockings
+and fragile slippers. "Ah, Jasper," Stephen Jannan said; "in our time,
+what! Do you remember your first Wellington boots? The gambling room and
+veranda at Saratoga? Tender eyes, old boy, and little tapering hands."
+Jasper Penny replied, "It seems my hair is grey." Silence fell on them
+as they entered the dining room. A long table was burdened with
+elaborate pagodas of spun barley sugar topped with sprigs of orange
+blossom, the moulded creams of a Charlotte Polonaise, champagne jelly
+valanced with lemon peel, pyramids of glazed fruits on lacquered plates;
+with faintly iridescent Belleek and fluted glass and ormolu; and,
+everywhere, the pale multitudinous flames of candles and the fuller
+radiance of astral lamps hung with lustres. Jasper Penny idly tore open
+a bon bon wrapped in a verse on fringed paper,
+
+"Viens! Viens! ange du ciel, je t'aime! je t'aime!
+Et te le dire ici, c'est le bonheur supreme."
+
+Love and the great hour of life! He had missed both; one, perhaps, with
+the other. His marriage to Phebe, except for a brief flare at the
+beginning, had been as empty as the affair with Essie Scofield. God, how
+hollow living seemed! He had missed something; or else existence was an
+ugly deception, the false lure of an incomprehensible jest. The music
+beat in faint, mocking waves on his hearing, the lights of the supper
+shone in the gold bubbles of his wine glass. He drained it hurriedly.
+Outside the night, lying cold on deserted squares, blurred with gas
+lamps, was like a vain death after the idle frivolity of Stephen
+Jannan's ball. In an instant, in the shutting of a door, the blackness
+had claimed him; the gaiety of warm flesh and laughter vanished. Death
+... and he had literally nothing in his hands, nothing in his heart. A
+duty, Eunice, remained. The sound of his footfalls on the bricks, thrown
+back from blank walls, resembled the embodied, stealthy following of the
+injustice he had wrought.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+The following morning he made his way past the continuous produce arcade
+that held the centre of Market Street to the Camden Ferry. At the river
+the fish stall, with its circular green roof and cornucopias, reached
+almost to the gloomy ferry-house with its heavy odour of wet wood. The
+boat clattered through broken ice, by a trim packet ship, the
+_Susquehanna_, and into the narrow canal through Windmill Island. Camden
+was a depressing region of low, marshy land, its streets unpaved and
+without gas, the gutters full of frozen, stagnant water. He inquired the
+way to the Reverend Mr. Needles', passed a brick meeting house, and,
+turning into Fourth Street, isolated frame dwellings, coming at last to
+a dingy wooden house with broken panes in the upper windows and a
+collapsing veranda at the edge of a blackened, skeleton wood.
+
+A tall, gaunt woman in a ravelled worsted shawl answered his summons,
+and informed him, interrupted by a prolonged coughing, that Mr. Needles
+was away on circuit. "I came for a child staying with you," Jasper Penny
+explained shortly, suppressing an involuntary repulsion at the degraded
+surroundings. "She's not well," the woman replied, with instant
+suspicion. "I don't just like to let a chancy person see her." He
+discarded all subterfuge. "I am her father," he stated. The other
+shifted to a whining self-defence. "And her in this sink!" she
+exclaimed, gazing at Jasper Penny's furred coat, his glossy hat and
+gloves and ebony cane.
+
+"I did all for her I could, considering the small money I was promised,
+and then half the time I didn't get that, neither. The lady owes for
+three weeks right now. I suppose you'll have to come in," she concluded
+grudgingly. They entered a dark hall, clay cold. Beyond, in a slovenly
+kitchen hardly warmer, he found Eunice, his daughter; a curiously
+sluggish child with a pinched, hueless face and a meagre body in a man's
+worn flannel shirt and ragged skirt and stockings.
+
+"Here's your father," Mrs. Needles ejaculated.
+
+Eunice stood in the middle of the bare floor, staring with pallid, open
+mouth at the imposing figure of the man. She said nothing; and Jasper
+Penny found her silence more accusing than a shrill torrent of reproach.
+"She's kind of heavy like," Mrs. Needles explained. "I have come to take
+you away," Jasper Penny said. Then, turning to the woman: "Are those all
+the clothes she has?" She grew duskily red. "There are some others
+about, but I don't just know where, and then she spoils them so fast."
+
+"That's a lie," the child announced, with a faint patch of colour on
+either thin cheek. "Mr. Needles sold them." The man decided to ignore
+such issues; his sole wish now was to take Eunice away as speedily as
+possible. "Well," he directed impatiently, "get a shawl, something to
+wrap her in." He regretted vainly that he had not come for the child in
+a carriage. He paid without a question what the woman said was owing;
+and, with Eunice folded in a ragged plaid, prepared to depart. "I
+guess," the child decided, in a strangely mature voice, "we'd better
+take my medicine." She turned toward a mantel, Mrs. Needles made a quick
+movement in the same direction, but the small shape was before her.
+Jasper Penny took a bottle from the diminutive, cold hand. The label had
+been obliterated; but, impelled by a distrustful curiosity, he took out
+the cork.
+
+Laudanum!
+
+He was at the point of an indignant condemnation when the words perished
+without utterance--not the haggard woman before him, but himself, Jasper
+Penny, was entirely guilty. He, in reality, had given the drug to his
+daughter, placed her in this sorry and bitter poverty. "Come, Eunice,"
+he said, taking her by the hand, his face grey and stony.
+
+Once more in the city he walked with the child to the ferry and foot of
+Chestnut Street, where they found places in The Reaper, a stage brightly
+painted with snowy ships and drawn by four sorrel horses. His first
+concern was to purchase proper clothes for his daughter; then he would
+face the problem of her happier disposal. They passed the columned
+façade of the Philadelphia Bank, the Custom House with its wide steps
+set back from the street, hedged dwellings, and the United States Hotel
+to Independence Square and Sixth Street, where he lifted the child from
+the stage. They stopped before an entrance between bowed windows which
+had above it the sign, The Misses Dunlop, Millinery.
+
+Jasper Penny had had no idea that it would be so difficult to procure
+clothes for a girl of seven. At first he was told that the necessary
+garments could not be furnished, when discussion revealed the fact that
+a nearly complete, diminutive wardrobe, especially ordered from Paris
+and neglected by the customer, was to be had. In a surprisingly short
+while a sentimental saleswoman had apparelled Eunice in black velvet
+with rows of small bows and gold buckles and a lace collar, cambric
+pantaloon ruffles swinging about her ankles, a quilted pink satin bonnet
+tied, like those of her elders', with a bow under her right cheek, and a
+muff and tippet of ermine. Other articles--a frock of rose gros de
+chine, with a flounced skirt, a drab velvet bonnet turned in green
+smocked silk, and sheer underthings--he ordered delivered at Sanderson's
+Hotel.
+
+The effect of what laudanum Eunice had taken faded, and her lethargy was
+replaced by an equally still, incredulous amazement. She followed Jasper
+Penny about with the mechanical rigidity of a minute sleepwalker. They
+went into a jewelry store beyond, with a square low bow window and white
+trimming, where he purchased a ring with a ruby, and small gold
+bracelets with locks and chains. His restless desire was to clothe
+Eunice in money, to overwhelm her with gifts; yet, although an evident
+delight struggled through her stupefaction, he failed to get from the
+expenditure the release he sought. A leaden sense of blood guiltiness
+persisted in him. At Parkinson's, the confectioner opposite the State
+House, he bought her syllabubs, a frozen rose cordial and black cake. On
+leaving, he paused at the marble steps with a lantern on either side and
+awning drawn out over the pavement, considering the next move. It should
+be toys--a German doll, slate and coloured crayons and jumping-figures.
+Then he took her back to his rooms at the Hotel.
+
+Sitting in a stiff crimson chair opposite him, the doll clasped in
+straining fingers, and a flush of excitement on her sharp features, she
+presented an enormous difficulty. What, justly, was he to do with her?
+How could he provide for a reasonable happiness, a healthy, normal
+existence? He decided coldly that he would prevent Essie Scofield's
+influence from ever touching the child again. Essie, he knew, was
+utterly without any warmth of motherhood. She had solely and callously
+used their daughter to extort money from him. But, he admitted to
+himself, neither had he any feeling of parentage for the small, lonely
+figure before him; nothing but a burning self-accusation, a lacerated
+pride. His act proceeded entirely from his head in place of his heart.
+For that very reason, Jasper Penny thought, he could give his daughter a
+greater measure of security. He would see Stephen Jannan to-morrow and
+with the lawyer's assistance get complete control of Eunice's future. He
+must alter his will.
+
+None of this, however, assisted in solving the actual immediate
+necessity. There was, certainly, Myrtle Forge; his mother, however she
+might silently suffer, protest, would ultimately accede in his wishes.
+But it was a dreary place for a child, with only the companionship of
+old women. He was, for the greater part, away in the interest of his
+widely scattered activities, forges, furnaces, nail factories and
+rolling mills.
+
+He felt in anticipation the censure of the Penny connections that would
+rise like a wall and shut Eunice from the companionship of the other
+children, of the family, embittering her at what he had somewhere heard
+described as the formative period of growth. His home, he decided, for
+the present at least, was an undesirable place for his daughter.
+
+It was, he discovered, past two, and he remorsefully summoned a servant.
+He gazed with bewilderment at the list of dinner dishes tended him;
+bear's meat, he felt, canvas back duck or terrapin, was not a diet
+proper to seven; but he solved the perplexity by ordering snipe, rolled
+and sugared cakes filled with whipped cream and preserved strawberries,
+and a deep apple pandowdy. After this, and a block of nougat, Eunice
+discovered herself to be sleepy. As she lay with tossed arms and pale
+streaming hair under the feather coverlet of a great hotel bed he saw
+with a sharp uneasiness that, in a subtle but unmistakable accent, she
+resembled her mother, Essie Scofield.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+His thoughts darkened with the falling day; he supposed them to be
+solely addressed to the problem of Eunice; but, in reality, they
+constantly evaded his will, following countless trivialities, and
+returned to his own, peculiar need. He made some small changes of dress
+for the evening, replacing brown with glazed black boots, and struggled,
+with one hand, through the ordeal of tying a formal neckcloth. He had
+purposely left behind his negro servant as a possible source of
+unguarded chatter. When Jasper Penny had finished he went in to Eunice
+and found her awake. The new clothes lay in their open boxes; and,
+lighting candles, he wondered if he had better have some one in to
+assist her. "Can you fix yourself up in these?" he asked, indicating the
+purchases.
+
+"Oh, yes," she assured him gravely; "that is except the very backest
+buttons." She stood by the folded piles of shirred muslin, the elaborate
+velvets and silks and ribbons, obviously at a loss before such an
+unparalleled choice; and he was once more disturbed by the attenuation
+of her small body. But that could be soon remedied; she had suffered
+other, far greater, irremedial, oppressions; her very birth had
+confronted her, in the puritanical self-righteousness of his world, with
+an almost insuperable barrier to happiness. Still back of that, even
+before the birth of himself and Essie Scofield, back, back in the
+unguessed past, Eunice had been shaped, condemned. Her fate had only
+culminated in his own unbalanced passion, in a desire that had blinded
+him like a flash of ignited powder, leaving him with a sense of utter
+void, of inexplicable need. "For what?" he demanded unconsciously and
+bitterly aloud.
+
+Eunice, startled, dropped the garment in her hands. She gazed at him
+with a shrinking dread. "Come," he told her gently, "that will be very
+pretty; and, don't you think, the velvet bonnet with green?" After
+supper he questioned her. "What time do you usually go to bed?" She
+answered promptly, "When it got too cold to stay up, at Mr. Needles',
+but I wouldn't know here."
+
+"We might go to the Circus," he suggested, half doubtful of the
+propriety of such a course. However, they went. She clung tightly to his
+sleeve before the illuminated, high-pillared façade of Welches' Circus,
+where Jasper took seats in a box. Eunice was breathless before the
+gleaming white and gold of the interior, the fabulous, glittering
+chandelier, the crimson draperies and great curtain with its
+equestrienne on a curvetting steed. The orchestra, with a blare of
+trombones, announced the raising of the curtain and appearance of Mr.
+John Mays, the celebrated clown. He was followed by Chinese sports, the
+Vision of Cupid and Zephyr, and the songs, the programme stated, of
+Lowrie and Williams. These gentlemen, in superb yellow satin, emphasized
+harmoniously the fact that
+
+"And joy is but a flower,
+The heart with sorrow meeting
+Will wither 'neath its power."
+
+Jasper Penny wondered abstractedly what was to be done with the tense,
+excitable child at his side? A voice from the wings announced: "Mouse
+and Harebell, the Lilliputian ponies, with Infant Jockies, the smallest
+schooled racers in existence." And the word "schooled" recalled to him
+the diffident woman he had met at Stephen Jannan's, the night before.
+Miss ... Brundon. A place for the education of younger girls. He could
+send Eunice there, for the present at any rate; and decide later upon
+her ultimate situation. Miss Brundon had a sensitive, yes, distinctly, a
+fine face. Her school, he remembered, was at Raspberry Alley, far out
+Spruce Street, close to Tenth. He drew a deep breath of relief at this
+bridging of the immediate complications the child presented.
+
+The next morning, again in the Reaper coach, they rolled west over
+Chestnut Street, past a theatre with elevated statues of Comedy and
+Tragedy, the Arcade with its outside stairs mounting across the front,
+stone mansions set back in gardens with gravelled paths, and the Moorish
+bulk of Masonic Hall half hid by stores. Beyond the Circus they
+proceeded on foot to a four square brick dwelling with weeping willows
+and an arched wood sign above the entrance painted with the designation,
+"Miss Brundon's Select Academy."
+
+Jasper Penny found Miss Brundon in a small, bare, immaculate office. She
+was sitting at a table; and, as he entered, with Eunice dragging
+desperately at his hand, she half rose, with a quick, faint blush.
+
+"Mr. Penny," she exclaimed, in a low, charming surprise. "I didn't
+expect, so soon, to have the pleasure ... here, at my school." He firmly
+moved Eunice from her position at his back. "An unexpected pleasure for
+me," he replied. "I came to consult with you about this little girl--the
+daughter of a friend of mine. A friend, I may add, in difficult
+circumstances, and for whom I am prepared to do a great deal. I had
+hoped--Stephen Jannan told me about your exceptional establishment--that
+you could take her. She needs just the supervision that I am certain you
+offer."
+
+"Of course," she replied immediately, "I'd be glad to have any one
+recommended by you. I do think my school is unusual. You see, there is
+almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies. And I have
+been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny;
+but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is
+required. Probably you would like an assurance of their studies and
+deportment."
+
+"No," he stopped her hastily; "it is quite enough to have seen you." A
+deeper, painful colour suffused her cheeks. He had, he thought, been
+inexcusably clumsy. He had unconsciously given voice to the conviction
+that Miss Brundon, like her establishment, was exceptional. She was,
+ordinarily, too pale for beauty; her countenance, with high, cheek
+bones, was irregular; yet her eyes, tranquil blue, held a steady quality
+almost the radiance of an inward light. Her diffidence, it was clear,
+co-existed with a firm, inviolable spirit. He said, later:
+
+"You will discover that there are many things Eunice requires, and I
+would be obliged if you would procure them without stint, and send the
+accounts to my Philadelphia office. The child has been in circumstances
+of considerable poverty; but I wish to give her whatever advantages
+money can bring. Yes--Eunice Scofield. And--" he hesitated, "in view of
+this...."
+
+"I understand, oh, completely," Susan Brundon interrupted him warmly.
+"You don't wish your charity exposed; and not only on your own account,
+but from consideration for the susceptibilities of the parents,
+parent--a mother, I gather."
+
+It had been, he thought, leaving, ridiculously simple. His meeting with
+Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance. A fine, delicate, unworldly woman;
+a fineness different from Phebe's, submerged in the pursuit of her own
+salvation. The former, he realized, was close to forty. If she had been
+sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice how admirably she would
+attend any of her own. Unmarried. The blindness of men, their fatuous
+choice, suddenly surprised him.
+
+He determined to proceed directly to Stephen Jannan, and put into motion
+at once the solving of his daughter's future. Never, he repeated, should
+Eunice fall again into the lax hands of Essie Scofield. Stephen would
+advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully
+overcoming its obstacles. He had unbounded faith in the power of money
+where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of
+laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable,
+ultimate scandal. What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching
+about him in every direction. He must discover firmer ground ahead,
+release from the act of that other man, his youth. The memory of the
+serene purity of Miss Brundon's office recurred to him like a breath
+from the open spaces where he had first known the deep pleasure of an
+utter freedom of spirit.
+
+Jasper Penny, revolving the complications of his position, made his way
+directly over the uneven sidewalk of Spruce Street to Fourth; there,
+passing the high, narrow residences of Society Hill, he proceeded to
+Stephen's office, beyond Chestnut. It was in a square brick edifice of
+an earlier period, with a broad marble step and door and wide windows
+coped in scoured white stone. The lawyer's private chamber was bare,
+with snowy panelling and mahogany, the high sombre shelves of a
+calf-bound law library, a ponderous cabriolet table, sturdy, rush-seated
+Dutch chairs, and a Franklin stove with slender brass capitols and
+shining hod.
+
+"A chair, Jasper," Stephen Jannan directed. "You ought to know them,
+they came out of Myrtle Forge--some of old Gilbert's. Your mother gave
+them to me when she did over the house in this new French fancy." Jasper
+Penny was momentarily at a loss for an adequate opening of the subject
+that had brought him there. Finally he plunged directly into his
+purpose. "You must know, Stephen," he said, "that I am decidedly
+obligated to a Mrs. Scofield." Jannan nodded shortly. "The thing dragged
+on for a number of years, but is quite dead now; in fact, it has been
+for a considerable number of months. That, in itself, doesn't bother me;
+it is comparatively simple; but there is a child, a girl, Stephen."
+
+"I didn't know that," the other acknowledged. "It is an ugly difficulty.
+Do you wish to legitimatize your--the child? There is marriage of
+course."
+
+"I have no intention of marrying Essie Scofield," Jasper Penny said
+coldly. "And I am almost certain she wouldn't consent if I had. I am
+quite willing to assume a proper responsibility; but there is a limit to
+my conception of that. There was never any serious question of marriage;
+there is none now. I simply wish to get complete control of Eunice; by
+adoption, perhaps; she is seven years old."
+
+"There are no laws of adoption, as such, in Pennsylvania," Jannan told
+him. "The only State with that provision is Louisiana; there, by an act
+of Legislature, the thing can be legalized. I could arrange it through
+correspondence, a certain residence within the State. It would be
+cumbersome and expensive, but possible." He paused, frowning. "Devilish
+awkward," he muttered; "make a stench in a family such as ours.
+However," he added, "a contract practically to the same effect can be
+drawn. This, with her consent, would be entirely binding on Mrs.
+Scofield. If the child can write it would be well to have her signature
+on the deed. Bring them here; she should have counsel."
+
+"After that, I suppose, the name could be arranged."
+
+"Exactly. The child, of course, would have no legal status as your heir.
+Anything she got would have to be willed direct." The other nodded. It
+was all far more simple than he had hoped. He almost saw a definite
+lightening of the future. "Is the girl with her mother now?" Jannan
+queried.
+
+"I took her away yesterday," Jasper Penny replied negligently. "We went
+to the Circus, and at present she is at Miss Brandon's Academy." He was
+surprised by the sudden concern on his cousin's handsome, florid
+countenance. "By heaven, Jasper," the lawyer exclaimed, "am I to
+understand that you took a--well, an illegitimate child, to Miss
+Brundon, left her in the School? It's--it's incredible."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"If such a thing were known it would ruin Susan Brundon over night.
+Haven't you a conception of how this is regarded? She would be stripped
+of pupils as if the place reeked of malignant fever. A most beastly
+egotistical and selfish act."
+
+"Never thought of that," Jasper Penny admitted. He saw again the fine,
+sensitive face of Miss Brundon, presiding over the establishment that
+was like an emanation of her diffident and courageous spirit; the last
+person alive he would harm. And people were exactly as Stephen had said,
+particularly women. They would destroy Susan Brundon ruthlessly, without
+a moment's hesitation. He thought of her as suffering incalculably,
+betrayed by his implied lie; he saw her eyes stricken with pain, her
+hands twisting together.... He rose sharply.
+
+"A blind, infernal fool!" he ejaculated, grasping his hat. "I'm glad I
+saw you when I did. Put it right at once. Obliged, Stephen; come to you
+later about changing my will and the rest."
+
+He was in such haste to remove the danger of Eunice from Susan Brundon
+that not until he again stood at the door of the Academy did he realize
+what a difficult explanation lay before him. Unconsciously he had
+reached a point where he would do his utmost to avoid hurting her.
+Already she occupied an unusual elevation in his thoughts, an unworldly
+plane bathed in a white radiance.
+
+She was not in the office, but soon appeared, with a questioning gaze;
+and, he felt, an appealing lessening of her reserve. He hesitated,
+casting vainly about for an acceptable expression of his errand. Another
+lie, he thought, acutely distressed, must be necessary. "I am extremely
+sorry, Miss Brandon," he told her, "but unexpected developments in the
+last hour make it necessary for me to remove Eunice from your school."
+
+A slow flush invaded her countenance lifted to meet his troubled gaze.
+"Mr. Penny!" she exclaimed, in a faint dismay. "Oh, I hope it is because
+of nothing--nothing derogatory you have heard. Please tell me
+directly--"
+
+"Absolutely no," he replied, his voice carrying a vibrating reassurance.
+"You are entirely without the need of recommendation, far beyond any
+unfavourable report. I am profoundly disturbed by causing you
+inconvenience, and I only hope to offer you sufficient apology; but I
+shall have to take Eunice away with me, at once."
+
+"Perhaps her mother can't bear separation."
+
+"It is not that," he said grimly, a tangible hurt sharpening within;
+"but something that cannot be gone into, with you." She turned away
+immediately. "I will send for her," she replied. They stood facing but
+mutually avoiding each other's gaze while Eunice was being fetched.
+"Her things have already come from the hotel," Miss Brundon proceeded.
+"Where shall I send them?" Eunice broke in with a shrill protest. "Do I
+have to go? I don't want to." Her face was scarlet with revolt. "I can
+walk up and down the room with a book on my head, while another little
+girl had to be all done with a board to her back."
+
+Jasper Penny wondered if he would see Miss Brundon again soon. The last
+was an afterthought bred by the realization that he could not permit her
+to depart absolutely from his life. There was a great deal that he, a
+rich and influential man of practical affairs, might do for her. He was
+certain that Susan Brundon needed exactly the assistance he could give;
+probably people robbed her, traded callously on her unsuspicious nature.
+Yet, when the moment came to leave, he could think of nothing to say
+beyond the banality of looking for her at the Jannans'.
+
+"I go out very little," she told him; "the work here absorbs me; and,
+unfortunately, my eyes are not strong. They require constant rest." He
+expressed regret once more for any disturbance he might have caused;
+and, after hesitating awkwardly, left with Eunice hanging fretfully at
+his hand. What, in God's name, was he to do with the child? He walked
+slowly, his face half lost in the fur of his overcoat, oblivious, in his
+concentration on the difficulties of her situation, of Eunice
+progressing discontentedly at his side. A petulant complaint rose at
+intervals to an audible sob. Looking down, as the sobs threatened to
+become a continuous crying, he saw the top of the velvet bonnet and her
+diminutive hands in scarlet knitted mitts. He would have to stop
+dragging her from place to place; a suitable position for the present
+was all he hoped for now. There must be other institutions, larger and
+farther away, to which Eunice could be sent. He had a vague memory of
+such a place somewhere on the Delaware, was it at Burlington?
+
+But he could not continue living with his daughter at Sanderson's Hotel.
+Jasper Penny decided that he would take her that afternoon to the house
+of the head machinist of his nail works at Jaffa, the town that, its
+beginning growing largely out of the Penny industries, lay a scant mile
+from Myrtle Forge. Speever was a superior man; his wife, a robust
+Cornish woman in a crisp apron, would give Eunice an energetic and
+proper care.
+
+A thin, flexible mantle of snow lay over the drab earth, sweeping up to
+a Grecian marble edifice, making more dreary the bulk of the Eastern
+Penitentiary and foundation of Girard College, and emphasizing the
+winter desertion of the reaches of the Fairmount Water Works. She soon
+grew absorbed in the various aspects of their transportation--the echo
+of the whip cracking over the mules that drew the coaches across the
+covered viaduct, the labouring stationary engine and their slow ascent
+beyond. They saw, lining the river, a cemetery elevated starkly against
+the sky; and followed a canal by a broken, black flood between snowy
+banks.
+
+Past a town with impressive residences and manufactories with low
+spreading veils of smoke, they came on a confusion of canals and canal
+boats, lock dams and bridges, mules and raffish crews with tanned faces
+and brightly coloured jackets and boots. Again crossing the river and a
+shallow, tranquil valley, the train brigade rolled into the main street
+of Jaffa. It was a town of small brick dwellings, spaced in orderly
+yards, echoing to the diminished clamour of the Penny Rolling Mills on
+the outskirts. Beyond the walls, starkly red against the snow, the
+blackened main street, the river was spotted with ice.
+
+Edgar Speever's wife accepted Eunice with an immediate and unquestioning
+capability, and Jasper Penny turned away with a momentary but immense
+relief. In a few days, after the deed for the possession of the child
+had been executed, he could place her more permanently. He walked out to
+the miscellaneous group of buildings and cluttered yards that held his
+inherited activity; and in the small single-roomed building of the main
+office discussed with his superintendent the changes, improvements of
+process, then under way. The old nail machines, propelled by the feet
+and hands of an operator, and producing but one nail at a time, had been
+replaced by a high power engine, self-heading machinery. The
+superintendent complained of the pig from the new hot blast furnaces.
+"Impure," he declared. "And this new stone coal firing, too, makes but
+poor stuff. It'll never touch the old charcoal forging. Hammered bar's
+at ninety, and I'm glad to get it then. The puddling furnaces will do
+something with the grey pig; we have eight in blast now, turning out the
+railroad and heavier bars. This year will see forty-five hundred tons of
+iron worked, and close to four thousand kegs of nails."
+
+Jasper Penny listened attentively; it was his intention soon to dispense
+entirely with all the time-honoured methods of iron manufacture. Water
+power, with its unequal flow, any large employment of charcoal, growing
+increasingly expensive with the rapid diminishment of the forests, must
+give place to the steam blast machine and anthracite. If his manager was
+unable to change, develop, with the changing times he would find
+another, more scientific.
+
+Outside the early twilight made more grey the dingy sheds and buildings,
+the heaped slag; the long brick rectangle of the rolling mill, with its
+triple imposed, ventilated roof and the high, smoking stacks of the
+puddling furnaces, rising four from either length, gave out an
+undiminished, deafening uproar, the clamour of the bars falling out from
+the rollers, the spatter of hammers and dull dragging of heavy weights.
+The engine of the nail works rent all other sound with an unaccustomed,
+harsh blast.... Jasper Penny was conscious of a deep, involuntary
+relief when he reached the comparative tranquillity, the secession of
+vexatious problems, accomplished by Myrtle Forge.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+There was, as always, an elaborate, steaming supper, with his mother, in
+a pelisse of black silk ruching, and Amity Merken at their places. He
+noted that an empty chair had been put, as customary, at the opposite
+end of the table, and with a trace of impatience ordered its removal. He
+wondered momentarily at his petty act; and then his thoughts returned to
+Susan Brundon. Jasper Penny saw her blue gaze lifted to his face, the
+hesitating smile; he felt again the pervading influence of her delicate
+yet essentially unshrinking spirit. She would possess an enormous
+steadfastness of purpose, he decided; a potentiality of immovable
+self-sacrifice. Yet she was the gentlest person alive. An unusual and
+resplendent combination of traits, rare possibilities.
+
+She had told him that she seldom went about--her school absorbed her,
+and her eyes needed care, rest. He must ask Stephen Jannan further about
+her. They were sitting, Jasper Penny, his mother and her sister, in the
+parlour; a large, square chamber hung with dark maroon paper and long,
+many tasselled and corniced window curtains in sombre green plush. A
+white wedgewood mantel with ornaments in olive and blue, above a
+brass-fretted closed stove, supported a high mirror, against which were
+ranged a pair of tall astral lamps shining in green and red spars of
+light through their pendants, a French clock--a crystal ball in a
+miniature Ionic pavilion of gilt--and artificial bouquets of coloured
+wax under glass domes. A thick carpet of purplish black velvet pile
+covered the floor from wall to wall; stiff Adam chairs and settee with
+wheelbacks of black and gold were upholstered in dusky ruby and indigo.
+Ebony tables of framed, inlaid onyx held tortoise shell and lacquer
+ornaments, an inlaid tulip-wood music-box, volumes in elaborately tooled
+morocco, and a globe where, apparently, metallic fish were suspended in
+a translucent, green gloom.
+
+The light from the multiple candelabras of ormolu and cut lustres
+streamed from the walls over Jasper Penny, sunk forward in profound
+absorption, and his mother's busy, fat hands working with gay worsteds.
+At her side a low stand of rubbed Chinese vermilion held her spilling
+yarns. Her face was placid, dryly pinkish and full. An irreproachable,
+domestic female. Herself the daughter of a successful Pennsylvania
+German Ironmaster, her wealth had doubled the Penny successes. There had
+been other children; Jasper could only faintly remember two, mostly in
+the form of infantile whimpering.
+
+The inevitable termination of the evening was readied by the appearance
+of a pitcher of steaming, spiced mulled wine. A cupful was formally
+presented to Amity Merken; Gilda Penny sipped hers with an audible
+satisfaction, and Jasper Penny absently drank the fragrant compound of
+cinnamon bark and lemon, cloves, sugar and claret. A measure of that,
+before retiring, could not but be beneficial to Susan Brundon, fatigued
+by the duties of her Academy. He thought of the sharper breath of the
+brandy and oranges compounded by Essie Scofield. A thin odour of
+foxglove clung to the memory of his wife.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Jasper Penny supplemented Jannan's letter to Essie Scofield, asking for
+an appointment with his client at the law office, with a short
+communication laying before her the condition in which he had found
+Eunice, his knowledge of her neglect to provide their daughter with the
+funds he had sent for that purpose, and definite plans for his complete
+control of the child. At the despatch of this he felt that his duty,
+where Essie as a formal parent resided, was ended. It was now only a
+question of an agreement on terms. He got no reply, other than a
+notification from Stephen Jannan that a meeting had been arranged for
+the following week. And, at eleven o'clock, on a clear, thin blue winter
+morning, he mounted, with Eunice, to the entrance of Jannan's offices on
+Fourth Street.
+
+Essie Scofield, in widespread mulberry silk with tight sleeves and broad
+steel buttons, a close brimmed blue bonnet filled with lilacs and tied
+with an old rose ribbon, was more compelling than Jasper Penny had
+remembered her for, actually, years. A coffee-coloured India shawl, with
+a deep fringe and trace of a lining checkered in cherry and black
+slipping from her shoulders, toned her appearance to a potential
+dignity.
+
+"Eunice," she exclaimed, as the child entered, "do come here at my
+side!" A small, cold mouth was silently raised for a straining embrace.
+Stephen Jannan proceeded at once, addressing Essie Scofield. "Mr. Penny
+informs me that he has written you explaining our purpose. I have
+already instructed you of the law in such a connexion, and there remains
+only your signatures to these papers. I begged you, if you will
+remember, to come with counsel, but since you have not done that it will
+be best for you to read this deed, which is quite clear in its intent."
+
+Essie gazed dramatically at the paper the lawyer tended her. "It means,"
+she said, "that I am to lose Eunice, and because I cannot offer her any
+advantages beyond those of a slim purse. I am a most unfortunate
+creature." Jasper Penny scraped his chair back impatiently, but Stephen
+enforced his silence with a gesture. "While my client understands that
+no monetary consideration can compensate for the breaking of ties of
+affection," Stephen Jannan went on smoothly, "and while he offers none
+in payment to that end, still we feel that some material recognition
+should be due you. Have you anything to say, suggest, at this point?"
+
+Essie Scofield's arm was about Eunice's waist. "I am to be parted from
+my little daughter," she exclaimed; "and my tears are to be stopped with
+gold--an affectionate breast, a heart-wrung appeal, stilled by a bribe.
+That is the price paid by a trusting, an unsuspicious, female. Long ago,
+when a mere girl, dazzled by--"
+
+"We won't go into that," Jannan interrupted, "but confine ourselves to
+the immediate development. By signing the paper in question, and
+accepting a sum of money, you surrender all claim to this child, known
+as Eunice Scofield."
+
+"How will that affect my--my position in other ways?" she demanded, in a
+suddenly shrewd, suspicious tone. "Not at all," the lawyer assured her.
+She sobbed once, emotionally; and Eunice regarded her with a wide,
+unsparing curiosity. "A stranger to me," she gasped, with a paper white
+face and fluttering eyelids. Jasper Penny ejaculated sharply, "How much,
+Essie?" In a moment, he judged, familiar with a potential hysteria, she
+might faint, scream; there were clerks, people, in the next rooms. On
+the brink of collapse she hesitated, twisting her purple kid gloves.
+
+"Ten thousand dollars," she said.
+
+Stephen Jannan glanced swiftly at his cousin, and the latter nodded.
+"That is satisfactory," Jannan announced. "A mere formality--witnesses."
+Essie Scofield traced her signature in round, unformed characters;
+Jasper Penny followed with a hasty, small script; and Eunice, seated at
+the impressive table, printed her name slowly, blotting it with a
+trailing sleeve. The lawyer swung back the door of a heavy safe, and
+took out a package of white bills of exchange on the Bank of
+Pennsylvania. Essie counted the notes independently, thrust the money
+into a steel-beaded reticule with silk cords, and rose, gathering
+together her cashmere shawl. She ignored Eunice totally in the veiled
+gaze she directed at Jasper Penny. "It is better," she told him, "if you
+write first when you expect to visit me. Really, the last time, with
+some friends there, you were impossible." He bowed stiffly. "Don't let a
+sense of duty bring you," she concluded boldly. "I get on surprisingly
+well as it is, as it is," she reiterated, and, he thought, her voice
+bore almost a threat.
+
+When she had gone the two men sat gazing in a common perplexity at the
+child. Stephen Jannan's lips were compressed, Jasper Penny's face was
+slightly drawn as if by pain. Eunice was investigating a thick stick of
+vermilion sealing wax and a steel die. "Well?" Jannan queried, nodding
+toward the table. "I thought something of Burlington," Penny replied,
+"but decided to place her in New York. Want to give her all the chance
+possible. I intend, at what seems the proper time, to secure her my own
+name." He stopped the objection clouding his cousin's countenance. "We
+won't argue that, please. Now about the will; the provision must be
+explicit and generous. There, at least, I am able to meet a just
+requirement." Jasper Penny's will was produced, a codicil projected,
+appended, and witnesses recalled.
+
+"I wanted to inquire about Miss Brundon," Jasper said finally, the
+business despatched. "She seems to me very fragile for the conducting of
+an Academy. Is there no family, men, to support her? And her
+institution--does it continue to progress well?"
+
+"Very." Jannan replied to the last question first. "Her children come
+from the best families in the city; and, under my advice, her charges
+are high. She has a brother, I believe, a cotton merchant of New
+Orleans, and quite prosperous. But he has a large family, and Susan will
+not permit him to deprive it of a dollar for her benefit. As you say,
+she is not strong; but in spite of that she needs no man's patronage.
+The finest qualities, Jasper, the most elevated spirit. A little too
+conscientious, perhaps; and, although she is thirty-nine, curiously
+ignorant of the world; but rare ... rare. It almost seems as if there
+were a conspiracy to keep ugly truths away from her."
+
+Truths, Jasper Penny thought bitterly, such as had just been revealed in
+Stephen's office. There was, it seemed, nothing he could do for Susan
+Brundon. He envied the lawyer his position of familiar adviser, the ease
+with which the other spoke her name: Susan. He rose, fumbling with a
+jade seal. "Come, Eunice," he said, the lines deepening about his mouth
+and eyes. Stephen Jannan assisted him into the heavy, furred coat.
+"Well, Jasper," he remarked sympathetically, "if we could but look
+ahead, if we were older in our youth, yes, and younger in our increasing
+age, the world would be a different place." He held out to Eunice a
+newly minted Brazilian goldpiece. "Good-bye," he addressed her; "command
+me if I can be of any use." She clutched the gold tightly, and Jasper
+Penny led her out into the winter street. "We must have dinner," he said
+gravely. "With some yellow rock candy," she added, "and syllabubs."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of
+pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The
+loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have
+its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down
+the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted
+from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing
+prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their
+manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.
+Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had
+largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail
+works by the canal at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle
+Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.
+
+Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself--the
+pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery,
+where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.
+The old system of bellows had been replaced by a wood cylinder,
+compressing air by piston into a chamber from which the blast was
+regulated. A blacksmith's shed had been added in the course of time,
+and a brick coke oven. He stopped at the Forge shed, filled with ruddy
+light and shadow, the ringing of hammers, and silently watched the
+malleable metal on the anvil. Flakes of glowing iron fell, changing from
+ruby to blue and black.
+
+The Penny iron! The Forge had been operated continuously since seventeen
+twenty-seven, hammering out the foundation of his, Jasper's, position.
+He had taken a not inconsiderable place in the succession of the men of
+his family; in him the Pennys had reached their greatest importance,
+wealth. But after him ... what? He was, now, the last Penny man. The
+foothold Gilbert had cut out of the wild, which Howat and Casimir--an
+outlandish name obviously traceable to his mother, the foreign
+widow--had, in turn, increased for Daniel and Jasper, would be
+dissipated. His great, great aunt, Caroline, marrying a solid Quaker,
+had contributed, too, to the family stamina; while her granddaughter,
+wedding a Jannan, had increased the social prestige and connections of
+the family. The Jannans, bankers and lawyers, had already converted the
+greater part of their iron inheritance into more speculative finance;
+and the burden of the industry rested on Jasper Penny's shoulders.
+
+At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible
+monument of their endurance and rectitude, except for the tenuous,
+momentary fact of Eunice, would be overthrown, forgot. He was conscious
+of a strong inner protest against such oblivion. He had, of course,
+often before lamented the fact that he had no son; but suddenly his loss
+became a hundred times more poignant, regrettable. Jasper Penny caught
+again the remembered, oppressive odour of foxglove, the aromatic reek of
+brandy and oranges; one, in its implications, as sterile as the other.
+He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of essential failure, a
+recurrence of the dark mood that had enveloped him in leaving the
+Jannans' ball.
+
+Yet, he thought again, he was still in the midstride of his life, his
+powers. His health was unimpaired; his presence bore none of the
+slackening aspect of increasing years. These feelings occupied him,
+speeding in a single cutter sleigh over the crisp snow of the road
+leading from his home to Shadrach Furnace, where Graham Jannan and his
+young wife had been newly installed in the foremens' dwelling. There was
+a slight uneasiness about Graham's lungs, in consequence of which he had
+been taken out of the banking house of an uncle, Jannan and Provost, and
+set at the more robust task of picking up the management of an iron
+furnace.
+
+It was early afternoon; the sky was as dryly powdered with unbroken blue
+as was the earth with white. The silver bells and scarlet pompons of the
+harness crackled in the still, intense cold; and a blanched vapour hung
+about the horse's head. Jasper Penny, enveloped in voluminous buffalo
+robes and fur, gazed with an increased interest at the familiar, flowing
+scene; nearby the forest had been cut, and suave, rolling fields
+stretched to a far mauve haze of trees; the ultramarine smoke of
+farmhouse chimneys everywhere climbed into the pale wash of sunlight;
+orderly fence succeeded fence. How rapidly, and prosperous, the country
+was growing! Even he could remember wide reaches of wild that were now
+cultivated. The game, quail and wild turkey and deer, was fast
+disappearing. The country was growing amazingly, too, extending through
+the Louisiana Purchase, State by State, to Mexico and the Texan border.
+The era of the greatness of the United States had hardly begun, while it
+was more than probable that the greatness, the power, of the Penny
+family faced an imminent destruction. His revolt at this, joining the
+more personal sense of the emptiness of his existence, filled him with a
+bitter energy, a determination to conquer, somehow, the obdurate facts
+hemming him in.
+
+The sleigh dropped over a rise into a shallow fold of hills, with a
+collection of structures on a slope, and a number of solid, small grey
+stone dwellings. He glanced subconsciously at the stack of Shadrach
+Furnace, and saw that it was in blast--a colourless, lively flame, with
+a thin, white smoke like crumpled muslin, playing about its base. The
+metallic ring of a smithy rose at a crossing of roads, and, from the
+cast house, drifted the refrain of a German song. He turned in by the
+comparatively long, low façade of the house where the Jannans were
+living.
+
+A negro led the horse and sleigh back to a stable; and, briskly sounding
+the polished iron doorknocker, he let himself into the dining room, a
+chamber with a wide, pot-hung fireplace and plain mahogany consul tables
+with wood chairs brightly painted with archaic flowers and scrolls in
+gold. Standing at the far side of the room, delicately outlined against
+a low, deeply embrasured window, was Susan Brundon.
+
+A slow tide of colour rose to her ordinarily pale cheeks, corresponding
+with a formless gladness permeating his own being. She wore ruffled
+lavender with a clear lace pelerine caught at her breast by a knot of
+straw-coloured ribbon and sprig of rose geranium. "Mr. Penny," she said,
+with a little gasp of surprise; but her gaze was unwavering, candid.
+
+"Why not?" he replied lightly. "I have a small interest in Shadrach. You
+are surprising--so far from that absorbing Academy."
+
+"It's my eyes again," she explained. "I am obliged to rest. There is a
+very good assistant at the school; and Mary sweetly thought the country
+would do me good."
+
+"It is really miraculous," Mary Jannan stated, entering from the
+kitchen; "she'll almost never. Weren't we lucky?" She was a small woman
+with smooth brown hair and an air of quiet capability. "And it's
+splendid to see you," she continued to Jasper Penny. "Don't for a
+minute think you'll get off before to-morrow, perhaps not then. Graham
+is out, chop-chopping wood. Actually--the suave Graham." She indicated a
+high row of pegs for Jasper Penny's furs. "Everything is terribly
+primitive. Most of the furniture was so sound that we couldn't bring
+ourselves to discard it all, however old-fashioned. Little by little."
+Graham Jannan entered, a tall, thin young man with crisp, pale yellow
+hair and a clean shaven, sanguine countenance with challenging light
+blue eyes. He greeted the older man with a firm, cold hand clasp. "I
+suppose you've come out to discover what I have learned about iron.
+Well, I know now that a sow is not necessarily a lady, and that some
+blooms have no bouquet. Good rum has, though, after sleighing."
+
+Upon alternately burning his fingers and throat with a steaming glass of
+St. Croix, Jasper Penny and Graham Jannan proceeded to the Furnace
+where, in the cast house, they watched the preparations for a flow of
+metal. The head founder, McQuatty, bearded to the eyes and swathed in a
+hide apron, stood at the Ironmaster's side. "The charcoal you'd get's
+not worth a bawbee," he complained; "soft stuff would hardly run lead.
+And where they'd cut six thousand cords of wood will no longer show more
+than four. Shadrach ought to put out twenty-eight tons of pig in a week;
+and you see the statements."
+
+"Stone coal," Jasper Penny replied; "and a hot blast." He turned to
+describe the latter to Jannan. "It'll come," the founder agreed, "and
+the quality will go." He went forward to tap the clay-sealed hearth. The
+liquid iron poured into the channels of its sand bed, sputtering and
+slowly fading to dingy grey. "I'd like you to take hold of this," Jasper
+Penny told the younger man; "great changes, improvements, are just over
+the hill. I'll miss them--a link between the old and the new. But you
+would see it all. The railroad will bring about an iron age; and then,
+perhaps, steel. I look for trouble, too--this damned States Rights. The
+South has been uneasy since the Carolina Nullification Act. It will be a
+time for action." He gazed keenly at Graham Jannan. A promising young
+man, he thought, with a considerable asset in his wife. A woman, the
+right woman, could make a tremendous difference in a man's capabilities.
+
+He elaborated this thought fantastically at dinner, sitting opposite
+Susan Brundon. Mary Jannan wore orange crêpe, with black loops of ball
+fringe and purple silk dahlias; and, beside her, Miss Brundon's dress
+was noticeably simple. She volunteered little, but, when directly
+addressed, answered in a gentle, hesitating voice that veiled the
+directness, the conviction, of her replies. The right woman, Jasper
+Penny repeated silently. Ten, fifteen, years ago, when he had been free,
+he would have acted immediately on the feeling that Susan Brundon was
+exactly the wife he wanted. But no such person had appeared at that
+momentous period in his life.
+
+However, then he had been a totally different being; perhaps the
+appreciation of Miss Brundon, her actual reality, lay for him entirely
+in his own perceptions. But if she would not have been the woman for him
+then, by heaven, she was now! He expressed this unaware of its wide
+implications, unconscious of the effect it would instantly have. The
+thing silently uttered bred an enormously increased need, the absolute
+determination that she was necessary to his most perfunctory being. The
+thought of her alone, he discovered, had been sufficient to give him a
+new energy, a sense of rare satisfaction.
+
+Shortly expressed, he wanted to marry her; he had not, he told himself
+oddly, ever been married. The word had a significance which heretofore
+he had completely missed. A strange emotion stirred into being, a
+longing thrown out from his new desire, the late-born feeling of
+dissatisfaction; it was a wish for something in Susan Brundon which he
+experienced but could not name. Roughly stated it was a hunger to
+surround her with security, comfort, to fortify the, at best, doubtful
+position of life in death for her. Yet he acknowledged to himself that
+this regard for her safety was mostly the result of his own inner, blind
+striving. Her happiness had magically become his. Beyond that he was
+unable to penetrate.
+
+After supper they gathered in the chamber beyond the dining room. Here
+Jasper Penny found an incongruous mingling of old and new furniture.
+There was a high, waxed walnut desk and cabinet, severely simple, and
+before it a chair with a back of elaborately carved and gilded tulips
+tufted in plum-coloured velvet. The thick carpet was a deep rose, and
+the drapery of the mantel and windows garnet. A painted hood of
+brilliant Chinese colours had been fastened before what was evidently an
+open hearth, for which a coal stove was substituted. On the middle of
+the floor was an oriental hassock in silver brocade; while a corner held
+a spinet-piano decorated in roseate cupids, flower sprays and gold leaf.
+Again, an old clock in Spanish mahogany, with a rudely painted glass
+door, had been left on the wall.
+
+Mary Jannan, at the piano, wove a delicate succession of arpeggios. She
+sang, in a small and graceful voice, a cavatina, _Tanti Palpiti_. Then,
+"Ah, que les amours ... de beaux heurs." Jasper Penny listened with an
+unconscious, approving pretence of understanding. But when, in the
+course of her repertoire, she reached _Sweet Sister Fay_, and _The Horn
+of My Loved One I Hear_, his pleasure became active. Susan Brundon, on
+the hassock, lifted her sensitive face to the mild candle light, and its
+still pallor gave him a shock of delight. Her hands were folded in the
+voluminous sweep of her crinoline; the ribbons at her breast rose and
+fell softly.
+
+Jasper Penny and Graham were smoking long, fragrant cigars that the
+former had produced from a lacquered case, and Jannan had the
+ingredients of the hot punch at his elbow. It amused the young man to
+persuade Susan Brandon to take a sip from his glass; and they all
+laughed at her subsequent gasping. Jasper Penny was astoundingly happy;
+his being radiated a warmth and contentment more potent than that of the
+St. Croix rum. It was accompanied by an extraordinary lightness of
+spirit, a feeling of the desirability of life. The memory of his greying
+hair had left him; not, it was true, to be replaced by the surging
+emotions of youth, but by a deep satisfaction.
+
+Susan Brundon, Susan ... the right woman. He marvelled again at the
+brightness of spirit that shone in her--like a flame through a fine
+paper lantern. Susan, at Myrtle Forge. His thought became concrete; he
+knew now, definitely, that he had determined to marry her. His peace of
+mind increased. There was no need for hurry, the mere idea was
+irradiating; yet there must be no unnecessary delay. Incontrovertibly he
+had passed forty. The best period in a man's life. They would go to the
+West Indies, he decided. A ring with a square emerald, and roses of
+pearls. It was, almost immediately, time to retire. His room, narrow
+with a sloping wall, had a small window giving on a flawless rectangle
+of snow like the purity of Susan Brundon.
+
+As he lay in bed, staring wakefully against the dark, another memory
+crept into his thoughts--the echo of a small, querulous voice, "yellow
+rock candy and syllabubs." Eunice! A sudden consternation seized him as
+he realized the necessity of telling Susan fully about his daughter. No
+escape, evasion, was possible. If she discovered the existence, the
+history, of the child afterward--he lingered over the happiness that
+term implied--it would destroy her. This, he told himself, was not
+merely melodrama; he was thinking of her delicate spirituality, so
+completely shielded from the bald fatality of facts. An increasing dread
+seized him at the thought of the hurt his revelation would inflict on
+her. The interweaving of life in life, consequence on consequence, the
+unbroken intricacy of the whole fabric of existence, realized anew,
+filled him with bitter rebellion. The blind commitment of a vanished
+youth, potent after years, still hung in a dark cloud over Susan
+Brundon. He was conscious of the past like an insuperable lead weight
+dragging at his attempted progress. The secret errors of all the pasts
+that had made him rose in a haggard, shadowy troop about his bed,
+perpetuated, multiplied, against his aspirations of tranquil release.
+
+Yet, he told himself, dressing in the bright flood of morning, if
+nothing perished but the mere, shredding flesh, one quality persisted
+equally with the other--the symbol of Essie Scofield was no more actual
+than Susan. He had breakfast early, with Graham Jannan; and, in a
+reviving optimism, arranged for the Jannans to bring Miss Brundon to
+Myrtle Forge for a night before her departure. He whirled away, in a
+sparkling veil of flung snow crystals, before the women appeared.
+
+Susan Brundon would, naturally, shrink from what he must tell her; but
+he was suddenly confident of his ability to convince her of the superior
+importance of the actuality of what they together might make of the
+future. He was accustomed to the bending of circumstance to his will; in
+the end he would prove stronger than any hesitancy she might, perhaps,
+reveal. His desire to have her had grown to such proportions that he
+could not, for an instant, think of existence without her as an intimate
+part. He even mentally determined when he should go to the city, the
+jeweller's, for the square emerald and flowered pearls. He would do over
+the rooms where he had lived in the thin formality of his marriage with
+Phebe, settle an amount on Essie ... shredding flesh. It would do the
+living woman no more injury than the dead. Oranges and brandy, satin and
+gold and ease.
+
+He wrote, through Stephen Jannan, to Essie Scofield that afternoon,
+stating the generous terms of his final arrangement with her, making it
+plain that all personal contact between them had reached an end.
+Hereafter she must exclusively address any unavoidable communications to
+Mr. Jannan. She disregarded this in a direct, inevitably complaining,
+laborious scrawl. However, he could read through it her obvious relief
+at complete independence. She would, she thought, stay where she was for
+a little ... a period of perfunctory sentimentality followed. He
+destroyed the letter, turning with deep pleasure to the message from
+Graham Jannan that he would bring Susan Brundon and Mary to Myrtle Forge
+the following day.
+
+His mother, with Amity Merken like a timid and reduced replica at her
+back, greeted the Jannans and Miss Brundon at the door. Jasper Penny
+came forward from the smoking room, to the right of the main entrance;
+where the men retired for an appetizer of gin and bitters. The older man
+was garbed with exact care. His whiskers were closely trimmed on either
+side of his severe mouth and shapely, dominant chin; and his sombre
+eyes, under their brows drawn up toward the temples, held an unusual
+raillery. Amity Merken, he learned, had desired to stay away from the
+supper table; but, to her distress, he forced her into a chair set by
+himself. Susan sat at the other end of the table, in the place that had
+been Phebe's. He gazed at her with a satisfaction without surprise; for
+it seemed to him that the woman beyond him had always occupied the fore
+of his existence. She wore pale grey, the opening at her neck filled
+with soft lace and pinned with a garnet brooch, and a deep-fringed,
+white silk shawl. The conversation was ambling, but, to Jasper Penny,
+pitched in a key of utter delight. He said little through supper; and,
+at its end, with Graham Jannan, immediately followed the others into the
+parlour.
+
+There Mary Jannan repeated her songs, French, English and Italian; and
+Jasper Penny listened with a poignant, emotional response. Graham and
+his wife had arranged to sleigh back to Shadrach Furnace that evening;
+but Susan Brundon was to stay at Myrtle Forge, and take the train from
+Jaffa to-morrow. The Jannans, finally, departed; and Jasper Penny,
+showing Susan through the chambers of the lower floor, succeeded in
+delaying her, seated, in the smoking room.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Now that the moment which he had so carefully planned had arrived he was
+curiously reluctant to precipitate Susan and himself into the future.
+The lamps on a mantel, hooded in alabaster, cast a diffused radiance
+over Susan's silvery dress, on her countenance faintly flushed above the
+white folds of the shawl. "What is that sound?" she suddenly queried. "I
+heard it all through supper and before. It seems to live in the walls,
+the very air, here."
+
+"The trip hammer of Myrtle Forge," he replied gravely. "I suppose it
+might, fancifully, be called the beating of the Penny heart; it does
+pound through every associated stone; and I have a notion that when it
+stops we shall stop too. The Penny men have all been faithful to it, and
+it has been faithful to us, given us a hold in a new country, a hold of
+wrought iron."
+
+"How beautiful," she murmured; "how strong and safe!"
+
+"It pleases me that you feel that," he plunged directly into his
+purpose; "for I intend to offer you all the strength and safety it
+contains." Her hands fluttered to her cheeks; a sudden fear touched
+her, yet her eyes found his unwaveringly. "If that were all," he
+continued, standing above her, "if I had only to tell you of the iron,
+if the metal were flawless, I'd be overwhelmed with gladness. But almost
+no iron is perfect, the longest refining leaves bubbles, faults. Men are
+like that, too ... Susan." She grew troubled, sensitively following his
+mood; her hands were now pressed to her breast, her lips parted. She was
+so bewilderingly pure, in her dim-lit, pearly haze of silk, that he
+paused with an involuntary contraction of pain at what must follow.
+
+"The child, Eunice," he struggled on; "I couldn't leave her at the
+Academy because it might injure you. I had brought her in a most blind
+egotism; and so I took her away. She is my daughter."
+
+He saw that at first she totally missed the implication of his words.
+"But," she stammered, "I was told you had no ... how would that--?" Then
+she stopped as sharply as if a hand had compressed her throat. A vivid
+mantle of colour rose in her face; she made a motion of rising, of
+flight, but sank back weakly. "It is criminally indelicate to speak to
+you of this," he said, "but it was absolutely necessary. I want to marry
+you; in that circumstance a lie would be fatal, later or sooner."
+
+She attempted to speak, her lips quivered, but only a low gasp was
+audible. It was worse, even, than he had feared. Now, however, that he
+had told her, he felt happier, more confident. Surely, after a little,
+she would forgive, forget, "I want to marry you," he repeated, torn
+with pity at her fragility, her visible suffering. "All that might hurt
+you has been put out of my life, out of our future. The way is open
+before us, the refining. I would do anything to spare you, believe that;
+but the truth, now, best."
+
+"Always," she said in a faint voice. "I am trying to--to realize. Oh! I
+suppose such things do occur; but the child herself, you--don't see how
+that, so near--" she broke off, gazing wide-eyed out of her misery. He
+was conscious of the dull, regular beat of the Forge hammer. God, how
+the imperfections persisted! But, he told himself savagely, in the end
+the metal was steadfast. He would, certainly, overcome her natural
+revulsion from what she had just heard. The colour had left her cheeks,
+violet shadows gathered about her eyes; she seemed more unsubstantial
+than ever. He would repay again and again the suffering he had brought
+her. Having declared himself he was almost tranquil; there was a total
+absence of the impetuous emotionalism of youth, the blind tyranny of
+desire. His feeling was deeper, and accompanied by a far more involved
+philosophy of self-recognition. At the same time, while acutely
+conscious of his absolute need of Susan Brundon, he was at a loss to
+discover its essence, shape. Before he had known her he had been
+obsessed by a distaste for his existence; he had desperately wanted
+something without definition ... And Susan was that desire, delicate,
+clear-eyed Susan. Yet, still, the heart of her escaped him.
+
+Jasper Penny had told himself that his new dissatisfaction was merely
+the result of his accumulating years; but, beyond the fact that such an
+increase might have brought him different and keener perceptions, that
+explanation was entirely inadequate. He wanted a quality beyond his
+experience, beyond, he realized, any material condition--Susan Brundon,
+yes; but it was no comparatively simple urge of sex, the natural
+selection of the general animal creation. There was no question of
+passionate importunities; those, here, would be worse than futile; all
+that he desired was beyond words, moving in obedience to a principle of
+which he had not caught the slightest glimpse. Yet, confident of his
+ultimate victory, he maintained the dominating presence of a black
+Penny.
+
+Susan Brundon had sunk back into the depths of her capacious chair; she
+seemed utterly exhausted, as if she had been subjected to a prolonged
+brutal strain. But still her eyes sought him steady in their hurt
+regard. "There is so much that I can give you," he blundered,
+immediately conscious of the sterility of his phrase. "I mean better
+things--peace and attention and--and understanding. I won't attempt any
+of the terms usual, commonplace, at such moments, you must take them,
+where they are worthy, for granted. I only tell you a lamentable fact,
+and ask you to marry me, promise you the tenderest care--"
+
+"I know that," she replied, with obvious difficulty, hesitation. "I'll
+not thank you. It is terribly difficult for me. I'd like to answer you
+as you wish, I mean reply to--to your request. But the other, the child,
+dragged about; there was such a distrust, a wariness, in her face."
+
+"There is no good in thinking of that alone," he stated, with a return
+of his customary decision. "No one can walk backwards into the future.
+Try to consider only the immediate question, what I have asked you--will
+you marry me?"
+
+"Is that all you have to explain?" she asked. "Is there, now, no one
+else that counts?" The edge of a cold dread entered his hopes. "If you
+refer to the child's mother," he said stiffly, "she is amply well taken
+care of, you need waste no sentimental thoughts on her."
+
+"Ah!" Susan exclaimed, shrinking. Her hands closed tightly on the wide
+silk of her skirt. The fear deepened within him; it would be impossible
+to explain Essie to the woman before him. Essie, falsely draped in
+conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth. He raged
+silently at his impotence, the inhibition that prevented the expression
+of what might be said for himself. Essie Scofield had, like every one
+else, lived in the terms of her being, attracting to herself what
+essentially she was; it was neither bad nor good, but inevitable. His
+contact with her had been the result of mutual qualities, qualities that
+were no longer valid. Yet to say that would place him in a damnable
+light, give him the aspect of the meanest opportunist. Susan breathed,
+"That poor woman." It was precisely what he had expected, feared--the
+adventitious illusion! He had an impulse to describe to her, even at the
+price of his own condemnation, the condition in which he had found
+Eunice; but that too perished silently. Jasper Penny grew restive under
+the unusual restraint of his position.
+
+"Do you mind--no more at present." Susan Brundon said. "I am upset;
+please, another time; if it is necessary. I feel that I couldn't answer
+anything now, I must go up; no, your mother will show me." She rose, and
+he realized that she would listen no further. There was an astonishing
+strength of purpose behind her deprecating presence. She was more
+determined than himself. He watched her walk evenly from the room, heard
+the low stir of voices beyond, with a feeling that he had been perhaps
+fatally clumsy. All that he had said had been wrong, brutally selfish.
+He had deliberately invited failure; he should have been patient,
+waited; given her a chance to know and, if possible, value him, come to
+depend on him, on his judgment, his ability in her welfare. But, in
+place of making himself a necessity, he had launched at once into facts
+which she must find hideous. She had said, "another time, if necessary."
+His mouth drew into a set line--there would be another and another,
+until he had persuaded, gained, her.
+
+He lit a cigar, and walked discontentedly up and across the room. The
+sound of the Forge hammer again crept into his consciousness: the Penny
+iron--the fibre, the actuality, of the Penny men! He repeated this
+arrogantly; but the declaration no longer brought reassurance; the
+certainty even of the iron faded from him; he had failed there, too,
+digging a pit of oblivion for all that their generations of toil had
+accomplished. The past inexorably woven into the pattern of the future!
+Eunice, so soon wary, distrustful, Susan had seen that immediately,
+would perpetuate all that he wished dead--Essie and himself bound
+together, projected in an undesirable immortality through endless lives
+striving, like himself, to escape from old chains.
+
+If he failed with Susan his existence would have been an unmitigated
+evil; the iron, his petty, material triumphs, would rust, but the other
+go on and on. His thoughts became a maze of pity for Eunice, infinite
+regret of the past, a bitter energy of hope for what might follow.
+
+He turned with pride to his forging--long-wrought charcoal iron; the
+world would know no better. Still, with his penetration of the future,
+he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had
+difficulty in assembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing
+contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension
+of steam railways, would grow resistlessly. More wholesale methods of
+production were being utilized daily; he was one of the foremost
+adherents of "improvement"; but suddenly he felt a poignant regret at
+the inevitable passing of the old order of great Ironmasters, the
+principalities of furnaces and forges. He was still, he felt, such a
+master of his men and miles of forests and clearings, lime pits and ore
+banks, coal holes, mills, coke ovens, hearths and manufactories. He
+might still drive to Virginia through a continuous line of his
+interests; his domination over his labourers, in all their personal and
+industrial implications, was patriarchal; he commanded, through their
+allegiance and his entire grasp on every iota of their living, their
+day's journey; but, he told himself, he was practically the last of his
+kind.
+
+New and different industrial combinations were locking together in great
+agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded
+by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in
+a cold and successful automaton of business. A system of general credit
+was springing up; the old, old payments in kind, in iron or even meal
+and apparel, or gold, had given place to reciprocal understandings of
+deferred indebtedness. The actual thousands of earlier commerce were
+replaced by theoretical millions. His own realty, his personal property,
+because of such understandings, were outside computation. They were, he
+knew, reckoned in surprising figures; but in a wide-spread panic, forced
+liquidation, the greater part of his wealth would break like straw. It
+was the same with the entire country.
+
+His thoughts returned to Susan, to the longing for the peace, the
+inviolable security, she would bring to the centre, the heart, of his
+life. No material catastrophe could shape, deplete, her richness of
+spirit. Fragile as she was, with her need of rest, her diffidence and
+pallor, she yet seemed to Jasper Penny the most--the only--secure thing
+in the world. She defied, he murmured, death itself. Wonderful.
+
+He moved slowly to his sombre bed room, with its dark velour hangings
+and ponderous black walnut furniture, precisely scrolled with gilt. The
+interior absorbed the light of a single lamp, robbing it of radiance. A
+clock deliberately struck the hour with an audible whirring of the
+spring. Jasper Penny took out from a drawer a tall, narrow ledger, its
+calf binding powdering in a yellow dust, with a blurring label,
+"Forgebook. Myrtle Forge, 1750." He sat, opening it on the arm of an old
+Windsor reading chair he had insisted on retaining among the recent
+upholstery, and studied the entries, some written in a small script with
+ornamental capitals and red lined day headings, others in an abrupt
+manner with heavy down strokes. The latter, he knew, had been made by
+his great grandfather, Howat.
+
+"Jonas Rupp charged with three pair of woollen stockings ... shoes for
+Minnie." Howat had been young when Minnie's shoes were new; twenty
+something--five or six. He must have married not long after.
+Howat--like himself--a black Penny. The special interest Jasper Penny
+felt for this particular ancestor grew so vivid that he almost felt the
+other's presence in the room at his shoulder. He consciously repressed
+the desire to turn suddenly and surprise the shadowy and yet clear
+figure in the gloom. The features of the youth so long gone, and yet,
+too, he felt, the replica of his own young years, were plain; the dark
+eyes, slanted brows, the impatient mouth.
+
+His community of sympathy with the other, who was still, in a measure,
+himself, was inexplicable; for obviously Howat had escaped Jasper's
+blundering--an early marriage, a son, the son whose name, like his
+mother's, made such an exotic note in a long, sound succession of
+Isabels and Carolines and Gilberts, was a far different tale from his
+own. Yet it persisted. It seemed to him that the silence of the room
+grew strained, there was the peculiar tension of a muteness desperately
+striving for utterance. He waited, listened, in a rigidity of which he
+was suddenly ashamed; ridiculous. He relaxed; the memory of his own
+youth flooded back, rapt him in visions, scents, sounds. The premonitory
+whirring of the clock spring sounded once more, followed by the slow,
+increasing strokes ... Again. His body wavered, on the verge of sleep,
+and he straightened himself sharply; then he rose and, putting back the
+Forgebook, undressed.
+
+Susan, at breakfast, her shoulders wrapped in a serious-toned pelerine,
+said little. Jasper Penny instinctively excluded her from a trivial
+conversation. She was, he decided, paler than usual, the shadows under
+her eyes were indigo. He was filled with self-condemnation. Mrs. Penny,
+gazing at her with a beady discernment, asked if her rest had been
+interrupted. "I am always an indifferent sleeper," Susan Brundon replied
+evasively. He followed her into the carriage that was to take her to the
+station at Jaffa; and, ignoring her slight gasp of protest, grasped the
+reins held by the negro coachman. However, they proceeded over the short
+distance to the town without speech. He was torn between a wish to spare
+her and the desire to urge his own purpose. But more immediately he
+wanted to make secure the near hour of his seeing her again. He asked,
+finally, "Will you be at the Jannans' this week, or are visitors
+received at the Academy?"
+
+"No," she replied to the first; "and I have very little time between
+classes. You see, they fill the whole day, tasks and pleasures. It is
+difficult for me to--to talk on a generality of themes with callers."
+
+"I have no intention of being diffuse," he replied pointedly. "I could
+confine my entire conversation to one request--"
+
+"Please," she interrupted pitiably. "I am utterly wretched now. The
+simplest gentility--" she paused, but her wish was clear. He restrained
+himself with difficulty. Drifting slowly across the scattered roofs of
+the town was the leaden smoke of his mills and fires; as they drove into
+the main street the thin crash of his iron was audible. Men everywhere
+bowed to him with marked respect. But the woman at his side sat erect,
+drawn away from him, unmoved by all that, to the world, he was. There
+was an appalling quality in her aloofness from what, materially, he
+might advance in extenuation; the things so generally potent here were
+no more than slag. He searched within for what might bend, influence,
+her, for whatever he might have of value in her eyes. He found nothing.
+It was a novel and painful experience; and it bred in him a certain
+anger; he became merely stubborn. He declared to himself, with an oath,
+that he would gain her; and he pulled up his horses viciously at the
+station rack. This, too, hurt her; she exclaimed faintly at the brutally
+drawn bits. A man hurried forward to take her bag, and then, in a
+blowing of horn, a harsh exhaust of steam, she was gone. A last, hurried
+impression of her delicate profile on a small pane of glass accompanied
+him back to Myrtle Forge. There his mother regarded him with an open
+concern. "Something's on your mind," she declared. "I passed your door
+at midnight, and there was light under it. I've often told you about
+sitting up late."
+
+"I'm getting along," he replied lightly. "You fail to do justice to the
+weight of my increasing majority. But, in a little, you'll be astonished
+at my renewed youth." He became serious in speaking, conscious of the
+new life Susan would, must, bring into his existence.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Since he had declared himself so decidedly and at once, no hesitation
+was possible; he must, he was aware, move remorselessly forward in
+assault. To sweep Susan Brundon into his desire, overwhelm her
+defences--he called them prejudices but immediately after withdrew that
+term--offered the greatest, the only promise of success. An obliterating
+snow fell for the following thirty hours, and a week went by in the
+readjustment to ordinary conditions of living and travel. But at the end
+of that period Jasper Penny left Myrtle Forge for the city, with a
+determined, an almost confident, mouth, and a bright, hard gaze. Late
+afternoon, he decided, would be the best time for his appearance at the
+Academy. And the western sky was a luminous, bright red when he passed
+under the stripped, uneasy branches of the willow trees to the school
+door.
+
+Miss Brundon's office, rigorous as the corridor of a hospital, had a
+table and uncompromising wooden chairs on a rectangle of bluish-pink
+carpet; a glowing, round stove held a place on a square of gleaming,
+embossed zinc, while the remaining surfaces were scrubbed oak flooring
+and white calcimine. A large geographer's globe, a sphere of pale,
+glazed yellow traced in violet and thin vermilion and cobalt, rested on
+an involuted mahogany stand; and a pile of text books covered in gay
+muslin made a single, decisive note of colour.
+
+She kept him waiting, he felt uneasily, a long while; perhaps she had a
+class; but he felt that that was not the reason for her delay. When she
+finally appeared in soft brown merino, with a deep fichu of old, dark
+lace, and black ribbons, she courageously held out a delightfully cool,
+smooth hand. "At first," she said directly, "I thought it would be
+better not to see you at all. Yet that wasn't genteel; and I felt, too,
+that I must speak to you. Even at the danger, perhaps, of trespassing
+into your privacy."
+
+"I have given you the absolute right to do that," he told her. "It will
+only bring me pleasure, to--to suppose I interest you enough--"
+
+"Ah, but you do," she cried with clasping fingers. "It has made my work
+here very difficult; the quiet has gone before echoes that I think every
+child must hear, echoes from spaces and things that appall me. Here, you
+see, I have lived so apart from others, perhaps selfishly, that I had
+grown accustomed to a false sense of peace. Only lessons and little
+questions, little hands. It seems now that I have been outside of life
+itself, in a cowardly seclusion. Yet it had always been that way; I
+didn't know." Her face was deeply troubled, the clear depths of her eyes
+held a new questioning doubt.
+
+"It's because of that, mainly, I ask you to marry me," he replied,
+standing before the table at which, unconsciously, she had taken her
+place; "it is because of your astonishing purity. You are so beautiful;
+and this quiet, peace--you must have it all your life; it is the air,
+the garden air, for you to flower in. I can give it to you, miles of it,
+farther than you can see. All that you care for heaped about you. But
+not that only," he insisted, "for I realized that no one lives to whom
+such things are less; I can give you something more, not to be talked
+about; whatever my life has been it has at least brought me to your
+feet. I have learned, for you, that there is a thing men must have, God
+knows exactly what--a craving to be satisfied, a--a reaching. And that
+itself, the knowledge of such need, is not without value. Because of it
+I again, and shall again, if necessary, ask you to marry me."
+
+She replied in a low voice. "You must marry the child's mother." For the
+first time she avoided him; bright blood burned in her cheeks; a hand on
+the edge of the table was straining, white. A sudden feeling of
+helplessness came over him, with, behind it, the ever-present edge of
+anger, of impatience. He took a step forward, as if to crush, by sheer
+insistence, her opposition; but he stopped. He lost entirely the sense
+of her fragile physical being; she seemed only a spirit, shining and
+high, and insuperably lovely. Then all feeling was lost but the
+realization that he could not--in any true sense--live without her.
+"Susan," he said, leaning forward, "you must marry me. Do you care for
+me at all?"
+
+Her breast rose and fell under the delicate contour of her wool gown.
+"The child's mother," she repeated, "you should marry her. How can you
+do differently? What can it matter if I care about you?" She raised a
+miserable face. "How can I?" she asked.
+
+He could think of no other answer than to repeat his supreme necessity
+for her. He struggled to tell her that this was an altogether different
+man from Essie Scofield's companion; but his words were unconvincing,
+limited by the inhibition of custom. A transparent dusk deepened in the
+room accompanied by a pause only broken by the faint explosions of the
+soft coal. The power of persuasion, of speech, appeared to have left
+him. There must be some convincing thing to say, some last,
+all-powerful, argument. It eluded him. The exasperation returned,
+spreading through his being.
+
+"Surely," she said laboriously, "there is only one course for you, for
+us all."
+
+"I'll never marry Essie Scofield!" he declared bluntly. His voice was
+unexpectedly loud, unpleasant; and it surprised him only less than Susan
+Brundon. She drew back, and the colour sank from her cheeks; an
+increasing fear of him was visible. "In the first place," he continued,
+"Essie probably wouldn't hear of it. And if I managed that it would be
+only to make a private hell for us both. It would not, it couldn't, last
+a month. There is nothing magical in marriage itself, there's no general
+salvation in it, nothing to change a man or woman. Why, by heaven,
+that's what you have taught me, that is the heart of my wanting you. You
+must feel it to understand." He circled the table and laid a hand on the
+back of her chair. "Susan."
+
+Her head was bowed, and he could see only her smooth, dark bands of hair
+and the whiteness of her neck. "Susan," he said again. "A second wrong
+will not cure the first. If one was inexcusable the other would be
+fatal. Married--to some one else, with yourself always before me--surely
+you must see the impossibility of that. And am I to come to nothing,
+eternally fail, because of the past? Isn't there any escape, any hope,
+any possibility? You don't realize how very much will go down with me. I
+am a man in the middle of life, and haven't the time, the elasticity, of
+youth. A few more years to the descent. But, with you, they could be
+splendidly useful, happy; happy, I think, for us both. I know that a
+great many people would say as you have, but it is wrong in every
+aspect, absolutely hopeless. Essie's values are totally different from
+yours; she has her own necessities; one measure will not do for all
+women."
+
+She rose and stood facing him, very near, her crinoline swaying against
+him, and said blindly, "You shall marry her."
+
+"I'll be damned if I do," Jasper Penny asserted. "I will marry you,
+you," he whispered, with his lips against the fineness of her ear. Her
+hands were on his shoulders; but she neither drew herself into his
+embrace nor repulsed him. He wanted to crush her softness in his arms,
+to kiss her still face into acquiescence. The quality, the kind, of his
+need made it impossible. She slipped back without a sound into her
+chair, drooping forward over the table.
+
+A sharp pity invaded him, holding him back from her, silencing the flow
+of his reasoning and appeal. It defeated, in the stirring tenderness of
+its consideration, his purpose. He could not continue tormenting her,
+racking her delicate, taut sensibilities by a hard insistence. He
+withdrew quietly, to where his hat and stick rested on a chair, and
+gathered them up. Still she didn't move, raise her head, break the low
+fumbling of the soft coal. He could no longer distinguish her clearly,
+she was blurring in a dusk deeping so imperceptibly that it seemed a
+gradual failing of his vision. The geographer's globe appeared to sway
+slightly, like a balloon tied to a string; the gay muslin of the piled
+text books had lost their designs. Suddenly the room without motion, the
+approaching night, the desirable presence of the woman growing more
+immaterial, more shadow-like to elude his reaching hands, presented a
+symbol, an epitome, of himself. Day fading swiftly into dark; dissolving
+the realities of table and flesh and floor; leaving only the hunger,
+the insuperable inner necessity and sense of loss.
+
+"Good-bye," he breathed. Jasper Penny saw that she raised her head, he
+caught the glimmering pallor of her face. But she said nothing, and sank
+back into the crumpled position on the table. He went out, closing the
+door of the office, shutting her into the loneliness of her resolve, her
+insistence.
+
+In the familiar rooms at Sanderson's Hotel he revolved again and again
+all that she had said. For a little he even endeavoured to inspect
+calmly the possibility of a marriage with Essie Scofield. Steeped in
+Susan's spirit he thought of it as a reparation, to Eunice, perhaps to
+Essie, but more certainly to an essence within himself. But immediately
+he saw the futility of such a course; the inexorable logic of existence
+could not be so easily placated, its rhyming of cause and effect
+defeated. All that he had told Susan Brundon recurred strengthened to an
+immovable conviction. The thought of marrying Essie was intolerable,
+farcical; to the woman herself it would mean utter boredom. Such a thing
+must lead inevitably to a greater misfortune than any of the past.
+Susan, in her resplendent ignorance of facts, failed to realize the
+impossibility of what she upheld. No, no, it was out of the question.
+
+He wondered if he had progressed in the other, his supreme, wish. And he
+felt, with a stirring of blood, that he had. Susan cared for him; her
+action had made that plain. That was a tremendous advantage; with
+another he would have thought it conclusive; but not--not quite with
+Susan Brundon. He had a deep regard for her determination, so surprising
+in the midst of her fragility. Yet, if pity had not prevented him, this
+afternoon, in her office, he might have forced her to a sharper
+realization of a more earthly need, the ache for sympathy, consolation,
+the imperative cry of self. That was his greatest difficulty, to
+overcome her lifelong habit of thinking of others before herself. Such,
+he knew, was the root of her appeal for Essie, rather than a cold,
+dogmatic conception. Self-effacement.
+
+At this a restive state followed; personally he had no confidence in the
+sacrifice of individual aims and happiness. Any course of that sort, he
+told himself, in the management of his practical affairs, would have
+resulted in his failure. There were a hundred men in the country
+plotting for his overthrow, anxious to take his position, scheming to
+undersell him, to discover the secret of the quality of his iron rails.
+Others he had deliberately, necessarily, ruined. No good would have been
+served by his stepping aside, allowing smaller men to flourish and annoy
+him, cut down his production by inconsiderable sales. He, and his
+family, had built a great, yes, and beneficial, industry by ruthlessly
+beating out a broad and broader way for their progress. It was needful
+to gaze fixedly at the end desirable and move in the straightest line
+possible.
+
+Susan stopped by the way. A thousand little acts of alleviation, at
+best temporary, interrupted her living. Children, not hers, dragged at
+her skirt. How much better for her to have a child of her own. Their
+child! A great deal that had been vague in his thoughts became concrete
+at that last period; not only the possible succession of the iron, but
+the comprehension that a child now, before the increasing sterility of
+multiplying years, would be an image of all his inmost craving and which
+must else be lost.
+
+Eunice was different. Pity, mingled with a rigid sense of his duty and a
+faint accent of parenthood, comprehended his feeling for her. He stated
+this to himself clearly, admitting what delinquency it carried. It was,
+simply, an incontrovertible fact; and it was his habit to meet such
+things squarely. A black Penny, he had no impulse to see existence in
+imposed sentimental or formally moral conceptions. From all this he
+returned with a feeling of delight to his personal longing for Susan
+Brundon; he saw her bowed over the table in an exhaustion almost an
+attitude of surrender. A slender, pliable figure in soft merino and
+lace. He saw her beyond the candles of Graham Jannan's supper table, a
+rose geranium at her breast. The motto of the bon bon partially
+returned:
+
+"... ange du ciel ... je t'aime!
+... le bon heur supreme!"
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+In the morning he walked over to Stephen Jannan's office on Fourth
+Street. The day was unexpectedly warm, and a mist rose about the wet
+bricks of the city. He proceeded directly into Stephen's private
+enclosure. "I was about to write you," the latter stated. "It's well
+enough for you to direct Mrs. Scofield to confine her pleas to me, and
+comparatively simple to picture her drawing a quarterly sum in an
+orderly manner; but how you are going to realize that happy conception
+is increasingly beyond me. I have to point out to her daily--a great
+nuisance it is--that she cannot have her income before it is due. Heaven
+knows what she has done with the other money in so short a while. She
+hasn't moved, apparently increased her establishment; at your direction
+the bills were settled, and heaven knows she had no reluctance in
+presenting all that were permissible and a number doubtful. There is, of
+course, one probability."
+
+Jasper Penny's thoughts returned to the stony, handsome youth he had
+seen in the company of Essie's friends, to the insinuations of the woman
+who had been removed protesting her superiority and warning him against
+a "tailor's dummy." Well, it was no longer his affair what Essie did
+with her money, what in her affections remained unimpaired. Rather it
+was reassuring that she had so promptly found solace; it enlarged his
+own feeling of freedom. "It got worse, yesterday," Stephen Jannan
+continued; "she came to the office, insisted on seeing me. Luckily I was
+busy with a mastership that kept me over three hours. But she left, I
+was told, with the air of one soon to return. She was brandied with
+purpose. There is no end, Jasper, to what I am prepared to do for you;
+but, my dear fellow, neither of us can have this. She wept. My young
+gentlemen were pierced with sympathetic curiosity. You must realize,
+Jasper, that you are not a sparrow, to float unnoticed from ledge to
+ledge."
+
+An angry impotence seized Jasper Penny. He was tempted to have Stephen
+Jannan turn over to Essie, at once, a conclusive sum of money. That
+would put an end to any communication between them, provide her with the
+power of self-gratification which for Essie Scofield spelled
+forgetfulness.... For a little, he was obliged, wearily, to add.
+Together with such a young man as he had seen in her house her capacity
+for expenditure would be limitless. She would come back to him with
+fresh demands, perhaps at an inconceivably awkward time, in a calculated
+hysteria--he had cause to know--surprisingly loud and convincing. Susan
+must be absolutely secured against that possibility. He could not help
+but think of the latter as yielding in the end, married to him.
+
+He gazed at Stephen Jannan in a sombre perplexity. "A nuisance," the
+other nodded. "Only time, I suppose, and the most rigid adherence to
+your statements will convince the lady of what she may expect. In the
+meanwhile, frankly, we had better put it in some other hands; not so
+much on my account as your own--the sympathetic young gentlemen, you
+see. That can be easily arranged."
+
+Jasper Penny was not thinking of the material Essie, the present,
+concrete problem; but he was once more absorbed in the manner in which
+her influence followed, apparently shaped, his existence. He was again
+appalled by the vitality of the past; the phrase itself was an error,
+there was no past. All that had gone, that was to come, met ceaselessly
+in the present, a confusion of hope and regret. It was evident that he
+would have to see Essie again, and explain that what she had from him
+depended entirely on her reciprocal attitude. This could only be
+satisfactory in person. He would go to her at once, to-day. An enormous
+reluctance to enter her house again possessed him. The mere act had the
+aspect of an acknowledgment of her continued potency, her influence over
+him. He put it off as long as possible, and it was past five when he
+finally walked slowly toward her door.
+
+She was in; and he saw, on the hall stand, a silk hat and overcoat cut
+in an extreme of current fashion. The servant preceded him above, toward
+the room usual for casual gatherings; and he heard a sudden low murmur,
+expostulation, follow the announcement of his name. Essie Scofield
+appeared at the top of the stairs. "Come up," she said in a hesitating,
+sullen voice. He mounted without reply. As he had expected Daniel Culser
+was present, and rose to greet him negligently, from a lounging attitude
+on the sofa. His coat, cut back to the knees, was relentlessly tapered,
+the collar enormously rolled and revered, and a white Marseilles
+waistcoat bore black spots as large as a Bolivian half dollar; while a
+black scarf, it was called the Du Casses, fell in an avalanche of
+ruffles. He moved toward the door, fitting his coat carefully about his
+slim waist, "I'm away, Essie," he proclaimed.
+
+"When will you come again, Daniel?" she asked with an oppressive
+humility. She gazed at Jasper Penny with a momentary delay; then, with
+an utter disregard of his presence, laid her hands on the younger man's
+shoulders. "Soon," she begged. Obviously ill at ease he abruptly
+released himself. "I don't care," she cried defiantly; "I'll tell the
+whole world you are the sweetest man in it. Jasper's nothing to me nor I
+to him. And I'm not afraid of him, of what he might threaten, either.
+Stay, Daniel, and you'll see. I will look out for us, Dan."
+
+Her unexpected frankness was inevitably followed by an awkward silence.
+Daniel Culser finally cursed below his breath, avoiding Jasper's cold
+inquiring gaze. "I'm glad I said it," Essie proceeded; "now he knows how
+things are." She went up again to the younger, and laid a clinging arm
+about his shoulders. "I'm mad about you, Daniel, you know it; there's
+nothing I wouldn't do for you, give you if I could. Isn't he beautiful?"
+she fatulously demanded of Jasper Penny.
+
+"You are making a fool of yourself and me," the subject of her adulation
+roughly declared. He removed her arm so forcibly that the scarlet print
+of his fingers was visible on her soft, dead white skin. "Probably you
+have gone and spoiled everything. And remember what I said. I am a man
+of my word."
+
+Jasper Penny dryly thought that the term man was singularly
+inappropriate in any connection with the meticulously garbed figure
+before him. Essie would have a difficult time with that stony youth. She
+regarded him with eyes of idolatry, drawing her fingers over the sleeve
+impatiently held aside from her touch. "I'm going," he stated once more,
+impolitely; but she barred him at the door. "I want you to stay," she
+cried excitedly; "hear what I am going to say, what I am going to do for
+you." She advanced toward Jasper Penny. "I asked that Jannan for more
+money because I had given Daniel all I had, and I wanted still more, to
+give him. I'll demand things all my life for him; everything I have is
+his." She gasped, at the verge of an emotional outburst. Her heart
+pounded unsteadily beneath an adventitious lace covering; her face was
+leaden with startling daubs of vermilion paint. "Give me a great deal
+of money, now, at once ... so that I can go to Daniel with my hands
+full."
+
+"That is why I came here," Jasper Penny replied; "to tell you that you
+must not use up your income at once, on the first week, almost, of its
+payment; because you will be able to get no more until another
+instalment is due. I haven't the slightest interest in where your money
+goes, it is absolutely your own; but I cannot have you after it every
+second day. The administration will be put in a different quarter,
+rigidly dispensed; and any continued inopportunities will only result in
+difficulties for yourself."
+
+She cursed him in a gasping, spent breath. Essie looked ill, he thought.
+Daniel Culser, listening at the door, made a movement to leave, but the
+woman prevented him, hanging about his neck. "No! No!" she exclaimed.
+"It will be all right, I can get it ... more. Be patient." Jasper Penny
+walked stiffly to the exit, where he paused at the point of repeating
+his warning. Essie Scofield was lifting a quivering, tear-drenched face
+to the vexation of the fashionable youth. He was attempting to repulse
+her, but she held him with a desperation of feeling. The elder descended
+the stairs without further speech.
+
+Outside, the warmth of the day had continued into dusk. The mist had
+thickened, above which, in a momentary rift, he could see the stars
+swimming in removed constellations. He was wrapped in an utter loathing
+of the scene through which he had passed, his undeniable part in it. It
+was all hideous beyond words. His late need, his sense of void and
+illimitable longing, tormented him ceaselessly. He was sick with
+rebellion against life, an affair of cunning traps and mud and fog.
+Above the obscured and huddled odium of the city the distances were
+clear, serene. Above the degradation ... Susan. A tyrannical desire to
+see her possessed him, an absolute necessity for the purification of her
+mere presence. Unconsciously he quickened his step, charged with
+purpose; but he couldn't go to the Academy now; it was six o'clock. He
+must delay an hour at least. Habit prompted him to a supper which he
+left untried on its plates, the lighting of a cigar, quickly cold,
+forgot. At seven he hurried resolutely over the dark streets with the
+dim luminosity of occasional gas lamps floating on the unstirring white
+gloom. The bricks under foot were soggy, and the curved sign above her
+entrance, the bare willows, dropped a pattering moisture.
+
+She saw him immediately, not in the familiar office, but in a hall laid
+with cold matting and nearly filled by a stairway, lit with a lamp at
+the further end. "I am sorry," she told him; "I have no place to take
+you. The rhetoric mistress is correcting papers there," she indicated
+the shut door. He made no immediate answer, content to gaze at her
+sensitive, appealing countenance. "It is so warm," she said finally,
+colouring at his intentness, "and I have been indoors all day. I might
+get my things. We could, perhaps ... a walk," she spoke rapidly, her
+head bent from him. She drew back, then hesitated. "Very well," he
+replied. Susan disappeared, but she quickly returned, in a little violet
+bonnet bound and tied with black, and a dark azure velvet cloak furred
+at her wrists and throat. She held a muff doubtfully; but, in the end,
+took it with her.
+
+Outside, the mist and night enveloped them in a close, damp veil. They
+turned silently to the right, passing the narrow mouth of Currant Alley,
+and Quince Street beyond. The bricks became precarious, and gave place
+to a walk of boards; the corners about a broad, muddy way were built up;
+but farther on the dwellings were scattered--lighted windows showed
+dimly behind bare catalpas, iron fences enclosed orderly patches between
+sodden flats, gas lamps grew fewer.
+
+A deep, all-pervading contentment surrounded Jasper Penny, an
+unreasoning, happy warmth. He said nothing, his stick now striking on
+the boards, now sinking into earth, and gazed down at Susan, her face
+hid by the rim of her bonnet. This companionship was the best, all, that
+life had to offer. He felt no need to importune her about the future,
+their marriage; curiously it seemed as though they had been married, and
+were walking in the security, the peace, of a valid and enduring bond.
+There was no necessity for talk, laborious explanation, periods
+infinitely more empty than this silence. They walked as close to each
+other as her skirt would permit; and at times her muff, swinging on a
+wrist, would brush softly against him. How strangely different the
+actual values of existence were from the emphasized, trite moments and
+emotions. In the middle of his life, at the point of his greatest
+capability for experience, his most transcendent happiness came from the
+present, the deliberate, unquestioning walk with Susan, the aimless
+progress through an invisible city and under a masked clear heaven of
+stars. No remembered thrill compared with it, reached the same height,
+achieved a similar dignity of consummation.
+
+The way became more uneven; low clustered sheds rose out of the darkness
+against a deeper black beyond, and they came to the river. The bank was
+marshy, but a track of pounded oyster shells, visible against the mud,
+led to a wharf extending into the solid, voiceless flow of the water.
+Jasper Penny stood with Susan gazing into the blanketing gloom. A wan,
+disintegrated radiance shone from a riding light in the rigging of a
+vessel, and a passing warm blur flattened over the wet deck as a lantern
+was carried forward. No other lights, and no movement, rose from the
+river; no sound was audible at their back. The city, from the evidence
+of Jasper Penny's sensibilities, did not exist; it had fallen out of his
+consciousness; suddenly its bricked miles, its involved life stilled or
+hectic, stealthy in the dark, seemed a thing temporary, adventitious;
+he had an extraordinary feeling of sharing in a permanence, a
+continuity, outlasting stone, iron, human tradition. He had been swept,
+he thought, into a movement where centuries were but the fretful ticking
+of seconds. "Outside death," he said fantastically, unconsciously aloud.
+A remarkable sentence recurred to him, the most profound, he told
+himself, ever written: "Before he was I am." Its vast implications
+easily evaded his finite mind, just as the essence of his present
+rapture--it was no less--lay beyond his grasp. He lingered over it; gave
+it up ... returned to Susan.
+
+"Wonderful," she said gravely, with a comprehensive wave of her muff.
+And her simplicity thrilled him the more with the knowledge that she
+shared his feeling. She drew up the fur collar of her cloak, shivered;
+and, in the wordless harmony that pervaded them, they turned and
+retraced their way.
+
+The rhetoric mistress had left the office with a low turned lamp, and
+Jasper Penny stopped, taking the furred wrap from Susan's shoulders. She
+slowly untied the velvet strings of her bonnet, and laid it on the
+table. She extended her hands toward him, and, taking their cool
+slightness, he drew her to him. She rested with the fragrance of her
+cheek against his face, with her hands pressed to his breast. They stood
+motionless; he closed his eyes, and she was gone. He was confused in the
+dimness empty except for himself, and fumbled with, his gloves. Susan's
+wrap lay limply over a chair; the damp bonnet ribbons trailed toward the
+floor. He looked slowly about, noting every object--a pile of folded
+yellow papers, the stove, the globe bearing a quiver of light on its
+varnished surface.
+
+The willow trees and board above the entrance were dripping ceaselessly;
+the lights of the city, increasing at its centre, like the discs of
+floating sunflowers. If he slept he was unaware of it, the magic joy so
+equally penetrated his waking and subconscious hours, the feeling of an
+elevation higher than years and mountains was so strong. The morning, he
+found, was again cold, and clear. He must go out to Jaffa, where new
+blast machines demanded attention; but, the day after--
+
+His thoughts were broken by a sharp rap on the outer door. Mr. Stephen
+Jannan was below, and demanded to see him immediately. Stephen's
+appearance at the hotel at that early hour, he recognized, was unusual.
+But a glance at his cousin's serious aspect showed him at once that the
+reason was urgent. Stephen Jannan, as customary, was particularly
+garbed; and yet he had an expression of haste, disturbance. He said at
+once, in the bedroom where Jasper Penny was folding his scarf.
+
+"That young waster, Culser, Daniel Culser, was shot and killed in Mrs.
+Scofield's house last evening."
+
+The ends of the scarf fell neglected over the soft, cambric frills of
+his shirt. Jasper Penny swallowed dryly. "At what time?" he asked.
+
+"He was seen in the Old White Bear Tavern at about seven, then
+apparently he went back to the woman's. The servant said he found the
+body at something past nine, and that there had been no other caller but
+yourself."
+
+His hearer expressed a deep, involuntary relief. "I was there late in
+the afternoon," he acknowledged; "but I left around six." Stephen
+Jannan, too, showed a sudden relaxation. "I have already sent a message
+to the Mayor," he continued; "confident that you would clear yourself
+without delay. Mrs. Scofield's history is, of course, known to the
+police. You have only to establish your alibi; she, Essie Scofield,
+can't be found for the moment. She may have taken an early stage out of
+the city; but it is probable that she has only moved into another police
+district. Just where were you, Jasper?"
+
+The latter said stupidly, "Walking with Susan Brundon."
+
+A swiftly augmented concern gathered on Stephen Jannan's countenance.
+"You were walking with Susan," he repeated increduously. "Yes," Jasper
+asserted, with a sharp inner dread. "You don't know, but I want to marry
+her." Stephen Jannan faced him with an exclamation of anger. "You want
+to marry her, and, in consequence, drag her, Susan, into the dirtiest
+affair the city is like to know for years. Susan Brundon, with her
+Academy; all she has, all her labour, destroyed, ruined, pulled to
+pieces by slanderous tongues! By God, Jasper, what a beast you look! The
+most delicate woman, alive, the one farthest from just this sort of
+muck, being sworn in the Mayor's office, testifying in an obscene murder
+case, before the Sheriff and Constable, and heaven knows what police and
+vilely curious!"
+
+A sickening feeling of utter destruction seized on Jasper Penny, a
+dropping of his entire being from the heights of yesterday to the last
+degradation. He felt the blood leave his heart and pound dizzily in his
+brain, and then recede, followed by an icy coldness, a wavering of the
+commonplace objects of the room. He raised his fingers to his collar,
+stared with burning eyes at Stephen Jannan. "Everything spoiled," the
+latter said again; "her pupils will positively be taken from her at once
+by all the nice females. Her name will be pronounced, smiled over, in
+every despicable quarter of the city, printed in the daily sheets. I--I
+can't forgive you for this. Susan, our especial joy!"
+
+Jasper Penny saw in a flash, as vivid and remorseless as a stab of
+lightning, that this was all true. The fatality of the past, sweeping
+forward in a black, strangling tide, had overtaken not only himself but
+Susan, too; Susan, in soft merino, in an azure velvet cloak; her face
+against his. "I shall go away at once," he said hoarsely. "I'll never
+appear, and they can think what they will. Then there will be no
+necessity for her to come forward. She shall be spared that, no matter
+what it costs."
+
+"Romantic and youthful folly," Jannan declared; "loud-sounding and
+useless. How little you understand Susan--immediately it is known Culser
+was killed between seven and nine, whether you stay or go, she will come
+forward with the truth, free you from any suspicion. I tell you every
+detail will be canvassed, familiar to the boys on the street. A man
+important as yourself, with all your industries and money, and such
+salacity, together with Susan Brundon, will make a pretty story. If I
+had a chance, Jasper, I'm almost certain I'd sacrifice you without a
+quiver. How could you? Susan Brundon! Never telling her--"
+
+"On the contrary, she knew everything. I am not so low as you seem to
+think."
+
+"That has no importance now!" Stephen Jannan exclaimed impatiently. "All
+that matters is to make it as easy as possible for her, I have, I think,
+enough position, influence, to keep the dregs out. But there will be
+enough present, even then. Damnable insinuations, winks,
+cross-questioning."
+
+His excitement faded before the exigencies of the unavoidable situation;
+he became cold, logical, legal. Jasper Penny listened, standing, to his
+instructions, the exact forecasting of every move probable at the
+hearing in the Mayor's chamber. "After that," Stephen added, "we can
+face the problem of Susan's future. She thinks tremendously of her
+school. It will fall to pieces in her hands. There can be no question of
+material assistance; refused her own brother.
+
+"Now, understand--stay in these rooms until I send for you. See no one.
+I'll get on, go to Susan. The thing itself should be short; her
+character will assist you there. What a mess you have made of living,
+Jasper."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet
+mingled inner voices: Essie's younger, exuberant periods, her joy at
+presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her
+last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any
+doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of
+a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low,
+diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice
+continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin
+complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the
+Academy. These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one
+rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same. Back of them
+were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of
+associated heat or cold, darkness or light:
+
+He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius,
+regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced,
+the sense of Howat's nearness; integral with himself; merging into his
+own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring. His mother joined the
+immaterial company, accents, rigid with pride in him. And penetrating,
+binding, all was the dull beat of the trip hammer at Myrtle Forge. He
+had mechanically finished dressing, and stood absently twisting the
+drapery at a window. A fine tracery of lines had suddenly appeared about
+his eyes; the cold rays of the winter sun, streaming over his erect
+figure, accentuated the patches of grey plentiful in his hair.
+
+He saw, on the street below, a parade of firemen, in scarlet tunics and
+brass helmets, dragging a glittering engine. The men walked evenly
+abreast, at cross ropes. A leader blew a brilliant fanfare on an
+embossed, silver horn. Women passed, foreshortened into circular bells
+of colour, draped with gay pelerines and rich India shawls. He saw all
+and nothing. The horn of the firemen sounded without meaning on his
+distracted hearing. The flood of his suffering rose darkly, oppressing
+his heart, choking his breath. Perhaps if, as he had desired, he had
+gone away, Susan would be spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could
+keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and
+bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would
+take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands
+slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why
+hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would
+have been already too late, he added in thought; it went back, back--
+
+A knock sounded discreetly on the door: and, opening it, he saw a young
+man, remembered as a law student in Stephen's office. "They are ready
+for you, sir, at the City Hall," he stated, in an over-emphasized,
+professional calm.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+The restrained curiosity and inaudible comments which greeted his
+passage through the lower floor of the hotel gave place to a livelier
+interest when he was readily recognized on the street. The news of the
+murder had, evidently, already become city property. He was indicated to
+individuals unaware of his identity, with a rapid sketch of the crime,
+of fabulous ascribed possessions, and hinted oriental indulgence. He
+strode on rapidly, his shoulders squared, his expression contemptuous,
+challenging; but within he was possessed by an apprehension increasing
+at every step. It was not, fortunately, far from Sanderson's Hotel to
+the City Hall; west on Chestnut Street they reached their destination at
+the following corner. The loungers from the trees before the State House
+had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the
+entrance to the municipal offices. The windows on either side of the
+marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and
+Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building. He tried to recall
+if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might
+be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; they whirled in a
+feverish course about the sole fact of the public degradation he had
+brought on Susan Brundon. They passed the doors of civic departments, he
+saw their signs--Water, City Treasurer, and then entered the Mayor's
+chamber.
+
+The latter was seated at a table facing the room with his back to a wide
+window, opening on the blank brick wall of the Philosophical Society
+building; and at one side the High Constable of the district in which
+the murder had been committed was conversing with the Sheriff. Beside
+them, Jasper Penny saw, there were only some clerks present and three
+policemen. The Mayor spoke equably to the Ironmaster, directed a chair
+placed for his convenience, and resumed the inspection of a number of
+reports. He had a gaunt, tight-lipped face framed in luxuriant whiskers,
+a severely moral aspect oddly contradicted by trousers of tremendous
+sporting plaid, a waistcoat of green buckskin cassimere, while his silk
+hat held a rakish, forward angle. The Constable and Sheriff punctuated
+their converse by prodigious and dexterous spitting into a dangerously
+far receptacle, and the clerks and police murmured together. The Mayor,
+finally glancing at a watch enamelled, Jasper Penny saw, with a fay of
+the ballet, spoke to the room in general. "Ten and past. Well! Well!
+Where are the others? Who is to come still, Hoffernan?"
+
+"Mr. Jannan, sir; and a witness," a clerk answered. The other gazed at
+the paper before him.
+
+"Susan Brundon," he read in a loud, uncompromising tone. Jasper Penny's
+eyes narrowed belligerently; he would see that these pothouse
+politicians gave Susan every consideration possible. He was, with
+Stephen, a far from negligible force in the city elections. "School
+mistress," the Mayor read on. "Never heard of her or her school. Ah--"
+Stephen Jannan had entered with Susan.
+
+Jasper rose as she came forward, and the Mayor had the grace to remove
+his hat. She wore, he saw, the familiar dress of wool, with a sober,
+fringed black silk mantle, black gloves and an inconspicuous bonnet. She
+met his harried gaze, and smiled; but beneath her greeting he was aware
+of a supreme tension. There was, however, no perceptible nervousness in
+the manner of her accepting an indicated place; she sat with her hands
+quietly folded in her lap, the mantle drooping back over the chair.
+Stephen Jannan, facing the Mayor, made a concise statement in a cold,
+deliberate voice. "I now propose to show your honour," he finished,
+"that, between the hours in which Daniel Culser is said to have been
+shot to death, my client was peacefully in the company of Miss Brundon,
+strolling in an opposite quarter of the city."
+
+"Hoffernan," the Mayor pronounced, waving toward the seated woman. The
+clerk advanced with a Bible; and, rising, Susan followed the words of
+the oath in a low, clear voice. To Jasper Penny the occasion seemed
+intolerably prolonged, filled with needless detail. Never had Susan
+Brundon appeared more utterly desirable, never had his need to protect,
+shield, her been stronger. He--protect her, he added bitterly; rather he
+had betrayed her, dragged her immaculate sweetness down into the foul
+atmosphere of a criminal hearing. His attention, fastening on the
+trivialities of the interior, removed him in a species of self-hypnotism
+from the actualities of the scene. He heard, as if from a distance, the
+questioning of the Mayor, "At what time, exactly, did you say? How did
+you know that?" Susan said, "I saw the clock at the back of the hall. I
+noticed it because I wondered if the younger children had retired."
+
+"You say you walked with Mr. Penny--where?... How long did you remain at
+the river? No way of knowing. Seemed surprisingly short, I'll venture."
+Why didn't Stephen put an end to such ill-timed jocularity? "And Mr.
+Penny had spoken to you of his--his relations with Mrs. Scofield, the
+woman in whose house Culser was killed. Did he refer to her on this
+particular evening, standing by the river's brink?" Susan replied in the
+negative. "Did he seem ill at ease, worried about anything? Was he
+hurried in manner?"
+
+To all of this Susan Brundon answered no, in a voice that constantly
+grew lower, but which never faltered, hesitated. The Mayor turned aside
+for a whispered consultation with the High Constable. The former nodded.
+"Have you any--shall we say--proprietary interest in Mr. Penny's
+affairs?" Her reply was hardly audible in the room stilled for what
+might be revealed. "No," she breathed, her gloved fingers interlacing.
+Jasper Penny's lips were drawn in a hard line; Stephen gazed fixedly at
+the floor. The Mayor gesticulated affably toward the lawyer. "That'll
+do," he declared. "Pleasure, Mr. Penny, to have you so completely
+cleared. I shall have to demand your assistance further,
+though--knowledge of Mrs. Scofield. And, in the case of her apprehension
+and trial, you will, of course, be called. Communication will be made
+through Mr. Jannan. No doubt in our mind now of the facts." A policeman
+opened the door and a surge of the curious pressed in. "Take her away,"
+Jasper Penny whispered to Jannan; "this is damnable."
+
+Susan rose, gathering up her mantle, and moved to Stephen Jannan's side.
+He offered his arm with a formal courtesy, and together they made their
+way out through the corridor. Jasper, lost in a moody abstraction,
+waited until they had vanished; and then, with a lowered head, walked
+rapidly over Chestnut Street in the direction of the terminus of the
+railroad for Jaffa. A brigade of cars was made up; he took a place and
+was immediately dragged on and over the viaduct to the plane and waiting
+engine beyond. He could see, from the demeanour of the loungers on the
+Jaffa platform, that the news of the murder, his connection with it, had
+preceded him. To-morrow's papers would provide them with full accounts,
+the name of Susan Brundon among the maculate details.... The meanest
+cast boy in his works would regard him, the knowledge of Essie, with a
+leer.
+
+His mother was at the main door of Myrtle Forge, pale but composed.
+"Take Mr. Penny's overcoat," she brusquely directed a servant. He had
+never seen a more delectable supper than the one awaiting him; and he
+tasted most of what found its way to his plate--he owed that to the
+maternal solicitude secretly regarding him, hastily masked as he met his
+mother's gaze. Sitting later in accustomed formality the dulness of a
+species of relief folded him. The minor sounds of his home, the
+deliberate loudness of an old clock, the minute warring of his mother's
+bone needles, her sister's fits of coughing, painfully restrained,
+soothed his harried being; subjected to an intolerable strain his
+overwrought nerves had suddenly relaxed; he sank back in a loose, almost
+somnolent, state. A mental indolence possessed him; the keen incentives
+of life appeared far, unimportant, his late rebellions and desires
+inexplicable. Even the iron was a heavy load; the necessity of
+constantly meeting new conditions with new processes, of uprooting month
+by month most with which the years had made him familiar, seemed beyond
+his power.
+
+A faint dread crept into his consciousness; he roused himself sharply,
+straightened his shoulders, glanced about to see if his tacit surrender
+had been noticed--this lassitude creeping over him, the indifference,
+was, at last, the edge of the authentic shadow of age, of decay; it was
+the deadening of the sensibilities preceding death. He banished it
+immediately, and all his desire, his need, his sense of the horror of
+the past day, surged back, reanimated him, sent the blood strongly to
+its furthest confines. But, none the less, a vague, disturbing memory of
+the other lingered at the back of his perceptions; he had a fresh
+realization of the necessity for him to make haste, to take at
+once--before the hateful anodyne of time had betrayed his vigour--what
+life still, and so fully, held.
+
+His desire for Susan increased to an intensity robbing it of a greater
+part of the early joy; it had, now, a fretful aspect drawing him into
+long and painfully minute rehearsals of his every contact with her, and
+of the disgraceful publicity brought upon her by his past. At the usual
+hour the hot wine appeared; the glassful was pressed on Amity Merken;
+his mother drank hers with the familiar, audible satisfaction. An old
+custom, an old compound, brought from Germany many years ago, binding,
+in its petty immortality, distant times, places, beings. He saw that his
+mother was noticeably less able than she had been the week before; her
+hands fumbled at her knitting, shook holding the glass. Her lined face
+quivered as she said good night. He bent and kissed a hot, dry brow,
+conscious of the blanched skull under her fading colour, her ebbing
+warmth. He had done this, too--hastened her death; she must have
+suffered inordinately in her prideful affection. She said nothing,
+beyond the repeated admonition that he must not sit up into the night.
+
+The next day he forced himself to read to the end the report of the
+murder in the _Gazette_. The references to Susan Brundon were as scant
+as, evidently, Stephen Jannan could arrange; but her name, her Academy,
+were invested with an odious publicity. Jasper Penny saw again that he
+was a person of moment; his part in the affair gave it a greatly
+augmented importance. Yet now the worst, he told himself, was at an end;
+the publicity would recede; after a decent interval he could see Susan.
+
+This mood was interrupted by an imperative communication from
+Stephen--he must be in the other's office at eleven o'clock to-morrow.
+Nothing more definite was said; but Jasper Penny was not wholly
+surprised to see Essie Scofield huddled in a chair at the lawyer's
+table. She had made an attempt at the bravado of apparel, but it had
+evidently failed midway; her hair hung loosely about a damp brow, the
+strings of her bonnet were in disarray, a shawl partially hid a bodice
+wrongly fastened. Her face was apathetic, with leaden shadows and dark
+lips ceaselessly twisting, now drawn into a petulant line, now drooping
+in childish impotence. She glanced at him fleetly as he entered, but
+said nothing. Robbed of the pretensions of pride, stripped of feminine
+subterfuge, she was appalling. He involuntarily recalled the Essie who
+had swept him into a riot of emotion--a vivid and palpitating creature
+radiating the exuberance of careless health and youth. She could not, he
+calculated, be beyond thirty-seven now. He abruptly ceased his
+speculation, turned from her, with a feeling of impropriety. Stephen
+Jannan said shortly:
+
+"Al Schimpf will be here. It seemed to me he was the best man to retain.
+It's obvious that I can't defend her. You will, of course, require
+everything possible done." Essie Scofield shivered. "I don't want to go
+into court," she articulated, "and answer all the dreadful questions."
+There was a stir without, and a hugely fat man in a black cape fastened
+with a silver chain and velvet collar entered. Al Schimpf's face was so
+burdened with rolling chins that he disregarded the customary fashion of
+whiskers, but a grizzled moustache lay above his well-formed lips, and
+an imperial divided his heavy, aggressive chin. He was, evidently, fully
+informed of the case before him; for, after saluting Jannan and Jasper
+Penny, he, seated himself directly before Essie Scofield, fastening upon
+her an unwavering, glacial gaze.
+
+"Now, pay attention," he proceeded at once.
+
+"I'll go over a few facts--this Daniel Culser, you were in love with
+him; no length you wouldn't go, lost your senses completely; and he--all
+he cared about was the money he could wring out of you. As soon as you
+were paid the sums that Mr. Penny allowed you, this Culser got it from
+you; he took every cent and wanted more. Said he would leave you unless
+you got hold of something really worth while. Then, of course, you
+carried on, promised to get him more and more; said you could force a
+fortune from Mr. Penny, anything to keep the young man. Hey?" he
+demanded suddenly.
+
+The woman looked up with a haggard wonder, an irrepressible shudder; her
+hands raised and fell, and she nodded dumbly.
+
+"Then, while Culser was in the house, Mr. Penny unexpectedly turned up
+and said--perhaps before Daniel himself--that you could expect nothing
+more, and made it plain that he was not to be intimidated. Daniel Culser
+was for leaving you, didn't intend to hang around for a bloody little
+quarterly; and, when you realized that he meant, or you thought he
+meant, what he said, you went crazy and shot him.... What!" He got no
+response from her now; she cowered away from him, hiding behind an
+updrawn shoulder, a fold of the shawl. "But listen to this," Al Schimpf
+shot at her, leaning forward, "here's what happened, and you must
+remember every fact:
+
+"The fellow had been around the house day after day. You had encouraged
+him at first; but then you got frightened; he beat you--hear
+that?--struck you with his fist, and threatened worse if you didn't go
+through old Penny's pocket for him. He even hinted at something you
+might do together, and then get away with a mint. Culser was at it when
+Mr. Penny called, and took it up when he left, at about six o'clock. He
+said he wanted money bad, debts were hounding him; and he was going to
+get it out of Penny, out of you. There's where you said you would warn
+Jasper Penny; and remember how he struck you, in the back, because you
+turned, and it hurts yet--there up by the left shoulder, the left
+shoulder, the left! Then, he had been drinking in your house and at a
+tavern, he threatened to kill you if you didn't do what he wanted. You
+honestly thought he'd do it, and snatched a pistol out of a table
+drawer, and.... Do you understand? That's what happened, and it's all
+you know. Said he would kill you, apparently commenced then, and you
+acted in self-protection. Now, repeat that."
+
+She gazed at him in a trembling confusion. "But," she objected, "he was
+only--he said. Oh! I was afraid I'd lose him." The lawyer moved closer
+to her, his unwinking, grey-green eyes like slate. "He said he'd kill
+you," he reiterated; "remember that, if you don't want to hang. He
+struck you; where?" After a long pause she replied haltingly, "In the
+back." Al Schimpf nodded, "Good. And he said you both were to get away
+with a mint. He told you it would be easy; the old man would gladly buy
+silence; and, by heaven, if he didn't--"
+
+Jasper Penny stonily watched the intolerable degradation of the woman
+bullied into the safety of a lie. This was worse than anything that had
+gone before; he fell deeper and deeper into a strangling, humiliating
+self-loathing. Stephen Jannan's handsome countenance was fixed and pale;
+one hand lay on the table, empty and still. In the silence between
+Schimpf's insistent periods Jasper Penny could hear Essie's sobbing
+inspirations; he was unable to keep his gaze from her countenance,
+jelly-like and robbed of every trace of human dignity. He wondered
+vaguely at an absence of any sense of responsibility for what Essie
+Scofield had become; he felt that an attitude of self-accusation, of
+profound regret for the way they had taken together, should rest upon
+him; but the thought, the effort, were perfunctory, obviously insincere.
+If now he had a different, perhaps deeper, sense of responsibility, he
+had known nothing of it in the first months of his contact with her....
+A different man, he reiterated; and one as faithfully representative as
+he was to-day. But totally another; men changed, evolved, progressed.
+Jasper Penny was convinced that it was a progression; but in a broad
+manner beyond all hope of his comprehension, and entirely outside
+dogmatic good and evil. The germ of it must have been in him from the
+first; his burning necessity for Susan, he told himself, had been born
+in him, laid dormant until, yes--it had been stirred into activity by
+Essie Scofield, by the revulsion which had followed that natural
+development.
+
+He was suddenly conscious that Al Schimpf had ceased domineering Essie.
+The lawyer swung about, facing them with an expression of commonplace
+satisfaction. "It's all in fine order," he declared. "I want, if
+possible, to study our jury through a preliminary case or so. We shall,
+of course, surrender our client at once, without making any difficulty
+about moving her from one police district to another. I can produce a
+witness to the fact that this Culser openly said that he expected
+shortly to come into more money. And he had dishonoured debts all about.
+You will have to appear, Mr. Penny; no way out of that, but our defence
+should go like a song. Now, Mrs. Scofield, I have a carriage outside."
+
+When they had gone Jasper Penny and Jannan sat in a lengthening silence.
+Stephen's hand moved among the papers on the table; the other drew a
+deep breath. "I regret this tremendously for you," Stephen Jannan said
+at last. He spoke with feeling; his momentary anger at the entanglement
+of Susan vanished. "But it will pass, Jasper. You are too solid a man to
+be hurt permanently by private scandal. And you have no concrete
+political position to invite mud slinging. Yes, it will drop out of
+mind, and your iron will continue to support enterprise, extension."
+
+"But Susan," Jasper Penny demanded, "what about her? Where is she?"
+
+"With Graham at Shadrach. She was badly torn, and I insisted on her
+retreating for a week or more. There is a very capable assistant at the
+Academy. It's too early to speak conclusively, but I am afraid that
+Susan's usefulness is ended there. Have you seen the cheaper sheets?
+Every one, of course, is buying them. Rotten! The assistant, I
+understand, is anxious to procure the school, and I am considering
+allowing her the capital. Something might be arranged paying Susan an
+income.... If she would accept; confoundly difficult to come about."
+
+"I am going to marry her," Jasper Penny asserted once more.
+
+"What was the initial trouble?" the other asked, tersely.
+
+"Essie." Stephen frowned.
+
+"She would hit on that," he agreed; "stand until the last gasp of some
+fantastic conception of right."
+
+Jasper explained:
+
+"She thinks I ought to marry Essie, mostly on account of the child. She
+likes me, too, Stephen; I think I may tell you that. Well, I'll keep at
+her and at her. In the end she will get tired of refusal." The other
+shook his head doubtfully. "I've known Susan a good many years, and I
+have never seen her lose an ideal, or even an idea, yet."
+
+Jasper Penny rose. "Meanwhile I'll have to go through with this trial.
+Thank God, Susan has no part in it." He warmly gripped Stephen's palm.
+"You're worth something in a life, immovable. Thank you, Stephen."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+It was early in April, an insidiously warm morning with the ailanthus
+trees in bud before the State House, when Jasper Penny left the court
+room where Essie had been freed. Provision had been made for her--she
+had had a severe collapse during the trial--and a feeling almost of
+renewed liberty of spirit permeated Jasper, as, with his overcoat on an
+arm, he turned to the left and walked over the street in the blandly
+expanding mildness. A train left shortly for Jaffa, and he was bound
+directly home, to Myrtle Forge, anxious to steep himself in the echo of
+the trip hammer mingled with the poignant harmony of spring sounds
+drifting from the farm and woods. He was possessed by a sharpened hunger
+for all the--now recognized--beauty of the place of his allegiance and
+birth, the serenity of the acres Gilbert Penny had beaten out of the
+wild of the Province. He was astonishingly conscious of himself as a
+part of the whole Penny succession, proud of Gilbert, of Howat, who had
+always so engaged his fancy, of Casimir, and Daniel, his own father.
+Theirs was a good heritage; their part of the earth, the ring of their
+iron, his particular characteristic of a black Penny, formed a really
+splendid entity.
+
+The low, horizontal branches of the beech tree on the lawn, older than
+the dwelling, opposed a pleasant variety on the long façade, built of
+stone with an appearance of dark pinkish malleability masking its
+obduracy. His mother was awaiting him on the narrow portico, and he at
+once told her of Essie's release. They stood together, gazing out across
+the turf, faintly emerald, over the public road, at the grey, solid
+group of farm buildings beyond. The farmer's daughter, in a white slip,
+emerged against the barnyard, and called the chickens in a high, musical
+note, scattering grain to a hysterical feathery mob. The air was still
+with approaching twilight; the sun slipped below the western trees and
+shadows gathered under the lilac bushes; the sky was April green.
+
+"Your father has been dead twelve years," Gilda Penny said unexpectedly.
+He looked down and saw that she was decrepit, an old woman. Her mouth
+had sunken, her ears projected in dry folds from her scant strands of
+hair. He recalled Daniel Barnes Penny; the earliest memories of his
+mother, a vigorous, brown-faced woman with alert, black eyes,
+quick-stepping, dictatorial in the sphere of her house and dependents.
+One after the other, like the sun, they were slipping out of the sight
+of Myrtle Forge; vanished and remained; passed from falling hand to hand
+the unextinguished flame of life. Gilda Penny was merging fast into the
+formless dark. She clung with pathetically tense fingers to his arm as
+they turned into the house.
+
+He had ordered a carriage immediately after an early supper; and,
+informing his coachman of his wish to proceed alone, drove quickly away
+through the dusk. He was going to Shadrach Furnace, to meet Susan for
+the first time since the unhappy occasion in the Mayor's chamber. He had
+decided, stifling his increasing impatience, not to see her until
+Essie's trial was over. Susan had been at Graham Jannan's house for nine
+weeks. Her sight, he had learned, had almost completely failed in a
+general exhaustion; but, with rigorous care, she had nearly recovered.
+The Academy had been sold to the assistant mistress; and there was an
+expressed uncertainty about Susan's near future. It had, however, no
+existence in Jasper Penny's thoughts, plans--she must marry him; any
+other course would now be absurd. The track from Myrtle Forge to the
+Furnace was bound into his every thought and association; its
+familiarity, he mused, had been born in him; his horses, too, took
+correctly, without pressure, every turning of the way. The road mounted,
+and then dropped between rounded hills to the clustering buildings,
+where lighted, pale yellow windows floated on the dusk, crowned by the
+wide-flung radiance of the Furnace stack. The air was potent in the
+valley with the indeterminate scent of budding earth--the premonitory
+fragrance of blossoms; and, hardly less delicate, stars flowered whitely
+in blue space.
+
+He paused for a moment before entering Graham Jannan's house, saturated
+with the pastoral tranquillity, listening to the flutter of wings under
+the eaves. Then he went in. They had finished supper, but were lingering
+at the table, with the candles guttering in an air from the open door.
+His greeting was simple and glad, and without restraint. Susan wore a
+dress like a white vapour, sprigged with pale buds, her throat and arms
+bare. She smiled the familiar, hesitating smile, met his questioning
+gaze with her undeviating courage. Jasper Penny took a chair opposite
+her. Little was said. Peace deepened about his spirit.
+
+Graham, he saw, had a new ruddiness of health; he laid a shawl tenderly
+about his wife's shoulders; and Jasper remembered that a birth was
+imminent. Later he drifted with Susan to the door, and they passed out
+into the obscurity beyond. Even now he was reluctant to speak, to break
+with importunities the serene mood. "All the iron making," she spoke at
+last, "lovely. I have stood night after night in the cast house watching
+the metal pour out in its glorious colours. And, when I wake, I go to my
+window and see the reflections of the blast on the trees, on the first
+leaves. The charcoal burners come down like giants out of the mythology
+of the forest. And, when I first came, there was a raccoon hunt, with a
+great stirring of lanterns and barking dogs in the dark ... all lovely."
+
+"It is yours," he said, bending over her. "You can come here at your
+will. A house built. And Myrtle Forge, too; whatever I have, am." He
+paused; but, without reply, continued more rapidly. "It's over, the--the
+misery of the past weeks; the mistakes are dead; they are paid, Susan.
+Now we may take what is left and make it as beautiful as possible. After
+suffering, reparation, happiness, is every one's due. And I am certain I
+can make you happy."
+
+A longer pause followed, in which he regarded her with an increasing
+anxiety. Her face was turned away, her progress grew slower until they
+stood by the shadowy bulk of a small stone structure. The door was open,
+and it seemed to him that she looked within. "A store house," he
+explained. Nothing was visible in the interior gloom but some obscure
+shapes, bales, piled against the walls, and the scant tracery of a rude
+stair leading up to a greater blackness above. She stopped, as if
+arrested by his period, laying a hand on the door frame.
+
+"Why don't you answer me, Susan?" he proceeded. "You know that I want to
+marry you; surely it is all right now. Everything possible has been
+done. A great deal of life remains." Her answer was so low that it
+almost escaped him; the faintest breath of pain, of longing and regret.
+"I can't," she whispered; "not with her, the child. I can't."
+
+"That," he replied gently, "is a mistaken idea of responsibility, a
+needless sacrifice. I could never urge you into an injustice, a wrong;
+at last I have got above that; what I want is the most reasonable thing
+imaginable, the best, in every conceivable way, for yourself and--any
+other. You are harming, depriving, no one. You are taking nothing but
+your own, what has been yours, and only yours, from the first moment I
+saw, no--from my birth. What has happened brought me in a straight road
+to you, the long road I have never, really, left."
+
+"I can't," she said still again. "I want to, Jasper. Oh, with a heart
+full of longing; I am so tired that I would almost give the rest of my
+life for another secure hour with you. And I would pay that to give you
+what you want, what you should have. But something stronger than I am,
+more than all this, holds me; I can't forget that miserable woman, nor
+her child and yours, so thin and suspicious. I am not good enough to be
+her mother myself, even if I felt I had the right. Inside of me I am
+quite wicked, selfish. I want my own. But not with the other woman
+outside. She'd be looking in at the windows, Jasper, looking in at my
+heart. I would hear her." She leaned against her arm, her face hid, her
+shoulders trembling.
+
+The musty odour of the stores floated out and enveloped him. He was
+suddenly annoyed. Susan herself lost some of her beauty, her radiance.
+He muttered that she was merely stubborn, blind to reality, to
+necessity. His attitude hardened, and he commenced to argue in a low,
+insistent voice. She made no reply, but remained supported in the
+doorway, a vague form against the inner dark.
+
+"You must change your mind," he asserted; "you can't be eternally so
+foolish. There is absolutely no question of my marrying Essie Scofield."
+
+"I don't want you to, really," she admitted in an agonized whisper. "I
+shall never again ask you to do that. Ah, God, how low I am."
+
+He saw, in an unsparing flash of comprehension, that it was useless. She
+would never marry him as long as the past stayed embodied, actual, to
+peer into their beings. A return of his familiar irritability, spleen,
+possessed him. "You are too pure for this world," he said brutally. She
+turned and stood facing him, meeting his scorn with an uplifted
+countenance. A shifting reflection from the Furnace stack fell over her
+in a wan veil, over the vaporous, sprigged white of her dress, her bare
+throat and arms, her cheeks wet with tears. Out of it her eyes, wide
+with pain, steadily met his angry scrutiny. Out of it she smiled at him
+before the reflection died.
+
+
+
+
+III THE METAL
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+In the warm, subdued light of a double lamp with apricot glass shades
+Howat Penny was turning over the pages, stiff with dry paste, of an
+album filled with opera programmes. The date of the brief, precisely
+penned label on the black cover was 1883-84; it was the first of a
+number of such thick, recording volumes he had gathered; and the operas,
+the casts, were of absorbing interest. At once a memento of the heroic
+period of American music and of his first manhood, the faded crudely
+embellished strips of paper, bearing names, lyric tenors and sopranos of
+limpid, bird-like song long ago lost in rosy and nebulous clouds of
+fable and cherished affection, roused remembered pleasures sharper than
+any calm actuality of to-day. He paused with a quiet exclamation, the
+single glass adroitly held in his left, astigmatic, eye fastened on the
+announcement of a famous evening, a famous name. His sense of the leaf
+before him blurred in the vivid memory of Patti, singing Martha in the
+campaign brought by Mapleson in the old Academy of Music against the
+forces of the new Metropolitan Opera House. He had been one of a
+conservative number that had supported the established opera, declaring
+heatedly that the Diva and Mapleson were an unapproachable musical
+combination, before which the shoddier magnificence of its rival,
+erected practically in a few summer months, would speedily fade.
+
+Nevertheless, he recalled, the widely heralded performance had been
+coolly received. Patti, although she had not perceptibly failed in
+voice, had been unable to inspire the customary enthusiasm; and the
+scene at the evening's end, planned to express her overwhelming triumph
+and superiority, when the horses had been taken from her carriage and it
+had been dragged by hand to the portal of the Windsor Hotel, had been no
+better than perfunctory. The wily Mapleson had arranged that beforehand,
+Howat Penny realized, with a faint, reminiscent smile on his severe
+lips--the "enthusiastic mob" had been coldly recruited, at a price, from
+the choristers. Another memory of Patti, and of that same performance,
+flooded back--the dinner given her in the Brunswick. He saw again the
+room where, on a divan, she had received her hosts, the seventy or more
+men of fashion grouped in irreproachable black and white, with her suave
+manager, the inevitable tea rose in his lapel, on a knee before Adelina,
+kissing her hand. The dinner had been laid in the ball room, lit with a
+multitude of wax candles. The features, appearance, of the more
+prominent men, of Mahun Stetson and Daly and William Steinway, were
+clear still. The original plan had been to include ladies at the
+dinner, but the latter, affecting outrage at the Diva's affair with the
+Marquis de Caux, had refused to lend their countenance to the singer's
+occasion. His smile broadened--this was so characteristic of New York in
+the eighties. How different it had been; but it was no better, he added
+silently, now.
+
+It was mid-August, and the air floating in through an open door was
+ladened with the richness of ultra-luxuriant vegetation, the persistent,
+metallic whirring of locusts, the mechanical repetition of katydids. One
+of the owls that inhabited the old willow tree before the house cried
+softly.... How different! He straightened up from the book open on his
+knees, and the glass fell with a small clatter over his formal, starched
+linen, swinging for an instant on its narrow ribbon. The unwavering lamp
+light was deflected in green points through the emeralds of his studs.
+
+The thought of bygone, gala nights of opera fastened on him with a
+peculiar significance--suddenly they seemed symbolic of his lost youth.
+Such tides of impassioned song, such poignant, lyric passion, such
+tragic sacrifice and death, were all in the extravagant key of youth.
+The very convention of opera, the glorified unreality of its language,
+the romantic impossibility of its colour, the sparkling dress like the
+sparkling voices and blue gardens and gilded halls, were the authentic
+expression of the resplendent vagaries of early years.
+
+The winter of eighty three and four; his first season of New York
+music. The autumn before he had returned from the five years spent in
+Europe, in Paris practically, with Bundy Provost, related to him by a
+marriage in the past generation, through the Jannans. He had gone abroad
+immediately after his graduation as a lawyer; and in the indolent
+culture of the five Parisian years, he now realized, he had permanently
+lost all hold on his profession. At his return he had drifted
+imperceptibly into an existence of polite pleasure. It had been
+different with Bundy; he had gone into the banking house of Provost,
+lately established in New York; and, with the extraordinary pertinacity
+and acumen sometimes developed by worldly and rich young men, he had
+steadily risen to a place of financial importance. An opening had, of
+course, been offered to Howat Penny when he had definitely decided not
+to settle in Philadelphia, where the Pennys had always been associated,
+and pursue the law. And, at first, he had occupied a desk in the Provost
+counting rooms. But he had soon grown discontented, he disliked routine
+and a clerk's condition; and, after two years of annoyed effort,
+withdrew to lead a more congenial existence on a secure, adequate
+income.
+
+"It was a mistake," he said aloud, in a decided, clearly modulated
+voice, gazing blankly into the warm stillness of the room. It had come
+partly from his innate impatience with any inferior state whatever, and
+part from the old inability to identify himself with the practicalities
+of existence. He had always viewed with distaste the apparently
+necessary compromises of successful living; the struggle for money,
+commercial supremacy, seemed unendurably ugly; the jargon and
+subterfuges of financial competition beneath his exacting standard of
+personal dignity. That had been his expression at the time--permeated by
+an impatient sense of superiority; but now he felt that there was
+something essential lacking in himself. An absence of proper balance.
+Solely concerned with the appearance, the insignificant surface, of such
+efforts as Bundy Provost's, their moving, masculine spirit had evaded
+him. Yes, it had been a mistake. He had missed the greatest pleasure of
+all, that of accumulating power and influence, of virile achievement.
+
+Well, it was over now; he was old; his life, his chance, had gone; and
+all that remained were memories of Patti smiling disdainfully in the
+flare of oil torches about her carriage; the only concrete record of so
+many years the scrap books such as that on his knees.
+
+It had been an error; yet there had been, within him, no choice, no
+intimation of a different, more desirable, consummation. Bundy had gone
+one way and himself another in obedience to forces beyond their
+understanding or control. They had done, briefly, what they were. There
+was no individual blame to attach, no applause; spare moralizing to
+append. He returned to the pages before him, to the memories of the
+radiant Ambre and Marimon, the sylvan echoes of Campanini singing
+Elvino.
+
+Now his recovered glass was intent on a programme of the rapidly
+successful Metropolitan forces, of the new German Opera, with
+Seidl-Krauss singing Elizabeth, and Brandt in _Fidelio_. Even here,
+after so long, he vibrated again to the exquisite beauty of Lenore's
+constancy and love. Then Dr. Damrosch dead, the sonorous funeral in the
+Opera House ... That had been changed with the rest; the baignoires were
+gone, the tiers of boxes newly curved; gone the chandeliers and Turkey
+red carpet and gold threaded brocade that had seemed the final
+expression of luxury. Lehmann in the premier of _Tristan und Isolde_,
+with the vast restrained enthusiasm and tensity when, at the end of the
+third act, Niemann bared his wounded breast. Eames' rise; but that, and
+what followed, were in successive books. He closed the one under his
+hand.
+
+As the years drew nearer the present their features became larger, more
+indistinct, their music grew louder, dissonant. He had retired further
+and further from an opera, a life, with which he was increasingly out of
+harmony. Or rather, he added, life moved away from the aging. It was as
+if the surrounding affair became objective; as if, once a participant in
+a cast--a production, however, less than grand--he had been conducted to
+a seat somewhere in the midst of a great, shadowy audience, from which
+he looked out of the gloom at the brilliant, removed spectacle. The
+final fact that had taken him from the setting of so many of his years
+had been the increasing expense of a discriminating existence in New
+York. Again his distaste for anything short of absolute nicety had
+dictated the form and conditions of his living. When the situation of
+his rooms had definitely declined, and the cost of possible
+locations--he could not endure a club--became prohibitive; when his once
+adequate, unaugmented income assumed the limitations of a mere
+sufficiency; and when, too, the old, familiar figures, the swells of his
+own period and acquaintance had vanished one by one with their vanishing
+halls of assembly--he had retreated to the traditional place of his
+family. He had gone back to the home of the Pennys in America.
+
+Not, however, to Myrtle Forge itself, the true centre of his
+inheritance. The house there had been uninhabited since his father's
+early years; it was a closed and melancholy memento; he had reanimated a
+comfortable stone dwelling at Shadrach Furnace; its solid grey façade
+drawn out by two happy additions to the original, small square. It had
+been, traditionally, at first, the house of the head furnacemen;
+sometime after that, perhaps a hundred years, Graham Jannan, newly
+married, had lived there while occupied with the active manufacture of
+iron; and three summers back he, Howat Penny, the last Penny now, had
+returned to the vicinity of Jaffa.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+The room in which he sat had two windows, set in the deep recesses of
+heavy stone walls, and three doors, two leading into opposite rooms and
+the third opening without. The double lamp stood on a low, gate-legged
+table of fibrous, time-blackened oak, together with an orderly array of
+periodicals--the white, typographical page of the _Saturday Review_
+under the dull rose of _The Living Age_ and chocolate-coloured bulk of
+the _Unpopular, Gil Blas_, the mid-week _Boston Transcript_ and
+yesterday's _New York Evening Post_. The table bore, in addition, a
+green morocco case of dominoes; a mahogany box that, in a recess,
+mysteriously maintained a visible cigarette; a study of Beethoven, in
+French; an outspread volume by Anatole France, _Jacques Tournebroche_,
+in a handsome paper cover; a set of copper ash trays; and a dull red
+figurine, holding within its few inches the deathless spirit of a heroic
+age. An angle of the wall before him was filled by a white panelled
+fireplace, the mantel close against the ceiling; and on the other side
+of a doorway, through which he could see Rudolph noiselessly preparing
+the dinner table, was a swan-like sofa, in olive wood and pale yellow
+satin, from the Venice of the _ottocento_. At his right, beyond a
+window, mounted a tall, austere secretary in waxed walnut; and behind
+him, under the white chair rail, bookcases extended across the width of
+the room. Gustavus Hesselius' portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on
+a yellow painted wall, his gilt-braided major's facings still vivid, his
+dark, perceptible scorn undimmed. There were, too, framed in oak, a
+large photograph of Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial
+message; another of a graceful woman in the Page's costume of _Les
+Huguenots_, signed "Sempre ... Scalchi"; a water colour drawing by Jan
+Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery foliage and brick of _The
+Penny Rolling Mills. Jaffa_. A black-blue rug, from Myrtle Forge, partly
+covered the broad, oak boards of the floor; and there was a comfortable
+variety of chairs--sturdy, painted Dutch, winged Windsors and a slatted
+Hunterstown rocker.
+
+Howat Penny's gaze wandered over the familiar furnishing, come to him
+surviving the generations of his family, or carefully procured for his
+individual dictates. A sense of tranquillity, of haven, deepened about
+him. "Rudolph," he inquired, "has Honduras gone for Miss Jannan?"
+
+The man stopped in the doorway, answering in the affirmative. He was
+slight, almost fragile, with close, dark hair that stood up across his
+forehead, and dry, high-coloured cheeks. Rudolph hesitated, with a
+handful of silver; and then returned to his task. Mariana would be
+along immediately, Howat Penny thought. He put the album aside and rose,
+moving toward the door that led without. He was a slender, erect figure,
+with little to indicate his age except the almost complete silvering of
+his hair--it had, evidently, been black--and a rigidity of body only
+apparent to a sharp scrutiny.
+
+A porch followed that length of the house, and doubled the end, where he
+stood peering into the gathering dusk. The old willow tree, inhabited by
+the owls, spread a delicate, blurred silhouette across a darkened vista
+of shorn wheat fields, filled, in the hollows, with woods; and a lamp
+glimmered from a farm house on a hill to the left. His lawn dropped to
+the public road, the hedged enclosure swimming with fireflies; and
+beyond he saw the wavering light shafts of his small motor returning
+from the insignificant flag station on the railroad, a mile distant.
+
+The noise of the engine increased, sliding into a lower gear on the
+short curve of the driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance
+directly into the dining room. She insisted, to his renewed discomfort,
+on kissing him. "It's wonderful here, after the city," she proclaimed;
+"and I've had to be in town three sweltering days. I'll dress right
+away."
+
+Honduras, his coloured man, as indispensable outside as Rudolph was in,
+followed with her bag up the narrow flight of steps to the floor above.
+He waited through, he thought, a reasonable interval, and then called.
+An indistinguishable reply floated down, mingled with the filling of a
+tub; and another half hour passed before Mariana appeared in white
+chiffon, securing a broad girdle of silver oak leaves, about her slight
+waist. "Do you mind?" she turned before him; and, with an impatience
+half assumed and half actual, he fastened the last hooks of her dress.
+"As you know," he reminded her, "I don't attempt cocktails. Will you
+have a gin and bitters?"
+
+She wouldn't, frankly; and they embarked on dinner in a pleasant,
+unstrained silence. Mariana was, he realized, the only person alive for
+whom he had a genuine warmth of affection. She was a first cousin; her
+Aunt Elizabeth had married James Penny, his father; but his fondness for
+her had no root in that fact. It didn't, for example, extend to her
+brother Kingsfrere. He speculated again on the reason for her marked
+effect. Mariana was not lovely, as had been the charmers of his own day;
+her features, with the exception of her eyes, were unremarkable. And her
+eyes, variably blue, were only arresting because of their extraordinary
+intensity of vision, their unquenchable and impertinent curiosity. A
+girl absolutely different from all his cherished mental images; but, for
+Howat Penny, always potent, always arousing a response from his
+supercritical being, stirring his aesthetic heart. Everything he
+possessed--his pictures, the albums, the moderate income, although she
+had little need of that--had been willed to her. It would be hers then
+just as it was, practically, now. And he was aware that her feeling
+generously equalled his own.
+
+His speculation, penetrating deeper than customary, rewarded him with
+the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That
+was it--the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any
+penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a
+possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious
+prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the
+correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, now almost lost. And he
+rated aristocracy of bearing higher than any other condition or fact.
+
+He wondered a little at her patent pleasure in visiting him, an old man,
+so frequently. Hardly a month passed but that, announced by telegram,
+she did not appear and stay over night, or for a part of the week. She
+would recount minutely the current gaiety of her polite existence. He
+knew the names of her associates, a number of them had been exhibited to
+him at Shadrach; the location of their country places; and what men
+temporarily monopolized her interest. None of the latter had been
+serious. He was, selfishly, glad of that; and waited uneasily through
+her every visit until she assured him that her affections had not been
+possessed. However, this condition, he knew, must soon come to an end;
+Mariana was instinct with sex; and a short while before he had sent his
+acknowledgment of her twenty-sixth birthday.
+
+She sat occupied with salad against the cavernous depths of a fireplace
+that, between the kitchen door and a built-in cupboard, filled the side
+of the dining room. The long mantel above her head was ladened with the
+grey sheen of pewter, and two uncommonly large, fluted bowls of blue
+Stiegel glass. In the centre of the table linen, the Sheffield and
+crystal and pictorial Staffordshire, was a vivid expanse of rose
+geraniums. She broke off a flower and pinned it with the diamond bar on
+her breast. "Howat," she said, "to-morrow's Saturday, and I've asked two
+people out until Sunday night. Eliza Provost and a young man. Do you
+mind?"
+
+"Tell Rudolph," he replied. It was not until after dinner, when they
+were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man's
+name. He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an
+ivory domino, he forgot. "Twenty," he announced, reaching for the
+scoring pad. "Oh, hell, Howat!" she protested. "That's the game,
+almost." She emptied her coffee cup, and speculatively fingered one of
+the thin cigars in the box at his hand. "It's the customary thing in
+Peru," she observed, pinching the end from the cigar and lighting it. He
+watched her absently, veiled in the fragrant, bluish smoke.
+Automatically his thoughts returned to the women that, at a breath of
+scandal, had refused to attend the dinner to Patti. So much changed; the
+years fled like birds in a mist.
+
+"I feel like a politician," she told him. "Eliza Provost would pat me on
+the back. She's talking from a soap box on the street corners now,
+winging men for such trifles as forced birth. I'm fond of Eliza; she's
+got a splendid crust. I wish you'd get excited about my rights; but your
+interest really goes no further than a hat from Camille Marchais. You
+are deleterious, Howat. Isn't that a lovely word! Which was the first
+double?" He blocked and won the game. "Fifty-five," she announced; "and
+ninety-five before. I owe you a dollar and a half."
+
+She paid the debt promptly from a flexible gold mesh bag on the table;
+then stooped and wandered among his books. Howat Penny turned to
+yesterday's _Evening Post_, and Mariana settled beyond the lamp. Outside
+the locusts were desperately shrill, and the heavy ticking of an old
+clock grew audible. "I don't like George Moore!" she exclaimed. He
+raised surprised, inquiring eyebrows. "He is such a taster," she added,
+but particularized no more. She sat, with the scarlet bound book clouded
+in the white chiffon of her lap, gazing at the wall. Her lips were
+parted, and a brighter colour rose in her cheeks. Her attitude, her
+expression, vaguely disturbed him; he had never seen her more warmly,
+dangerously, alive. A new reluctance stopped the question forming in
+his mind; she seemed to have retreated from him. "Moore is a very great
+artist," he said instead.
+
+"That's little to me," she replied flippantly, rising. "I think I'll go
+up; and I almost think I will kiss you again." He grumbled a protest,
+and watched her trail from the room, the silver girdle and chiffon
+emphasizing her thin, vigorous body, the lamplight falling on her bare,
+sharp shoulders. Howat Penny had early acquired a habit of long hours,
+and it was past one when he put aside his papers, stood for a moment on
+the porch. The fireflies were gone, the locusts seemed farther away, and
+the soft, heavy flight of an owl rose from the warm grass.
+
+Below, on the right, he could vaguely see the broken bulk of what had
+been Shadrach Furnace, the ruined shape of the past. The Pennys no
+longer made iron. His father had marked the last casting. They no longer
+listened to the beat of the trip hammer, but to the light rhythm of a
+conductor's baton; they heard, in place of ringing metal, a tenor's
+grace notes. Soon they would hear nothing. They went out, for all time,
+with himself. It was fitting that the last, true to their peculiar
+inheritance, should be a black Penny. He, Howat, was that--the ancient
+Welsh blood finally gathered in a cup of life before it was spilled.
+
+Old influences quickened within him; but, attenuated, they were no more
+than regrets. They came late to trouble his remnant of living. He was
+like the Furnace, a sign of what had been; yet, he thought in
+self-extenuation, he had brought no dishonour, no dragging of the
+tradition through the muck of a public scandal. Not that ... nor
+anything else. Now, when it was absurd, he was resentful of the part he
+had played in life; like a minor, cracked voice, he extended a former
+figure with a saving touch of humour, importuning the director because
+he had not been cast in the great rôles. The night mist came up and
+brushed him; he was conscious of a sudden chill, an aching of the
+wrists. "Cracked," he repeated, aloud, and retreated into the house;
+where, Rudolph gone up, he put out the lights and stiffly retired.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+They accomplished little the following morning. Mariana, in a scant
+brown linen skirt, a sheer waist through which were visible precarious
+incidentals and narrow black ribbon, and the confoundedest green
+stockings he had ever seen, lounged indolently in a canvas swing. The
+heat increased in a reddish haze through which the sun poured like
+molten copper. "You'd better come inside," he said from the doorway;
+"the house, shut up, is quite comfortable." Within the damp of the old,
+stone walls made a comparative coolness. The shades were drawn down, and
+they sat in an untimely twilight.
+
+"When I think of how energetic Eliza will be," Mariana asserted, "I am
+already overwhelmed. But you never look hot, Howat; you are always
+beautiful." His flannels and straw-coloured silk coat were crisply
+ironed; his hair, his scarf and lustrous yellow shoes, precise. "Howat,"
+she continued almost anxiously, "you put a lot on, well--good form. You
+think that the way a man knots his tie is tremendously significant--"
+
+"Perhaps," he returned cautiously. "A good many years have shown me that
+the right man usually wears the right things."
+
+"Couldn't that be just the smallest bit unfair? Aren't there, after
+all, droves of the right men in rubber collars? I don't know any," she
+added hastily; "that is, not exactly the same. But it seems to me that
+you have lived so exclusively in a certain atmosphere that you might
+have got blinded to--to other things."
+
+"Perhaps," he said again, complacently. "I can only judge by my own
+feeling and experience. Now Mapleson, never was a finer conductor of
+opera--you didn't catch him in a pink tie in the evening. And some of
+those others, who failed in a couple of weeks, I give you my word, dress
+shirts with forgetmenots."
+
+She regarded him with a frowning, half closed vision. "It sounds wrong,"
+she commented. "It's been your life, of course." He grew resentful under
+her scrutiny, the implied criticism. A sudden suspicion entered his
+mind, connected with her expression last evening, the young man whose
+name he had omitted to ask. His reluctance to question her returned. But
+if Mariana had attached herself to some rowdy, by heaven, he would....
+He fixed the glass in his eye, and, pretending to be occupied with a
+periodical, studied her. He realized that he would, could, do nothing.
+She was a woman of determination, and, her father dead, a very adequate
+income of her own. His fondness for Mariana resided principally in a
+wish to see her free from the multitudinous snares that he designated in
+a group as common. He was fearful of her entanglement in the cheap
+implications of the undistinguished democracy more prevalent every year.
+All that was notable, charming, in her, he felt, would be obliterated by
+trite connection; he had no more patience for the conventional
+fulfilment of her life than he had for the thought of women voting.
+Howat Penny saw Mariana complete, fine, in herself, as the _Orpheo_ of
+Christopher Gluck was fine and complete. He preferred the contained
+artistry of such music to the cruder, more popular and moral, sounds.
+
+Early in the afternoon she went to her room, although Honduras had no
+occasion to go to the station for considerably more than an hour,
+explaining that she must dress. Howat Penny sat with his palms on his
+white flannelled knees, revolving, now, himself in the light of his
+aspirations for Mariana. He wondered if, in the absence of any sympathy
+for the mass of sentiment and living, he was blind, too, to her greatest
+possibilities; if, in short, he was a vicious influence. Perhaps, as the
+old were said to do, he had hardened into a narrow and erroneous
+conception of values. Such doubts were both disturbing and unusual;
+ordinarily he never hesitated in the exact expression of his vigorously
+held opinions and prejudices; he seldom relaxed the critical elevation
+of his standards. He was, he thought contemptuously, growing soft;
+senility was diluting his fibre, blurring his inner vision.
+
+Nothing of this was visible as he rose on Mariana's reappearance; there
+was not a line relaxed; his handsome, dark profile was as pridefully
+clear as if it had been stamped on a bronze coin. Mariana wore, simply,
+blue, with an amber veiling of tulle about her shoulders, and a short
+skirt that gave her a marked youthful aspect. She seemed ill at ease;
+and avoided his gaze, hurrying out to meet the motor as it noisily
+turned sharply in at the door. Howat Penny heard Eliza Provost's short,
+impatient enunciation, and a rapid, masculine utterance. Eliza entered,
+a girl with a decided, evenly pale face and brown eyes, in a severe
+black linen suit and a small hat, and extended a direct hand, a slightly
+smiling greeting. Mariana followed, for a moment filling the doorway.
+"We'll go up, Eliza," she said, moving with the other to the stair, a
+few feet distant. A man followed into the house, and Mariana half turned
+on the bottom step. "Howat," she proceeded hurriedly, "this is James
+Polder." Then she ascended with Eliza Provost.
+
+An expression of amazement, deepening almost to dismay, was momentarily
+visible on Howat Penny's countenance. His face felt hot, and there was
+an uncomfortable pressure in his throat, such as might come from shock.
+Surely Mariana wouldn't ... without warning him--! He was conscious of
+the necessity, facing a tall, spare young man with an intent expression,
+of a polite phrase; and he articulated an adequate something in a
+noticeably disturbed tone. But, of course, he had made a mistake. James
+Polder's intensity increased, concentrated in a gaze at once belligerent
+and eager. He said:
+
+"Then Miss Jannan didn't tell you. It was a mistake. It may be I am not
+exactly desirable here," his voice sharpened, and he retreated a step
+toward the door.
+
+"No," Howat Penny replied; "she didn't." He found himself studying a
+face at once youthful and lined, a good jaw contradicted by a mouth
+already traced with discontent, and yellow-brown eyes kindling with a
+surprising energy of resentment. "You are Byron Polder's son?" he said
+in a manner that carried its own affirmation. "Eunice Scofield's
+grandson."
+
+"Eunice Penny's," the other interjected. "Your own grandfather saw to
+that." His hand rested in the doorway, and he stopped Honduras, carrying
+in the guests' bags. Howat Penny's poise rapidly returned. "Go right up,
+Honduras," he directed; "the Windmill room, I think. I had never seen
+you," he said to James Polder, as if in apology. "But your father has
+been pointed out to me." He waved the younger man into the room beyond,
+and moved forward the cigarettes.
+
+James Polder took one with an evident relief in the commonplace act. He
+struck a match and lit the cigarette with elaborate care. "Will you sit
+for a little?" the elder proceeded. "Or perhaps you'd rather change at
+once. I've no doubt it was sticky in the city."
+
+"Thank you; perhaps I'd better--the last." Rudolph appeared, and
+conducted the young man above. Howat Penny sat suddenly, his lips folded
+in a stubborn line. Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be
+familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some
+very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy
+affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather--it had been, he had
+always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had,
+before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had those of his
+father.
+
+The latter had been the child of a dangerously late marriage, a marriage
+from which time and delay had stripped both material potency and
+sustaining illusion. Jasper Penny had been nearing fifty when his son
+was born; and that act of deliberate sacrifice on the part of his wife,
+entering middle age, had imposed an inordinate amount of suffering on
+her last years. Their child, it was true, had been of normal stature,
+and lived to within a short space of a half century. But then he had
+utterly collapsed, died in three days from what had first appeared a
+slight cold; and, throughout his maturity, he had been a man of feverish
+mind. His disastrous, blind struggle against the great, newly discovered
+iron deposits of the Middle West was characteristic of his ill balance.
+And, in his own, Howat Penny's, successive turn, the latter told himself
+again, he had paid part of the price of his grandfather's indulgence.
+
+It was incorporated in the Penny knowledge that Susan Brundon had
+refused to marry Jasper while the other woman was alive. The latter had
+died, some years after the disgraceful publicity of the murder and
+trial; the wedding had then taken place; but it seemed to Howat Penny to
+have been almost perfunctory. Yes, he had paid too, in the negative
+philosophy, the critical sterility, of his existence. He recognized this
+in one of the disconcerting flashes of perception that lately
+illuminated him as if from without. Some essential proportion had been
+disturbed. He looked up, at a slight sound, and saw Mariana standing
+before him. His expression, he knew, was severe; he had been quite
+upset.
+
+"I can see," she proceeded slowly, "that I have been very wicked. I
+didn't realize, Howat, that it might affect you; how real all that old
+stir might be. I am tremendously sorry; you must know that I am awfully
+fond of you. It was pure, young selfishness. I was afraid that if I
+spoke first you wouldn't let him come. And it was important--I must see
+him and talk to him and think about it. You can realize mother and
+Kingsfrere!"
+
+"Where did you meet him?" he demanded shortly.
+
+"With Eliza, at a meeting," she went on more rapidly. "He's terribly
+brilliant, and a steel man. Isn't it funny? The Pennys were steel, too;
+or iron, and that's the same. I wish you could be nice to him or just
+decent, until--until I know."
+
+"Mariana!" he exclaimed, rising. "You don't mean that you are really--.
+That you--"
+
+"Perhaps, Howat," she answered gravely. "I have only seen him twice; and
+he has said nothing; but, you see, I am an experienced young woman. No
+other man has made the same impression."
+
+"That," he declared coldly, "is unthinkable. You can't know all the
+facts."
+
+"I do; but, somehow, I don't care."
+
+"Everything about him is impossible--his history, family ... Why, Eunice
+Scofield, well, Penny, married a man from behind a counter, a fellow who
+sold womens' gloves; yes, and more than half Jew. And this man's mother
+was Delia Mullen, a daughter of the dirty ward leader. All this aside
+from--from his bad blood."
+
+"It's partly yours, you know," she said quietly. "After all, there are
+other places I can see him." She turned away. "Eliza Provost is insane,"
+he muttered. "No," Mariana returned, "only superior to narrow little
+prejudices. She can see life, people, as they are. Jim Polder is one of
+the most promising men in the steel mills. He is going up and up. That
+is enough for Eliza, it is enough for me; and if it won't do for my
+family--" she made an opening gesture with her fingers. Her expression
+had hardened; she gazed at him with bright, contemptuous eyes. In a
+moment the affectionate bonds between them seemed to have dissolved.
+His feeling was one of mingled anger and concern; but he endeavoured to
+regain his self-control, conscious that a hasty word more might do
+irreparable harm.
+
+"Of course, I can't have you meeting him about the streets," he stated.
+"It is better here, if necessary. I am very much displeased," a note of
+complaint appeared, and she immediately returned to him, laid a hand on
+his shoulder. "Nothing is certain," she assured him. "I wanted to be
+sure, that is all. I don't want to make a mess out of things."
+
+It was a part of the very quality of emotional courage he had so lately
+defined, extolled; a part of her disdain for ordinary prudence and
+conventional approbation. A direct dislike for this James Polder invaded
+him, a determined attitude of hyper-criticism. When the younger man
+reappeared Howat Penny found justification for this attitude. The
+details of Polder's apparel, although acceptable in the main, were
+without nicety. His shoes were a crude tan, and his necktie from the
+outer limbo. His hands, too, had a grimy surface and the nails were
+broken, unkempt.
+
+But it was evident that all the criticism was not to be limited to his
+own. James Polder regarded the single glass with a scoffing lip, as if
+it were the appendage of a ludicrous Anglomania. He glanced with
+indifference at Howat Penny's pictures, books, the collected emblems of
+his cultivated years. His brows raised at the photograph of Scalchi in
+the Page's trunks--as if, the elder thought, she had been a "pony" in
+the _Black Crook_--and was visibly amused at the great Mapleson, posed
+in a dignified attitude by a broken column. An irrepressible and biting
+scorn, Howat Penny saw, was, perhaps, the young man's strongest
+attribute. He had violent opinions expressed in sudden, sharp movements,
+gestures with his shoulders, swift frowns and fragmentary sentences.
+
+Howat Penny had never seen a more ill-ordered youth, and he experienced
+an increasing difficulty in keeping a marked asperity from his speech
+and conduct. Eliza Provost shortly came down, and the three strolled out
+into the ruddy light of late afternoon. Howat Penny consumed a long time
+dressing for the evening; and, in the end, irritably summoned Rudolph.
+"I can't get these damned studs in," he complained; "whatever do you
+suppose women use for starch now?" Rudolph dexterously fixed the
+emeralds, then held the black silk waistcoat. "And coats won't hang for
+a bawbee," he went on. "Gentlemen like Gary Dilkes used to go regularly
+to London, spring and fall, for their things. No doubt then about a man
+of breeding. You didn't see the other kind around. Wouldn't have 'em."
+Rudolph murmured consolingly. "Sat in the pit but never got into the
+boxes," his voice grew thin, querulous. "I'm moving along, Rudolph," he
+admitted suddenly; "the manners, and, by thunder, the music too, don't
+suit me any more. Give me the old Academy days in Irving Place." He
+hummed a bar from _Ernani_.
+
+Through dinner he maintained a severe silence, listening with a frowning
+disapproval to Eliza Provost's tranquil, subversive utterances. Howat
+Penny couldn't think what her father was about, permitting her to
+harangue loafers by the streets and saloons. She was, in a cold way--she
+had Peter Jannan Provost's curious grey colouring--a handsome piece of a
+girl, too. "A fine figger," he told himself.
+
+Later, Mariana and James Polder had gone out on the porch, he faced with
+reluctance the task of furnishing her with entertainment; but, to his
+extreme relief, she procured a leather portfolio, and addressed herself
+to a sheaf of papers. But that, in itself, was a peculiar way for a
+young woman to spend an evening. She would have done it, he felt, if he
+had been half his actual age. God help the man with a fancy for her!
+Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the
+past--a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in
+Paris ... at dawn. Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth,
+fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake. His silk hat
+had been telescoped in the process of smacking a Frenchman's eye.
+Perhaps, they had told each other, there would be cards later in the
+day, an affair of honour. He forgot what, exactly, had happened; but
+there had been no duel.
+
+He looked up with a sudden concern, as if his thoughts might have been
+clear to Eliza Provost, in irreproachable evening dress and shell rimmed
+glasses, intent on statistical pages. Mariana and James Polder appeared;
+the former, Howat Penny thought, disturbed. Polder's intense countenance
+was sombre, his brow corrugated. Mariana, accompanied by Eliza, soon
+after went up; and left the two men facing each other across a neutral
+silence. "You manufacture steel, I believe," the elder finally stated.
+
+"The Company does," Polder replied more exactly. "I've been in the open
+hearth since I left school," he went on; "it was born in me, I've never
+thought of anything else." His tone grew sharp, as if it might occur to
+the other to contradict the legitimacy of his pursuit. "I have done well
+enough, too," he said pridefully. "Most of them come on from college. I
+went from shovelling slag in the pit, the crane, to second helper and
+melter; they gave me the furnace after a year and now I am foreman. It
+will be better still if a reorganization goes through. Not many men have
+a chance at the superintendent's office under thirty-five."
+
+"That is very admirable," Howat Penny said formally. He wondered,
+privately, at the far channel into which the original Penny ability had
+flowed. There could be no doubt, however objectionable, that James
+Polder was the present repository of the family tradition. He had had it
+from the source; and the iron had not, apparently, been corroded by
+tainted blood. He was forced to admit that a coarser strain had,
+perhaps, lent it endurance. All this failed to detract from his initial
+dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in
+which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant
+proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized,
+to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible.
+Such things were utterly unimportant to him. He was unable to justify,
+or even explain to himself, his standards of judgment. They were not
+founded on admirable conduct, on achievement, what was known as solid
+worth; but on vague accents, intuitive attitudes of mind visible in a
+hundred trivial, even absurd, signs. The "right things" were more
+indispensable to him than the sublimest attributes.
+
+On the following morning Mariana, Eliza and Polder disappeared in his
+car--it seemed that the latter was an accomplished mechanic in addition
+to his other qualities--and Howat Penny faced the disagreeable
+possibilities of the near future. Mariana would, he knew, meet this
+fellow promiscuously if necessary. As she had indicated, it was
+impossible to conceive of him in Charlotte Jannan's house. The latter
+was a rigidly correct woman. She would, too, and properly, be nasty if
+she learned that such meetings had taken place at Shadrach. The only
+thing to do was to bring Mariana to what he designated as her senses.
+And, at the start, he had a conviction that he might fail.
+
+She did not accompany Eliza Provost and Polder, when, late Sunday
+afternoon, they departed; but sat absorbed in thought through the
+evening meal. He found his affection for her increasing to an annoying
+degree; he was almost humble in his anxiety not to wound her.
+
+"Life is so messy," she said with sudden violence. "You can't think,
+Howat, how I hate myself; the horridest things go round and round
+through my mind. We're all wrong--I'm more like you than I
+admitted--born snobs. I mean the kind who look down on people different
+from themselves. I can't help being on--on edge. I can tell you this,
+though, I care more for Jim Polder than for any other man I've ever met.
+I'm mad about him; and yet, somehow, I can't quite think of marrying
+him. He's asked me already. But I knew he would."
+
+"You must wait," he temporized; "such things clear up after a little."
+
+"And if they don't?" she demanded. "What if they are choked by a hundred
+cowardly or selfish thoughts? It can be too late so terribly soon,
+Howat. You must know that. You see, I can't decide what really is the
+most valuable, what should be held tight on to, or let go. There are two
+me's, it seems--one what I want and the other what I am. I want Jim and
+I'm Mariana Jannan. All that about Eunice or Essie, or whatever her name
+was, doesn't matter a bawbee, as you say. I hate it because I think at
+times it makes him unhappy. Really, I believe I am fonder of him because
+of it. We owe him something--the superior Jannans and Pennys. Why,
+Howat, he's your own blood, and you looked at him as if he were a
+grocer's assistant. And I watched hatefully for the little expressions
+that seemed common. Of course, out in those mills, he would pick up a
+lot that wouldn't touch us; and, after all, he could drop them."
+
+"If you have any thought of reforming him," he commented dryly, "you
+might as well see a wedding stationer."
+
+"I could influence him," she insisted; "I'd at least count for as much
+as those shovellers and furnace men."
+
+"But not," he proceeded relentlessly, "against the Essie Scofield you
+dismissed so easily. I don't doubt for a minute the unhappiness you
+spoke of; it would he a part of his inheritance; and you'd never charm
+it out of him. Damn it, Mariana," he burst out, "he's inferior! That's
+all, inferior." Anger and resentment destroyed his caution, his planned
+logic, restraint. "I can see what your life would be, if you can't. You
+would live in a no-man's land; and all the clergymen in the world
+couldn't make you one."
+
+"It wouldn't be the clergymen, Howat," she said simply. "And you mustn't
+think I am only a silly with her first young man. I have kissed them
+before, Howat; yes, and liked it. I am not happy with Jim; it's
+something else, like tearing silk. He is so confident and so helpless;
+he's drinking now, too."
+
+"I suppose that is an added attraction," he commented. She chose to
+ignore this. "I half promised him," she continued, "to take dinner with
+his family. He will be in the city next week. I said I thought you'd
+bring me."
+
+"Well, I won't," he replied in a startled energy. "Mariana, you're out
+of your head. Go to Byron Polder's house! Me!" In his excitement he
+dropped a lighted cigarette on the Chinese rug. "I have no one else,"
+she told him. "Perhaps I'll marry Jim, and go away ... I thought you
+might want to be with me, at the last."
+
+He fumbled for his glass, fixed it in his eye, and then dropped it out,
+clearing his throat sharply. He rose and crossed the room, and looked
+out through the open door at the night. The stars were hazy, and there
+was a constant reflection of lightning on the horizon. Howat Penny swore
+silently at his increasing softness, his betrayal by his years. Yet it
+might be a good thing for her to see the Polder family assembled,
+Byron--he was a pretentious looking fool--at one end of the table and
+Delia Mullen Polder at the other. There were more children, too. But if
+it became necessary, heaven knew how he would explain all this to
+Charlotte. "I believe," he said, apparently innocently, "that they live
+in the north end of the city."
+
+"It won't damage you," she replied indirectly. Already, he thought with
+poignant regret, a part of the old Mariana had gone; her voice was
+older, darker with maturity.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Howat Penny arrived in town late on the day when he was to dine with
+Mariana at the Polders. He entered a taxicab, and was carried smoothly
+through the thick, hot air; open electric cars, ladened with damp,
+pallid salespeople, passed with a harsh ringing; and the foliage in
+Rittenhouse Square hung dusty and limp and still. The houses beyond, on
+Nineteenth Street, where the Jannans' winter dwelling stood, were closed
+and blankly boarded. The small, provisional entrance before which he
+stopped opened, and a servant, out of livery, appeared. "Shall I tell
+the driver to return, sir?" he queried; "the telephone is disconnected."
+He issued instructions, and, with Howat Penny's bag, followed him into
+the darkened house.
+
+The windows of a general chamber on the second floor had been thrown
+open; and there he found Mariana's brother. Kingsfrere Jannan was a
+young man with a broad white face, shadowed in pasty green, and leaden
+eyes. His countenance, Howat knew, masked a keen and avaricious
+temperament. He did uncommonly well at auction bridge in the clubs.
+Kingsfrere, in a grey morning coat with white linen gaiters and a
+relentless collar, nodded and lounged from the room; and Mariana soon
+appeared. "Perhaps, Howat," she said, "it would be better if you didn't
+dress. I have an idea the Polder men don't."
+
+At the stubborn expression which possessed him she exclaimed sharply,
+"If you tell me that the Colonel or Gary Dilkes were always formally
+dressed at dinner I think I'll scream." Nevertheless, he had no
+intention of relinquishing a habit of years for the Polders, or the
+north end of the city; and when, later, he came down into the hall,
+where the man stood with his silk hat and cape, Mariana put an arm about
+his shoulders. "I wish every one could he as beautiful as yourself," she
+told him. They passed the Square, bathed in dusk and the beginning
+shimmer of arc lights, went through the flattened and faintly thunderous
+arch of a railway, and turned into a broad asphalt street, on which
+wide, glistening bulk windows gave place to sombre shops with lurid,
+flame-streaked vistas, and continuous residences beyond. Howat Penny
+gazed curiously at the tall, narrow dwellings, often a continuous,
+similar façade from street corner to corner, then diversified in
+elaborate, individual design. All, however, had deep stone steps leading
+to the sidewalk, thronged with figures in airy white dresses, coatless
+men smoking contentedly; there was a constant light vibration of
+laughing voices and subdued calling, and the fainter strains of
+mechanical music, the beat of popular marches and attenuated voices of
+celebrated singers.
+
+The motor turned suddenly in to the curb, and they got out. The house
+before them, like its fellows, was entered from a high flight of red
+sandstone steps, and was built of a smooth, soapy green stone, with red
+coursings, an elaborate cornice and tiled Italian roof. No one was
+sitting outside, although there was a pile of circular, grass-woven
+cushions; and Howat sharply rang the bell. A maid in aproned black
+admitted them into a narrow hall, from which stairs mounted with a
+carved rail terminating in a newel post supporting an almost life-sized
+bronze nymph, whose flowing hair was encircled by a wreath of
+electrically lit flowers, and who held a dully shining sheaf of
+jonquils. There was no other illumination, and Howat Penny discovered in
+the obscurity a high mirror bristling with elk horns, on which hung
+various hats and outer garments. He stood helpless, apparently, in an
+attitude he found impossible to deny himself, waiting to be relieved of
+his coverings, when Mariana whispered angrily, "Don't be so rotten,
+Howat."
+
+Finally the maid secured his cape, and he was conscious of a stir at the
+head of the stairs. Immediately after, a shrill, subdued voice carried
+to where he stood. "I told you," it said violently, "... dress suit."
+There was an answering murmur, in which he could distinguish, James
+Polder's impatient tones. The latter descended, and flooded the hall
+with, light from a globe in the ceiling. He was garbed in blue serge and
+flannels. "Isabella," he stated directly, belligerently even, "thinks we
+ought to change our clothes; but we never do, and I wouldn't hear of--of
+lying for effect." Howat Penny's dislike for him pleasantly increased.
+Mariana, in rose crêpe with a soft, dull gold girdle and long,
+trumpet-like sleeves of flowered gauze, smiled at him warmly. "It is a
+harmless pose of Howat's," she explained: "a concession to the ghosts of
+the past." She patted the elder on the shoulder.
+
+Above, James Polder ushered them into a room hung with crimson and gilt
+stamped paper, an elaborately fretted cherry mantel about the asbestos
+rectangle of an artificial hearth, and a multitude of chairs and divans
+shrouded in linen. There was an upright, ebonized piano draped in a
+fringed, Roman scarf and holding a towering jar of roses, a great,
+carved easel with a painstaking, smooth oil painting of a dark man in an
+attitude of fixed dignity, and an expensively cased talking machine. The
+original, evidently, of the portrait, and a small, rotund woman in mauve
+brocade, advanced to meet them. Young Polder said, "My mother and
+father. This is Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny."
+
+The latter saw that Mrs. Byron Polder was distinctly nervous; she
+twisted the diamonds that occupied a not inconsiderable portion of her
+short fingers, and smiled rigidly. "I am very pleased to meet you, Miss
+Jannan," she proceeded; "and Mr. Penny too." She held out a hand, then
+half withdrew it; but Mariana captured it in her direct palm. "Thank
+you," she replied. Byron Polder had a more confident poise; in reality
+there was a perceptible chill in his manner. He was a handsome man, with
+a cleanly-shaven face, introspective brown eyes and a petulant, drooping
+mouth. "You have succeeded in finding your way to my house," he
+pronounced enigmatically, gazing at Howat Penny.
+
+It was, Howat thought, just such an ill-bred utterance as he had looked
+for from Byron Polder; and he made no effort to mitigate it. He was
+conscious of, and resolutely ignored, Mariana's veiled entreaty. "You
+don't know my girls," Mrs. Polder continued rapidly. "Here is Isabella,
+and Kate will be along for dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps,
+thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved
+forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went
+on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood
+awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't
+a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a
+consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit,
+"It's a quarter after seven," she said in a swift aside. Isabella,
+correctly disposed on a chair of muffled and mysterious line, resolutely
+ignored the appeal.
+
+"I didn't suppose you'd be in the city," she addressed Mariana; "I read
+in the paper that you had gone to Watch Hill with Mrs. Ledyard B.
+Starr."
+
+"You can see that I'm back," Mariana smiled. "The family, of course, are
+at Andalusia, but we have all been in town the past days. I am really
+staying with Howat at Shadrach."
+
+"The former location of Shadrach Furnace, I believe," Byron Polder
+stated. "Now in ruins." Howat Penny accurately gathered that the other
+inferred the collapse not only of the Furnace. He secured the single
+glass in his eye and looked deliberately around. Isabella watched him
+with a tense interest. Mrs. Polder gave a short, perturbed giggle. "Just
+like George Arliss," she told her son. James Polder, on the edge of a
+chair, was twitching with repressed uneasiness; he frowned
+antagonistically and then gazed appealingly at Mariana. "I have been
+introduced to your cousin, Miss Provost," Isabella again took up her
+social thread. "A dear friend of mine, a talented actress, gave a
+recitation at Miss Provost's request, for suffrage."
+
+"Eliza's splendid," Mariana pronounced.
+
+"Peter Jannan Provost's daughter," Byron Polder added fully. But his
+voice indicated that even more, darkly unfavourable, might be revealed.
+"Miss Provost has been under arrest." Damn the solemn ass, Howat Penny
+thought. "She's been in the jug twice now," Mariana went on cheerfully;
+"Kingsfrere had to put up a bond the last time." Mrs. Polder was rapidly
+regaining her ease. "Wasn't her mamma scared?" she inquired. "I'd go on
+if Isabella was taken up."
+
+"Imagine Isabella!" Jim Polder exploded. "It's quite the thing," that
+individual asserted. "Isabella," her mother declared, "it is twenty-five
+past seven. I wish you'd go out and see where dinner is." She rose with
+an expression of mingled surprise and pain. "Really, mother," she said,
+"that is an extraordinary request." Her brother snorted. There was a
+sudden muffled clamour of chimes from below, and Mrs. Polder gave a sigh
+of relief. "I didn't want it spoiled," she explained, descending; "Jim
+would be wild after all his eagerness to have things nice."
+
+The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and
+had a high ceiling in varnished light wood. Byron Polder faced his wife
+at the opposite end of the table. Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with
+Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother's right; and a waiting
+place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl. "This is Kate,"
+Mrs. Polder said proudly. Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome
+female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent crêpe de Chine waist
+that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a
+lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth
+drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the
+direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission
+that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up
+to the standard of old days, the divinity of Scalchi herself. She would
+have created a sensation in Delmonico's, the real Delmonico's. Gary and
+the Colonel--
+
+"We think they're elegant," Mrs. Polder's voice broke in on his revery.
+He looked up and saw a great fish on a huge platter before his host, a
+fish in surprising semblance to life, had it not been for the rosettes
+of lemon, the green bed, which surrounded it. "Gracious, no," she
+answered Mariana's query; "we don't do it home. Mr. Polder has them sent
+from a Rathskeller down town. He'll make a meal off one." The latter was
+plainly chagrined at this light thrown on his petty appetites. He
+assumed an air of complete detachment in the portioning of the dish;
+but, at the same time, managed to supply himself liberally. The
+conversation was sporadic. Howat Penny found the dinner lavish, and
+divided his attention between it and Kate Polder. James and Mariana
+addressed general remarks to the table at succeeding intervals. Mr.
+Polder gloomed, and Isabella went through the gestures, the accents, of
+the occasion with utter correctness. Howat studied Mariana, but he was
+unable to discover her thoughts; she was smiling and cordial; and
+apologized for losing her slipper. "I always do," she explained. James
+Polder hastily rose, and came around to assist her. The dinner was at an
+end, and she stood with a slim, silken foot outheld for him to replace
+the fragile object of search.
+
+They reassembled above, and Mrs. Polder suggested music. "My son says
+you are very fond of good music," she addressed Howat Penny. "I can tell
+you it is a lovely taste. We have the prettiest records that come.
+Isabella, put on _Hark, Hark, the Lark_." She obediently rose, and,
+revolving the handle of the talking machine, fixed the grooved, rubber
+disk and needle. Howat listened with a stony countenance to the ensuing
+strains. Such instruments were his particular detestation. Mrs. Polder
+waved her hand dreamily. "Now," she said, "the _Sextette_, and _The End
+of a Perfect Day_. No, Mr. Penny would like to hear _Salome_, I'm sure,
+with all those cymbals and creepy Eastern tunes." An orgy of sound
+followed, applauded--perversely, he was certain--by Mariana. James, he
+saw, was as uneasy as himself; but for a totally different reason. He
+gazed at Mariana with a fierce devotion patent to the most casual eye;
+his expression was tormented with concern and longing.
+
+"When do you return to Harrisburg?" Byron Polder inquired. "My son," he
+went on to Howat Penny, "is a practical iron man. I say iron, although
+that is no longer the phrase, because of natural associations. The
+present system of the manufacture of steel, as you doubtless know,
+evolved from the old Ironmasters, of whose blood James has a generous
+share. We look to him to re-establish, er--a departed importance. I need
+say no more." His women's anxiety at this trend of speech became
+painful. "Play a right lively piece," Mrs. Polder interjected, and an
+intolerable cacophony of banjoes followed, making conversation futile.
+
+The evening, Howat Penny felt, was a considerable success; by heaven,
+Mariana would never get herself into this! Byron Polder's innuendoes
+must have annoyed her nicely. When the mechanical disturbance ceased,
+Mrs. Polder said, "I believe that's the bell." Evidently she had been
+correct, for, immediately after, a young woman with bright gold hair,
+and a mobile, pink countenance unceremoniously entered the room. "Oh!"
+she exclaimed, in an instinctively statuesque surprise; "I didn't know
+you were entertaining company."
+
+"Come right in, Harriet," Mrs. Polder heartily proclaimed. "Miss Jannan,
+Mr. Penny, this is Isabella's friend, Harriet de Barry, a near neighbour
+and a sweet girl. She's an actress, too; understudies Vivian Blane; and
+is better, lots say, than the lead."
+
+Harriet de Barry made a comprehensive gesture. "I wanted to say good-bye
+to you all," she announced. "I am going on tour. Leave at midnight. Just
+had a wire from Mrs. Blane." There were polite Polder exclamations,
+regret, congratulations; through which the son of the house moodily
+gazed at the carpet. "Haven't you anything to say to Hatty?" his mother
+demanded. "And after all the passes she sent you." Howat Penny saw
+Mariana's gaze rest swiftly on the latest comer's obvious good looks;
+and the scrutiny, he was certain, held a cold feminine appraisal. As
+they descended to leave Mariana lingered on the stairs with Jim. The
+latter closed the door of the public motor with a low, intense mutter;
+and, moving away, Howat Penny lit a cigarette with a breath of audible
+relief.
+
+"I don't know which I detest most," Mariana declared viciously, "you or
+myself."
+
+"You might include that fish," he added plaintively. She gazed at him in
+cold contempt, with an ugly, protruding lip. Nothing else was said until
+they were in the opened room at the Jannans. Mariana flung herself on a
+broad divan, with her narrowed gaze fixed on the points of her slippers.
+"Comfortable, isn't it," she addressed him; "this feeling of
+superiority?" He placidly nodded, inwardly highly pleased. "I wish I'd
+married Jim the first week I knew him, without trying to be so dam'
+admirable. Howat, what is it that makes people what they are, and
+aren't?" It was, he told her, difficult to express; but it had to do
+with inherited associations. "Mrs. Polder is as kind as possible," she
+asserted; "and I could see that you were absorbed in Kate."
+
+"Really, Mariana," he protested, "at times you are a little rough. She
+is a very fine girl; in fact, reminds me of Scalchi. Old Byron, though,
+what--a regular catafalque!" A blundering step mounted to the stair;
+Kingsfrere entered and stood wavering and concerned, the collar wilted
+and a gaiter missing. "Ought to do something about the front door," he
+asserted; "frightful condition, no paint; and full of splinters. Very
+plump splinters," he specified, examining a hand. Mariana surveyed him
+coolly, thoroughly. "Sweet, isn't he?" she remarked. "Kingsfrere Gilbert
+Todd Jannan."
+
+"That's absolutely all," that individual assured her. "Except if you
+want to add Sturgeon; some do. Hullow, Howat! Grand old boy, Howat," he
+told her. "But if he says I'm drunk, I will tell you one of Bundy's
+stories about him. This--this elegant deception tremendous noise with
+the song birds." He sat abruptly on a providentially convenient chair.
+There, limply, he hiccoughed. "Sweet," Mariana repeated. Kingsfrere
+finally rose, and, with a friendly wave, wandered from the room.
+
+"It was good of you to take me, Howat," she told him wearily. "Although,
+now, I can see that you went willingly enough. You thought it would cure
+me. But of what, Howat--of love? Of a feeling that, perhaps, I'd found a
+reason for living?"
+
+A decidedly uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an
+unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation
+to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured
+himself; Mariana's inherent, well--prejudices, couldn't be charged to
+him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed him. She
+was his greatest, his only concern. Howat Penny reviewed his desire for
+her, his preference for a Mariana untouched by the common surge of
+living. He recalled the discontent, the feeling of sterility, that had
+lately possessed him; the suspicion that his life had been in vain. All
+his philosophy, his accumulated convictions, were involved; and, tie in
+hand, he sat endeavouring to pierce the confusion of his ideas.
+
+He was conscious of a slow change gathering within him; and, in itself,
+that consciousness was disturbing. It had a vaguely dark, chill aspect.
+He shivered, in the room super-heated by summer; his blood ran thinner
+and cold. Howat Penny had a sudden, startling sense of his utter
+loneliness; there was absolutely no one, now, to whom he could turn for
+the understanding born of long and intimately affectionate association.
+Mariana was lost to him in her own poignant affair ... No children. So
+many, so much, dead. His countenance, however, grew firm with the
+determination that age should not find him a coward. He had always been
+bitterly contemptuous of the men that, surfeiting their appetites,
+showed at the impotent last a cheap repentance. But he had done nothing
+pointedly wrong; he had--the inversion repeated itself--done nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+At Shadrach his customary decision returned; he went about, or sat
+reading, well-ordered, cool-appearing, dogmatic. He learned from the
+_Evening Post_ that Mariana was at Warrenton. She had carefully
+described to him the Virginia country life, the gaiety and hard riding
+of the transplanted English colonies; and he pictured her at the
+successive horse shows, in the brilliant groups under the Doric columns
+of the porticoes. Then, he saw, she had gone north; he found her picture
+in a realistic Egyptian costume with bare, painted legs at an
+extravagant ball. He studied her countenance, magnifying it with a
+reading glass; but he saw nothing beyond a surface enjoyment of the
+moment.
+
+Then, to his utter surprise, on an evening after dinner, when he was
+seated in the settling dusk of the porch, intent on the grey movements
+of his familiar owls, a quick step mounted the path, and James Polder
+appeared.
+
+"I wanted to ask about Miss Jannan," the latter stated frankly and at
+once. Howat Penny cleared his throat sharply. "I believe she is well,"
+he stated formally. "You will find it cooler here." It struck him that
+the young man was not deficient in that particular. More, of still
+greater directness, followed. "I suppose you know," Polder stated, "that
+I want to marry her ... and she won't."
+
+"I had gathered something of the sort," the other admitted. "It's
+natural, in a way." Polder proceeded gloomily: "I'd take her away from
+so much. And, yet, look here--you can shut me up if you like--what's it
+all about? Can you tell me that?" Howat Penny couldn't. "I'm not to
+blame for that old mess any more than you. And it's not my fault if
+something of--of which you think so much came to me by the back door.
+I've always wanted what Mariana is," he burst out, "and I have never
+been satisfied with what I could get. And when I saw her, hell--what's
+the use!
+
+"Any one in Harrisburg will tell you I am a good man," he reiterated, at
+a slightly different angle. "When you kick through out of that racket of
+hunkies and steel you've done something. Soon I'll be getting five or
+six thousand." He paused, and the other said dryly, "Admirable." The
+phrase seemed to him inadequate; it sounded in his ear as unpleasantly
+as a false note. Yet he was powerless to alter it, change its brusque
+accent. The personal tone of Polder's revelations was inherently
+distasteful to him. He said, rising, "If you will excuse me I'll tell
+Rudolph you will be here."
+
+"But I won't," Polder replied; "there's a train back at eleven. I have
+to be at the mills for the day shift to-morrow. I came out because I
+had to talk a little about Mariana." He had deserted the more formal
+address. "And I wanted to tell some one connected with her that I have
+gimp of my own. I know why she won't marry me, and it's a small reason;
+it would be small in--"
+
+"Hold up," Howat Penny interrupted, incensed. "Am I to understand that
+you came here to complain about Miss Jannan's conduct? That won't do,
+you know."
+
+"It's a small reason," the other insisted hotly. "Hardly more than the
+idiotic fact that I'm not in the Social Register. I am ashamed of her,
+and I said so. It was so little that I told her I wouldn't argue. She
+could go to the devil."
+
+"Really," the other observed, "really, I shall have to ask you to
+control your language or leave."
+
+"I wonder if she will?" the surprising James Polder sombrely speculated.
+"I wonder if I am? But there are other women, with better hearts."
+
+"Are we to construe this as a threat?" Howat asked in a delicately
+balanced tone.
+
+"For God's sake," he begged, "can't you be human!" The other suddenly
+recalled Mariana's imploring anger at the Polders. "Don't be so rotten,
+Howat." The confusion of his valuations, his habitual attitudes of
+thought, returned. His gaze strayed to the obscured ruin of Shadrach
+Furnace, at once a monument of departed vigour and present
+disintegration. Perhaps, just as the energy had expired in the Furnace,
+it had seeped from him. It might be that he was only a sere husk, a dry
+bundle of inhibitions, insensible to the green humanity of life.
+
+"I couldn't go on my knees to anything," the younger took up his burden.
+"Wrong or not it is the way I'm made. I'd not hang about where I wasn't
+wanted. Although you mightn't think it. And I am sorry I came here. I do
+things like that all the time; I mean I do, say, exactly the opposite of
+what I plan. You'll think I am a braying ass, of course."
+
+"Stop for a breath," Howat Penny recommended; "a breath, and a
+cigarette." He extended his case; and, in place of taking a cigarette,
+Polder examined the case resentfully. "There is it," he declared;
+"correct, like all the rest of you. And it's only old leather. But mine
+would be different. I could sink and Mariana wouldn't put out a hand
+just on account of that. It's wrong," he insisted. Expressed in that
+manner it did seem to Howat Penny a small reason for the withholding of
+any paramount salvation. Yet, he told himself, he had no intention,
+desire, to undertake the weight of any reformation. A futile effort, he
+added, with his vague consciousness of implacable destiny, his dim sense
+of man moved from without, in locked progression. Polder was young,
+rebellious; but he could grow older; he would grow older and comprehend;
+or else beat himself to death on obdurate circumstance. What concerned
+Howat was the hope that Mariana would be no further involved in either
+process. She too had this to learn--that, in the end, blood was stronger
+than will; the dead were terribly potent. He had, even, no inclination
+to say any of this to the man frowning in the dusk at his side. It would
+be useless, a mere preaching. An expression, too, of a slight but actual
+sympathy for James Polder would be misleading. In the main Howat was
+entirely careless of what might happen to the other; it was only where,
+unfortunately, he touched Mariana that he entered into the elder's
+world. He would sacrifice him for Mariana in an instant. Polder rose.
+
+"I must leave," he announced. Howat Penny expressed no regret, and the
+other hesitated awkwardly. "It's no use!" he finally exclaimed. "I can't
+reach you; as if one of us spoke Patagonian. Hellish, it seems to me."
+He turned and disappeared, as violently as he had come, over the
+obscurity of the lawn. A reddish, misshapen moon hung low in the sky,
+and gave the aging man an extraordinarily vivid impression of dead
+planets, unthinkable wastes of time, illimitable systems and spaces.
+James Polder's passionate resentment, his own emotion, were no more
+articulate than the thin whirring of the locusts. He went quickly into
+the house, to the warm glow of his lamp, the memories of his pictures,
+the figurine in baked clay with Hermes' wand of victory.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The heat dragged through the remainder of August and filled September
+with steaming days and heavy nights, followed by driving grey storms and
+premonitory, chill dawns. A period of sunny tranquillity succeeded, but
+crimson blots of sumach, the warmer tone of maples, made it evident that
+summer had lapsed. Honduras mulched the strawberries, and set new teeth
+in his lawn rakes. The days passed without feature, or word from
+Mariana, and Howat Penny fell into an almost slumberous monotony of
+existence. It was not unpleasant; occupied with small duties, intent on
+his papers, or wandering in a past that seemed to grow clearer, rather
+than fade, as time multiplied, he maintained his erect, carefully
+ordered existence. Then, among his mail, he found a large,
+formal-appearing envelope which he opened with a mild curiosity. His
+attitude of detachment was soon dispelled.
+
+Mrs. Corinne de Barry desired the pleasure of his attendance at the
+wedding of her daughter, Harriet, to James Polder. Details, a church and
+hour, were appended. The headlong young man, he thought, with a smile,
+Mariana was well out of that. He had been wise in saying nothing to
+Charlotte; the thing had expired naturally. But, irrationally, he
+thought of Polder with a trace of contempt--a man who had,
+unquestionably, possessed Mariana Jannan's regard marrying the
+pink-faced understudy to a second-rate emotional actress! In a way it
+made him cross; the fellow should have shown a--a greater appreciation,
+delicacy. "Commonplace," he said decisively, aloud. The following day
+Mariana herself appeared, with a touch of sable and a small, wickedly
+becoming hat.
+
+He was at lunch; and, without delay, she took the place smilingly laid
+for her by Rudolph. It was characteristic that she made no pretence of
+concealing the reason that had brought her to Shadrach. "Jim's going to
+marry that Harriet de Barry," she said at once, nicely casual. "I had a
+card," he informed her. "It's to be on the thirtieth," Mariana
+proceeded, "at eight o'clock and in church. Of course you are going."
+
+"Not at all of course," he replied energetically. "And you'll stay away
+for the plainest decency."
+
+"We will go together," she proceeded calmly. "I want to see Jim married,
+happy." She gazed at him with narrowed eyes.
+
+"Mariana," he told her, "that's a shameful lie. It is cold, feminine
+curiosity. It's worse--the only vulgar thing I can remember your
+considering. I won't hear of it." He debated the wisdom of recounting
+James Polder's last visit to Shadrach and decided in the negative. "Let
+the young man depart with his Harriet in peace."
+
+"It's sickening, isn't it?" she queried. "And yet it is so like Jim. He
+had a very objectional idea of his dignity; he was sensitive in a way
+that made me impatient. He couldn't forget himself, you see. That helped
+to make it difficult for me; I wasn't used to it; his feelings were
+always being damaged."
+
+Howat Penny nodded. "You'll recall I emphasized that." Mariana looked
+worn by her gaiety, he decided, white; for the first time in his memory
+she seemed older than her actual years. Her friends, he knew, her
+existence, bore the general appellation, fast; Howat had no share in the
+condemnatory aspect of the term, but he realized that it had a literal
+application. Their pace was feverish, and Mariana plainly showed its
+effects. Her voice, already noted as more mature, had, he was sure,
+hardened. She dabbled her lips thickly with a rouge stick. "Mariana," he
+said querulously, "I wish, you'd stop this puppet dance you're leading.
+I wish you would marry."
+
+"I tried to," she coolly replied, "but you spoiled my young dream of
+happiness."
+
+"That isn't true," he asserted sharply, perturbed. "Anything that
+happened, or didn't happen, was only the result of yourself, of what you
+are. I am extremely anxious to have you settled, and your legs out of
+the Sunday papers. I--I am opposed to your present existence; it's gone
+on too long. I believe I'd rather see you orating on the streets, like
+Eliza Provost. And, by thunder, I never thought I should come to that!
+Champagne and those damnable syncopated tunes played by hysterical
+niggers make a poor jig." He spoke impetuously, unconscious of any
+reversal of previous judgments, opinions.
+
+"You are so difficult to please, Howat," she said wearily; "you were
+aghast at the thought of my marrying James, and now you are complaining
+of the natural alternative. The truth is," she added brutally, "you are
+old-fashioned; you think life goes on just as it did when the Academy of
+Music was the centre of your world. And nothing is the same." She rose,
+and, with a lighted cigarette and half-shut eyes, fell into a rhythmic
+step of sensuous abandon. "You see," she remarked, pausing. An
+increasing dread for her filled his heart. He felt, in response to her
+challenge, a sudden bewilderment in the world of to-day. Things, Howat
+Penny told himself, were marching to the devil. He said this irritably,
+loud, and she laughed. "I'm going in by an early train," she proceeded.
+"We have left the country. Will you stop for me on the thirtieth? Early,
+Howat, so we can be sure of a good place."
+
+His helplessness included the subject of her remarks; he would, he
+realized, be at James Polder's wedding, but he persisted in his opinion.
+"A low piece of business," Howat declared. When she had gone he felt
+that he had not penetrated her actual attitude toward Polder's
+deflection. He had not for a moment got beneath her casual manner, her
+lightness, pretended or actual. He wished vehemently that he were back
+again in the past he comprehended, among the familiar figures that had
+thronged the notable dinner to Patti, the women who had floated so
+graciously through the poetry of departed waltzes. He got out his albums
+once more, scrutinized through his polished glass the programmes of
+evenings famous in song. But he went to bed a full two hours earlier
+than customary; his feet positively dragged up the stairs; above he sat
+strangely exhausted, breathing heavily for, apparently, no reason
+whatever.
+
+He retraced, with Mariana, the course over the broad, asphalt way into
+the north end of the city early on the evening of the thirtieth. They
+found the church easily, by reason of a striped canvas tunnel stretched
+out to the curb; and a young man with plastered hair and a gardenia led
+them, Mariana on his arm, to a place on the centre aisle. The church had
+a high nave newly vaulted in maple, and stained glass windows draped
+with smilax, garish in colour against electric lights. Above the altar a
+great illuminated cross maintained an unsteady flickering; and--it was
+unseasonably cold--heating steam pipes gave out an expanding racket.
+
+The pews through the centre filled rapidly; there was a low, excited
+chatter of voices, and a spreading tropical expanse of the dyed
+feathers and iridescent foliage of womens' hats. An overpowering scent
+of mingled perfumes rose and filled the interior. The strains of an
+organ grew audible, contesting with the rattle of the steam pipes. Howat
+Penny was detached, critical. Mariana, in a dull, black satin wrap of
+innumerable soft folds and wide paisley collar slipping from a
+sheath-like bodice of gleaming, cut steel beading, was silent,
+incurious. He turned to her, to point out an extravagant figure, but he
+said nothing. She was, evidently, in no mood for the enjoyment of the
+ridiculous. This disturbed him; he had not thought that she would be
+so--so concerned. He suppressed an impatient exclamation, and returned
+to the scrutiny of the culminating ceremony.
+
+Here was a sphere, vastly larger than his own, to the habits and
+prejudices of which he was complete stranger. It was as James Polder had
+said--as if one or the other spoke Patagonian. He had no wish to acquire
+the language about him; a positive antagonism to his surrounding
+possessed him, beyond reason. He thought--how different Mariana is from
+all this, and was annoyed again at her serious bearing. Then he was
+surprised by his presence there at all; confound the girl, why didn't
+she play with her own kind! Yet only the other day the glimpse she had
+given him of her natural associates had filled him with dread. His mind,
+striving to encompass the problem of Mariana's existence, failed to
+overcome the walls built about him by time, by habit. He gave it up. The
+louder pealing of the organ announced immediate developments.
+
+There was a stir in the front of the church, a clergyman in white
+vestment advanced; and, at a sudden murmurous interest, a twisting of
+heads, the wedding procession moved slowly up the aisle. The ushers,
+painstakingly adopting various lengths of stride to the requirements of
+the organ, passed in pairs; then followed an equal number of young
+women, among whom he instantly recognized the handsome presence of Kate
+Polder, in drooping blue bonnets, with prodigious panniers of
+celestial-hued silk, carrying white enamelled shepherd's crooks from
+which depended loops of artificial buttercups. An open space ensued, in
+the centre of which advanced a child with starched white skirts
+springing out in a lacy wheel about spare, bare knees, her pale yellow
+hair tied in an overwhelming blue bow; and holding outstretched, in a
+species of intense and quivering agony, a white velvet cushion to which
+were pinned two gold wedding bands.
+
+After that, Howat Penny thought, the prospective bride could furnish
+only the diminished spectacle of an anti-climax. Led by the virginal
+presence of Isabella Polder she floated forward in a foam of white tulle
+and dragging satin attached below her bare, full shoulders. A floating
+veil, pinned with a wreath of orange blossoms, manifestly wax, covered
+the metallic gold of her hair. Her countenance was unperturbed,
+statuesque, and pink. As the sentimental clamour of the organ died the
+steam pipes took up, with renewed vigour, their utilitarian noise. "Why
+don't they turn them off?" Mariana exclaimed in his ear. Personally he
+enjoyed such an accompaniment to what he designated as the performance.
+
+He cast the participants in their inevitable rôles--the bride as prima
+donna, James Polder the heroic tenor. Mrs. Corinne de Barry, a thin,
+concerned figure in glistening lavender, supported a lamenting mezzo,
+the bulky, masculine figure at her side, with an imposing diamond on a
+hand like two bricks, was beautifully basso--
+
+His train of thought was abruptly upset by James Polder's familiar,
+staccato utterance. The precipitant young man! It stamped out all Howat
+Penny's humorous condescension; his sensitive ear was conscious of a
+note, almost, of desperation. He avoided looking at Mariana. Damn it,
+the thing unexpectedly cut at him like a knife. James Polder said, "I
+will." The clear, studied tones of Harriet de Barry, understudy to
+Vivian Blane, were spoiled by the crackling of steam. Howat moved
+uneasily; he had an absurd sense of guilt; he hated the whole
+proceeding. What was that Polder, whose voice persisted so darkly in his
+hearing, about, getting himself into such a snarl? He recalled what the
+younger had said on his porch--"women with better hearts." He had
+implored him, Howat Penny, to be "more human." The memory, too, of the
+shaken tone of that request bothered him. Now it appeared that he might
+have been, well, more human. He composed himself, facing such
+sentimental illusions, into a savage indifference to what remained of
+the ceremony; he ignored the passage of Polder, with Harriet Polder on
+his arm; the relief of the unspeakable child carrying the white velvet
+cushion no longer in the manner of a hot plate; the united bridesmaids
+and ushers. "Thank heaven, that's over!" he ejaculated in the
+deeply-comfortable space of the Jannan's motor laundalet. "But it
+isn't," Mariana said briefly. She sat silent, with her head turned from
+him, through the remainder of the short drive about Rittenhouse Square.
+Then she went abruptly to her room.
+
+Charlotte Jannan and her oldest child, Sophie Lewis, were above in the
+living room. The former was handsome in a rigid way; her countenance,
+squarely and harshly formed, with grey hair exactly waved and pinned,
+had an expression of cold firmness; her voice was assertive and final.
+Sophie, apparently midway in appearance between Kingsfrere and Mariana,
+was gracefully proportioned, and gave an impression of illusive beauty
+by means of a mystery of veils, such as were caught up on her hat now.
+They were discussing, he discovered, the family.
+
+"It's an outrage, Howat," Charlotte told him, "you never married, and
+that the name will go. Here's Mariana at twenty-seven, almost, and
+nothing in sight; and Sophie flatly refuses, after only one, to have
+another child. I wish now I'd had a dozen. It is really the duty of the
+proper people. And Eliza Provost won't hear of a man! I tell Sophie it's
+their own fault when they complain about society to-day. It's the fault
+of this charity work and athletics, too; both extremely levelling.
+Hundreds of women wind bandages or go to the hunt races and gabble about
+votes for no reason under heaven but superior associates."
+
+"Howat will feelingly curse the present with you," Sophie said rising.
+"I must go. Borrow the motor, if you don't mind. I saw in the paper a
+Polder was married." Howat Penny lit a cigarette, admirably stolid. "A
+name I never repeat," Charlotte Jannan said when her daughter had left.
+He heard again the echo of James Polder's intense voice, "I will."
+Something of his dislike for him, he discovered, had evaporated. Howat
+thought of Mariana, in her room--alone with what feelings? He realized
+that Charlotte would never have forgiven her for any excursion in that
+direction. He himself had been, was, entirely opposed to such a
+connection. However, he could now dismiss it into the past that held a
+multitude of similarly futile imaginings.
+
+Charlotte, he inferred, had no elasticity; it was a quality the absence
+of which he had not before noted. She was a little narrow in her
+complacency. Her patent satisfaction in Sophie was a shade too--too
+worldly. Sam Lewis was, of course, irreproachably situated; but he was,
+at the same time, thick-witted, an indolent appendage for his name.
+Suddenly he felt poignantly sorry for Mariana; in a way she seemed to
+have been trapped by life. James Polder resembled her in that he had
+been caught in an ugly net of circumstance. A great deal had been upset
+since his day, when the boxes and pit had been so conveniently
+separated; old boundaries no longer defined, limited, their content;
+social demarcations were being obliterated by a growing disaffection. It
+was very unfortunate, for, as he was seeing, unhappiness ensued. It was
+bound to. An irritability seized him at being dragged into such useless
+conjecturing; into, at his age, confusing complications; and he greeted
+with relief the long, low front of his dwelling at Shadrach, its old
+grey stone a seeming outcropping of the old green turf, the aged,
+surrounding trees.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Mariana, however, followed him almost immediately. She stood before him
+in an informal, belted black wool sweater, a ridiculously inadequate
+skirt, and the solid shoes he detested on women. But he soon forgot her
+garb.
+
+"Howat," she told him, "I have made a cowardly and terrible mistake. I
+was meant to marry Jimmy, and I didn't. Perhaps I have ruined his life.
+Mine will be nothing without him." They were in the middle room, and a
+fire of hickory was burning in the panelled hearth. She dropped on a
+chair, and sat gazing into the singing flames. Here it's all to do over,
+he thought, with a feeling of weariness. "He may get along very well
+with his Harriet," he remarked, resentful of his dissipated contentment.
+
+"You know he won't," she replied sharply. "He loves me; and I love him,
+Howat. I never knew how much, or how little anything else mattered,
+until I was in my room, after his wedding. It wasn't a wedding, really,"
+she declared. "All that doesn't make one. He'll find it out, too. Jimmy
+will be desperate, and I'm afraid he will drink harder. He told me they
+were getting frightfully strict about that at the Works. And there's
+that reorganization; it will embitter him if he isn't made
+superintendent. He has worked splendidly for it. That woman he--he went
+off with is a squash," she said vindictively. "She will be in bed when
+he goes away in the morning, and in crêpe de Chine negligee when he gets
+back. Perhaps it won't last," she added thoughtfully.
+
+The sense of future security generated in Howat Penny by the marriage
+abruptly departed. He fumbled with his glass, directed it at Mariana.
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. "I would go to him like a shot,
+if he needed me," she coolly returned. The dreadful part of it was that
+he was sure she would. "Nonsense," he asserted, hiding his concern;
+"there will be no fence climbing." All this came from the letting down
+of conversational bars, the confounded books he found about on tables.
+Words, like everything else, had lost their meanings. In his day a bad
+woman was bad, a good, likewise, good; but the Lord couldn't tell them
+apart now. It was the dancing, too. Might as well be married to a man,
+he thought.
+
+Mariana was haggard, the paint on her face crudely--paint. He saw that
+there were tears in her eyes, and he turned away confused, rose. The
+slot in his cigarette box refused to open, and he shook it violently,
+then put it back with a clatter. "Tell Rudolph you're here," he said
+disjointedly; and, miserable, left the room. Dressing he stood at a
+window; the west held a narrow strip of crimson light under a windy mass
+of cloud. The ruin of Shadrach Furnace was sombre. Within, the room was
+almost bare. There was a large, high-posted bed without drapings, a
+vermilion lacquered table, dark with age, supporting a glass lamp at its
+side; a set of drawers with old brass handles; a pair of stiff Adam
+chairs with wheel backs; and a modern mahogany dressing case, variously
+and conveniently divided, a clear mirror in the door.
+
+The day failed rapidly, and he lit a pair of small lamps on the set of
+drawers. The sun sank in no time at all. Mariana, crying. The girl ought
+to go to her mother, and not come out to him, an old man, with her
+intimate troubles. "A name I never repeat," Charlotte had said. That was
+just like her. Small sympathy there, and no more understanding. He
+knotted his tie hurriedly, askew; and gathered the ends once more. It
+tired him a little to dress in the evening; often he longed to stay
+relaxed, pondering, until Rudolph called him to dinner. But every day
+something automatic, tyrannical, dragged him up to his room, encased him
+in rigid linen, formal black. Mariana, against the fireplace, ate
+listlessly; and, later, he beat her with shameful ease at sniff.
+
+"You can't do that," he pointed out with asperity, when she
+thoughtlessly joined unequal numbers. "Why not?" she asked. She must be
+addled. "It's against the rule." Mariana said, "I'm tired of rules."
+She always had put away the dominoes, but to-night she ignored them, and
+he returned the pieces to their morocco case. She relapsed into silence
+and a chair; and he sat with gaze fixed on the hickory in the fireplace,
+burning to impalpable, white ash.
+
+What a procession of logs had been there reduced to dust, warming
+generations of men now cold. The thought of all those lapsed winters and
+lives soothed him; the clamour of living seemed to retreat, to leave him
+in a grey tranquillity. His head sank forward, and his narrow, dark
+hands rested in absolute immobility on the arms of his chair. He roused
+suddenly to discover that Mariana had gone up, and that there were only
+some fitful, rosy embers of fire left. In November it had been his
+custom to go into town for the winter; and it was time for him to make
+such arrangement; but, all at once, he was overwhelmingly reluctant to
+face the change, the stir, of moving. The city seemed intolerably noisy,
+oppressive; the thought of the hurrying, indifferent crowds disconcerted
+him. At Shadrach it was quiet, familiar, spacious. He had had enough of
+excursions, strange faces, problems.... He would speak to Rudolph. Stay.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+The countryside, it appeared to Howat Penny, flamed with autumn and
+faded in a day. Throughout the night he heard the crisp sliding of dead
+leaves over the roof, the lash of the wind swung impotently about the
+rectangular, stone block of his dwelling. At the closing of shutters the
+December gales only penetrated to him in a thin, distant complaint. The
+burning hickory curtained the middle room with a ruddy warmth. It was a
+period of extreme peace; he slept for long hours in a deep chair, or sat
+lost in a simulation of sleep, living again in the past. The present was
+increasingly immaterial, unimportant; old controversies occupied him,
+long since stilled; and among the memories of opera, of Eames as a
+splendid girl, forgotten rôles, were other, vaguer associations,
+impressions which seemed to linger from actual happenings, but
+persistently evaded definition. At times, his eyes closed, the glow of
+his fireplace burned hotter, more lurid, and was filled with faintly
+clamorous sounds; at times there was, woven through his half-wakeful
+dreaming, a monotonous beat ... such as the fall of a hammer. He saw,
+too, strange and yet familiar faces--a girl in silk like an extravagant
+tea rose; a countenance seamed and glistening with pain floated in
+shadow; and then another mocked and mocked him. Once he heard the
+drumming of rain, close above; and the illusion was so strong that he
+made his way to the door; a black void was glistening with cold and
+relentless stars.... Now he was standing by a dark, hurrying river,
+nothing else was visible; and yet he was thrilled by a sense of utter
+rapture.
+
+He developed a feeling of the impermanence of life, his hold upon it no
+stronger than the tenuous cord of a balloon straining impatiently in
+great, unknown currents. The future lost all significance, reality;
+there were only memories; the vista behind was long and clear, but the
+door to to-morrow was shut. Looking into his mirror the reflection was
+far removed; it was hollow-cheeked and silvered, unfamiliar. He half
+expected to see a different face, not less lean, but more arrogant, with
+a sharply defined chin. The actual, blurred visage accorded ill with his
+trains of thought; it was out of place among the troops of gala youth.
+
+A wired letter, a customary present of cigarettes, came from Mariana on
+Christmas, gifts from Charlotte and Bundy Provost. There was champagne
+at his place for dinner; and he sealed crisp money in envelopes
+inscribed Rudolph, Honduras, and the names of the cook and maid. He
+drank the wine solemnly; the visions were gone; and he saw himself as an
+old man lingering out of his time, alone. There was, however, little
+sentimental melancholy in the realization; he held an upright pride, the
+inextinguishable accent of a black Penny. His disdain for the
+commonality of life still dictated his prejudices. He informed Rudolph
+again that the present opera was without song; and again Rudolph gravely
+echoed the faith that melody was the heart of music.
+
+The winds grew even higher, shriller; the falls of snow vanished before
+drenching, brown rains, and the afternoons perceptibly lengthened. There
+was arbutus on the slopes, robins, before he recognized that April was
+accomplished. A farmer ploughed the vegetable garden behind the house;
+and Honduras dragged the cedar bean poles from their resting place.
+Mariana soon appeared.
+
+"I wouldn't miss the spring at Shadrach for a hundred years of
+hibiscus," she told him. He gathered that she had been south. She
+brought him great pleasure, beat him with annoying frequency at sniff,
+and was more companionable than ever before. She had, he thought, forgot
+James Polder; and he was careful to avoid the least reference to the
+latter. Mariana was a sensible girl; birth once more had told.
+
+She was better looking than he had remembered her, more tranquil; a
+distinguished woman. It was incredible that a man approximately her
+equal had not appeared. Then, without warning--they were seated on the
+porch gazing through the tender green foliage of the willow at the
+vivid young wheat beyond--she said:
+
+"Howat, I am certain that things are going badly with Jimmy. He wrote to
+me willingly in the winter, but twice since then he hasn't answered a
+letter."
+
+He suppressed a sharp, recurrent concern. "It's that Harriet," he told
+her, capitally diffident. "You are stupid to keep it up. What chance
+would he have had answering her letters married to you?"
+
+"This is different," she replied confidently. He saw that he had been
+wrong--nothing had changed, lessened. Howat swore silently. That
+damnable episode might well spoil her entire existence. But he wisely
+avoided argument, comment. A warm current of air, fragrant with apple
+blossoms, caught the ribbon-like smoke of his cigarette and dissipated
+it. She smiled with half-closed eyes at the new flowering of earth. Her
+expression grew serious, firm. "I think we'd better go out to
+Harrisburg," she remarked, elaborately casual, "and see Jimmy for
+ourselves."
+
+He protested vehemently, but--from experience in that quarter--with a
+conviction of futility. "She'll laugh at you," he told Mariana. "Haven't
+you any proper pride?" She shook her head.
+
+"Not a scrap. It's just that quality in Jim that annoyed me, and spoiled
+everything. I'd cook for them if it would do any good." Irritation
+mastered him. "This is shameful, Mariana," he declared. "Don't your
+position, your antecedents, stand for anything? If I had Jasper Penny
+here I would tell him what I thought of his confounded behaviour!" He
+rose, and walked the length of the porch and back.
+
+"The first part of next week?" she queried. "I won't go a mile," he
+stated, in sheer bravado. "Then," said Mariana, "I must do it alone." He
+muttered a period in which the term hussy was solely audible. "Which of
+us?" she asked, calmly. "Actually," he exploded, "I feel sorry for that
+Harriet. I sympathize with her. She got the precious James fair enough,
+and the decent thing for you is to keep away."
+
+"But I'm not decent either," Mariana continued. "If you could know what
+is in my head you'd recognize that. I seem to have no good qualities. I
+don't want them, Howat," her voice intensified; "I want Jim."
+
+He was completely silenced by this desire persisting in spite of every
+established obstacle. It summoned an increasing response at the core of
+his being. Such an attitude was, more remotely, his own; but in him it
+had been purely negative, an inhibition rather than a challenge; he had
+kept out of life instead of actively defying it. In him the family
+inheritance of blackness was subsiding with the rest.
+
+Howat maintained until the moment of their departure his protest, his
+perverse community with Harriet Polder. "You'll find a happy house," he
+predicted, "and come home like a fool. I hope you do. It ought to help
+make you more reasonable. She will tell James to give you a comfortable
+chair, and apologize for not asking you to dinner." She gazed through
+the car window without replying. He realized that he had never seen
+Mariana more becomingly dressed--she wore a rough, silver-coloured suit
+with a short jacket, a pale green straw hat, like the new willow leaves,
+across the blueness of her eyes, and an innumerably ruffled and flounced
+waist of thinnest batiste. A square, deep emerald hung from a platinum
+chain about her neck; and a hand, stripped of its thick white glove,
+showed an oppressive, prismatic glitter of diamonds.
+
+The morning was filled with dense, low, grey cloud, under which the
+river on their left flowed without a glimmer of brightness. Howat was
+aware of an increasing sulphurous pall, and suddenly the train was
+passing an apparently endless confusion of great, corrugated iron sheds,
+rows of towering, smoking stacks, enormous, black cylinders, systems of
+tracks over which shrilling locomotives hauled carloads of broken slag,
+or bumped strings of trucks, with reckless energy, in and out of the
+grimy interiors. The overpowering magnitude of the steel works--Howat
+Penny needed no assurance of its purpose--exceeded every preconception.
+
+Shut between the river and an abrupt hillside, where scattered dwellings
+and sparse trees and ground were coated with a soft monotony of
+rose-brown dust, the mills were jumbled in mile-long perspectives.
+Above the immediate noise of the train he could hear the sullen, blended
+roar of an infinity of strident sounds--the screaming of whistles, a
+choked, drumming thunder, rushing blasts of air, the shattering impact
+of steel rails, raw steam, and a multitudinous clangour of metal and
+jolting wheels and connective power. He passed rusting mountains
+straddled by giant gantries, the towering lifts of mammoth cranes, banks
+of chalk-white stone, dizzy super-structures mounted by spasmodic skips.
+
+As the train proceeded with scarcely abated speed, and the vast
+operation continued without a break, mill on mill, file after file of
+stacks, Howat Penny's senses were crushed by the spectacle of such
+incredible labour. Suddenly a column of fire, deep orange at the core,
+raying through paler yellow to a palpitating white brilliancy, shot up
+through the torn vapours, the massed and shuddering smoke, to the
+clouds, and was sharply withdrawn in a coppery smother pierced by a
+rapid, lance-like thrust of steel-blue flame.
+
+These stupendous miles were, to-day, the furnaces and forges that
+Gilbert Penny had built and operated in the pastoral clearings of the
+Province. Howat recalled the single, diminutive shed of Myrtle Forge,
+the slender stream, the wheel, its sole power; the solitary stack of
+Shadrach Furnace, recreated in his vision, opposed its insignificant
+bulk against the living greenery of overwhelming forests. Now the
+forests were gone, obliterated by the mills that had grown out of
+Gilbert's energy and determination, his pioneer courage. His spirit, the
+indomitable will of a handful of men, a small, isolated colony, had
+swept forward in a resistless tide, multiplying invention, improvement,
+with success until, as Howat had seen, their flares reached to the
+clouds, their industry spread in iron cities. James Polder had a part in
+this. Here, under the ringing walls of the steel mills, he got a fresh
+comprehension of the bitter, restless virility of the younger man.
+
+Out of the station Mariana furnished the driver of a public motor with
+James Polder's address, and they twisted through congested streets, past
+the domed Capitol, rising from intense green sod, flanked by involved
+groups of sculpture, to a quieter reach lying parallel with the river.
+They discovered Polder's house occupying a corner, one of a short row of
+yellow brick with a scrap of lawn bound by a low wall, and a porch
+continuous across the face of the dwellings.
+
+The door opened after a long interval, and a woman with bare arms and a
+spotted kitchen apron admitted them to an interior faintly permeated
+with the odours of cooking. There were redly varnished chairs, upright
+piano, a heavily framed saccharine print of loves and a flushed,
+sleeping divinity; a table scarred by burning cigarettes, holding cerise
+knitting on needles one of which was broken, glasses with dregs of beer,
+a photograph in a tarnished silver frame of Harriet de Barry Polder
+with undraped shoulders and an exploited dimple, and a copy of a
+technical journal. A fretful, shrill barking rose at their heels; and
+Howat Penny swung his stick at a diminutive, silky white dog with
+matted, pinkish eyes, obsessed by an impotent fury.
+
+An indolent voice drifted from above. "Cherette!" And a low, masculine
+protest was audible. Mariana Jannan's face was inscrutable. The woman
+continued audibly, "How can I--like this? You will have to see what it
+is." A moment later James Polder, drawing on a coat, descended the
+stairs. He saw Mariana at once, and stood arrested with one foot on the
+floor, and a hand clutching the rail. A sudden pallor invaded his
+countenance and Howat turned away, inspecting the print. But he could
+not close his hearing to the suppressed eagerness, the stammering joy,
+of Polder's surprise.
+
+"And you, too," he said to the elder, with a crushing grip. Howat
+immediately recognized that the other was marked by an obvious ill
+health; his eyes were hung with shadows, like smudges of the iron dust,
+and his palm was hot and wet. "Harriet," he called up the stair, "here's
+Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny to see us." A complete silence above,
+then a sharp rustle, replied to his announcement. "Harriet will be right
+down," he continued; "fixing herself up a little first. Have trouble
+finding us? Second Street is high for a foreman, but we're moving out
+against the future."
+
+The dog maintained a stridulous barking; and James Polder carried her,
+in an ecstasy of snarling ill-temper, out. "Cherette doesn't appreciate
+callers," he stated, with an expression that contradicted the mildness
+of his words. His gaze, Howat thought, rested on Mariana with the
+intensity of a fanatic Arab at the apparition of Mohammed. And Mariana
+smiled back with a penetrating comprehension and sympathy. The
+proceeding made Howat Penny extremely uncomfortable; it was--was
+barefaced. He hoped desperately that something more appropriately casual
+would meet the appearance of Harriet. Mariana said:
+
+"You haven't been well." Polder replied that it was nothing. "I get a
+night shift," he explained, "and I've never learned to sleep through the
+day. We're working under unusual pressure, too; inhuman contracts,
+success." He smiled without gaiety. "You didn't answer my letter," the
+outrageous Mariana proceeded. Howat withered mentally at her cool
+daring, and Polder, now flushed, avoided her gaze. The necessity of
+answer was bridged by the descent of his wife. Her face, as always,
+brightly coloured, was framed in an instinctively effective twist of
+gold hair; and she wore an elaborately braided, white cloth skirt, a
+magenta georgette crêpe waist, with a deep, boyish collar, drawn tightly
+across her full, soft body.
+
+"Isn't it fierce," she demanded cheerfully, "with Jim out as many nights
+as he's in bed?" She produced a pasteboard package of popular
+cigarettes and offered them to Howat Penny and Mariana. "Sorry, I can't
+smoke any others," she explained, striking a match. "I heard you saying
+he doesn't look right," she addressed Mariana. "And it's certainly the
+truth. Who would with what he does? I tell him our life is all broke up.
+One night stands used to get me, but they're a metropolitan run compared
+with this. Honest to God," she told them good naturedly, "I've
+threatened to leave him already. I'd rather see him a property man with
+me on the road."
+
+"It must be a little wearing," Mariana agreed; "but then, you know, your
+husband is a steel man. This is his life." Howat Penny could see the
+cordiality ebbing from the other woman's countenance. Positively,
+Mariana ought to be ... "I can get that," Harriet Polder informed her.
+"We are only hanging on till Jim's made superintendent. Then we'll be
+regular inhabitants. Any other small thing?" At the sharpening note of
+her voice James Polder hurriedly proceeded with general facts. "You'll
+want to see the Works, as much as I can show you. Hardly any of the
+public are let through now. It will interest you, sir, to see what the
+Penny iron trade has become. I can take you down this afternoon. Harriet
+will find us some lunch." The latter moved in a sensuous deliberation,
+followed by a thin, acidulous trail of smoke, into inner rooms. "When do
+you have to go back?" Polder asked.
+
+"This evening," Howat told him; "we just stopped to--"
+
+"To see how you were," Mariana interrupted him baldly, studying the
+younger man with a concerned frown. "You ought to rest, you know," she
+decided. "That's possible," he returned. "I thought of asking for a
+couple of weeks. I hurried back right after I was married. They are
+coming to me." She enigmatically regarded Howat Penny; he saw that she
+was about to speak impetuously; but, to his great relief, she stopped.
+"It's been pretty hard on Harriet," he said instead. "After the stage
+and audiences, and all that." Mariana's expression was cold. Confound
+her, why didn't she help the fellow! Howat Penny fidgeted with his
+stick. What a stew Polder had gotten himself into. This was worse, even,
+than the marriage threatened.
+
+Lunch was a spasmodic affair of cutlets hardening in grease, blue boiled
+potatoes, sandy spinach and blanched ragged bread. There was more beer;
+but Jim, his wife proceeded, liked whiskey and water with his meals. The
+former glanced uneasily at Mariana, tranquilly cutting up her cutlet.
+The diamonds on her narrow, delicate hand flashed, the emerald at her
+throat was superb. Their surroundings were doubly depressing contrasted
+with her fastidious dress and person. Before her composure Harriet
+Polder seemed over-florid; a woman of trite phrases, commonplace,
+theatrical attitudes and emotions. As lunch progressed the latter
+relapsed into a sulky silence; she glanced surreptitiously at Mariana's
+apparel; and consumed cigarettes with a straining assumption of easy
+indifference.
+
+Howat Penny was acutely uncomfortable, and Polder scowled at his plate.
+The whiskey and water shook in a tense, unsteady hand. He rose from the
+table with a violent relief. He proposed almost immediately that they go
+over to the Works, and Mariana turned pleasantly to his wife. "Shall you
+get a hat?" The other hesitated, then asserted defiantly, "I've always
+said I wouldn't go into that rackety place, and I won't now. It's bad
+enough to have it tramped back over things." Mariana extended a hand.
+"Then good-bye," she proceeded. "I think we won't get back here. We're
+tremendously obliged for the lunch. It has been interesting to see where
+Jim lives." Harriet Polder's cheeks were darker than pink as they moved
+out to the sidewalk. "Jim," she called, with an unmistakably proprietary
+sounding of the familiar diminution; "don't forget my cigarettes, and a
+half pound of liver for Cherette."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+James Polder conducted them to the river, sweeping away in a wide curve
+beneath solid grey stone bridges into a region of towering hills. They
+turned to the left, and, walking on a high embankment, passed blocks of
+individually pretentious dwellings, edifices of carved granite,
+alternating with the simpler brick faces of an older period. A narrow,
+whitely dusty sweep of green park was followed by a speedy degeneration
+of the riverside; the houses shrunk to rows of wood marked by the grime
+of steel mills. Soon after they reached a forbidding fence; and, passing
+a watchman's inspection, entered into a clamorous region of sheds,
+tracks and confusing levels such as Howat Penny had viewed from the
+train.
+
+"I'm in the open hearth," Polder told them, leading the way over a
+narrow boardwalk, still skirting the broad expanse of the river. "It's a
+process, really, but the whole mill is called after it. We make steel
+from iron scrap; that's our specialty in the Medial Works; and our
+stuff's as good as the best. The bigger concerns mostly use pig. Turn in
+here." They were facing the towering end of an iron shed, and mounted a
+steep ascent to gain the upper entrance. The multiplication of noises
+beat in an increasing volume about Howat Penny. Below him a locomotive
+screeched with a freight of slag; beyond was a heap of massive, broken
+moulds; and a train of small trucks held empty iron boxes beside an
+enormous bank of iron scrap dominated by a huge crane swinging a
+circular magnet that dispassionately picked up ton loads and bore them
+to the waiting cars.
+
+Inside he gazed through a long vista under a roof lost in tenebrious
+shadow. On one side were ranged the furnaces, a continuous bank of brick
+bound in iron; each furnace with five doors, closed with black slides in
+which a round opening emitted an intolerable, dazzling white glare. But
+few men, Howat thought, were visible in proportion to the magnitude of
+the work; deliberately engaged, with leather shields hanging from their
+wrists and blue spectacles pushed up on their grimy brows.
+
+A crane advanced with the shrill racket of an electric gong, its
+operator caged in midair, and herculean grappling chains swinging. A
+grinding truck, filling the width of floor, moved forward to where Howat
+stood. It was, Polder told him, the charging machine. An iron beam
+projected opposite the furnace doors, and it was locked into one of the
+charging boxes, filled with scrap metal, standing on the rails against
+the furnaces. A man behind him dragged forward a lever, the slide which
+covered a door rose ponderously on a blinding, incandescent core, and
+the beam thrust forward into the blaze, turning round and round in the
+emptying of the box. It was withdrawn, the slide dropped, and the
+machine retreated, its complex movements controlled by a single engineer
+at crackling switches where the power leaped in points of light like
+violets.
+
+At another furnace, an opened door, where the heat poured out in a
+constricting blast, workmen were shovelling in powdery white stone;
+moving up with their heads averted, and quickly retreating with
+shielding arms. "That's dolomite," James Polder's explanations went
+rapidly forward. "They are banking up the furnace. The other, in the
+bins, is ferro manganese." He procured a pair of spectacles; and, with a
+protected gaze, Howat looked into a furnace, an appalling space of
+apparently bubbling milk over which played sheets of ignited gases. The
+skin on his forehead shrivelled like scorching paper.
+
+"I particularly wanted you to see a heat tapped," Polder told Mariana.
+"And they're making a test at number four." They followed him to where a
+small ladle of metal had been dipped out of a furnace. It was poured,
+with a red-gold shower of sparks, into a mould, then dropped in a trough
+of water. The miniature ingot, broken under the wide sweep of a sledge,
+was examined by a lean, grizzled workman--"the melter"--who nodded. "We
+must get back of the furnace," Polder continued, indicating a narrow
+opening between brick walls through the unstopped chinks of which
+seethed the scorifying blaze.
+
+Howat Penny stood at a railing, looking down into an apparent confusion
+of slag and cars, pits and gigantic ladles and upright moulds set upon
+circular bases. A crane rumbled forward, grappled a hundred-ton ladle, a
+fabulous iron pot, and petulantly deposited it under a channel extending
+out from the base of the furnace where they had been stationed. A
+workman steadied himself below their level and picked with a long iron
+bar at a plugged opening. It was, James Polder went on, the most
+dangerous moment of the process--"sometimes the furnace blows out." The
+labour of tapping was prolonged until Howat was conscious of an
+oppressive tension. Workmen had gathered, waiting, in the pit. More
+appeared along the railing above. This was, he felt, the supreme, the
+dramatic, height of steel making. The men suddenly seemed puny,
+insignificant, before the stupendous, volcanic energy they had evoked.
+The tapping stopped. Polder commenced, "It will be rammed out from the
+front--"
+
+A stunning white flare filled the far roof with a dazzling illumination;
+and, in a dull explosion, a terrific billowing of heat, a cataract of
+liquid steel burst out through lambent orange and blue flames. It
+poured, searing the vision, into the ladle, over which rosy clouds
+accumulated in a bank drifting through the great space of the shed.
+Nothing, Howat thought, could contain, control, the appalling expansion,
+the furious volume, of seething white metal. He was obliged to turn
+away, blinded by sheets of complementary green hanging before his eyes.
+
+The uproar subsided, the flooding steel became bluer, a solid stream
+curving into the black depths of the ladle. Vapours of green and sulphur
+and lilac shivered into the denser ruby smoke and rising silver spray.
+Polder called a warning into Mariana's ear, they drew back as a lump of
+coal was heaved up from the pit, into the ladle. A dull vermilion blaze
+followed, and Howat Penny partly heard an explanation--"recarburizing."
+He could now see the steel bubbling up to the rim of the container. Men,
+Polder said shortly, had fallen in.... Utterly unthinkable. With a
+sudorific heat that drove them still farther back the slag boiling on
+the steel flowed in a gold cascade over a great lip into a second
+receptacle below. That was soon filled, and gorgeous streams and pools
+widened across the riven ground. The steel itself escaped in a milky
+incandescence. "A wild heat," James Polder told them, pleased. "The
+bottom of a furnace may drop out. I was almost caught in the pit at
+Cambria." The crane chains swung forward, picked up the ladle of molten
+metal, and shifted it through the air to a position over a circular
+group of moulds. There, a valve opened, the steel poured into a central
+pipe. "Bottom-filled," Polder concluded, assisting Mariana over the
+precarious flooring; "the metal rises into the ingot forms."
+
+They descended again, by the blackened brick, box-like office of the
+superintendent, to the level of the pit, retraced the way over the
+boardwalk. They passed a cavernous interior, filled with a continuous
+crashing, where a great sheet of flushing steel was propelled over a
+system of rollers through a black, dripping compression. "I can take you
+to the Senate," James Polder told them, once more outside; "or the
+Engineers' Society. Dinner will be ready at the club."
+
+He conducted them into the serious interior of a large, solidly
+constructed dwelling that had been transformed into a club. The dining
+room was already filling but they secured a small table against the
+wall. Across the floor ten or twelve men were gathered in a circle.
+Some, Howat thought, were surprisingly young for the evident authority
+in their manner, pronouncements; others were grey, weatherworn, men with
+immobile faces often lost, in the middle of a gay period, in a sudden
+gravity of thought, silent calculation. He saw the smooth, deft hands of
+draughtsmen, and scarred, powerful hands that, like James Polder's, had
+laboured through apprenticeship in pit and mill shop.
+
+He recognized that Polder was more drawn than he had first observed. He
+was sapped by the crushing entity of the steel works, the enormous heat
+and energy and strain of the open hearth. If the younger did not lay off
+he would, unquestionably, break. Nevertheless, Howat was totally
+unprepared for the amazing suggestion quietly advanced by Mariana.
+"Jimmy," she said, "couldn't you come to Shadrach for those two weeks?
+You'd find the quiet there wonderful. And any doctor will advise you to
+leave your family for a proper rest. I'm certain Howat would be as nice
+as possible."
+
+A sudden, patent longing leaped to James Polder's countenance. Actually
+he stuttered with a surprised delight. Damn it, there was nothing for
+him, Howat, to do but stare like a helpless idiot. He ought to say
+something, second Mariana's impudent invitation, at once. She ignored
+him, gazing intently at the younger man. He, too, meeting Mariana's
+eyes, had apparently totally forgot the unimportant presence of Howat
+Penny. And he had been married to his Harriet for a scant half year!
+Howat Penny thought mechanically of the Polders' depressing house, the
+odours of old cooking and cheap cigarettes, the feverish yapping of the
+silky animal, Cherette, with matted, pinkish eyes. The precipitant,
+prideful, young fool! Why hadn't he held onto the merest memory, the
+most distant chance in the world, of Mariana, rather than fling himself,
+his injured self-opinion, into this stew?
+
+"Don't say it can't be managed," she persisted. "Anything may. It's
+absolutely necessary; you can get a prescription--two weeks of green
+valley and robins and country eggs. Howat will take your money from you
+at penny sniff, and I'll--I'll come out for dinner."
+
+"Harriet thought of going back to the family," he replied; "but it
+might--" he turned at last to Howat Penny. "Would you have me?" he asked
+directly. What, in thunder, choice of reply did he have? Howat couldn't
+point out the shamelessness of such an arrangement. Harriet, it seemed,
+was not to be considered; just as if she were a merely disinterested
+connection. He issued a belated period to the effect that Shadrach was
+spacious and Rudolph a capable attendant. It was, he saw, sufficient.
+"We can write," said Mariana. She endeavoured to caress Howat's hand,
+but he indignantly frustrated her.
+
+"I'll have to get back to the hearth," James Polder announced
+regretfully. "It's been wonderful," he told Mariana Jannan. Howat
+scraped his chair at the baldness of Polder's pleasure. "Your work is
+tremendous, Jim," she replied; "the only stirring thing I have ever
+known in a particularly silly world. But you mustn't let it run you,
+too, into steel rails. President Polder," she smiled brilliantly at him.
+"Why not?" queried James, the sanguine, at once defiant, haggard and
+intense.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The following day Howat Penny was both weary and irritable. Mariana
+declared, remorsefully, that she had selfishly dragged him away from
+Shadrach; and proposed countless trivial amends, which he fretfully
+blocked. He had no intention of affording her such a ready escape from a
+sense, he hoped, of error and responsibility. Before dinner, however, he
+found himself walking with her over the deep green sod that reached to
+the public road below. A mock orange hedge enclosed his lawn, bounding
+the cross roads, the upper course leading to Myrtle Forge; and beyond
+they passed, on the left, the collapsed stone walls and fallen shingles
+of what, evidently, had been a small blacksmith's shed. Farther along
+they came to the sturdy shell of an old, single-room building, erected,
+perhaps, when Shadrach Furnace was new, with weeds climbing through the
+rotten floor, and a fragment of steps, rising to the mouldering peak of
+a loft, still clinging to a wall.
+
+Without definite purpose they turned from the public way into an
+overgrown path, banked with matted blackberry bushes, and were soon
+facing the remains of the Furnace. It had been solidly constructed of
+unmasoned stone, bound by iron rods, and its bulk was largely unaffected
+by time. The hearth had fallen in, choked by luxuriant greenery; but the
+blank sides mounted to meet the walled path reaching out to its top from
+the abrupt hill against which it had been placed. Before it foundations
+could still be traced; and above, a rectangle of windowless stone walls
+survived, roofless and desolate. An abandoned road turned up the hill,
+and they followed it to where they could gaze into the upper ruin and
+the Furnace top below. Everywhere nature had marked or twisted aside cut
+stone and wood with its living greenery. Farther down a pathlike level
+followed the side of the hill, ending abruptly in a walled fall, and a
+confusion of broken beams, iron braces, and section of a large,
+wheel-like circumference. Out beyond were other crumbling remains of old
+activity--a stone span across the dried course of a water way, and a
+wide bank, showing through a hardy vegetation the grey-brown
+inequalities of slag.
+
+The stillness, broken only by the querulous melody of a robin, and a
+beginning, faint piping of frogs, was amazingly profound after the
+roaring energy of the Medial Works. The decay of Shadrach Furnace showed
+absolute against the crashing miles of industry on the broad river. A
+breath of honeysuckle lifted to Howat Penny; the sky was primrose.
+Mariana moved closer to him and took his arm. They said nothing.
+
+A warm light was spilling across the darkening grass from the lower
+windows of his dwelling, blurring in a dusk under the high leafage of
+aged maples. The white roses were already in bud on the vine climbing
+the lattices at his door, and Mariana fixed one in his buttonhole.
+"Howat," she said, "it isn't as if you were doing it just for Jim, but
+for a man, any man, really sick. I'll not even ask you to think of it
+for me. He can sit on the porch and converse with your owls, and poke
+about over the hills."
+
+Howat considered the advisability of attempting to extract a promise
+from her that she would stay away from Shadrach if James Polder was
+there. He considered it--very momentarily. The possibility, he asserted
+to himself, was without any alleviating circumstance. What, in heaven's
+name, would Charlotte think if, as it well might, the knowledge came to
+her that Mariana and a Polder--that name she never repeated--a married
+Polder without his wife, were poking over the hills together at
+Shadrach? She would have him, Howat, examined for lunacy. Mariana
+demanded too much. He told her this with the dessert.
+
+"It's only the commonest charity," she repeated. Her attack rapidly
+veered. "Howat," she asked, "do you really dislike Jimmy?" Certainly, he
+asserted, he--he disapproved of him ... altogether. A headstrong young
+donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life. He would have to make
+the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself. "It
+is terrific," she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of
+having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands. "Perhaps something
+can still be done," she said, frowning, increasing the dangers of his
+position. He managed, by a stubborn silence, to check further
+conversation in that direction; hoping, vainly, that James Polder
+couldn't come, that Harriet, sensibly, would insist on his accompanying
+her, or that Byron would solemnly intervene.
+
+Mariana, later displaying a letter, dispelled his wishes. "It's been
+arranged quite easily," she told him. "Harriet will go home. I'd like to
+be here when he arrives, but I can't. You'll be a dear, Howat, won't
+you?" she begged. "I'm certain James will give you no trouble. And do
+send him to bed early." At this he grew satirical, and she laughed in an
+unaccustomed, nervous manner that upset him surprisingly. Honduras drove
+her to the station the next morning; and, three days later, deposited
+James Polder on the worn stone threshold under the climbing rose.
+
+After dinner the younger man faced him squarely across the apricot glow
+of the lamp in the middle room. "This is the third time I've come here
+without an invitation from you," he said directly. "It was Mariana this
+last. I shut my mouth on what I'd once have crammed down your throat,
+and came like any puppy. It wasn't on account of my health, there are
+miles of quiet country; it wasn't--" he hesitated, then went
+on--"altogether because of Mariana. I wanted to watch you closer; I want
+to find out what you are like inside, so I might understand some--some
+other things better. I can get out if it's a rank failure."
+
+Howat issued a polite, general dissent. "Now, right there," Polder
+stated; "you don't want me; you'd rather I was a thousand miles away,
+dead. Well--why don't you say so?" He had not the least conception of a
+decent reticence of address, Howat Penny thought, resentfully, at the
+discomfort aroused by the young man's sharp attack.
+
+"Certain amenities," he observed coldly, "have been accepted as
+desirable, as obligations for--" he hesitated, casting about for a
+phrase that would not too conspicuously exclude James Polder. "Say it,"
+the latter burst out rudely, "gentlemen. And you all stand about with
+one thing to say and another in your head."
+
+"A degree of perception is always admirable," Howat Penny instructed
+him. "That's a nasty one," Polder acknowledged; "but I got into it
+myself. I can see that." His hand, seared with labour, was pressed on
+the table; and the elder realized that, since he had witnessed a heat
+tapped, he was not so censorious of the broken nails, the lines of
+indelible black. He caught James Polder's gaze, and turned from its
+intense questioning. Young cheeks had no business to be so gaunt.
+Polder picked up the figurine in red clay, studied it with a troubled
+brow, and replaced it with a gesture of hopelessness. "Possibly," Howat
+Penny unexpectedly remarked, "possibly you find beauty in a piece of
+open hearth steel."
+
+"It's useful," Polder declared; "it has a tensile strength. I know what
+it will do. This," he indicated the fragment of a grace razed over
+twenty-three hundred years before, "is good for nothing that I see."
+Now, Howat told himself, it was merely a question of tensile strength.
+His old enthusiasms, his passionate admiration for the operas of
+Christopher Gluck, the enthusiasms and admirations of his kind, were
+being pushed aside for things of more obvious practicality. The very
+term that had distinguished his world, men of breeding, had been
+discarded. Individuals like James Polder, blunt of speech, contemptuous,
+labour scarred, were paramount to-day.
+
+His thoughts, he realized, were a part of the questioning thrust on him
+by the intrusion of Mariana's unfortunate affair into his old age. She
+was always dragging him to a perplexing spectacle for which he had
+neither energy nor inclination. But he'd be damned if he would allow the
+importunities of the young man beyond the table to complicate further
+his difficulties, and he retired abruptly behind the _Saturday Review_.
+"You'd better get along up," he said brusquely, after a little.
+
+Breakfast at an end, they settled into a not uncomfortable, mutual
+silence. They smoked; James Polder unfolded newspapers which he
+neglected to read; Howat went through the periodicals with audible
+expressions of displeasure. He wondered when Mariana would appear.
+Mariana made a fool of him, that was evident; however, he would put his
+foot on any philandering about Shadrach. He could be as blunt as James
+Polder when the occasion demanded. After lunch the latter fell asleep in
+his chair on the porch, pallidly insensible of the sparkling flood of
+afternoon. Howat rose and went into the house. It was indecent to see a
+countenance so wearily unguarded, shorn of all protective aggression.
+Mariana walked in unannounced.
+
+"Why didn't you telephone for Honduras?" he complained. "Always some
+infernal difference in what you do." She frowned. "Suddenly," she
+admitted, "I wasn't in a hurry to get here. I almost went back.
+Idiotic."
+
+"Sensible, it seems to me," he commented. "That Polder is asleep on the
+porch." She nodded, "Splendid. And you needn't try to look fierce. I can
+see through you and out the back." He lit a cigarette angrily. "Going to
+stay for the night?" he demanded. "Several," she replied coolly. "Three
+can play sniff."
+
+"Look here, Mariana," he proclaimed, "I won't have any nonsense, do you
+understand?"
+
+"We can keep a photograph of Harriet on the table."
+
+James Polder entered, and put a temporary end to his determined speech.
+When the former saw Mariana his shameless pleasure, Howat thought, was
+beyond credence. Positively neither of them paid any more attention to
+him than they did to Rudolph. His irritation gave place to a deeper
+realization that an impossible situation threatened. There was nothing,
+obviously, that he could do to-day; but he would speak seriously to
+Mariana to-morrow; one or both of them would have to leave Shadrach.
+This determination took the present weight from his conscience; and,
+pottering about small concerns of his own, he ignored them comfortably.
+
+They appeared late, dirty and hot, for dinner; and it was eight o'clock
+before Mariana came down in a gown like a white-petalled flower. She
+wore no rings, but about her throat was a necklace of old-fashioned seed
+pearls in loops and rosettes. "It's family," she told them; "it belonged
+to Caroline Penny. And she married a Quaker, too; a David Forsythe." She
+stopped suddenly, and Howat Penny recalled the tradition that Caroline
+Penny, Gilbert's daughter, had appropriated her sister Myrtle's suitor.
+Mariana favoured him with a fleet glance, the quiver of a reprehensible
+wink. He glared back at her choking with suppressed wrath. "I have a
+wonderful idea for to-morrow," she proceeded tranquilly; "we'll take
+lunch, and leave Honduras, and go to Myrtle Forge for the day."
+
+Her design was unfolded so rapidly, her directions to Rudolph so
+explicit, that he had no opportunity to oppose his plan of sending her
+away in the morning; and his impotence committed him to her suggestion.
+She could go in the evening almost as well. After dinner he rattled the
+dominoes significantly, but Mariana, smiling at him absently, went
+through the room and out upon the porch. Polder, with an obscure
+sentence, followed her. A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there
+was no wind; the night was warm.
+
+Howat glanced at his watch, after a period of restful ease, and saw that
+it was past ten. He moved resolutely outside. Mariana was banked with
+cushions in the canvas swing, and Polder sat with his body extended, his
+hands clasped behind his head, in a gloomy revery. The night,
+apparently, had robbed her countenance of any bloom; more than once in
+the past year Howat had seen her stamped with the premonitory scarring
+of time. Polder rose as he approached, and Mariana struggled upright.
+
+"Good night," she said ungraciously, to them both, and flickered away
+through the dark. James Polder was savagely biting his lips; his hands,
+the elder saw, were clenched. "Your wife," Howat proceeded, "how is
+she?" Polder gazed at him stonily, without reply. "I asked after your
+wife," Howat repeated irritably. "No," the other at last said, "you
+reminded me of her. I suppose you are right." He turned and walked
+abruptly from the porch, into the slowly dropping rain.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The road to Myrtle Forge mounted between rolling cultivated fields, the
+scattered, stone ruins of walls erected in the earliest iron days; and,
+after a pastoral course, came to the Forge dwelling, its shuttered bulk
+set in a tangle of bushes and rank grass. An ancient beech tree swept
+the ground with smooth, grey limbs, surrounded by long-accumulated dead
+leaves. James Polder shut off the motor by the low, stone wall that
+supported the lawn from the roadway; he crossed to the farm, where the
+house keys were kept, and Howat and Mariana moved slowly forward. A
+porch, added, the former said, in Jasper Penny's time, extended at the
+left; and they stood on the broken flooring and gazed down at a
+featureless tangle once a garden and the gnarled remainder of a small
+apple orchard beyond.
+
+Polder soon returned, and they proceeded to a door on the further side,
+where the kitchen angle partly enclosed a flagging of broad stones.
+Inside, the house, empty of furnishing, was a place of echoes muffled in
+dust; the insidious, dank odours of corrupting wood and plaster; walls
+with melancholy, superimposed, stripping papers; older, sombrely
+blistered paint and panelled wainscoting varnished in an imitation,
+yellow graining. It was without a relic of past dignity. Mariana was
+unable to discover a souvenir of the generations of Pennys that had
+filled the rooms with the stir of their living. Once more outside they
+sat on the stone threshold of an office-like structure back of the main
+dwelling and indulged in cigarettes.
+
+The disturbing tension of last night, Howat thought comfortably, had
+vanished. Mariana was flippant, James Polder enveloped in indolent ease.
+"The Forge," Howat Penny told them, "was below." A path descended across
+a steep face of sparse grass; and, at the bottom, Polder's interest
+revived. "It stood there," he indicated a fallen shed beyond a masoned
+channel, choked with the broken stones of its walls and tangled
+shrubbery. "You don't suppose a joke that size was the great Gilbert's
+plant. Here's the drop for the water power; yes, and the iron pinions of
+the overshot wheel." He climbed down a precarious wall, and stood
+perhaps twelve feet below them. Securing a rough bolt, he brought it up
+for their inspection. "Look at that forging," he cried; "after it has
+lain around for a century and a half. Like silk. Charcoal iron, and it
+was hammered, too. Metal isn't half worked any more. We could turn that
+into steel at almost nothing a ton." He showed them in the mouldering
+shed the foundation of the anvil, traced the probable shafting of the
+trip hammer, marked the location of the hearths. "Three," he decided;
+"and a cold trickle of air. A nigger pumping a bellows, probably. No,
+they could get that from the wheel," he drew an explanatory diagram in
+the blackened dust.
+
+With the lunch basket on the running board of the motor they ate sitting
+on the low boundary wall of the lawn. The heat increased through the
+late May noon, and Howat remained while Mariana and James Polder
+wandered in the direction of the orchard. Finally the sun forced the
+former to move; and he, too, proceeded in a desultory manner, entering
+the shade of a grove of old maples. The trees, their earliest red
+leafage already emerald, followed the dry channel cut back from Canary
+Creek to the Forge, and he soon emerged at the broad, flashing course of
+the stream. A flat rock jutted into the hurrying water by an overthrown
+dam, its sun-heated expanse now in shadow; and he stayed, listening to
+the gurgling flow. Far above him a hawk wheeled in ambient space; a mill
+whistle sounded remotely from Jaffa.
+
+The thought of Mariana hovered at the back of his lulled being; all he
+desired, he told himself, was her complete happiness. He might even have
+become reconciled to James Polder. His first, unfavourable opinion of
+the latter, he realized, had been modified by--by time. He had judged
+Polder solely in the light of an old standard. The fellow was painfully
+honest; good stuff there, iron ... the iron of the Pennys. But the other
+strain had betrayed him. A cursed shame. The material of the present,
+moulded, perhaps, into seemingly new forms, was always that of the
+past. This Polder was Essie Scofield and Jasper ... Byron. He, Howat
+Penny, was Penny and Jannan and Penny--Daniel, James, Casimir, and Howat
+once more, the older Howat who had married the widow of Felix Winscombe.
+Black again. He wondered what the blackness, not spent like his own, had
+brought the other. A headstrong, dark youth with the characteristic
+sloping eyebrows and slender, vigorous, carriage. The traditional
+rebellious spirit had involved Jasper in disgrace; it had thinned his
+own blood.
+
+Footfalls approached through the trees, and the others joined him. James
+Polder extended himself on the rock, and Mariana sat with her hands
+clasped about her slim knees. A silence intensified by the whispering
+stream enveloped them. The hawk circled above, and Howat had an
+extraordinary sense of the familiarity of the bird hanging in limitless
+space, of the warm stone and water choking in a smooth eddy. He had, as
+a boy, fished there. But his brain momentarily swam with a poignant,
+unrecognizable emotion, different from the sensation of childhood. He
+rose, confused and giddy. With old age, he muttered.
+
+Mariana followed. "It's all over," she announced, decisively. "We'll
+drive back and leave to-day." She sighed. "That's gone already," James
+Polder showed her the sun slipping toward the western hills. She moved
+up to him, laid her hand on his arm. Howat Penny went ahead. He must
+speak to her after dinner. As the motor slowly gathered momentum he
+turned and looked back at the dark, pinkish dwelling in its tangle of
+grass and bushes run wild. Dusk appeared to have already gathered over
+it, although the sun still shone elsewhere in lengthening dusty gold
+bars; the wide-spread beech was sombre against blank shutters, the
+chimneys broken and cold.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+A letter for James Polder was at Shadrach, and he opened it immediately,
+glancing over its scrawled sheet. Howat saw a curious expression
+overspread the other's countenance. He called, "Mariana!" in a sharp
+tone. She appeared from the foot of the steps. "Harriet never went
+home," he told her; "this is from Pittsburgh. She's back on the stage."
+A premonitory dread filled Howat Penny. Mariana stood quietly, her gaze
+lifted to Polder. "She never went home," he repeated; "but writes that
+suddenly she--she didn't want to, and couldn't stand Harrisburg another
+week. She saw some one and had a part, that ought to be good, offered to
+her; and, so--"
+
+"Is that all, Jim?"
+
+"No," he replied; "there is more, absolutely unjustified. I think I'd
+like you to read it. It would be best." Mariana took the letter, and
+followed its irregular course. "It's true enough," she said quietly, at
+the end. "But I don't in the least mind, Jim. She had a perfect right to
+something of the sort. That is--I'm not annoyed about what she says of
+me, but it will upset you terribly. And it has been my fault, from the
+first." He protested vehemently, but she stopped him with a gesture;
+then walked to the door opening on the porch; where, her head up, she
+stood gazing out into the serene, failing light.
+
+James Polder followed her, and Howat heard the screen softly close. He
+was about to light a cigarette, but, his hand shaking, he laid it on the
+table. He put up his glass, without purpose, and then let it drop.
+Rudolph was placing the silver for dinner; old forks faintly marked with
+a crest that Isabel Howat had brought to her husband. A recurrence of
+the afternoon's sense of the continuity of all living flowed over him,
+whispering with old voices, old longing and sorrow and regret, mingled
+dim features, and the broken clasping of hands. He saw Mariana sweeping
+in a pale current--a remote, eternal passion winding through the
+transient body of life. She smiled, her subdued, mocking gaiety
+infinitely appealing, and vanished.
+
+They came in to dinner without changing the informal garb of the day.
+James Polder was silent, disturbed, but Mariana was serenely
+commonplace. Her voice, clear and high, went unimportantly on; until,
+turning to Howat Penny, she said without the changing of a tone. "I want
+James to take me back to Harrisburg with him, but he won't." Howat
+endeavoured to meet this insanity with the silence usually opposed to
+Mariana's frequent wildness of statement. His knife scraped sharply
+against a plate; but, in the main, he successfully preserved an unmoved
+countenance. "Now that Harriet has surrendered Mm," she persisted, "I
+don't see why I can't be considered. It is the commonest sense--Jim
+can't live alone, properly, in that house; I can't exist properly
+without him. You see, Howat, how reasonable it seems." What he did
+perceive was that his attitude of inattention must be sharply deserted.
+
+"Your words, Mariana," he said coldly, "'proper' and 'reasonable,' in
+the connection you have used them, would be ridiculous if they weren't
+disgraceful. I have been patient with a certain amount of rash talk,
+yes--and conduct, but this must be the end. I had intended to have you
+leave Shadrach this morning, then later. Either that or I'll be forced
+to make my excuses to James Polder." He glanced with a veiled anxiety at
+the latter but could read nothing from the lowered, pinched countenance.
+
+"We could leave together if you are tired of us," Mariana continued.
+"It's James, really, who is making all the trouble. He has some stupid
+idea about nobility of conduct and my best good. But the real truth is
+that he's afraid, for me, of course, and so he won't listen."
+
+"Won't you show her that it is impossible?" the younger man cried at
+Howat Penny. "I can't take advantage of her heavenly courage. She
+doesn't realize the weight of opinion. It would make--"
+
+"Stuff," she interrupted. "You'd make steel, and I would make an
+occasional dessert. You must be told, Jimmy, that the afternoon calling
+you have confused with life really isn't done any more. You have been
+brought up in rather a deadly way. You ought to be saved from yourself.
+I am a very mature person, and I am advising you calmly."
+
+The dinner had come to an end; a decanter, in old-fashioned blue and
+gold cutting, of brandy, a silver basket of oranges, the coffee cups and
+glasses, were all that remained; and James Polder played with the cut
+fruit, the half-full cordial glass before him. "I am going to be
+brutally frank, Jimmy," she said again. "You know that is a habit of
+mine, too. You are a very brilliant young man, but you are not
+omnipotent--you require stiffening, like a collar. And I would be a
+splendid laundress for you. Harriet is a long shot too lenient. I might
+not be so comfortable to live with, but I'd be bracing. I'd have you in
+that dirty little superintendent's box in no time."
+
+He made no reply; and, obviously tormented, automatically squeezed a
+half orange into his goblet. Then he took a sip of brandy.
+
+"Together, James," Mariana asserted, "we would go up like a kite. By
+yourself--forgive me--you haven't enough patience, enough balance; you
+wouldn't fly steadily. You might break all your sticks on the ground."
+He moodily emptied what remained of his brandy into the goblet and
+orange juice, and pushed it impatiently away. "I'd rather do that," he
+answered, "than try to carry you with me on such a flight."
+
+Howat Penny was conscious of a diminution of his fears. He had entirely
+underrated James Polder; the latter was an immense sight steadier than
+Mariana. His thoughts strayed momentarily to Harriet, back again in her
+public orbit. He could imagine that she had found Harrisburg insuperably
+dull, the hours with only Cherette empty after the emotional debauches
+of the plays elected by Vivian Blane. Yes, this young Polder would stand
+admirably firm. Mariana frowned at the cobalt smoke of her cigarette. "I
+am in a very bad temper," she told them. "No one for a minute thinks of
+what my feeling may be. You are both entirely concerned with your own
+nice sense of virtue."
+
+"Not at all, but of your future," Howat Penny asserted.
+
+Her lower lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently
+capable. She made no immediate reply. James Polder's fingers absently
+clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the
+thick liquid it contained. "Just what do you recommend me to do?"
+Mariana challenged Howat. "Go through with a lifeful of winters like the
+last! Marry another Sam Lewis! I am not celebrated for reliability; it
+is only with Jimmy--" she broke off. Howat Penny recalled her callous
+expression, photographed in Egyptian dress at a period ball, her
+description of the hard riding and reckless parties of the transplanted
+English colonies in the south.
+
+Polder lifted the goblet to his lips, but set it back untasted. Howat
+looked away from Mariana's scornful interrogation, unable to reply.
+Finally, "I am old, as you once reminded me," he stated; "I'm out of my
+time, don't understand, I can only remember, and remembering isn't any
+longer of use. The men I knew, the kind, I hope, I was, would ruin
+themselves a hundred times before compromising a woman. Polder appears
+to understand that. And women I had the privilege of meeting sacrificed
+themselves with a smile for what you dismiss as mere stupidity. God
+knows which is right. They looked the loveliest of creatures then. There
+was a standard, we thought high.... Things a man couldn't do. But I
+don't know--it seems so long ago." He stopped to watch James Polder take
+a sip of the mixture in his hand. The latter tasted it slowly, and then
+emptied the goblet. His face was blank, with eyes nearly closed.
+
+"I could carry Jimmy up in my hands," Mariana said. "Don't," she added
+vaguely, as he squeezed out the remaining half of his orange and poured
+fresh brandy into it. "It's curious," he told her; "not at all bad."
+
+They moved out of the dining room, and Mariana and Polder continued to
+the porch. Howat stood with a hand resting on the mahogany cigarette
+box; he had the feeling of a man unexpectedly left by a train thundering
+into the distance. It would not stop, back, for him now; he was dropped.
+He sank relaxed into an accustomed chair; his brain surrendered its
+troubling; the waking somnolence settled over him. He was conscious of
+his surrounding, recognized its actuality; yet, at the same time, it
+seemed immaterial, like the setting of a dream. He roused himself after
+a little and smoked, nodding his head to emphasize the points of his
+thought.
+
+This Polder had shown the instinct of breeding; while Mariana was--just
+what she was he couldn't for the life of him determine. A hussy, he
+decided temporarily. After all, his own time, when black and white had
+been distinguishable, was best. Howat Penny relinquished, with a sigh,
+the effort to penetrate to-day; he was content to be left behind; out of
+the grinding rush, the dizzy speed, of progression. His day, when black
+had been black, was immeasurably superior; the women had been more
+charming, the men erect, clothed in proper garb and pride. Where, now,
+could be seen such an audience as Dr. Damrosch had gathered for his
+first season of German opera? Not, certainly, at the performance he had
+heard with Mariana two, no--three, winters ago. A vulgarized performance
+in the spirit of a boulevard café. The whole present air, he told
+himself, was wrong.
+
+He looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that it was past ten.
+Not a sound came from the porch; and he determined to go outside,
+exercise the discretion which Mariana had cast to the winds. However, he
+didn't stir; he could not summon the energy necessary for the combating
+of their impetuous youth. He unfolded a paper, but it drooped on his
+knees, slid, finally, to the floor. Then Mariana appeared, walked
+swiftly, without a word, through the room, and vanished upstairs. Not
+even a civil period at the end of the evening. After another, long wait
+James Polder entered. The latter stood uneasily by the table, with a
+furrowed brow, a ridiculous, twitching mouth.
+
+Polder went out into the dining room; where, through the doorway, Howat
+Penny could see him hovering over the silver basket of oranges, placed
+upon the sideboard. "If you don't mind," he called back, and there were
+a rattle of knives, a thin ring of glass. The light was dim beyond, and
+he stood in the doorway with the brandy decanter and orange juice. He
+drained the mixture and leaned, absorbed, against the woodwork. "This is
+a hell of a world!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Everything worth having is
+fenced off. A woman won't understand. Does any one suppose that I don't
+want Mariana! It's the responsibility. She's right--I am afraid of it.
+And she laughed at me. Nothing cowardly in her," his voice deepened.
+
+"It is ignorance," Howat stated.
+
+"I thought so, for a minute; you are wrong. She's had more experience
+than we'd get in a thousand years. The life she knows would fix that.
+She talked me into a tangled foolishness in five minutes; made me look
+like a whiskered hypocrite. Nothing I said sounded real, and yet I must
+be right. Suppose Harriet should turn nasty, suppose--oh, a thousand
+things."
+
+"It isn't arguable," Howat Penny agreed.
+
+This afforded the other no consolation. "What is she to do?" he
+demanded. "Mariana won't settle quietly against a wall. She told you
+that. She's full of--of a sort of energy that must be at something.
+Mariana hasn't the anchor of most women--respectability."
+
+"Am I to gather that that is no longer considered admirable?" the elder
+inquired. "If you gather anything you are lucky," Polder replied
+gloomily. "I'm not sure about my own name. Good-night," he disappeared
+abruptly.
+
+Above, Howat slowly made his preparations for retiring, infinitely
+weary. Waking problems fell from him like a leaden weight into the sea
+of unconsciousness. He was relieved, at breakfast, to see Mariana come
+down in a hat, with the jacket of her suit on an arm. He waited for her
+to indicate the train by which she was leaving, so that he could tell
+Honduras to have the motor ready; but she sat around in a dragging
+silence. Polder walked up and down the room in which they were gathered.
+Howat wished he would stop his clattering movement. An expression of
+ill-nature deepened in Mariana; she looked her ugliest; and James Polder
+was perceptibly fogged from a lack of sleep. Finally he said:
+
+"Look here, we can't go on like this." He stopped in front of Mariana,
+with a quivering face. She raised her eyebrows. "Come outside," he
+begged. "What's the use?" she replied; but, at the same time, she rose.
+"Don't get desperate, Howat," she said over her shoulder. "Even I can't
+do any more; I can only take my shamelessness back to Andalusia." Polder
+held open the screen door; and as, without her jacket, she went out,
+Howat Penny had a final glimpse of the man bending at her side. Like two
+fish in a net, he thought ungraciously. He was worn out by their
+infernal flopping. With a determined movement of his shoulders, a fixing
+of his glass, he turned to the accumulation of his papers.
+
+Later he heard the changing gears of a motor. He thought for a moment
+that it was Honduras at his own car; then he recognized the stroke of a
+far heavier engine. The powerful, ungraceful bulk of an English machine
+was stopping at his door. Immediately after he distinguished the
+slightly harsh, dominating voice of Peter Provost. The latter entered,
+followed by Kingsfrere Jannan. Peter Provost, a member of the New York
+family and connection of the Jannans, had, since the elder Jannan's
+death, charge of the family's interest in the banking firm of Provost,
+Jannan and Provost. He occupied, Howat knew, a position of general
+advisor to Charlotte and her children. He was a large man who had never
+lost the hardness of a famous university career in the football field,
+with a handsome, cold countenance and spiked, grey moustache. He shook
+hands with Howat Penny, and plunged directly into his present purpose.
+
+"Kingsfrere," he said, "has heard some cheap stuff in the city,
+principally about that young Polder married last fall. Personally, I
+laughed at it, but Charlotte seemed upset. This Polder's wife, an
+actress, has left her husband, and gone back to the stage because--so
+Byron asserted; you know Byron--Mariana had broken up their home."
+
+"Old Polder said just that," Kingsfrere affirmed. "And that wasn't
+all--he added that Mariana was out here with the fellow."
+
+Provost laughed.
+
+"Well," Howat Penny replied, "James Polder is staying at Shadrach. He
+was asked here because his health was threatening. He had two weeks
+leave; and, although I wasn't really anxious, I said he might recuperate
+with me."
+
+"And Mariana?" Provost inquired.
+
+"Came out day before yesterday, late; leaving this morning."
+
+Howat Penny was conscious of a growing anger. There was no reason for
+his submitting to an interrogation by Peter Provost; he didn't have to
+justify his actions, the selection of his guests; and he had no
+intention of explaining his attitude toward Mariana. But Provost, it
+became evident, had no inclination to be intrusive. It was, he made that
+clear, wholly Charlotte. But Kingsfrere Jannan was increasingly
+impatient. "Where is Polder?" he demanded. Howat surveyed him with
+neither favour nor reply. Suddenly he understood the feeling of both
+men--they considered that he was too old to have any grip or
+comprehension of life. They were quietly but obviously relegating him to
+the back of the scene. His anger mounted; he was about to make a sharp
+reply, when he paused. There was a possibility that they were right; he
+was, undoubtedly, old; and he had been unable to influence, turn,
+Mariana, in the slightest degree. He didn't approve of her present,
+head-strong course ... only a few hours ago he had voluntarily, gladly,
+relinquished all effort to comprehend it.
+
+"Perhaps," Provost suggested, "since we are here we'd better talk to
+him. I suppose they're out about the place. You could send Rudolph."
+Howat replied that he would find them himself. He wanted, now, to
+prepare James Polder for any incidental unpleasantness. The latter, he
+knew, had a hasty temper, a short store of patience. After all, he had
+acted very well in a difficult situation. It had been Mariana. Howat
+Penny was aware of a growing sympathy for young Polder. His was a more
+engaging person than Kingsfrere's pasty presence and sharp reputation at
+cards. He got his hat, and went out over the thick, smooth sod, into the
+slumberous, blue radiance of the early summer noon.
+
+He found Mariana and James Polder sitting on a bank by the Furnace.
+"Peter Provost's here with Kingsfrere," he told them quietly. "They want
+to see.... James, about some nonsense bantered around town." Polder
+rose quickly, instantly antagonistic. "At the house?" he demanded,
+already moving away. Mariana stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
+"Don't pay any attention to what they may say, Jimmy," she commanded.
+"It isn't Peter Provost's affair, and Kingsfrere in a fatherly pose is a
+scream." They moved forward together. "I'll see them," she added
+cuttingly.
+
+"I will attend to this," James Polder told her. "I don't want any woman
+explaining my actions. They haven't a whisper on me. I'm glad enough of
+an opportunity to talk to a man."
+
+"If you lose your temper--" Howat commenced, but Mariana impatiently
+interrupted him. "Why shouldn't Jim lose his temper?" she demanded. "I
+would. Personally, I'd be glad if he did, although it mightn't be
+fortunate for Kingsfrere. He's a good deal of a dumpling. But I will be
+furious if you look guilty. Tell them we're mad about each other and
+that I am waiting for the smallest encouragement to go with you."
+
+Howat Penny left Mariana at the door, and went in with Polder. Provost
+was seated, with an open paper; Kingsfrere studying the photograph of
+Scalchi. "This," said Howat generally, "is my guest, James Polder."
+Peter Provost extended his square, powerful hand; but the other, Jannan,
+made no movement. "Well?" Polder demanded aggressively. Howat Penny
+proceeded through the room to the porch, where he met Mariana. They
+walked to the further end and found chairs. "What makes me sick,"
+Mariana proceeded, "is the way men calmly take everything into their own
+hands; as if women were still tied up, naughty bundles. Jim will have
+all the fun, and he has only said 'no' in horrified tones."
+
+Again he could think of no adequate reply. He listened in vain for the
+sound of raised voices within. "What, in heaven's name, brought them?"
+Howat told her what he had heard. "I'm glad I did break up that mess
+they called a home," she asserted. "It was rotten with stale beer and
+half pounds of liver for that disgusting animal!"
+
+The heat increased in waves; a wagon passing on the road below was
+enveloped in a cloud of dust. "I wish they'd hurry," Mariana said
+sharply. Howat Penny thought he heard Kingsfrere speaking in abrupt
+periods. Then a chair scraped, and Peter Provost's deliberate voice
+became audible. It was, however, impossible to distinguish his words;
+but suddenly Polder exclaimed, "Say something I can pound into you."
+Mariana rose, her hands clenched. "Go back to your mouldy little life!"
+James Polder continued. "I'm not surprised Miss Jannan wants to get out
+of it. I am sorry I hesitated. It seemed to me I couldn't offer her
+anything good enough; but that was before I'd listened to you.... And if
+you in particular come worming about me again I'll smash your flat
+face." The screen door was wrenched violently open, and James Polder
+strode up to Mariana. "Suppose we get out of this slag pit," he said,
+his chest labouring; "I can't breathe here."
+
+"I am ready, Jimmy," she replied quietly; "perhaps Howat will look up a
+train and let Honduras drive us to the station." She laid her hand on
+his arm. "Now we can forget them," she said. They turned, and, together,
+vanished into the house. Howat Penny followed them slowly. He found
+Peter Provost apparently undisturbed. "Nothing to be done," the latter
+commented. "I saw that immediately he turned up. Kingsfrere made a short
+effort, but it wasn't conspicuously successful; I imagine it rather
+worse than failed. God knows what's getting into these young women,
+Howat--Eliza and the rest of 'em--it's a gamble they don't. All right,
+Kingsfrere." Jannan lingered with a dark mutter, but the other
+unceremoniously drove him into the waiting car.
+
+Mariana soon descended, with Polder carrying two bags. "One seven,"
+Howat told them. In the extraordinary situation he found nothing
+adequate to say. Mariana might have been going unremarkably to Charlotte
+and her home; she was absolutely contained. James Polder had a dazed
+expression; without his companion, Howat thought, he would blunder into
+the walls. He stood, holding the bags until told to put them down.
+Honduras was soon at the door. Mariana moved forward, and mechanically
+Howat Penny made his customary pretence of avoiding her kiss. The warm
+fragrance of her lips remained long after she had gone.
+
+A pervasive stillness settled upon Shadrach; outside the sunlight lay on
+the hills in a thick, yellow veil; the cool interior held only the
+familiar crepitation of the old clock above. Now, he told himself, he
+could read the papers peacefully; but he sat with empty hands. Mariana
+had gone. "Outrageous conduct," he said aloud, without conviction. His
+voice sounded thin, unfamiliar. His dreams of her continued superiority
+to the commonplace, of her fine aloofness like the elevation of the
+strains of _Orfeo_, had been utterly destroyed. He could not imagine a
+greater descent than the one which had overtaken her. As he rehearsed
+its details they seemed increasingly disgraceful. He could not forgive
+James Polder for his relapse, his shocking failure to maintain the
+standards, the obligations, bred into himself, Howat Penny, by so many
+years, and by blood. It was that miserable old business of Jasper's once
+more, blighting the present, betraying Mariana.
+
+This wheeled in his brain throughout summer. He had, as he expected, no
+word from her. Charlotte, too, sent no line; he was isolated in the
+increasing and waning heat, in a sea of greenery growing heavy and grey
+with dust, then swept by rain, and touched with the scarlet finality of
+frost. Rudolph lit again the hickory fires in the middle hearth; the
+days shortened rapidly; sitting before the glow of the logs he could
+see, through a western window, the afternoon expiring in a sullen red
+flame. The leaves streamed sibilantly by the eaves and accumulated in
+dry, russet heaps in angles and hollows; they burned in crackling fires,
+filling the air with a drifting haze rich with suggestion and memories.
+He saw the first snow on a leaden morning when the flexible and bald
+white covering, devoid of charm, held the significance of barrenness,
+death. All day this chilling similitude lingered in his mind. He walked
+about the house slowly, unpleasantly conscious of the striking of his
+feet on the wood floors.
+
+At Christmas a revival of spirit overtook him; a long letter came from
+Mariana, Bundy Provost sent him a tall silver tankard, with a lid, for
+his night table. Howat, polishing his glass with a maroon bandanna, read
+Mariana's letter in the yellow light of the lamp and burning logs.
+
+"I have been to see a new steel process," she wrote; "the Duplex, with
+immense tilting furnaces and the Bessemer blast. I know a great deal
+about iron now; far more than a Howat Penny who should be an authority.
+Jim is frightfully busy, but lately he has been able to sleep after the
+night shift, which makes it better for every one. He is one of the best
+men here, and that comes from the Works, and the reorganization is
+slowly but surely progressing, and we are progressing with it. I am not
+a particle lonely, with only one servant; really don't want another,
+and make a great deal more than desserts. You have no idea how
+absorbing it is to have a lot of things that must be done. The days
+simply fade. You mustn't worry about me, Howat; I always hated polite
+affairs and parties and people; even when I was young as possible I was
+more than anything else a Hell in the Corner."
+
+He smiled, recognizing an old flippant phrase, and let his hand drop
+while he recalled Mariana--turning to him to hook her gown, constructing
+annoying towers with the dominoes, reprehensible and amusing. He resumed
+reading:
+
+"It would be wonderful if--no, it is wonderful! But Howat, I can tell
+only you this, I wish oranges had never been invented." He drew his
+mouth into a compressed line. James was drinking. He remembered when the
+other first made the concoction of orange juice and brandy; he saw him
+clearly, leaning in the doorway to the dining room, with the emptied
+goblet, and a curious, introspective expression on his mobile
+countenance. "He ought to be hung!" he exclaimed sharply. The fellow
+should see himself as a mat for Mariana's feet. But that wasn't life, he
+realized; existence seemed to become more and more heedless of the
+proprieties, of the simplest concessions to duty. He saw the world as a
+ship which, admirably navigated a score or more years ago, had jammed
+its rudder. No one could predict what rocks the unmanageable sphere
+might be driving for.
+
+The significance born by that sentence robbed the remainder of the
+letter of pleasure. He read that Mariana had ordered the customary gift
+of cigarettes, and hoped they would last him longer than everybody knew
+they would. The implied affection of all the paragraphs was visible in
+the last words. He put the letter carefully away. The cigarettes were
+sufficient for a considerable time beyond customary. Something of his
+appetite had gone; the periods of half wakeful slumber in his chair drew
+out through whole evenings. The actual world retreated; his memories, as
+bright as ever, became a little confused; the years, figures, mingled
+incongruously; famous arias were transposed to operas in which they had
+not been sung.
+
+Winter retreated, but the latter part of March and April were bitterly
+cold; no leaves appeared; the ground remained barren; he seldom got out.
+
+The albums of programmes were brought from their place on the low
+shelves, but now, more than often, they were barely opened, scanned.
+Then, on an evening when belated snow was sifting through the cracks of
+the solid shutters, he came on an oblong package, wrapped in strong
+paper. He opened it, in a momentary revival of interest, of life. It was
+a tall ledger, bound in crumbling calf, with stained and wrinkled
+leaves. Howat had not seen it for twenty years, but he recalled
+immediately that it was a forge book kept in Gilbert Penny's day; then
+Myrtle Forge had been new, that other Howat alive. He opened it
+carefully, powdered his knees with leather dust, and studied the faded
+entries; what flourishing, pale violet initials, what rubicund lines and
+endings!
+
+There were two handwritings, listing commonplace transactions now
+invested by time with an accumulated, poignant significance, one smooth
+and clerkly, the other abrupt, with heavy, impatient strokes. Youth,
+probably, held at an unwelcome task; and, more than likely, Howat ...
+October, in seventeen fifty. Years of virility, of struggle and
+conquest, of iron--iron, James Polder had shown him, still uncorrupted,
+better than the metal of to-day--and iron-like men. The ledger slipped
+to the floor, tearing the spongy leather and crumbling the sere leaves.
+He recovered it, dismayed at the damage wrought. A sheet apparently had
+come loose, and he bent forward with difficulty, a swimming head. Howat
+made an attempt to find its place, when he discovered that it was not a
+part of the volume. It was, he saw, a note, obliterated by creases but
+with some lines still legible, hurriedly scrawled, by a woman:
+
+"You must be more careful ... Your mother. So hot-headed, Howat. I can't
+do what you ask. I have a headache now thinking about Felix and you and
+myself. No one must find out." What followed was lost, then came a
+signature that, with the aid of a reading glass, he barely
+deciphered--"Ludowika."
+
+That was the name of the woman, a widow, Gilbert's son had married. Her
+first husband, Felix Winscombe, had died at Myrtle Forge during a
+diplomatic mission from England.... An old man with a young wife! His
+confusion, slowly resolving into a comprehension of what the note
+implied, filled him with an increasing revolt. The earlier Howat, too,
+like Jasper, in the tangle of an intrigue--not a public scandal and
+shame, as had been the later, but no less offensive. In a flare of anger
+Howat Penny crumpled the paper and flung it into the fire. There it
+instantly blackened, burst into flame and wavered, a shuddering cinder,
+up the chimney. He put the ledger, loosely wrapped in its covering, on
+the table, and sat breathing rapidly, curiously disturbed. The old
+fault, projected so unexpectedly out of the faithless burial of the
+past, struck at him with the weight of a personal affront.
+
+The heat subsided in the hearth, with the nightly ebbing of steam in the
+radiator; the hickory, disintegrating into blocks, faded from cherry red
+to pulsating, and finally dead, ash. Lost in the bitterness of his
+thoughts he made no movement to replenish the fire.
+
+He wondered if the explored histories of other families would show such
+scarring records as his own. Were there everywhere, back of each heart,
+puddles, sloughs, masked in the deceiving probity maintained for public
+view? And now--Mariana! Yet, somehow, her affair did not appear as ugly
+as these others. Stated coldly, in conventional terms, it was little
+different. Why, in plain words she had ... but Mariana evaded plain
+words, her challenging courage forbade them. Here was more than could be
+arraigned, convicted, by a stereotyped judgment. Or perhaps this was
+only his affection for her, blinding him to the truth.
+
+The first Howat and Jasper, striking contemptuously across the barriers
+of social morals, lived in Mariana, alone with James Polder in
+illegitimate circumstance, and in himself--an old man without family,
+without the supporting memory of actual achievement; the negative decay
+of a negative existence. His mind, confronted by a painful complexity of
+unanswerable problems, failed utterly. He was conscious of his impotence
+chilling his blood, deadening his nerves. Thin tears fell over his
+hollow cheeks; and he rose shakily, fiercely dragging at his bandanna.
+
+But he discovered that his hand was numb with cold. The fire lay black
+and dead. The shrilling wind, ladened with snow, wrenched at the
+shutters. The room was bitter. He must get up to bed ... warm blankets.
+A chill touched him with an icy breath. It overtook him midway on the
+stair, and he clung to the railing, appalled at its violence in his
+fragile being. He got, finally, to his room, to the edge of his bed,
+where he sat waiting for the assault to subside. He wanted Rudolph, but
+the effort to move to the door, call, appeared insuperable. The chill
+left him; and blundering, hideously delayed, he wrapped himself in the
+bed covering.
+
+Not all the wool in the world, he thought, would be sufficient to drive
+the cold from his body. He fell into a temporary exhaustion of sleep;
+but was waked later by sharp and oppressive pains in his chest,
+deepening when he breathed. The suffering must be mastered, and he lay
+with gripping hands, striving by force of will to overcome what he
+thought of as the brutal play of small, sharp knives. He conquered, it
+seemed; the pain grew less; but it had left an increasing difficulty in
+his breathing; it was a labour to absorb sufficient air even for his
+small, aged demands. Sleep deserted him; and he waited through seeming
+years for the delayed appearance of dawn. He had hoped that the new day
+would be sunny, warm; it was overcast, he could see the snow drifted in
+the lower window panes.
+
+Rudolph usually knocked at the door at half past eight; but, apparently,
+to-day he had forgot. Howat Penny's watch lay on the table, at his hand,
+yet it was far distant; he couldn't face the heavy effort of its
+inspection. At last the man came in with his even morning greeting.
+Howat was so exhausted that he could make no reply; and Rudolph moved
+silently to the bedside. His expression, for an instant, was deeply
+concerned. "I have a cold, or something of the sort," the other said. He
+raised his head, but sank back, with a thin, audible inspiration. "It
+would be best, sir, to have the doctor from Jaffa," the servant
+suggested. Howat, in the midst of protest, closed his eyes; the pain had
+returned. When he had again defeated it Rudolph was gone.
+
+The room blurred, lost its walls, became formless space; out of which,
+to his pleasurable surprise, he saw the carefully garbed figure of
+Colonel Mapleson walking toward him. He never forgot that tea rose!
+Confound him--probably another benefit for one of his indigent song
+birds. As Howat was about to speak the Colonel disappeared. It was
+Scalchi, in street dress, a yellow fur about her throat, warm,
+seductive. He had sent the divine Page the bouquet in paper lace. But
+she too vanished. He heard the strains of an orchestra; lingering he had
+missed the overture, and it might be the first duet--with Geister in
+superb voice. He was waiting for Mariana, that was it ... always late.
+Then her hand was under his arm. But it was the doctor from Jaffa.
+
+Rudolph was at the foot of the bed, and the two men moved aside,
+conversed impolitely in hushed tones. I'm sick, he thought lucidly. One
+word reached him--oxygen. It all melted away again, into a black lake
+with ghostly swans, a painted mouth and showering confetti; one of the
+supreme waltzes that Johann Strauss alone could compose. Later a woman
+in a folded linen cap was seated beside him, a chimera. But she laid
+cool fingers on his Wrist, held a brownish, distasteful mixture to his
+lips. A draught of egg nog was better, although it wasn't as persuasive
+as some he had had: Bundy Provost's, for example.
+
+Bundy was a galliard youth, but he was clear as ice underneath. He
+wouldn't have let them put that thing over his, Howat's, face. He tried
+to turn aside, but a cap of darkness descended upon him. Afterward his
+breathing was easier. A blue iron tank was standing nearby, and the
+nurse was removing a rubber mask attached to a flexible tube. The latter
+led from a glass bottle, with a crystal pipe into the tank; the bottle
+held water; and the water was troubled with subsiding, clear bubbles.
+More of the dark, unpleasant mixture, more egg nog. Why did they trouble
+and trouble him--already he was late getting to Irving Place.
+
+The opera, as he had feared, had commenced; and it was at once strange
+and familiar. The chorus and orchestra were singing in a deep ground
+tone; the stage was set with a row of great, seething furnaces; glaring
+white bars of light cut through vaporous, yellow gases and showered
+steel sparks where coppery figures were labouring obscurely in a flaming
+heat that rolled out over the audience. There was a shrilling of
+violins, and then a deafening blare of brass, an appalling volume of
+sound pouring out like boiling metal.... But here was Rudolph; the
+performance was at an end; it was time to go home.
+
+"I took the liberty of searching for--for Miss Jannan's address," the
+other told him. Well, and why not! "Mr. Provost and Mrs. Jannan are away
+for a week." Howat hoped that Kingsfrere would not turn up with his
+flat face. He was conscious of smiling at a memory the exact shape of
+which escaped him--something humorous that had happened to the pasty
+youth. A refreshing air came in at the open windows, and he struggled
+for a full, satisfying breath. The relief of what he dimly recognized as
+oxygen followed. The nurse moved to the door and Mariana entered.
+
+"Howat," she exclaimed, sitting beside him, "how silly of you! A cold
+now with winter done. The snow is running away. And these soda-watery
+tanks." He felt a warmth communicated by her actual presence. "It's just
+my breathing," he told her; "it gets stopped up. A damned nuisance! Did
+Honduras meet you?"
+
+She assured him that she had been correctly received, and vanished to
+remove her hat. Mariana must not sit in here, with the windows open, he
+told the nurse; but then, he added, it was no good giving Mariana
+advice. She wouldn't listen to it, except to do the opposite. She came
+back, in one of her eternal knitted things, this one like a ripe banana,
+and sat in the nurse's place. There was a great deal he wanted to know,
+in a few minutes, when he felt less oppressed. The night came swiftly,
+lit by his familiar lamps; Rudolph moved about in the orderly
+disposition of fresh white laundry. A coat needed pressing. It would do
+to-morrow. The doctor hurt him with a little scraping stab at the
+bottom of his ear.
+
+"Mariana," he at last made the effort of speech, questioning: "I have
+been bothered about your--your temporary arrangement. That Harriet, you
+know ... make trouble."
+
+"Why, Howat," she replied, admirably detached; "you don't read the
+important sheets of the papers! Harriet has made a tremendous success
+with what was supposed to be a small part. A New York manager has
+engaged her in letters of fire, for an unthinkable amount. James and I
+sent her our obscure compliments, but we were virtuously rebuked by a
+legal gentleman. Harriet, it seems, is going to cast us off."
+
+Of all that she had said only the word obscure remained in his mind; and
+it roused in him an echo of his old, dogmatic pride. "Mariana," he
+demanded, "didn't the reorganization come about; isn't James Polder
+superintendent?"
+
+She hesitated, then replied in a low, steady voice. "Yes, Howat, it did;
+but they didn't move Jim up. An older, they said steadier, man was
+chosen." It was the oranges, he told himself, the oranges and brandy;
+the cursed young fool. "You must come away, Mariana," he continued more
+faintly; "fair trial, failure--something to yourself, our family."
+
+"Leave Jimmy because he wasn't made superintendent!" she replied in an
+abstracted impatience. Then, "I wonder about a smaller plant? Won't you
+understand, Howat," she leaned softly over him; "I need Jim as badly as
+he needs me; perhaps more. If I had any superior illusions they have all
+gone. I can't tell us apart. Of course, I'd like him to get on, but
+principally for himself. Jim, every bit of him, the drinking and
+tempers, and tenderness you would never suspect, is my--oxygen. I can
+see that you want to know if I am happy; but I can't tell you, Howat.
+Perhaps that's the answer, and I am--I have a feeling of being a part of
+something outside personal happiness, something that has tied Jim and me
+together and gone on about a larger affair. You see, Howat, I wasn't
+consulted," she added in a more familiar impudence; "whether I was
+pleased or not didn't appear to matter. In a position like that it's
+silly to talk about happiness as if it were like the thrill at your
+first ball."
+
+He drifted away from her through the nebulous haze deepening about him.
+An occasional, objective buzzing penetrated to his removed place; but
+all the while he realized that he was getting farther and farther from
+such interruptions of an effort to distinguish a vaguely familiar,
+veiled shape. He saw, at last, that it was Howat, a black Penny. It was
+at once himself and that other Howat, yes, and Jasper. All three
+unremarkably merged into one. And the acts of the first, a dark young
+man with an erect, impatient carriage, a countenance and gaze of
+vigorous scorn, accumulated in a later figure, hardly less upright,
+slender, but touched with grey--a man in the middle of life. He paid
+with an anguished spirit for what had taken place; and at last an old
+man lingered with empty hands, the husk of a passion that had burned out
+all vitality.
+
+Mariana, too, had been drawn into the wide implications of this mingled
+past and present. But now, clearly, he recognized in her the meeting of
+spirit and flesh that had been denied to him. That was life, he thought,
+that was happiness. In the absence of such consummation he had come to
+nothing. In Jasper, in Susan Brundon who had married him over late, the
+two had warred.
+
+Life took the spirit to itself, mysteriously; wove the gold thread into
+its design of scarlet and earth and green, or else ... a hearth soon
+cold, the walls of a Furnace crumbled and broken, a ruin covered from
+memory by growing leafage and grass throbbing with the song of robins,
+the shrilling of frogs in the meadow.
+
+The doctor and nurse, Rudolph and Mariana, moved about him in a far, low
+stir. At times they approached on a lighter flood of oxygen. Mariana
+wiped his lips--an immaterial red stain. But what was that confounded
+opera the name of which he had forgot? It would be in his albums; in the
+first, probably. Downstairs. He had a sudden view of Mariana's face as
+she returned with the volume. An expression of piercing concern
+overwhelmed the reassuring smile she had for him.
+
+Howat understood at last, he was dying. An instinctive shuddering
+seized him; not in fear of the obliterating fact; but from a physical
+revulsion bred by his long years of delicate habit.
+
+Yet it wouldn't do to expose Mariana to the terrors; and, after a sharp,
+inward struggle, he said almost fretfully, "Further on." She turned the
+pages slowly; but no one could read without a decent light. He moved his
+head, in an infinity of labour, toward the clear, grey opening of the
+window, and saw a pattern of flying geese wavering across the tranquil
+sky.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Three Black Pennys
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2005 [EBook #15135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE BLACK PENNYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Images provided
+by the Million Book Project.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1><a name="THE_THREE_BLACK_PENNYS" id="THE_THREE_BLACK_PENNYS" />THE THREE BLACK PENNYS</h1>
+
+
+<h2>A NOVEL</h2>
+
+
+<h2>JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER</h2>
+
+<h3>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP</h3>
+
+<h3>PUBLISHERS</h3>
+
+<p><i>By Arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf</i></p>
+
+<p>COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY</p>
+
+<p>ALFRED A. KNOPF</p>
+
+
+<p>PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_DEDICATION" id="A_DEDICATION" /><i>A DEDICATION</i></h2>
+
+<p><i>Dear John Hemphill</i></p>
+
+<p>
+<i>This is a record and act of memory<br />
+of you at Dower House&mdash;of June<br />
+nights on the porch, with the foliage<br />
+of the willow tree powdered against<br />
+the stars; the white-panelled hearth<br />
+of the yellow room in smouldering<br />
+winter dusks; dinner with the candles<br />
+wavering in tepid April airs; and<br />
+the blue envelopment of late September<br />
+noons. A quiet reach like the old<br />
+grey house and green fields, the little<br />
+valleys filled with trees and placid<br />
+town beyond the hill, where the calendar<br />
+of our days and companionship is<br />
+set.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>Joseph Hergesheimer</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS" />CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+ <a href="#THE_THREE_BLACK_PENNYS"><b>THE THREE BLACK PENNYS</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#A_DEDICATION"><b>A DEDICATION</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#CONTENTS"><b>CONTENTS</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#I_THE_FURNACE"><b>I THE FURNACE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#I"><b>I</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#II"><b>II</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#III"><b>III</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#IV"><b>IV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#V"><b>V</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#VI"><b>VI</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#VII"><b>VII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#VIII"><b>VIII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#IX"><b>IX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#II_THE_FORGE"><b>II THE FORGE</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#X"><b>X</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XI"><b>XI</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XII"><b>XII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XIII"><b>XIII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XIV"><b>XIV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XV"><b>XV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XVI"><b>XVI</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XVII"><b>XVII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XVIII"><b>XVIII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XIX"><b>XIX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XX"><b>XX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXI"><b>XXI</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXII"><b>XXII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#III_THE_METAL"><b>III THE METAL</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXIII"><b>XXIII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXIV"><b>XXIV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXV"><b>XXV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXVI"><b>XXVI</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXVII"><b>XXVII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXVIII"><b>XXVIII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXIX"><b>XXIX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXX"><b>XXX</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXXI"><b>XXXI</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXXII"><b>XXXII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXXIII"><b>XXXIII</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#XXXIV"><b>XXXIV</b></a><br />
+ <a href="#THE_END"><b>THE END</b></a><br />
+ </p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I_THE_FURNACE" id="I_THE_FURNACE" />I THE FURNACE</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I" />I</h2>
+
+
+<p>A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly
+wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already
+stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with
+patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening
+underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above
+the hills, wavered against the serene, ashen evening. Howat Penny,
+standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the
+shifting, regular flight would not come close enough for a shot. He
+dropped the butt of his gun to the ground. Then he raised it again,
+examining the hammer; the flint was loose, unsatisfactory. There was a
+probability that it would miss firing.</p>
+
+<p>He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his
+keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened,
+permeating him. He turned his dark, young face toward the transparent,
+green afterglow; the firm eyebrows drawn up at the temples, sombre eyes
+set, too, at a slight angle, a straight nose, impatient mouth and
+projecting chin. Below him, and to the left, a heavy, dark flame and
+silvery smoke were rolling from the stack of Shadrach Furnace. Figures
+were moving obscurely over the way that led from the coal house, set on
+the hill, to the top and opening of the furnace; finishing, Howat Penny
+knew, the charge of charcoal, limestone and iron ore.</p>
+
+<p>Shadrach Furnace had been freshly set in blast; it was on that account
+he was there, to represent, in a way, his father, who owned a half
+interest in the Furnace. However, he had paid little attention to the
+formality; his indifference was especially centred on the tedious
+processes of iron making, which had, at the same time, made his family.
+He had gone far out from the Furnace tract into an utterly uninhabited
+and virginal region, where he had shot at, and missed, an impressive
+buck and killed a small bear. Now, that he had returned, his apathy once
+more flooded him; but he had eaten nothing since morning, and he was
+hungry.</p>
+
+<p>He could go home, over the nine miles of road that bound the Furnace to
+Myrtle Forge and the Penny dwelling; there certain of whatever supper he
+would elect. But, he decided, he preferred something now, less formal.
+There were visitors at Myrtle Forge, Abner Forsythe, who owned the other
+half of Shadrach, his son David, newly back from England and the study
+of metallurgy, and a Mr. Winscombe, come out to the Provinces in
+connection with the Maryland boundary dispute, accompanied by his wife.
+All this Howat Penny regarded with profound distaste; necessary social
+and conversational forms repelled him. And it annoyed his father when he
+sat, apparently morose, against the wall, or retired solitary to his
+room.</p>
+
+<p>He would get supper here; they would be glad to have him at the house of
+Peter Heydrick, the manager of the Furnace. Half turning, he could see
+the dwelling at his back&mdash;a small, grey stone rectangle with a narrow
+portico on its solid face and a pale glimmer of candles in the lower
+windows. The ground immediately about it was cleared of brush and little
+trees, affording Peter Heydrick a necessary, unobstructed view of the
+Furnace stack while sitting in his house or when aroused at night. The
+dwelling was inviting, at once slipping into the dusk and emerging by
+reason of the warm glow within. Mrs. Heydrick, too, was an excellent
+cook; there would be plenty of venison, roast partridge, okra soup.
+Afterwards, under a late moon, he could go back to Myrtle Forge; or he
+might stay at the Heydricks all night, and to-morrow kill such a buck as
+he had lost.</p>
+
+<p>The twilight darkened beneath the trees, the surrounding hills lost
+their forms, in the east the distance merged into the oncoming night,
+but the west was still translucent, green. There was a faint movement
+in the leaves by the roadside, and a grey fox crossed, flattened on the
+ground, and disappeared. Howat Penny could see the liquid gleam of its
+eyes as it watched him. From the hill by the coal house came the heavy
+beating of wild turkeys' wings.</p>
+
+<p>He could go to Peter Heydrick's, where the venison would be excellent,
+and Mrs. Heydrick was celebrated for her guinea pickle with cucumbers;
+but ... the Heydricks had no daughter, and the Gilkans had. Thomas
+Gilkan was only a founderman; his house had one room below and a
+partition above; and Mrs. Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to
+Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny Gilkan, erect
+and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could himself, and carry
+her father's clumsy gun all the way.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of
+supper, and rested upon the fact that his&mdash;his appreciation of her was
+becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it,
+with biting comments, among the charcoal burners. Dan Hesa, although
+younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward
+young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her
+serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among
+the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of
+the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with
+the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive
+in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he
+knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to
+Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior merits
+of the Heydrick table.</p>
+
+<p>That was his character: denial as a child had filled him with
+slow-accumulating rage; later discipline at school had found him utterly
+intractable. Something deep and instinctive within him resisted every
+effort to make him a part of any social organization, however admirable;
+he never formed any personal bonds with humanity in particular. He had
+grown into a solitary being within whom were immovably locked all the
+confidences, the spontaneous expressions of self, that bind men into a
+solidarity of common failings and hopes. He never offered, nor,
+apparently, required, any marks of sympathy; as a fact, he rarely
+expressed anything except an occasional irrepressible scorn lashing out
+at individuals or acts that conspicuously displeased him. This had
+occurred more than once at Myrtle Forge, when assemblymen or members of
+the Provincial Council had been seated at dinner.</p>
+
+<p>It was after such a scene that his mother had witnessed perhaps his only
+attempt at self-explanation. &quot;I am sorry you were disturbed,&quot; he had
+pronounced, after standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning
+space; &quot;but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like
+cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't
+manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the
+stuffy show. If it gets much thicker,&quot; he had threatened, waving vaguely
+toward the west, &quot;I'll go out to the Ohio, or the French forts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That this was not merely a passive but an active state of mind was amply
+expressed by his resolute movement toward Thomas Gilkan's house. He had,
+ordinarily, an unusual liking for the charcoal burners, and had spent
+many nights in their huts, built, like the charring stacks, of mud and
+branches. But, organized by Dan Hesa into an opposition, a criticism of
+his choice of way, they offered an epitome of the conditions he derided
+and assailed.</p>
+
+<p>His feeling for Fanny Gilkan was in the greater part understood,
+measured; there was a certain amount of inchoate, youthful response to
+her sheer physical well being, a vague blur of pleasant sensation at her
+proximity; but beyond that he felt no attraction except a careless
+admiration for her endurance and dexterity in the woods, a certain
+relief in the freedom of her companionship. He had never considered her
+concretely as a possible source of physical pleasure. He was not easily
+excited sexually, and had had few adventures with women; something of
+his contempt, his indifference, removed him from that, too. His emotions
+were deep, vital; and hid beneath a shyness of habit that had grown into
+a suspicious reserve. All bonds were irksome to him, and instinctively
+he avoided the greater with the lesser; instinctively he realized that
+the admission of cloying influences, of the entanglements of sex, would
+more definitely bind him than any generality of society.</p>
+
+<p>It had, he thought, grown dark with amazing rapidity. He could now see a
+feeble light at the Gilkans, ahead and on the right. At the same moment
+a brighter, flickering radiance fell upon the road, the thick foliage of
+the trees. The blast was gathering at Shadrach Furnace. A clear, almost
+smokeless flame rose from the stack against the night-blue sky. It
+illuminated the rectangular, stone structure of the coal-house on the
+hill, and showed the wet and blackened roof of the casting shed below.
+The flame dwindled and then mounted, hanging like a fabulous oriflamme
+on a stillness in which Howat Penny could hear the blast forced through
+the Furnace by the great leather bellows.</p>
+
+<p>He turned in, over the littered ground before the Gilkan house. Fanny
+was standing in the doorway, her straight, vigorous body sharp against
+the glow inside. &quot;Here's Mr. Howat Penny,&quot; she called over her shoulder.
+&quot;Is everything off the table? There's not much,&quot; she turned to him, &quot;but
+the end of the pork barrel.&quot; A meagre fire was burning in the large,
+untidy hearth; battered tin ovens had been drawn aside, and a pair of
+wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back
+against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty
+but for some dull scarred pewter and scraps of salt meat. On the narrow
+stair that led above, a small, touselled form was sleeping&mdash;one of the
+cast boys at the Furnace.</p>
+
+<p>A thin, peering woman in a hickory-dyed wool dress moved forward
+obsequiously. &quot;Mr. Penny!&quot; she echoed the girl's announcement; &quot;and here
+I haven't got a thing fit for you. Thomas Gilkan has been too busy to
+get out, and Fanny she'll fetch nothing unless the mood's on her. If I
+only had a fish I could turn over.&quot; She brushed the end of the table
+with a frayed sleeve. &quot;You might just take a seat, and I'll look
+around.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan listened to her mother with a comprehending smile. Fanny's
+face was gaunt, but her grey eyes were wide and compelling, her mouth
+was firm and bright; and her hair, her father often said, resembled the
+fire at the top of Shadrach. Howat knew that she was as impersonal, as
+essentially unstirred, as himself; but he had a clear doubt of Mrs.
+Gilkan. The latter was too anxious to welcome him to their unpretending
+home; she obviously moved to throw Fanny and himself together, and to
+disparage such suits as honest Dan Hesa's. He wondered if the older
+woman thought he might marry her daughter. And wondering he came to the
+conclusion that the other thing would please the mother almost as well.
+She had given him to understand that at Fanny's age she would know how
+to please any Mr. Howat Penny that chance fortune might bring her.</p>
+
+<p>That some such worldly advice had been poured into Fanny's ears he
+could not doubt; and he admired the girl's obvious scorn of such wiles
+and surrenders. She sat frankly beside him now, as he finished a
+wretched supper, and asked about the country in regions to which she had
+not penetrated. &quot;It's a three days' trip,&quot; he finished a recital of an
+excursion of his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd like to go,&quot; she returned; &quot;but I suppose I couldn't find it
+alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was considering the possibility of such a journey with her&mdash;it would
+be pleasant in the extreme&mdash;when her mother interrupted them from the
+foot of the stair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A sensible girl,&quot; she declared, &quot;would think about seeing the sights of
+a city, and of a cherry-derry dress with ribbons, instead of all this
+about tramping off through the woods with a ragged skirt about your
+naked knees.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan's face darkened, and she glanced swiftly at Howat Penny. He
+was filling a pipe, unmoved. Such a trip as he had outlined, with Fanny,
+was fastening upon his thoughts. It would at once express his entire
+attitude toward the world, opinion, and the resentful charcoal burners.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You wouldn't really go,&quot; he said aloud, half consciously.</p>
+
+<p>The girl frowned in an effort of concentration, gazing into the thin
+light of the dying fire and two watery tallow dips. Her coarsely spun
+dress, coloured with sassafras bark and darker than the yellow hickory
+stain, drew about her fine shoulders and full, plastic breast. &quot;I'd like
+it,&quot; she repeated; &quot;but afterward. There is father&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had said father, but Howat Penny determined that she was thinking of
+Dan Hesa; Dan was as strong as himself, if heavier; a personable young
+man. He would make a good husband. But that, he added, was in the
+future; Dan Hesa apparently didn't want to marry Fanny to-morrow, that
+week. Meanwhile a trip with him to the headwaters of a creek would not
+injure her in the least. His contempt of a world petty and iron-bound in
+endless pretence, fanning his smouldering and sullen resentment in
+general, flamed out in a determination to take her with him if possible.
+It would conclusively define, state, his attitude toward &quot;men herding
+like cattle.&quot; He did not stop to consider what it might define for Fanny
+Gilkan. In the stir of his rebellious self there was no pause for
+vicarious approximations. If he thought of her at all it was in the
+indirect opinion that she was better without such a noodle as Dan Hesa
+threatened to become.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'd get two horses from the Forge,&quot; he continued, apparently to his
+mildly speculative self; &quot;a few things, not much would be necessary.
+That gun you carry,&quot; he addressed Fanny indirectly, &quot;is too heavy. I'll
+get you a lighter, bound in brass.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She repeated sombrely, leaning with elbows on the table, her chin in her
+hands, &quot;And afterwards&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought you were free of that,&quot; he observed; &quot;it sounds like the
+town women, the barnyard crowd. I thought you were an independent
+person. Certainly,&quot; he went on coldly, &quot;you can't mistake my attitude. I
+like you, but I am not in the least interested in any way that&mdash;that
+jour mother might appreciate. I am neither a seducer nor the type that
+marries.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand that, Howat,&quot; she assured him; &quot;and I think, I'm not sure
+but I think, that what you mean wouldn't bother me either. Anyhow it
+shouldn't spoil the fun of our trip. But no one else in the world would
+believe that simple truth. If you could stay there, in those splendid
+woods or a world like them, why, it would be heaven. But you have to
+come back, you have to live on, perhaps for a great while, in the world
+of Shadrach and Myrtle Forge. I'm not sure that I'd refuse if you asked
+me to go, Howat. I just don't know if a woman can stand alone, for
+that's what it would come to afterward, against a whole lifeful of
+misjudgment. It might be better in the end, for everybody, if she
+continued home, made the best of things with the others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You may possibly be right,&quot; he told her with a sudden resumption of
+indifference. After all, it was unimportant whether or not Fanny Gilkan
+went with him to the source of the stream he had discovered. Every one,
+it became more and more evident, was alike, monotonous. He wondered
+again, lounging back against the wall, about the French forts, outposts
+in a vast wilderness. There was an increasing friction between the
+Province and France, the legacy of King George's War, but Howat Penny's
+allegiance to place was as conspicuous by its absence as the other
+communal traits. Beside that, beyond Kaskaskia, at St. Navier and the
+North, there was little thought of French or English; the sheer problem
+of existence there drowned other considerations. He would, he thought,
+go out in the spring ... leave Myrtle Forge with its droning anvil, the
+endless, unvaried turning of water wheel, and the facile, trivial
+chatter in and about the house. David Forsythe, back from England in the
+capacity of master of fluxing metals, might acquire his, Howat's,
+interest in the Penny iron.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan said, &quot;You'll burn a hole in your coat with that pipe.&quot; He
+roused himself, and she moved across the room and pinched the smoking
+wicks. The embers on the hearth had expired, and the fireplace was a
+sooty, black cavern. Fanny, at the candles, was the only thing clearly
+visible; the thin radiance slid over the turn of her cheek; her hovering
+hand was like a cut-paper silhouette. It was growing late; Thomas Gilkan
+would soon be back from the Furnace; he must go. Howat had no will to
+avoid Gilkan, but the thought of the necessary conversational exchange
+wearied him.</p>
+
+<p>The sound of footsteps approached the house from without; it was, he
+thought, slightly annoyed, the founderman; but the progress deflected
+by the door, circled to a window at the side. A voice called low and
+urgent, &quot;Seemy! Seemy!&quot; It was repeated, and there was an answering
+mutter from the stair, a thick murmur and a deep sigh.</p>
+
+<p>The cast boy slipped crumpled and silent in bare feet across the floor.
+&quot;Yes,&quot; he called back, rapidly waking.</p>
+
+<p>The voice from without continued, &quot;They're going to start up the Oley.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is it?&quot; Fanny demanded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The raccoon dogs,&quot; the boy paused at the door. &quot;A lot of the furnacemen
+and woodcutters from round about are hunting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan leaned across the table to Howat, her face glowing with
+interest. &quot;Come ahead,&quot; she urged; &quot;we can do this anyhow. I like to
+hear the dogs yelping, and follow them through the night. You can bring
+your gun, I'll leave mine back, and perhaps we'll get something really
+big.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat himself responded thoroughly to such an expedition; to the mystery
+of the primitive woods, doubly withdrawn in the dark; the calls of the
+others, near or far, or completely lost in a silence of stars; the still
+immensity of a land unguessed, mythical&mdash;endless trees, endless
+mountains, endless rivers with their headwaters buried in arctic
+countries beyond human experience, and emptying into the miraculous blue
+and gilded seas of the tropics.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan would follow the dogs closely, too, with infinite swing
+and zest. She knew the country better than himself, better almost than
+any one else at the Furnace. He stirred at her urgency, and she caught
+his arm, dragging him from behind the table. She tied a linsey-woolsey
+jacket by its arms about her waist, and put out the candles. Outside the
+blast was steadily in progress at the stack; the clear glow of the flame
+shifted over the nearby walls, glinted on the new yellow of more distant
+foliage, fell in sharp or blurred traceries against the surrounding
+night.</p>
+
+<p>They could hear the short, impatient yelps of the dogs; but, before they
+reached them, the hunt was away. A lantern flickered far ahead, a minute
+blur vanishing through files of trees. Fanny turned to the right,
+mounting an abrupt slope thickly wooded toward the crown. A late moon,
+past full, shed an unsteady light through interlaced boughs, matted
+grape vines, creepers flung from tree to tree; it shone on a hurrying
+rill, a bright thread drawn through the brush. Fanny Gilkan jumped
+lightly from bank to bank. She made her way with lithe ease through
+apparently unbroken tangles. It was Fanny who went ahead, who waited for
+Howat to follow across a fallen trunk higher than his waist. She even
+mocked him gaily, declared that, through his slowness, they were
+hopelessly losing the hunt.</p>
+
+<p>However, the persistent barking of the dogs contrived to draw them on.
+They easily passed the stragglers, left a group gathered about a lantern
+and a black bottle. They caught up to the body of men, but preferred to
+follow a little outside of the breathless comments and main, stumbling
+progress. They stirred great areas of pigeons and countless indifferent
+coveys of partridges barely moved to avoid the swiftly falling feet. But
+no deer crossed near them, and the crashing of a heavy animal through
+the bushes diminished into such a steep gulley that they relinquished
+thought of pursuit. The chase continued for an unusual distance; the
+moon sank into the far, unbroken forest; the stars brightened through
+the darkest hour of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan and Howat proceeded more slowly now, but still they went
+directly, without hesitation, in the direction they chose. They crossed
+a log felled over a shallow, hurrying creek; the course grew steeper,
+more densely wooded. &quot;Ruscomb Manor,&quot; Fanny pronounced over her
+shoulder. &quot;Since a long way back,&quot; he agreed. Finally a sharper,
+stationary clamour announced that the object of the hunt had been
+achieved, and a raccoon treed. They made their way to the dim
+illumination cast on moving forms and a ring of dogs throwing themselves
+upward at the trunk of a tree. There was a concerted cry for &quot;Ebo,&quot; and
+a wizened, grey negro in a threadbare drugget coat with a scarlet
+handkerchief about his throat came forward and, kicking aside the dogs,
+commenced the ascent of the smooth trunk that swept up to the obscure
+foliage above. There was a short delay, then a violent agitation of
+branches. A clawing shape shot to the ground, struggled to its feet, but
+the raccoon was instantly smothered in a snarling pyramid of dogs.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny was overwhelmingly weary. He had tramped all day, since
+before morning; while now another dawn was approaching, and the hunters
+were at least ten miles from the Furnace. He would have liked to stay,
+sleep, where he was; but the labour of preparing a proper resting place
+would be as great as returning to Shadrach. Besides, Fanny Gilkan was
+with him, with her new, cautious regard for the world's opinion. They
+stood silent for a moment, under a fleet dejection born of the hour and
+a cold, seeping mist of which he became suddenly conscious. The barrel
+of his gun was wet, and instinctively he wiped off the lock. Two men
+passing brushed heavily against him and stopped. &quot;Who is it,&quot; one
+demanded, &quot;John Rajennas? By God, it's a long way back to old Shadrach
+with splintering shoes.&quot; A face drew near Howat, and then retreated.
+&quot;Oh, Mr. Penny! I didn't know you were up on the hunt.&quot; It was, he
+recognized, one of the coaling men who worked for Dan Hesa. The other
+discovered Fanny Gilkan. &quot;And Fanny, too,&quot; the voice grew inimical. The
+men drew away, and a sharp whispering fluctuated out of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come,&quot; Howat Penny said sharply; &quot;we must get back or stay out here for
+the rest of the night. I don't mind admitting I'd like to be where I
+could sleep.&quot; She moved forward, now tacitly taking a place behind him,
+and he led the return, tramping doggedly in the shortest direction
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>The hollows and stream beds were filled with the ghostly mist, and
+bitterly chill; the night paled slightly, diluted with grey; there was a
+distant clamour of crows. They entered the Furnace tract by a path at
+the base of the rise from where they had started. On the left, at a
+crossing of roads, one leading to Myrtle Forge, the other a track for
+the charcoal sleds, a blacksmith's open shed held a faint smoulder on
+the hearth. The blast from Shadrach Furnace rose perpendicular in the
+still air.</p>
+
+<p>Fanny Gilkan slipped away with a murmur. Howat abandoned all thought of
+returning to Myrtle Forge that night. But it was, he corrected the
+conclusion, morning. The light was palpable; he could see individual
+trees, the bulk of the cast-house, built directly against the Furnace;
+in the illusive radiance the coal house on the hill seemed poised on top
+of the other structures. A lantern made a reddish blur in the
+cast-house; it was warm in there when a blast was in progress, and he
+determined to sleep at once.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Gilkan, with a fitful light, was testing the sealing clay on the
+face of the Furnace hearth; two men were rolling out the sand for the
+cast over the floor of the single, high interior, and another was
+hammering on a wood form used for stamping the pig moulds. The interior
+was soothing; the lights, blurred voices, the hammering, seemed to
+retreat, to mingle with the subdued, smooth clatter of the turning wheel
+without, the rhythmic collapse of the bellows. Howat Penny was losing
+consciousness when an apparently endless, stuttering blast arose close
+by. He cursed splenetically. It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands
+for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning
+lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat
+saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist
+smiting a broad, hard palm. The group shifted, and the countenance of
+the man who had recognized Howat Penny in the woods swam into the pale
+radiance. His lassitude swiftly deserted him, receding before the
+instant resentment always lying at the back of his sullen
+intolerance&mdash;they were discussing him, mouthing some foul imputation
+about the past night. Hesa left the cast-house abruptly, followed by the
+charcoal burner; and Howat rose, the length of his rifle thrust forward
+under his arm, and walked deliberately forward.</p>
+
+<p>The daylight was increasing rapidly; and, as he approached, Thomas
+Gilkan extinguished the flame of the lantern. He was a small man, with a
+face parched by the heat of the furnace, and a narrowed, reddened vision
+without eyebrows or lashes. He was, Howat had heard, an unexcelled
+founder, a position of the greatest importance to the quality of metal
+run. There was a perceptible consciousness of this in the manner in
+which Gilkan moved forward to meet Gilbert Penny's son.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't want to give offence,&quot; the founderman said, &quot;but, Mr. Penny,
+sir&mdash;&quot; he stopped, commenced again without the involuntary mark of
+respect. &quot;Mr. Penny, stay away from my house. There is more that I could
+say but I won't. That is all&mdash;keep out of my place. No names, please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny's resentment swelled in a fiery anger at the stupidity that
+had driven Thomas Gilkan into making his request. A sense of humiliation
+contributed to an actual fury, the bitterer for the reason that he could
+make no satisfactory reply. Gilkan was a freedman; while he was
+occupying a dwelling at Shadrach Furnace it was his to conduct as he
+liked. Howat's face darkened&mdash;the meagre fool! He would see that there
+was another head founder here within a week.</p>
+
+<p>But there were many positions in the Province for a man of Gilkan's
+ability, there were few workmen of his sensitive skill with the charge
+and blast. Not only Howat's father, but Abner Forsythe as well, would
+search to the end all cause for the founderman's leaving. And, in
+consequence of that, any detestable misunderstanding must increase. He
+determined, with an effort unaccustomed and arduous, to ignore the
+other; after all Gilkan was but an insignificant mouthpiece for the
+familiar ineptitude of the world at large. Thomas Gilkan might continue
+at the Furnace without interference from him; Fanny marry her stupid
+labourer. Howat had seen symptoms of that last night. He would no longer
+complicate her existence with avenues of escape from a monotony which
+she patently elected.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, Gilkan,&quot; he agreed shortly, choking on his wrath. He turned
+and tramped shortly from the interior. A sudden, lengthening sunlight
+bathed the open and a sullen group of charcoal burners about Dan Hesa.
+Their faces seemed ebonized by the grinding in of particles of blackened
+wood. Some women, even, in gay, primitive clothes, stood back of the
+men. As Howat passed, a low, hostile murmur rose. He halted, and met
+them with a dark, contemptuous countenance, and the murmur died in a
+shuffling of feet in the dry grass. He turned again, and walked slowly
+away, when a broken piece of rough casting hurtled by his head. In an
+overpowering rage he whirled about, throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
+A man detached from the group was lowering his arm; and, holding the
+sights hard on the other's metal-buttoned, twill jacket, Howat pulled
+the trigger. There was only an answering dull, ineffectual click.</p>
+
+<p>The rifle slid to the ground, and Howat stared, fascinated, at the man
+he had attempted to kill. The charcoal burners were stationary before
+the momentary abandon of Howat Penny's temper. &quot;Right at me,&quot; the man
+articulated who had been so nearly shot into oblivion. &quot;&mdash;saw the hammer
+fall.&quot; A tremendous desire to escape possessed Howat; a violent chill
+overtook him; his knees threatened the loss of all power to hold him up.
+He stepped backward, his gun stock trailing over the inequalities of the
+ground; then he swung about, and, in an unbroken silence, stumbled away.</p>
+
+<p>He was not running from anything the charcoal burner might say, do, but
+from a terrifying spectacle of himself; from the vision of a body shot
+through the breast, huddled in the sere underbrush. He was aghast at the
+unsuspected possibility revealed, as it were, out of a profound dark by
+the searing flash of his anger, cold at the thought of such absolute
+self-betrayal. Howat saw in fancy the bald triumph of a society to which
+his act consummated would have delivered him; a society that, as his
+peer, would have judged, condemned, him. Hundreds of faces&mdash;faces mean,
+insignificant, or pock-marked&mdash;merged into one huge, dominant
+countenance; hundreds of bodies, unwashed or foul with disease, or
+meticulously clean, joined in one body, clothed in the black robe of
+delegated authority, and loomed above him, gigantic and absurd and
+powerful, and brought him to death. Deeper than his horror, than any
+fear of physical consequences, lay the instinctive shrinking from the
+obliteration of his individual being, the loss of personal freedom.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II" />II</h2>
+
+
+<p>He was possessed by an unaccustomed desire to be at Myrtle Forge;
+usually it was the contrary case, and he was escaping from the
+complicated civilisation of his home; but now the well-ordered house,
+the serenity of his room, appeared astonishingly inviting. Howat
+progressed rapidly past the smithy, and turned to the right, about the
+Furnace dam, a placid and irregular reach of water holding the
+reflection of the trees on a mirror still dulled by a vanishing trace of
+mist, above which the leaves hung in the motionless air, in the aureate
+wash of the early sun, as if they had been pressed from gold foil.
+Beyond the dam the path&mdash;he had left the road that connected Forge and
+Furnace for a more direct way&mdash;followed the broad, rippling course of
+the Canary, the stream that supplied the life of Myrtle Forge. He
+automatically avoided the breaks in the rough trail; his mind, a dark
+and confused chamber, still lighted by appalling flashes of memory. A
+thing as slight, as incalculable, as a loose flint had been all that
+prevented.... He wondered if Fanny and Thomas Gilkan were right in their
+shared conviction; Fanny half persuaded, but the elder with a finality
+stamped with an accent of the heroic. Whether or not they were right
+didn't concern him, he decided; his only problem was to keep outside
+all such entanglements. And at present he wanted to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The path left the creek and joined the road that swept about the face of
+the dwelling at Myrtle Forge. The lawn, squarely raised from the public
+way by a low brick terrace, showed the length of house behind the
+dipping, horizontal branches, the beginning, pale gold, of a widespread
+beech. It was a long structure of but two stories, built solidly out of
+a dark, flinty stone with an indefinite pinkish glow against the lush
+sod and sombre, flat greenery of a young English ivy about a narrow,
+stiff portico.</p>
+
+<p>Howat crossed the lawn above the house, where a low wing, holding the
+kitchen and pantries, extended at right angles from the dwelling's
+length. A shed with a flagging of broad stones lay inside the angle,
+where a robust girl with an ozenbrigs skirt caught up on bare legs and
+feet thrust into wooden clogs was scrubbing a steaming line of iron
+pots. He quickly entered the centre hall from a rear door, and mounted,
+as he hoped, without interruption to his room. That interior was
+singularly restful, pleasant, after the confused and dishevelling night.</p>
+
+<p>The sanded floor, patterned with a broom, held no carpet, nor were the
+walls covered, but white and bare save for a number of small, framed
+engravings&mdash;a view of Boston Harbour, Queene Anne's Tomb, and some black
+line satirical portrait prints. A stone fireplace, ready for lighting,
+had iron dogs and fender, and a screen lacquered in flowery wreaths on
+a slender black stem. At one side stood a hinge-bound chest, its oak
+panels glassy with age; on the other, an English set of drawers held a
+mirror stand and scattered trifles&mdash;razors and gold sleeve-buttons, a
+Barcelona handkerchief, candlesticks and flint, a twist of common,
+pig-tail tobacco; while from a drawer knob hung a banian of bright
+orange Chinese silk with a dark blue cord.</p>
+
+<p>By the side of his curled black walnut bed, without drapery, and set,
+like a French couch, low on three pairs of spiral legs, was a deep
+cushioned chair into which he sank and dragged off his sodden buckskin
+breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision&mdash;squat,
+rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with
+apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the floor.... He
+secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool, sibilant folds,
+he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, into an immediate profound
+slumber.</p>
+
+<p>The shadows of late afternoon were once more gathering when he woke. He
+lay, with hands clasped behind his head, watching a roseate glow
+disperse from the room. From without came the faint, clear voice of
+Marta Appletofft, across the road at the farm, calling the chickens; and
+he could hear the querulous whistling of the partridges that invariably
+deserted the fringes of forest to join the domesticated flocks at feed
+time. A sense of well-being flooded him; the project of St. Xavier, the
+French forts, drew far away; never before had he found Myrtle Forge so
+desirable. He was, he thought, growing definitely older. He was
+twenty-five.</p>
+
+<p>A light knock fell on his door, and he answered comfortably, thinking
+that it was his mother. But it was Caroline, his oldest sister. &quot;How you
+have slept,&quot; she observed, closing the door at her back; &quot;it was hardly
+nine when you came in, and here it is five. Mother heard you.&quot; Caroline
+Penny was a warm, unbeautiful girl with a fine, slender body, two years
+younger than himself. Her colouring was far lighter than Howat's; she
+had sympathetic hazel eyes, an inviting mouth, an illusive depression in
+one cheek that alone saved her from positive ugliness, and tobacco brown
+hair worn low with a long, turned strand. She had on a pewter-coloured,
+informal wrap over a black silk petticoat, lacking hoops, with a cut
+border of violet and silver brocade; and above low, green kid stays with
+coral tulip blossoms worked on the dark velvet of foliage were glimpses
+of webby linen and frank, young flesh.</p>
+
+<p>She came to the edge of the bed, where she sat with a yellow morocco
+slipper swinging from a silk clocked, narrow foot. He liked Caroline,
+Howat lazily thought. Although she did not in the least resemble their
+mother in appearance&mdash;she could not pretend to such distinction of
+being&mdash;Caroline unmistakably possessed something of the other's
+personality, far more than did Myrtle. She said generally, patently only
+delaying for the moment communications of much greater interest than
+himself, &quot;Where were you last night?&quot; He told her, and she plunged at
+once into a rich store of information.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Winscombe are staying on? It's so,
+because of the fever in the city. David and his father stopped all
+night, too, and only left after breakfast. He's insane about London, but
+I could see that he's glad to get back to the Province. Mr. Forsythe is
+very abrupt, but ridiculously proud of him&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;These Winscombes,&quot; Howat interrupted, &quot;what about them? The Forsythes
+are a common occurrence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;David's been gone more than three years,&quot; she replied. &quot;And you should
+hear him talk; he's got a coat with wired tails in his box he's dying to
+wear, but is afraid of his father. Oh, the Winscombes! Well, he's rather
+sweet, sixty or sixty-five years old; very straight up the back, and
+wears the loveliest wigs. His servant fixes them on a stand&mdash;he turns
+the curls about little rolls of clay, ties them with paper, and then
+bakes it in the oven like a pudding. The servant is an Italian with a
+long duck's bill of a nose and quick little black eyes. He makes our
+negro women giggle like anything. It's evident he is fearfully
+impertinent. And, what do you think?&mdash;he hooks Mrs. Winscombe into her
+stays! Mother says that that isn't anything, really; Mrs. Winscombe is a
+lady of the court, and the most extraordinary happenings go on there.
+You see, mother knows a lot about her family, and it's very good; she's
+part Polish and part English, and her name's Ludowika. She's ages
+younger than her husband.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Myrtle doesn't like her,&mdash;&quot; she stopped midway in her torrent of
+information. &quot;I came in to talk to you about Myrtle,&quot; she went on in a
+different voice; &quot;that is, partly about Myrtle, but more of myself and
+of&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long are the others going to stay?&quot; he cut in heedlessly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; she again repressed her own desire; &quot;perhaps they will
+have to go back to Annapolis&mdash;don't ask me why&mdash;but they hope to sail
+from Philadelphia in a week or so. She has marvellous clothes, and I
+asked her if she would send me some babies from London. You know what
+they are, Howat&mdash;little wooden dolls to show off the fashion; but she
+made a harrowing joke, right in front of father and Mrs. Forsythe. The
+things she says are just beyond description; it seems that it's all
+right to talk anyway now if you call it classic. And she has fans with
+pictures and rhymes on, honestly&mdash;&quot; words apparently failed her.</p>
+
+<p>Howat laughed. &quot;Little Innocence,&quot; he said. He fell silent, thinking of
+their mother. The court, he knew, had been her right, too, by birth; and
+he wondered if, with the reminder of Mrs. Winscombe and her reflections
+of St. James, she regretted her marriage and removal to the Province.
+She was essentially lady, while Gilbert Penny had been the son of a
+small country squire. He had seen a profile of his father as a young
+man, at the time he had first met Isabel Kingsfrere Howat. It was a
+handsome profile, perhaps a shade heavy, but admirably balanced and
+stamped with decisive power. He had characteristically invested almost
+his last shilling in a tract of eight hundred acres in Pennsylvania and
+the passage of himself and his bride to the Province.</p>
+
+<p>It was natural for men so to adventure, but Howat thought of Isabel
+Penny with, perhaps, the only marked admiration he felt for any being.
+There had been a period, short but strenuous, of material difficulties,
+in which the girl&mdash;she had been hardly a woman in years&mdash;entirely
+unprepared for such a different activity, had been finely competent and
+courageous. This had not endured long because Gilbert Penny had been
+successful almost from the first day of his landing in a new world.
+Chance letters had enlisted the confidence of David Forsythe, a Quaker
+merchant of property and increasing importance; the latter became a part
+owner of an iron furnace situated not far from the Penny holding; he
+assisted Gilbert in the erection of a forge; and in less than twenty
+years Gilbert Penny had grown to be a half proprietor in the Furnace,
+with&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howat,&quot; Caroline broke in on his thoughts sharply, &quot;I came in, as I
+said, to talk about something very important to me, and I intend to do
+it.&quot; Even after that decided announcement she hesitated, a deeper
+colour stained her dear cheeks. &quot;You mustn't laugh at me,&quot; she warned
+him; &quot;or think I'm horrid. I can talk to you like this because you seem
+a&mdash;a little outside of things, as if you were looking on at a rather
+poorly done play; and you are entirely honest yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded condescendingly, his interest at last retrieved from the
+contemplation of his mother as a young woman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's about David,&quot; Caroline stated almost defiantly. &quot;Howat, I think
+I'm very fond of David. No, you mustn't interrupt me. When he went away
+I liked him a lot; but now that he is back, and quite grown up, it's
+more than liking ... Howat. His father brought him out here right away
+he returned, and for a special reason. He was very direct about it; he
+wants David to marry&mdash;Myrtle. I heard father&mdash;yes, I listened&mdash;and him
+talking it over, and our old darling was pleased to death. It's natural,
+Mr. Forsythe is one of the most influential men in the city; and father
+adores Myrtle more than anything else in the world.&quot; She paused, and he
+studied her in a growing wonder; suddenly she seemed older, her mouth
+was drawn in a hard line: a new Caroline. &quot;You know Myrtle,&quot; she added.</p>
+
+<p>He did, and considered the youngest Penny with a new objectivity. Myrtle
+was an extremely pretty, even a beautiful girl. &quot;You know Myrtle,&quot; she
+repeated; &quot;and why father is so blind is more than I can understand.
+She doesn't care a ribbon for truth, she never thinks of anything but
+her own comfort and clothes, and&mdash;and she'd make David miserable. Myrtle
+simply can't fancy anybody but herself. That's very different from me,
+Howat; or yourself. You would be a burning lover.&quot; He laughed
+incredulously. &quot;And I, well, I know what I feel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's practically made up for David to marry Myrtle, that is, to urge it
+all that's possible; and she will never care for him, while all he
+thinks of now is how good looking she is. I want David, terribly,&quot; she
+said, sitting erect with shut hands; &quot;and I will be expected to step
+aside, to keep out of the way while Myrtle poses at him. Oh, I know all
+about it. I see her rehearsing before the glass. Or I will be expected
+to act as a contrast, a plain background, for Myrtle's beauty.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see, there is no one I can talk to but yourself. Even mother
+wouldn't understand, completely; and she couldn't be honest about
+Myrtle. The best of mothers, after all, are women; and, Howat, there is
+always a curious formality between women, a little stiffness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; he demanded, &quot;what do you want me to say, or what did you think
+I might do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know,&quot; she admitted, her eyes bright with unshed tears. &quot;I
+suppose I just wanted a little support, or even some encouragement. I
+don't propose to let Myrtle walk off with David and not turn my hand.
+Of course I am not a beauty, but then I'm not a ninny, either. And I
+have a prettier figure; that is, it will still be pretty in ten or
+fifteen years; Myrtle's soft.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good heavens,&quot; he exclaimed, half serious, &quot;what Indians you all are!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm quite shameless,&quot; she admitted, &quot;and this is really what I
+thought&mdash;you can, perhaps, help me sometimes, I don't know how, but he
+will be out here a lot, men talk together&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And I can tell him that Myrtle is an utterly untrustworthy person who
+would make him ultimately miserable. I'll remind him that her beauty is
+no deeper than he sees it. But that Caroline there, admirable girl,
+seething with affection in a figure warranted against time or
+accident&mdash;&quot; her expression brought his banter to an end. He studied her
+seriously, revolved what she had said. She was right about Myrtle, who
+was undoubtedly a vain and silly little fish. His father's immoderate
+admiration for her had puzzled him as well as the elder sister. He
+remembered that never had he heard their mother express a direct opinion
+of Myrtle; but neither had Isabel Penny shown the slightest question of
+her husband's high regard for their youngest child. She was, he realized
+with a warming of his admiration, beautifully cultivated in the wisdom
+of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Caroline was vastly preferable to Myrtle, he felt that instinctively;
+and he was inclined to give her whatever assistance he could. But this
+would be negligible, and he said so. &quot;You will have to do the trick by
+yourself,&quot; he advised her. &quot;I wouldn't pretend to tell you how. As you
+said, you're not a ninny. And Myrtle's none too clever, although she
+will manage to seem so. It's wonderful how she'll pick up a hint or two
+and make a show. You see&mdash;she will be talking iron to David as if she
+had been raised in a furnace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Men are so senseless!&quot; Caroline exclaimed viciously. She rose. &quot;It's
+been a help only to talk to you, Howat. I knew you'd understand. Supper
+will be along soon. Make yourself into a charmer for Mrs. Winscombe. I'm
+certain she thinks the men out here are frightful hobs.&quot; The light had
+dimmed rapidly in the room, and he moved over to the chest of drawers,
+where he lit the candles, settling over them their tall, carved glass
+cylinders.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III" />III</h2>
+
+
+<p>He dressed slowly, all that Caroline had said, and he thought, tangling
+and disentangling deliberately in his mind. Mrs. Winscombe ... thinking
+there were no presentable men in the Provinces. His hand strayed in the
+direction of a quince-coloured satin coat; but he chose instead a
+commonplace, dun affair with pewter buttons, and carelessly settled his
+shoulders in an unremarkable waistcoat. Then, although he could hear a
+concerted stir of voices below that announced impending supper, he
+slipped into a chair for half a pipe. He was indifferent, not diffident,
+and there was no hesitation in the manner in which he finally approached
+the company seated at supper. His place was, as usual, at his mother's
+side; but opposite him where Myrtle usually sat was a rigid, high
+shouldered man in mulberry and silver, jewelled buckles, and a full,
+powdered wig. He had thin, dark cheeks, a heavy nose above a firm mouth
+with a satirical droop, and small, unpleasantly penetrating eyes. An
+expression of general malice was, however, corrected by a high and
+serene brow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Winscombe,&quot; Howat Penny's mother said, &quot;my son.&quot; The former bowed
+with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which,
+Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech. He
+was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr. Penny; and that extravagant
+expression, delivered in a slightly harsh, negligent voice, heightened
+the impression of a personality strong and cold; a being as obdurate as
+an iron bar masquerading in coloured satin and formulating pretty
+phrases like the sheen on the surface of a deep November pool. Gilbert
+Penny echoed the introduction at the other end of the table.</p>
+
+<p>Howat saw, in the yellow candlelight, a woman not, he decided, any
+better looking than Caroline, in an extremely low cut gown of scarlet,
+with a rigid girdle of saffron brocade, a fluted tulle ruff tied with a
+scarlet string about a long, slim neck, and a cap of sheer cambric with
+a knot of black ribbons. Her eyes were widely opened and dark, her nose
+short, and her mouth full and petulant. She, too, was conventionally
+adequate; but her insincerity was clearer than her husband's, it was
+pronounced quickly, in an impertinent and musical voice, without the
+slightest pretence of the injection of any interest. Howat Penny felt,
+in a manner which he was unable to place, that she vaguely resembled
+himself; perhaps it lay in her eyebrows slanting slightly toward the
+temples; but it was vaguer, more elusive, than that.</p>
+
+<p>He considered it idly, through the course of supper. At intervals he
+heard her voice, a little, high-pitched laugh with a curious,
+underlying flatness: not of tone, her modulations were delicate and
+exact; but deeper. Again he was dimly conscious of an aspect of her
+which eluded every effort to fix and define. He could not even
+comprehend his dwelling upon the immaterial traits of a strange and
+indifferent woman; he was at a loss to understand how such inquiries
+assailed him. He grew, finally, annoyed, and shut his mind to any
+further consideration of her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Penny was talking with charming earnestness to the man on her other
+hand. The amber radiance flickered over the beautiful curves of her
+shoulders and cast a warm shadow at the base of her throat. She smiled
+at her son; and her face, in spite of its present gaiety, held a
+definite reminder of her years, almost fifty; but when she turned again
+her profile, with slightly tilted nose and delightfully fresh lips and
+chin, was that of a girl no older than Caroline. Howat had often noticed
+this. It was amazing&mdash;with that slight movement she would seem to lose
+at once all the years that had accumulated since she was newly married.
+In a second she would appear to leave them all, her mature children, the
+heavy, palpably aging presence of Gilbert Penny, the house and
+obligations that had grown about her, and be remotely young, a stranger
+to the irrefutable proof that her youth had gone. At such moments he was
+almost reluctant to claim her attention, to bring her again, as it were,
+into the present, with so much spent, lapsed: at times he almost
+thought, in that connection, wasted.</p>
+
+<p>She had, in addition to her profile, a spirit of youth that had remained
+undimmed; as if there were within her a reserve warmth, a priceless
+gift, which life had never claimed; and it was the contemplation of that
+which gave Howat the impression that Isabel Penny's life had not fully
+flowered. He had never known her to express a regret of the way she had
+taken; he had never even surprised her in a perceptible retrospective
+dejection; but the conviction remained. Gilbert Penny had been an almost
+faultless husband, tender and firm and successful; but his wife had come
+from other blood and necessities than domestic felicities; she had been
+a part of a super-cultivation, a world of such niceties as the flawless
+courtesy of Mr. Winscombe discussing with her the unhappy passion of the
+Princess Caroline for Lord Hervey.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny thought sombrely of love, of the emotion that had
+brought&mdash;or betrayed?&mdash;Isabel Howat so far away from her birthright. It
+had gripped his sister no less tyrannically; stripping them, he
+considered, of their essential liberty. The thing was clear enough in
+his mind&mdash;nothing more than an animal instinct, humiliating to the human
+individual, to breed. It was the mere repetition of nature through the
+working of an automatic law. No such obscure fate, he determined, should
+overtake, obliterate, him. Yet it had involved his mother, a person of
+the first superiority. A slight chill, as if a breath of imminent winter
+had touched him, communicated itself to his heart.</p>
+
+<p>A trivial conversation was in progress across the table between Mrs.
+Winscombe and Myrtle. The latter was an embodiment of the familiar Saxon
+type of beauty; her hair was fair, infinitely pale gold, her complexion
+a delicately mingled crimson and white, her eyes as candidly blue as
+flowers. Her features were finely moulded, and her shoulders, slipping
+out from azure lutestring, were like smooth handfuls of meringue. Her
+voice was always formal, and it sounded stilted, forced, in comparison
+with Mrs. Winscombe's easy periods.</p>
+
+<p>The supper ended, and the company trailed into a drawing room at the
+opposite end of the house from the kitchen wing. Howat delayed, and
+Caroline, urged forward by Mr. Winscombe's sardonically ubiquitous bow,
+half lingered to cast back a glance of private understanding at her
+brother. When he decided reluctantly to follow he was kept back by the
+sound of a familiar explanation in his father's decisive, full tones.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howat,&quot; he pronounced, obviously addressing the elder Winscombe, &quot;is a
+black Penny. That is what we call them in our family. You see, the
+Pennys, some hundreds of years back, acquired a strong Welsh strain. I
+take it you are familiar with the Welsh&mdash;a solitary-living, dark lot.
+Unamenable to influence, reflect their country, I suppose; but lovers
+of music. I have a touch of that. Now any one would think that such a
+blood, so long ago, would have spread out, been diluted, in a thick
+English stock like the Pennys; or at least that we would all have had a
+little, here and there. But nothing of the sort; it sinks entirely out
+of sight for two or three and sometimes four generations; and then
+appears solid, in one individual, as unslacked as the pure, original
+thing. The last one was burned as a heretic in Mary's day; although I
+believe he would have equally stayed Catholic if the affair had been the
+other way around. Opposition's their breath. This boy&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must not figure to yourself, Mr. Winscombe,&quot; Mrs. Penny's even
+voice admirably cut in, &quot;that the black is a word of reproach. I think
+we are both at times at a loss with Howat, he is so different from us,
+from the girls; but he is truly remarkable. I have an unusual affection
+for him; really, his honesty is extraordinary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He ought, he knew, either follow the others into the drawing room or
+move farther away. His father's explanation repelled him; but his
+mother's capital defence&mdash;it amounted to that&mdash;made it evident to him
+that he should, by his presence, give her what support he could.</p>
+
+<p>At the fireplace Gilbert Penny was lost in conversational depths with
+Mr. Winscombe. About the opening, now closed for the introduction of a
+hearth stove, were tiles picturing in gay glazes the pastoral history
+of Ruth, and above the mantel a long, clear mirror held a similitude of
+brilliant colour&mdash;the scarlet of Mrs. Winscombe's gown, Myrtle's azure
+lutestring on a petticoat of ruffled citron spreading over her hoops and
+little white kid slippers with gilt heels, Caroline's flowered Chinese
+silk. The room was large and square, with a Turkey floor carpet, and
+walls hung with paper printed in lavender and black perspectives from
+copper plates. A great many candles had been lighted, on tables and
+mantel, and in lacquer stands. One of the latter, at Mrs. Winscombe's
+side, showed her features clearly.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny saw that while she was actually no prettier than Caroline
+she was infinitely more vivid and compelling. Her face held an
+extraordinary potency; her bare arms and shoulders were more insistent
+than his sister's; there was about her a consciousness of the allurement
+of body, frankness in its employment. She made no effort to mask her
+feeling, which at present was one of complete indifference to her
+surroundings; and, not talking, a shadow had settled on her vision.
+Caroline was seated on a little sofa across from the fireplace, and she
+moved her voluminous skirt aside, made a place for him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Almost nothing of Annapolis,&quot; Mrs. Winscombe replied to a query of what
+she had seen in Maryland. &quot;We were there hardly two weeks, and I hadn't
+recovered from the trip across the sea. When I think of returning God
+knows I'd almost stay here. You wouldn't suppose one person could vent
+so much. I believe Felix went to a Jockey Club, there were balls and
+farces; but I kept in bed.&quot; Mrs. Penny asked, &quot;And London&mdash;how are you
+amused there now?&quot; The other retied the bow of a garter. &quot;Fireworks,
+Roman candles to Mr. Handel's music, and Italian parties, Villeggiatura.
+Covent Garden with paper lanterns among the trees, seductions&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert Penny smote his hands on the chair arms. &quot;This hectoring of our
+commerce will have to rest somewhere!&quot; he declared; &quot;taking the duty
+from pig iron, and then restricting its market to London, is no
+conspicuous improvement. It is those enactments that provide our
+currency with Spanish pieces instead of English pounds. The West Indies
+are too convenient to be overlooked.&quot; Mr. Winscombe replied stiffly,
+&quot;The Government is prepared to meet infractions of its law.&quot; Mr. Penny
+muttered a period about Germany in England, with a more distant echo of
+Hanoverian whores and deformed firebrands. His guest sat with a harsh,
+implacable countenance framed in the long shadows of his elaborate wig,
+his ornate coat tails falling stiffly on either side of his chair.</p>
+
+<p>Howat, bred in the comparative simplicity of the Province, found the
+foppery of the aging man slightly ridiculous; yet he was aware that Mr.
+Winscombe's essential character had no expression in his satin and
+powder; his will was as rugged and virile as that of any adventuring
+frontiersman clad in untanned hides. He was, Howat decided, at little
+disadvantage with his young wife. He wondered if any deep bond bound the
+two. Their personal feelings were carefully concealed, and in this they
+resembled Isabel Howat, rather than Gilbert, her husband. The latter had
+a habit of expressing publicly his affectionate domestic relations. And
+Howat Penny decided that he vastly preferred the others' reserve.</p>
+
+<p>An awkward silence had developed on top of the brief political
+acerbities. There was no sound but the singing of the wood in the open
+stove. Myrtle had an absent, speculative gaze; Caroline was biting her
+lip; Mrs. Winscombe yawned in the face of the assembly. Gilbert Penny
+suggested cards, but there was no reply. Howat left the room by a door
+that opened on a rock threshold set in the lawn. The night was
+immaculate, still and cold, with stars brightening in the advance of
+winter. He walked about the house. The counting room of the forge was a
+separate stone structure back of the kitchen; and to the right, and
+farther away, was a second small building. The ground fell rapidly down
+to the Forge on the water power below. He could barely discern the
+towering bulk of the water wheel and roofs of the sheds.</p>
+
+<p>He felt uneasy, obscurely and emotionally disturbed. Already Fanny
+Gilkan seemed far away, to have dropped out of his life. He would give
+some gold to the charcoal burner he had attempted to shoot. Mrs.
+Winscombe annoyed him by her attitude toward Myrtle Forge, her
+unvarnished air of condescension. How old was she? A few years more than
+himself, he decided. The Italian hooked her into her stays. A picture of
+this formed in his thoughts and dissolved, leaving behind a faint
+stinging of his nerves. He recalled her bare&mdash;naked&mdash;arms ... the old
+man, her husband.</p>
+
+<p>She had spoken of Italian parties; he had seen a picture on a fan
+labelled Villeggiatura&mdash;a simpering exquisite in a lascivious embrace
+with a frail beauty on the bank of a stream, and a garland of stripped
+loves reeling about a slim, diapered Harlequin. It was a different
+scene, a different world, from the Province; and its intrusion in the
+person of Mrs. Winscombe was like an orris-scented air moving across the
+face of great trees sweeping their virginal foliage into the region of
+strong and pure winds.</p>
+
+<p>He was dimly conscious of the awakening in him of undivined pressures,
+the stirring of attenuated yet persisting influences. He was saturated
+in the space, the sheer, immense simplicity of the wild, hardly touched
+by the narrow strip of inhabited coast. He had given his existence to
+the woods, to hunting cunning beasts, the stoical endurance of blinding
+fatigue; he had scorned the, to him, sophistications of bricks and
+civilization. But now, in the length of an evening, something invidious
+and far different had become sentient in his being. Italian parties, and
+Covent Garden with lanterns among the trees ... Trees clipped and
+pruned, and gravel walks; seductions.</p>
+
+<p>A falling meteor flashed a brilliant arc across the black horizon,
+dropping into what illimitable wilderness? Fireworks set to the shrill
+scraping of violins. One mingled with the other in his blood, fretting
+him, spoiling the serene and sure vigour of youth, binding his feet to
+the obscure past. Yet colouring all was the other, the black Welsh blood
+of the Pennys. Ever since his boyhood he had heard the fact of his
+peculiar inheritance explained, accepted. In the past he had been what
+he was without thought, self-appraisal. But now he recognized an
+essential difference from his family; it came over him in a feeling of
+loneliness, of removal from the facile business of living in general.</p>
+
+<p>For the first time he wondered about his future. It was unguarded by the
+placid and safe engagements of the majority of lives. He would, he knew,
+ultimately possess Myrtle Forge, a part of Shadrach, and a considerable
+fortune. That was his obvious inheritance. But, suddenly, the material
+thing, the actual, grew immaterial, and the visionary assumed a dark and
+enigmatic reality.</p>
+
+<p>Howat abruptly quitted the night of the lawn, his sombre questioning,
+for the house. The candles had been extinguished in the drawing room. A
+square, glass lamp hung at the foot of the stairs; and there he
+encountered a man in a scratch wig, with a long nose flattened at the
+end. He bowed obsequiously&mdash;a posturing figure in shirtsleeves with a
+green cloth waistcoat and black legs. The Italian servant, Howat
+concluded. He passed noiselessly, leaving a reek of pomatum and the
+memory of a servile smile. Howat Penny experienced a strong sense of
+distaste, almost depression, at the other's silent proximity. It
+followed him to his room, contaminated his sleep with unintelligible
+whispering, oily and disturbing gestures, and fled only at the widening
+glimmer of dawn.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV" />IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The sun had almost reached the zenith before Mrs. Winscombe appeared
+from her room. And at the same moment David Forsythe arrived on a spent
+grey mare. He had come over the forty rough miles which separated Myrtle
+Forge from the city in less than five hours. He was a year older than
+Howat, but he appeared actually younger&mdash;a candid youth with high colour
+and light, simply tied hair. He had, he told Howat, important messages
+from his father to Mr. Winscombe. The latter and Gilbert Penny were
+conversing amicably in the lower room at the right of the stairway&mdash;a
+chamber with a bed that, nevertheless, was used for informal assemblage.
+Mr. Winscombe wore an enveloping banian of russet brocade with deep
+furred cuffs, and a turban of vermilion silk comfortably replacing a
+wigged formality. Under that brilliant colour his face was as yellow as
+an orange.</p>
+
+<p>The written messages were delivered, and David returned to the lawn. The
+day was superb&mdash;a crystal cold through which the sun's rays filtered
+with a faintly perceptible glow. Caroline was standing at Howat's side,
+and she gave his hand a rapid pressure as David Forsythe approached.
+&quot;Where's Myrtle?&quot; the latter asked apparently negligently. Howat
+replied, &quot;Still in the agony of fixing her hair&mdash;for dinner; she'll be
+at it again before supper.&quot; David whistled a vague tune. Caroline added,
+&quot;You've got fearfully dressy yourself, since London.&quot; He replied
+appropriately, and then became more serious. &quot;I wish,&quot; he told them,
+&quot;that we belonged to the church of England; you know the Penns have gone
+back. It's pretty heavy at home after&mdash;after some other things. The
+Quakers didn't use to be so infernally solemn. You should see the swells
+about the Court; the greatest fun. And old George with a face like a
+plum&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't you find anything here that pleases you?&quot; Caroline demanded with
+asperity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Myrtle's all right,&quot; he admitted; &quot;not many of them are as pretty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll tell her you've come,&quot; Caroline promptly volunteered; &quot;she won't
+keep you waiting. There she is! No, it's Mrs. Winscombe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was swathed in a ruffled lilac cloak quilted with a dull gold
+embroidery; satin slippers were buckled into high pattens of black
+polished wood; and her head, relatively small with tight-drawn hair, was
+uncovered. She was not as compelling under the sun as in candle light,
+he observed. Her face, unpainted, was pale, an expression of petulance
+discernible. Yet she was more potent than any other woman he had
+encountered. &quot;Isn't that the garden?&quot; she asked, waving beyond the end
+of the house. &quot;I like gardens.&quot; She moved off in the direction
+indicated; and&mdash;as he felt she expected, demanded&mdash;he followed slightly
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>A short, steep terrace descended to a formally planted plot, now
+flowerless, enclosed by low privet hedges. There were walks of rolled
+bark, and, against a lower, denser barrier, a long, white bench. The
+ground still fell away beyond; and there was a sturdy orchard, cleared
+of underbrush, with crimson apples among the grey limbs. Beyond, across
+a low, tangled wild, an amphitheatre of hills rose against the sky,
+drawn from the extreme right about the fa&ccedil;ade of the dwelling. They
+seemed to enclose Myrtle Forge in a natural domain of its own; and,
+actually, Gilbert Penny owned most of the acreage within that immediate
+circle.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Winscombe sank on the garden bench, where she sat with a hand
+resting on either side of her. Above them a column of smoke rose from
+the kitchen against the blue. A second, heavier cloud rolled up from the
+Forge below. &quot;They have been repairing the forebay,&quot; Howat explained;
+&quot;the Forge has been closed. I'm supposed to be in the counting house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You work?&quot; she demanded surprised.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the ledger, put things down&mdash;what the men are paid, mostly in
+tobacco and shoes, ozenbrigs and molasses and rum; or garters and
+handkerchiefs for the women. Then I enter the pig hauled from Shadrach,
+and the carriage of the blooms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't understand any of that,&quot; she announced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It probably wouldn't interest you; the pig's the iron cast at the
+furnace. It's worked in the forges, and hammered into blooms and
+anconies, chunks or stout bars of wrought iron. We do better than two
+tons a week.&quot; The sound of a short, jarring blow rose from the Forge, it
+was repeated, became a continuous part of the serene noon. &quot;That's the
+hammer now,&quot; he explained. &quot;It goes usually all day and most nights.
+We're used to it, don't hear it; but strangers complain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Forsythe said your father was an Ironmaster, one of the biggest in
+the Province, and I suppose you'll become that too.&quot; She gazed about at
+the hills, sheeted in scarlet and yellow, at the wide sunny hollow that
+held Myrtle Forge. &quot;Here,&quot; she added in a totally unexpected accent of
+feeling, &quot;it is very beautiful, very big. I thought all the world was
+like St. James or Versailles. I've never been to Poland, my mother's
+family came from there to Paris, but I'm told they have forests and such
+things, too. This is different from Annapolis, that is only an echo of
+London, but here&mdash;&quot; she gazed far beyond him into the profound noon.</p>
+
+<p>He recovered slowly from the surprise of her unlooked for speech,
+attitude. Howat studied her frankly, leaning forward with his elbows on
+his knees. Her discontent was paramount. It was deeper than he had
+supposed; like his there were disturbing qualities in her blood,
+qualities at a variance with the obvious part of her being. A sense of
+profound intimacy with her pervaded him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This,&quot; she continued, &quot;is like a cure at a Bath, a great bath of air
+and light. I should like to stay, I think.... Are you content?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It always seemed crowded to me,&quot; he admitted. &quot;Usually I get as far
+away as possible, into the woods, the real wilderness. But you heard my
+father last night&mdash;I'm a black Penny, a solitary, dark lot. You couldn't
+judge from what I might feel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father and you are not sympathetic,&quot; she judged acutely. &quot;He is
+practical, solid; but it isn't easy to say, even with an explanation,
+what you are. In London&mdash;but I'm sick of London. Myrtle Forge. It's
+appalling at night. I'd like to go into the real wilderness, leave off
+my hoops and stays, and bathe in a stream; a water nymph and you ... but
+that's only Watteau again, with a cicisbeo holding my shift and
+stockings. In London you'd be that, a lady's servant of love; but, in
+the Province, I wonder?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He sat half comprehending her words mingling in his brain with the
+pounding of the trip hammer at the Forge, one familiar and one
+unfamiliar yet not strange sound. Above them, on the lawn, he could see
+Myrtle&mdash;through the middle of the day the sun had increased its
+warmth&mdash;with skirts like the petals of a fabulous tea rose. The sun
+glinted on the living gold of her hair and bathed an arm white as snow.
+David was there no doubt. His thoughts dwelt for a moment on Caroline,
+then returned to Mrs. Winscombe, to himself. His entire attitude toward
+her, his observations, had been upset, disarmed, by her unexpected air
+of soft melancholy. In her lavender wrap she resembled a drooping branch
+of flowering lilac. She seemed very young; her air of sophistication,
+her sensuality of being, had vanished. Traces of her illness on
+shipboard still lingered darkly under her eyes. Asleep, he suddenly
+thought, her face would be very innocent, purified. This came to him
+involuntarily; there was none of the stinging of the senses she had
+evoked in him the night before. His instinct for preservation from any
+entanglements with life lay dormant before her surrender to influences
+that left her crumpled, without the slightest interest in any exterior
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>A sententious black servant in maroon livery and a bright worsted
+waistcoat announced dinner from the foot of the terrace, and they moved
+slowly toward the house. There was a concerted interest in the faces
+they found already about the table. Howat took his seat at his mother's
+side, Gilbert Penny assisted Mrs. Winscombe. David was placed between
+Caroline and Myrtle. Mr. Winscombe, again formally wigged and coated,
+was absorbed in thought. He said to his hostess, &quot;It's the uncertainty
+that puts me in doubt. Ogle thought the thing thoroughly reviewed, when
+now Hamilton comes out with his damned Indians and Maryland rum.
+Forsythe suggests my presence in Council to-morrow, and it's barely
+possible that there will be a return to Annapolis. While Ludowika&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't travel another ell over the atrocities they call roads here,&quot;
+Mrs. Winscombe declared. &quot;I expect to die returning to England as it is,
+and I won't put up with any more preliminary torment. You'll have to
+leave me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At Myrtle Forge,&quot; Gilbert Penny added at once; &quot;at Myrtle Forge as long
+as you like. Unless,&quot; he added with a smile, &quot;you prefer the gaiety at
+Abner Forsythe's.&quot; A hot colour suffused David's cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Winscombe bowed over the table, &quot;I am inclined to take advantage of
+that. Ludowika would be the better without even Quaker gaiety for a
+little.&quot; He stopped, turned toward her. &quot;I'd like it immensely,&quot; she
+replied simply. &quot;I am sure it would give me back all that I've lost in
+passage. Perhaps,&quot; she leaned forward, smiling at Howat, &quot;I could see
+something of what's behind those hills, go into the real Arcadia.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Out there,&quot; said Mr. Penny, &quot;are the Endless Mountains.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The faint, involuntary chill again invaded Howat; suddenly an unfamiliar
+imagery attached to the commonplace phrase uttered by his father&mdash;the
+Endless Mountains! It brought back his doubt, his questioning, of life.
+It was the inconceivable term endless, without any finality of ultimate
+rest, without even the arbitrary peace of death, that appalled him. He
+thought of life going on and on, with nothing consummated, nothing
+achieved nor final. He thought of the black Penny who had been burned as
+a heretic to ashes years before; yet Howat was conscious of the martyr's
+bitter stubbornness of soul, alive, still alive and unquenched, in
+himself. He wondered about the heritage to come. There was a further
+belief that it followed exclusively the male line. The Pennys, like many
+another comparatively obscure name, went far back into the primeval soil
+of civilization. If he had no issue the endlessness might be confounded;
+a fatality in his long, dangerous excursions would have vanquished the
+ineradicable Welsh blood. He might have no children; yesterday he would
+have made such a decision; but now he was less sure of himself, of his
+power to will. He was dimly conscious of vast exterior forces and
+traitorous factors within. It was as if momentarily he had been lifted
+to a cloud beyond time, from which he saw the entire, stumbling progress
+of humanity, its beginning hid in humid mist, moving into a nocturnal
+shadow like a thunder bank.</p>
+
+<p>He sat with chin on breast and sombre eyes until his mother laid her
+hand on his shoulder. &quot;Howat,&quot; she protested, &quot;you are too glum for the
+comfort of any one near you. I think you must make a pose of being
+black. I'd almost called one of the servants to fiddle in your ear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat smiled at her; he returned slowly to the actual, the particular.
+Mr. Winscombe had pushed back his chair, excusing himself in the
+pressure of necessary preparations. His wife disappeared with him,
+leaving behind the echo of a discussion about Cecco, the Italian
+servant. The women followed, with David at Myrtle's shoulder, leaving
+Howat and Gilbert Penny.</p>
+
+<p>The latter was still a handsome man, with his own hair silvered on a
+ruddy countenance, and a careful taste in clothes. His nose was
+predominant, with a wide-cleft mouth above a square chin. &quot;I had
+thought,&quot; he said deliberately, &quot;that you were employed in the counting
+house, but Schwar tells me that it has been a week since you were seen
+there.&quot; He raised a broad hand to silence Howat's reply. &quot;While I can
+afford to keep you merely at hunting, the result to the table is so
+meagre that I'm not justified. There is no St. James here, in
+Pennsylvania, no gentlemen supported by the Crown for the purpose of
+amusement. You will have to sail for England if you expect that sort of
+thing.&quot; He rose, &quot;You owe an intelligent interest in Myrtle Forge, to
+your sisters and mother, toward all that I have accomplished. It's a
+rich property, and it's growing bigger. Already young Forsythe has a
+list of improvements to be instituted at the Furnace&mdash;clerks and a
+manager and new system for carrying on the blast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm not an iron man,&quot; Howat Penny told him, &quot;I'm not a clerk. David
+can take all that over for you, particularly if he marries one of the
+girls.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are you?&quot; the elder demanded sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ought to know. You explained it fully enough to the Winscombes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it wasn't for that you'd have been dumping slag five years ago. What
+I hoped was that with maturity some sense of obligation would be born
+into you. What is this pretended affection for your mother worth if you
+are unwilling to conserve, make safe, her future, in case I die?&quot; All
+that his father said was logical, just; but it only brought him a
+renewed sense of his impotence before very old and implacable inner
+forces.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll try again,&quot; he briefly agreed. &quot;But I warn you, it will do little
+good. There is no pretence in the affection you spoke of, but&mdash;but
+something stronger&mdash;&quot; he gave up as hopeless the effort to explain all
+that had swept through his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert Penny abruptly left the room.</p>
+
+<p>It transpired that the Italian servant was to be left at Myrtle Forge;
+he was now assisting the servants in strapping a box behind the chaise
+that was to carry Mr. Winscombe and David to the city. Howat pictured
+the long, supple hands of the Italian hooking Mrs. Winscombe into her
+clothes, and a sudden, hot revulsion clouded his brain. When the
+carriage had gone, and he stood in the contracted space of the counting
+room, before a long, narrow forge book open on a high desk, he was still
+conscious of a strong repulsion. It was idiotic to let such an
+insignificant fact as the Winscombes' man persistently annoy him. But,
+in a manner entirely unaccountable, this Cecco had become a symbol of
+much that was dark, potentially threatening, in his conjectures.</p>
+
+<p>The hammer fell with a full reiteration through the afternoon; the sun,
+at a small window, shifted a dusty bar across inkpots and quills and
+desk to a higher corner. He could hear the dull turning of the wheel and
+the thin, irregular splash of falling water. Other sounds rose at
+intervals&mdash;the tramping of mules dragging pig iron from Shadrach, the
+rumble of its deposit by the Forge. Emanuel Schwar entered with a piece
+of paper in his hand. &quot;Eleven hundred weight of number two,&quot; he read;
+&quot;at six pounds, and a load of charcoal. Jonas Hupp charged with three
+pairs of woollen stockings, and shoes for Minnie, four shillings more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat mechanically entered the enumerated items, his distaste for such a
+petty occupation mounting until it resembled a concrete power forcing
+him outside into the mellow end of the day. A figure darkened the
+doorway; it was Caroline. &quot;I hardly saw him,&quot; she declared hotly.
+&quot;Myrtle hung like a sickly flower in his buttonhole.&quot; Her hoops
+flattened as she made her way through the narrow entrance. &quot;There's one
+thing about Myrtle,&quot; she continued, &quot;she's frightfully proper in her
+narrow little ideas. Myrtle's a prude. And I promise you I won't be if I
+get a chance at David.&quot; She stood with vivid, parted lips, bright eyes;
+almost, Howat thought, charming. Such a spirit in Caroline amazed him;
+he hadn't conceived of its presence. He recognized a phase of his own
+contempt for customary paths, accepted limitations and proprieties.
+&quot;Remember David's Quaker training,&quot; he told her in his habitual air of
+jest. &quot;David's been to London,&quot; she replied. &quot;I saw him pinch the
+Appletofft girl at the farm.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again in his room, he changed into more formal clothes than on the
+evening previous; he did this without a definite, conscious purpose; it
+was as if his attitude of mind required a greater suavity of exterior.
+He wore a London waistcoat, a gift from his mother, of magenta worked
+with black petals and black stone buttons; his breeches were without a
+wrinkle, and the tails of his coat, even if they were not wired like
+those David was said to have brought from England, had a not
+unsatisfactory swing.</p>
+
+<p>At supper Mrs. Winscombe sat at his left, Caroline and Myrtle had taken
+their customary places opposite, the elders had not been disturbed. Mrs.
+Winscombe had resumed the animation vanished at noon. She wore green and
+white, with plum-coloured ribbons, and a flat shirred cap tied under her
+chin. The fluted, clear lawn of her elbow sleeves was like a scented
+mist. He was again conscious of the warm seduction, the rare finish, of
+her body, like a flushed marble under wide hoops and dyed silk. She was
+talking to Myrtle about the Court. &quot;I am in waiting with the Princess
+Amelia Sophia,&quot; she explained; &quot;I have her stockings. There is a
+frightful racket of music and parrots and German, with old Handel
+bellowing and the King eternally clinking one piece of gold on another.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert Penny listened with a tightening of his well shaped lips. &quot;It's
+into that chamber pot we pour our sweat and iron,&quot; he asserted. Ludowika
+Winscombe studied him. &quot;In England,&quot; she said, &quot;the American provinces
+are supposed to lie hardly beyond the Channel, but here England seems to
+be at the other end of the world.&quot; Myrtle added, &quot;I'd like it
+immensely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And Howat thought of Ludowika&mdash;he thought of her tentatively as
+Ludowika&mdash;in the brilliant setting of tropical silks and birds.</p>
+
+<p>He considered the change that had overtaken his father, English born, in
+the quarter century he had lived in America; the strong allegiance
+formed to ideas fundamentally different from those held at St. James;
+and he wondered if such a transformation would operate in Ludowika if
+she could remain in the Province. It was a fantastic query, and he
+impatiently dismissed it, returning to the contemplation of his mother's
+problematic happiness. He determined to question the latter if a
+permissible occasion arose; suddenly his interest had sharpened toward
+her mental situation. He compared the two women, what he could
+conjecture about Isabel Howat and Ludowika Winscombe; but something
+within him, automatic and certain, whispered that no comparison was
+possible. His mother possessed a quality of spirit that he had never
+found elsewhere; he could see, in spite of their resemblance of blood
+and position, that the elder could never have been merely provocative.
+Such distinctions, he divined, were the result of qualities mysterious
+and deeply concealed. Love, that he had once dismissed as the principle
+of blind procreation, became more complex, enigmatic. He had no
+increased desire to experience it, with the inevitable loss of personal
+liberty; but he began to be conscious of new depths, unexpected
+complications, in human relationship.</p>
+
+<p>He was not so sure of himself.</p>
+
+<p>They had moved to the less formal of the rooms used as places of
+gathering. The bed in a corner was hung in blue shalloon over ruffled
+white muslin, and there was blue at the windows. Against the wall a
+clavichord, set aside as obsolete, raised its dusky red ebony box on
+grooved legs. Myrtle was seated at it picking out an air from
+Belshazzar. She held each note in a silvery vibration that had the
+fragility of old age. Ludowika was by the fire, quartered across a
+corner; there was no stove, and the wood burning in the opening sent out
+frequent, pungent waves of smoke. She coughed and cursed. &quot;Positively,&quot;
+she declared, &quot;I'll turn salt like a smoked herring.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She rose, her gaze resting on Howat. &quot;I must go out,&quot; she continued;
+&quot;breathe.&quot; He was strangely reluctant to accompany her, his feet were
+leaden. Nevertheless, in a few moments he found himself at her side on
+the lawn. Her sophistication had again disappeared, beneath the stars
+drawn across the hills, over Myrtle Forge. There was a pause in the
+hammering below. &quot;Take me down there,&quot; she commanded.</p>
+
+<p>He led the way on a beaten path that dropped sharply to a bridge of hewn
+logs crossing the spent water. The Forge, a long shed following the
+stream, was open on the opposite side; an enclosure of ruddy, vaporous
+gloom with pools of molten colour, clangorous sounds. The bubbling,
+white cores of three raised and hooded hearths were incessantly agitated
+with long rods by blackened and glistening shapes. At intervals a
+flushing rod was withdrawn from a fire and plunged in a trough of water;
+a cloud of ghostly steam arose, a forgeman's visage momentarily
+illuminated like a copper mask. A grimy lantern was hung above the
+anvil, its thin light falling on the ponderous head of the trip hammer
+suspended at right angles from a turning cogged shaft projection through
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>The hearths, set in a row beyond the anvil, had at their back an
+obscure, mechanical stir, accompanied by the audible suction of squat,
+drum bellows. The labour was halted at a fire; half naked anatomies,
+herculean shoulders and incredible arms, gathered about its mouth with
+hooked bars. An incandescent mass was lifted, born, rayed in an
+intolerable white heat, into the air. A hammer was swung upon it; and,
+as if the metal were sentient, a violet radiance scintillated where the
+blow had fallen. The pasty iron was carried to the anvil, the hooks
+dropped for wide-jawed tongs; the trip hammer moved up and fell. The
+hardening metal darkened to a carnation from which chips scattered like
+gorgeous petals. The carnation faded under ringing blows; the petals,
+heaping in the penumbra under foot, were as vividly blue as gentians.
+The colour vanished from the solidifying bloom ... It was ashen, black.
+The hammering continued.</p>
+
+<p>A sense of the vast and antique simplicity of the forging, a feeling of
+hammering the earth itself into the superior purposes of man, enveloped
+Howat. He forgot for the moment his companion, lost in a swelling pride
+of Myrtle Forge, of his father's fibre&mdash;the iron of his character like
+the iron he successfully wrought. He could grasp Gilbert Penny's
+accomplishment here, take fire at its heroic quality; a thing he found
+impossible in the counting room above, recording such trivial details as
+wool stockings for Jonas Rupp. He could be a forgeman, he thought, but
+never a clerk; and in that limitation he realized that he was inferior
+to his father. There were aspects of himself beyond such discipline and
+control.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika Winscombe grasped his arm. &quot;Come away,&quot; she begged; &quot;it's&mdash;it's
+savage, like Vulcan and dreadful, early legends.&quot; She hurried him,
+clinging to his arm, over the ascent to the orderly lawn, the tranquil
+shine of candle-lit windows. There, with her hood fallen from her head,
+she sat on a stone step.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You frighten me, a little,&quot; she confessed. &quot;Are you at all like&mdash;like
+that below inside of you? I have a feeling that you might be. If you
+were one of the men about Vauxhall you'd be kissing me now ... if I
+liked you. But, although I do like you, I wouldn't kiss you for an
+emerald buckle.&quot; He recognized that she spoke seriously; her voice bore
+no connective suggestion. Kisses, it appeared, were no more to her than
+little flowers which she dealt out casually where she pleased. Yet the
+idea, with its intimate sensual implications, stayed in his thoughts. He
+considered kissing her, holding her mouth against his; and he was
+conscious of a sharp return of his stinging sense of her bodily
+seductiveness.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time an obscure uneasiness, rebellion, possessed him; it was
+the old, familiar feeling of revolt, of distaste for imprisoning
+circumstance. It came to him acutely, almost as if a voice had whispered
+in his ear, warning him, urging him into the wild, to escape threatening
+catastrophe. He determined to leave Myrtle Forge in the morning, to
+return to the stream he had followed into the serene heart of the woods.
+There he would stay until&mdash;until Ludowika Winscombe had gone. Howat had
+no especial sense of danger from her; only for the moment she typified
+the entire world of trivial artifice. He gazed at her with a conscious
+detachment possible because of the rarity in his existence of such
+figures as hers.</p>
+
+<p>She had risen, and her cloak fallen upon the grass. Howat could see her
+face beneath hair faintly powdered with silver dust and the ruffled
+patch of white tied pertly under her chin. Her smoothly turning
+shoulders, filmed in lawn, and low bodice crowned an extravagant
+circumference of ruffled silk and rosettes. Against the night of the
+Province, the invisible but felt presence of immutable hills, she was
+like a puppet, a grotesque figure of comedy. He regarded her sombrely
+from the step, his chin cupped in a hand.</p>
+
+<p>But, again, she surprised him, speaking entirely out of the character he
+had assigned her, in a spirit that seemed utterly incongruous, but which
+was yet warm with conviction. &quot;I want to explain a great deal to you,&quot;
+she said, &quot;that really isn't explainable. It isn't sensible, and yet it
+is the strongest feeling I remember. It's about here and you and me. You
+can't picture my life, and so you don't know how strange this is, how
+different from all I've ever lived.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I told you I was born in Paris&mdash;you see some of us came to
+France when Louis took a Polish princess, and there my mother married an
+English gentleman. Well, it was always the Court, in France and in
+England. Always the Court&mdash;do you know what that means? It's a place
+where women are pretty pink and white candies that men are always
+picking over. It's a great bed with a rose silk counterpane and closed
+draperies. Champagne and music and scent and masques. Little plays with
+the intrigue in the audience; favours behind green hedges. I was in it
+when I was fourteen, and I had a lover the first year. He showed me how
+to make pleasure. Don't think that I was indifferent to this,&quot; she added
+directly; &quot;that I wanted to escape it. I wasn't; I didn't. Only beneath
+everything I had a feeling of not being completely satisfied; I
+wanted&mdash;oh, not very strongly&mdash;something else, for an hour. At times the
+air seemed choking; and inside of me, but not in my body, I seemed
+choking too. I used to think about the Polish forests, and that would
+help a little.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She resumed the place at his side, with her silk billowing against his
+knee. &quot;This is it,&quot; she declared, her face set against the illimitable,
+still dark. &quot;I recognized it only a little while ago. I think
+unconsciously I came to America hoping to find it; there was nothing at
+Annapolis, but here&mdash;&quot; she drew a breath as deep, he noted, as her stays
+would permit. &quot;It includes you, somehow,&quot; she continued; &quot;as if you were
+the voice. What I said coming away from the Forge, about dreading you,
+was only momentary. I have another feeling, premonition&mdash;&quot; she broke
+off, her manner changed. &quot;All the Court believes in signs: Protestantism
+and vampires.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems unreal here; I mean St. James and all that was so
+tremendously important; incredibly stupid&mdash;the Princess Amelia's
+stockings. But you can't imagine the jealousy. Every bit of it shall go
+out of my thoughts. You'll help me, a harmless magic. I'll be as simple
+as that girl across the road, with the red cheeks, in a single slip. You
+must call me Ludowika; Ludowika and Howat. I'm not so terribly old, only
+twenty-nine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am going away to-morrow,&quot; he informed her; &quot;I won't be back before
+you leave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A slight frown gathered about her eyes. Her face was very close to his.
+&quot;But I don't like that either,&quot; she replied. &quot;You were to be a part of
+it, its voice; excursions in the woods. Is it necessary, your absence?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He knew that it was not; and suddenly he was seized with the conviction
+that he would not go. It was as if, again, a voice outside him had
+informed him of the fact. But if there were no reason for his going
+there was as little for his remaining at Myrtle Forge; that was, so far
+as Ludowika Winscombe was concerned. He had been untouched by all that
+she had said; untouched except for a faint involuntary shiver as she had
+spoken of premonition. And that had vanished instantaneously. There was
+his duty in the counting house. But he was forced to admit to himself
+the insufficiency of that reason; it was too palpably false.</p>
+
+<p>He had not been moved by the intent of what she had said, but his
+imagination had been stirred, as if by the touch of delicate, pointed
+fingers, at her description of Court&mdash;a bed with a silk counterpane ...
+behind clipped greenery. He recalled the fan with its painted
+Villeggiatura, the naked, wanton loves. &quot;Something different,&quot; she half
+repeated, with a sigh, an accent, of longing. Howat heard her with
+impatience; it was absurd to try to picture her tramping in the
+wilderness, breaking her way hour after hour through thorned underbrush,
+like Fanny Gilkan. She wouldn't progress a hundred yards in her unsteady
+pattens and fragile clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the Italian servant appeared absolutely noiselessly at her
+side, speaking a ridiculous, oily gibberish. &quot;At once,&quot; she replied. She
+turned to Howat. &quot;My bed has been prepared. Are you going to-morrow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he answered awkwardly. She turned and left without further words.
+The servant walked behind her, resembling an unnatural shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The metallic clamour at the anvil rose and fell, diminished by the
+interposed bulk of the dwellings, ceaselessly forging the Penny iron,
+the Penny gold. He thought of himself as metal under the hammer; or
+rather ore at the furnace: he hadn't run clear in the casting; there
+were bubbles, bubbles and slag. Endless refinements&mdash;first the furnace
+and then the forge and then the metal. A contempt for the lesser degrees
+possessed him, for a flawed or clumsy forging, for weakness of the
+flesh, the fatality of easy surrender. An overwhelming, passionate
+emotion swept him to his feet, clenched his hands, filled him with a
+numbing desire to reach the last purification.</p>
+
+<p>The mood sank into an inexplicable nostalgia; he dragged the back of a
+hand impatiently across his vision. His persistent indifference, the
+inhibition that held him in a contemptuous isolation, again possessed
+him, Howat, a black Penny. A last trace of his emotion, caught in the
+flood of his paramount disdain, vanished like a breath of warm mist. He
+entered the house and mounted to his room; the stairs creaked but that
+was the only sound audible within. His candles burned without their
+protecting glasses in smooth, unwavering flames. When they were
+extinguished the darkness flowed in and blotted out familiar objects,
+folded him in a cloak of invisibility, obliterated him in sleep. As he
+lost consciousness he heard the trip hammer dully beating out Penny
+iron, Penny gold; beating out, too, the Penny men ... Slag and metal and
+ruffled muslin, roman candles and stars.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V" />V</h2>
+
+
+<p>There came to him in the counting house, the following afternoon,
+rumours and echoes of the day's happenings. David Forsythe had arrived
+after dinner, and there had been word from Mr. Winscombe; he would be
+obliged to return to Maryland, and trusted that Ludowika would not be an
+onerous charge. David was to take Myrtle and Caroline back with him to
+the city, for an exemplary Quaker party. &quot;There's no good asking you,&quot;
+he told Howat, lounging in the door of the counting room. David was
+flushed, his sleeve coated with dust. &quot;Caroline,&quot; he exclaimed, &quot;is as
+strong as a forgeman; she upset me on the grass as quickly as you
+please, hooked her knee behind me, and there I was. She picked me up,
+too, and laughed at me,&quot; he stopped, lost in thought. &quot;Myrtle's really
+beautiful,&quot; he said again; &quot;Caroline's not a thing to look at, and yet,
+do you know, a&mdash;a man looks at her. She is wonderfully graceful.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat gave Caroline the vigorous stamp of his brotherly approval. &quot;She
+understands a lot, for a girl,&quot; he admitted. &quot;Of course Myrtle's a
+particular peach, but I'd never go to her if a buckle&mdash;&quot; he stopped
+abruptly as Myrtle appeared at David's side. &quot;Isn't he industrious?&quot;
+she said indifferently. &quot;You'd never guess how father's at him. Have you
+heard, Howat&mdash;Mrs. Winscombe will be here perhaps a month. It's a wonder
+you haven't gone away, you are so frightfully annoyed by people. Last
+night you were with her over an hour on the lawn. I could see that
+father thought it queer; but I explained to him that court women never
+thought of little things like, well, husbands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat gazed at her coldly, for the first time conscious that he actually
+disliked Myrtle. He made up his mind, definitely, to assist Caroline as
+far as possible. She was absurd, criticizing Mrs. Winscombe. &quot;Where,&quot; he
+demanded, &quot;did you get all that about courts? And your sudden, tender
+interest in husbands? That's new, too. You're not thinking of one for
+yourself, are you? He'd never see you down in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A bright, angry colour flooded her cheeks. &quot;You are as coarse as
+possible,&quot; she declared. &quot;I'm sure I wish you'd stay away altogether
+from Myrtle Forge; you've never been anything but a bother.&quot; She left
+abruptly. &quot;Sweet disposition.&quot; Howat grinned. &quot;You are seeing family
+life as it's actually lived.&quot; Later his thoughts returned to what she
+had said about Ludowika Winscombe; he recalled the latter's speech,
+seated on the doorstep; some stuff about a premonition. Myrtle had
+suggested that he was interested in her. What ridiculous nonsense! If
+his father said anything on that score the other would discover that he
+was no longer a boy. Besides, such insinuations were a breach of
+hospitality. How Mrs. Winscombe would laugh at them if she suspected
+Myrtle's cheap folly.</p>
+
+<p>She had asked him to call her Ludowika. He decided that he would; really
+he couldn't get out of it now. It would do no harm. Ludowika! It was a
+nice name; undoubtedly Polish. He thought again about what she had said
+of Polish forests, the dissatisfaction that had followed her for so many
+years. A lover at fourteen. A surprising sentence formed of itself in
+his brain.&mdash;She had never had a chance. That pasty court life had
+spoiled her. It had no significance for himself; he was simply revolving
+a slightly melancholy fact.</p>
+
+<p>Felix Winscombe was a sere figure, yet he was extraordinarily full of a
+polished virility, rapier-like. Howat could see the dark, satirical face
+shadowed by the elaborate wig, the rigid figure in precise, foppish
+dress. He heard Winscombe's slightly harsh, dominant voice. His position
+in England was, he knew, secure, high. Ludowika had been very sensible
+in marrying him. That was the way, Howat Penny told himself, that
+marriage should be consummated. He would never marry. David Schwar
+appeared with a sheaf of papers, which he himself proceeded to docket,
+and Howat left the counting room.</p>
+
+<p>He met Ludowika almost immediately; she advanced more simply dressed
+than he had ever seen her before. She pointed downward to the water
+flashing over the great, turning wheel. &quot;Couldn't we walk along the
+rill? There's a path, and it's beautiful in the shadow.&quot; The stream
+poured solid and green through the narrow, masoned course of the
+forebay, sweeping in a lucent arc over the lip of the fall. An earthen
+path followed the artificial channel through a dense grove of young
+maples, seeming to hold the sun in their flame-coloured foliage. Myrtle
+Forge was lost, the leaves shut out the sky; underfoot some were already
+dead. The wilderness marched up to the edges of the meagre clearings.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika walked ahead, without speech; irregular patches of ruddy light
+slid over her flared skirt. Suddenly she stopped with an exclamation;
+the trees opened before them on the broad Canary sweeping between flat
+rocks, banks bluely green. Above, the course was broken, swift; but
+where they stood it was tranquil again, and crystal clear. Yellow rays
+plunging through the unwrinkled surface gilded the pebbles on the
+shallower bottom. A rock, broad and flat, extended into the stream by
+the partial, diagonal dam that turned the water into Myrtle Forge; and
+Ludowika found a seat with her slippers just above the current. Howat
+Penny sat beside her, then dropped back on the rocks, his hands clasped
+behind his head.</p>
+
+<p>A silence intensified by the whispering stream enveloped them. He
+watched a hawk, diminutive on the pale immensity above. &quot;Heavens,&quot;
+Ludowika finally spoke, &quot;how wonderful ... just to sit, not to be
+bothered by&mdash;by things. Just to hear the water. Far away,&quot; she said
+dreamily; &quot;girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>From where he lay he could see her arms, beautiful and bare, lost in
+soft Holland above the elbows; he could see the roundness of her body
+above the lowest of stays. Suddenly she fascinated him; he visualized
+her sharply, as though for the first time&mdash;a warm, intoxicating entity.
+He was profoundly disturbed, and sat erect; the stream, the woods,
+blurred in his vision. He felt as if his heart had been turned
+completely over in his body; the palms of his hands were wet. He had a
+momentary, absurd impulse to run, beyond Shadrach Furnace, beyond any
+distance he had yet explored, farther even than St. Xavier. Ludowika
+Winscombe gazed in serene, unconscious happiness before her. He felt
+that his face was crimson, and he rose, moved to the water's edge, his
+back toward her. He was infuriated at a trembling that passed over him,
+damned it in a savage and inaudible whisper.</p>
+
+<p>What particularly appalled him was the fact that his overmastering
+sensation came without the slightest volition of his own. He had had
+nothing to do with it, his will was powerless. He was betrayed like a
+fortified city whose gate had been thrown open by an unsuspected, a
+concealed, traitor inside. In an instant he had been invaded, his being
+levelled, his peculiar pride overthrown. He thought even that he heard a
+dull crash, as if something paramount had irremediably fallen,
+something that should have been maintained at any cost, until the end of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Howat felt a sudden hatred of his companion; but that quickly
+evaporated; he discovered that she had spread, like a drop of carmine in
+a goblet of water, through his every nerve. By God, but she had become
+himself! In the space of a breath she was in his blood, in his brain;
+calling his hands about her, toward her smooth, beautiful arms. She was
+the scent in his nostrils, the sound a breeze newly sprung up stirred
+out of the leaves. A profound melancholy spread over him, a deep
+sadness, a conviction of loss. Ludowika was singing softly:</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Last Sunday at St. James's prayers<br />
+&mdash;dressed in all my whalebone airs.&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>He had come on disaster. The realization flashed through his
+consciousness and was engulfed in the submerging of his being in the
+overwhelming, stinging blood that had swept him from his old security.
+Yet he had been so detached from the merging influences about him, his
+organization had been so complete in its isolation, his egotism so
+developed, that a last trace of his entity lingered sentient, viewing as
+if from a careened but still tenable deck the general submergence. His
+thoughts returned to the automatic operation of the consummation
+obliterating his person, the inexorable blind movement of the thing in
+which he had been caught, dragged into the maw of a supreme purpose. It
+was, of course, the law of mere procreation which he had before
+contemptuously recognized and dismissed; a law for animals; but he was
+no longer entirely an animal. Already he had considered the possibility
+of an additional force in the directing of human passion, founded on
+something beyond the thirst of flesh, founded perhaps on soaring
+companionships, on&mdash;on&mdash;The condition, the term, he was searching for
+evaded him.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the word love; and he was struck by the vast inaccuracy of
+that large phrase. It meant, Howat told himself, literally nothing: what
+complex feeling Isabel Penny might have for her husband, Caroline's
+frank desire for David Forsythe, Myrtle's meagre emotion, Fanny Gilkan's
+sense of Hesa and life's necessary compromises, his own collapse&mdash;all
+were alike called love. It was not only a useless word but a dangerous
+falsity. It had without question cloaked immense harm, pretence; it had
+perpetuated old lies, brought them plausibly, as if in a distinguished
+and reputable company, out of past superstitions and credulity; the real
+and the meaningless, the good and the evil, hopelessly confused.</p>
+
+<p>They were seated at supper, four of them only; Isabel and Gilbert Penny,
+and, opposite him, Ludowika. Occasionally he would glance at her,
+surreptitiously; his wrists would pound with an irregular, sultry
+circulation; longing would harass him like the beating of a club. She,
+it seemed to him, grew gayer, younger, more simple, every hour.
+Happiness, peace, radiated in her gaze, the gestures of her hands. Howat
+wondered at what moment he would destroy it. Reprehensible. A moment
+must come&mdash;soon&mdash;when emotion would level his failing reserve, his
+falling defences. He thrilled at the thought of the inevitable
+disclosure. Would she fight against it, deny, satirize his tumult; or
+surrender? He couldn't see clearly into that; he didn't care. Then he
+wondered about the premonition of which she had spoken, deciding to ask
+her to be more explicit.</p>
+
+<p>An opportunity occurred later. Gilbert Penny had gone down to the Forge
+store, his wife had disappeared. Ludowika Winscombe and Howat were
+seated in the drawing room. Only a stand of candles was lit at her
+elbow; her face floated like a pale and lovely wafer against the
+billowing shadows of the chamber. The wood on the iron hearth was
+charring without flame. He questioned her bluntly, suddenly, out of a
+protracted silence. She regarded him speculatively, delaying answer.
+Then, &quot;I couldn't tell you like this, now; it would be too silly; you
+would laugh at me. I hadn't meant to say even what I did. I'd prefer to
+ignore it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you mean, what premonition came to you?&quot; he insisted crudely.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to draw away from him, increase in years and an attitude of
+tolerant amusement. Only an immediate reply would save them, he
+realized. He leaned forward unsteadily, with clenched hands. &quot;I warned
+you,&quot; she proceeded lightly; &quot;and if you do laugh my pride will suffer.&quot;
+In spite of her obvious determination to speak indifferently her voice
+grew serious, &quot;I had a feeling that you mustn't kiss me, that
+this&mdash;America, the Province, Myrtle Forge, you, were for something
+different. You see, I had always longed for a peculiar experience,
+release, and when it came, miraculously, I thought, it must not be
+spoiled, turned into the old, old thing. That was all. It was in my
+spirit,&quot; she added almost defiantly, as if that claim might too be
+susceptible of derision.</p>
+
+<p>He settled back into his chair, turning upon her a gloomy vision.
+Whatever penalty threatened them, he knew, must fall. Nothing existing
+could keep him from it. He felt a fleet sorrow for her in the inevitable
+destruction of the release for which she had so long searched, her new
+peace, so soon to be smashed. All sorrow for himself had gone under.
+Isabel Penny returned to the drawing room, and moved about, her flowered
+silk at once gay and obscure in the semidarkness. &quot;The fire, Howat,&quot; she
+directed; &quot;it's all but out.&quot; He stirred the logs into a renewed blaze.</p>
+
+<p>A warm gilding flickered over Ludowika; she smiled at him, relaxed,
+content. He was surprised that she could not see the tumultuous feeling
+overpowering him. He had heard that women were immediately aware of
+such emotion. But he realized that she had been lulled into a false
+sense of security, of present immunity from &quot;the old, old thing,&quot; by her
+own placidity. He did not know when his mother left the room. He
+wondered continuously when it would happen, when the bolt would fall,
+what she would do. Howat was hot and cold, and possessed by a subtle
+sense of improbity, a feeling resembling that of a doubtful advance
+through the dark, for a questionable end. This was the least part of
+him, insignificant; his passion grew constantly stronger, more brutal.
+In a last, vanishing trace of his superior consciousness he recognized
+that the thing must have happened to him as it did; it was the price of
+his more erect pride, his greater contempt, his solitary and unspent
+state.</p>
+
+<p>She rose suddenly and announced that she was about to retire. It saved
+them for the moment, for that day; he muttered something
+incomprehensible and she was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Isabel Penny returned and took Mrs. Winscombe's place before the fire.
+She spoke trivially, at random intervals. A great longing swept over him
+to tell his mother everything, try to find an escape in her wise
+counsel; but his emotion seemed so ugly that he could not lay it before
+her. Besides, he had a conviction that it would be hopeless: he was
+gone. She was discussing Ludowika now. &quot;Really,&quot; she said, &quot;they seem
+very well matched, a good arrangement.&quot; She was referring, he realized,
+to the Winscombes' experience. He never thought of Felix Winscombe as
+married, Ludowika's husband; he had ceased to think of him at all. The
+present moment banished everything else. &quot;She has a quality usually
+destroyed by life about a Court,&quot; the leisurely voice went on; &quot;she
+seems quite happy here, for a little, in a way simple. But, curiously
+enough, she disturbs your father. He can't laugh with her as he usually
+does with attractive women.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was natural, Howat thought, that Gilbert Penny should be uneasy
+before such a direct reminder of the setting from which he had taken
+Isabel Howat. It was a life, memories, in which the elder had no part;
+that consciousness dictated a part of his father's bitterness toward St.
+James, the Royal Government. But Gilbert Penny had never had serious
+reason to dread it. His wife had left it all behind, permanently,
+without, apparently, a regret. He had a sudden, astonishing community of
+feeling with the older man; a momentary dislike of St. James,
+Versailles, the entire, treacherous, silk mob. A lover at fourteen!
+Howat damned such a betrayal with a bitterness whose base lay deeply
+buried in sex jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad,&quot; the other continued, &quot;that you are not susceptible; I
+suppose you'll be off hunting in a day or more; Mrs. Winscombe is bright
+wine for a young man. Women like her play at sensation, like eating
+figs.&quot; He thought contemptuously what nonsense was talked in connection
+with feminine intuition; it was nothing more than a polite chimera,
+like all the other famous morals and inhibitions supposed to serve and
+direct mankind.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered once more about his mother, what the course of her life had
+been&mdash;happily occupied, filled, or merely self-contained, hiding much in
+a deep, even flow? Her head was turned away from him, and he could see
+the girlish profile, the astonishing illusion of youth renewed. Howat
+wanted to ask her how she had experienced, well&mdash;love, since there was
+no other word. It had come to her quickly, he knew; her affair with
+Gilbert Penny had been headlong, or else it would not have been at all;
+yet he felt she had not been the victim of such a tyranny as mastered
+himself. But, perhaps, after all, secretly, every one was&mdash;just
+animal-like. He repudiated this firmly, at once. He himself had felt
+that he was not entirely animal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The girls,&quot; Isabel Penny said, &quot;will be gallopading now. Myrtle has a
+new dress, her father gave it to her, an apricot mantua.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's really idiotic about Myrtle,&quot; Howat declared irritably. His mother
+glanced swiftly at him. She made no comment. &quot;Now Caroline! It's
+Caroline who ought to marry David Forsythe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such things must fall out as they will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>God, that was true enough, terribly true! He rose and strode into the
+farther darkness of the drawing room, returning to the fireplace,
+marching away again. He saw the white glimmer of Ludowika's arms; he
+had a vision of her tying the broad ribbon about her rounded, silken
+knee. &quot;... a man now,&quot; his mother's voice was distant, blurred.
+&quot;Responsibilities; your father&mdash;&quot; He had heard this before without being
+moved; but suddenly the words had a new actuality; he was a man now,
+that was to say he stood finally, irrevocably, alone, beyond assistance,
+advice. He had never heeded them; he had gone a high-handed, independent
+way, but the others had been there; unconsciously he had been aware of
+them, even counted on them. Now they had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Caroline and Myrtle, bringing David with them again, returned on the
+following morning. It seemed to Howat that the former was almost lovely;
+she had a gayer sparkle, a clearer colour, than he had ever seen her
+possess before. On the other hand, Myrtle was dull; the dress, it
+seemed, had not been the unqualified success she had hoped for.
+Something newer had arrived in the meantime from London. Ludowika, it
+developed, had one of the later sacques in her boxes; but that, she said
+indifferently, must be quite dead now. It seemed to Howat that she too
+regarded Myrtle without enthusiasm. Ludowika and Myrtle had had very
+little to say to each other; Myrtle studied Mrs. Winscombe's apparel
+with a keen, even belligerent, eye; the other patronized the girl in a
+species of half absent instruction.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was flawless, leaden blue; the sunlight fell in an enveloping
+flood over the countryside, but it was pale, without warmth. There was
+no wind, not a leaf turned on the trees&mdash;a sinuous sheeting of the
+country-side like red-gold armour. But Howat knew that at the first stir
+of air the leaves would be in stricken flight, the autumn accomplished.
+Caroline dragged him impetuously down into the garden, among the brown,
+varnished stems of the withered roses, the sere, dead ranks of scarlet
+sage. &quot;He hugged me,&quot; she told him; &quot;I was quite breathless. It was in a
+hall, dark; but he didn't say anything. What do you think?&quot; There was
+nothing definite that he might express; and he patted her shoulder. He
+had a new kinship with Caroline; Howat now understood her tempest of
+feeling, concealed beneath her commonplace daily aspect.</p>
+
+<p>Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high
+desk in the counting house. Strangely his energy of being communicated
+itself to the prosaic work before him. It was, he suddenly felt,
+important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not
+do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the
+Penny iron. He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume;
+and money of his own. He found a savage pleasure in recording every
+detail put before him. He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of
+charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped
+to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in
+which London limited the Province's industries. For the first time he
+was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a
+personal concern in its output. He had always visualized it as
+automatically prosperous, a cause of large, inexact pride; but now it
+was all near to him; he considered the competition rapidly increasing
+here, and the jealous menace over seas.</p>
+
+<p>His final trace of careless youth had gone; he felt the advent of the
+constant apprehension that underlies all maturity, a sense of the
+proximity of blind accident, evil chance, disaster. At last he was
+opposed to life itself, with an immense stake to gain, to hold; in the
+midst of a seething, treacherous conflict arbitrarily ended by death.
+There was no cringing, absolutely no cowardice, in him. He was glad that
+it was all immediately about him; he was arrogant in pressing forward to
+take what he wanted from existence. He forgot all premonitions, doubt
+was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika
+Winscombe. She was something he would, had to, have.</p>
+
+<p>David Forsythe sat across the back of a chair in Howat's room as the
+latter dressed in the rapidly failing light. David had smuggled his
+London coat with the wired tails out to Myrtle Forge, and had the
+stiffened portion now spread smoothly out on either side. His cheerful,
+freshly-coloured face was troubled; he seemed constantly on the point of
+breaking into speech without actually becoming audible. Howat was
+thinking of Ludowika. It would happen to-night, he knew. He was at once
+apprehensive and glad.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You knew,&quot; David ventured finally, &quot;that I'm supposed to ask Myrtle to
+marry me. That is, your father and mine hoped I would. Well,&quot; he drew a
+deep breath, &quot;I don't think I shall. Of course, she is one of the
+prettiest girls any one ever saw, and she's quite bright&mdash;it's wonderful
+what she has picked up about the Furnace, but yet&mdash;&quot; his speech suddenly
+ran out. With an effort Howat brought himself back from his own vastly
+more important concern. &quot;Yes?&quot; he queried, pausing with his fingers in
+the buttonholes of a mulberry damask coat. &quot;I have decided to choose, to
+act, for myself,&quot; David announced; &quot;this is a thing where every man must
+be absolutely free.&mdash;Caroline can have me if she likes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat could not avoid a momentary, inward flicker of amusement at David
+Forsythe's absolute freedom of choice. He felt infinitely older than the
+other, wiser in the circuitous mysteries of being. He pounded David on
+the back, exclaimed, &quot;Good!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know whether to speak to Abner,&quot; the other proceeded
+unfilially, &quot;or the great Penny first. I don't care too much for either
+job. It would be pleasanter to go to Caroline. I have an idea she
+doesn't exactly dislike me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps I oughtn't to tell you,&quot; Howat replied gravely; &quot;but Caroline
+thinks a lot of you. She has admitted it to me&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>David Forsythe danced agilely about the more serious figure; he kicked
+Howat gaily from behind, ironically patted his cheek. &quot;Hell's buttons!&quot;
+he cried. &quot;Why didn't you tell me that before? You cast iron ass! I'll
+marry Caroline if I have to take her to a charcoal burner's hut. She
+would go, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny gripped the other's shoulder, faced him with grim
+determination. &quot;Do you fully realize that Myrtle Forge, Shadrach, will
+be us? They will be ours and our wives' and childrens'. We must stand
+together, David, whatever happens, whatever we may, personally, think.
+The iron is big now, but it is going to be great. We mustn't fail, fall
+apart. We'll need each other; there's going to be trouble, I think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>David put out his hand. &quot;I didn't know you felt like that, Howat,&quot; he
+replied, the effervescent youth vanished from him too. &quot;It's splendid.
+We'll hammer out some good blooms together. And for the other, nothing
+shall ever make a breach between us.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI" />VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>They went down to the supper table silently, absorbed in thought. David
+was placed where Mr. Winscombe had been seated, on Mrs. Penny's right,
+and next to Myrtle. Gilbert Penny maintained a flow of high spirits; he
+rallied every one at the table with the exception of, Howat noted,
+Ludowika. Her hair was simply arranged and undecorated, she wore
+primrose with gauze like smoke, an apparently guileless bodice with
+blurred, warm suggestions of her fragrant body. Howat was conscious of
+every detail of her appearance; she was stamped, as she was that
+evening, indelibly on his inner being. He turned toward her but little,
+addressed to her only the most perfunctory remarks; he was absorbed in
+the realization that the most fateful moment he had met was fast
+approaching. His father's cheerful voice continued seemingly
+interminably; now it was a London beauty to which he affected to believe
+David had given his heart. The latter replied stoutly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I brought that back safely enough; it's here the danger lies.
+Humiliating to cross the ocean and then be lost in Canary Creek.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert Penny shot an obvious, humorous glance at Myrtle. She did not
+meet it, but sat with lowered gaze. Caroline made a daring &quot;nose&quot; at
+Howat; but he too failed to acknowledge her message. David's affair had
+sunk from his thoughts. The drawing room was brilliantly lighted: there
+was a constant stir of peacock silk, of yellow and apple green and coral
+lutestring, of white shoulders, in the gold radiance of candles like
+stiff rows of narcissi. Caroline drifted finally into the chamber back
+of the dining room, and they could hear the tenuous vibrations of the
+clavichord. Soon David had disappeared. The elder Penny discovered
+Myrtle seated sullenly at her mother's side; and, taking her arm, he
+escorted her in the direction of the suddenly silenced music.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace. She smiled at
+Howat as he moved closer to her. She never did things with her hands, he
+noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little
+heaps of white. She sat motionless, her arms at rest. His mother seemed
+far away. The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room
+wavered in his vision. Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of
+intoxicating, yellow wine. He had a curious sensation of floating in
+air, of tea roses. It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she
+still realized nothing.... She must know now, any minute. Howat saw that
+his mother had gone.</p>
+
+<p>He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her. She
+raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened. Then her expression
+changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand. Her breast
+rose and fell, sharply, once. Howat picked her up by the shoulders and
+crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him. Ludowika's
+skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa. She
+hadn't struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her
+countenance, only a deep trouble. &quot;Howat,&quot; she said softly, &quot;you
+shouldn't have done that. It was brutal, selfish. You&mdash;you knew, after
+all that I told you; the premonition&mdash;&quot; she broke off, anger shone
+brighter in her eyes. &quot;How detestable men are!&quot; She turned away from
+him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa. Unexpectedly he was
+almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on
+the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.</p>
+
+<p>He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. &quot;I
+was an imbecile,&quot; she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with
+bitterness; &quot;Arcadia,&quot; she laughed. &quot;I thought it was different here,
+that you were different; that feeling in my heart&mdash;but it's gone now,
+dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I
+would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single
+little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing
+new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the
+world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see,
+I learned it all quite young.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if
+you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself.&quot; She
+appeared older, the Mrs. Winscombe who had first come to Myrtle Forge;
+her mouth was flippant. &quot;The eternal Suzanna,&quot; she remarked, &quot;the
+monotonous elders or younger.&quot; He paid little heed to her words; the
+coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like
+the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above
+her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement
+of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't choose it,&quot; he told her; &quot;it's ruined all that I was. Now, I
+don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about&mdash;if
+there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here
+with&mdash;as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My
+feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the
+end. There isn't any, I think.&quot; He pressed her hands to his throat with
+a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained
+her cheeks, and her breath caught. &quot;Endless,&quot; he repeated, losing the
+word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode
+over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat
+returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his
+nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid;
+she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its
+wrist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think it is something in myself,&quot; she said presently; &quot;something a
+little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat
+Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. God, I'd like to be that
+girl across the road, in the barnyard.&quot; He was back at the fire again
+when Gilbert Penny entered the room. The latter dropped a palm on
+Howat's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Schwar says the last sow metal was faulty,&quot; he declared; &quot;the
+Furnace'll need some attention with Abner Forsythe deeper in the
+Provincial affairs. Splendid thing David's back. Look for a lot from
+David.&quot; Howat hoped desperately that Ludowika would not leave, go to her
+room, while his father was talking. &quot;David says you have an
+understanding, will do great things. I hope so. I hope so. I won't damn
+him as an example but he will do you no harm. That is, if he touches
+your confounded person at all. A black Penny, Mrs. Winscombe,&quot; he said,
+turning to the figure spread in pale silk on the sofa. &quot;Fortunate for
+you to have no such confounded, stubborn lot on your hands. Although,&quot;
+he added laughingly, &quot;Felix Winscombe's no broken reed. But this boy of
+mine&mdash;you might think he had been run out of Shadrach,&quot; he tapped a
+finger on Howat's back. &quot;Not like those fellows about the Court, anyway.
+They tell me he'll go fifty miles through the woods in a day. Now if we
+could only keep that at the iron trade&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His father went on insufferably, without end. Howat withdrew stiffly
+from the other's touch. Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika.
+She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated. An immense
+tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer passion vapourized into a
+poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling. He was protective; his jaw set
+rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world. He had
+a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and
+silver buttons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage,
+confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him. Inexplicable
+tremors assailed him, vast fears. His father's deliberate voice
+destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and
+yellow flowers, the suave interior. The others had returned. He heard
+Ludowika speaking; she laughed. His tension relaxed. Suddenly he was
+flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling,
+delightful water. He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose.
+Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.</p>
+
+<p>There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him
+to declare himself to Ludowika. He was vaguely conscious of his mother's
+scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable
+surmising. His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to
+feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the
+consideration of an announcement of his passion for Ludowika Winscombe,
+a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world. But for
+the present he must be careful. This, the greatest event that had
+befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a
+black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his
+convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening.
+His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven
+fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his
+scorn.</p>
+
+<p>As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room. Myrtle took
+her place on the sofa. Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at
+the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own
+council. David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat. Caroline gaily laid
+her arm across her mother's shoulder and propelled her from the room.
+David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less
+clumsy, took his departure. He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow
+of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light.
+Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly. &quot;Howat,&quot; she said
+in a small voice, &quot;it's&mdash;it's, that is, David loves me. Whatever do you
+suppose father and Myrtle will say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you think David is saying to Myrtle now?&quot; he asked drily. &quot;I am
+glad, Caroline; everything worked out straight for you. David is a
+damned good Quaker. For some others life isn't so easy.&quot; She laid a warm
+hand on his shoulder. &quot;I wish you were happy, Howat.&quot; A slight
+irritation seized him at the facile manner in which she radiated her
+satisfaction, and he moved away. &quot;David's going back to-night. I wish he
+wouldn't,&quot; she said troubled. &quot;That long, dark way. Anything might
+happen. But he has simply got to be at his father's office in the
+morning. He is going to speak to him first, see what will be given us at
+the Furnace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It should be quite a family party at breakfast,&quot; Howat predicted.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII" />VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>He was entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face
+seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition
+after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared
+suddenly, &quot;I hate David Forsythe!&quot; Gilbert Penny was obviously startled.
+Caroline half rose, as if she had finished breakfast; but she sat down
+again with an expression of determination. Howat looted about from his
+removed place of being. &quot;I do!&quot; Myrtle repeated. &quot;At first he seemed to
+like&mdash;I mean I liked him, and then everything changed, got horrid. Some
+one interfered.&quot; Resentment, suspicion, dominated her, she grew shrill
+with anger. &quot;I saw him making faces at Howat, as if he and Howat, as if
+Howat had, well&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't generalize,&quot; said Howat coolly; &quot;be particular.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As if you had deliberately spoiled any chance, yes,&quot; she declared
+defiantly, &quot;any chance I had.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's ridiculous,&quot; Gilbert Penny declared. &quot;What,&quot; he asked his wife,
+&quot;are they all driving at?&quot; She professed herself equally puzzled. &quot;Howat
+would say nothing disadvantageous to young Forsythe. He knows what we
+all hope.&quot; Caroline suddenly leaned forward, speaking in a level voice:
+&quot;This has nothing to do with Howat, but with me. I am going to tell you
+at once, so that you can all say what you wish, get as angry as you
+like, and then accept what&mdash;what had to be. David and I love each other;
+we are going to be married.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Gilbert Penny's surprise slowly gave place to a dark tide suffusing his
+countenance. &quot;You and David,&quot; he half stuttered, &quot;getting married&mdash;like
+that.&quot; Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily
+without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness
+from which she watched the conflicts of her family. &quot;I know I'm
+fearfully bold, yes, indecent,&quot; Caroline went on, &quot;and undutiful,
+impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me,
+later. But I won't apologize for loving David.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Incredible,&quot; her father pronounced. &quot;A girl announcing, without the
+slightest warrant or authority, that she intends to marry. And trampling
+on her sister's heart in the bargain.&quot; Howat expostulated, &quot;What does it
+matter which he marries? The main affair is to consolidate the
+families.&quot; The elder glared at him. &quot;Be silent!&quot; he commanded. Howat
+Penny's ever present resentment rose to the surface. &quot;I am not a girl,&quot;
+he stated; &quot;nor yet a nigger. And, personally, I think David was
+extremely wise.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was sure of it,&quot; Myrtle cried; &quot;he&mdash;he has talked against me, helped
+Caroline behind my back.&quot; She sobbed thinly, with her arm across her
+eyes. &quot;If I thought anything like that had occurred,&quot; their father
+asserted, &quot;Howat would&mdash;&quot; he paused, gazing heavily about at his family.</p>
+
+<p>Howat's ill temper arose. &quot;Yes&mdash;?&quot; he demanded with a sharp inflection.
+&quot;Be still, Howat,&quot; his mother said unexpectedly. &quot;This is all very
+regrettable, Gilbert,&quot; she told her husband; &quot;but it is an impossible
+subject of discussion.&quot; Gilbert Penny continued hotly, &quot;He wouldn't stay
+about here.&quot; She replied equably, &quot;On the contrary, Howat shall be at
+Myrtle Forge until he himself chooses to leave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat was conscious of a surprise almost as moving as that pictured on
+his father's countenance. He had never heard Isabel Penny speak in that
+manner before; perhaps at last she would reveal what he had long
+speculated over&mdash;her true, inner situation. But he saw at once that he
+was to be again disappointed; the speaker was immediately enveloped in
+her detachment, the air that seemed almost one of a spectator in the
+Penny household. She smiled deprecatingly. How fine she was, Howat
+thought. Gilbert Penny did not readily recover from his consternation;
+his surprise had notably increased to that. His mouth was open, his face
+red and agitated. &quot;Before the children, Isabel,&quot; he complained. &quot;Don't
+know what to think. Surely, surely, you don't uphold Howat? Outrageous
+conduct if it's true. And Myrtle so gentle, never hurt any one in her
+life.&quot; Myrtle circled the table, and found a place in his arms. &quot;If they
+had only told me,&quot; she protested. &quot;If Caroline&mdash;&quot; He patted her flushed
+cheeks. &quot;Don't give it another thought,&quot; he directed; &quot;a girl as pretty
+as you! I'll take you to London, where you'll have a string of men, not
+Quakers, fine as peacocks.&quot; He bent his gaze on his son.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Didn't I tell you last evening that the cast metal has been light?&quot; he
+demanded. &quot;Must I beg you to go to the Furnace? Or perhaps that too
+conflicts with your mother's fears for you. There are stumps in the
+road.&quot; There was a whisper of skirts at the door, and Ludowika Winscombe
+stood smiling at them. Myrtle turned her tear-swollen face upon her
+father's shoulder. Howat wondered if Ludowika had slept. He endeavoured
+in vain to discover from her serene countenance something of her
+thoughts of what had occurred. He had a sudden inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can go to Shadrach as soon as Adam saddles a horse,&quot; he told his
+father. &quot;You were curious about the Furnace,&quot; he added to Ludowika,
+masking the keen anxiety he felt at what was to follow; &quot;it's a sunny
+day, a pleasant ride.&quot; She answered without a trace of feeling other
+than a casual politeness. &quot;Thank you, since it will be my only
+opportunity. I'll have to change.&quot; She was gazing, Howat discovered,
+lightly at Isabel Penny. &quot;I must get the figures from Schwar,&quot; his
+father said. Before he left the room he moved to his wife's side, rested
+his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a reassuring nod.
+Howat saw that, whatever it might be, the bond between them was secure,
+stronger than any differences of prejudices or blood, more potent than
+time itself. The group, the strain, about the table, broke up.</p>
+
+<p>The horses footed abreast over the road that crossed the hills and
+forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace.
+Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her
+face muffled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression
+she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His passion mounted
+and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its tide.
+Howat said at last:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you still so angry at life, at yourself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she replied; &quot;I slept that foolishness away. I must have sounded
+like a character in <i>The Lying Valet.</i>&quot; Her present mood obscurely
+troubled him; he infinitely preferred her in the pale crumpled silk and
+candle light of the evening before. &quot;I wish I could tell you what I
+feel,&quot; he said moodily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot; she replied. &quot;It's the most amusing thing possible. You
+advance and I seem to retreat; you reach forward and grasp&mdash;my fan, a
+handful of petticoat; you protest and sulk&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps in Vauxhall,&quot; he interrupted her savagely, &quot;but not here, not
+like that, not with me. This is not a gavotte. I didn't want it; I tried
+to get away; but it, you, had me in a breath. At once it was all over.
+God knows what it is. Call it love. It isn't a thing under a hedge, I
+tell you that, for an hour. It's stronger than anything else that will
+ever touch me, it will last longer.... Like falling into a river.
+Perhaps I'm different, a black Penny, but what other men take like
+water, a woman, is brandy for me. I'm&mdash;I'm not used to it. I haven't
+wanted Kate here and Mary there; but only you. I've got to have you,&quot; he
+said with a marked simplicity. &quot;I've got to, or there will be a bad
+smash.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika rode silently, hid in her mask. He urged his horse closer to
+her, and laid a hand on her swaying shoulder. &quot;I didn't choose this,&quot; he
+repeated; &quot;the blame's somewhere else.&quot; He felt a tremor run through
+her. &quot;Why say blame?&quot; she finally answered. &quot;I hate moralities and
+excuses and tears. If you are set on being gloomy, and talking to heaven
+about damnation, take it all away from me.&quot; A shadow moved across the
+countryside, and he saw clouds rising out of the north. A sudden wind
+swept through the still forest, and immediately the air was aflame with
+rushing autumn leaves. They fell across Howat's face and eddied about
+the horses' legs. The grey bank deepened in space, the sun vanished; the
+wind was bleak. It seemed to Howat Penny that the world had changed,
+its gold stricken to dun and gaunt branches, in an instant. The road
+descended to the clustered stone houses about Shadrach Furnace.</p>
+
+<p>The horses were left under the shed of the smithy at the primitive cross
+roads. Thomas Gilkan had gone to the river about a purchase of casting
+sand, but expected to be back for the evening run of metal. Fanny was
+away, Howat learned, visiting Dan Hesa's family. They would, of course,
+have dinner at the Heydricks; and the latter sent a boy home to prepare
+his wife. Ludowika and Howat aimlessly followed the turning road that
+mounted to the coal house. A levelled and beaten path, built up with
+stone, led out to the top of the stack, where a group of sooty figures
+were gathered about the clear, almost smokeless flame of the blast.
+Below they lingered on the grassy edge of the stream banked against the
+hillside and flooding smoothly to the clamorous fall and revolving wheel
+by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter
+spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their
+dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a
+dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace,
+voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows,
+dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.</p>
+
+<p>Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her
+arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an
+abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was
+drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid
+embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.</p>
+
+<p>At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The
+house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on
+the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the
+length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared
+into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep
+embrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road,
+and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led
+above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland apron and
+worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards
+while Heydrick and their guests dined.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it
+seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by
+the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They
+were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The
+charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the
+cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled
+through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were
+unsteady, inexact.</p>
+
+<p>The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some
+scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant
+before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had
+taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they
+protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was
+restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's
+cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she
+took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with
+Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance. They stood for a while in
+the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for
+the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom
+of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure
+moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of
+rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling
+emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the
+murky interior.</p>
+
+<p>A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles
+accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on
+the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.
+Ludowika looked within. &quot;For storing,&quot; Howat told her. Inside were piled
+sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.
+Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the
+door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly,
+and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms; then Ludowika
+stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders. She rested
+against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the
+ceiling. &quot;For storage,&quot; he said again. He thought his throat had closed,
+and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was
+above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. &quot;You
+see,&quot; he muttered; &quot;things for the store ... the men, wool stockings,
+handkerchiefs ... against their pay.&quot; The drumming rain was scarcely a
+foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and
+canvas-sewed bales about the walls. &quot;Ludowika,&quot; Howat said. He
+stopped&mdash;she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was
+individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.</p>
+
+<p>A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his
+blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices,
+somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses
+waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Winscombe. No, by God, never
+that last again!</p>
+
+<p>He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool
+shock of the rain. Ludowika was muffled in her cloak. Howat could see a
+renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about
+the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to
+call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to
+wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly
+the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which
+the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out
+of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans
+of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the
+fluid iron.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up
+at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an
+expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond
+Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road.
+A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it
+would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new
+difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He
+searched his feelings curiously.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without
+remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced
+none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over
+no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable
+then to think of Felix Winscombe except as a person generally
+unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without
+any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed
+wig, now absent in Maryland, had no importance in the passionate
+situation that had arisen between Ludowika and himself. Felix Winscombe
+would of course have to be met, dealt with; but so would a great many
+other exterior conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika, in her linen mask, was enigmatic, a figure of mystery. A
+complete silence continued between them; at times they ambled with his
+hand on her body; then the inequalities of the road forced them apart.
+The clouds dissolved, the sky was immaculate, green, with dawning stars
+like dim white flowers. A faint odour of the already mouldering year
+rose from the wet earth. Suddenly Ludowika dragged the mask from her
+face. Quivering with intense feeling she cried:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm glad, Howat! Howat, I'm glad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He contrived to put an arm about her, crush her to him for a precarious
+moment. &quot;We have had an unforgettable day out of life,&quot; she continued
+rapidly; &quot;that is something. It has been different, strangely apart,
+from all the rest. The rain and that musty little store house and the
+wonderful iron; a memory to hold, carry away&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To carry where?&quot; he interrupted. &quot;You must realize that I'll never let
+you go now. I will keep you if we have to go beyond the Endless
+Mountains. I will keep you in the face of any man or opposition
+created.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. &quot;I am
+afraid of myself, Howat,&quot; she told him; &quot;all that I have been, my
+life&mdash;against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different.
+Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while I have needed this.
+Howat, do you think so? Do you think I could forget so much, drop the
+past from me, be all new and happy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He reassured her, only half intent upon the burden of her words. He
+utterly disregarded anything provisional in their position; happiness or
+unhappiness were unconsidered in the overwhelming determination that she
+should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain.
+The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient
+gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily
+censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid,
+unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place
+comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the
+complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the elder at
+breakfast. His mother, Howat gladly felt, would give him the sympathy of
+a wise, broad understanding. David and Caroline would interpose no
+serious objection. Felix Winscombe remained; a virile figure in spite of
+his years; a man of assured position and a bitter will.</p>
+
+<p>He determined to speak on the day that Felix Winscombe returned from
+Annapolis; there would be no concealment of what had occurred, and no
+hypocrisy. A decent regret at Winscombe's supreme loss. The other would
+not relinquish Ludowika without a struggle. Who would? It was
+conceivable that he would summon the assistance of the law, conceivable
+but not probable; the situation had its centre in a purely personal
+pride. Nothing essential could be won legally. A physical encounter was
+far more likely. Howat thought of that coldly. He had no chivalrous
+instinct to offer himself as a sop to conventional honour. In any
+struggle, exchange of shots, he intended to be victorious.... He would
+have the naming of the conditions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's beautiful here,&quot; Ludowika broke into his speculations; &quot;the great
+forests and Myrtle Forge. I can almost picture myself directing servants
+like your mother, getting supplies out of the store, and watching the
+charcoal and iron brought down to the Forge. The sound of the hammer has
+become a part of my dreams. And you, Howat&mdash;I have never before had a
+feeling like this for a man. There's a little fear in it even. It must
+be stronger than the other, than Europe; I want it to be.&quot; They could
+see below them the lighted windows at Myrtle Forge. The horses turned
+unguided into the curving way across the lawn. A figure stood
+obsequiously at the door; it was, Howat saw with deep automatic
+revulsion, the Italian servant. He wondered again impatiently at the
+persistently unpleasant impression the other made on him. Gilbert Penny
+was waiting in the hall, and Howat told him fully the result of his
+investigation.</p>
+
+<p>His father nodded, satisfied. &quot;You are taking hold a great bit better,&quot;
+he was obviously pleased. &quot;We must go over the whole iron situation with
+the Forsythes. It's time you and David stepped forward. I am getting
+bothered by new complications; the thing is spreading out so
+rapidly&mdash;steel and a thousand new methods and refinements. And the
+English opposition; I'm afraid you'll come into that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika did not again appear that evening, and Howat sat informally
+before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline.
+Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled,
+almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his
+father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from
+just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he
+be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black
+Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious
+spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be
+a subject to it always. All the elements of his captivity lay so
+entirely outside of him, beyond his power to measure or comprehend, that
+a feeling of helplessness came over him. He again had the sense of being
+swept twisting in an irresistible flood. But his confusion was dominated
+by one great assurance&mdash;nothing should deprive him of Ludowika. An
+intoxicating memory invaded him, touched every nerve with delight and a
+tyrannical hunger. His fibre seemed to crumble, his knees turn to dust.
+Years ago he had been poisoned by berries, and limpness almost like this
+had gone softly, treacherously, through him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII" />VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>They entered into a period of secret contentment and understanding.
+Ludowika displayed a grave interest in the details of the house and iron
+at Myrtle Forge; he explained the processes that resulted in the wrought
+blooms despatched by tons in the lumbering, mule-drawn wagons. They
+explored the farm, where she listened approvingly to the changes he
+proposed making, kitchen gardens to be planted, the hedges of roses and
+gravelled paths to be laid&mdash;for her. She suggested an Italian walk,
+latticed above, with a stone seat, and was indicating a corner that
+might be transformed into a semblance of an angle of Versailles, when,
+suddenly, she stopped, and clasped his wrist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No! No!&quot; she exclaimed, with surprising energy. &quot;We'll have no France,
+no court, here, but only America; only you and myself, with no past, no
+memories, but just the future.&quot; How that was to be realized neither of
+them considered; they avoided all practical issues, difficulties. They
+never mentioned Felix Winscombe's name. However, a long communication
+came from him for his wife. She read it thoughtfully, in the drawing
+room, awaiting dinner. No one else but Howat was present, and he was
+standing with his hand on her shoulder. &quot;Felix hasn't been well,&quot; she
+remarked presently. &quot;For the first time he has spoken to me of his age.
+The Maryland affair drags, and that has wearied him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What does he say about returning?&quot; Howat bluntly asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Shortly, he hopes; that is, in another ten days. He says there is a
+good ship, the <i>Lindamira</i>, by the middle of November.&quot; Howat said,
+&quot;Excellent.&quot; Ludowika gazed at him swiftly. &quot;It will be difficult.&quot; His
+face became grim, but he made no direct reply. A silence fell on the
+room through which vibrated the blows of the trip hammer at the Forge.
+The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the
+counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a
+note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A
+flexibility that seemed entirely without bones. His eyes were jet slits,
+his lips shaven and mobile; a wig was repulsively saturated with scented
+grease. Yet it was not in actual details that he oppressed Howat; but by
+the vague suggestion of debasing commendations, of surreptitious
+understanding, insinuations. He seemed, absurdly, unreal, a symbol the
+intent of which Howat missed; he suppressed an insane movement to touch
+the Italian, discover if he was actually before him.</p>
+
+<p>He reread Ludowika's note whenever he was not actually employed in
+recording, until he was obliged to conceal it in the Forge book.</p>
+
+<p>Later Abner Forsythe arrived with David, and there was a stir of
+preparing rooms and communication with the farm. David's mother was
+dead, and Abner conducted the wedding negotiations with the Pennys. &quot;I
+thought it would be the pretty little one,&quot; he said at the table, with a
+Quaker disregard of small niceties of feeling; &quot;but, Gilbert, any girl
+of yours would be more than the young men of the present deserve.&quot; It
+was a difficult conversation for every one but Ludowika and Abner
+Forsythe. A greater ease appeared after supper. David and Caroline
+disappeared in the direction of the clavichord, from which sounded some
+scattered, perfunctory measures. The two elder men returned, over a
+decanter of French spirits, to the inevitable and engrossing subject of
+iron and the Crown regulations; Myrtle sat stiffly before the fireplace
+with Isabel Penny; and Howat moved up and across the room, his gaze
+lying on Ludowika, spread in an expanse of orange chiffon and bold
+silver tracery on the small sofa.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled at him once, but, for the most part, she was lost in revery.
+Ludowika had a fan, to hold against the fire; and her white fingers were
+playing with its polished black sticks and glazed paper printed with an
+ornamental bar of music. A faint colour stained her cheeks as he watched
+her, and set his heart tumultuously beating. He told himself over and
+over, with an unabated sense of wonder, that she was his. He longed for
+the moment when they could discard all pretence and be frankly,
+completely, together. That must happen after Felix Winscombe arrived.
+Meanwhile he was forced to content himself with a look, a quick or
+lingering contact of fingers, the crush of her body against his
+momentarily in a passage. They had returned once to the rock where he
+had first been intoxicated by her; in a strangling wave of emotion he
+had taken her into his arms; but she had broken away. The width of the
+stream and screen of trees had apparently disconcerted Ludowika, and she
+contrived to make him feel inexcusably young, awkward.</p>
+
+<p>But usually he dominated her; there was a depth to his passion that
+achieved patience, the calmness of unassailable fortitude. She gazed at
+him often with a surprise that bordered on fear; again she would delight
+in his mastery, beg him to hold her forever safe against the past. He
+reassured her of his ability and determination to accomplish that; there
+was not the shadow of a doubt in his own mind. He was more troubled now
+than formerly; but he was eager for the climax to pass, impatient to
+claim his own.</p>
+
+<p>As if a dam had been again thrown across the flood of his emotions he
+felt them mounting, growing more and more irrepressible. He slept in
+feverish snatches, with gaps in which he stared wide-eyed into the dark,
+trying to realize his coming joy, visualizing Ludowika, a brilliant
+apparition of flowing silk, on the night. He thought of the store house
+at the Furnace, of the rain beating on the roof, and Ludowika ... God,
+if that old man would only return, go, leave them! The clouds vanished
+and left the nights emerald clear, the constellations glittered in
+frosty immensities of silence. He stood at the open window with his
+shoulders bare, revelling in the cold air that flowed over him, defying
+winter, death itself. The moon waned immutably.</p>
+
+<p>David was now at Shadrach Furnace, living with the Heydricks, and the
+necessities that brought him to Myrtle Forge were endless. He was
+absolutely happy, and Howat watched him with mingled longing and envy.
+His affair, darker, more tragic in spite of a consummation that must be
+joyous, seemed infinitely more mature. Caroline was a nice enough girl,
+but Ludowika was supremely fascinating. David amused him:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Caroline is a miracle. Of course there are prettier, and Mrs. Winscombe
+has more air; but none has Caroline's charming manner. Of course, you
+have noticed it. Even a thick-headed brother couldn't miss that. We have
+plans for you, too. And it's no good your looking glum; we'll glum you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The amusement faded from Howat's countenance, and he listened sullenly
+to the end of the raillery. His temper was growing daily more uneven,
+the delight had largely left his reflections. His passion had become too
+insistent for happy conjecturing; the visions of Ludowika now only
+tormented him. Her eyes were like burning sapphires, her warm palms
+caressed his face; he was increasingly gaunt and shadowed. Once he gave
+a note for her to the Italian servant, loathing the hand that adroitly
+covered the folded sheet, the other's oblique smile; but she sent back
+word that she was suffering from a headache. He began to plan so that he
+would intercept her in unexpected places. She, too, was passionate in
+her admissions; but, somehow, some one always stumbled toward them, or
+they were summoned from beyond. He began to feel that this was not mere
+chance, but desired, deliberately courted, by Ludowika. Very well, he
+would end it all, as it were, with a shout when Felix Winscombe came
+back.</p>
+
+<p>When Felix Winscombe came back!</p>
+
+<p>He was, too, increasingly aware of his mother's scrutiny. Howat was
+certain that Isabel Penny had surmised a part of his feeling for
+Ludowika. He didn't greatly care; any one might know, he thought
+contemptuously. It had destroyed his sympathetic feeling for his mother,
+the only considerate bond that had existed with his family.
+Unconsciously he placed her on one side of a line, the other held only
+Ludowika and himself.</p>
+
+<p>He explained this to her in a sere reach of the garden. It was
+afternoon, the sun low and a haze on the hills. Ludowika had on a
+scarlet wrap, curiously vivid against the withered, brown aspect of the
+faded flower stems. &quot;You and me,&quot; he repeated. She gazed, without
+answering, at the barrier of hills that closed in Myrtle Forge. From
+the thickets came the clear whistling of partridges, intensifying the
+unbroken tranquillity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was
+suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive
+forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a
+corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling
+always intensified by the thought of England. &quot;The Province,&quot; he said
+disjointedly, &quot;a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road
+this morning? Perhaps five with their women, some pack horses, kitchen
+tins and hide tents. The men wore buckskin, and furred caps, and the
+women's skirts were sewed leather. One was tramping along with a feeding
+baby. Well, God knows where they have been, how many days they have
+walked; their shoes were in shreds. And their faces, thin and serious,
+have looked steadily over rifles at death. The women, too. You'll only
+get them here, in a big country, a new&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They were terrible,&quot; Ludowika declared; &quot;savage. I was glad when they
+were by. The baby at the woman's great breast!&quot; she shuddered at the
+memory. &quot;Like animals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her with a slight surprise; he had never heard her speak so
+bitterly. He saw her more clearly than ever before; as if her words had
+illuminated her extraordinary delicacy of being, had made visible all
+the infinite refinements of which she was the result. He had a
+recurrence of his sense of her incongruity here, balanced on polished
+black pattens, against the darkening hills. The sun disappeared, there
+was a cool flare of yellow light, and a feeling of impending evening.
+The hills were indigo, the forest a dimmer gold, a wind moved audible in
+the dry leaves.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika gasped. &quot;It's so&mdash;so huge,&quot; she said, &quot;all the lonely miles. At
+times I can't bear to think of it.&quot; A faint dread invaded him. &quot;Last
+night, when I couldn't sleep, a thing howled in the woods. And I got
+thinking of those naked men at the Forge, with their eyes rimmed in
+black, and&mdash;and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He disregarded the publicity of their position and put an arm about her
+shoulders, in an overwhelming impulse to calm and reassure her; but she
+slipped away. &quot;I'll be all right again,&quot; she promised; &quot;but I think it's
+more cheerful with the candles. We'll get your sister to play Belshazzar
+and pretend we're across the green from St. James.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A mood darker than any he had lately known settled over him. It was
+natural for Ludowika to be lonely, at first; but in a little she would
+grow to love the wild like himself. She must. The Province was to be her
+life. He was standing before the fire in the informal chamber beyond the
+dining room, watching his mother's vigorous hands deftly engaged in
+embroidery. There was no one present, and a sudden, totally desperate
+recklessness possessed him. Isabel Penny said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Winscombe will be here shortly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish it would be to-night,&quot; he declared. She raised her calm gaze
+with brows arched in inquiry. &quot;There is something&mdash;&quot; he broke off. &quot;She
+belongs to me,&quot; he said in a low, harsh voice, &quot;and not to that old
+man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Penny secured her needle, and put the colourful web aside. She was,
+as he had been sure she would be, entirely composed, admirable. Her
+questioning look grew keener. &quot;I was afraid of that,&quot; she admitted
+simply; &quot;after the first. It is very unpleasant and difficult. This is
+not London, and your father will make no allowances. You are not any
+easier to bend, Howat. With Mrs. Winscombe&mdash;&quot; she paused, &quot;I am not
+certain. But there is no doubt about the husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She belongs to me,&quot; he reiterated sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no need for you to make yourself offensively clear. I know
+something of details of that kind. I told you once that they might mean
+only a very little to&mdash;to certain women. I am not prepared to judge
+about that. But I know you, what bitter feeling you are capable of. You
+are a very pure man, Howat; and for that reason such an occurrence would
+tear you up and across. There is no use in begging you to be cautious,
+diplomatic. Mr. Winscombe, too, is very determined; he has many
+advantages&mdash;maturity, coldness, experience. He won't spare you, either.
+It's excessively unfortunate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll get it over as quickly as possible. I didn't want the thing to
+happen, it wasn't from any choice; it hit me like a bullet. Nothing else
+is of the slightest importance. I've gone over this again and again;
+I'll tell him and let him try what he can. Ludowika's gone from&mdash;from
+the fireworks and fiddles and stinking courts; I've got her, and, by
+God, I'll keep her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Talk quietly; you can't shout yourself into this. Are you certain that
+Mrs. Winscombe really finds the courts&mdash;stinking? I remember, at first,&quot;
+she stopped. Even in the midst of his passion he listened for what
+revelation she might make; but none followed. She was silent for a
+minute. &quot;They become a habit,&quot; she said finally; &quot;love, loves, become a
+habit. Only men brought up in the same atmosphere can understand. At
+first Felix Winscombe will be infuriated with you for speaking, then he
+will realize more, and the trouble will follow. Are you certain that you
+have comprehended? It would be stupid to mistake an episode, you would
+succeed only in making yourself ridiculous.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He lifted up both his hands and closed them with a quivering, relentless
+force.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly,&quot; Isabel Penny remarked, &quot;truly I begin to be sorry for her.
+There is something she has yet to learn about men. Nothing can be said;
+and that is what your father will not penetrate. Howat, I am even a
+little afraid ... now. That, I believe, is unusual for me. It's your
+blackness, like powder. The explosion can kill. Nothing may be said.
+Life drags us along by the hair.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her questions about Ludowika joined to the memory of the latter's
+revulsion from the primitive conditions of the Province and added to the
+heaviness of his heart. He mentally denied his mother's suggestions,
+drove them from him, but they left a faint enduring sting, a vague
+unrest. His passion for Ludowika swelled, dominated, him; he forgot
+everything but his own, supreme desire. Nothing else stood before its
+flood; all thought of Ludowika's final happiness was lost with the other
+detritus. The tense closing of his hands had symbolized his feeling, his
+intent. He held her in a manner as nakedly primitive as the inchoate
+sexuality of the emotion that had engulfed him.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika did not appear for supper, and he was possessed by a misery of
+vague apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a
+token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped
+the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately,
+without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his
+room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply,
+only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the
+affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court
+adventure. It was the Italian servant, Howat decided; and immediately he
+recognized why he disliked the other&mdash;it was because he expressed an
+aspect of slyness that lay over Ludowika and himself. He put that from
+him, too; but it was like brushing away cobwebs. His hunger for Ludowika
+increased all the while; it became more burningly material, insatiable
+and concrete.</p>
+
+<p>On the day following she clung to him, when opportunity offered, with a
+desperate energy of emotion. &quot;You must hold me tighter,&quot; she told him.
+Her mood rapidly changed, and she complained of the eternal, pervasive
+fall of the forge hammer. &quot;It will drive me mad,&quot; she declared almost
+wildly. &quot;I can't bear to think of its going on and on, year after year;
+listening to it&mdash;&quot; He heard her with sombre eyes. She had come to the
+counting house, empty for the moment but for themselves, and stood with
+her countenance shadowed by a frown. &quot;If the hammer stops,&quot; he replied,
+waving his hand largely, &quot;all this, the Pennys, stop, too. I'm afraid
+that sound of beating out iron will be always wrought through our lives.
+You will get accustomed to it&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her expression grew petulant, resentful. &quot;Do you mean that we couldn't,
+perhaps, go to England, if&mdash;if I wanted?&quot; He moved closer to her,
+brushing the circumference of her skirt. &quot;You asked me to hold you, to
+keep you from the past; and I am going to do it. London is all that you
+wish to forget; it must go completely out of your life ... never finger
+you again.&quot; A faint dread that deepened almost to antagonism was
+visible on her countenance. &quot;I suppose to men talk like that seems a
+sign of strength, of possession; but it doesn't impress women, really.
+You see, women give, or else&mdash;there is nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had no thought of impressing you,&quot; he said simply; &quot;I only repeated
+what came into my mind, what I mean. It would be a mistake for me to
+take you to England, and make both of us miserable. Beside, there is
+more to tend here than I'll ever accomplish.&quot; She objected, &quot;But other
+people, workmen, will do the actual labour. Surely you are not going to
+keep on with anything so vulgar&mdash;&quot; she indicated the office and desks.
+Her features sharpened with contempt. &quot;I'll not be a clerk,&quot; he told her
+gravely. &quot;But I am responsible for a great deal. You should understand
+that for you showed it to me. Most of what I am now has been you.&quot; He
+reached out his hands to her in a wave of tenderness, but she evaded
+him. She stood irresolute for a moment and then abruptly turned and
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>A white rim of new moon grew visible at the edge of dusk, and he stood
+gazing at it before he entered the dwelling. A dull unrest had become
+part of his inner tumult, a premonition falling over him like an
+advancing shadow. But above all his vague fears rose the knowledge that
+he would never let Ludowika go from him; that was the root of his being.
+Now she could never leave him. It was natural, he assured himself again,
+that she should feel doubts at first; everything here was so different
+from the life she had known; and women were variable. He would have to
+understand that, learn to accommodate himself to changing, surface
+moods, immovable underneath.</p>
+
+<p>She had put on for supper, he saw, a daring dress; and her expression
+was that which he had first noted, indifferent, slightly scoffing. Her
+shoulders and arms gleamed under fragile gauze, her bodice was hardly
+more than a caress of silk. He watched her every movement, and got a
+sort of satisfaction from the knowledge that she grew increasingly
+disturbed at his unwavering scrutiny. His mother's attitude toward Mrs.
+Winscombe had not changed by a shade, an inflection; she was correctly
+cordial in her slightly distant manner.</p>
+
+<p>In the ebb and flow of the evening Howat was left with Ludowika for a
+little, and he bent over her, kissing her sharply. She was coldly
+unresponsive; and he kissed her again, trying vainly to bring some
+warmth to her lips. She did not avoid him actually, but he felt that
+something in her, essential, slipped aside from his caress. His emotion
+changed to a mounting anger. &quot;You will have to get over this now or
+later,&quot; he asserted. She said surprisingly, &quot;Felix will be home this
+week.&quot; He stood with an arm half raised, his head turned, as he had been
+arrested by her period.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well?&quot; he demanded stupidly. Her tone had been beyond his
+comprehension. &quot;Felix,&quot; she went on, apparently at random, &quot;is very
+satisfactory.&quot; Something of her intent penetrated his stunned faculties.
+He advanced toward her dark with rage. &quot;And if he is,&quot; he replied, &quot;it
+will do him no good. It will do you no good, if you think&mdash;&quot; he broke
+off from an accession of emotion. &quot;What damned thing are you thinking
+of?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Princess Amelia's stockings,&quot; she answered pertly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll never put them on her again, like any dirty chamber maid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Felix, the end of this week,&quot; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll kill him,&quot; Howat whispered; &quot;if he lifts a hand I'll shoot him
+through the head. This was forced on me; some one else, responsible, can
+pay.&quot; Her chin was up, her expression mocking. &quot;Ridiculous, like any
+cloddish countryman.&quot; She walked deliberately away, seated herself in a
+graceful eddy of panniered silk.</p>
+
+<p>A cold torment succeeded his rage; he had the feeling of being
+hopelessly trapped, stifling in his passion. He followed her. &quot;Ludowika,
+this is horrible, so soon. I am willing to think that I am to blame;
+stupid; no experience. You will have to be patient with me. Naturally
+everything, now&mdash;&quot; he broke off and wandered to a window, holding aside
+the draperies, gazing out into the night. The sky was so luminous that
+the barriers of surrounding hills were printed clearly against starry
+space. The forest swept about in a dark veil; nowhere could be seen a
+glimpse of habitation. He heard the wavering cry of an owl.</p>
+
+<p>The Province, immense, secretive! Paper lanterns strung in parks, hid
+music, provocative smiles only playing with the heart! It was
+tremendously unfortunate. Why must they suffer so unreasonably?
+Something, he was certain, had gone wrong; it lay both within them and
+outside; a force diverted, a purpose unaccomplished. It bent, broke,
+them like two twigs; they were no more than two bubbles, momentarily
+reflecting the sky, on a profound depth. A wind stirred, oppressed them,
+and they were gone. A great pity for Ludowika took its place in his
+feelings. He was sorry for himself. Suddenly the rustle of her skirts
+approached.</p>
+
+<p>An infinitely seductive, warm arm crept about his neck; she abandoned
+herself to a ruthless embrace. &quot;It's been wonderful, Howat; and&mdash;and it
+isn't over, yet. Nothing lasts, it's a mistake to demand too much. We
+must take what we may. Perhaps, even, later&mdash;in London. No, don't
+interrupt me. After all, I'm wiser than you are. I was swept away for a
+little. Impossibilities. I am what I am. I was always that, inside of
+me. If the longing I told you about had been stronger, it, and not the
+court, would have made me; but it was no more than a glimpse seen from a
+window, a thing far away. I'd never reach it. This, now, has been the
+best of me, all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He had a mingled sense of the truth and futility of her words. It was
+as if his passion stood apart from them, dominating them, lashing him
+with desire. Nothing she might say, no necessity nor effort, could free
+them. The uselessness of words smote him. She spoke again, an urgent
+flow of dulcet sound against his ear; but it was without meaning, lost
+in the drumming of his blood. The stir of feet approached, and he
+released her, moving to the fireplace. It was Caroline. She stopped
+awkwardly, advancing a needless explanation of a trivial errand from the
+doorway, and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>His position at Myrtle Forge was fast becoming impossible. There would
+be an explosion now at any moment. He took the fire tongs and idly
+rearranged the wood on the hearth. The flames blazed more brightly,
+their reflection squirmed over the lacquer frames on the walls, gleamed
+richly on polished black walnut, and fell across the Turkey floor
+carpet. It even reached through the pale candle light and flickered on
+Ludowika's dull red gown, flowered and clouded with blue. She was turned
+away from him, against the window; her shoulders drooped in an attitude
+of dejection. The flames died away again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX" />IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Ludowika's manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and,
+Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient
+air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to
+him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive.
+She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband. Felix Winscombe,
+she thought, would mean&mdash;escape. He used the word deliberately,
+realizing that that now expressed her attitude toward the Province,
+toward him. It made no difference in his feeling for her, his
+determination that nothing should take her from him. His power of
+detachment vanished; he became utterly the instrument of his passion.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't press upon her small expressions of his emotion; somehow,
+without struggle, she had made them seem foolish; beyond that they were
+inadequate. He was conscious of the approach of a great climax; his
+feeling was above the satisfaction of trivial caresses. Soon, he told
+himself, soon he would absolutely possess her, for as long as they
+lived. Ultimately she must be happy with him. He thought the same things
+in a ceaseless round; he walked almost without sight, discharging
+mechanically the routine of daily existence; answering inevitable
+queries in a perfunctory, dull voice. Myrtle Forge made a distant
+background of immaterial colours and sounds for the slightly mocking
+figure of Ludowika.</p>
+
+<p>In mid-afternoon David arrived with a face stung scarlet by beating
+wind, and a clatter of hoofs. He immediately found Gilbert Penny, and
+the two men sat together with grave faces, lowered voices. Howat, who
+had left the counting house at the sound of the hurried approach, caught
+a few words as he drew near the others:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;... a bad attack, crumpled him up. Coming out from the city now.&quot; They
+were talking about Felix Winscombe, who, it appeared, had been assaulted
+by a knife-like pain; and was returning to Myrtle Forge. &quot;Watlow saw no
+reason why it should be dangerous,&quot; David continued; &quot;he thinks perhaps
+it came from unusual exertions, entertaining. A little rest, he says. He
+thinks the Winscombes will be able to sail on the <i>Lindamira</i> as they
+planned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika listened seriously to Gilbert Penny's few, temperate words of
+preparation. &quot;He has had a pain like that before,&quot; she told them. &quot;It
+always passes away. Felix is really very strong, in spite of his age. He
+won't ordinarily go to bed, but I'll insist on that now, simply for
+rest.&quot; Felix Winscombe appeared at the supper hour. He was helped out
+of Abner Forsythe's leather-hung chaise, and assisted into the house.
+Howat saw him under the hanging lamp in the hall; with a painful
+surprise he realized that he was gazing at the haggard face of an old
+man. Before he had never connected the thought of definite age with Mr.
+Winscombe. The man's satirical virility had forbidden any of the
+patronage unconsciously extended to the aged.</p>
+
+<p>A trace of his familiar, mocking smile remained, but it was tremulous;
+it required, Howat saw, great effort. An involuntary admiration
+possessed him for the other's unquenchable courage. The latter protested
+vehemently against being led to his room by Ludowika; but she ignored
+his determination to go into supper, swept him away with a firm arm
+about his waist.</p>
+
+<p>The house took on the slightly strange and disordered aspect of illness;
+voices were grave, low; in the morning Howat learned that Felix
+Winscombe had had another vicious attack in the night. Dr. Watlow
+arrived, and demanded assistance. Howat Penny, in the room where
+Ludowika's husband lay exhausted in a bed canopied and draped in gay
+India silk, followed Watlow's actions with a healthy feeling of
+revulsion. The doctor bared Winscombe's spare chest, then filled a
+shallow, thick glass with spirits; emptying the latter, he set fire to
+the interior of the glass; and, when the blue flame had expired, clapped
+the cupped interior over the prostrate man's heart. There was, it
+seemed, little else that could be done; bleeding was judged for the
+once unexpeditious.</p>
+
+<p>An effort at commonplace conversation was maintained at dinner. Ludowika
+openly discussed the arrangements for their return to London. Felix
+Winscombe had rallied from the night; his wife said that it was
+difficult to restrain him. The most comfortable provisions, she
+continued, had been made for their passage on the <i>Lindamira</i>. Howat
+heard her without resentment. He had no wish to contradict her
+needlessly even in thought; he was immovably fixed. Mr. Winscombe's
+debilitated return had completely upset his intentions. An entirely
+different proceeding would now be demanded, but with an identical end.
+What pity he felt for the elder had no power to reach or alter his
+passion.</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the counting house, and worked methodically through the
+afternoon, with an increasing sense of being involved in an irresistible
+movement. This gave him a feeling almost of tranquillity; from the
+beginning he had not been responsible. In the face of illness the
+Italian servant proved utterly undependable; he cringed, stricken with
+dread, from the spectacle of suffering. And when late in the day Mr.
+Winscombe, partially drugged with opium, grew consciously weaker,
+Howat's assistance was required.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika now remained in the room with her husband, and there was a
+discreet movement in and out by various members of the household.
+Isabel Penny remained for an hour, Caroline took her place, Myrtle
+fluttered uncertainly in the doorway. Through the evening Felix
+Winscombe lay propped on pillows, his head covered by a black gros de
+Naples cap. His keen personality waned and revived on his long, yellow
+countenance. At one side wigs stood in a row on blocks, a brilliant,
+magenta coat lay in a huddle on a chair. At intervals he spoke, in a
+thinner, higher voice than customary, petulantly uneasy, or with a
+familiar, sardonic inflection. At the latter Ludowika would grow
+immensely cheered. She entirely ignored Howat on the occasions when he
+was in the room. He saw her mostly bent over leather boxes, into which
+disappeared her rich store of silk and gold brocades, shoes of purple
+morocco, soft white shifts. Howat watched her without an emotion visible
+on his sombre countenance.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally Mr. Winscombe's tenuous fingers dipped into a snuff box of
+black enamel and brilliants, and he lifted his hand languidly. The man's
+vitality, his sheer determination, were extraordinary. Even now he was
+far from impotence. He had, Howat had learned, completely dominated the
+Provincial Councils, forced a mutual compromise and agreement on them.
+He spoke of still more complicated affairs awaiting him in England. He
+damned the Italian's &quot;white liver,&quot; and threatened to leave him in
+America. Dr. Watlow had been forced to return to the city.</p>
+
+<p>Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his
+feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it
+easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about
+their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his
+personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the
+future of the Penny iron. They might live in one of the outlying stone
+dwellings at the Forge ... for the present. He was glad that Gilbert
+Penny, that he, was rich. Ludowika could continue to dress in rare
+fabrics, to step in elaborate pattens over the common earth. That could
+not help but influence, assuage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in
+the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive assemblies were open to
+them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of
+Mr. Winscombe's bitter humour. In the past he had repudiated them with
+the utmost scorn. In the past&mdash;dim shapes, scenes, that appeared to have
+occurred years before, but which in reality reached to last month,
+trooped through his mind. Youth had vanished like a form dropping behind
+a hill. He looked back; it was gone; his feet hurried forward into the
+unguessed future; anxiety joined him; the scent that was Ludowika
+accompanied him, an illusive figure. He reached toward it.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing at the foot of the bed where Felix Winscombe lay. The
+latter was restless, and complained of pains in his arms, reaching down
+to his fingers. Ludowika bent over him, her face stamped with concern.
+She regarded Howat with a new expression&mdash;narrowed eyes and a glimmer of
+flawless teeth: a look he had never foreseen there; but it was impotent
+before the thing that was. It had, however, the effect of intensifying
+his desire, his passion for her fragility of silk and flesh. He would
+kiss her hate on her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>She sat by the bedside, and Howat took a place opposite her. Candles
+burned on a highboy, on a table at his back; and their auriferous light
+flowed in about the bedstead. The latter was draped from the canopy to
+the bases of the posts in a bright printing of pheasants and
+conventional thickets&mdash;cobalt and ruby and orange; and across a heavy
+counterpane half drawn up stalked a row of panoplied Indians in clipped
+zephyr. It was a nebulous enclosure with the shadows of the hangings
+wavering on the coloured wool and cold linen, on the long, seamed
+countenance of the prostrate man.</p>
+
+<p>A clock in the hall struck slowly&mdash;it needed winding&mdash;ten blurred notes.
+Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the
+hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without;
+wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a
+blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's
+face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ...
+Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name,
+and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but
+soundless lips&mdash;Ludowika Penny.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband lay with his eyes closed, his head bowed forward on his
+chest, as if in sleep. At irregular intervals small, involuntary
+contractions of pain twitched at his mouth. At times, too, he muttered
+noiselessly. Extraordinary. Ludowika and Felix Winscombe and himself,
+Howat Penny. A world peopled only by them; the silence of the room
+dropped into infinite space, bottomless time. A sudden dread of such
+vast emptiness seized Howat; he felt that he must say something,
+recreate about them the illusion of safe and familiar spaces and walls.
+It seemed that he was unable to speak; a leaden inhibition lay on his
+power of utterance. He made a harsh sound in his throat, loud and
+startling. Felix Winscombe raised his head, and Ludowika cried faintly.
+Then silence again folded them.</p>
+
+<p>Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs&mdash;the
+furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and
+himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with
+his mother. She was astonishingly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika
+and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompassing the
+magnitude of his passion; she had not realized his new patience and
+determination. He found himself counting the gorgeous birds in the
+bed-hangings&mdash;twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and stopped
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>It had grown chilly in the room, and Ludowika had an India cashmere
+shawl about her shoulders. The sombre garnets and blues hid the tinsel
+gaiety of her gown and her bare shoulders. She appeared older than he
+had ever seen her before. Her face, carefully studied, showed no trace
+of beauty; her eyes were heavy, her lips dark; any efforts of animation
+were suspended. She showed completely the effect of her life in courts
+and a careless prodigality of hours and emotions. Howat, seeing all
+this, felt only a fresh accession of his hunger for her; she was far
+more compelling than when romantically viewed as a moon.</p>
+
+<p>He sat with his chin propped on a palm; she was rigidly upright with her
+arms at her sides; Felix Winscombe moved higher on the pillows. His eyes
+glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred
+ceaselessly with weaving fingers. Howat could almost feel Ludowika's
+hatred striking at him across the bed. He smiled at her, and she faced
+him with an expression of stony unresponse. He thought luxuriantly of
+her in his arms, with the rain beating on the store house roof; he
+caught the odours of the damp, heaped merchandise, the distant clamour
+in the casting shed. He had a brutal impulse to lean forward and remind
+her of what had occurred, of the fact that she was his; he wanted to
+fling it against her present detachment, to mock her with it. Then he
+would crush her against his heart. Felix Winscombe raised up on an
+elbow, distorting the row of sanguinary Indians.</p>
+
+<p>Ludowika moved to the edge of the bed, and put a firm, graceful arm
+about him. A grey shadow of pain fell on Mr. Winscombe's features. The
+silence was absolute. He seemed to be waiting in an attitude of mingled
+dread and resolution. He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on
+his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika's support. She
+sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat
+started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless
+suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm. Howat watched him
+in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath.
+Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony
+gathering on Felix Winscombe's countenance, but a corresponding sense of
+complete helplessness settled like a leaden coffin about him. The other
+became unrecognizable; his face seemed to be set in an unnatural grin.
+His head drew back on a thin, corded neck, and a faint gasping for air
+stirred in the shadows. Even Howat felt the pain to be unendurable, and
+Ludowika, white as milk, had risen to her feet. She stood with a hand
+half raised beneath a fringed corner of the India shawl.</p>
+
+<p>It was incredible that the sufferer's agony should increase, but it was
+apparent that it did remorselessly. All humanity was obliterated in an
+excruciating spasm over which streamed some meagre tears. Mr.
+Winscombe's arms raised and dropped; and, suddenly relaxed, he slipped
+down upon the pillows. Immediately the torment vanished from his
+countenance; it became peaceful, released. The familiar mockery of the
+mouth came back. The head, slightly turned, seemed to regard Ludowika
+with contentment and interrogation. Howat was conscious of a relief
+almost as marked as that on the face before him. He had gripped his
+hands until they ached. The tension in the room, too, seemed spent. He
+was about to address a reassuring period to Ludowika, when, at a glimpse
+of her expression, the words died on his lips.</p>
+
+<p>He bent over the bed, with his hand on a ridged, still chest; he gazed
+down at flaccid eyes, a dropped chin. Felix Winscombe was dead.</p>
+
+<p>Howat raised up slowly, facing the woman through the draperies. She was
+gazing in an incredulous, shocked surprise at the limp, prostrate body
+capped in black gros de Naples. A shuddering fear passed over her, and
+then her eyes met those of Howat Penny. Even separated from him by the
+bed she drew away as if from his touch. He saw that she had forgotten
+the dead man in a sharp realization of the portent of the living. She
+glanced about the room in the panic of a trapped lark, an abject
+fright, searching for an escape.</p>
+
+<p>He realized that there was none; Ludowika now belonged to him
+absolutely; he was as remorseless as the pain that had killed Felix
+Winscombe. Below the automatic sensations of the moment Howat was
+conscious of utter satisfaction. A miracle had given Ludowika to him; in
+the passing of a breath all his difficulty had been ended. She was alone
+with him in a province of forests and iron and stars. He would make her
+forget the gardens of fireworks and scraping violins; but forget or not
+she was his ... Ludowika Penny.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II_THE_FORGE" id="II_THE_FORGE" />II THE FORGE</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X" />X</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jasper Penny stood at a window of his bed room, his left arm carried in
+a black silk handkerchief, gazing down at the long, low roof of Myrtle
+Forge, built by his great, great grandfather Gilbert over a hundred and
+ten years before. It was February, and he could hear the ringing blows
+of axes, cutting the ice out of the forebay to liberate the water power
+for the completion of a forging of iron destined to be rolled into
+tracks for the slowly lengthening Columbia Steam Railway System. It was
+midday, a grey sky held a brighter, diffused radiance where the veiled
+sun hung without warmth, and the earth was everywhere frozen
+granite-like. He could see beyond the Forge shed heaped charcoal, and
+the black mass seemed no more dead than the ground or bare, brittle
+trees sweeping down and up to where, on encircling hills, they were
+lifted sharply against the cloudy monotony.</p>
+
+<p>He was ordinarily impervious to the influence of weather, the more
+depressing aspects of nature; but now he was conscious of a dejection
+communicated, in part at least, he felt, by the bleak prospect without.
+Another, and infinitely more arresting, reason for this feeling had just
+stirred his thoughts&mdash;for the first time he was conscious of the
+invidious, beginning weariness of accumulating years. He was hardly past
+forty, and he impatiently repudiated the possibility that he was
+actually declining; in fact he had not yet reached the zenith of his
+capabilities, physical or mental; yet his broken arm, slow in mending,
+the pain, had unquestionably depleted him more than a similar accident
+ten years ago. Not only this, but, during the forced inaction, his mind
+had definitely taken a different cast; considerations that had seemed to
+constitute the main business of existence had lately faded before
+preoccupations and feelings ignored until now.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny saw, objectively, not so much the surrounding circumstance
+as his own former acts and emotions; detached from his habitual being by
+hardly more than a month his past was posed before his critical
+judgment. Looked at in this manner his life appeared crowded with
+surprisingly meaningless gestures and words, his sheer youth an
+incomprehensible revolt. A greater part of that had been lately
+expressed by his mother, when he had returned to Myrtle Forge with an
+arm broken by a fall in a railroad coach travelling to Philadelphia. She
+had said, shaking her head with tightened lips:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I warned you plenty against those train brigades. It isn't safe nor
+sensible with a good horse service convenient. But then you have always
+been a knowing, head-strong boy and man.... A black Penny.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How she would get along without that last phrase he was at a loss to
+conjecture, from his first consciousness he recalled it, now a term of
+reproach and now extenuation. Only a few weeks before she had repeated
+it in precisely the same tone of mingled admonition and complaint that
+had greeted his most boyish mishaps. He had grown so accustomed to it,
+not only from Gilda Penny but from every one familiar with the Pennys
+and their history, that it had become part of his automatic entity.
+Jasper&mdash;a black Penny.</p>
+
+<p>The course of his thoughts turned back to the earliest episodes
+remembered in that connection, to a time in which the especial quality
+had necessarily freest play. Now he characterized it as mere uninformed
+wildness; but he still recalled the tremendous impatience with which he
+had met the convenient enclosure of a practicable, organized society.
+Even at Myrtle Forge, where&mdash;in contrast to dwelling in the confines of
+a city&mdash;he had had a rare amount of actual freedom, a feeling of
+constriction had sent him day after day into the woods, hunting or
+merely idle along the upper reaches of still unsullied streams. Yet it
+had been an especial kind of wildness; he owed that recognition to his
+vanished youth. The term generally included champagne parties and the
+companionship of various but similar ladies of the circus or opera
+house. But nothing of that had then entered into his deep-rooted
+rebellion. He had had merely a curious passion for complete
+independence, an innate turning from street-bound affairs and men to the
+isolation and physical accomplishment of arduous excursions on horses or
+foot. He had, then, avoided, even dreaded, women. And that instinct, he
+told himself, shifting his injured arm to a more comfortable position,
+had been admirably founded.</p>
+
+<p>The ax blows ceased; from his position he could just see the top of the
+great wheel that drove the Forge trip hammer; and slowly the rim
+blurred, commencing to turn. The forebay was open. A pennant of black
+smoke, lurid with flaming cinders, twisted up in the motionless air. The
+hammer fell once, experimentally, with a faint jar, and a grimy figure
+shovelled charcoal into a barrow.</p>
+
+<p>His mind soon returned to the point where it had been deflected by the
+movement at the Forge; he could even visualize his mature boyhood&mdash;a
+straight, arrogant figure, black certainly, with up-sloping brows and an
+outthrust chin. And that, he thought, not without complacency, was not
+very far from a description of himself at present. There were, of
+course, the whiskers, severely trimmed on his spare face, and showing,
+in certain lights, a glimmer of silver; but he was as upright, as
+comfortably lean, now as then. He was still capable of prolonged
+physical exertion.... It was ridiculous to think of himself as
+definitely aging. Yet he was past forty, and the years seemed to go far
+more swiftly than at twenty-one.</p>
+
+<p>Women! The silent pronouncement included the smallest plural
+possible&mdash;only two; but it seemed to Jasper Penny that they comprised
+all the variations, the faults and virtues, of their entire sex. With a
+certain, characteristic formality, propriety, he considered his wife
+first, now a year dead. He wondered if she had found the orthodox and
+concrete heaven in the frequent ecstatic contemplation of which so much
+of her life had been spent. It had been that fine superiority to the
+material that had first attracted him to her, a quality of shining
+enthusiasm, of reflected inspiration from a vision, however trite, of
+eternal hymning; and it had been that same essence which finally held
+them apart through the greater number of their married years. Phebe's
+health, slowly ebbing, had drawn her farther and farther from the known
+world in general and the affairs and being of her husband in particular;
+her last strength had gone in the hysteria of protracted religious
+emotion, during which she had become scarcely more to Jasper Penny than
+an attenuated, rapt invalid lingering in his house.</p>
+
+<p>Her pale, still presence was usurped by a far different, animated and
+colourful, figure. He thought of Essie Scofield, of all that she
+paramountly held and expressed, with a reluctance that had lately,
+almost within the past week, grown to resemble resentment, if not actual
+irritation. Yet, however, casting back through the years, in his present
+remoteness, he was able to recreate her and his emotions as they had
+first, irresistibly moved together. The absolute opposite of Phebe,
+already withdrawing into her religious, incorporeal region, Essie
+Scofield had immediately swept him into the whirlpool of her vivid,
+physical personality. Before her the memory of his wife faded into
+insignificance. But there was no mere retrospect in the considering of
+Essie; very much alive she presented, outside the Penny iron, the one
+serious preoccupation, complication, of his future.</p>
+
+<p>At the time when he had first admitted, welcomed, her claim on him, he
+had felt a sudden energy in which he had recognized a play of the traits
+of a black Penny. Here was a satisfactory, if necessarily private,
+exercise of his inborn contempt for the evident hypocrisy, the
+cowardice, of perfunctory inhibitions and safe morals. That, however,
+had been speedily lost in his rocketing passion, flaring out of a quiet
+continence into giddy spaces of unrestraint. Essie, after a momentary
+surrender, had attempted retreat, expressing a doubt of the durability
+of their feeling; she had, in fact, made it painfully clear that she
+wished to escape from the uncomfortable volume of his fervour; but he
+had overborne her caution&mdash;her wisdom, he now expressed it.</p>
+
+<p>That, more than anything else, brought before him the undeniable passage
+of time, the fact that he was rapidly accomplishing middle age&mdash;the
+total extinguishing of an emotion which he had felt must outlast life.
+It had gone, and with it his youth. Of course, he had recognized that he
+was no longer thirty; he had been well aware of his years, but only
+during the last few weeks had there been the slight, perceptible
+dragging down.... On the black walnut dressing stand past the window lay
+a letter he had received from Essie that morning; it contained her usual
+appeal for an additional sum of money&mdash;he gave her, formally, six
+thousand dollars a year; and the manner of the demand, for the
+necessities of their daughter, showed his sharpened perceptions that she
+had never really experienced the blindness of a generous emotion.
+Eunice, the child, was incontrovertible proof of that&mdash;no more than an
+additional lever for her to swing.</p>
+
+<p>His face darkened, and he moved his shoulder impatiently, as if to throw
+off a burden grown unendurable. But it was fastened immovably&mdash;his
+responsibility was as baldly apparent as the February noon, its greyness
+now blotted by a wind-driven, metallic shift of snow.</p>
+
+<p>He had been criminally negligent of Eunice. This realization was
+accompanied by no corresponding warmth of parenthood; there was no
+quickening of blood at the thought of his daughter, but only a newborn
+condemnation of his neglected, proper pride. He had, thoughtlessly,
+descended to a singularly low level of conduct. And it must abruptly
+terminate. Jasper Penny had not seen Eunice for seven, nine, months; he
+would remedy this at once, supervise advantages, a proper place, for
+her. Afterward Essie and himself could make a mutually satisfactory
+agreement.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI" />XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Throughout an excellent dinner, terrapin and bass, wild turkey with
+oysters and fruit preserved in white brandy, he maintained a sombre
+silence. His mother, on the right, her sister opposite&mdash;Phebe's place
+seemed scarcely emptier than when she had actually occupied it&mdash;held an
+intermittent verbal exchange patently keyed to Jasper Penny's mood. They
+were women with yellow-white, lace-capped hair, blanched eyebrows and
+lashes, and small, quick eyes on hardy, reddened faces. Gilda Penny was
+slightly the larger, more definite; Amity Merken had a timid, almost
+furtive, expression in the opulence of the Penny establishment, while
+Gilda was complacent; but otherwise the two women were identical. Their
+dresses were largely similar&mdash;Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire
+silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from
+shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline to the floor. Lace
+fell about their square, capable hands, and Gilda wore broad, locked
+bracelets checked in black and gold.</p>
+
+<p>Sherry, in blue cut decanters stoppered with gilt, gave place to port.
+An &eacute;pergne of glass and burnished ormolu, in the form of supporting oak
+leaves, with numerous sockets for candles, was set, filled with fruit,
+in the centre of the table; silver lustre plates were laid; but Jasper
+Penny heedlessly fingered the stem of a wine glass. He said suddenly,
+&quot;I'm going to the city this afternoon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it safe yet?&quot; his mother queried doubtfully. &quot;Hadn't you better wait
+till to-morrow, when you can drive easily, or without stopping at a
+tavern?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He looked up impatiently. &quot;I shall go by the railroad,&quot; he stated
+decisively. &quot;Can't you understand that, with the future of iron almost
+dependent on steam, it is the commonest foresight for me to patronize
+such customers as the Columbia Railway! I have no intention of adding to
+the ignorant prejudice against improved methods of travelling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There's your arm,&quot; she insisted with spirit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;An untried engine. The Hecla works along smoothly at twenty miles an
+hour.&quot; Amity cast a glance of swift appeal at her sister, but Gilda
+Penny persisted. &quot;Ungodly,&quot; was the term she selected. Jasper ignored
+her. He had decided to straighten the tangled affair of Eunice at once;
+he would see Essie that evening, arrive at an understanding about the
+child's future. It would be even more difficult to terminate his
+connection with Essie herself. That, he now recognised, was his main
+desire. The affair had actually died before Phebe; but its onerous
+consequences remained, blighting the future.</p>
+
+<p>The future! It was that, he now discovered, which occupied him, rather
+than the past. A new need had become apparent, a restless desire
+analogous to the urge of seeking youth. Jasper Penny was aware of a
+great dissatisfaction, a vast emptiness, in his existence; he had a
+feeling of waste growing out of the sense of hurrying years. Somehow,
+obscurely, he had been cheated. He almost envied the commonality of men,
+not, like himself, black Pennys, impatient of assuaging relationships
+and beliefs. Yet this, too, turned into another phase of his
+inheritance&mdash;his need was not material, concrete, it had no worldly,
+graspable implications, and his general contempt was not less but
+greater. He wished to bring a final justification to his isolation
+rather than lose himself in the wide, undistinguished surge of living.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You'll stop at the Jannans?&quot; his mother queried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think not, probably Sanderson's Hotel, Stephen is giving a ball
+to-night for Graham and his wife. I have some important transactions.&quot;
+Not an echo of his affair with Essie Scofield had, he knew, penetrated
+to Myrtle Forge. It was a most fortunate accident. The vulgarity
+consequent upon discovery would have been unbearable. Stephen Jannan,
+his cousin, a lawyer of wide city connections, must have learned
+something of the truth; but Stephen, properly, had said nothing; a
+comfortable obscurity had hid him from gabbled scandal. Now, soon, it
+would all be over. Unconsciously he drew a deeper breath of relief, of
+prospective freedom.</p>
+
+<p>The Hecla, a wooden barrelled engine with a tall, hinged stack, drew its
+brigade of canary-coloured chariot cars forward with a rapid bumping
+over inequal rails. Jasper Penny's seat, number nineteen, was
+fortunately in the centre, close by the stove, where a warmth hung that
+failed to reach to the doors. Lost in speculation the journey was both
+long and vague. Twilight deepened within the car, and two flickering
+candles were lit at either end, their pallid light serving only to cast
+thin, climbing shadows over the rocking, box-like interior. At irregular
+intervals the train stopped with a succession of subsiding crashes, and
+started again at the blowing of a horn; passengers would leave or enter;
+or it would prove to be merely a halt to take on cut and piled wood fuel
+for the engine.</p>
+
+<p>Finally the train brigade reached the inclined plane leading to the
+river and city; the engine was detached, and the cars, fastened to a
+hemp cable, were lowered spasmodically to where a team of mules drew
+them through a gloomy, covered bridge echoing to the slow hoof falls and
+creaking of loose planks. Jasper Penny fastened the elaborate frogs of
+his heavily furred overcoat over his injured arm, and with a florid
+bandanna wiped the cinders from his silk hat.</p>
+
+<p>The coaches rolled into the station shed, where he changed, taking a
+swaying Mulberry Street omnibus to Fourth, and Sanderson's Hotel. It was
+a towering, square structure of five stories, with a columned white
+portico, and high, divided steps. The clerk, greeting him with a precise
+familiar deference, directed him to a select suite with a private
+parlour, a sombre chamber of red plush, dark walls and thickly draped,
+long windows. There he sat grimly contemplating a distasteful prospect.
+He knew the casual, ill-prepared dinners presided over by Essie, the
+covertly insolent man servant; and an overpowering reluctance came upon
+him to sit again at her table. But the confusion of the hotel ordinary
+repelled him too: he had seen in passing a number of men who would
+endeavour to force his opinion on the specie situation or speculation in
+canals. He rose and pulled sharply at the tasselled bell rope, ordering
+grilled pheasant, anchovy toast and champagne to be served where he sat.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny ate slowly, partly distracted by the market reports in the
+<i>U.S. Gazette</i>. Ninety-two and a half had been offered for Schuylkill
+Navigation, only fifteen for the West Chester Railroad, but Philadelphia
+and Trenton had gone to ninety-eight; while a three and a half dividend
+had been declared on the French Town Turnpike and Railway Company. He
+was annoyed afresh by the persistent refusal of the Government to award
+the mail to the Reading Steam System. His thoughts returned to Eunice,
+his daughter, the coming scene&mdash;it would at least be that&mdash;with Essie
+Scofield.</p>
+
+<p>It was but a short distance from the hotel to where Essie lived, over
+Fourth Street to Cherry; and almost immediately he turned by the three
+story brick dwelling at the corner and was at her door. The servant, in
+an untidy white jacket, stood stupidly blocking the narrow hall, until
+Jasper Penny with an angry impatience waved him aside. There were other
+silk hats and coats, and a woman's fringed wrap, on the stand where he
+left his stick and outer garments; and from above came a peal of mingled
+laughter. The presence of others, now, was singularly inopportune; it
+would be no good waiting for their departure&mdash;here such gatherings
+almost invariably drew out until dawn; and he abruptly decided that,
+after a short interval, he would give Essie to understand that he wished
+to talk to her privately.</p>
+
+<p>A young woman with a chalk-white face and oleaginous bandeaux of dead
+black hair, in scarlet and green tartan over an extravagant crinoline,
+was seated on a sofa between two men, each with an arm about her waist
+and wine glasses elevated in their free hands. Essie was facing them
+from a circular floor hassock, in a blue satin, informal robe over
+mussed cambric ruffles, heelless nonchalants, and her hair elaborately
+dressed with roses, white ribbons and a short ostrich feather. Her body,
+at once slim and full, was consciously seductive, and her face, slightly
+swollen and pasty in the shadows, bore the same, heedless unrestraint.
+Her dark, widely-opened eyes, an insignificant nose and shortly curved,
+scarlet lips, held almost the fixed, painted impudence of a cynically
+debased doll. She turned and surveyed Jasper Penny with a petulant,
+silent inquiry, and whatever gaiety was in progress abruptly terminated
+as he advanced into the room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You never let me know you'd be here,&quot; Essie complained; &quot;but I suppose
+I ought to be glad to see you anyway&mdash;after four months without a line.
+Jasper, Mr. Daniel Culser.&quot; The younger of the men on the sofa, a
+stolidly handsome individual with hard, blue eyes, rose with an
+over-emphasized composure. &quot;Mr. Penny, extremely pleased.&quot; Jasper Penny
+was irritated by the other's instant identification, and he nodded
+bluntly. &quot;Lambert Babb and Myrtilla Lewis,&quot; Essie continued
+indifferently. Babb, an individual of inscrutable age, with ashen
+whiskers and a blinking, weak vision in a silvery face, was audibly
+delighted. Myrtilla Lewis smiled professionally over her expanse of
+bewildering silk plaid. &quot;Wine in the cooler,&quot; Essie added, and Daniel
+Culser moved to where a silver bucket reposed by a tray of glasses and
+broken, sugared rusks. Jasper Penny refused the offered drink, and found
+a chair apart from the others. A moody silence enveloped him which he
+found impossible to break, and an increasing uneasiness spread over the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; Essie Scofield commanded, &quot;say something. You look as black as
+an Egyptian. What'll my friends think of you? I suppose it doesn't
+matter any more what it is to me; but you might play at being polite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't chip at a man like that,&quot; Myrtilla advised. &quot;Mr. Penny has a
+right to talk or not.&quot; She smiled more warmly at him, and he saw that
+she had had too much champagne. The room reeked with the thin, acrid
+odour of the wine, and a sickly perfume of vanilla essence. Essie, as
+usual, had a glass of her favourite drink&mdash;orange juice and French
+brandy&mdash;on the floor beside her, the brandy bottle and fresh oranges
+conveniently near. His repulsion for her deepened until it seemed as if
+actual fingers were compressing his throat, stopping his breath. He
+wondered suddenly how far he was responsible for her possible
+degeneration. But he had not been the first; her admission of that fact
+had in the beginning attracted him to an uncommon frankness in her
+peculiar make-up. He was willing to assume his fault, to pay for it,
+whatever payment was possible, and escape.... Not only from her, but
+from all that she embodied, from himself&mdash;what he had been&mdash;as much as
+anything else.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are an Ironmaster,&quot; Mr. Babb finally announced; &quot;in fact, one of
+our greatest manufacturers. Now, Mr. Penny, what is your personal
+opinion of engine as against the public coach? Will the railroad survive
+the experimental stage, and are such gentlemen as yourself behind it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw in the <i>Ledger</i> some days back,&quot; Daniel Culser added, &quot;that your
+arm had been broken travelling by steam.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One had nothing to do with the other,&quot; Jasper stated tersely, ignoring
+Babb's query, &quot;but was entirely my own fault.&quot; The conversation lagged
+painfully again, during which Essie skilfully compounded another mixture
+of spirits and thick, yellow juice. She grew sullen with resentment at
+Jasper Penny's attitude, and exchanged enigmatic glances with Culser.
+The liquor brought a quick flush to her slightly pendulous cheeks, and
+she was enveloped in an increasing bravado. &quot;Penny's a solemn old boy,&quot;
+she announced generally. Lambert Babb attempted to embrace Myrtilla,
+but, her gaze on the newcomer, she pushed him away. &quot;You got to be a
+gentleman with me,&quot; she proclaimed with a patently unsteady dignity. &quot;My
+grandfather was a French noble.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What I'd like to know,&quot; Essie remarked, &quot;is what's his granddaughter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better'n you!&quot; Myrtilla heatedly asserted; &quot;one who'd appreciate a real
+man, and not be playing about private with a tailor's dummy.&quot; Daniel
+Culser's face grew noticeably pinker. &quot;I'm going,&quot; Myrtilla continued,
+rising. &quot;Mr. Penny, I'd be happy to meet you under more social
+conditions. Here I cannot remain for&mdash;for reasons. I might be tempted
+to&mdash;&quot; Mr. Babb caught her arm under his, and, at an imperious gesture
+from Essie, piloted her from the room. Culser rose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't go, Dan,&quot; Essie Scofield told him defiantly. But Jasper Penny
+maintained a silence that forced the younger man to make a stiff exit.
+&quot;Well,&quot; Essie demanded, flinging herself on the deserted sofa, &quot;now
+you've spoiled my evening. Why did you come at all if you couldn't
+behave genteel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where, exactly, is Eunice?&quot; he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at him with an instant masking of her resentment. &quot;I've told
+you a hundred times&mdash;in the house of a very respectable clergyman. My
+letter was clear enough; she's had bronchitis, and there's the doctor,
+and&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Just where is Eunice?&quot; he repeated, interrupting her aggrieved recital.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where I put her,&quot; her voice grew shrill. &quot;You haven't asked to see her
+for near a year, you haven't even pretended an interest in&mdash;in your own
+daughter. I've done the best I could; you know I don't like children
+around; but I have attended to as much of my duty as you. Now you come
+out and insist on being unpleasant all in an hour. Why didn't you write?
+I'd had her here for you. Come back in two or three days.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-morrow,&quot; he replied. &quot;I am going to see her in the morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You just ain't. I did the best I knew, but, if it isn't all roses,
+you'll blame everything on me. I will have Eunice fetched&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where is she?&quot; he asked still again, wearily.</p>
+
+<p>Every instinct revolted against the degradation into which he had
+blindly walked. His youth had betrayed him, involving him, practically a
+different man, in a payment which he realized had but commenced.... To
+escape. He had first thought of that with the unconscious conviction
+that the mere wish carried its fulfilment. In fact, it would be
+immensely difficult; a man, he saw, could not sever himself so casually
+from the past; it reached without visible demarcation into the present,
+the future. All was a piece, one with another; and Essie Scofield was
+drawn in a vivid thread through the entire fabric of his being.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the need, the longing forward, so newly come into his consciousness,
+persisted, grew&mdash;it had become the predominate design of his weaving.
+Through this he recognized a reassertion of his pride, the rigid pride
+of a black Penny, which, in the years immediately past, had been
+overwhelmed by a temporary inner confusion. Beyond forty men returned to
+their inheritance, their blood; this fact echoed vaguely among his
+memories of things heard; and he felt in himself its measure of truth.
+His distaste for a largely muddled, pandering society, for men huddled,
+he thought, like domestic animals, returned in choking waves. In the
+maculate atmosphere of flat wine and stale cologne he had a sharp
+recurrence of the scent of pines, lifting warmly in sunny space.</p>
+
+<p>He produced a morocco bound note book, a gold pencil; and, with the
+latter poised, directed a close interrogation at Essie. Her face flushed
+with an ungovernable anger, and she pressed a hand over her labouring
+heart. &quot;Get her then; out Fourth Street, Camden; the Reverend Mr.
+Needles. But afterwards don't come complaining to me. You ought to have
+seen to her; you've got the money, the influence. And you have done
+nothing, beyond some stinking dollars ... wouldn't even name her. Eunice
+Scofield, a child without&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>All that she had said was absolutely true, just.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose you'll even think I didn't give her the sums you sent; that
+damned Needles has been bleeding me, suspects something.&quot; She stopped
+from a lack of breath; her darkened face was purplish, in the shadows.
+&quot;I haven't been well, either&mdash;a fierce pain here, in my heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the brandy, he told her; she should leave the city, late wine
+parties, go back into the country. &quot;Go back,&quot; she echoed bitterly.
+&quot;Where? How?&quot; He winced&mdash;the past reaching inexorably into the future.
+Jasper Penny made no attempt to ignore, forget, his responsibility; he
+admitted it to her; but at the same time the tyrannical hunger increased
+within him&mdash;the mingled desire for fresh paths and the nostalgia of the
+old freedom of spirit. But life, that had made him, had in the same
+degree created Essie; neither had been the result of the other; they had
+been swept together, descended blindly in company, submerged in the
+passion that he had thought must last forever, but which had burned to
+ashes, to nothing more than a vague sense of putrefaction in life.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you,&quot; he said formally, putting away the note book. &quot;Something,
+of course, must be done; but what, I can only say after I have seen
+Eunice. I am, undoubtedly, more to blame than yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose, in this holy strain, you'll end by giving her all and me
+nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;... what you are getting as long as you live?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's little enough, when I hear how much you have, what all that iron
+is bringing you. Why, you could let me have twenty, thirty thousand, and
+never know it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you are unable to get on, that too will be rectified.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are really not a bad old thing, Jasper,&quot; she pronounced, mollified.
+&quot;At one time&mdash;do you remember?&mdash;you said if ever the chance came you
+would marry me. Ah, you needn't fear, I wouldn't have you with all your
+iron, gold. I&mdash;&quot; she stopped abruptly, uneasily. &quot;Not a bad old thing,&quot;
+she repeated, moving to secure a half-full glass.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you call me old?&quot; he asked curiously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I hadn't thought of it before,&quot; she admitted; &quot;but, this evening, you
+looked so solemn, and there is grey in your hair, that all at once you
+seemed like an old gentleman. Now Dan Culser,&quot; she hesitated, and then
+swept on, &quot;he's what you'd name young.&quot; At Daniel Culser's age, he told
+himself, he, Jasper Penny, could have walked the other blind; and now
+Essie Scofield was calling him old; she had noticed the grey in his
+hair. He rose to go, and she came close to him, a clinging, soft thing
+of flesh faintly reeking with brandy. &quot;I have a great deal to pay, where
+money goes I don't know, even a little would be a help.&quot; He left some
+gold in her hand, thankful to purchase, at that slight price, a
+momentary release.</p>
+
+<p>Outside Cherry Street was blackly cold, a gas lamp at the corner shed a
+watery, contracted illumination. He made his way back toward the hotel,
+but a sudden reluctance to mount to his lonely chambers possessed him.
+Before the glimmering marble fa&ccedil;ade he took out his watch, a pale gold
+efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes.
+The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing,
+at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house
+flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he
+determined to proceed and have a cigar with Stephen.</p>
+
+<p>He walked briskly up Mulberry Street to Sixth and there turned to the
+left. Jasper Penny soon passed the shrouded silence of Independence
+Square, with the new Corinthian doorway of the State House showing
+vaguely through the irregularly grouped ailanthus trees. Beyond, the
+brick wall with its marble coping and high iron fence reached, on the
+opposite side, to the Jannan corner. The length of the brick dwelling,
+with white arched windows and coursings faced the vague emptiness of
+Washington Square, closed for the winter.</p>
+
+<p>Inside the hall was bright and filled with the pungent warmth of fat
+hearth coal. A servant, with a phrase of recognition, directed him
+above, to a room burdened with masculine greatcoats and silk hats. There
+an attendant told him that Mr. Jannan was below. Jasper Penny had no
+intention of becoming a participant in the hall, but neither did he
+propose to linger among wraps, listening to the supercilious chatter of
+young men in the extreme mode of bright blue coats, painfully tight
+black trousers with varnished pumps and expanses of ankle in grey silk.
+One, inspecting him through an eyeglass on a woven hair guard, expressed
+a pointed surprise at Jasper Penny's informal garb. &quot;Christoval!&quot; he
+ejaculated. &quot;It approaches an insult to the da-da-darlings.&quot; Another
+commenced to sing a popular minstrel air:</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Blink&mdash;a&mdash;ho&mdash;dink! Ah! Ho!<br />
+<br />
+&quot;Roley Boley&mdash;Good morning Ladies all!&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny abruptly descended to a small room used for smoking. Young
+men, he thought impatiently, could no longer even curse respectably.
+They lisped like females at an embroidery frame. When he was young,
+younger, he corrected himself, he could have outdrunk, outridden.... His
+train of thought was abruptly terminated by a group unexpectedly
+occupying the smoking room. He saw Stephen Jannan, his wife Liza, the
+newly married young Jannans, and a strange woman in glac&eacute; muslin and a
+black Spanish lace shawl about her shoulders. Stephen greeted him
+cordially. &quot;Jasper, just at the moment for a waltz with&mdash;with Susan.&quot;
+The stranger blushed painfully, made an involuntary movement backward,
+and Liza Jannan admonished her husband. &quot;Do you know Miss Brundon,
+Jasper?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny bowed, and Miss Brundon, with an evident effort, smiled,
+her shy, blue eyes held resolutely on his countenance. She at once
+slipped into the background, talking in a low, clear voice to Graham
+Jannan's wife; while the older men enveloped themselves in a fragrant
+veil of cigars. &quot;Come, Mary, Susan,&quot; Mrs. Jannan directed, &quot;out of this
+horrid, masculine odour.&quot; Accompanied by her son the women left, and
+Stephen turned to his cousin. &quot;Thought, of course, you knew Susan
+Brundon,&quot; he remarked. &quot;A school mistress, but superior, and a lady. Has
+a place on Spruce Street, by Raspberry Alley, for select younger girls;
+unique idea, and very successful, I believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny said comfortably, &quot;Humm!&quot; The other continued, &quot;I want
+Graham to get out to Shadrach Furnace as soon as may be. That old stone
+house the foremen have occupied is nearly fixed for him. I am very well
+content, Jasper, to have him in the iron trade, with you practically at
+its head. No deliberate favours, remember, and I have told him to look
+for nothing. But, at the same time&mdash;you comprehend: folly not to push
+the boy on fast as possible. No reason for us all to go through with
+the hardships of the first Gilbert and his times. Must have been
+fatiguing, the wilderness and English troubles and all that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Splendid, I should say,&quot; Jasper Penny replied. He repeated satirically
+the conversation he had heard above. &quot;Makes me ill. You will remember
+there was a Howat, son of our original settler&mdash;now he must have been a
+lad! Married some widow or other; wild at first, but made iron in the
+end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A black Penny, Jasper; resembled you. Personally, I like it better
+now.&quot; Jasper Penny surveyed with approbation Stephen's full, handsome
+presence. Jannan was a successful, a big, man. Well, so was he too. But
+he thought with keen longing of the time when he was twenty-one, and
+free, free to roam self-sufficient. He thought of that Howat Penny of
+which they had spoken, black as he was black in the family tradition; he
+had seen Hesselius's portrait of the other; and, but for the tied hair
+and continental buff, it might have been a replica of himself. It was
+curious&mdash;that dark strain of Welsh blood, cropping out undiminished,
+concrete, after generations. The one to hold it before Howat had been
+burned in Mary's time, in the sixteenth century, dead almost three
+hundred years. Jasper had a sudden, vivid sense of familiarity with the
+Howat who had married some widow or other. His mind returned to his own,
+peculiar problem, to Essie Scofield, to the burden with which he had
+encumbered himself, the payment that faced him for&mdash;for his sheer
+youth. He said abruptly, belated:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You fit the present formal ease of society, Stephen; you like it and it
+likes you. In a superficial way I have done well enough, but
+underneath&mdash;&quot; his voice sank into silence. A profound, familiar
+dejection seized him; incongruously he thought of Miss Brundon's
+delicate shrinking from the mere contact of the amenities of speech.
+Super-sensitive. &quot;I must go,&quot; he announced, and refused Stephen Jannan's
+invitation for the night.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stay for some supper, anyhow,&quot; the other insisted, and, a hand on his
+arm, led him past the doors open upon the dancing.</p>
+
+<p>Chandeliers, great coruscating pendants of glass prisms and candles,
+glittered above the expanse of whirling crinoline and blue coats,
+vermilion turbans, gilt feathers and flowered hair. The light fell on
+shoulders as white and elegantly sloping as alabaster vases, draped in
+rose and citron, in blanched illusion frosted and looped with silver; on
+bouquets of camellias swinging from jewelled chains against ruffled and
+belled skirts swaying about the revealed symmetry of lacy silk stockings
+and fragile slippers. &quot;Ah, Jasper,&quot; Stephen Jannan said; &quot;in our time,
+what! Do you remember your first Wellington boots? The gambling room and
+veranda at Saratoga? Tender eyes, old boy, and little tapering hands.&quot;
+Jasper Penny replied, &quot;It seems my hair is grey.&quot; Silence fell on them
+as they entered the dining room. A long table was burdened with
+elaborate pagodas of spun barley sugar topped with sprigs of orange
+blossom, the moulded creams of a Charlotte Polonaise, champagne jelly
+valanced with lemon peel, pyramids of glazed fruits on lacquered plates;
+with faintly iridescent Belleek and fluted glass and ormolu; and,
+everywhere, the pale multitudinous flames of candles and the fuller
+radiance of astral lamps hung with lustres. Jasper Penny idly tore open
+a bon bon wrapped in a verse on fringed paper,</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;Viens! Viens! ange du ciel, je t'aime! je t'aime!<br />
+Et te le dire ici, c'est le bonheur supreme.&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Love and the great hour of life! He had missed both; one, perhaps, with
+the other. His marriage to Phebe, except for a brief flare at the
+beginning, had been as empty as the affair with Essie Scofield. God, how
+hollow living seemed! He had missed something; or else existence was an
+ugly deception, the false lure of an incomprehensible jest. The music
+beat in faint, mocking waves on his hearing, the lights of the supper
+shone in the gold bubbles of his wine glass. He drained it hurriedly.
+Outside the night, lying cold on deserted squares, blurred with gas
+lamps, was like a vain death after the idle frivolity of Stephen
+Jannan's ball. In an instant, in the shutting of a door, the blackness
+had claimed him; the gaiety of warm flesh and laughter vanished. Death
+... and he had literally nothing in his hands, nothing in his heart. A
+duty, Eunice, remained. The sound of his footfalls on the bricks, thrown
+back from blank walls, resembled the embodied, stealthy following of the
+injustice he had wrought.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII" />XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The following morning he made his way past the continuous produce arcade
+that held the centre of Market Street to the Camden Ferry. At the river
+the fish stall, with its circular green roof and cornucopias, reached
+almost to the gloomy ferry-house with its heavy odour of wet wood. The
+boat clattered through broken ice, by a trim packet ship, the
+<i>Susquehanna</i>, and into the narrow canal through Windmill Island. Camden
+was a depressing region of low, marshy land, its streets unpaved and
+without gas, the gutters full of frozen, stagnant water. He inquired the
+way to the Reverend Mr. Needles', passed a brick meeting house, and,
+turning into Fourth Street, isolated frame dwellings, coming at last to
+a dingy wooden house with broken panes in the upper windows and a
+collapsing veranda at the edge of a blackened, skeleton wood.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, gaunt woman in a ravelled worsted shawl answered his summons,
+and informed him, interrupted by a prolonged coughing, that Mr. Needles
+was away on circuit. &quot;I came for a child staying with you,&quot; Jasper Penny
+explained shortly, suppressing an involuntary repulsion at the degraded
+surroundings. &quot;She's not well,&quot; the woman replied, with instant
+suspicion. &quot;I don't just like to let a chancy person see her.&quot; He
+discarded all subterfuge. &quot;I am her father,&quot; he stated. The other
+shifted to a whining self-defence. &quot;And her in this sink!&quot; she
+exclaimed, gazing at Jasper Penny's furred coat, his glossy hat and
+gloves and ebony cane.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did all for her I could, considering the small money I was promised,
+and then half the time I didn't get that, neither. The lady owes for
+three weeks right now. I suppose you'll have to come in,&quot; she concluded
+grudgingly. They entered a dark hall, clay cold. Beyond, in a slovenly
+kitchen hardly warmer, he found Eunice, his daughter; a curiously
+sluggish child with a pinched, hueless face and a meagre body in a man's
+worn flannel shirt and ragged skirt and stockings.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here's your father,&quot; Mrs. Needles ejaculated.</p>
+
+<p>Eunice stood in the middle of the bare floor, staring with pallid, open
+mouth at the imposing figure of the man. She said nothing; and Jasper
+Penny found her silence more accusing than a shrill torrent of reproach.
+&quot;She's kind of heavy like,&quot; Mrs. Needles explained. &quot;I have come to take
+you away,&quot; Jasper Penny said. Then, turning to the woman: &quot;Are those all
+the clothes she has?&quot; She grew duskily red. &quot;There are some others
+about, but I don't just know where, and then she spoils them so fast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's a lie,&quot; the child announced, with a faint patch of colour on
+either thin cheek. &quot;Mr. Needles sold them.&quot; The man decided to ignore
+such issues; his sole wish now was to take Eunice away as speedily as
+possible. &quot;Well,&quot; he directed impatiently, &quot;get a shawl, something to
+wrap her in.&quot; He regretted vainly that he had not come for the child in
+a carriage. He paid without a question what the woman said was owing;
+and, with Eunice folded in a ragged plaid, prepared to depart. &quot;I
+guess,&quot; the child decided, in a strangely mature voice, &quot;we'd better
+take my medicine.&quot; She turned toward a mantel, Mrs. Needles made a quick
+movement in the same direction, but the small shape was before her.
+Jasper Penny took a bottle from the diminutive, cold hand. The label had
+been obliterated; but, impelled by a distrustful curiosity, he took out
+the cork.</p>
+
+<p>Laudanum!</p>
+
+<p>He was at the point of an indignant condemnation when the words perished
+without utterance&mdash;not the haggard woman before him, but himself, Jasper
+Penny, was entirely guilty. He, in reality, had given the drug to his
+daughter, placed her in this sorry and bitter poverty. &quot;Come, Eunice,&quot;
+he said, taking her by the hand, his face grey and stony.</p>
+
+<p>Once more in the city he walked with the child to the ferry and foot of
+Chestnut Street, where they found places in The Reaper, a stage brightly
+painted with snowy ships and drawn by four sorrel horses. His first
+concern was to purchase proper clothes for his daughter; then he would
+face the problem of her happier disposal. They passed the columned
+fa&ccedil;ade of the Philadelphia Bank, the Custom House with its wide steps
+set back from the street, hedged dwellings, and the United States Hotel
+to Independence Square and Sixth Street, where he lifted the child from
+the stage. They stopped before an entrance between bowed windows which
+had above it the sign, The Misses Dunlop, Millinery.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny had had no idea that it would be so difficult to procure
+clothes for a girl of seven. At first he was told that the necessary
+garments could not be furnished, when discussion revealed the fact that
+a nearly complete, diminutive wardrobe, especially ordered from Paris
+and neglected by the customer, was to be had. In a surprisingly short
+while a sentimental saleswoman had apparelled Eunice in black velvet
+with rows of small bows and gold buckles and a lace collar, cambric
+pantaloon ruffles swinging about her ankles, a quilted pink satin bonnet
+tied, like those of her elders', with a bow under her right cheek, and a
+muff and tippet of ermine. Other articles&mdash;a frock of rose gros de
+chine, with a flounced skirt, a drab velvet bonnet turned in green
+smocked silk, and sheer underthings&mdash;he ordered delivered at Sanderson's
+Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of what laudanum Eunice had taken faded, and her lethargy was
+replaced by an equally still, incredulous amazement. She followed Jasper
+Penny about with the mechanical rigidity of a minute sleepwalker. They
+went into a jewelry store beyond, with a square low bow window and white
+trimming, where he purchased a ring with a ruby, and small gold
+bracelets with locks and chains. His restless desire was to clothe
+Eunice in money, to overwhelm her with gifts; yet, although an evident
+delight struggled through her stupefaction, he failed to get from the
+expenditure the release he sought. A leaden sense of blood guiltiness
+persisted in him. At Parkinson's, the confectioner opposite the State
+House, he bought her syllabubs, a frozen rose cordial and black cake. On
+leaving, he paused at the marble steps with a lantern on either side and
+awning drawn out over the pavement, considering the next move. It should
+be toys&mdash;a German doll, slate and coloured crayons and jumping-figures.
+Then he took her back to his rooms at the Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>Sitting in a stiff crimson chair opposite him, the doll clasped in
+straining fingers, and a flush of excitement on her sharp features, she
+presented an enormous difficulty. What, justly, was he to do with her?
+How could he provide for a reasonable happiness, a healthy, normal
+existence? He decided coldly that he would prevent Essie Scofield's
+influence from ever touching the child again. Essie, he knew, was
+utterly without any warmth of motherhood. She had solely and callously
+used their daughter to extort money from him. But, he admitted to
+himself, neither had he any feeling of parentage for the small, lonely
+figure before him; nothing but a burning self-accusation, a lacerated
+pride. His act proceeded entirely from his head in place of his heart.
+For that very reason, Jasper Penny thought, he could give his daughter a
+greater measure of security. He would see Stephen Jannan to-morrow and
+with the lawyer's assistance get complete control of Eunice's future. He
+must alter his will.</p>
+
+<p>None of this, however, assisted in solving the actual immediate
+necessity. There was, certainly, Myrtle Forge; his mother, however she
+might silently suffer, protest, would ultimately accede in his wishes.
+But it was a dreary place for a child, with only the companionship of
+old women. He was, for the greater part, away in the interest of his
+widely scattered activities, forges, furnaces, nail factories and
+rolling mills.</p>
+
+<p>He felt in anticipation the censure of the Penny connections that would
+rise like a wall and shut Eunice from the companionship of the other
+children, of the family, embittering her at what he had somewhere heard
+described as the formative period of growth. His home, he decided, for
+the present at least, was an undesirable place for his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>It was, he discovered, past two, and he remorsefully summoned a servant.
+He gazed with bewilderment at the list of dinner dishes tended him;
+bear's meat, he felt, canvas back duck or terrapin, was not a diet
+proper to seven; but he solved the perplexity by ordering snipe, rolled
+and sugared cakes filled with whipped cream and preserved strawberries,
+and a deep apple pandowdy. After this, and a block of nougat, Eunice
+discovered herself to be sleepy. As she lay with tossed arms and pale
+streaming hair under the feather coverlet of a great hotel bed he saw
+with a sharp uneasiness that, in a subtle but unmistakable accent, she
+resembled her mother, Essie Scofield.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII" />XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>His thoughts darkened with the falling day; he supposed them to be
+solely addressed to the problem of Eunice; but, in reality, they
+constantly evaded his will, following countless trivialities, and
+returned to his own, peculiar need. He made some small changes of dress
+for the evening, replacing brown with glazed black boots, and struggled,
+with one hand, through the ordeal of tying a formal neckcloth. He had
+purposely left behind his negro servant as a possible source of
+unguarded chatter. When Jasper Penny had finished he went in to Eunice
+and found her awake. The new clothes lay in their open boxes; and,
+lighting candles, he wondered if he had better have some one in to
+assist her. &quot;Can you fix yourself up in these?&quot; he asked, indicating the
+purchases.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes,&quot; she assured him gravely; &quot;that is except the very backest
+buttons.&quot; She stood by the folded piles of shirred muslin, the elaborate
+velvets and silks and ribbons, obviously at a loss before such an
+unparalleled choice; and he was once more disturbed by the attenuation
+of her small body. But that could be soon remedied; she had suffered
+other, far greater, irremedial, oppressions; her very birth had
+confronted her, in the puritanical self-righteousness of his world, with
+an almost insuperable barrier to happiness. Still back of that, even
+before the birth of himself and Essie Scofield, back, back in the
+unguessed past, Eunice had been shaped, condemned. Her fate had only
+culminated in his own unbalanced passion, in a desire that had blinded
+him like a flash of ignited powder, leaving him with a sense of utter
+void, of inexplicable need. &quot;For what?&quot; he demanded unconsciously and
+bitterly aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Eunice, startled, dropped the garment in her hands. She gazed at him
+with a shrinking dread. &quot;Come,&quot; he told her gently, &quot;that will be very
+pretty; and, don't you think, the velvet bonnet with green?&quot; After
+supper he questioned her. &quot;What time do you usually go to bed?&quot; She
+answered promptly, &quot;When it got too cold to stay up, at Mr. Needles',
+but I wouldn't know here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We might go to the Circus,&quot; he suggested, half doubtful of the
+propriety of such a course. However, they went. She clung tightly to his
+sleeve before the illuminated, high-pillared fa&ccedil;ade of Welches' Circus,
+where Jasper took seats in a box. Eunice was breathless before the
+gleaming white and gold of the interior, the fabulous, glittering
+chandelier, the crimson draperies and great curtain with its
+equestrienne on a curvetting steed. The orchestra, with a blare of
+trombones, announced the raising of the curtain and appearance of Mr.
+John Mays, the celebrated clown. He was followed by Chinese sports, the
+Vision of Cupid and Zephyr, and the songs, the programme stated, of
+Lowrie and Williams. These gentlemen, in superb yellow satin, emphasized
+harmoniously the fact that</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;And joy is but a flower,<br />
+The heart with sorrow meeting<br />
+Will wither 'neath its power.&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny wondered abstractedly what was to be done with the tense,
+excitable child at his side? A voice from the wings announced: &quot;Mouse
+and Harebell, the Lilliputian ponies, with Infant Jockies, the smallest
+schooled racers in existence.&quot; And the word &quot;schooled&quot; recalled to him
+the diffident woman he had met at Stephen Jannan's, the night before.
+Miss ... Brundon. A place for the education of younger girls. He could
+send Eunice there, for the present at any rate; and decide later upon
+her ultimate situation. Miss Brundon had a sensitive, yes, distinctly, a
+fine face. Her school, he remembered, was at Raspberry Alley, far out
+Spruce Street, close to Tenth. He drew a deep breath of relief at this
+bridging of the immediate complications the child presented.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, again in the Reaper coach, they rolled west over
+Chestnut Street, past a theatre with elevated statues of Comedy and
+Tragedy, the Arcade with its outside stairs mounting across the front,
+stone mansions set back in gardens with gravelled paths, and the Moorish
+bulk of Masonic Hall half hid by stores. Beyond the Circus they
+proceeded on foot to a four square brick dwelling with weeping willows
+and an arched wood sign above the entrance painted with the designation,
+&quot;Miss Brundon's Select Academy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny found Miss Brundon in a small, bare, immaculate office. She
+was sitting at a table; and, as he entered, with Eunice dragging
+desperately at his hand, she half rose, with a quick, faint blush.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Penny,&quot; she exclaimed, in a low, charming surprise. &quot;I didn't
+expect, so soon, to have the pleasure ... here, at my school.&quot; He firmly
+moved Eunice from her position at his back. &quot;An unexpected pleasure for
+me,&quot; he replied. &quot;I came to consult with you about this little girl&mdash;the
+daughter of a friend of mine. A friend, I may add, in difficult
+circumstances, and for whom I am prepared to do a great deal. I had
+hoped&mdash;Stephen Jannan told me about your exceptional establishment&mdash;that
+you could take her. She needs just the supervision that I am certain you
+offer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; she replied immediately, &quot;I'd be glad to have any one
+recommended by you. I do think my school is unusual. You see, there is
+almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies. And I have
+been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny;
+but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is
+required. Probably you would like an assurance of their studies and
+deportment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he stopped her hastily; &quot;it is quite enough to have seen you.&quot; A
+deeper, painful colour suffused her cheeks. He had, he thought, been
+inexcusably clumsy. He had unconsciously given voice to the conviction
+that Miss Brundon, like her establishment, was exceptional. She was,
+ordinarily, too pale for beauty; her countenance, with high, cheek
+bones, was irregular; yet her eyes, tranquil blue, held a steady quality
+almost the radiance of an inward light. Her diffidence, it was clear,
+co-existed with a firm, inviolable spirit. He said, later:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will discover that there are many things Eunice requires, and I
+would be obliged if you would procure them without stint, and send the
+accounts to my Philadelphia office. The child has been in circumstances
+of considerable poverty; but I wish to give her whatever advantages
+money can bring. Yes&mdash;Eunice Scofield. And&mdash;&quot; he hesitated, &quot;in view of
+this....&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand, oh, completely,&quot; Susan Brundon interrupted him warmly.
+&quot;You don't wish your charity exposed; and not only on your own account,
+but from consideration for the susceptibilities of the parents,
+parent&mdash;a mother, I gather.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It had been, he thought, leaving, ridiculously simple. His meeting with
+Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance. A fine, delicate, unworldly woman;
+a fineness different from Phebe's, submerged in the pursuit of her own
+salvation. The former, he realized, was close to forty. If she had been
+sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice how admirably she would
+attend any of her own. Unmarried. The blindness of men, their fatuous
+choice, suddenly surprised him.</p>
+
+<p>He determined to proceed directly to Stephen Jannan, and put into motion
+at once the solving of his daughter's future. Never, he repeated, should
+Eunice fall again into the lax hands of Essie Scofield. Stephen would
+advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully
+overcoming its obstacles. He had unbounded faith in the power of money
+where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of
+laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable,
+ultimate scandal. What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching
+about him in every direction. He must discover firmer ground ahead,
+release from the act of that other man, his youth. The memory of the
+serene purity of Miss Brundon's office recurred to him like a breath
+from the open spaces where he had first known the deep pleasure of an
+utter freedom of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny, revolving the complications of his position, made his way
+directly over the uneven sidewalk of Spruce Street to Fourth; there,
+passing the high, narrow residences of Society Hill, he proceeded to
+Stephen's office, beyond Chestnut. It was in a square brick edifice of
+an earlier period, with a broad marble step and door and wide windows
+coped in scoured white stone. The lawyer's private chamber was bare,
+with snowy panelling and mahogany, the high sombre shelves of a
+calf-bound law library, a ponderous cabriolet table, sturdy, rush-seated
+Dutch chairs, and a Franklin stove with slender brass capitols and
+shining hod.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A chair, Jasper,&quot; Stephen Jannan directed. &quot;You ought to know them,
+they came out of Myrtle Forge&mdash;some of old Gilbert's. Your mother gave
+them to me when she did over the house in this new French fancy.&quot; Jasper
+Penny was momentarily at a loss for an adequate opening of the subject
+that had brought him there. Finally he plunged directly into his
+purpose. &quot;You must know, Stephen,&quot; he said, &quot;that I am decidedly
+obligated to a Mrs. Scofield.&quot; Jannan nodded shortly. &quot;The thing dragged
+on for a number of years, but is quite dead now; in fact, it has been
+for a considerable number of months. That, in itself, doesn't bother me;
+it is comparatively simple; but there is a child, a girl, Stephen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't know that,&quot; the other acknowledged. &quot;It is an ugly difficulty.
+Do you wish to legitimatize your&mdash;the child? There is marriage of
+course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no intention of marrying Essie Scofield,&quot; Jasper Penny said
+coldly. &quot;And I am almost certain she wouldn't consent if I had. I am
+quite willing to assume a proper responsibility; but there is a limit to
+my conception of that. There was never any serious question of marriage;
+there is none now. I simply wish to get complete control of Eunice; by
+adoption, perhaps; she is seven years old.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are no laws of adoption, as such, in Pennsylvania,&quot; Jannan told
+him. &quot;The only State with that provision is Louisiana; there, by an act
+of Legislature, the thing can be legalized. I could arrange it through
+correspondence, a certain residence within the State. It would be
+cumbersome and expensive, but possible.&quot; He paused, frowning. &quot;Devilish
+awkward,&quot; he muttered; &quot;make a stench in a family such as ours.
+However,&quot; he added, &quot;a contract practically to the same effect can be
+drawn. This, with her consent, would be entirely binding on Mrs.
+Scofield. If the child can write it would be well to have her signature
+on the deed. Bring them here; she should have counsel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After that, I suppose, the name could be arranged.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly. The child, of course, would have no legal status as your heir.
+Anything she got would have to be willed direct.&quot; The other nodded. It
+was all far more simple than he had hoped. He almost saw a definite
+lightening of the future. &quot;Is the girl with her mother now?&quot; Jannan
+queried.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I took her away yesterday,&quot; Jasper Penny replied negligently. &quot;We went
+to the Circus, and at present she is at Miss Brandon's Academy.&quot; He was
+surprised by the sudden concern on his cousin's handsome, florid
+countenance. &quot;By heaven, Jasper,&quot; the lawyer exclaimed, &quot;am I to
+understand that you took a&mdash;well, an illegitimate child, to Miss
+Brundon, left her in the School? It's&mdash;it's incredible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If such a thing were known it would ruin Susan Brundon over night.
+Haven't you a conception of how this is regarded? She would be stripped
+of pupils as if the place reeked of malignant fever. A most beastly
+egotistical and selfish act.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never thought of that,&quot; Jasper Penny admitted. He saw again the fine,
+sensitive face of Miss Brundon, presiding over the establishment that
+was like an emanation of her diffident and courageous spirit; the last
+person alive he would harm. And people were exactly as Stephen had said,
+particularly women. They would destroy Susan Brundon ruthlessly, without
+a moment's hesitation. He thought of her as suffering incalculably,
+betrayed by his implied lie; he saw her eyes stricken with pain, her
+hands twisting together.... He rose sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A blind, infernal fool!&quot; he ejaculated, grasping his hat. &quot;I'm glad I
+saw you when I did. Put it right at once. Obliged, Stephen; come to you
+later about changing my will and the rest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was in such haste to remove the danger of Eunice from Susan Brundon
+that not until he again stood at the door of the Academy did he realize
+what a difficult explanation lay before him. Unconsciously he had
+reached a point where he would do his utmost to avoid hurting her.
+Already she occupied an unusual elevation in his thoughts, an unworldly
+plane bathed in a white radiance.</p>
+
+<p>She was not in the office, but soon appeared, with a questioning gaze;
+and, he felt, an appealing lessening of her reserve. He hesitated,
+casting vainly about for an acceptable expression of his errand. Another
+lie, he thought, acutely distressed, must be necessary. &quot;I am extremely
+sorry, Miss Brandon,&quot; he told her, &quot;but unexpected developments in the
+last hour make it necessary for me to remove Eunice from your school.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A slow flush invaded her countenance lifted to meet his troubled gaze.
+&quot;Mr. Penny!&quot; she exclaimed, in a faint dismay. &quot;Oh, I hope it is because
+of nothing&mdash;nothing derogatory you have heard. Please tell me
+directly&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Absolutely no,&quot; he replied, his voice carrying a vibrating reassurance.
+&quot;You are entirely without the need of recommendation, far beyond any
+unfavourable report. I am profoundly disturbed by causing you
+inconvenience, and I only hope to offer you sufficient apology; but I
+shall have to take Eunice away with me, at once.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps her mother can't bear separation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not that,&quot; he said grimly, a tangible hurt sharpening within;
+&quot;but something that cannot be gone into, with you.&quot; She turned away
+immediately. &quot;I will send for her,&quot; she replied. They stood facing but
+mutually avoiding each other's gaze while Eunice was being fetched.
+&quot;Her things have already come from the hotel,&quot; Miss Brundon proceeded.
+&quot;Where shall I send them?&quot; Eunice broke in with a shrill protest. &quot;Do I
+have to go? I don't want to.&quot; Her face was scarlet with revolt. &quot;I can
+walk up and down the room with a book on my head, while another little
+girl had to be all done with a board to her back.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny wondered if he would see Miss Brundon again soon. The last
+was an afterthought bred by the realization that he could not permit her
+to depart absolutely from his life. There was a great deal that he, a
+rich and influential man of practical affairs, might do for her. He was
+certain that Susan Brundon needed exactly the assistance he could give;
+probably people robbed her, traded callously on her unsuspicious nature.
+Yet, when the moment came to leave, he could think of nothing to say
+beyond the banality of looking for her at the Jannans'.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I go out very little,&quot; she told him; &quot;the work here absorbs me; and,
+unfortunately, my eyes are not strong. They require constant rest.&quot; He
+expressed regret once more for any disturbance he might have caused;
+and, after hesitating awkwardly, left with Eunice hanging fretfully at
+his hand. What, in God's name, was he to do with the child? He walked
+slowly, his face half lost in the fur of his overcoat, oblivious, in his
+concentration on the difficulties of her situation, of Eunice
+progressing discontentedly at his side. A petulant complaint rose at
+intervals to an audible sob. Looking down, as the sobs threatened to
+become a continuous crying, he saw the top of the velvet bonnet and her
+diminutive hands in scarlet knitted mitts. He would have to stop
+dragging her from place to place; a suitable position for the present
+was all he hoped for now. There must be other institutions, larger and
+farther away, to which Eunice could be sent. He had a vague memory of
+such a place somewhere on the Delaware, was it at Burlington?</p>
+
+<p>But he could not continue living with his daughter at Sanderson's Hotel.
+Jasper Penny decided that he would take her that afternoon to the house
+of the head machinist of his nail works at Jaffa, the town that, its
+beginning growing largely out of the Penny industries, lay a scant mile
+from Myrtle Forge. Speever was a superior man; his wife, a robust
+Cornish woman in a crisp apron, would give Eunice an energetic and
+proper care.</p>
+
+<p>A thin, flexible mantle of snow lay over the drab earth, sweeping up to
+a Grecian marble edifice, making more dreary the bulk of the Eastern
+Penitentiary and foundation of Girard College, and emphasizing the
+winter desertion of the reaches of the Fairmount Water Works. She soon
+grew absorbed in the various aspects of their transportation&mdash;the echo
+of the whip cracking over the mules that drew the coaches across the
+covered viaduct, the labouring stationary engine and their slow ascent
+beyond. They saw, lining the river, a cemetery elevated starkly against
+the sky; and followed a canal by a broken, black flood between snowy
+banks.</p>
+
+<p>Past a town with impressive residences and manufactories with low
+spreading veils of smoke, they came on a confusion of canals and canal
+boats, lock dams and bridges, mules and raffish crews with tanned faces
+and brightly coloured jackets and boots. Again crossing the river and a
+shallow, tranquil valley, the train brigade rolled into the main street
+of Jaffa. It was a town of small brick dwellings, spaced in orderly
+yards, echoing to the diminished clamour of the Penny Rolling Mills on
+the outskirts. Beyond the walls, starkly red against the snow, the
+blackened main street, the river was spotted with ice.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar Speever's wife accepted Eunice with an immediate and unquestioning
+capability, and Jasper Penny turned away with a momentary but immense
+relief. In a few days, after the deed for the possession of the child
+had been executed, he could place her more permanently. He walked out to
+the miscellaneous group of buildings and cluttered yards that held his
+inherited activity; and in the small single-roomed building of the main
+office discussed with his superintendent the changes, improvements of
+process, then under way. The old nail machines, propelled by the feet
+and hands of an operator, and producing but one nail at a time, had been
+replaced by a high power engine, self-heading machinery. The
+superintendent complained of the pig from the new hot blast furnaces.
+&quot;Impure,&quot; he declared. &quot;And this new stone coal firing, too, makes but
+poor stuff. It'll never touch the old charcoal forging. Hammered bar's
+at ninety, and I'm glad to get it then. The puddling furnaces will do
+something with the grey pig; we have eight in blast now, turning out the
+railroad and heavier bars. This year will see forty-five hundred tons of
+iron worked, and close to four thousand kegs of nails.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny listened attentively; it was his intention soon to dispense
+entirely with all the time-honoured methods of iron manufacture. Water
+power, with its unequal flow, any large employment of charcoal, growing
+increasingly expensive with the rapid diminishment of the forests, must
+give place to the steam blast machine and anthracite. If his manager was
+unable to change, develop, with the changing times he would find
+another, more scientific.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the early twilight made more grey the dingy sheds and buildings,
+the heaped slag; the long brick rectangle of the rolling mill, with its
+triple imposed, ventilated roof and the high, smoking stacks of the
+puddling furnaces, rising four from either length, gave out an
+undiminished, deafening uproar, the clamour of the bars falling out from
+the rollers, the spatter of hammers and dull dragging of heavy weights.
+The engine of the nail works rent all other sound with an unaccustomed,
+harsh blast.... Jasper Penny was conscious of a deep, involuntary
+relief when he reached the comparative tranquillity, the secession of
+vexatious problems, accomplished by Myrtle Forge.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV" />XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was, as always, an elaborate, steaming supper, with his mother, in
+a pelisse of black silk ruching, and Amity Merken at their places. He
+noted that an empty chair had been put, as customary, at the opposite
+end of the table, and with a trace of impatience ordered its removal. He
+wondered momentarily at his petty act; and then his thoughts returned to
+Susan Brundon. Jasper Penny saw her blue gaze lifted to his face, the
+hesitating smile; he felt again the pervading influence of her delicate
+yet essentially unshrinking spirit. She would possess an enormous
+steadfastness of purpose, he decided; a potentiality of immovable
+self-sacrifice. Yet she was the gentlest person alive. An unusual and
+resplendent combination of traits, rare possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>She had told him that she seldom went about&mdash;her school absorbed her,
+and her eyes needed care, rest. He must ask Stephen Jannan further about
+her. They were sitting, Jasper Penny, his mother and her sister, in the
+parlour; a large, square chamber hung with dark maroon paper and long,
+many tasselled and corniced window curtains in sombre green plush. A
+white wedgewood mantel with ornaments in olive and blue, above a
+brass-fretted closed stove, supported a high mirror, against which were
+ranged a pair of tall astral lamps shining in green and red spars of
+light through their pendants, a French clock&mdash;a crystal ball in a
+miniature Ionic pavilion of gilt&mdash;and artificial bouquets of coloured
+wax under glass domes. A thick carpet of purplish black velvet pile
+covered the floor from wall to wall; stiff Adam chairs and settee with
+wheelbacks of black and gold were upholstered in dusky ruby and indigo.
+Ebony tables of framed, inlaid onyx held tortoise shell and lacquer
+ornaments, an inlaid tulip-wood music-box, volumes in elaborately tooled
+morocco, and a globe where, apparently, metallic fish were suspended in
+a translucent, green gloom.</p>
+
+<p>The light from the multiple candelabras of ormolu and cut lustres
+streamed from the walls over Jasper Penny, sunk forward in profound
+absorption, and his mother's busy, fat hands working with gay worsteds.
+At her side a low stand of rubbed Chinese vermilion held her spilling
+yarns. Her face was placid, dryly pinkish and full. An irreproachable,
+domestic female. Herself the daughter of a successful Pennsylvania
+German Ironmaster, her wealth had doubled the Penny successes. There had
+been other children; Jasper could only faintly remember two, mostly in
+the form of infantile whimpering.</p>
+
+<p>The inevitable termination of the evening was readied by the appearance
+of a pitcher of steaming, spiced mulled wine. A cupful was formally
+presented to Amity Merken; Gilda Penny sipped hers with an audible
+satisfaction, and Jasper Penny absently drank the fragrant compound of
+cinnamon bark and lemon, cloves, sugar and claret. A measure of that,
+before retiring, could not but be beneficial to Susan Brundon, fatigued
+by the duties of her Academy. He thought of the sharper breath of the
+brandy and oranges compounded by Essie Scofield. A thin odour of
+foxglove clung to the memory of his wife.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV" />XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Jasper Penny supplemented Jannan's letter to Essie Scofield, asking for
+an appointment with his client at the law office, with a short
+communication laying before her the condition in which he had found
+Eunice, his knowledge of her neglect to provide their daughter with the
+funds he had sent for that purpose, and definite plans for his complete
+control of the child. At the despatch of this he felt that his duty,
+where Essie as a formal parent resided, was ended. It was now only a
+question of an agreement on terms. He got no reply, other than a
+notification from Stephen Jannan that a meeting had been arranged for
+the following week. And, at eleven o'clock, on a clear, thin blue winter
+morning, he mounted, with Eunice, to the entrance of Jannan's offices on
+Fourth Street.</p>
+
+<p>Essie Scofield, in widespread mulberry silk with tight sleeves and broad
+steel buttons, a close brimmed blue bonnet filled with lilacs and tied
+with an old rose ribbon, was more compelling than Jasper Penny had
+remembered her for, actually, years. A coffee-coloured India shawl, with
+a deep fringe and trace of a lining checkered in cherry and black
+slipping from her shoulders, toned her appearance to a potential
+dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eunice,&quot; she exclaimed, as the child entered, &quot;do come here at my
+side!&quot; A small, cold mouth was silently raised for a straining embrace.
+Stephen Jannan proceeded at once, addressing Essie Scofield. &quot;Mr. Penny
+informs me that he has written you explaining our purpose. I have
+already instructed you of the law in such a connexion, and there remains
+only your signatures to these papers. I begged you, if you will
+remember, to come with counsel, but since you have not done that it will
+be best for you to read this deed, which is quite clear in its intent.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Essie gazed dramatically at the paper the lawyer tended her. &quot;It means,&quot;
+she said, &quot;that I am to lose Eunice, and because I cannot offer her any
+advantages beyond those of a slim purse. I am a most unfortunate
+creature.&quot; Jasper Penny scraped his chair back impatiently, but Stephen
+enforced his silence with a gesture. &quot;While my client understands that
+no monetary consideration can compensate for the breaking of ties of
+affection,&quot; Stephen Jannan went on smoothly, &quot;and while he offers none
+in payment to that end, still we feel that some material recognition
+should be due you. Have you anything to say, suggest, at this point?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Essie Scofield's arm was about Eunice's waist. &quot;I am to be parted from
+my little daughter,&quot; she exclaimed; &quot;and my tears are to be stopped with
+gold&mdash;an affectionate breast, a heart-wrung appeal, stilled by a bribe.
+That is the price paid by a trusting, an unsuspicious, female. Long ago,
+when a mere girl, dazzled by&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We won't go into that,&quot; Jannan interrupted, &quot;but confine ourselves to
+the immediate development. By signing the paper in question, and
+accepting a sum of money, you surrender all claim to this child, known
+as Eunice Scofield.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How will that affect my&mdash;my position in other ways?&quot; she demanded, in a
+suddenly shrewd, suspicious tone. &quot;Not at all,&quot; the lawyer assured her.
+She sobbed once, emotionally; and Eunice regarded her with a wide,
+unsparing curiosity. &quot;A stranger to me,&quot; she gasped, with a paper white
+face and fluttering eyelids. Jasper Penny ejaculated sharply, &quot;How much,
+Essie?&quot; In a moment, he judged, familiar with a potential hysteria, she
+might faint, scream; there were clerks, people, in the next rooms. On
+the brink of collapse she hesitated, twisting her purple kid gloves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ten thousand dollars,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Jannan glanced swiftly at his cousin, and the latter nodded.
+&quot;That is satisfactory,&quot; Jannan announced. &quot;A mere formality&mdash;witnesses.&quot;
+Essie Scofield traced her signature in round, unformed characters;
+Jasper Penny followed with a hasty, small script; and Eunice, seated at
+the impressive table, printed her name slowly, blotting it with a
+trailing sleeve. The lawyer swung back the door of a heavy safe, and
+took out a package of white bills of exchange on the Bank of
+Pennsylvania. Essie counted the notes independently, thrust the money
+into a steel-beaded reticule with silk cords, and rose, gathering
+together her cashmere shawl. She ignored Eunice totally in the veiled
+gaze she directed at Jasper Penny. &quot;It is better,&quot; she told him, &quot;if you
+write first when you expect to visit me. Really, the last time, with
+some friends there, you were impossible.&quot; He bowed stiffly. &quot;Don't let a
+sense of duty bring you,&quot; she concluded boldly. &quot;I get on surprisingly
+well as it is, as it is,&quot; she reiterated, and, he thought, her voice
+bore almost a threat.</p>
+
+<p>When she had gone the two men sat gazing in a common perplexity at the
+child. Stephen Jannan's lips were compressed, Jasper Penny's face was
+slightly drawn as if by pain. Eunice was investigating a thick stick of
+vermilion sealing wax and a steel die. &quot;Well?&quot; Jannan queried, nodding
+toward the table. &quot;I thought something of Burlington,&quot; Penny replied,
+&quot;but decided to place her in New York. Want to give her all the chance
+possible. I intend, at what seems the proper time, to secure her my own
+name.&quot; He stopped the objection clouding his cousin's countenance. &quot;We
+won't argue that, please. Now about the will; the provision must be
+explicit and generous. There, at least, I am able to meet a just
+requirement.&quot; Jasper Penny's will was produced, a codicil projected,
+appended, and witnesses recalled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wanted to inquire about Miss Brundon,&quot; Jasper said finally, the
+business despatched. &quot;She seems to me very fragile for the conducting of
+an Academy. Is there no family, men, to support her? And her
+institution&mdash;does it continue to progress well?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very.&quot; Jannan replied to the last question first. &quot;Her children come
+from the best families in the city; and, under my advice, her charges
+are high. She has a brother, I believe, a cotton merchant of New
+Orleans, and quite prosperous. But he has a large family, and Susan will
+not permit him to deprive it of a dollar for her benefit. As you say,
+she is not strong; but in spite of that she needs no man's patronage.
+The finest qualities, Jasper, the most elevated spirit. A little too
+conscientious, perhaps; and, although she is thirty-nine, curiously
+ignorant of the world; but rare ... rare. It almost seems as if there
+were a conspiracy to keep ugly truths away from her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Truths, Jasper Penny thought bitterly, such as had just been revealed in
+Stephen's office. There was, it seemed, nothing he could do for Susan
+Brundon. He envied the lawyer his position of familiar adviser, the ease
+with which the other spoke her name: Susan. He rose, fumbling with a
+jade seal. &quot;Come, Eunice,&quot; he said, the lines deepening about his mouth
+and eyes. Stephen Jannan assisted him into the heavy, furred coat.
+&quot;Well, Jasper,&quot; he remarked sympathetically, &quot;if we could but look
+ahead, if we were older in our youth, yes, and younger in our increasing
+age, the world would be a different place.&quot; He held out to Eunice a
+newly minted Brazilian goldpiece. &quot;Good-bye,&quot; he addressed her; &quot;command
+me if I can be of any use.&quot; She clutched the gold tightly, and Jasper
+Penny led her out into the winter street. &quot;We must have dinner,&quot; he said
+gravely. &quot;With some yellow rock candy,&quot; she added, &quot;and syllabubs.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI" />XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of
+pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The
+loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have
+its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down
+the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted
+from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing
+prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their
+manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.
+Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had
+largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail
+works by the canal at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle
+Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself&mdash;the
+pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery,
+where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.
+The old system of bellows had been replaced by a wood cylinder,
+compressing air by piston into a chamber from which the blast was
+regulated. A blacksmith's shed had been added in the course of time,
+and a brick coke oven. He stopped at the Forge shed, filled with ruddy
+light and shadow, the ringing of hammers, and silently watched the
+malleable metal on the anvil. Flakes of glowing iron fell, changing from
+ruby to blue and black.</p>
+
+<p>The Penny iron! The Forge had been operated continuously since seventeen
+twenty-seven, hammering out the foundation of his, Jasper's, position.
+He had taken a not inconsiderable place in the succession of the men of
+his family; in him the Pennys had reached their greatest importance,
+wealth. But after him ... what? He was, now, the last Penny man. The
+foothold Gilbert had cut out of the wild, which Howat and Casimir&mdash;an
+outlandish name obviously traceable to his mother, the foreign
+widow&mdash;had, in turn, increased for Daniel and Jasper, would be
+dissipated. His great, great aunt, Caroline, marrying a solid Quaker,
+had contributed, too, to the family stamina; while her granddaughter,
+wedding a Jannan, had increased the social prestige and connections of
+the family. The Jannans, bankers and lawyers, had already converted the
+greater part of their iron inheritance into more speculative finance;
+and the burden of the industry rested on Jasper Penny's shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible
+monument of their endurance and rectitude, except for the tenuous,
+momentary fact of Eunice, would be overthrown, forgot. He was conscious
+of a strong inner protest against such oblivion. He had, of course,
+often before lamented the fact that he had no son; but suddenly his loss
+became a hundred times more poignant, regrettable. Jasper Penny caught
+again the remembered, oppressive odour of foxglove, the aromatic reek of
+brandy and oranges; one, in its implications, as sterile as the other.
+He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of essential failure, a
+recurrence of the dark mood that had enveloped him in leaving the
+Jannans' ball.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, he thought again, he was still in the midstride of his life, his
+powers. His health was unimpaired; his presence bore none of the
+slackening aspect of increasing years. These feelings occupied him,
+speeding in a single cutter sleigh over the crisp snow of the road
+leading from his home to Shadrach Furnace, where Graham Jannan and his
+young wife had been newly installed in the foremens' dwelling. There was
+a slight uneasiness about Graham's lungs, in consequence of which he had
+been taken out of the banking house of an uncle, Jannan and Provost, and
+set at the more robust task of picking up the management of an iron
+furnace.</p>
+
+<p>It was early afternoon; the sky was as dryly powdered with unbroken blue
+as was the earth with white. The silver bells and scarlet pompons of the
+harness crackled in the still, intense cold; and a blanched vapour hung
+about the horse's head. Jasper Penny, enveloped in voluminous buffalo
+robes and fur, gazed with an increased interest at the familiar, flowing
+scene; nearby the forest had been cut, and suave, rolling fields
+stretched to a far mauve haze of trees; the ultramarine smoke of
+farmhouse chimneys everywhere climbed into the pale wash of sunlight;
+orderly fence succeeded fence. How rapidly, and prosperous, the country
+was growing! Even he could remember wide reaches of wild that were now
+cultivated. The game, quail and wild turkey and deer, was fast
+disappearing. The country was growing amazingly, too, extending through
+the Louisiana Purchase, State by State, to Mexico and the Texan border.
+The era of the greatness of the United States had hardly begun, while it
+was more than probable that the greatness, the power, of the Penny
+family faced an imminent destruction. His revolt at this, joining the
+more personal sense of the emptiness of his existence, filled him with a
+bitter energy, a determination to conquer, somehow, the obdurate facts
+hemming him in.</p>
+
+<p>The sleigh dropped over a rise into a shallow fold of hills, with a
+collection of structures on a slope, and a number of solid, small grey
+stone dwellings. He glanced subconsciously at the stack of Shadrach
+Furnace, and saw that it was in blast&mdash;a colourless, lively flame, with
+a thin, white smoke like crumpled muslin, playing about its base. The
+metallic ring of a smithy rose at a crossing of roads, and, from the
+cast house, drifted the refrain of a German song. He turned in by the
+comparatively long, low fa&ccedil;ade of the house where the Jannans were
+living.</p>
+
+<p>A negro led the horse and sleigh back to a stable; and, briskly sounding
+the polished iron doorknocker, he let himself into the dining room, a
+chamber with a wide, pot-hung fireplace and plain mahogany consul tables
+with wood chairs brightly painted with archaic flowers and scrolls in
+gold. Standing at the far side of the room, delicately outlined against
+a low, deeply embrasured window, was Susan Brundon.</p>
+
+<p>A slow tide of colour rose to her ordinarily pale cheeks, corresponding
+with a formless gladness permeating his own being. She wore ruffled
+lavender with a clear lace pelerine caught at her breast by a knot of
+straw-coloured ribbon and sprig of rose geranium. &quot;Mr. Penny,&quot; she said,
+with a little gasp of surprise; but her gaze was unwavering, candid.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot; he replied lightly. &quot;I have a small interest in Shadrach. You
+are surprising&mdash;so far from that absorbing Academy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's my eyes again,&quot; she explained. &quot;I am obliged to rest. There is a
+very good assistant at the school; and Mary sweetly thought the country
+would do me good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is really miraculous,&quot; Mary Jannan stated, entering from the
+kitchen; &quot;she'll almost never. Weren't we lucky?&quot; She was a small woman
+with smooth brown hair and an air of quiet capability. &quot;And it's
+splendid to see you,&quot; she continued to Jasper Penny. &quot;Don't for a
+minute think you'll get off before to-morrow, perhaps not then. Graham
+is out, chop-chopping wood. Actually&mdash;the suave Graham.&quot; She indicated a
+high row of pegs for Jasper Penny's furs. &quot;Everything is terribly
+primitive. Most of the furniture was so sound that we couldn't bring
+ourselves to discard it all, however old-fashioned. Little by little.&quot;
+Graham Jannan entered, a tall, thin young man with crisp, pale yellow
+hair and a clean shaven, sanguine countenance with challenging light
+blue eyes. He greeted the older man with a firm, cold hand clasp. &quot;I
+suppose you've come out to discover what I have learned about iron.
+Well, I know now that a sow is not necessarily a lady, and that some
+blooms have no bouquet. Good rum has, though, after sleighing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Upon alternately burning his fingers and throat with a steaming glass of
+St. Croix, Jasper Penny and Graham Jannan proceeded to the Furnace
+where, in the cast house, they watched the preparations for a flow of
+metal. The head founder, McQuatty, bearded to the eyes and swathed in a
+hide apron, stood at the Ironmaster's side. &quot;The charcoal you'd get's
+not worth a bawbee,&quot; he complained; &quot;soft stuff would hardly run lead.
+And where they'd cut six thousand cords of wood will no longer show more
+than four. Shadrach ought to put out twenty-eight tons of pig in a week;
+and you see the statements.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stone coal,&quot; Jasper Penny replied; &quot;and a hot blast.&quot; He turned to
+describe the latter to Jannan. &quot;It'll come,&quot; the founder agreed, &quot;and
+the quality will go.&quot; He went forward to tap the clay-sealed hearth. The
+liquid iron poured into the channels of its sand bed, sputtering and
+slowly fading to dingy grey. &quot;I'd like you to take hold of this,&quot; Jasper
+Penny told the younger man; &quot;great changes, improvements, are just over
+the hill. I'll miss them&mdash;a link between the old and the new. But you
+would see it all. The railroad will bring about an iron age; and then,
+perhaps, steel. I look for trouble, too&mdash;this damned States Rights. The
+South has been uneasy since the Carolina Nullification Act. It will be a
+time for action.&quot; He gazed keenly at Graham Jannan. A promising young
+man, he thought, with a considerable asset in his wife. A woman, the
+right woman, could make a tremendous difference in a man's capabilities.</p>
+
+<p>He elaborated this thought fantastically at dinner, sitting opposite
+Susan Brundon. Mary Jannan wore orange cr&ecirc;pe, with black loops of ball
+fringe and purple silk dahlias; and, beside her, Miss Brundon's dress
+was noticeably simple. She volunteered little, but, when directly
+addressed, answered in a gentle, hesitating voice that veiled the
+directness, the conviction, of her replies. The right woman, Jasper
+Penny repeated silently. Ten, fifteen, years ago, when he had been free,
+he would have acted immediately on the feeling that Susan Brundon was
+exactly the wife he wanted. But no such person had appeared at that
+momentous period in his life.</p>
+
+<p>However, then he had been a totally different being; perhaps the
+appreciation of Miss Brundon, her actual reality, lay for him entirely
+in his own perceptions. But if she would not have been the woman for him
+then, by heaven, she was now! He expressed this unaware of its wide
+implications, unconscious of the effect it would instantly have. The
+thing silently uttered bred an enormously increased need, the absolute
+determination that she was necessary to his most perfunctory being. The
+thought of her alone, he discovered, had been sufficient to give him a
+new energy, a sense of rare satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly expressed, he wanted to marry her; he had not, he told himself
+oddly, ever been married. The word had a significance which heretofore
+he had completely missed. A strange emotion stirred into being, a
+longing thrown out from his new desire, the late-born feeling of
+dissatisfaction; it was a wish for something in Susan Brundon which he
+experienced but could not name. Roughly stated it was a hunger to
+surround her with security, comfort, to fortify the, at best, doubtful
+position of life in death for her. Yet he acknowledged to himself that
+this regard for her safety was mostly the result of his own inner, blind
+striving. Her happiness had magically become his. Beyond that he was
+unable to penetrate.</p>
+
+<p>After supper they gathered in the chamber beyond the dining room. Here
+Jasper Penny found an incongruous mingling of old and new furniture.
+There was a high, waxed walnut desk and cabinet, severely simple, and
+before it a chair with a back of elaborately carved and gilded tulips
+tufted in plum-coloured velvet. The thick carpet was a deep rose, and
+the drapery of the mantel and windows garnet. A painted hood of
+brilliant Chinese colours had been fastened before what was evidently an
+open hearth, for which a coal stove was substituted. On the middle of
+the floor was an oriental hassock in silver brocade; while a corner held
+a spinet-piano decorated in roseate cupids, flower sprays and gold leaf.
+Again, an old clock in Spanish mahogany, with a rudely painted glass
+door, had been left on the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Mary Jannan, at the piano, wove a delicate succession of arpeggios. She
+sang, in a small and graceful voice, a cavatina, <i>Tanti Palpiti</i>. Then,
+&quot;Ah, que les amours ... de beaux heurs.&quot; Jasper Penny listened with an
+unconscious, approving pretence of understanding. But when, in the
+course of her repertoire, she reached <i>Sweet Sister Fay</i>, and <i>The Horn
+of My Loved One I Hear</i>, his pleasure became active. Susan Brundon, on
+the hassock, lifted her sensitive face to the mild candle light, and its
+still pallor gave him a shock of delight. Her hands were folded in the
+voluminous sweep of her crinoline; the ribbons at her breast rose and
+fell softly.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny and Graham were smoking long, fragrant cigars that the
+former had produced from a lacquered case, and Jannan had the
+ingredients of the hot punch at his elbow. It amused the young man to
+persuade Susan Brandon to take a sip from his glass; and they all
+laughed at her subsequent gasping. Jasper Penny was astoundingly happy;
+his being radiated a warmth and contentment more potent than that of the
+St. Croix rum. It was accompanied by an extraordinary lightness of
+spirit, a feeling of the desirability of life. The memory of his greying
+hair had left him; not, it was true, to be replaced by the surging
+emotions of youth, but by a deep satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Brundon, Susan ... the right woman. He marvelled again at the
+brightness of spirit that shone in her&mdash;like a flame through a fine
+paper lantern. Susan, at Myrtle Forge. His thought became concrete; he
+knew now, definitely, that he had determined to marry her. His peace of
+mind increased. There was no need for hurry, the mere idea was
+irradiating; yet there must be no unnecessary delay. Incontrovertibly he
+had passed forty. The best period in a man's life. They would go to the
+West Indies, he decided. A ring with a square emerald, and roses of
+pearls. It was, almost immediately, time to retire. His room, narrow
+with a sloping wall, had a small window giving on a flawless rectangle
+of snow like the purity of Susan Brundon.</p>
+
+<p>As he lay in bed, staring wakefully against the dark, another memory
+crept into his thoughts&mdash;the echo of a small, querulous voice, &quot;yellow
+rock candy and syllabubs.&quot; Eunice! A sudden consternation seized him as
+he realized the necessity of telling Susan fully about his daughter. No
+escape, evasion, was possible. If she discovered the existence, the
+history, of the child afterward&mdash;he lingered over the happiness that
+term implied&mdash;it would destroy her. This, he told himself, was not
+merely melodrama; he was thinking of her delicate spirituality, so
+completely shielded from the bald fatality of facts. An increasing dread
+seized him at the thought of the hurt his revelation would inflict on
+her. The interweaving of life in life, consequence on consequence, the
+unbroken intricacy of the whole fabric of existence, realized anew,
+filled him with bitter rebellion. The blind commitment of a vanished
+youth, potent after years, still hung in a dark cloud over Susan
+Brundon. He was conscious of the past like an insuperable lead weight
+dragging at his attempted progress. The secret errors of all the pasts
+that had made him rose in a haggard, shadowy troop about his bed,
+perpetuated, multiplied, against his aspirations of tranquil release.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, he told himself, dressing in the bright flood of morning, if
+nothing perished but the mere, shredding flesh, one quality persisted
+equally with the other&mdash;the symbol of Essie Scofield was no more actual
+than Susan. He had breakfast early, with Graham Jannan; and, in a
+reviving optimism, arranged for the Jannans to bring Miss Brundon to
+Myrtle Forge for a night before her departure. He whirled away, in a
+sparkling veil of flung snow crystals, before the women appeared.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Brundon would, naturally, shrink from what he must tell her; but
+he was suddenly confident of his ability to convince her of the superior
+importance of the actuality of what they together might make of the
+future. He was accustomed to the bending of circumstance to his will; in
+the end he would prove stronger than any hesitancy she might, perhaps,
+reveal. His desire to have her had grown to such proportions that he
+could not, for an instant, think of existence without her as an intimate
+part. He even mentally determined when he should go to the city, the
+jeweller's, for the square emerald and flowered pearls. He would do over
+the rooms where he had lived in the thin formality of his marriage with
+Phebe, settle an amount on Essie ... shredding flesh. It would do the
+living woman no more injury than the dead. Oranges and brandy, satin and
+gold and ease.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote, through Stephen Jannan, to Essie Scofield that afternoon,
+stating the generous terms of his final arrangement with her, making it
+plain that all personal contact between them had reached an end.
+Hereafter she must exclusively address any unavoidable communications to
+Mr. Jannan. She disregarded this in a direct, inevitably complaining,
+laborious scrawl. However, he could read through it her obvious relief
+at complete independence. She would, she thought, stay where she was for
+a little ... a period of perfunctory sentimentality followed. He
+destroyed the letter, turning with deep pleasure to the message from
+Graham Jannan that he would bring Susan Brundon and Mary to Myrtle Forge
+the following day.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, with Amity Merken like a timid and reduced replica at her
+back, greeted the Jannans and Miss Brundon at the door. Jasper Penny
+came forward from the smoking room, to the right of the main entrance;
+where the men retired for an appetizer of gin and bitters. The older man
+was garbed with exact care. His whiskers were closely trimmed on either
+side of his severe mouth and shapely, dominant chin; and his sombre
+eyes, under their brows drawn up toward the temples, held an unusual
+raillery. Amity Merken, he learned, had desired to stay away from the
+supper table; but, to her distress, he forced her into a chair set by
+himself. Susan sat at the other end of the table, in the place that had
+been Phebe's. He gazed at her with a satisfaction without surprise; for
+it seemed to him that the woman beyond him had always occupied the fore
+of his existence. She wore pale grey, the opening at her neck filled
+with soft lace and pinned with a garnet brooch, and a deep-fringed,
+white silk shawl. The conversation was ambling, but, to Jasper Penny,
+pitched in a key of utter delight. He said little through supper; and,
+at its end, with Graham Jannan, immediately followed the others into the
+parlour.</p>
+
+<p>There Mary Jannan repeated her songs, French, English and Italian; and
+Jasper Penny listened with a poignant, emotional response. Graham and
+his wife had arranged to sleigh back to Shadrach Furnace that evening;
+but Susan Brundon was to stay at Myrtle Forge, and take the train from
+Jaffa to-morrow. The Jannans, finally, departed; and Jasper Penny,
+showing Susan through the chambers of the lower floor, succeeded in
+delaying her, seated, in the smoking room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII" />XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Now that the moment which he had so carefully planned had arrived he was
+curiously reluctant to precipitate Susan and himself into the future.
+The lamps on a mantel, hooded in alabaster, cast a diffused radiance
+over Susan's silvery dress, on her countenance faintly flushed above the
+white folds of the shawl. &quot;What is that sound?&quot; she suddenly queried. &quot;I
+heard it all through supper and before. It seems to live in the walls,
+the very air, here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The trip hammer of Myrtle Forge,&quot; he replied gravely. &quot;I suppose it
+might, fancifully, be called the beating of the Penny heart; it does
+pound through every associated stone; and I have a notion that when it
+stops we shall stop too. The Penny men have all been faithful to it, and
+it has been faithful to us, given us a hold in a new country, a hold of
+wrought iron.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How beautiful,&quot; she murmured; &quot;how strong and safe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It pleases me that you feel that,&quot; he plunged directly into his
+purpose; &quot;for I intend to offer you all the strength and safety it
+contains.&quot; Her hands fluttered to her cheeks; a sudden fear touched
+her, yet her eyes found his unwaveringly. &quot;If that were all,&quot; he
+continued, standing above her, &quot;if I had only to tell you of the iron,
+if the metal were flawless, I'd be overwhelmed with gladness. But almost
+no iron is perfect, the longest refining leaves bubbles, faults. Men are
+like that, too ... Susan.&quot; She grew troubled, sensitively following his
+mood; her hands were now pressed to her breast, her lips parted. She was
+so bewilderingly pure, in her dim-lit, pearly haze of silk, that he
+paused with an involuntary contraction of pain at what must follow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The child, Eunice,&quot; he struggled on; &quot;I couldn't leave her at the
+Academy because it might injure you. I had brought her in a most blind
+egotism; and so I took her away. She is my daughter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He saw that at first she totally missed the implication of his words.
+&quot;But,&quot; she stammered, &quot;I was told you had no ... how would that&mdash;?&quot; Then
+she stopped as sharply as if a hand had compressed her throat. A vivid
+mantle of colour rose in her face; she made a motion of rising, of
+flight, but sank back weakly. &quot;It is criminally indelicate to speak to
+you of this,&quot; he said, &quot;but it was absolutely necessary. I want to marry
+you; in that circumstance a lie would be fatal, later or sooner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She attempted to speak, her lips quivered, but only a low gasp was
+audible. It was worse, even, than he had feared. Now, however, that he
+had told her, he felt happier, more confident. Surely, after a little,
+she would forgive, forget, &quot;I want to marry you,&quot; he repeated, torn
+with pity at her fragility, her visible suffering. &quot;All that might hurt
+you has been put out of my life, out of our future. The way is open
+before us, the refining. I would do anything to spare you, believe that;
+but the truth, now, best.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Always,&quot; she said in a faint voice. &quot;I am trying to&mdash;to realize. Oh! I
+suppose such things do occur; but the child herself, you&mdash;don't see how
+that, so near&mdash;&quot; she broke off, gazing wide-eyed out of her misery. He
+was conscious of the dull, regular beat of the Forge hammer. God, how
+the imperfections persisted! But, he told himself savagely, in the end
+the metal was steadfast. He would, certainly, overcome her natural
+revulsion from what she had just heard. The colour had left her cheeks,
+violet shadows gathered about her eyes; she seemed more unsubstantial
+than ever. He would repay again and again the suffering he had brought
+her. Having declared himself he was almost tranquil; there was a total
+absence of the impetuous emotionalism of youth, the blind tyranny of
+desire. His feeling was deeper, and accompanied by a far more involved
+philosophy of self-recognition. At the same time, while acutely
+conscious of his absolute need of Susan Brundon, he was at a loss to
+discover its essence, shape. Before he had known her he had been
+obsessed by a distaste for his existence; he had desperately wanted
+something without definition ... And Susan was that desire, delicate,
+clear-eyed Susan. Yet, still, the heart of her escaped him.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny had told himself that his new dissatisfaction was merely
+the result of his accumulating years; but, beyond the fact that such an
+increase might have brought him different and keener perceptions, that
+explanation was entirely inadequate. He wanted a quality beyond his
+experience, beyond, he realized, any material condition&mdash;Susan Brundon,
+yes; but it was no comparatively simple urge of sex, the natural
+selection of the general animal creation. There was no question of
+passionate importunities; those, here, would be worse than futile; all
+that he desired was beyond words, moving in obedience to a principle of
+which he had not caught the slightest glimpse. Yet, confident of his
+ultimate victory, he maintained the dominating presence of a black
+Penny.</p>
+
+<p>Susan Brundon had sunk back into the depths of her capacious chair; she
+seemed utterly exhausted, as if she had been subjected to a prolonged
+brutal strain. But still her eyes sought him steady in their hurt
+regard. &quot;There is so much that I can give you,&quot; he blundered,
+immediately conscious of the sterility of his phrase. &quot;I mean better
+things&mdash;peace and attention and&mdash;and understanding. I won't attempt any
+of the terms usual, commonplace, at such moments, you must take them,
+where they are worthy, for granted. I only tell you a lamentable fact,
+and ask you to marry me, promise you the tenderest care&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know that,&quot; she replied, with obvious difficulty, hesitation. &quot;I'll
+not thank you. It is terribly difficult for me. I'd like to answer you
+as you wish, I mean reply to&mdash;to your request. But the other, the child,
+dragged about; there was such a distrust, a wariness, in her face.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no good in thinking of that alone,&quot; he stated, with a return
+of his customary decision. &quot;No one can walk backwards into the future.
+Try to consider only the immediate question, what I have asked you&mdash;will
+you marry me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all you have to explain?&quot; she asked. &quot;Is there, now, no one
+else that counts?&quot; The edge of a cold dread entered his hopes. &quot;If you
+refer to the child's mother,&quot; he said stiffly, &quot;she is amply well taken
+care of, you need waste no sentimental thoughts on her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah!&quot; Susan exclaimed, shrinking. Her hands closed tightly on the wide
+silk of her skirt. The fear deepened within him; it would be impossible
+to explain Essie to the woman before him. Essie, falsely draped in
+conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth. He raged
+silently at his impotence, the inhibition that prevented the expression
+of what might be said for himself. Essie Scofield had, like every one
+else, lived in the terms of her being, attracting to herself what
+essentially she was; it was neither bad nor good, but inevitable. His
+contact with her had been the result of mutual qualities, qualities that
+were no longer valid. Yet to say that would place him in a damnable
+light, give him the aspect of the meanest opportunist. Susan breathed,
+&quot;That poor woman.&quot; It was precisely what he had expected, feared&mdash;the
+adventitious illusion! He had an impulse to describe to her, even at the
+price of his own condemnation, the condition in which he had found
+Eunice; but that too perished silently. Jasper Penny grew restive under
+the unusual restraint of his position.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mind&mdash;no more at present.&quot; Susan Brundon said. &quot;I am upset;
+please, another time; if it is necessary. I feel that I couldn't answer
+anything now, I must go up; no, your mother will show me.&quot; She rose, and
+he realized that she would listen no further. There was an astonishing
+strength of purpose behind her deprecating presence. She was more
+determined than himself. He watched her walk evenly from the room, heard
+the low stir of voices beyond, with a feeling that he had been perhaps
+fatally clumsy. All that he had said had been wrong, brutally selfish.
+He had deliberately invited failure; he should have been patient,
+waited; given her a chance to know and, if possible, value him, come to
+depend on him, on his judgment, his ability in her welfare. But, in
+place of making himself a necessity, he had launched at once into facts
+which she must find hideous. She had said, &quot;another time, if necessary.&quot;
+His mouth drew into a set line&mdash;there would be another and another,
+until he had persuaded, gained, her.</p>
+
+<p>He lit a cigar, and walked discontentedly up and across the room. The
+sound of the Forge hammer again crept into his consciousness: the Penny
+iron&mdash;the fibre, the actuality, of the Penny men! He repeated this
+arrogantly; but the declaration no longer brought reassurance; the
+certainty even of the iron faded from him; he had failed there, too,
+digging a pit of oblivion for all that their generations of toil had
+accomplished. The past inexorably woven into the pattern of the future!
+Eunice, so soon wary, distrustful, Susan had seen that immediately,
+would perpetuate all that he wished dead&mdash;Essie and himself bound
+together, projected in an undesirable immortality through endless lives
+striving, like himself, to escape from old chains.</p>
+
+<p>If he failed with Susan his existence would have been an unmitigated
+evil; the iron, his petty, material triumphs, would rust, but the other
+go on and on. His thoughts became a maze of pity for Eunice, infinite
+regret of the past, a bitter energy of hope for what might follow.</p>
+
+<p>He turned with pride to his forging&mdash;long-wrought charcoal iron; the
+world would know no better. Still, with his penetration of the future,
+he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had
+difficulty in assembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing
+contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension
+of steam railways, would grow resistlessly. More wholesale methods of
+production were being utilized daily; he was one of the foremost
+adherents of &quot;improvement&quot;; but suddenly he felt a poignant regret at
+the inevitable passing of the old order of great Ironmasters, the
+principalities of furnaces and forges. He was still, he felt, such a
+master of his men and miles of forests and clearings, lime pits and ore
+banks, coal holes, mills, coke ovens, hearths and manufactories. He
+might still drive to Virginia through a continuous line of his
+interests; his domination over his labourers, in all their personal and
+industrial implications, was patriarchal; he commanded, through their
+allegiance and his entire grasp on every iota of their living, their
+day's journey; but, he told himself, he was practically the last of his
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>New and different industrial combinations were locking together in great
+agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded
+by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in
+a cold and successful automaton of business. A system of general credit
+was springing up; the old, old payments in kind, in iron or even meal
+and apparel, or gold, had given place to reciprocal understandings of
+deferred indebtedness. The actual thousands of earlier commerce were
+replaced by theoretical millions. His own realty, his personal property,
+because of such understandings, were outside computation. They were, he
+knew, reckoned in surprising figures; but in a wide-spread panic, forced
+liquidation, the greater part of his wealth would break like straw. It
+was the same with the entire country.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts returned to Susan, to the longing for the peace, the
+inviolable security, she would bring to the centre, the heart, of his
+life. No material catastrophe could shape, deplete, her richness of
+spirit. Fragile as she was, with her need of rest, her diffidence and
+pallor, she yet seemed to Jasper Penny the most&mdash;the only&mdash;secure thing
+in the world. She defied, he murmured, death itself. Wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>He moved slowly to his sombre bed room, with its dark velour hangings
+and ponderous black walnut furniture, precisely scrolled with gilt. The
+interior absorbed the light of a single lamp, robbing it of radiance. A
+clock deliberately struck the hour with an audible whirring of the
+spring. Jasper Penny took out from a drawer a tall, narrow ledger, its
+calf binding powdering in a yellow dust, with a blurring label,
+&quot;Forgebook. Myrtle Forge, 1750.&quot; He sat, opening it on the arm of an old
+Windsor reading chair he had insisted on retaining among the recent
+upholstery, and studied the entries, some written in a small script with
+ornamental capitals and red lined day headings, others in an abrupt
+manner with heavy down strokes. The latter, he knew, had been made by
+his great grandfather, Howat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jonas Rupp charged with three pair of woollen stockings ... shoes for
+Minnie.&quot; Howat had been young when Minnie's shoes were new; twenty
+something&mdash;five or six. He must have married not long after.
+Howat&mdash;like himself&mdash;a black Penny. The special interest Jasper Penny
+felt for this particular ancestor grew so vivid that he almost felt the
+other's presence in the room at his shoulder. He consciously repressed
+the desire to turn suddenly and surprise the shadowy and yet clear
+figure in the gloom. The features of the youth so long gone, and yet,
+too, he felt, the replica of his own young years, were plain; the dark
+eyes, slanted brows, the impatient mouth.</p>
+
+<p>His community of sympathy with the other, who was still, in a measure,
+himself, was inexplicable; for obviously Howat had escaped Jasper's
+blundering&mdash;an early marriage, a son, the son whose name, like his
+mother's, made such an exotic note in a long, sound succession of
+Isabels and Carolines and Gilberts, was a far different tale from his
+own. Yet it persisted. It seemed to him that the silence of the room
+grew strained, there was the peculiar tension of a muteness desperately
+striving for utterance. He waited, listened, in a rigidity of which he
+was suddenly ashamed; ridiculous. He relaxed; the memory of his own
+youth flooded back, rapt him in visions, scents, sounds. The premonitory
+whirring of the clock spring sounded once more, followed by the slow,
+increasing strokes ... Again. His body wavered, on the verge of sleep,
+and he straightened himself sharply; then he rose and, putting back the
+Forgebook, undressed.</p>
+
+<p>Susan, at breakfast, her shoulders wrapped in a serious-toned pelerine,
+said little. Jasper Penny instinctively excluded her from a trivial
+conversation. She was, he decided, paler than usual, the shadows under
+her eyes were indigo. He was filled with self-condemnation. Mrs. Penny,
+gazing at her with a beady discernment, asked if her rest had been
+interrupted. &quot;I am always an indifferent sleeper,&quot; Susan Brundon replied
+evasively. He followed her into the carriage that was to take her to the
+station at Jaffa; and, ignoring her slight gasp of protest, grasped the
+reins held by the negro coachman. However, they proceeded over the short
+distance to the town without speech. He was torn between a wish to spare
+her and the desire to urge his own purpose. But more immediately he
+wanted to make secure the near hour of his seeing her again. He asked,
+finally, &quot;Will you be at the Jannans' this week, or are visitors
+received at the Academy?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; she replied to the first; &quot;and I have very little time between
+classes. You see, they fill the whole day, tasks and pleasures. It is
+difficult for me to&mdash;to talk on a generality of themes with callers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no intention of being diffuse,&quot; he replied pointedly. &quot;I could
+confine my entire conversation to one request&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please,&quot; she interrupted pitiably. &quot;I am utterly wretched now. The
+simplest gentility&mdash;&quot; she paused, but her wish was clear. He restrained
+himself with difficulty. Drifting slowly across the scattered roofs of
+the town was the leaden smoke of his mills and fires; as they drove into
+the main street the thin crash of his iron was audible. Men everywhere
+bowed to him with marked respect. But the woman at his side sat erect,
+drawn away from him, unmoved by all that, to the world, he was. There
+was an appalling quality in her aloofness from what, materially, he
+might advance in extenuation; the things so generally potent here were
+no more than slag. He searched within for what might bend, influence,
+her, for whatever he might have of value in her eyes. He found nothing.
+It was a novel and painful experience; and it bred in him a certain
+anger; he became merely stubborn. He declared to himself, with an oath,
+that he would gain her; and he pulled up his horses viciously at the
+station rack. This, too, hurt her; she exclaimed faintly at the brutally
+drawn bits. A man hurried forward to take her bag, and then, in a
+blowing of horn, a harsh exhaust of steam, she was gone. A last, hurried
+impression of her delicate profile on a small pane of glass accompanied
+him back to Myrtle Forge. There his mother regarded him with an open
+concern. &quot;Something's on your mind,&quot; she declared. &quot;I passed your door
+at midnight, and there was light under it. I've often told you about
+sitting up late.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm getting along,&quot; he replied lightly. &quot;You fail to do justice to the
+weight of my increasing majority. But, in a little, you'll be astonished
+at my renewed youth.&quot; He became serious in speaking, conscious of the
+new life Susan would, must, bring into his existence.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII" />XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Since he had declared himself so decidedly and at once, no hesitation
+was possible; he must, he was aware, move remorselessly forward in
+assault. To sweep Susan Brundon into his desire, overwhelm her
+defences&mdash;he called them prejudices but immediately after withdrew that
+term&mdash;offered the greatest, the only promise of success. An obliterating
+snow fell for the following thirty hours, and a week went by in the
+readjustment to ordinary conditions of living and travel. But at the end
+of that period Jasper Penny left Myrtle Forge for the city, with a
+determined, an almost confident, mouth, and a bright, hard gaze. Late
+afternoon, he decided, would be the best time for his appearance at the
+Academy. And the western sky was a luminous, bright red when he passed
+under the stripped, uneasy branches of the willow trees to the school
+door.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Brundon's office, rigorous as the corridor of a hospital, had a
+table and uncompromising wooden chairs on a rectangle of bluish-pink
+carpet; a glowing, round stove held a place on a square of gleaming,
+embossed zinc, while the remaining surfaces were scrubbed oak flooring
+and white calcimine. A large geographer's globe, a sphere of pale,
+glazed yellow traced in violet and thin vermilion and cobalt, rested on
+an involuted mahogany stand; and a pile of text books covered in gay
+muslin made a single, decisive note of colour.</p>
+
+<p>She kept him waiting, he felt uneasily, a long while; perhaps she had a
+class; but he felt that that was not the reason for her delay. When she
+finally appeared in soft brown merino, with a deep fichu of old, dark
+lace, and black ribbons, she courageously held out a delightfully cool,
+smooth hand. &quot;At first,&quot; she said directly, &quot;I thought it would be
+better not to see you at all. Yet that wasn't genteel; and I felt, too,
+that I must speak to you. Even at the danger, perhaps, of trespassing
+into your privacy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have given you the absolute right to do that,&quot; he told her. &quot;It will
+only bring me pleasure, to&mdash;to suppose I interest you enough&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, but you do,&quot; she cried with clasping fingers. &quot;It has made my work
+here very difficult; the quiet has gone before echoes that I think every
+child must hear, echoes from spaces and things that appall me. Here, you
+see, I have lived so apart from others, perhaps selfishly, that I had
+grown accustomed to a false sense of peace. Only lessons and little
+questions, little hands. It seems now that I have been outside of life
+itself, in a cowardly seclusion. Yet it had always been that way; I
+didn't know.&quot; Her face was deeply troubled, the clear depths of her eyes
+held a new questioning doubt.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's because of that, mainly, I ask you to marry me,&quot; he replied,
+standing before the table at which, unconsciously, she had taken her
+place; &quot;it is because of your astonishing purity. You are so beautiful;
+and this quiet, peace&mdash;you must have it all your life; it is the air,
+the garden air, for you to flower in. I can give it to you, miles of it,
+farther than you can see. All that you care for heaped about you. But
+not that only,&quot; he insisted, &quot;for I realized that no one lives to whom
+such things are less; I can give you something more, not to be talked
+about; whatever my life has been it has at least brought me to your
+feet. I have learned, for you, that there is a thing men must have, God
+knows exactly what&mdash;a craving to be satisfied, a&mdash;a reaching. And that
+itself, the knowledge of such need, is not without value. Because of it
+I again, and shall again, if necessary, ask you to marry me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She replied in a low voice. &quot;You must marry the child's mother.&quot; For the
+first time she avoided him; bright blood burned in her cheeks; a hand on
+the edge of the table was straining, white. A sudden feeling of
+helplessness came over him, with, behind it, the ever-present edge of
+anger, of impatience. He took a step forward, as if to crush, by sheer
+insistence, her opposition; but he stopped. He lost entirely the sense
+of her fragile physical being; she seemed only a spirit, shining and
+high, and insuperably lovely. Then all feeling was lost but the
+realization that he could not&mdash;in any true sense&mdash;live without her.
+&quot;Susan,&quot; he said, leaning forward, &quot;you must marry me. Do you care for
+me at all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her breast rose and fell under the delicate contour of her wool gown.
+&quot;The child's mother,&quot; she repeated, &quot;you should marry her. How can you
+do differently? What can it matter if I care about you?&quot; She raised a
+miserable face. &quot;How can I?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He could think of no other answer than to repeat his supreme necessity
+for her. He struggled to tell her that this was an altogether different
+man from Essie Scofield's companion; but his words were unconvincing,
+limited by the inhibition of custom. A transparent dusk deepened in the
+room accompanied by a pause only broken by the faint explosions of the
+soft coal. The power of persuasion, of speech, appeared to have left
+him. There must be some convincing thing to say, some last,
+all-powerful, argument. It eluded him. The exasperation returned,
+spreading through his being.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Surely,&quot; she said laboriously, &quot;there is only one course for you, for
+us all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll never marry Essie Scofield!&quot; he declared bluntly. His voice was
+unexpectedly loud, unpleasant; and it surprised him only less than Susan
+Brundon. She drew back, and the colour sank from her cheeks; an
+increasing fear of him was visible. &quot;In the first place,&quot; he continued,
+&quot;Essie probably wouldn't hear of it. And if I managed that it would be
+only to make a private hell for us both. It would not, it couldn't, last
+a month. There is nothing magical in marriage itself, there's no general
+salvation in it, nothing to change a man or woman. Why, by heaven,
+that's what you have taught me, that is the heart of my wanting you. You
+must feel it to understand.&quot; He circled the table and laid a hand on the
+back of her chair. &quot;Susan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her head was bowed, and he could see only her smooth, dark bands of hair
+and the whiteness of her neck. &quot;Susan,&quot; he said again. &quot;A second wrong
+will not cure the first. If one was inexcusable the other would be
+fatal. Married&mdash;to some one else, with yourself always before me&mdash;surely
+you must see the impossibility of that. And am I to come to nothing,
+eternally fail, because of the past? Isn't there any escape, any hope,
+any possibility? You don't realize how very much will go down with me. I
+am a man in the middle of life, and haven't the time, the elasticity, of
+youth. A few more years to the descent. But, with you, they could be
+splendidly useful, happy; happy, I think, for us both. I know that a
+great many people would say as you have, but it is wrong in every
+aspect, absolutely hopeless. Essie's values are totally different from
+yours; she has her own necessities; one measure will not do for all
+women.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She rose and stood facing him, very near, her crinoline swaying against
+him, and said blindly, &quot;You shall marry her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll be damned if I do,&quot; Jasper Penny asserted. &quot;I will marry you,
+you,&quot; he whispered, with his lips against the fineness of her ear. Her
+hands were on his shoulders; but she neither drew herself into his
+embrace nor repulsed him. He wanted to crush her softness in his arms,
+to kiss her still face into acquiescence. The quality, the kind, of his
+need made it impossible. She slipped back without a sound into her
+chair, drooping forward over the table.</p>
+
+<p>A sharp pity invaded him, holding him back from her, silencing the flow
+of his reasoning and appeal. It defeated, in the stirring tenderness of
+its consideration, his purpose. He could not continue tormenting her,
+racking her delicate, taut sensibilities by a hard insistence. He
+withdrew quietly, to where his hat and stick rested on a chair, and
+gathered them up. Still she didn't move, raise her head, break the low
+fumbling of the soft coal. He could no longer distinguish her clearly,
+she was blurring in a dusk deeping so imperceptibly that it seemed a
+gradual failing of his vision. The geographer's globe appeared to sway
+slightly, like a balloon tied to a string; the gay muslin of the piled
+text books had lost their designs. Suddenly the room without motion, the
+approaching night, the desirable presence of the woman growing more
+immaterial, more shadow-like to elude his reaching hands, presented a
+symbol, an epitome, of himself. Day fading swiftly into dark; dissolving
+the realities of table and flesh and floor; leaving only the hunger,
+the insuperable inner necessity and sense of loss.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good-bye,&quot; he breathed. Jasper Penny saw that she raised her head, he
+caught the glimmering pallor of her face. But she said nothing, and sank
+back into the crumpled position on the table. He went out, closing the
+door of the office, shutting her into the loneliness of her resolve, her
+insistence.</p>
+
+<p>In the familiar rooms at Sanderson's Hotel he revolved again and again
+all that she had said. For a little he even endeavoured to inspect
+calmly the possibility of a marriage with Essie Scofield. Steeped in
+Susan's spirit he thought of it as a reparation, to Eunice, perhaps to
+Essie, but more certainly to an essence within himself. But immediately
+he saw the futility of such a course; the inexorable logic of existence
+could not be so easily placated, its rhyming of cause and effect
+defeated. All that he had told Susan Brundon recurred strengthened to an
+immovable conviction. The thought of marrying Essie was intolerable,
+farcical; to the woman herself it would mean utter boredom. Such a thing
+must lead inevitably to a greater misfortune than any of the past.
+Susan, in her resplendent ignorance of facts, failed to realize the
+impossibility of what she upheld. No, no, it was out of the question.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if he had progressed in the other, his supreme, wish. And he
+felt, with a stirring of blood, that he had. Susan cared for him; her
+action had made that plain. That was a tremendous advantage; with
+another he would have thought it conclusive; but not&mdash;not quite with
+Susan Brundon. He had a deep regard for her determination, so surprising
+in the midst of her fragility. Yet, if pity had not prevented him, this
+afternoon, in her office, he might have forced her to a sharper
+realization of a more earthly need, the ache for sympathy, consolation,
+the imperative cry of self. That was his greatest difficulty, to
+overcome her lifelong habit of thinking of others before herself. Such,
+he knew, was the root of her appeal for Essie, rather than a cold,
+dogmatic conception. Self-effacement.</p>
+
+<p>At this a restive state followed; personally he had no confidence in the
+sacrifice of individual aims and happiness. Any course of that sort, he
+told himself, in the management of his practical affairs, would have
+resulted in his failure. There were a hundred men in the country
+plotting for his overthrow, anxious to take his position, scheming to
+undersell him, to discover the secret of the quality of his iron rails.
+Others he had deliberately, necessarily, ruined. No good would have been
+served by his stepping aside, allowing smaller men to flourish and annoy
+him, cut down his production by inconsiderable sales. He, and his
+family, had built a great, yes, and beneficial, industry by ruthlessly
+beating out a broad and broader way for their progress. It was needful
+to gaze fixedly at the end desirable and move in the straightest line
+possible.</p>
+
+<p>Susan stopped by the way. A thousand little acts of alleviation, at
+best temporary, interrupted her living. Children, not hers, dragged at
+her skirt. How much better for her to have a child of her own. Their
+child! A great deal that had been vague in his thoughts became concrete
+at that last period; not only the possible succession of the iron, but
+the comprehension that a child now, before the increasing sterility of
+multiplying years, would be an image of all his inmost craving and which
+must else be lost.</p>
+
+<p>Eunice was different. Pity, mingled with a rigid sense of his duty and a
+faint accent of parenthood, comprehended his feeling for her. He stated
+this to himself clearly, admitting what delinquency it carried. It was,
+simply, an incontrovertible fact; and it was his habit to meet such
+things squarely. A black Penny, he had no impulse to see existence in
+imposed sentimental or formally moral conceptions. From all this he
+returned with a feeling of delight to his personal longing for Susan
+Brundon; he saw her bowed over the table in an exhaustion almost an
+attitude of surrender. A slender, pliable figure in soft merino and
+lace. He saw her beyond the candles of Graham Jannan's supper table, a
+rose geranium at her breast. The motto of the bon bon partially
+returned:</p>
+
+<p>
+&quot;... ange du ciel ... je t'aime!<br />
+... le bon heur supreme!&quot;<br />
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX" />XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the morning he walked over to Stephen Jannan's office on Fourth
+Street. The day was unexpectedly warm, and a mist rose about the wet
+bricks of the city. He proceeded directly into Stephen's private
+enclosure. &quot;I was about to write you,&quot; the latter stated. &quot;It's well
+enough for you to direct Mrs. Scofield to confine her pleas to me, and
+comparatively simple to picture her drawing a quarterly sum in an
+orderly manner; but how you are going to realize that happy conception
+is increasingly beyond me. I have to point out to her daily&mdash;a great
+nuisance it is&mdash;that she cannot have her income before it is due. Heaven
+knows what she has done with the other money in so short a while. She
+hasn't moved, apparently increased her establishment; at your direction
+the bills were settled, and heaven knows she had no reluctance in
+presenting all that were permissible and a number doubtful. There is, of
+course, one probability.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny's thoughts returned to the stony, handsome youth he had
+seen in the company of Essie's friends, to the insinuations of the woman
+who had been removed protesting her superiority and warning him against
+a &quot;tailor's dummy.&quot; Well, it was no longer his affair what Essie did
+with her money, what in her affections remained unimpaired. Rather it
+was reassuring that she had so promptly found solace; it enlarged his
+own feeling of freedom. &quot;It got worse, yesterday,&quot; Stephen Jannan
+continued; &quot;she came to the office, insisted on seeing me. Luckily I was
+busy with a mastership that kept me over three hours. But she left, I
+was told, with the air of one soon to return. She was brandied with
+purpose. There is no end, Jasper, to what I am prepared to do for you;
+but, my dear fellow, neither of us can have this. She wept. My young
+gentlemen were pierced with sympathetic curiosity. You must realize,
+Jasper, that you are not a sparrow, to float unnoticed from ledge to
+ledge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An angry impotence seized Jasper Penny. He was tempted to have Stephen
+Jannan turn over to Essie, at once, a conclusive sum of money. That
+would put an end to any communication between them, provide her with the
+power of self-gratification which for Essie Scofield spelled
+forgetfulness.... For a little, he was obliged, wearily, to add.
+Together with such a young man as he had seen in her house her capacity
+for expenditure would be limitless. She would come back to him with
+fresh demands, perhaps at an inconceivably awkward time, in a calculated
+hysteria&mdash;he had cause to know&mdash;surprisingly loud and convincing. Susan
+must be absolutely secured against that possibility. He could not help
+but think of the latter as yielding in the end, married to him.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at Stephen Jannan in a sombre perplexity. &quot;A nuisance,&quot; the
+other nodded. &quot;Only time, I suppose, and the most rigid adherence to
+your statements will convince the lady of what she may expect. In the
+meanwhile, frankly, we had better put it in some other hands; not so
+much on my account as your own&mdash;the sympathetic young gentlemen, you
+see. That can be easily arranged.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny was not thinking of the material Essie, the present,
+concrete problem; but he was once more absorbed in the manner in which
+her influence followed, apparently shaped, his existence. He was again
+appalled by the vitality of the past; the phrase itself was an error,
+there was no past. All that had gone, that was to come, met ceaselessly
+in the present, a confusion of hope and regret. It was evident that he
+would have to see Essie again, and explain that what she had from him
+depended entirely on her reciprocal attitude. This could only be
+satisfactory in person. He would go to her at once, to-day. An enormous
+reluctance to enter her house again possessed him. The mere act had the
+aspect of an acknowledgment of her continued potency, her influence over
+him. He put it off as long as possible, and it was past five when he
+finally walked slowly toward her door.</p>
+
+<p>She was in; and he saw, on the hall stand, a silk hat and overcoat cut
+in an extreme of current fashion. The servant preceded him above, toward
+the room usual for casual gatherings; and he heard a sudden low murmur,
+expostulation, follow the announcement of his name. Essie Scofield
+appeared at the top of the stairs. &quot;Come up,&quot; she said in a hesitating,
+sullen voice. He mounted without reply. As he had expected Daniel Culser
+was present, and rose to greet him negligently, from a lounging attitude
+on the sofa. His coat, cut back to the knees, was relentlessly tapered,
+the collar enormously rolled and revered, and a white Marseilles
+waistcoat bore black spots as large as a Bolivian half dollar; while a
+black scarf, it was called the Du Casses, fell in an avalanche of
+ruffles. He moved toward the door, fitting his coat carefully about his
+slim waist, &quot;I'm away, Essie,&quot; he proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When will you come again, Daniel?&quot; she asked with an oppressive
+humility. She gazed at Jasper Penny with a momentary delay; then, with
+an utter disregard of his presence, laid her hands on the younger man's
+shoulders. &quot;Soon,&quot; she begged. Obviously ill at ease he abruptly
+released himself. &quot;I don't care,&quot; she cried defiantly; &quot;I'll tell the
+whole world you are the sweetest man in it. Jasper's nothing to me nor I
+to him. And I'm not afraid of him, of what he might threaten, either.
+Stay, Daniel, and you'll see. I will look out for us, Dan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her unexpected frankness was inevitably followed by an awkward silence.
+Daniel Culser finally cursed below his breath, avoiding Jasper's cold
+inquiring gaze. &quot;I'm glad I said it,&quot; Essie proceeded; &quot;now he knows how
+things are.&quot; She went up again to the younger, and laid a clinging arm
+about his shoulders. &quot;I'm mad about you, Daniel, you know it; there's
+nothing I wouldn't do for you, give you if I could. Isn't he beautiful?&quot;
+she fatulously demanded of Jasper Penny.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are making a fool of yourself and me,&quot; the subject of her adulation
+roughly declared. He removed her arm so forcibly that the scarlet print
+of his fingers was visible on her soft, dead white skin. &quot;Probably you
+have gone and spoiled everything. And remember what I said. I am a man
+of my word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny dryly thought that the term man was singularly
+inappropriate in any connection with the meticulously garbed figure
+before him. Essie would have a difficult time with that stony youth. She
+regarded him with eyes of idolatry, drawing her fingers over the sleeve
+impatiently held aside from her touch. &quot;I'm going,&quot; he stated once more,
+impolitely; but she barred him at the door. &quot;I want you to stay,&quot; she
+cried excitedly; &quot;hear what I am going to say, what I am going to do for
+you.&quot; She advanced toward Jasper Penny. &quot;I asked that Jannan for more
+money because I had given Daniel all I had, and I wanted still more, to
+give him. I'll demand things all my life for him; everything I have is
+his.&quot; She gasped, at the verge of an emotional outburst. Her heart
+pounded unsteadily beneath an adventitious lace covering; her face was
+leaden with startling daubs of vermilion paint. &quot;Give me a great deal
+of money, now, at once ... so that I can go to Daniel with my hands
+full.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is why I came here,&quot; Jasper Penny replied; &quot;to tell you that you
+must not use up your income at once, on the first week, almost, of its
+payment; because you will be able to get no more until another
+instalment is due. I haven't the slightest interest in where your money
+goes, it is absolutely your own; but I cannot have you after it every
+second day. The administration will be put in a different quarter,
+rigidly dispensed; and any continued inopportunities will only result in
+difficulties for yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She cursed him in a gasping, spent breath. Essie looked ill, he thought.
+Daniel Culser, listening at the door, made a movement to leave, but the
+woman prevented him, hanging about his neck. &quot;No! No!&quot; she exclaimed.
+&quot;It will be all right, I can get it ... more. Be patient.&quot; Jasper Penny
+walked stiffly to the exit, where he paused at the point of repeating
+his warning. Essie Scofield was lifting a quivering, tear-drenched face
+to the vexation of the fashionable youth. He was attempting to repulse
+her, but she held him with a desperation of feeling. The elder descended
+the stairs without further speech.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the warmth of the day had continued into dusk. The mist had
+thickened, above which, in a momentary rift, he could see the stars
+swimming in removed constellations. He was wrapped in an utter loathing
+of the scene through which he had passed, his undeniable part in it. It
+was all hideous beyond words. His late need, his sense of void and
+illimitable longing, tormented him ceaselessly. He was sick with
+rebellion against life, an affair of cunning traps and mud and fog.
+Above the obscured and huddled odium of the city the distances were
+clear, serene. Above the degradation ... Susan. A tyrannical desire to
+see her possessed him, an absolute necessity for the purification of her
+mere presence. Unconsciously he quickened his step, charged with
+purpose; but he couldn't go to the Academy now; it was six o'clock. He
+must delay an hour at least. Habit prompted him to a supper which he
+left untried on its plates, the lighting of a cigar, quickly cold,
+forgot. At seven he hurried resolutely over the dark streets with the
+dim luminosity of occasional gas lamps floating on the unstirring white
+gloom. The bricks under foot were soggy, and the curved sign above her
+entrance, the bare willows, dropped a pattering moisture.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him immediately, not in the familiar office, but in a hall laid
+with cold matting and nearly filled by a stairway, lit with a lamp at
+the further end. &quot;I am sorry,&quot; she told him; &quot;I have no place to take
+you. The rhetoric mistress is correcting papers there,&quot; she indicated
+the shut door. He made no immediate answer, content to gaze at her
+sensitive, appealing countenance. &quot;It is so warm,&quot; she said finally,
+colouring at his intentness, &quot;and I have been indoors all day. I might
+get my things. We could, perhaps ... a walk,&quot; she spoke rapidly, her
+head bent from him. She drew back, then hesitated. &quot;Very well,&quot; he
+replied. Susan disappeared, but she quickly returned, in a little violet
+bonnet bound and tied with black, and a dark azure velvet cloak furred
+at her wrists and throat. She held a muff doubtfully; but, in the end,
+took it with her.</p>
+
+<p>Outside, the mist and night enveloped them in a close, damp veil. They
+turned silently to the right, passing the narrow mouth of Currant Alley,
+and Quince Street beyond. The bricks became precarious, and gave place
+to a walk of boards; the corners about a broad, muddy way were built up;
+but farther on the dwellings were scattered&mdash;lighted windows showed
+dimly behind bare catalpas, iron fences enclosed orderly patches between
+sodden flats, gas lamps grew fewer.</p>
+
+<p>A deep, all-pervading contentment surrounded Jasper Penny, an
+unreasoning, happy warmth. He said nothing, his stick now striking on
+the boards, now sinking into earth, and gazed down at Susan, her face
+hid by the rim of her bonnet. This companionship was the best, all, that
+life had to offer. He felt no need to importune her about the future,
+their marriage; curiously it seemed as though they had been married, and
+were walking in the security, the peace, of a valid and enduring bond.
+There was no necessity for talk, laborious explanation, periods
+infinitely more empty than this silence. They walked as close to each
+other as her skirt would permit; and at times her muff, swinging on a
+wrist, would brush softly against him. How strangely different the
+actual values of existence were from the emphasized, trite moments and
+emotions. In the middle of his life, at the point of his greatest
+capability for experience, his most transcendent happiness came from the
+present, the deliberate, unquestioning walk with Susan, the aimless
+progress through an invisible city and under a masked clear heaven of
+stars. No remembered thrill compared with it, reached the same height,
+achieved a similar dignity of consummation.</p>
+
+<p>The way became more uneven; low clustered sheds rose out of the darkness
+against a deeper black beyond, and they came to the river. The bank was
+marshy, but a track of pounded oyster shells, visible against the mud,
+led to a wharf extending into the solid, voiceless flow of the water.
+Jasper Penny stood with Susan gazing into the blanketing gloom. A wan,
+disintegrated radiance shone from a riding light in the rigging of a
+vessel, and a passing warm blur flattened over the wet deck as a lantern
+was carried forward. No other lights, and no movement, rose from the
+river; no sound was audible at their back. The city, from the evidence
+of Jasper Penny's sensibilities, did not exist; it had fallen out of his
+consciousness; suddenly its bricked miles, its involved life stilled or
+hectic, stealthy in the dark, seemed a thing temporary, adventitious;
+he had an extraordinary feeling of sharing in a permanence, a
+continuity, outlasting stone, iron, human tradition. He had been swept,
+he thought, into a movement where centuries were but the fretful ticking
+of seconds. &quot;Outside death,&quot; he said fantastically, unconsciously aloud.
+A remarkable sentence recurred to him, the most profound, he told
+himself, ever written: &quot;Before he was I am.&quot; Its vast implications
+easily evaded his finite mind, just as the essence of his present
+rapture&mdash;it was no less&mdash;lay beyond his grasp. He lingered over it; gave
+it up ... returned to Susan.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wonderful,&quot; she said gravely, with a comprehensive wave of her muff.
+And her simplicity thrilled him the more with the knowledge that she
+shared his feeling. She drew up the fur collar of her cloak, shivered;
+and, in the wordless harmony that pervaded them, they turned and
+retraced their way.</p>
+
+<p>The rhetoric mistress had left the office with a low turned lamp, and
+Jasper Penny stopped, taking the furred wrap from Susan's shoulders. She
+slowly untied the velvet strings of her bonnet, and laid it on the
+table. She extended her hands toward him, and, taking their cool
+slightness, he drew her to him. She rested with the fragrance of her
+cheek against his face, with her hands pressed to his breast. They stood
+motionless; he closed his eyes, and she was gone. He was confused in the
+dimness empty except for himself, and fumbled with, his gloves. Susan's
+wrap lay limply over a chair; the damp bonnet ribbons trailed toward the
+floor. He looked slowly about, noting every object&mdash;a pile of folded
+yellow papers, the stove, the globe bearing a quiver of light on its
+varnished surface.</p>
+
+<p>The willow trees and board above the entrance were dripping ceaselessly;
+the lights of the city, increasing at its centre, like the discs of
+floating sunflowers. If he slept he was unaware of it, the magic joy so
+equally penetrated his waking and subconscious hours, the feeling of an
+elevation higher than years and mountains was so strong. The morning, he
+found, was again cold, and clear. He must go out to Jaffa, where new
+blast machines demanded attention; but, the day after&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts were broken by a sharp rap on the outer door. Mr. Stephen
+Jannan was below, and demanded to see him immediately. Stephen's
+appearance at the hotel at that early hour, he recognized, was unusual.
+But a glance at his cousin's serious aspect showed him at once that the
+reason was urgent. Stephen Jannan, as customary, was particularly
+garbed; and yet he had an expression of haste, disturbance. He said at
+once, in the bedroom where Jasper Penny was folding his scarf.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That young waster, Culser, Daniel Culser, was shot and killed in Mrs.
+Scofield's house last evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The ends of the scarf fell neglected over the soft, cambric frills of
+his shirt. Jasper Penny swallowed dryly. &quot;At what time?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was seen in the Old White Bear Tavern at about seven, then
+apparently he went back to the woman's. The servant said he found the
+body at something past nine, and that there had been no other caller but
+yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His hearer expressed a deep, involuntary relief. &quot;I was there late in
+the afternoon,&quot; he acknowledged; &quot;but I left around six.&quot; Stephen
+Jannan, too, showed a sudden relaxation. &quot;I have already sent a message
+to the Mayor,&quot; he continued; &quot;confident that you would clear yourself
+without delay. Mrs. Scofield's history is, of course, known to the
+police. You have only to establish your alibi; she, Essie Scofield,
+can't be found for the moment. She may have taken an early stage out of
+the city; but it is probable that she has only moved into another police
+district. Just where were you, Jasper?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The latter said stupidly, &quot;Walking with Susan Brundon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A swiftly augmented concern gathered on Stephen Jannan's countenance.
+&quot;You were walking with Susan,&quot; he repeated increduously. &quot;Yes,&quot; Jasper
+asserted, with a sharp inner dread. &quot;You don't know, but I want to marry
+her.&quot; Stephen Jannan faced him with an exclamation of anger. &quot;You want
+to marry her, and, in consequence, drag her, Susan, into the dirtiest
+affair the city is like to know for years. Susan Brundon, with her
+Academy; all she has, all her labour, destroyed, ruined, pulled to
+pieces by slanderous tongues! By God, Jasper, what a beast you look! The
+most delicate woman, alive, the one farthest from just this sort of
+muck, being sworn in the Mayor's office, testifying in an obscene murder
+case, before the Sheriff and Constable, and heaven knows what police and
+vilely curious!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sickening feeling of utter destruction seized on Jasper Penny, a
+dropping of his entire being from the heights of yesterday to the last
+degradation. He felt the blood leave his heart and pound dizzily in his
+brain, and then recede, followed by an icy coldness, a wavering of the
+commonplace objects of the room. He raised his fingers to his collar,
+stared with burning eyes at Stephen Jannan. &quot;Everything spoiled,&quot; the
+latter said again; &quot;her pupils will positively be taken from her at once
+by all the nice females. Her name will be pronounced, smiled over, in
+every despicable quarter of the city, printed in the daily sheets. I&mdash;I
+can't forgive you for this. Susan, our especial joy!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny saw in a flash, as vivid and remorseless as a stab of
+lightning, that this was all true. The fatality of the past, sweeping
+forward in a black, strangling tide, had overtaken not only himself but
+Susan, too; Susan, in soft merino, in an azure velvet cloak; her face
+against his. &quot;I shall go away at once,&quot; he said hoarsely. &quot;I'll never
+appear, and they can think what they will. Then there will be no
+necessity for her to come forward. She shall be spared that, no matter
+what it costs.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Romantic and youthful folly,&quot; Jannan declared; &quot;loud-sounding and
+useless. How little you understand Susan&mdash;immediately it is known Culser
+was killed between seven and nine, whether you stay or go, she will come
+forward with the truth, free you from any suspicion. I tell you every
+detail will be canvassed, familiar to the boys on the street. A man
+important as yourself, with all your industries and money, and such
+salacity, together with Susan Brundon, will make a pretty story. If I
+had a chance, Jasper, I'm almost certain I'd sacrifice you without a
+quiver. How could you? Susan Brundon! Never telling her&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On the contrary, she knew everything. I am not so low as you seem to
+think.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That has no importance now!&quot; Stephen Jannan exclaimed impatiently. &quot;All
+that matters is to make it as easy as possible for her, I have, I think,
+enough position, influence, to keep the dregs out. But there will be
+enough present, even then. Damnable insinuations, winks,
+cross-questioning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His excitement faded before the exigencies of the unavoidable situation;
+he became cold, logical, legal. Jasper Penny listened, standing, to his
+instructions, the exact forecasting of every move probable at the
+hearing in the Mayor's chamber. &quot;After that,&quot; Stephen added, &quot;we can
+face the problem of Susan's future. She thinks tremendously of her
+school. It will fall to pieces in her hands. There can be no question of
+material assistance; refused her own brother.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, understand&mdash;stay in these rooms until I send for you. See no one.
+I'll get on, go to Susan. The thing itself should be short; her
+character will assist you there. What a mess you have made of living,
+Jasper.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX" />XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet
+mingled inner voices: Essie's younger, exuberant periods, her joy at
+presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her
+last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any
+doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of
+a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low,
+diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice
+continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin
+complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the
+Academy. These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one
+rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same. Back of them
+were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of
+associated heat or cold, darkness or light:</p>
+
+<p>He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius,
+regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced,
+the sense of Howat's nearness; integral with himself; merging into his
+own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring. His mother joined the
+immaterial company, accents, rigid with pride in him. And penetrating,
+binding, all was the dull beat of the trip hammer at Myrtle Forge. He
+had mechanically finished dressing, and stood absently twisting the
+drapery at a window. A fine tracery of lines had suddenly appeared about
+his eyes; the cold rays of the winter sun, streaming over his erect
+figure, accentuated the patches of grey plentiful in his hair.</p>
+
+<p>He saw, on the street below, a parade of firemen, in scarlet tunics and
+brass helmets, dragging a glittering engine. The men walked evenly
+abreast, at cross ropes. A leader blew a brilliant fanfare on an
+embossed, silver horn. Women passed, foreshortened into circular bells
+of colour, draped with gay pelerines and rich India shawls. He saw all
+and nothing. The horn of the firemen sounded without meaning on his
+distracted hearing. The flood of his suffering rose darkly, oppressing
+his heart, choking his breath. Perhaps if, as he had desired, he had
+gone away, Susan would be spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could
+keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and
+bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would
+take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands
+slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why
+hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would
+have been already too late, he added in thought; it went back, back&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A knock sounded discreetly on the door: and, opening it, he saw a young
+man, remembered as a law student in Stephen's office. &quot;They are ready
+for you, sir, at the City Hall,&quot; he stated, in an over-emphasized,
+professional calm.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI" />XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The restrained curiosity and inaudible comments which greeted his
+passage through the lower floor of the hotel gave place to a livelier
+interest when he was readily recognized on the street. The news of the
+murder had, evidently, already become city property. He was indicated to
+individuals unaware of his identity, with a rapid sketch of the crime,
+of fabulous ascribed possessions, and hinted oriental indulgence. He
+strode on rapidly, his shoulders squared, his expression contemptuous,
+challenging; but within he was possessed by an apprehension increasing
+at every step. It was not, fortunately, far from Sanderson's Hotel to
+the City Hall; west on Chestnut Street they reached their destination at
+the following corner. The loungers from the trees before the State House
+had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the
+entrance to the municipal offices. The windows on either side of the
+marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and
+Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building. He tried to recall
+if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might
+be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; they whirled in a
+feverish course about the sole fact of the public degradation he had
+brought on Susan Brundon. They passed the doors of civic departments, he
+saw their signs&mdash;Water, City Treasurer, and then entered the Mayor's
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>The latter was seated at a table facing the room with his back to a wide
+window, opening on the blank brick wall of the Philosophical Society
+building; and at one side the High Constable of the district in which
+the murder had been committed was conversing with the Sheriff. Beside
+them, Jasper Penny saw, there were only some clerks present and three
+policemen. The Mayor spoke equably to the Ironmaster, directed a chair
+placed for his convenience, and resumed the inspection of a number of
+reports. He had a gaunt, tight-lipped face framed in luxuriant whiskers,
+a severely moral aspect oddly contradicted by trousers of tremendous
+sporting plaid, a waistcoat of green buckskin cassimere, while his silk
+hat held a rakish, forward angle. The Constable and Sheriff punctuated
+their converse by prodigious and dexterous spitting into a dangerously
+far receptacle, and the clerks and police murmured together. The Mayor,
+finally glancing at a watch enamelled, Jasper Penny saw, with a fay of
+the ballet, spoke to the room in general. &quot;Ten and past. Well! Well!
+Where are the others? Who is to come still, Hoffernan?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Jannan, sir; and a witness,&quot; a clerk answered. The other gazed at
+the paper before him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Susan Brundon,&quot; he read in a loud, uncompromising tone. Jasper Penny's
+eyes narrowed belligerently; he would see that these pothouse
+politicians gave Susan every consideration possible. He was, with
+Stephen, a far from negligible force in the city elections. &quot;School
+mistress,&quot; the Mayor read on. &quot;Never heard of her or her school. Ah&mdash;&quot;
+Stephen Jannan had entered with Susan.</p>
+
+<p>Jasper rose as she came forward, and the Mayor had the grace to remove
+his hat. She wore, he saw, the familiar dress of wool, with a sober,
+fringed black silk mantle, black gloves and an inconspicuous bonnet. She
+met his harried gaze, and smiled; but beneath her greeting he was aware
+of a supreme tension. There was, however, no perceptible nervousness in
+the manner of her accepting an indicated place; she sat with her hands
+quietly folded in her lap, the mantle drooping back over the chair.
+Stephen Jannan, facing the Mayor, made a concise statement in a cold,
+deliberate voice. &quot;I now propose to show your honour,&quot; he finished,
+&quot;that, between the hours in which Daniel Culser is said to have been
+shot to death, my client was peacefully in the company of Miss Brundon,
+strolling in an opposite quarter of the city.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hoffernan,&quot; the Mayor pronounced, waving toward the seated woman. The
+clerk advanced with a Bible; and, rising, Susan followed the words of
+the oath in a low, clear voice. To Jasper Penny the occasion seemed
+intolerably prolonged, filled with needless detail. Never had Susan
+Brundon appeared more utterly desirable, never had his need to protect,
+shield, her been stronger. He&mdash;protect her, he added bitterly; rather he
+had betrayed her, dragged her immaculate sweetness down into the foul
+atmosphere of a criminal hearing. His attention, fastening on the
+trivialities of the interior, removed him in a species of self-hypnotism
+from the actualities of the scene. He heard, as if from a distance, the
+questioning of the Mayor, &quot;At what time, exactly, did you say? How did
+you know that?&quot; Susan said, &quot;I saw the clock at the back of the hall. I
+noticed it because I wondered if the younger children had retired.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You say you walked with Mr. Penny&mdash;where?... How long did you remain at
+the river? No way of knowing. Seemed surprisingly short, I'll venture.&quot;
+Why didn't Stephen put an end to such ill-timed jocularity? &quot;And Mr.
+Penny had spoken to you of his&mdash;his relations with Mrs. Scofield, the
+woman in whose house Culser was killed. Did he refer to her on this
+particular evening, standing by the river's brink?&quot; Susan replied in the
+negative. &quot;Did he seem ill at ease, worried about anything? Was he
+hurried in manner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To all of this Susan Brundon answered no, in a voice that constantly
+grew lower, but which never faltered, hesitated. The Mayor turned aside
+for a whispered consultation with the High Constable. The former nodded.
+&quot;Have you any&mdash;shall we say&mdash;proprietary interest in Mr. Penny's
+affairs?&quot; Her reply was hardly audible in the room stilled for what
+might be revealed. &quot;No,&quot; she breathed, her gloved fingers interlacing.
+Jasper Penny's lips were drawn in a hard line; Stephen gazed fixedly at
+the floor. The Mayor gesticulated affably toward the lawyer. &quot;That'll
+do,&quot; he declared. &quot;Pleasure, Mr. Penny, to have you so completely
+cleared. I shall have to demand your assistance further,
+though&mdash;knowledge of Mrs. Scofield. And, in the case of her apprehension
+and trial, you will, of course, be called. Communication will be made
+through Mr. Jannan. No doubt in our mind now of the facts.&quot; A policeman
+opened the door and a surge of the curious pressed in. &quot;Take her away,&quot;
+Jasper Penny whispered to Jannan; &quot;this is damnable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Susan rose, gathering up her mantle, and moved to Stephen Jannan's side.
+He offered his arm with a formal courtesy, and together they made their
+way out through the corridor. Jasper, lost in a moody abstraction,
+waited until they had vanished; and then, with a lowered head, walked
+rapidly over Chestnut Street in the direction of the terminus of the
+railroad for Jaffa. A brigade of cars was made up; he took a place and
+was immediately dragged on and over the viaduct to the plane and waiting
+engine beyond. He could see, from the demeanour of the loungers on the
+Jaffa platform, that the news of the murder, his connection with it, had
+preceded him. To-morrow's papers would provide them with full accounts,
+the name of Susan Brundon among the maculate details.... The meanest
+cast boy in his works would regard him, the knowledge of Essie, with a
+leer.</p>
+
+<p>His mother was at the main door of Myrtle Forge, pale but composed.
+&quot;Take Mr. Penny's overcoat,&quot; she brusquely directed a servant. He had
+never seen a more delectable supper than the one awaiting him; and he
+tasted most of what found its way to his plate&mdash;he owed that to the
+maternal solicitude secretly regarding him, hastily masked as he met his
+mother's gaze. Sitting later in accustomed formality the dulness of a
+species of relief folded him. The minor sounds of his home, the
+deliberate loudness of an old clock, the minute warring of his mother's
+bone needles, her sister's fits of coughing, painfully restrained,
+soothed his harried being; subjected to an intolerable strain his
+overwrought nerves had suddenly relaxed; he sank back in a loose, almost
+somnolent, state. A mental indolence possessed him; the keen incentives
+of life appeared far, unimportant, his late rebellions and desires
+inexplicable. Even the iron was a heavy load; the necessity of
+constantly meeting new conditions with new processes, of uprooting month
+by month most with which the years had made him familiar, seemed beyond
+his power.</p>
+
+<p>A faint dread crept into his consciousness; he roused himself sharply,
+straightened his shoulders, glanced about to see if his tacit surrender
+had been noticed&mdash;this lassitude creeping over him, the indifference,
+was, at last, the edge of the authentic shadow of age, of decay; it was
+the deadening of the sensibilities preceding death. He banished it
+immediately, and all his desire, his need, his sense of the horror of
+the past day, surged back, reanimated him, sent the blood strongly to
+its furthest confines. But, none the less, a vague, disturbing memory of
+the other lingered at the back of his perceptions; he had a fresh
+realization of the necessity for him to make haste, to take at
+once&mdash;before the hateful anodyne of time had betrayed his vigour&mdash;what
+life still, and so fully, held.</p>
+
+<p>His desire for Susan increased to an intensity robbing it of a greater
+part of the early joy; it had, now, a fretful aspect drawing him into
+long and painfully minute rehearsals of his every contact with her, and
+of the disgraceful publicity brought upon her by his past. At the usual
+hour the hot wine appeared; the glassful was pressed on Amity Merken;
+his mother drank hers with the familiar, audible satisfaction. An old
+custom, an old compound, brought from Germany many years ago, binding,
+in its petty immortality, distant times, places, beings. He saw that his
+mother was noticeably less able than she had been the week before; her
+hands fumbled at her knitting, shook holding the glass. Her lined face
+quivered as she said good night. He bent and kissed a hot, dry brow,
+conscious of the blanched skull under her fading colour, her ebbing
+warmth. He had done this, too&mdash;hastened her death; she must have
+suffered inordinately in her prideful affection. She said nothing,
+beyond the repeated admonition that he must not sit up into the night.</p>
+
+<p>The next day he forced himself to read to the end the report of the
+murder in the <i>Gazette</i>. The references to Susan Brundon were as scant
+as, evidently, Stephen Jannan could arrange; but her name, her Academy,
+were invested with an odious publicity. Jasper Penny saw again that he
+was a person of moment; his part in the affair gave it a greatly
+augmented importance. Yet now the worst, he told himself, was at an end;
+the publicity would recede; after a decent interval he could see Susan.</p>
+
+<p>This mood was interrupted by an imperative communication from
+Stephen&mdash;he must be in the other's office at eleven o'clock to-morrow.
+Nothing more definite was said; but Jasper Penny was not wholly
+surprised to see Essie Scofield huddled in a chair at the lawyer's
+table. She had made an attempt at the bravado of apparel, but it had
+evidently failed midway; her hair hung loosely about a damp brow, the
+strings of her bonnet were in disarray, a shawl partially hid a bodice
+wrongly fastened. Her face was apathetic, with leaden shadows and dark
+lips ceaselessly twisting, now drawn into a petulant line, now drooping
+in childish impotence. She glanced at him fleetly as he entered, but
+said nothing. Robbed of the pretensions of pride, stripped of feminine
+subterfuge, she was appalling. He involuntarily recalled the Essie who
+had swept him into a riot of emotion&mdash;a vivid and palpitating creature
+radiating the exuberance of careless health and youth. She could not, he
+calculated, be beyond thirty-seven now. He abruptly ceased his
+speculation, turned from her, with a feeling of impropriety. Stephen
+Jannan said shortly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Al Schimpf will be here. It seemed to me he was the best man to retain.
+It's obvious that I can't defend her. You will, of course, require
+everything possible done.&quot; Essie Scofield shivered. &quot;I don't want to go
+into court,&quot; she articulated, &quot;and answer all the dreadful questions.&quot;
+There was a stir without, and a hugely fat man in a black cape fastened
+with a silver chain and velvet collar entered. Al Schimpf's face was so
+burdened with rolling chins that he disregarded the customary fashion of
+whiskers, but a grizzled moustache lay above his well-formed lips, and
+an imperial divided his heavy, aggressive chin. He was, evidently, fully
+informed of the case before him; for, after saluting Jannan and Jasper
+Penny, he, seated himself directly before Essie Scofield, fastening upon
+her an unwavering, glacial gaze.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now, pay attention,&quot; he proceeded at once.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll go over a few facts&mdash;this Daniel Culser, you were in love with
+him; no length you wouldn't go, lost your senses completely; and he&mdash;all
+he cared about was the money he could wring out of you. As soon as you
+were paid the sums that Mr. Penny allowed you, this Culser got it from
+you; he took every cent and wanted more. Said he would leave you unless
+you got hold of something really worth while. Then, of course, you
+carried on, promised to get him more and more; said you could force a
+fortune from Mr. Penny, anything to keep the young man. Hey?&quot; he
+demanded suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>The woman looked up with a haggard wonder, an irrepressible shudder; her
+hands raised and fell, and she nodded dumbly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, while Culser was in the house, Mr. Penny unexpectedly turned up
+and said&mdash;perhaps before Daniel himself&mdash;that you could expect nothing
+more, and made it plain that he was not to be intimidated. Daniel Culser
+was for leaving you, didn't intend to hang around for a bloody little
+quarterly; and, when you realized that he meant, or you thought he
+meant, what he said, you went crazy and shot him.... What!&quot; He got no
+response from her now; she cowered away from him, hiding behind an
+updrawn shoulder, a fold of the shawl. &quot;But listen to this,&quot; Al Schimpf
+shot at her, leaning forward, &quot;here's what happened, and you must
+remember every fact:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fellow had been around the house day after day. You had encouraged
+him at first; but then you got frightened; he beat you&mdash;hear
+that?&mdash;struck you with his fist, and threatened worse if you didn't go
+through old Penny's pocket for him. He even hinted at something you
+might do together, and then get away with a mint. Culser was at it when
+Mr. Penny called, and took it up when he left, at about six o'clock. He
+said he wanted money bad, debts were hounding him; and he was going to
+get it out of Penny, out of you. There's where you said you would warn
+Jasper Penny; and remember how he struck you, in the back, because you
+turned, and it hurts yet&mdash;there up by the left shoulder, the left
+shoulder, the left! Then, he had been drinking in your house and at a
+tavern, he threatened to kill you if you didn't do what he wanted. You
+honestly thought he'd do it, and snatched a pistol out of a table
+drawer, and.... Do you understand? That's what happened, and it's all
+you know. Said he would kill you, apparently commenced then, and you
+acted in self-protection. Now, repeat that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She gazed at him in a trembling confusion. &quot;But,&quot; she objected, &quot;he was
+only&mdash;he said. Oh! I was afraid I'd lose him.&quot; The lawyer moved closer
+to her, his unwinking, grey-green eyes like slate. &quot;He said he'd kill
+you,&quot; he reiterated; &quot;remember that, if you don't want to hang. He
+struck you; where?&quot; After a long pause she replied haltingly, &quot;In the
+back.&quot; Al Schimpf nodded, &quot;Good. And he said you both were to get away
+with a mint. He told you it would be easy; the old man would gladly buy
+silence; and, by heaven, if he didn't&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny stonily watched the intolerable degradation of the woman
+bullied into the safety of a lie. This was worse than anything that had
+gone before; he fell deeper and deeper into a strangling, humiliating
+self-loathing. Stephen Jannan's handsome countenance was fixed and pale;
+one hand lay on the table, empty and still. In the silence between
+Schimpf's insistent periods Jasper Penny could hear Essie's sobbing
+inspirations; he was unable to keep his gaze from her countenance,
+jelly-like and robbed of every trace of human dignity. He wondered
+vaguely at an absence of any sense of responsibility for what Essie
+Scofield had become; he felt that an attitude of self-accusation, of
+profound regret for the way they had taken together, should rest upon
+him; but the thought, the effort, were perfunctory, obviously insincere.
+If now he had a different, perhaps deeper, sense of responsibility, he
+had known nothing of it in the first months of his contact with her....
+A different man, he reiterated; and one as faithfully representative as
+he was to-day. But totally another; men changed, evolved, progressed.
+Jasper Penny was convinced that it was a progression; but in a broad
+manner beyond all hope of his comprehension, and entirely outside
+dogmatic good and evil. The germ of it must have been in him from the
+first; his burning necessity for Susan, he told himself, had been born
+in him, laid dormant until, yes&mdash;it had been stirred into activity by
+Essie Scofield, by the revulsion which had followed that natural
+development.</p>
+
+<p>He was suddenly conscious that Al Schimpf had ceased domineering Essie.
+The lawyer swung about, facing them with an expression of commonplace
+satisfaction. &quot;It's all in fine order,&quot; he declared. &quot;I want, if
+possible, to study our jury through a preliminary case or so. We shall,
+of course, surrender our client at once, without making any difficulty
+about moving her from one police district to another. I can produce a
+witness to the fact that this Culser openly said that he expected
+shortly to come into more money. And he had dishonoured debts all about.
+You will have to appear, Mr. Penny; no way out of that, but our defence
+should go like a song. Now, Mrs. Scofield, I have a carriage outside.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>When they had gone Jasper Penny and Jannan sat in a lengthening silence.
+Stephen's hand moved among the papers on the table; the other drew a
+deep breath. &quot;I regret this tremendously for you,&quot; Stephen Jannan said
+at last. He spoke with feeling; his momentary anger at the entanglement
+of Susan vanished. &quot;But it will pass, Jasper. You are too solid a man to
+be hurt permanently by private scandal. And you have no concrete
+political position to invite mud slinging. Yes, it will drop out of
+mind, and your iron will continue to support enterprise, extension.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But Susan,&quot; Jasper Penny demanded, &quot;what about her? Where is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With Graham at Shadrach. She was badly torn, and I insisted on her
+retreating for a week or more. There is a very capable assistant at the
+Academy. It's too early to speak conclusively, but I am afraid that
+Susan's usefulness is ended there. Have you seen the cheaper sheets?
+Every one, of course, is buying them. Rotten! The assistant, I
+understand, is anxious to procure the school, and I am considering
+allowing her the capital. Something might be arranged paying Susan an
+income.... If she would accept; confoundly difficult to come about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am going to marry her,&quot; Jasper Penny asserted once more.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What was the initial trouble?&quot; the other asked, tersely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Essie.&quot; Stephen frowned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She would hit on that,&quot; he agreed; &quot;stand until the last gasp of some
+fantastic conception of right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper explained:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She thinks I ought to marry Essie, mostly on account of the child. She
+likes me, too, Stephen; I think I may tell you that. Well, I'll keep at
+her and at her. In the end she will get tired of refusal.&quot; The other
+shook his head doubtfully. &quot;I've known Susan a good many years, and I
+have never seen her lose an ideal, or even an idea, yet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Jasper Penny rose. &quot;Meanwhile I'll have to go through with this trial.
+Thank God, Susan has no part in it.&quot; He warmly gripped Stephen's palm.
+&quot;You're worth something in a life, immovable. Thank you, Stephen.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII" />XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was early in April, an insidiously warm morning with the ailanthus
+trees in bud before the State House, when Jasper Penny left the court
+room where Essie had been freed. Provision had been made for her&mdash;she
+had had a severe collapse during the trial&mdash;and a feeling almost of
+renewed liberty of spirit permeated Jasper, as, with his overcoat on an
+arm, he turned to the left and walked over the street in the blandly
+expanding mildness. A train left shortly for Jaffa, and he was bound
+directly home, to Myrtle Forge, anxious to steep himself in the echo of
+the trip hammer mingled with the poignant harmony of spring sounds
+drifting from the farm and woods. He was possessed by a sharpened hunger
+for all the&mdash;now recognized&mdash;beauty of the place of his allegiance and
+birth, the serenity of the acres Gilbert Penny had beaten out of the
+wild of the Province. He was astonishingly conscious of himself as a
+part of the whole Penny succession, proud of Gilbert, of Howat, who had
+always so engaged his fancy, of Casimir, and Daniel, his own father.
+Theirs was a good heritage; their part of the earth, the ring of their
+iron, his particular characteristic of a black Penny, formed a really
+splendid entity.</p>
+
+<p>The low, horizontal branches of the beech tree on the lawn, older than
+the dwelling, opposed a pleasant variety on the long fa&ccedil;ade, built of
+stone with an appearance of dark pinkish malleability masking its
+obduracy. His mother was awaiting him on the narrow portico, and he at
+once told her of Essie's release. They stood together, gazing out across
+the turf, faintly emerald, over the public road, at the grey, solid
+group of farm buildings beyond. The farmer's daughter, in a white slip,
+emerged against the barnyard, and called the chickens in a high, musical
+note, scattering grain to a hysterical feathery mob. The air was still
+with approaching twilight; the sun slipped below the western trees and
+shadows gathered under the lilac bushes; the sky was April green.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father has been dead twelve years,&quot; Gilda Penny said unexpectedly.
+He looked down and saw that she was decrepit, an old woman. Her mouth
+had sunken, her ears projected in dry folds from her scant strands of
+hair. He recalled Daniel Barnes Penny; the earliest memories of his
+mother, a vigorous, brown-faced woman with alert, black eyes,
+quick-stepping, dictatorial in the sphere of her house and dependents.
+One after the other, like the sun, they were slipping out of the sight
+of Myrtle Forge; vanished and remained; passed from falling hand to hand
+the unextinguished flame of life. Gilda Penny was merging fast into the
+formless dark. She clung with pathetically tense fingers to his arm as
+they turned into the house.</p>
+
+<p>He had ordered a carriage immediately after an early supper; and,
+informing his coachman of his wish to proceed alone, drove quickly away
+through the dusk. He was going to Shadrach Furnace, to meet Susan for
+the first time since the unhappy occasion in the Mayor's chamber. He had
+decided, stifling his increasing impatience, not to see her until
+Essie's trial was over. Susan had been at Graham Jannan's house for nine
+weeks. Her sight, he had learned, had almost completely failed in a
+general exhaustion; but, with rigorous care, she had nearly recovered.
+The Academy had been sold to the assistant mistress; and there was an
+expressed uncertainty about Susan's near future. It had, however, no
+existence in Jasper Penny's thoughts, plans&mdash;she must marry him; any
+other course would now be absurd. The track from Myrtle Forge to the
+Furnace was bound into his every thought and association; its
+familiarity, he mused, had been born in him; his horses, too, took
+correctly, without pressure, every turning of the way. The road mounted,
+and then dropped between rounded hills to the clustering buildings,
+where lighted, pale yellow windows floated on the dusk, crowned by the
+wide-flung radiance of the Furnace stack. The air was potent in the
+valley with the indeterminate scent of budding earth&mdash;the premonitory
+fragrance of blossoms; and, hardly less delicate, stars flowered whitely
+in blue space.</p>
+
+<p>He paused for a moment before entering Graham Jannan's house, saturated
+with the pastoral tranquillity, listening to the flutter of wings under
+the eaves. Then he went in. They had finished supper, but were lingering
+at the table, with the candles guttering in an air from the open door.
+His greeting was simple and glad, and without restraint. Susan wore a
+dress like a white vapour, sprigged with pale buds, her throat and arms
+bare. She smiled the familiar, hesitating smile, met his questioning
+gaze with her undeviating courage. Jasper Penny took a chair opposite
+her. Little was said. Peace deepened about his spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Graham, he saw, had a new ruddiness of health; he laid a shawl tenderly
+about his wife's shoulders; and Jasper remembered that a birth was
+imminent. Later he drifted with Susan to the door, and they passed out
+into the obscurity beyond. Even now he was reluctant to speak, to break
+with importunities the serene mood. &quot;All the iron making,&quot; she spoke at
+last, &quot;lovely. I have stood night after night in the cast house watching
+the metal pour out in its glorious colours. And, when I wake, I go to my
+window and see the reflections of the blast on the trees, on the first
+leaves. The charcoal burners come down like giants out of the mythology
+of the forest. And, when I first came, there was a raccoon hunt, with a
+great stirring of lanterns and barking dogs in the dark ... all lovely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is yours,&quot; he said, bending over her. &quot;You can come here at your
+will. A house built. And Myrtle Forge, too; whatever I have, am.&quot; He
+paused; but, without reply, continued more rapidly. &quot;It's over, the&mdash;the
+misery of the past weeks; the mistakes are dead; they are paid, Susan.
+Now we may take what is left and make it as beautiful as possible. After
+suffering, reparation, happiness, is every one's due. And I am certain I
+can make you happy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A longer pause followed, in which he regarded her with an increasing
+anxiety. Her face was turned away, her progress grew slower until they
+stood by the shadowy bulk of a small stone structure. The door was open,
+and it seemed to him that she looked within. &quot;A store house,&quot; he
+explained. Nothing was visible in the interior gloom but some obscure
+shapes, bales, piled against the walls, and the scant tracery of a rude
+stair leading up to a greater blackness above. She stopped, as if
+arrested by his period, laying a hand on the door frame.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why don't you answer me, Susan?&quot; he proceeded. &quot;You know that I want to
+marry you; surely it is all right now. Everything possible has been
+done. A great deal of life remains.&quot; Her answer was so low that it
+almost escaped him; the faintest breath of pain, of longing and regret.
+&quot;I can't,&quot; she whispered; &quot;not with her, the child. I can't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That,&quot; he replied gently, &quot;is a mistaken idea of responsibility, a
+needless sacrifice. I could never urge you into an injustice, a wrong;
+at last I have got above that; what I want is the most reasonable thing
+imaginable, the best, in every conceivable way, for yourself and&mdash;any
+other. You are harming, depriving, no one. You are taking nothing but
+your own, what has been yours, and only yours, from the first moment I
+saw, no&mdash;from my birth. What has happened brought me in a straight road
+to you, the long road I have never, really, left.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can't,&quot; she said still again. &quot;I want to, Jasper. Oh, with a heart
+full of longing; I am so tired that I would almost give the rest of my
+life for another secure hour with you. And I would pay that to give you
+what you want, what you should have. But something stronger than I am,
+more than all this, holds me; I can't forget that miserable woman, nor
+her child and yours, so thin and suspicious. I am not good enough to be
+her mother myself, even if I felt I had the right. Inside of me I am
+quite wicked, selfish. I want my own. But not with the other woman
+outside. She'd be looking in at the windows, Jasper, looking in at my
+heart. I would hear her.&quot; She leaned against her arm, her face hid, her
+shoulders trembling.</p>
+
+<p>The musty odour of the stores floated out and enveloped him. He was
+suddenly annoyed. Susan herself lost some of her beauty, her radiance.
+He muttered that she was merely stubborn, blind to reality, to
+necessity. His attitude hardened, and he commenced to argue in a low,
+insistent voice. She made no reply, but remained supported in the
+doorway, a vague form against the inner dark.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must change your mind,&quot; he asserted; &quot;you can't be eternally so
+foolish. There is absolutely no question of my marrying Essie Scofield.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't want you to, really,&quot; she admitted in an agonized whisper. &quot;I
+shall never again ask you to do that. Ah, God, how low I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He saw, in an unsparing flash of comprehension, that it was useless. She
+would never marry him as long as the past stayed embodied, actual, to
+peer into their beings. A return of his familiar irritability, spleen,
+possessed him. &quot;You are too pure for this world,&quot; he said brutally. She
+turned and stood facing him, meeting his scorn with an uplifted
+countenance. A shifting reflection from the Furnace stack fell over her
+in a wan veil, over the vaporous, sprigged white of her dress, her bare
+throat and arms, her cheeks wet with tears. Out of it her eyes, wide
+with pain, steadily met his angry scrutiny. Out of it she smiled at him
+before the reflection died.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III_THE_METAL" id="III_THE_METAL" />III THE METAL</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII" />XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the warm, subdued light of a double lamp with apricot glass shades
+Howat Penny was turning over the pages, stiff with dry paste, of an
+album filled with opera programmes. The date of the brief, precisely
+penned label on the black cover was 1883-84; it was the first of a
+number of such thick, recording volumes he had gathered; and the operas,
+the casts, were of absorbing interest. At once a memento of the heroic
+period of American music and of his first manhood, the faded crudely
+embellished strips of paper, bearing names, lyric tenors and sopranos of
+limpid, bird-like song long ago lost in rosy and nebulous clouds of
+fable and cherished affection, roused remembered pleasures sharper than
+any calm actuality of to-day. He paused with a quiet exclamation, the
+single glass adroitly held in his left, astigmatic, eye fastened on the
+announcement of a famous evening, a famous name. His sense of the leaf
+before him blurred in the vivid memory of Patti, singing Martha in the
+campaign brought by Mapleson in the old Academy of Music against the
+forces of the new Metropolitan Opera House. He had been one of a
+conservative number that had supported the established opera, declaring
+heatedly that the Diva and Mapleson were an unapproachable musical
+combination, before which the shoddier magnificence of its rival,
+erected practically in a few summer months, would speedily fade.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, he recalled, the widely heralded performance had been
+coolly received. Patti, although she had not perceptibly failed in
+voice, had been unable to inspire the customary enthusiasm; and the
+scene at the evening's end, planned to express her overwhelming triumph
+and superiority, when the horses had been taken from her carriage and it
+had been dragged by hand to the portal of the Windsor Hotel, had been no
+better than perfunctory. The wily Mapleson had arranged that beforehand,
+Howat Penny realized, with a faint, reminiscent smile on his severe
+lips&mdash;the &quot;enthusiastic mob&quot; had been coldly recruited, at a price, from
+the choristers. Another memory of Patti, and of that same performance,
+flooded back&mdash;the dinner given her in the Brunswick. He saw again the
+room where, on a divan, she had received her hosts, the seventy or more
+men of fashion grouped in irreproachable black and white, with her suave
+manager, the inevitable tea rose in his lapel, on a knee before Adelina,
+kissing her hand. The dinner had been laid in the ball room, lit with a
+multitude of wax candles. The features, appearance, of the more
+prominent men, of Mahun Stetson and Daly and William Steinway, were
+clear still. The original plan had been to include ladies at the
+dinner, but the latter, affecting outrage at the Diva's affair with the
+Marquis de Caux, had refused to lend their countenance to the singer's
+occasion. His smile broadened&mdash;this was so characteristic of New York in
+the eighties. How different it had been; but it was no better, he added
+silently, now.</p>
+
+<p>It was mid-August, and the air floating in through an open door was
+ladened with the richness of ultra-luxuriant vegetation, the persistent,
+metallic whirring of locusts, the mechanical repetition of katydids. One
+of the owls that inhabited the old willow tree before the house cried
+softly.... How different! He straightened up from the book open on his
+knees, and the glass fell with a small clatter over his formal, starched
+linen, swinging for an instant on its narrow ribbon. The unwavering lamp
+light was deflected in green points through the emeralds of his studs.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of bygone, gala nights of opera fastened on him with a
+peculiar significance&mdash;suddenly they seemed symbolic of his lost youth.
+Such tides of impassioned song, such poignant, lyric passion, such
+tragic sacrifice and death, were all in the extravagant key of youth.
+The very convention of opera, the glorified unreality of its language,
+the romantic impossibility of its colour, the sparkling dress like the
+sparkling voices and blue gardens and gilded halls, were the authentic
+expression of the resplendent vagaries of early years.</p>
+
+<p>The winter of eighty three and four; his first season of New York
+music. The autumn before he had returned from the five years spent in
+Europe, in Paris practically, with Bundy Provost, related to him by a
+marriage in the past generation, through the Jannans. He had gone abroad
+immediately after his graduation as a lawyer; and in the indolent
+culture of the five Parisian years, he now realized, he had permanently
+lost all hold on his profession. At his return he had drifted
+imperceptibly into an existence of polite pleasure. It had been
+different with Bundy; he had gone into the banking house of Provost,
+lately established in New York; and, with the extraordinary pertinacity
+and acumen sometimes developed by worldly and rich young men, he had
+steadily risen to a place of financial importance. An opening had, of
+course, been offered to Howat Penny when he had definitely decided not
+to settle in Philadelphia, where the Pennys had always been associated,
+and pursue the law. And, at first, he had occupied a desk in the Provost
+counting rooms. But he had soon grown discontented, he disliked routine
+and a clerk's condition; and, after two years of annoyed effort,
+withdrew to lead a more congenial existence on a secure, adequate
+income.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was a mistake,&quot; he said aloud, in a decided, clearly modulated
+voice, gazing blankly into the warm stillness of the room. It had come
+partly from his innate impatience with any inferior state whatever, and
+part from the old inability to identify himself with the practicalities
+of existence. He had always viewed with distaste the apparently
+necessary compromises of successful living; the struggle for money,
+commercial supremacy, seemed unendurably ugly; the jargon and
+subterfuges of financial competition beneath his exacting standard of
+personal dignity. That had been his expression at the time&mdash;permeated by
+an impatient sense of superiority; but now he felt that there was
+something essential lacking in himself. An absence of proper balance.
+Solely concerned with the appearance, the insignificant surface, of such
+efforts as Bundy Provost's, their moving, masculine spirit had evaded
+him. Yes, it had been a mistake. He had missed the greatest pleasure of
+all, that of accumulating power and influence, of virile achievement.</p>
+
+<p>Well, it was over now; he was old; his life, his chance, had gone; and
+all that remained were memories of Patti smiling disdainfully in the
+flare of oil torches about her carriage; the only concrete record of so
+many years the scrap books such as that on his knees.</p>
+
+<p>It had been an error; yet there had been, within him, no choice, no
+intimation of a different, more desirable, consummation. Bundy had gone
+one way and himself another in obedience to forces beyond their
+understanding or control. They had done, briefly, what they were. There
+was no individual blame to attach, no applause; spare moralizing to
+append. He returned to the pages before him, to the memories of the
+radiant Ambre and Marimon, the sylvan echoes of Campanini singing
+Elvino.</p>
+
+<p>Now his recovered glass was intent on a programme of the rapidly
+successful Metropolitan forces, of the new German Opera, with
+Seidl-Krauss singing Elizabeth, and Brandt in <i>Fidelio</i>. Even here,
+after so long, he vibrated again to the exquisite beauty of Lenore's
+constancy and love. Then Dr. Damrosch dead, the sonorous funeral in the
+Opera House ... That had been changed with the rest; the baignoires were
+gone, the tiers of boxes newly curved; gone the chandeliers and Turkey
+red carpet and gold threaded brocade that had seemed the final
+expression of luxury. Lehmann in the premier of <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>,
+with the vast restrained enthusiasm and tensity when, at the end of the
+third act, Niemann bared his wounded breast. Eames' rise; but that, and
+what followed, were in successive books. He closed the one under his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>As the years drew nearer the present their features became larger, more
+indistinct, their music grew louder, dissonant. He had retired further
+and further from an opera, a life, with which he was increasingly out of
+harmony. Or rather, he added, life moved away from the aging. It was as
+if the surrounding affair became objective; as if, once a participant in
+a cast&mdash;a production, however, less than grand&mdash;he had been conducted to
+a seat somewhere in the midst of a great, shadowy audience, from which
+he looked out of the gloom at the brilliant, removed spectacle. The
+final fact that had taken him from the setting of so many of his years
+had been the increasing expense of a discriminating existence in New
+York. Again his distaste for anything short of absolute nicety had
+dictated the form and conditions of his living. When the situation of
+his rooms had definitely declined, and the cost of possible
+locations&mdash;he could not endure a club&mdash;became prohibitive; when his once
+adequate, unaugmented income assumed the limitations of a mere
+sufficiency; and when, too, the old, familiar figures, the swells of his
+own period and acquaintance had vanished one by one with their vanishing
+halls of assembly&mdash;he had retreated to the traditional place of his
+family. He had gone back to the home of the Pennys in America.</p>
+
+<p>Not, however, to Myrtle Forge itself, the true centre of his
+inheritance. The house there had been uninhabited since his father's
+early years; it was a closed and melancholy memento; he had reanimated a
+comfortable stone dwelling at Shadrach Furnace; its solid grey fa&ccedil;ade
+drawn out by two happy additions to the original, small square. It had
+been, traditionally, at first, the house of the head furnacemen;
+sometime after that, perhaps a hundred years, Graham Jannan, newly
+married, had lived there while occupied with the active manufacture of
+iron; and three summers back he, Howat Penny, the last Penny now, had
+returned to the vicinity of Jaffa.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV" />XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The room in which he sat had two windows, set in the deep recesses of
+heavy stone walls, and three doors, two leading into opposite rooms and
+the third opening without. The double lamp stood on a low, gate-legged
+table of fibrous, time-blackened oak, together with an orderly array of
+periodicals&mdash;the white, typographical page of the <i>Saturday Review</i>
+under the dull rose of <i>The Living Age</i> and chocolate-coloured bulk of
+the <i>Unpopular, Gil Blas</i>, the mid-week <i>Boston Transcript</i> and
+yesterday's <i>New York Evening Post</i>. The table bore, in addition, a
+green morocco case of dominoes; a mahogany box that, in a recess,
+mysteriously maintained a visible cigarette; a study of Beethoven, in
+French; an outspread volume by Anatole France, <i>Jacques Tournebroche</i>,
+in a handsome paper cover; a set of copper ash trays; and a dull red
+figurine, holding within its few inches the deathless spirit of a heroic
+age. An angle of the wall before him was filled by a white panelled
+fireplace, the mantel close against the ceiling; and on the other side
+of a doorway, through which he could see Rudolph noiselessly preparing
+the dinner table, was a swan-like sofa, in olive wood and pale yellow
+satin, from the Venice of the <i>ottocento</i>. At his right, beyond a
+window, mounted a tall, austere secretary in waxed walnut; and behind
+him, under the white chair rail, bookcases extended across the width of
+the room. Gustavus Hesselius' portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on
+a yellow painted wall, his gilt-braided major's facings still vivid, his
+dark, perceptible scorn undimmed. There were, too, framed in oak, a
+large photograph of Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial
+message; another of a graceful woman in the Page's costume of <i>Les
+Huguenots</i>, signed &quot;Sempre ... Scalchi&quot;; a water colour drawing by Jan
+Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery foliage and brick of <i>The
+Penny Rolling Mills. Jaffa</i>. A black-blue rug, from Myrtle Forge, partly
+covered the broad, oak boards of the floor; and there was a comfortable
+variety of chairs&mdash;sturdy, painted Dutch, winged Windsors and a slatted
+Hunterstown rocker.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny's gaze wandered over the familiar furnishing, come to him
+surviving the generations of his family, or carefully procured for his
+individual dictates. A sense of tranquillity, of haven, deepened about
+him. &quot;Rudolph,&quot; he inquired, &quot;has Honduras gone for Miss Jannan?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The man stopped in the doorway, answering in the affirmative. He was
+slight, almost fragile, with close, dark hair that stood up across his
+forehead, and dry, high-coloured cheeks. Rudolph hesitated, with a
+handful of silver; and then returned to his task. Mariana would be
+along immediately, Howat Penny thought. He put the album aside and rose,
+moving toward the door that led without. He was a slender, erect figure,
+with little to indicate his age except the almost complete silvering of
+his hair&mdash;it had, evidently, been black&mdash;and a rigidity of body only
+apparent to a sharp scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>A porch followed that length of the house, and doubled the end, where he
+stood peering into the gathering dusk. The old willow tree, inhabited by
+the owls, spread a delicate, blurred silhouette across a darkened vista
+of shorn wheat fields, filled, in the hollows, with woods; and a lamp
+glimmered from a farm house on a hill to the left. His lawn dropped to
+the public road, the hedged enclosure swimming with fireflies; and
+beyond he saw the wavering light shafts of his small motor returning
+from the insignificant flag station on the railroad, a mile distant.</p>
+
+<p>The noise of the engine increased, sliding into a lower gear on the
+short curve of the driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance
+directly into the dining room. She insisted, to his renewed discomfort,
+on kissing him. &quot;It's wonderful here, after the city,&quot; she proclaimed;
+&quot;and I've had to be in town three sweltering days. I'll dress right
+away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Honduras, his coloured man, as indispensable outside as Rudolph was in,
+followed with her bag up the narrow flight of steps to the floor above.
+He waited through, he thought, a reasonable interval, and then called.
+An indistinguishable reply floated down, mingled with the filling of a
+tub; and another half hour passed before Mariana appeared in white
+chiffon, securing a broad girdle of silver oak leaves, about her slight
+waist. &quot;Do you mind?&quot; she turned before him; and, with an impatience
+half assumed and half actual, he fastened the last hooks of her dress.
+&quot;As you know,&quot; he reminded her, &quot;I don't attempt cocktails. Will you
+have a gin and bitters?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She wouldn't, frankly; and they embarked on dinner in a pleasant,
+unstrained silence. Mariana was, he realized, the only person alive for
+whom he had a genuine warmth of affection. She was a first cousin; her
+Aunt Elizabeth had married James Penny, his father; but his fondness for
+her had no root in that fact. It didn't, for example, extend to her
+brother Kingsfrere. He speculated again on the reason for her marked
+effect. Mariana was not lovely, as had been the charmers of his own day;
+her features, with the exception of her eyes, were unremarkable. And her
+eyes, variably blue, were only arresting because of their extraordinary
+intensity of vision, their unquenchable and impertinent curiosity. A
+girl absolutely different from all his cherished mental images; but, for
+Howat Penny, always potent, always arousing a response from his
+supercritical being, stirring his aesthetic heart. Everything he
+possessed&mdash;his pictures, the albums, the moderate income, although she
+had little need of that&mdash;had been willed to her. It would be hers then
+just as it was, practically, now. And he was aware that her feeling
+generously equalled his own.</p>
+
+<p>His speculation, penetrating deeper than customary, rewarded him with
+the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That
+was it&mdash;the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any
+penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a
+possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious
+prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the
+correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, now almost lost. And he
+rated aristocracy of bearing higher than any other condition or fact.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered a little at her patent pleasure in visiting him, an old man,
+so frequently. Hardly a month passed but that, announced by telegram,
+she did not appear and stay over night, or for a part of the week. She
+would recount minutely the current gaiety of her polite existence. He
+knew the names of her associates, a number of them had been exhibited to
+him at Shadrach; the location of their country places; and what men
+temporarily monopolized her interest. None of the latter had been
+serious. He was, selfishly, glad of that; and waited uneasily through
+her every visit until she assured him that her affections had not been
+possessed. However, this condition, he knew, must soon come to an end;
+Mariana was instinct with sex; and a short while before he had sent his
+acknowledgment of her twenty-sixth birthday.</p>
+
+<p>She sat occupied with salad against the cavernous depths of a fireplace
+that, between the kitchen door and a built-in cupboard, filled the side
+of the dining room. The long mantel above her head was ladened with the
+grey sheen of pewter, and two uncommonly large, fluted bowls of blue
+Stiegel glass. In the centre of the table linen, the Sheffield and
+crystal and pictorial Staffordshire, was a vivid expanse of rose
+geraniums. She broke off a flower and pinned it with the diamond bar on
+her breast. &quot;Howat,&quot; she said, &quot;to-morrow's Saturday, and I've asked two
+people out until Sunday night. Eliza Provost and a young man. Do you
+mind?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell Rudolph,&quot; he replied. It was not until after dinner, when they
+were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man's
+name. He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an
+ivory domino, he forgot. &quot;Twenty,&quot; he announced, reaching for the
+scoring pad. &quot;Oh, hell, Howat!&quot; she protested. &quot;That's the game,
+almost.&quot; She emptied her coffee cup, and speculatively fingered one of
+the thin cigars in the box at his hand. &quot;It's the customary thing in
+Peru,&quot; she observed, pinching the end from the cigar and lighting it. He
+watched her absently, veiled in the fragrant, bluish smoke.
+Automatically his thoughts returned to the women that, at a breath of
+scandal, had refused to attend the dinner to Patti. So much changed; the
+years fled like birds in a mist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I feel like a politician,&quot; she told him. &quot;Eliza Provost would pat me on
+the back. She's talking from a soap box on the street corners now,
+winging men for such trifles as forced birth. I'm fond of Eliza; she's
+got a splendid crust. I wish you'd get excited about my rights; but your
+interest really goes no further than a hat from Camille Marchais. You
+are deleterious, Howat. Isn't that a lovely word! Which was the first
+double?&quot; He blocked and won the game. &quot;Fifty-five,&quot; she announced; &quot;and
+ninety-five before. I owe you a dollar and a half.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She paid the debt promptly from a flexible gold mesh bag on the table;
+then stooped and wandered among his books. Howat Penny turned to
+yesterday's <i>Evening Post</i>, and Mariana settled beyond the lamp. Outside
+the locusts were desperately shrill, and the heavy ticking of an old
+clock grew audible. &quot;I don't like George Moore!&quot; she exclaimed. He
+raised surprised, inquiring eyebrows. &quot;He is such a taster,&quot; she added,
+but particularized no more. She sat, with the scarlet bound book clouded
+in the white chiffon of her lap, gazing at the wall. Her lips were
+parted, and a brighter colour rose in her cheeks. Her attitude, her
+expression, vaguely disturbed him; he had never seen her more warmly,
+dangerously, alive. A new reluctance stopped the question forming in
+his mind; she seemed to have retreated from him. &quot;Moore is a very great
+artist,&quot; he said instead.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's little to me,&quot; she replied flippantly, rising. &quot;I think I'll go
+up; and I almost think I will kiss you again.&quot; He grumbled a protest,
+and watched her trail from the room, the silver girdle and chiffon
+emphasizing her thin, vigorous body, the lamplight falling on her bare,
+sharp shoulders. Howat Penny had early acquired a habit of long hours,
+and it was past one when he put aside his papers, stood for a moment on
+the porch. The fireflies were gone, the locusts seemed farther away, and
+the soft, heavy flight of an owl rose from the warm grass.</p>
+
+<p>Below, on the right, he could vaguely see the broken bulk of what had
+been Shadrach Furnace, the ruined shape of the past. The Pennys no
+longer made iron. His father had marked the last casting. They no longer
+listened to the beat of the trip hammer, but to the light rhythm of a
+conductor's baton; they heard, in place of ringing metal, a tenor's
+grace notes. Soon they would hear nothing. They went out, for all time,
+with himself. It was fitting that the last, true to their peculiar
+inheritance, should be a black Penny. He, Howat, was that&mdash;the ancient
+Welsh blood finally gathered in a cup of life before it was spilled.</p>
+
+<p>Old influences quickened within him; but, attenuated, they were no more
+than regrets. They came late to trouble his remnant of living. He was
+like the Furnace, a sign of what had been; yet, he thought in
+self-extenuation, he had brought no dishonour, no dragging of the
+tradition through the muck of a public scandal. Not that ... nor
+anything else. Now, when it was absurd, he was resentful of the part he
+had played in life; like a minor, cracked voice, he extended a former
+figure with a saving touch of humour, importuning the director because
+he had not been cast in the great r&ocirc;les. The night mist came up and
+brushed him; he was conscious of a sudden chill, an aching of the
+wrists. &quot;Cracked,&quot; he repeated, aloud, and retreated into the house;
+where, Rudolph gone up, he put out the lights and stiffly retired.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV" />XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>They accomplished little the following morning. Mariana, in a scant
+brown linen skirt, a sheer waist through which were visible precarious
+incidentals and narrow black ribbon, and the confoundedest green
+stockings he had ever seen, lounged indolently in a canvas swing. The
+heat increased in a reddish haze through which the sun poured like
+molten copper. &quot;You'd better come inside,&quot; he said from the doorway;
+&quot;the house, shut up, is quite comfortable.&quot; Within the damp of the old,
+stone walls made a comparative coolness. The shades were drawn down, and
+they sat in an untimely twilight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When I think of how energetic Eliza will be,&quot; Mariana asserted, &quot;I am
+already overwhelmed. But you never look hot, Howat; you are always
+beautiful.&quot; His flannels and straw-coloured silk coat were crisply
+ironed; his hair, his scarf and lustrous yellow shoes, precise. &quot;Howat,&quot;
+she continued almost anxiously, &quot;you put a lot on, well&mdash;good form. You
+think that the way a man knots his tie is tremendously significant&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; he returned cautiously. &quot;A good many years have shown me that
+the right man usually wears the right things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Couldn't that be just the smallest bit unfair? Aren't there, after
+all, droves of the right men in rubber collars? I don't know any,&quot; she
+added hastily; &quot;that is, not exactly the same. But it seems to me that
+you have lived so exclusively in a certain atmosphere that you might
+have got blinded to&mdash;to other things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; he said again, complacently. &quot;I can only judge by my own
+feeling and experience. Now Mapleson, never was a finer conductor of
+opera&mdash;you didn't catch him in a pink tie in the evening. And some of
+those others, who failed in a couple of weeks, I give you my word, dress
+shirts with forgetmenots.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She regarded him with a frowning, half closed vision. &quot;It sounds wrong,&quot;
+she commented. &quot;It's been your life, of course.&quot; He grew resentful under
+her scrutiny, the implied criticism. A sudden suspicion entered his
+mind, connected with her expression last evening, the young man whose
+name he had omitted to ask. His reluctance to question her returned. But
+if Mariana had attached herself to some rowdy, by heaven, he would....
+He fixed the glass in his eye, and, pretending to be occupied with a
+periodical, studied her. He realized that he would, could, do nothing.
+She was a woman of determination, and, her father dead, a very adequate
+income of her own. His fondness for Mariana resided principally in a
+wish to see her free from the multitudinous snares that he designated in
+a group as common. He was fearful of her entanglement in the cheap
+implications of the undistinguished democracy more prevalent every year.
+All that was notable, charming, in her, he felt, would be obliterated by
+trite connection; he had no more patience for the conventional
+fulfilment of her life than he had for the thought of women voting.
+Howat Penny saw Mariana complete, fine, in herself, as the <i>Orpheo</i> of
+Christopher Gluck was fine and complete. He preferred the contained
+artistry of such music to the cruder, more popular and moral, sounds.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the afternoon she went to her room, although Honduras had no
+occasion to go to the station for considerably more than an hour,
+explaining that she must dress. Howat Penny sat with his palms on his
+white flannelled knees, revolving, now, himself in the light of his
+aspirations for Mariana. He wondered if, in the absence of any sympathy
+for the mass of sentiment and living, he was blind, too, to her greatest
+possibilities; if, in short, he was a vicious influence. Perhaps, as the
+old were said to do, he had hardened into a narrow and erroneous
+conception of values. Such doubts were both disturbing and unusual;
+ordinarily he never hesitated in the exact expression of his vigorously
+held opinions and prejudices; he seldom relaxed the critical elevation
+of his standards. He was, he thought contemptuously, growing soft;
+senility was diluting his fibre, blurring his inner vision.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of this was visible as he rose on Mariana's reappearance; there
+was not a line relaxed; his handsome, dark profile was as pridefully
+clear as if it had been stamped on a bronze coin. Mariana wore, simply,
+blue, with an amber veiling of tulle about her shoulders, and a short
+skirt that gave her a marked youthful aspect. She seemed ill at ease;
+and avoided his gaze, hurrying out to meet the motor as it noisily
+turned sharply in at the door. Howat Penny heard Eliza Provost's short,
+impatient enunciation, and a rapid, masculine utterance. Eliza entered,
+a girl with a decided, evenly pale face and brown eyes, in a severe
+black linen suit and a small hat, and extended a direct hand, a slightly
+smiling greeting. Mariana followed, for a moment filling the doorway.
+&quot;We'll go up, Eliza,&quot; she said, moving with the other to the stair, a
+few feet distant. A man followed into the house, and Mariana half turned
+on the bottom step. &quot;Howat,&quot; she proceeded hurriedly, &quot;this is James
+Polder.&quot; Then she ascended with Eliza Provost.</p>
+
+<p>An expression of amazement, deepening almost to dismay, was momentarily
+visible on Howat Penny's countenance. His face felt hot, and there was
+an uncomfortable pressure in his throat, such as might come from shock.
+Surely Mariana wouldn't ... without warning him&mdash;! He was conscious of
+the necessity, facing a tall, spare young man with an intent expression,
+of a polite phrase; and he articulated an adequate something in a
+noticeably disturbed tone. But, of course, he had made a mistake. James
+Polder's intensity increased, concentrated in a gaze at once belligerent
+and eager. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then Miss Jannan didn't tell you. It was a mistake. It may be I am not
+exactly desirable here,&quot; his voice sharpened, and he retreated a step
+toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; Howat Penny replied; &quot;she didn't.&quot; He found himself studying a
+face at once youthful and lined, a good jaw contradicted by a mouth
+already traced with discontent, and yellow-brown eyes kindling with a
+surprising energy of resentment. &quot;You are Byron Polder's son?&quot; he said
+in a manner that carried its own affirmation. &quot;Eunice Scofield's
+grandson.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eunice Penny's,&quot; the other interjected. &quot;Your own grandfather saw to
+that.&quot; His hand rested in the doorway, and he stopped Honduras, carrying
+in the guests' bags. Howat Penny's poise rapidly returned. &quot;Go right up,
+Honduras,&quot; he directed; &quot;the Windmill room, I think. I had never seen
+you,&quot; he said to James Polder, as if in apology. &quot;But your father has
+been pointed out to me.&quot; He waved the younger man into the room beyond,
+and moved forward the cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>James Polder took one with an evident relief in the commonplace act. He
+struck a match and lit the cigarette with elaborate care. &quot;Will you sit
+for a little?&quot; the elder proceeded. &quot;Or perhaps you'd rather change at
+once. I've no doubt it was sticky in the city.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you; perhaps I'd better&mdash;the last.&quot; Rudolph appeared, and
+conducted the young man above. Howat Penny sat suddenly, his lips folded
+in a stubborn line. Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be
+familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some
+very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy
+affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather&mdash;it had been, he had
+always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had,
+before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had those of his
+father.</p>
+
+<p>The latter had been the child of a dangerously late marriage, a marriage
+from which time and delay had stripped both material potency and
+sustaining illusion. Jasper Penny had been nearing fifty when his son
+was born; and that act of deliberate sacrifice on the part of his wife,
+entering middle age, had imposed an inordinate amount of suffering on
+her last years. Their child, it was true, had been of normal stature,
+and lived to within a short space of a half century. But then he had
+utterly collapsed, died in three days from what had first appeared a
+slight cold; and, throughout his maturity, he had been a man of feverish
+mind. His disastrous, blind struggle against the great, newly discovered
+iron deposits of the Middle West was characteristic of his ill balance.
+And, in his own, Howat Penny's, successive turn, the latter told himself
+again, he had paid part of the price of his grandfather's indulgence.</p>
+
+<p>It was incorporated in the Penny knowledge that Susan Brundon had
+refused to marry Jasper while the other woman was alive. The latter had
+died, some years after the disgraceful publicity of the murder and
+trial; the wedding had then taken place; but it seemed to Howat Penny to
+have been almost perfunctory. Yes, he had paid too, in the negative
+philosophy, the critical sterility, of his existence. He recognized this
+in one of the disconcerting flashes of perception that lately
+illuminated him as if from without. Some essential proportion had been
+disturbed. He looked up, at a slight sound, and saw Mariana standing
+before him. His expression, he knew, was severe; he had been quite
+upset.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I can see,&quot; she proceeded slowly, &quot;that I have been very wicked. I
+didn't realize, Howat, that it might affect you; how real all that old
+stir might be. I am tremendously sorry; you must know that I am awfully
+fond of you. It was pure, young selfishness. I was afraid that if I
+spoke first you wouldn't let him come. And it was important&mdash;I must see
+him and talk to him and think about it. You can realize mother and
+Kingsfrere!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where did you meet him?&quot; he demanded shortly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With Eliza, at a meeting,&quot; she went on more rapidly. &quot;He's terribly
+brilliant, and a steel man. Isn't it funny? The Pennys were steel, too;
+or iron, and that's the same. I wish you could be nice to him or just
+decent, until&mdash;until I know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mariana!&quot; he exclaimed, rising. &quot;You don't mean that you are really&mdash;.
+That you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps, Howat,&quot; she answered gravely. &quot;I have only seen him twice; and
+he has said nothing; but, you see, I am an experienced young woman. No
+other man has made the same impression.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That,&quot; he declared coldly, &quot;is unthinkable. You can't know all the
+facts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do; but, somehow, I don't care.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Everything about him is impossible&mdash;his history, family ... Why, Eunice
+Scofield, well, Penny, married a man from behind a counter, a fellow who
+sold womens' gloves; yes, and more than half Jew. And this man's mother
+was Delia Mullen, a daughter of the dirty ward leader. All this aside
+from&mdash;from his bad blood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's partly yours, you know,&quot; she said quietly. &quot;After all, there are
+other places I can see him.&quot; She turned away. &quot;Eliza Provost is insane,&quot;
+he muttered. &quot;No,&quot; Mariana returned, &quot;only superior to narrow little
+prejudices. She can see life, people, as they are. Jim Polder is one of
+the most promising men in the steel mills. He is going up and up. That
+is enough for Eliza, it is enough for me; and if it won't do for my
+family&mdash;&quot; she made an opening gesture with her fingers. Her expression
+had hardened; she gazed at him with bright, contemptuous eyes. In a
+moment the affectionate bonds between them seemed to have dissolved.
+His feeling was one of mingled anger and concern; but he endeavoured to
+regain his self-control, conscious that a hasty word more might do
+irreparable harm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, I can't have you meeting him about the streets,&quot; he stated.
+&quot;It is better here, if necessary. I am very much displeased,&quot; a note of
+complaint appeared, and she immediately returned to him, laid a hand on
+his shoulder. &quot;Nothing is certain,&quot; she assured him. &quot;I wanted to be
+sure, that is all. I don't want to make a mess out of things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was a part of the very quality of emotional courage he had so lately
+defined, extolled; a part of her disdain for ordinary prudence and
+conventional approbation. A direct dislike for this James Polder invaded
+him, a determined attitude of hyper-criticism. When the younger man
+reappeared Howat Penny found justification for this attitude. The
+details of Polder's apparel, although acceptable in the main, were
+without nicety. His shoes were a crude tan, and his necktie from the
+outer limbo. His hands, too, had a grimy surface and the nails were
+broken, unkempt.</p>
+
+<p>But it was evident that all the criticism was not to be limited to his
+own. James Polder regarded the single glass with a scoffing lip, as if
+it were the appendage of a ludicrous Anglomania. He glanced with
+indifference at Howat Penny's pictures, books, the collected emblems of
+his cultivated years. His brows raised at the photograph of Scalchi in
+the Page's trunks&mdash;as if, the elder thought, she had been a &quot;pony&quot; in
+the <i>Black Crook</i>&mdash;and was visibly amused at the great Mapleson, posed
+in a dignified attitude by a broken column. An irrepressible and biting
+scorn, Howat Penny saw, was, perhaps, the young man's strongest
+attribute. He had violent opinions expressed in sudden, sharp movements,
+gestures with his shoulders, swift frowns and fragmentary sentences.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny had never seen a more ill-ordered youth, and he experienced
+an increasing difficulty in keeping a marked asperity from his speech
+and conduct. Eliza Provost shortly came down, and the three strolled out
+into the ruddy light of late afternoon. Howat Penny consumed a long time
+dressing for the evening; and, in the end, irritably summoned Rudolph.
+&quot;I can't get these damned studs in,&quot; he complained; &quot;whatever do you
+suppose women use for starch now?&quot; Rudolph dexterously fixed the
+emeralds, then held the black silk waistcoat. &quot;And coats won't hang for
+a bawbee,&quot; he went on. &quot;Gentlemen like Gary Dilkes used to go regularly
+to London, spring and fall, for their things. No doubt then about a man
+of breeding. You didn't see the other kind around. Wouldn't have 'em.&quot;
+Rudolph murmured consolingly. &quot;Sat in the pit but never got into the
+boxes,&quot; his voice grew thin, querulous. &quot;I'm moving along, Rudolph,&quot; he
+admitted suddenly; &quot;the manners, and, by thunder, the music too, don't
+suit me any more. Give me the old Academy days in Irving Place.&quot; He
+hummed a bar from <i>Ernani</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Through dinner he maintained a severe silence, listening with a frowning
+disapproval to Eliza Provost's tranquil, subversive utterances. Howat
+Penny couldn't think what her father was about, permitting her to
+harangue loafers by the streets and saloons. She was, in a cold way&mdash;she
+had Peter Jannan Provost's curious grey colouring&mdash;a handsome piece of a
+girl, too. &quot;A fine figger,&quot; he told himself.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Mariana and James Polder had gone out on the porch, he faced with
+reluctance the task of furnishing her with entertainment; but, to his
+extreme relief, she procured a leather portfolio, and addressed herself
+to a sheaf of papers. But that, in itself, was a peculiar way for a
+young woman to spend an evening. She would have done it, he felt, if he
+had been half his actual age. God help the man with a fancy for her!
+Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the
+past&mdash;a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in
+Paris ... at dawn. Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth,
+fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake. His silk hat
+had been telescoped in the process of smacking a Frenchman's eye.
+Perhaps, they had told each other, there would be cards later in the
+day, an affair of honour. He forgot what, exactly, had happened; but
+there had been no duel.</p>
+
+<p>He looked up with a sudden concern, as if his thoughts might have been
+clear to Eliza Provost, in irreproachable evening dress and shell rimmed
+glasses, intent on statistical pages. Mariana and James Polder appeared;
+the former, Howat Penny thought, disturbed. Polder's intense countenance
+was sombre, his brow corrugated. Mariana, accompanied by Eliza, soon
+after went up; and left the two men facing each other across a neutral
+silence. &quot;You manufacture steel, I believe,&quot; the elder finally stated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Company does,&quot; Polder replied more exactly. &quot;I've been in the open
+hearth since I left school,&quot; he went on; &quot;it was born in me, I've never
+thought of anything else.&quot; His tone grew sharp, as if it might occur to
+the other to contradict the legitimacy of his pursuit. &quot;I have done well
+enough, too,&quot; he said pridefully. &quot;Most of them come on from college. I
+went from shovelling slag in the pit, the crane, to second helper and
+melter; they gave me the furnace after a year and now I am foreman. It
+will be better still if a reorganization goes through. Not many men have
+a chance at the superintendent's office under thirty-five.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is very admirable,&quot; Howat Penny said formally. He wondered,
+privately, at the far channel into which the original Penny ability had
+flowed. There could be no doubt, however objectionable, that James
+Polder was the present repository of the family tradition. He had had it
+from the source; and the iron had not, apparently, been corroded by
+tainted blood. He was forced to admit that a coarser strain had,
+perhaps, lent it endurance. All this failed to detract from his initial
+dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in
+which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant
+proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized,
+to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible.
+Such things were utterly unimportant to him. He was unable to justify,
+or even explain to himself, his standards of judgment. They were not
+founded on admirable conduct, on achievement, what was known as solid
+worth; but on vague accents, intuitive attitudes of mind visible in a
+hundred trivial, even absurd, signs. The &quot;right things&quot; were more
+indispensable to him than the sublimest attributes.</p>
+
+<p>On the following morning Mariana, Eliza and Polder disappeared in his
+car&mdash;it seemed that the latter was an accomplished mechanic in addition
+to his other qualities&mdash;and Howat Penny faced the disagreeable
+possibilities of the near future. Mariana would, he knew, meet this
+fellow promiscuously if necessary. As she had indicated, it was
+impossible to conceive of him in Charlotte Jannan's house. The latter
+was a rigidly correct woman. She would, too, and properly, be nasty if
+she learned that such meetings had taken place at Shadrach. The only
+thing to do was to bring Mariana to what he designated as her senses.
+And, at the start, he had a conviction that he might fail.</p>
+
+<p>She did not accompany Eliza Provost and Polder, when, late Sunday
+afternoon, they departed; but sat absorbed in thought through the
+evening meal. He found his affection for her increasing to an annoying
+degree; he was almost humble in his anxiety not to wound her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Life is so messy,&quot; she said with sudden violence. &quot;You can't think,
+Howat, how I hate myself; the horridest things go round and round
+through my mind. We're all wrong&mdash;I'm more like you than I
+admitted&mdash;born snobs. I mean the kind who look down on people different
+from themselves. I can't help being on&mdash;on edge. I can tell you this,
+though, I care more for Jim Polder than for any other man I've ever met.
+I'm mad about him; and yet, somehow, I can't quite think of marrying
+him. He's asked me already. But I knew he would.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must wait,&quot; he temporized; &quot;such things clear up after a little.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if they don't?&quot; she demanded. &quot;What if they are choked by a hundred
+cowardly or selfish thoughts? It can be too late so terribly soon,
+Howat. You must know that. You see, I can't decide what really is the
+most valuable, what should be held tight on to, or let go. There are two
+me's, it seems&mdash;one what I want and the other what I am. I want Jim and
+I'm Mariana Jannan. All that about Eunice or Essie, or whatever her name
+was, doesn't matter a bawbee, as you say. I hate it because I think at
+times it makes him unhappy. Really, I believe I am fonder of him because
+of it. We owe him something&mdash;the superior Jannans and Pennys. Why,
+Howat, he's your own blood, and you looked at him as if he were a
+grocer's assistant. And I watched hatefully for the little expressions
+that seemed common. Of course, out in those mills, he would pick up a
+lot that wouldn't touch us; and, after all, he could drop them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you have any thought of reforming him,&quot; he commented dryly, &quot;you
+might as well see a wedding stationer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I could influence him,&quot; she insisted; &quot;I'd at least count for as much
+as those shovellers and furnace men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But not,&quot; he proceeded relentlessly, &quot;against the Essie Scofield you
+dismissed so easily. I don't doubt for a minute the unhappiness you
+spoke of; it would he a part of his inheritance; and you'd never charm
+it out of him. Damn it, Mariana,&quot; he burst out, &quot;he's inferior! That's
+all, inferior.&quot; Anger and resentment destroyed his caution, his planned
+logic, restraint. &quot;I can see what your life would be, if you can't. You
+would live in a no-man's land; and all the clergymen in the world
+couldn't make you one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It wouldn't be the clergymen, Howat,&quot; she said simply. &quot;And you mustn't
+think I am only a silly with her first young man. I have kissed them
+before, Howat; yes, and liked it. I am not happy with Jim; it's
+something else, like tearing silk. He is so confident and so helpless;
+he's drinking now, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose that is an added attraction,&quot; he commented. She chose to
+ignore this. &quot;I half promised him,&quot; she continued, &quot;to take dinner with
+his family. He will be in the city next week. I said I thought you'd
+bring me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I won't,&quot; he replied in a startled energy. &quot;Mariana, you're out
+of your head. Go to Byron Polder's house! Me!&quot; In his excitement he
+dropped a lighted cigarette on the Chinese rug. &quot;I have no one else,&quot;
+she told him. &quot;Perhaps I'll marry Jim, and go away ... I thought you
+might want to be with me, at the last.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He fumbled for his glass, fixed it in his eye, and then dropped it out,
+clearing his throat sharply. He rose and crossed the room, and looked
+out through the open door at the night. The stars were hazy, and there
+was a constant reflection of lightning on the horizon. Howat Penny swore
+silently at his increasing softness, his betrayal by his years. Yet it
+might be a good thing for her to see the Polder family assembled,
+Byron&mdash;he was a pretentious looking fool&mdash;at one end of the table and
+Delia Mullen Polder at the other. There were more children, too. But if
+it became necessary, heaven knew how he would explain all this to
+Charlotte. &quot;I believe,&quot; he said, apparently innocently, &quot;that they live
+in the north end of the city.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It won't damage you,&quot; she replied indirectly. Already, he thought with
+poignant regret, a part of the old Mariana had gone; her voice was
+older, darker with maturity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI" />XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Howat Penny arrived in town late on the day when he was to dine with
+Mariana at the Polders. He entered a taxicab, and was carried smoothly
+through the thick, hot air; open electric cars, ladened with damp,
+pallid salespeople, passed with a harsh ringing; and the foliage in
+Rittenhouse Square hung dusty and limp and still. The houses beyond, on
+Nineteenth Street, where the Jannans' winter dwelling stood, were closed
+and blankly boarded. The small, provisional entrance before which he
+stopped opened, and a servant, out of livery, appeared. &quot;Shall I tell
+the driver to return, sir?&quot; he queried; &quot;the telephone is disconnected.&quot;
+He issued instructions, and, with Howat Penny's bag, followed him into
+the darkened house.</p>
+
+<p>The windows of a general chamber on the second floor had been thrown
+open; and there he found Mariana's brother. Kingsfrere Jannan was a
+young man with a broad white face, shadowed in pasty green, and leaden
+eyes. His countenance, Howat knew, masked a keen and avaricious
+temperament. He did uncommonly well at auction bridge in the clubs.
+Kingsfrere, in a grey morning coat with white linen gaiters and a
+relentless collar, nodded and lounged from the room; and Mariana soon
+appeared. &quot;Perhaps, Howat,&quot; she said, &quot;it would be better if you didn't
+dress. I have an idea the Polder men don't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the stubborn expression which possessed him she exclaimed sharply,
+&quot;If you tell me that the Colonel or Gary Dilkes were always formally
+dressed at dinner I think I'll scream.&quot; Nevertheless, he had no
+intention of relinquishing a habit of years for the Polders, or the
+north end of the city; and when, later, he came down into the hall,
+where the man stood with his silk hat and cape, Mariana put an arm about
+his shoulders. &quot;I wish every one could he as beautiful as yourself,&quot; she
+told him. They passed the Square, bathed in dusk and the beginning
+shimmer of arc lights, went through the flattened and faintly thunderous
+arch of a railway, and turned into a broad asphalt street, on which
+wide, glistening bulk windows gave place to sombre shops with lurid,
+flame-streaked vistas, and continuous residences beyond. Howat Penny
+gazed curiously at the tall, narrow dwellings, often a continuous,
+similar fa&ccedil;ade from street corner to corner, then diversified in
+elaborate, individual design. All, however, had deep stone steps leading
+to the sidewalk, thronged with figures in airy white dresses, coatless
+men smoking contentedly; there was a constant light vibration of
+laughing voices and subdued calling, and the fainter strains of
+mechanical music, the beat of popular marches and attenuated voices of
+celebrated singers.</p>
+
+<p>The motor turned suddenly in to the curb, and they got out. The house
+before them, like its fellows, was entered from a high flight of red
+sandstone steps, and was built of a smooth, soapy green stone, with red
+coursings, an elaborate cornice and tiled Italian roof. No one was
+sitting outside, although there was a pile of circular, grass-woven
+cushions; and Howat sharply rang the bell. A maid in aproned black
+admitted them into a narrow hall, from which stairs mounted with a
+carved rail terminating in a newel post supporting an almost life-sized
+bronze nymph, whose flowing hair was encircled by a wreath of
+electrically lit flowers, and who held a dully shining sheaf of
+jonquils. There was no other illumination, and Howat Penny discovered in
+the obscurity a high mirror bristling with elk horns, on which hung
+various hats and outer garments. He stood helpless, apparently, in an
+attitude he found impossible to deny himself, waiting to be relieved of
+his coverings, when Mariana whispered angrily, &quot;Don't be so rotten,
+Howat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Finally the maid secured his cape, and he was conscious of a stir at the
+head of the stairs. Immediately after, a shrill, subdued voice carried
+to where he stood. &quot;I told you,&quot; it said violently, &quot;... dress suit.&quot;
+There was an answering murmur, in which he could distinguish, James
+Polder's impatient tones. The latter descended, and flooded the hall
+with, light from a globe in the ceiling. He was garbed in blue serge and
+flannels. &quot;Isabella,&quot; he stated directly, belligerently even, &quot;thinks we
+ought to change our clothes; but we never do, and I wouldn't hear of&mdash;of
+lying for effect.&quot; Howat Penny's dislike for him pleasantly increased.
+Mariana, in rose cr&ecirc;pe with a soft, dull gold girdle and long,
+trumpet-like sleeves of flowered gauze, smiled at him warmly. &quot;It is a
+harmless pose of Howat's,&quot; she explained: &quot;a concession to the ghosts of
+the past.&quot; She patted the elder on the shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Above, James Polder ushered them into a room hung with crimson and gilt
+stamped paper, an elaborately fretted cherry mantel about the asbestos
+rectangle of an artificial hearth, and a multitude of chairs and divans
+shrouded in linen. There was an upright, ebonized piano draped in a
+fringed, Roman scarf and holding a towering jar of roses, a great,
+carved easel with a painstaking, smooth oil painting of a dark man in an
+attitude of fixed dignity, and an expensively cased talking machine. The
+original, evidently, of the portrait, and a small, rotund woman in mauve
+brocade, advanced to meet them. Young Polder said, &quot;My mother and
+father. This is Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The latter saw that Mrs. Byron Polder was distinctly nervous; she
+twisted the diamonds that occupied a not inconsiderable portion of her
+short fingers, and smiled rigidly. &quot;I am very pleased to meet you, Miss
+Jannan,&quot; she proceeded; &quot;and Mr. Penny too.&quot; She held out a hand, then
+half withdrew it; but Mariana captured it in her direct palm. &quot;Thank
+you,&quot; she replied. Byron Polder had a more confident poise; in reality
+there was a perceptible chill in his manner. He was a handsome man, with
+a cleanly-shaven face, introspective brown eyes and a petulant, drooping
+mouth. &quot;You have succeeded in finding your way to my house,&quot; he
+pronounced enigmatically, gazing at Howat Penny.</p>
+
+<p>It was, Howat thought, just such an ill-bred utterance as he had looked
+for from Byron Polder; and he made no effort to mitigate it. He was
+conscious of, and resolutely ignored, Mariana's veiled entreaty. &quot;You
+don't know my girls,&quot; Mrs. Polder continued rapidly. &quot;Here is Isabella,
+and Kate will be along for dinner.&quot; A tall, bony woman of, perhaps,
+thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved
+forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went
+on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood
+awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, &quot;Good heavens, this isn't
+a wax works! Why don't we sit down?&quot; The older woman glanced with a
+consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit,
+&quot;It's a quarter after seven,&quot; she said in a swift aside. Isabella,
+correctly disposed on a chair of muffled and mysterious line, resolutely
+ignored the appeal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I didn't suppose you'd be in the city,&quot; she addressed Mariana; &quot;I read
+in the paper that you had gone to Watch Hill with Mrs. Ledyard B.
+Starr.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can see that I'm back,&quot; Mariana smiled. &quot;The family, of course, are
+at Andalusia, but we have all been in town the past days. I am really
+staying with Howat at Shadrach.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The former location of Shadrach Furnace, I believe,&quot; Byron Polder
+stated. &quot;Now in ruins.&quot; Howat Penny accurately gathered that the other
+inferred the collapse not only of the Furnace. He secured the single
+glass in his eye and looked deliberately around. Isabella watched him
+with a tense interest. Mrs. Polder gave a short, perturbed giggle. &quot;Just
+like George Arliss,&quot; she told her son. James Polder, on the edge of a
+chair, was twitching with repressed uneasiness; he frowned
+antagonistically and then gazed appealingly at Mariana. &quot;I have been
+introduced to your cousin, Miss Provost,&quot; Isabella again took up her
+social thread. &quot;A dear friend of mine, a talented actress, gave a
+recitation at Miss Provost's request, for suffrage.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eliza's splendid,&quot; Mariana pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Peter Jannan Provost's daughter,&quot; Byron Polder added fully. But his
+voice indicated that even more, darkly unfavourable, might be revealed.
+&quot;Miss Provost has been under arrest.&quot; Damn the solemn ass, Howat Penny
+thought. &quot;She's been in the jug twice now,&quot; Mariana went on cheerfully;
+&quot;Kingsfrere had to put up a bond the last time.&quot; Mrs. Polder was rapidly
+regaining her ease. &quot;Wasn't her mamma scared?&quot; she inquired. &quot;I'd go on
+if Isabella was taken up.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Imagine Isabella!&quot; Jim Polder exploded. &quot;It's quite the thing,&quot; that
+individual asserted. &quot;Isabella,&quot; her mother declared, &quot;it is twenty-five
+past seven. I wish you'd go out and see where dinner is.&quot; She rose with
+an expression of mingled surprise and pain. &quot;Really, mother,&quot; she said,
+&quot;that is an extraordinary request.&quot; Her brother snorted. There was a
+sudden muffled clamour of chimes from below, and Mrs. Polder gave a sigh
+of relief. &quot;I didn't want it spoiled,&quot; she explained, descending; &quot;Jim
+would be wild after all his eagerness to have things nice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and
+had a high ceiling in varnished light wood. Byron Polder faced his wife
+at the opposite end of the table. Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with
+Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother's right; and a waiting
+place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl. &quot;This is Kate,&quot;
+Mrs. Polder said proudly. Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome
+female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent cr&ecirc;pe de Chine waist
+that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a
+lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth
+drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the
+direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission
+that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up
+to the standard of old days, the divinity of Scalchi herself. She would
+have created a sensation in Delmonico's, the real Delmonico's. Gary and
+the Colonel&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We think they're elegant,&quot; Mrs. Polder's voice broke in on his revery.
+He looked up and saw a great fish on a huge platter before his host, a
+fish in surprising semblance to life, had it not been for the rosettes
+of lemon, the green bed, which surrounded it. &quot;Gracious, no,&quot; she
+answered Mariana's query; &quot;we don't do it home. Mr. Polder has them sent
+from a Rathskeller down town. He'll make a meal off one.&quot; The latter was
+plainly chagrined at this light thrown on his petty appetites. He
+assumed an air of complete detachment in the portioning of the dish;
+but, at the same time, managed to supply himself liberally. The
+conversation was sporadic. Howat Penny found the dinner lavish, and
+divided his attention between it and Kate Polder. James and Mariana
+addressed general remarks to the table at succeeding intervals. Mr.
+Polder gloomed, and Isabella went through the gestures, the accents, of
+the occasion with utter correctness. Howat studied Mariana, but he was
+unable to discover her thoughts; she was smiling and cordial; and
+apologized for losing her slipper. &quot;I always do,&quot; she explained. James
+Polder hastily rose, and came around to assist her. The dinner was at an
+end, and she stood with a slim, silken foot outheld for him to replace
+the fragile object of search.</p>
+
+<p>They reassembled above, and Mrs. Polder suggested music. &quot;My son says
+you are very fond of good music,&quot; she addressed Howat Penny. &quot;I can tell
+you it is a lovely taste. We have the prettiest records that come.
+Isabella, put on <i>Hark, Hark, the Lark</i>.&quot; She obediently rose, and,
+revolving the handle of the talking machine, fixed the grooved, rubber
+disk and needle. Howat listened with a stony countenance to the ensuing
+strains. Such instruments were his particular detestation. Mrs. Polder
+waved her hand dreamily. &quot;Now,&quot; she said, &quot;the <i>Sextette</i>, and <i>The End
+of a Perfect Day</i>. No, Mr. Penny would like to hear <i>Salome</i>, I'm sure,
+with all those cymbals and creepy Eastern tunes.&quot; An orgy of sound
+followed, applauded&mdash;perversely, he was certain&mdash;by Mariana. James, he
+saw, was as uneasy as himself; but for a totally different reason. He
+gazed at Mariana with a fierce devotion patent to the most casual eye;
+his expression was tormented with concern and longing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When do you return to Harrisburg?&quot; Byron Polder inquired. &quot;My son,&quot; he
+went on to Howat Penny, &quot;is a practical iron man. I say iron, although
+that is no longer the phrase, because of natural associations. The
+present system of the manufacture of steel, as you doubtless know,
+evolved from the old Ironmasters, of whose blood James has a generous
+share. We look to him to re-establish, er&mdash;a departed importance. I need
+say no more.&quot; His women's anxiety at this trend of speech became
+painful. &quot;Play a right lively piece,&quot; Mrs. Polder interjected, and an
+intolerable cacophony of banjoes followed, making conversation futile.</p>
+
+<p>The evening, Howat Penny felt, was a considerable success; by heaven,
+Mariana would never get herself into this! Byron Polder's innuendoes
+must have annoyed her nicely. When the mechanical disturbance ceased,
+Mrs. Polder said, &quot;I believe that's the bell.&quot; Evidently she had been
+correct, for, immediately after, a young woman with bright gold hair,
+and a mobile, pink countenance unceremoniously entered the room. &quot;Oh!&quot;
+she exclaimed, in an instinctively statuesque surprise; &quot;I didn't know
+you were entertaining company.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come right in, Harriet,&quot; Mrs. Polder heartily proclaimed. &quot;Miss Jannan,
+Mr. Penny, this is Isabella's friend, Harriet de Barry, a near neighbour
+and a sweet girl. She's an actress, too; understudies Vivian Blane; and
+is better, lots say, than the lead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Harriet de Barry made a comprehensive gesture. &quot;I wanted to say good-bye
+to you all,&quot; she announced. &quot;I am going on tour. Leave at midnight. Just
+had a wire from Mrs. Blane.&quot; There were polite Polder exclamations,
+regret, congratulations; through which the son of the house moodily
+gazed at the carpet. &quot;Haven't you anything to say to Hatty?&quot; his mother
+demanded. &quot;And after all the passes she sent you.&quot; Howat Penny saw
+Mariana's gaze rest swiftly on the latest comer's obvious good looks;
+and the scrutiny, he was certain, held a cold feminine appraisal. As
+they descended to leave Mariana lingered on the stairs with Jim. The
+latter closed the door of the public motor with a low, intense mutter;
+and, moving away, Howat Penny lit a cigarette with a breath of audible
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I don't know which I detest most,&quot; Mariana declared viciously, &quot;you or
+myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might include that fish,&quot; he added plaintively. She gazed at him in
+cold contempt, with an ugly, protruding lip. Nothing else was said until
+they were in the opened room at the Jannans. Mariana flung herself on a
+broad divan, with her narrowed gaze fixed on the points of her slippers.
+&quot;Comfortable, isn't it,&quot; she addressed him; &quot;this feeling of
+superiority?&quot; He placidly nodded, inwardly highly pleased. &quot;I wish I'd
+married Jim the first week I knew him, without trying to be so dam'
+admirable. Howat, what is it that makes people what they are, and
+aren't?&quot; It was, he told her, difficult to express; but it had to do
+with inherited associations. &quot;Mrs. Polder is as kind as possible,&quot; she
+asserted; &quot;and I could see that you were absorbed in Kate.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really, Mariana,&quot; he protested, &quot;at times you are a little rough. She
+is a very fine girl; in fact, reminds me of Scalchi. Old Byron, though,
+what&mdash;a regular catafalque!&quot; A blundering step mounted to the stair;
+Kingsfrere entered and stood wavering and concerned, the collar wilted
+and a gaiter missing. &quot;Ought to do something about the front door,&quot; he
+asserted; &quot;frightful condition, no paint; and full of splinters. Very
+plump splinters,&quot; he specified, examining a hand. Mariana surveyed him
+coolly, thoroughly. &quot;Sweet, isn't he?&quot; she remarked. &quot;Kingsfrere Gilbert
+Todd Jannan.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's absolutely all,&quot; that individual assured her. &quot;Except if you
+want to add Sturgeon; some do. Hullow, Howat! Grand old boy, Howat,&quot; he
+told her. &quot;But if he says I'm drunk, I will tell you one of Bundy's
+stories about him. This&mdash;this elegant deception tremendous noise with
+the song birds.&quot; He sat abruptly on a providentially convenient chair.
+There, limply, he hiccoughed. &quot;Sweet,&quot; Mariana repeated. Kingsfrere
+finally rose, and, with a friendly wave, wandered from the room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It was good of you to take me, Howat,&quot; she told him wearily. &quot;Although,
+now, I can see that you went willingly enough. You thought it would cure
+me. But of what, Howat&mdash;of love? Of a feeling that, perhaps, I'd found a
+reason for living?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A decidedly uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an
+unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation
+to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured
+himself; Mariana's inherent, well&mdash;prejudices, couldn't be charged to
+him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed him. She
+was his greatest, his only concern. Howat Penny reviewed his desire for
+her, his preference for a Mariana untouched by the common surge of
+living. He recalled the discontent, the feeling of sterility, that had
+lately possessed him; the suspicion that his life had been in vain. All
+his philosophy, his accumulated convictions, were involved; and, tie in
+hand, he sat endeavouring to pierce the confusion of his ideas.</p>
+
+<p>He was conscious of a slow change gathering within him; and, in itself,
+that consciousness was disturbing. It had a vaguely dark, chill aspect.
+He shivered, in the room super-heated by summer; his blood ran thinner
+and cold. Howat Penny had a sudden, startling sense of his utter
+loneliness; there was absolutely no one, now, to whom he could turn for
+the understanding born of long and intimately affectionate association.
+Mariana was lost to him in her own poignant affair ... No children. So
+many, so much, dead. His countenance, however, grew firm with the
+determination that age should not find him a coward. He had always been
+bitterly contemptuous of the men that, surfeiting their appetites,
+showed at the impotent last a cheap repentance. But he had done nothing
+pointedly wrong; he had&mdash;the inversion repeated itself&mdash;done nothing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII" />XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>At Shadrach his customary decision returned; he went about, or sat
+reading, well-ordered, cool-appearing, dogmatic. He learned from the
+<i>Evening Post</i> that Mariana was at Warrenton. She had carefully
+described to him the Virginia country life, the gaiety and hard riding
+of the transplanted English colonies; and he pictured her at the
+successive horse shows, in the brilliant groups under the Doric columns
+of the porticoes. Then, he saw, she had gone north; he found her picture
+in a realistic Egyptian costume with bare, painted legs at an
+extravagant ball. He studied her countenance, magnifying it with a
+reading glass; but he saw nothing beyond a surface enjoyment of the
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>Then, to his utter surprise, on an evening after dinner, when he was
+seated in the settling dusk of the porch, intent on the grey movements
+of his familiar owls, a quick step mounted the path, and James Polder
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wanted to ask about Miss Jannan,&quot; the latter stated frankly and at
+once. Howat Penny cleared his throat sharply. &quot;I believe she is well,&quot;
+he stated formally. &quot;You will find it cooler here.&quot; It struck him that
+the young man was not deficient in that particular. More, of still
+greater directness, followed. &quot;I suppose you know,&quot; Polder stated, &quot;that
+I want to marry her ... and she won't.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I had gathered something of the sort,&quot; the other admitted. &quot;It's
+natural, in a way.&quot; Polder proceeded gloomily: &quot;I'd take her away from
+so much. And, yet, look here&mdash;you can shut me up if you like&mdash;what's it
+all about? Can you tell me that?&quot; Howat Penny couldn't. &quot;I'm not to
+blame for that old mess any more than you. And it's not my fault if
+something of&mdash;of which you think so much came to me by the back door.
+I've always wanted what Mariana is,&quot; he burst out, &quot;and I have never
+been satisfied with what I could get. And when I saw her, hell&mdash;what's
+the use!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any one in Harrisburg will tell you I am a good man,&quot; he reiterated, at
+a slightly different angle. &quot;When you kick through out of that racket of
+hunkies and steel you've done something. Soon I'll be getting five or
+six thousand.&quot; He paused, and the other said dryly, &quot;Admirable.&quot; The
+phrase seemed to him inadequate; it sounded in his ear as unpleasantly
+as a false note. Yet he was powerless to alter it, change its brusque
+accent. The personal tone of Polder's revelations was inherently
+distasteful to him. He said, rising, &quot;If you will excuse me I'll tell
+Rudolph you will be here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I won't,&quot; Polder replied; &quot;there's a train back at eleven. I have
+to be at the mills for the day shift to-morrow. I came out because I
+had to talk a little about Mariana.&quot; He had deserted the more formal
+address. &quot;And I wanted to tell some one connected with her that I have
+gimp of my own. I know why she won't marry me, and it's a small reason;
+it would be small in&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold up,&quot; Howat Penny interrupted, incensed. &quot;Am I to understand that
+you came here to complain about Miss Jannan's conduct? That won't do,
+you know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a small reason,&quot; the other insisted hotly. &quot;Hardly more than the
+idiotic fact that I'm not in the Social Register. I am ashamed of her,
+and I said so. It was so little that I told her I wouldn't argue. She
+could go to the devil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really,&quot; the other observed, &quot;really, I shall have to ask you to
+control your language or leave.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wonder if she will?&quot; the surprising James Polder sombrely speculated.
+&quot;I wonder if I am? But there are other women, with better hearts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are we to construe this as a threat?&quot; Howat asked in a delicately
+balanced tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For God's sake,&quot; he begged, &quot;can't you be human!&quot; The other suddenly
+recalled Mariana's imploring anger at the Polders. &quot;Don't be so rotten,
+Howat.&quot; The confusion of his valuations, his habitual attitudes of
+thought, returned. His gaze strayed to the obscured ruin of Shadrach
+Furnace, at once a monument of departed vigour and present
+disintegration. Perhaps, just as the energy had expired in the Furnace,
+it had seeped from him. It might be that he was only a sere husk, a dry
+bundle of inhibitions, insensible to the green humanity of life.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I couldn't go on my knees to anything,&quot; the younger took up his burden.
+&quot;Wrong or not it is the way I'm made. I'd not hang about where I wasn't
+wanted. Although you mightn't think it. And I am sorry I came here. I do
+things like that all the time; I mean I do, say, exactly the opposite of
+what I plan. You'll think I am a braying ass, of course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop for a breath,&quot; Howat Penny recommended; &quot;a breath, and a
+cigarette.&quot; He extended his case; and, in place of taking a cigarette,
+Polder examined the case resentfully. &quot;There is it,&quot; he declared;
+&quot;correct, like all the rest of you. And it's only old leather. But mine
+would be different. I could sink and Mariana wouldn't put out a hand
+just on account of that. It's wrong,&quot; he insisted. Expressed in that
+manner it did seem to Howat Penny a small reason for the withholding of
+any paramount salvation. Yet, he told himself, he had no intention,
+desire, to undertake the weight of any reformation. A futile effort, he
+added, with his vague consciousness of implacable destiny, his dim sense
+of man moved from without, in locked progression. Polder was young,
+rebellious; but he could grow older; he would grow older and comprehend;
+or else beat himself to death on obdurate circumstance. What concerned
+Howat was the hope that Mariana would be no further involved in either
+process. She too had this to learn&mdash;that, in the end, blood was stronger
+than will; the dead were terribly potent. He had, even, no inclination
+to say any of this to the man frowning in the dusk at his side. It would
+be useless, a mere preaching. An expression, too, of a slight but actual
+sympathy for James Polder would be misleading. In the main Howat was
+entirely careless of what might happen to the other; it was only where,
+unfortunately, he touched Mariana that he entered into the elder's
+world. He would sacrifice him for Mariana in an instant. Polder rose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must leave,&quot; he announced. Howat Penny expressed no regret, and the
+other hesitated awkwardly. &quot;It's no use!&quot; he finally exclaimed. &quot;I can't
+reach you; as if one of us spoke Patagonian. Hellish, it seems to me.&quot;
+He turned and disappeared, as violently as he had come, over the
+obscurity of the lawn. A reddish, misshapen moon hung low in the sky,
+and gave the aging man an extraordinarily vivid impression of dead
+planets, unthinkable wastes of time, illimitable systems and spaces.
+James Polder's passionate resentment, his own emotion, were no more
+articulate than the thin whirring of the locusts. He went quickly into
+the house, to the warm glow of his lamp, the memories of his pictures,
+the figurine in baked clay with Hermes' wand of victory.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII" />XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The heat dragged through the remainder of August and filled September
+with steaming days and heavy nights, followed by driving grey storms and
+premonitory, chill dawns. A period of sunny tranquillity succeeded, but
+crimson blots of sumach, the warmer tone of maples, made it evident that
+summer had lapsed. Honduras mulched the strawberries, and set new teeth
+in his lawn rakes. The days passed without feature, or word from
+Mariana, and Howat Penny fell into an almost slumberous monotony of
+existence. It was not unpleasant; occupied with small duties, intent on
+his papers, or wandering in a past that seemed to grow clearer, rather
+than fade, as time multiplied, he maintained his erect, carefully
+ordered existence. Then, among his mail, he found a large,
+formal-appearing envelope which he opened with a mild curiosity. His
+attitude of detachment was soon dispelled.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Corinne de Barry desired the pleasure of his attendance at the
+wedding of her daughter, Harriet, to James Polder. Details, a church and
+hour, were appended. The headlong young man, he thought, with a smile,
+Mariana was well out of that. He had been wise in saying nothing to
+Charlotte; the thing had expired naturally. But, irrationally, he
+thought of Polder with a trace of contempt&mdash;a man who had,
+unquestionably, possessed Mariana Jannan's regard marrying the
+pink-faced understudy to a second-rate emotional actress! In a way it
+made him cross; the fellow should have shown a&mdash;a greater appreciation,
+delicacy. &quot;Commonplace,&quot; he said decisively, aloud. The following day
+Mariana herself appeared, with a touch of sable and a small, wickedly
+becoming hat.</p>
+
+<p>He was at lunch; and, without delay, she took the place smilingly laid
+for her by Rudolph. It was characteristic that she made no pretence of
+concealing the reason that had brought her to Shadrach. &quot;Jim's going to
+marry that Harriet de Barry,&quot; she said at once, nicely casual. &quot;I had a
+card,&quot; he informed her. &quot;It's to be on the thirtieth,&quot; Mariana
+proceeded, &quot;at eight o'clock and in church. Of course you are going.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all of course,&quot; he replied energetically. &quot;And you'll stay away
+for the plainest decency.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We will go together,&quot; she proceeded calmly. &quot;I want to see Jim married,
+happy.&quot; She gazed at him with narrowed eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mariana,&quot; he told her, &quot;that's a shameful lie. It is cold, feminine
+curiosity. It's worse&mdash;the only vulgar thing I can remember your
+considering. I won't hear of it.&quot; He debated the wisdom of recounting
+James Polder's last visit to Shadrach and decided in the negative. &quot;Let
+the young man depart with his Harriet in peace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's sickening, isn't it?&quot; she queried. &quot;And yet it is so like Jim. He
+had a very objectional idea of his dignity; he was sensitive in a way
+that made me impatient. He couldn't forget himself, you see. That helped
+to make it difficult for me; I wasn't used to it; his feelings were
+always being damaged.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny nodded. &quot;You'll recall I emphasized that.&quot; Mariana looked
+worn by her gaiety, he decided, white; for the first time in his memory
+she seemed older than her actual years. Her friends, he knew, her
+existence, bore the general appellation, fast; Howat had no share in the
+condemnatory aspect of the term, but he realized that it had a literal
+application. Their pace was feverish, and Mariana plainly showed its
+effects. Her voice, already noted as more mature, had, he was sure,
+hardened. She dabbled her lips thickly with a rouge stick. &quot;Mariana,&quot; he
+said querulously, &quot;I wish, you'd stop this puppet dance you're leading.
+I wish you would marry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I tried to,&quot; she coolly replied, &quot;but you spoiled my young dream of
+happiness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That isn't true,&quot; he asserted sharply, perturbed. &quot;Anything that
+happened, or didn't happen, was only the result of yourself, of what you
+are. I am extremely anxious to have you settled, and your legs out of
+the Sunday papers. I&mdash;I am opposed to your present existence; it's gone
+on too long. I believe I'd rather see you orating on the streets, like
+Eliza Provost. And, by thunder, I never thought I should come to that!
+Champagne and those damnable syncopated tunes played by hysterical
+niggers make a poor jig.&quot; He spoke impetuously, unconscious of any
+reversal of previous judgments, opinions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are so difficult to please, Howat,&quot; she said wearily; &quot;you were
+aghast at the thought of my marrying James, and now you are complaining
+of the natural alternative. The truth is,&quot; she added brutally, &quot;you are
+old-fashioned; you think life goes on just as it did when the Academy of
+Music was the centre of your world. And nothing is the same.&quot; She rose,
+and, with a lighted cigarette and half-shut eyes, fell into a rhythmic
+step of sensuous abandon. &quot;You see,&quot; she remarked, pausing. An
+increasing dread for her filled his heart. He felt, in response to her
+challenge, a sudden bewilderment in the world of to-day. Things, Howat
+Penny told himself, were marching to the devil. He said this irritably,
+loud, and she laughed. &quot;I'm going in by an early train,&quot; she proceeded.
+&quot;We have left the country. Will you stop for me on the thirtieth? Early,
+Howat, so we can be sure of a good place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>His helplessness included the subject of her remarks; he would, he
+realized, be at James Polder's wedding, but he persisted in his opinion.
+&quot;A low piece of business,&quot; Howat declared. When she had gone he felt
+that he had not penetrated her actual attitude toward Polder's
+deflection. He had not for a moment got beneath her casual manner, her
+lightness, pretended or actual. He wished vehemently that he were back
+again in the past he comprehended, among the familiar figures that had
+thronged the notable dinner to Patti, the women who had floated so
+graciously through the poetry of departed waltzes. He got out his albums
+once more, scrutinized through his polished glass the programmes of
+evenings famous in song. But he went to bed a full two hours earlier
+than customary; his feet positively dragged up the stairs; above he sat
+strangely exhausted, breathing heavily for, apparently, no reason
+whatever.</p>
+
+<p>He retraced, with Mariana, the course over the broad, asphalt way into
+the north end of the city early on the evening of the thirtieth. They
+found the church easily, by reason of a striped canvas tunnel stretched
+out to the curb; and a young man with plastered hair and a gardenia led
+them, Mariana on his arm, to a place on the centre aisle. The church had
+a high nave newly vaulted in maple, and stained glass windows draped
+with smilax, garish in colour against electric lights. Above the altar a
+great illuminated cross maintained an unsteady flickering; and&mdash;it was
+unseasonably cold&mdash;heating steam pipes gave out an expanding racket.</p>
+
+<p>The pews through the centre filled rapidly; there was a low, excited
+chatter of voices, and a spreading tropical expanse of the dyed
+feathers and iridescent foliage of womens' hats. An overpowering scent
+of mingled perfumes rose and filled the interior. The strains of an
+organ grew audible, contesting with the rattle of the steam pipes. Howat
+Penny was detached, critical. Mariana, in a dull, black satin wrap of
+innumerable soft folds and wide paisley collar slipping from a
+sheath-like bodice of gleaming, cut steel beading, was silent,
+incurious. He turned to her, to point out an extravagant figure, but he
+said nothing. She was, evidently, in no mood for the enjoyment of the
+ridiculous. This disturbed him; he had not thought that she would be
+so&mdash;so concerned. He suppressed an impatient exclamation, and returned
+to the scrutiny of the culminating ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a sphere, vastly larger than his own, to the habits and
+prejudices of which he was complete stranger. It was as James Polder had
+said&mdash;as if one or the other spoke Patagonian. He had no wish to acquire
+the language about him; a positive antagonism to his surrounding
+possessed him, beyond reason. He thought&mdash;how different Mariana is from
+all this, and was annoyed again at her serious bearing. Then he was
+surprised by his presence there at all; confound the girl, why didn't
+she play with her own kind! Yet only the other day the glimpse she had
+given him of her natural associates had filled him with dread. His mind,
+striving to encompass the problem of Mariana's existence, failed to
+overcome the walls built about him by time, by habit. He gave it up. The
+louder pealing of the organ announced immediate developments.</p>
+
+<p>There was a stir in the front of the church, a clergyman in white
+vestment advanced; and, at a sudden murmurous interest, a twisting of
+heads, the wedding procession moved slowly up the aisle. The ushers,
+painstakingly adopting various lengths of stride to the requirements of
+the organ, passed in pairs; then followed an equal number of young
+women, among whom he instantly recognized the handsome presence of Kate
+Polder, in drooping blue bonnets, with prodigious panniers of
+celestial-hued silk, carrying white enamelled shepherd's crooks from
+which depended loops of artificial buttercups. An open space ensued, in
+the centre of which advanced a child with starched white skirts
+springing out in a lacy wheel about spare, bare knees, her pale yellow
+hair tied in an overwhelming blue bow; and holding outstretched, in a
+species of intense and quivering agony, a white velvet cushion to which
+were pinned two gold wedding bands.</p>
+
+<p>After that, Howat Penny thought, the prospective bride could furnish
+only the diminished spectacle of an anti-climax. Led by the virginal
+presence of Isabella Polder she floated forward in a foam of white tulle
+and dragging satin attached below her bare, full shoulders. A floating
+veil, pinned with a wreath of orange blossoms, manifestly wax, covered
+the metallic gold of her hair. Her countenance was unperturbed,
+statuesque, and pink. As the sentimental clamour of the organ died the
+steam pipes took up, with renewed vigour, their utilitarian noise. &quot;Why
+don't they turn them off?&quot; Mariana exclaimed in his ear. Personally he
+enjoyed such an accompaniment to what he designated as the performance.</p>
+
+<p>He cast the participants in their inevitable r&ocirc;les&mdash;the bride as prima
+donna, James Polder the heroic tenor. Mrs. Corinne de Barry, a thin,
+concerned figure in glistening lavender, supported a lamenting mezzo,
+the bulky, masculine figure at her side, with an imposing diamond on a
+hand like two bricks, was beautifully basso&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>His train of thought was abruptly upset by James Polder's familiar,
+staccato utterance. The precipitant young man! It stamped out all Howat
+Penny's humorous condescension; his sensitive ear was conscious of a
+note, almost, of desperation. He avoided looking at Mariana. Damn it,
+the thing unexpectedly cut at him like a knife. James Polder said, &quot;I
+will.&quot; The clear, studied tones of Harriet de Barry, understudy to
+Vivian Blane, were spoiled by the crackling of steam. Howat moved
+uneasily; he had an absurd sense of guilt; he hated the whole
+proceeding. What was that Polder, whose voice persisted so darkly in his
+hearing, about, getting himself into such a snarl? He recalled what the
+younger had said on his porch&mdash;&quot;women with better hearts.&quot; He had
+implored him, Howat Penny, to be &quot;more human.&quot; The memory, too, of the
+shaken tone of that request bothered him. Now it appeared that he might
+have been, well, more human. He composed himself, facing such
+sentimental illusions, into a savage indifference to what remained of
+the ceremony; he ignored the passage of Polder, with Harriet Polder on
+his arm; the relief of the unspeakable child carrying the white velvet
+cushion no longer in the manner of a hot plate; the united bridesmaids
+and ushers. &quot;Thank heaven, that's over!&quot; he ejaculated in the
+deeply-comfortable space of the Jannan's motor laundalet. &quot;But it
+isn't,&quot; Mariana said briefly. She sat silent, with her head turned from
+him, through the remainder of the short drive about Rittenhouse Square.
+Then she went abruptly to her room.</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte Jannan and her oldest child, Sophie Lewis, were above in the
+living room. The former was handsome in a rigid way; her countenance,
+squarely and harshly formed, with grey hair exactly waved and pinned,
+had an expression of cold firmness; her voice was assertive and final.
+Sophie, apparently midway in appearance between Kingsfrere and Mariana,
+was gracefully proportioned, and gave an impression of illusive beauty
+by means of a mystery of veils, such as were caught up on her hat now.
+They were discussing, he discovered, the family.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's an outrage, Howat,&quot; Charlotte told him, &quot;you never married, and
+that the name will go. Here's Mariana at twenty-seven, almost, and
+nothing in sight; and Sophie flatly refuses, after only one, to have
+another child. I wish now I'd had a dozen. It is really the duty of the
+proper people. And Eliza Provost won't hear of a man! I tell Sophie it's
+their own fault when they complain about society to-day. It's the fault
+of this charity work and athletics, too; both extremely levelling.
+Hundreds of women wind bandages or go to the hunt races and gabble about
+votes for no reason under heaven but superior associates.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howat will feelingly curse the present with you,&quot; Sophie said rising.
+&quot;I must go. Borrow the motor, if you don't mind. I saw in the paper a
+Polder was married.&quot; Howat Penny lit a cigarette, admirably stolid. &quot;A
+name I never repeat,&quot; Charlotte Jannan said when her daughter had left.
+He heard again the echo of James Polder's intense voice, &quot;I will.&quot;
+Something of his dislike for him, he discovered, had evaporated. Howat
+thought of Mariana, in her room&mdash;alone with what feelings? He realized
+that Charlotte would never have forgiven her for any excursion in that
+direction. He himself had been, was, entirely opposed to such a
+connection. However, he could now dismiss it into the past that held a
+multitude of similarly futile imaginings.</p>
+
+<p>Charlotte, he inferred, had no elasticity; it was a quality the absence
+of which he had not before noted. She was a little narrow in her
+complacency. Her patent satisfaction in Sophie was a shade too&mdash;too
+worldly. Sam Lewis was, of course, irreproachably situated; but he was,
+at the same time, thick-witted, an indolent appendage for his name.
+Suddenly he felt poignantly sorry for Mariana; in a way she seemed to
+have been trapped by life. James Polder resembled her in that he had
+been caught in an ugly net of circumstance. A great deal had been upset
+since his day, when the boxes and pit had been so conveniently
+separated; old boundaries no longer defined, limited, their content;
+social demarcations were being obliterated by a growing disaffection. It
+was very unfortunate, for, as he was seeing, unhappiness ensued. It was
+bound to. An irritability seized him at being dragged into such useless
+conjecturing; into, at his age, confusing complications; and he greeted
+with relief the long, low front of his dwelling at Shadrach, its old
+grey stone a seeming outcropping of the old green turf, the aged,
+surrounding trees.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX" />XXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mariana, however, followed him almost immediately. She stood before him
+in an informal, belted black wool sweater, a ridiculously inadequate
+skirt, and the solid shoes he detested on women. But he soon forgot her
+garb.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howat,&quot; she told him, &quot;I have made a cowardly and terrible mistake. I
+was meant to marry Jimmy, and I didn't. Perhaps I have ruined his life.
+Mine will be nothing without him.&quot; They were in the middle room, and a
+fire of hickory was burning in the panelled hearth. She dropped on a
+chair, and sat gazing into the singing flames. Here it's all to do over,
+he thought, with a feeling of weariness. &quot;He may get along very well
+with his Harriet,&quot; he remarked, resentful of his dissipated contentment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know he won't,&quot; she replied sharply. &quot;He loves me; and I love him,
+Howat. I never knew how much, or how little anything else mattered,
+until I was in my room, after his wedding. It wasn't a wedding, really,&quot;
+she declared. &quot;All that doesn't make one. He'll find it out, too. Jimmy
+will be desperate, and I'm afraid he will drink harder. He told me they
+were getting frightfully strict about that at the Works. And there's
+that reorganization; it will embitter him if he isn't made
+superintendent. He has worked splendidly for it. That woman he&mdash;he went
+off with is a squash,&quot; she said vindictively. &quot;She will be in bed when
+he goes away in the morning, and in cr&ecirc;pe de Chine negligee when he gets
+back. Perhaps it won't last,&quot; she added thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>The sense of future security generated in Howat Penny by the marriage
+abruptly departed. He fumbled with his glass, directed it at Mariana.
+&quot;What do you mean by that?&quot; he demanded. &quot;I would go to him like a shot,
+if he needed me,&quot; she coolly returned. The dreadful part of it was that
+he was sure she would. &quot;Nonsense,&quot; he asserted, hiding his concern;
+&quot;there will be no fence climbing.&quot; All this came from the letting down
+of conversational bars, the confounded books he found about on tables.
+Words, like everything else, had lost their meanings. In his day a bad
+woman was bad, a good, likewise, good; but the Lord couldn't tell them
+apart now. It was the dancing, too. Might as well be married to a man,
+he thought.</p>
+
+<p>Mariana was haggard, the paint on her face crudely&mdash;paint. He saw that
+there were tears in her eyes, and he turned away confused, rose. The
+slot in his cigarette box refused to open, and he shook it violently,
+then put it back with a clatter. &quot;Tell Rudolph you're here,&quot; he said
+disjointedly; and, miserable, left the room. Dressing he stood at a
+window; the west held a narrow strip of crimson light under a windy mass
+of cloud. The ruin of Shadrach Furnace was sombre. Within, the room was
+almost bare. There was a large, high-posted bed without drapings, a
+vermilion lacquered table, dark with age, supporting a glass lamp at its
+side; a set of drawers with old brass handles; a pair of stiff Adam
+chairs with wheel backs; and a modern mahogany dressing case, variously
+and conveniently divided, a clear mirror in the door.</p>
+
+<p>The day failed rapidly, and he lit a pair of small lamps on the set of
+drawers. The sun sank in no time at all. Mariana, crying. The girl ought
+to go to her mother, and not come out to him, an old man, with her
+intimate troubles. &quot;A name I never repeat,&quot; Charlotte had said. That was
+just like her. Small sympathy there, and no more understanding. He
+knotted his tie hurriedly, askew; and gathered the ends once more. It
+tired him a little to dress in the evening; often he longed to stay
+relaxed, pondering, until Rudolph called him to dinner. But every day
+something automatic, tyrannical, dragged him up to his room, encased him
+in rigid linen, formal black. Mariana, against the fireplace, ate
+listlessly; and, later, he beat her with shameful ease at sniff.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can't do that,&quot; he pointed out with asperity, when she
+thoughtlessly joined unequal numbers. &quot;Why not?&quot; she asked. She must be
+addled. &quot;It's against the rule.&quot; Mariana said, &quot;I'm tired of rules.&quot;
+She always had put away the dominoes, but to-night she ignored them, and
+he returned the pieces to their morocco case. She relapsed into silence
+and a chair; and he sat with gaze fixed on the hickory in the fireplace,
+burning to impalpable, white ash.</p>
+
+<p>What a procession of logs had been there reduced to dust, warming
+generations of men now cold. The thought of all those lapsed winters and
+lives soothed him; the clamour of living seemed to retreat, to leave him
+in a grey tranquillity. His head sank forward, and his narrow, dark
+hands rested in absolute immobility on the arms of his chair. He roused
+suddenly to discover that Mariana had gone up, and that there were only
+some fitful, rosy embers of fire left. In November it had been his
+custom to go into town for the winter; and it was time for him to make
+such arrangement; but, all at once, he was overwhelmingly reluctant to
+face the change, the stir, of moving. The city seemed intolerably noisy,
+oppressive; the thought of the hurrying, indifferent crowds disconcerted
+him. At Shadrach it was quiet, familiar, spacious. He had had enough of
+excursions, strange faces, problems.... He would speak to Rudolph. Stay.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX" />XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p>The countryside, it appeared to Howat Penny, flamed with autumn and
+faded in a day. Throughout the night he heard the crisp sliding of dead
+leaves over the roof, the lash of the wind swung impotently about the
+rectangular, stone block of his dwelling. At the closing of shutters the
+December gales only penetrated to him in a thin, distant complaint. The
+burning hickory curtained the middle room with a ruddy warmth. It was a
+period of extreme peace; he slept for long hours in a deep chair, or sat
+lost in a simulation of sleep, living again in the past. The present was
+increasingly immaterial, unimportant; old controversies occupied him,
+long since stilled; and among the memories of opera, of Eames as a
+splendid girl, forgotten r&ocirc;les, were other, vaguer associations,
+impressions which seemed to linger from actual happenings, but
+persistently evaded definition. At times, his eyes closed, the glow of
+his fireplace burned hotter, more lurid, and was filled with faintly
+clamorous sounds; at times there was, woven through his half-wakeful
+dreaming, a monotonous beat ... such as the fall of a hammer. He saw,
+too, strange and yet familiar faces&mdash;a girl in silk like an extravagant
+tea rose; a countenance seamed and glistening with pain floated in
+shadow; and then another mocked and mocked him. Once he heard the
+drumming of rain, close above; and the illusion was so strong that he
+made his way to the door; a black void was glistening with cold and
+relentless stars.... Now he was standing by a dark, hurrying river,
+nothing else was visible; and yet he was thrilled by a sense of utter
+rapture.</p>
+
+<p>He developed a feeling of the impermanence of life, his hold upon it no
+stronger than the tenuous cord of a balloon straining impatiently in
+great, unknown currents. The future lost all significance, reality;
+there were only memories; the vista behind was long and clear, but the
+door to to-morrow was shut. Looking into his mirror the reflection was
+far removed; it was hollow-cheeked and silvered, unfamiliar. He half
+expected to see a different face, not less lean, but more arrogant, with
+a sharply defined chin. The actual, blurred visage accorded ill with his
+trains of thought; it was out of place among the troops of gala youth.</p>
+
+<p>A wired letter, a customary present of cigarettes, came from Mariana on
+Christmas, gifts from Charlotte and Bundy Provost. There was champagne
+at his place for dinner; and he sealed crisp money in envelopes
+inscribed Rudolph, Honduras, and the names of the cook and maid. He
+drank the wine solemnly; the visions were gone; and he saw himself as an
+old man lingering out of his time, alone. There was, however, little
+sentimental melancholy in the realization; he held an upright pride, the
+inextinguishable accent of a black Penny. His disdain for the
+commonality of life still dictated his prejudices. He informed Rudolph
+again that the present opera was without song; and again Rudolph gravely
+echoed the faith that melody was the heart of music.</p>
+
+<p>The winds grew even higher, shriller; the falls of snow vanished before
+drenching, brown rains, and the afternoons perceptibly lengthened. There
+was arbutus on the slopes, robins, before he recognized that April was
+accomplished. A farmer ploughed the vegetable garden behind the house;
+and Honduras dragged the cedar bean poles from their resting place.
+Mariana soon appeared.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wouldn't miss the spring at Shadrach for a hundred years of
+hibiscus,&quot; she told him. He gathered that she had been south. She
+brought him great pleasure, beat him with annoying frequency at sniff,
+and was more companionable than ever before. She had, he thought, forgot
+James Polder; and he was careful to avoid the least reference to the
+latter. Mariana was a sensible girl; birth once more had told.</p>
+
+<p>She was better looking than he had remembered her, more tranquil; a
+distinguished woman. It was incredible that a man approximately her
+equal had not appeared. Then, without warning&mdash;they were seated on the
+porch gazing through the tender green foliage of the willow at the
+vivid young wheat beyond&mdash;she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howat, I am certain that things are going badly with Jimmy. He wrote to
+me willingly in the winter, but twice since then he hasn't answered a
+letter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He suppressed a sharp, recurrent concern. &quot;It's that Harriet,&quot; he told
+her, capitally diffident. &quot;You are stupid to keep it up. What chance
+would he have had answering her letters married to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This is different,&quot; she replied confidently. He saw that he had been
+wrong&mdash;nothing had changed, lessened. Howat swore silently. That
+damnable episode might well spoil her entire existence. But he wisely
+avoided argument, comment. A warm current of air, fragrant with apple
+blossoms, caught the ribbon-like smoke of his cigarette and dissipated
+it. She smiled with half-closed eyes at the new flowering of earth. Her
+expression grew serious, firm. &quot;I think we'd better go out to
+Harrisburg,&quot; she remarked, elaborately casual, &quot;and see Jimmy for
+ourselves.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He protested vehemently, but&mdash;from experience in that quarter&mdash;with a
+conviction of futility. &quot;She'll laugh at you,&quot; he told Mariana. &quot;Haven't
+you any proper pride?&quot; She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not a scrap. It's just that quality in Jim that annoyed me, and spoiled
+everything. I'd cook for them if it would do any good.&quot; Irritation
+mastered him. &quot;This is shameful, Mariana,&quot; he declared. &quot;Don't your
+position, your antecedents, stand for anything? If I had Jasper Penny
+here I would tell him what I thought of his confounded behaviour!&quot; He
+rose, and walked the length of the porch and back.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The first part of next week?&quot; she queried. &quot;I won't go a mile,&quot; he
+stated, in sheer bravado. &quot;Then,&quot; said Mariana, &quot;I must do it alone.&quot; He
+muttered a period in which the term hussy was solely audible. &quot;Which of
+us?&quot; she asked, calmly. &quot;Actually,&quot; he exploded, &quot;I feel sorry for that
+Harriet. I sympathize with her. She got the precious James fair enough,
+and the decent thing for you is to keep away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I'm not decent either,&quot; Mariana continued. &quot;If you could know what
+is in my head you'd recognize that. I seem to have no good qualities. I
+don't want them, Howat,&quot; her voice intensified; &quot;I want Jim.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was completely silenced by this desire persisting in spite of every
+established obstacle. It summoned an increasing response at the core of
+his being. Such an attitude was, more remotely, his own; but in him it
+had been purely negative, an inhibition rather than a challenge; he had
+kept out of life instead of actively defying it. In him the family
+inheritance of blackness was subsiding with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Howat maintained until the moment of their departure his protest, his
+perverse community with Harriet Polder. &quot;You'll find a happy house,&quot; he
+predicted, &quot;and come home like a fool. I hope you do. It ought to help
+make you more reasonable. She will tell James to give you a comfortable
+chair, and apologize for not asking you to dinner.&quot; She gazed through
+the car window without replying. He realized that he had never seen
+Mariana more becomingly dressed&mdash;she wore a rough, silver-coloured suit
+with a short jacket, a pale green straw hat, like the new willow leaves,
+across the blueness of her eyes, and an innumerably ruffled and flounced
+waist of thinnest batiste. A square, deep emerald hung from a platinum
+chain about her neck; and a hand, stripped of its thick white glove,
+showed an oppressive, prismatic glitter of diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was filled with dense, low, grey cloud, under which the
+river on their left flowed without a glimmer of brightness. Howat was
+aware of an increasing sulphurous pall, and suddenly the train was
+passing an apparently endless confusion of great, corrugated iron sheds,
+rows of towering, smoking stacks, enormous, black cylinders, systems of
+tracks over which shrilling locomotives hauled carloads of broken slag,
+or bumped strings of trucks, with reckless energy, in and out of the
+grimy interiors. The overpowering magnitude of the steel works&mdash;Howat
+Penny needed no assurance of its purpose&mdash;exceeded every preconception.</p>
+
+<p>Shut between the river and an abrupt hillside, where scattered dwellings
+and sparse trees and ground were coated with a soft monotony of
+rose-brown dust, the mills were jumbled in mile-long perspectives.
+Above the immediate noise of the train he could hear the sullen, blended
+roar of an infinity of strident sounds&mdash;the screaming of whistles, a
+choked, drumming thunder, rushing blasts of air, the shattering impact
+of steel rails, raw steam, and a multitudinous clangour of metal and
+jolting wheels and connective power. He passed rusting mountains
+straddled by giant gantries, the towering lifts of mammoth cranes, banks
+of chalk-white stone, dizzy super-structures mounted by spasmodic skips.</p>
+
+<p>As the train proceeded with scarcely abated speed, and the vast
+operation continued without a break, mill on mill, file after file of
+stacks, Howat Penny's senses were crushed by the spectacle of such
+incredible labour. Suddenly a column of fire, deep orange at the core,
+raying through paler yellow to a palpitating white brilliancy, shot up
+through the torn vapours, the massed and shuddering smoke, to the
+clouds, and was sharply withdrawn in a coppery smother pierced by a
+rapid, lance-like thrust of steel-blue flame.</p>
+
+<p>These stupendous miles were, to-day, the furnaces and forges that
+Gilbert Penny had built and operated in the pastoral clearings of the
+Province. Howat recalled the single, diminutive shed of Myrtle Forge,
+the slender stream, the wheel, its sole power; the solitary stack of
+Shadrach Furnace, recreated in his vision, opposed its insignificant
+bulk against the living greenery of overwhelming forests. Now the
+forests were gone, obliterated by the mills that had grown out of
+Gilbert's energy and determination, his pioneer courage. His spirit, the
+indomitable will of a handful of men, a small, isolated colony, had
+swept forward in a resistless tide, multiplying invention, improvement,
+with success until, as Howat had seen, their flares reached to the
+clouds, their industry spread in iron cities. James Polder had a part in
+this. Here, under the ringing walls of the steel mills, he got a fresh
+comprehension of the bitter, restless virility of the younger man.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the station Mariana furnished the driver of a public motor with
+James Polder's address, and they twisted through congested streets, past
+the domed Capitol, rising from intense green sod, flanked by involved
+groups of sculpture, to a quieter reach lying parallel with the river.
+They discovered Polder's house occupying a corner, one of a short row of
+yellow brick with a scrap of lawn bound by a low wall, and a porch
+continuous across the face of the dwellings.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened after a long interval, and a woman with bare arms and a
+spotted kitchen apron admitted them to an interior faintly permeated
+with the odours of cooking. There were redly varnished chairs, upright
+piano, a heavily framed saccharine print of loves and a flushed,
+sleeping divinity; a table scarred by burning cigarettes, holding cerise
+knitting on needles one of which was broken, glasses with dregs of beer,
+a photograph in a tarnished silver frame of Harriet de Barry Polder
+with undraped shoulders and an exploited dimple, and a copy of a
+technical journal. A fretful, shrill barking rose at their heels; and
+Howat Penny swung his stick at a diminutive, silky white dog with
+matted, pinkish eyes, obsessed by an impotent fury.</p>
+
+<p>An indolent voice drifted from above. &quot;Cherette!&quot; And a low, masculine
+protest was audible. Mariana Jannan's face was inscrutable. The woman
+continued audibly, &quot;How can I&mdash;like this? You will have to see what it
+is.&quot; A moment later James Polder, drawing on a coat, descended the
+stairs. He saw Mariana at once, and stood arrested with one foot on the
+floor, and a hand clutching the rail. A sudden pallor invaded his
+countenance and Howat turned away, inspecting the print. But he could
+not close his hearing to the suppressed eagerness, the stammering joy,
+of Polder's surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you, too,&quot; he said to the elder, with a crushing grip. Howat
+immediately recognized that the other was marked by an obvious ill
+health; his eyes were hung with shadows, like smudges of the iron dust,
+and his palm was hot and wet. &quot;Harriet,&quot; he called up the stair, &quot;here's
+Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny to see us.&quot; A complete silence above,
+then a sharp rustle, replied to his announcement. &quot;Harriet will be right
+down,&quot; he continued; &quot;fixing herself up a little first. Have trouble
+finding us? Second Street is high for a foreman, but we're moving out
+against the future.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The dog maintained a stridulous barking; and James Polder carried her,
+in an ecstasy of snarling ill-temper, out. &quot;Cherette doesn't appreciate
+callers,&quot; he stated, with an expression that contradicted the mildness
+of his words. His gaze, Howat thought, rested on Mariana with the
+intensity of a fanatic Arab at the apparition of Mohammed. And Mariana
+smiled back with a penetrating comprehension and sympathy. The
+proceeding made Howat Penny extremely uncomfortable; it was&mdash;was
+barefaced. He hoped desperately that something more appropriately casual
+would meet the appearance of Harriet. Mariana said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You haven't been well.&quot; Polder replied that it was nothing. &quot;I get a
+night shift,&quot; he explained, &quot;and I've never learned to sleep through the
+day. We're working under unusual pressure, too; inhuman contracts,
+success.&quot; He smiled without gaiety. &quot;You didn't answer my letter,&quot; the
+outrageous Mariana proceeded. Howat withered mentally at her cool
+daring, and Polder, now flushed, avoided her gaze. The necessity of
+answer was bridged by the descent of his wife. Her face, as always,
+brightly coloured, was framed in an instinctively effective twist of
+gold hair; and she wore an elaborately braided, white cloth skirt, a
+magenta georgette cr&ecirc;pe waist, with a deep, boyish collar, drawn tightly
+across her full, soft body.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Isn't it fierce,&quot; she demanded cheerfully, &quot;with Jim out as many nights
+as he's in bed?&quot; She produced a pasteboard package of popular
+cigarettes and offered them to Howat Penny and Mariana. &quot;Sorry, I can't
+smoke any others,&quot; she explained, striking a match. &quot;I heard you saying
+he doesn't look right,&quot; she addressed Mariana. &quot;And it's certainly the
+truth. Who would with what he does? I tell him our life is all broke up.
+One night stands used to get me, but they're a metropolitan run compared
+with this. Honest to God,&quot; she told them good naturedly, &quot;I've
+threatened to leave him already. I'd rather see him a property man with
+me on the road.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be a little wearing,&quot; Mariana agreed; &quot;but then, you know, your
+husband is a steel man. This is his life.&quot; Howat Penny could see the
+cordiality ebbing from the other woman's countenance. Positively,
+Mariana ought to be ... &quot;I can get that,&quot; Harriet Polder informed her.
+&quot;We are only hanging on till Jim's made superintendent. Then we'll be
+regular inhabitants. Any other small thing?&quot; At the sharpening note of
+her voice James Polder hurriedly proceeded with general facts. &quot;You'll
+want to see the Works, as much as I can show you. Hardly any of the
+public are let through now. It will interest you, sir, to see what the
+Penny iron trade has become. I can take you down this afternoon. Harriet
+will find us some lunch.&quot; The latter moved in a sensuous deliberation,
+followed by a thin, acidulous trail of smoke, into inner rooms. &quot;When do
+you have to go back?&quot; Polder asked.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This evening,&quot; Howat told him; &quot;we just stopped to&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To see how you were,&quot; Mariana interrupted him baldly, studying the
+younger man with a concerned frown. &quot;You ought to rest, you know,&quot; she
+decided. &quot;That's possible,&quot; he returned. &quot;I thought of asking for a
+couple of weeks. I hurried back right after I was married. They are
+coming to me.&quot; She enigmatically regarded Howat Penny; he saw that she
+was about to speak impetuously; but, to his great relief, she stopped.
+&quot;It's been pretty hard on Harriet,&quot; he said instead. &quot;After the stage
+and audiences, and all that.&quot; Mariana's expression was cold. Confound
+her, why didn't she help the fellow! Howat Penny fidgeted with his
+stick. What a stew Polder had gotten himself into. This was worse, even,
+than the marriage threatened.</p>
+
+<p>Lunch was a spasmodic affair of cutlets hardening in grease, blue boiled
+potatoes, sandy spinach and blanched ragged bread. There was more beer;
+but Jim, his wife proceeded, liked whiskey and water with his meals. The
+former glanced uneasily at Mariana, tranquilly cutting up her cutlet.
+The diamonds on her narrow, delicate hand flashed, the emerald at her
+throat was superb. Their surroundings were doubly depressing contrasted
+with her fastidious dress and person. Before her composure Harriet
+Polder seemed over-florid; a woman of trite phrases, commonplace,
+theatrical attitudes and emotions. As lunch progressed the latter
+relapsed into a sulky silence; she glanced surreptitiously at Mariana's
+apparel; and consumed cigarettes with a straining assumption of easy
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny was acutely uncomfortable, and Polder scowled at his plate.
+The whiskey and water shook in a tense, unsteady hand. He rose from the
+table with a violent relief. He proposed almost immediately that they go
+over to the Works, and Mariana turned pleasantly to his wife. &quot;Shall you
+get a hat?&quot; The other hesitated, then asserted defiantly, &quot;I've always
+said I wouldn't go into that rackety place, and I won't now. It's bad
+enough to have it tramped back over things.&quot; Mariana extended a hand.
+&quot;Then good-bye,&quot; she proceeded. &quot;I think we won't get back here. We're
+tremendously obliged for the lunch. It has been interesting to see where
+Jim lives.&quot; Harriet Polder's cheeks were darker than pink as they moved
+out to the sidewalk. &quot;Jim,&quot; she called, with an unmistakably proprietary
+sounding of the familiar diminution; &quot;don't forget my cigarettes, and a
+half pound of liver for Cherette.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI" />XXXI</h2>
+
+<p>James Polder conducted them to the river, sweeping away in a wide curve
+beneath solid grey stone bridges into a region of towering hills. They
+turned to the left, and, walking on a high embankment, passed blocks of
+individually pretentious dwellings, edifices of carved granite,
+alternating with the simpler brick faces of an older period. A narrow,
+whitely dusty sweep of green park was followed by a speedy degeneration
+of the riverside; the houses shrunk to rows of wood marked by the grime
+of steel mills. Soon after they reached a forbidding fence; and, passing
+a watchman's inspection, entered into a clamorous region of sheds,
+tracks and confusing levels such as Howat Penny had viewed from the
+train.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'm in the open hearth,&quot; Polder told them, leading the way over a
+narrow boardwalk, still skirting the broad expanse of the river. &quot;It's a
+process, really, but the whole mill is called after it. We make steel
+from iron scrap; that's our specialty in the Medial Works; and our
+stuff's as good as the best. The bigger concerns mostly use pig. Turn in
+here.&quot; They were facing the towering end of an iron shed, and mounted a
+steep ascent to gain the upper entrance. The multiplication of noises
+beat in an increasing volume about Howat Penny. Below him a locomotive
+screeched with a freight of slag; beyond was a heap of massive, broken
+moulds; and a train of small trucks held empty iron boxes beside an
+enormous bank of iron scrap dominated by a huge crane swinging a
+circular magnet that dispassionately picked up ton loads and bore them
+to the waiting cars.</p>
+
+<p>Inside he gazed through a long vista under a roof lost in tenebrious
+shadow. On one side were ranged the furnaces, a continuous bank of brick
+bound in iron; each furnace with five doors, closed with black slides in
+which a round opening emitted an intolerable, dazzling white glare. But
+few men, Howat thought, were visible in proportion to the magnitude of
+the work; deliberately engaged, with leather shields hanging from their
+wrists and blue spectacles pushed up on their grimy brows.</p>
+
+<p>A crane advanced with the shrill racket of an electric gong, its
+operator caged in midair, and herculean grappling chains swinging. A
+grinding truck, filling the width of floor, moved forward to where Howat
+stood. It was, Polder told him, the charging machine. An iron beam
+projected opposite the furnace doors, and it was locked into one of the
+charging boxes, filled with scrap metal, standing on the rails against
+the furnaces. A man behind him dragged forward a lever, the slide which
+covered a door rose ponderously on a blinding, incandescent core, and
+the beam thrust forward into the blaze, turning round and round in the
+emptying of the box. It was withdrawn, the slide dropped, and the
+machine retreated, its complex movements controlled by a single engineer
+at crackling switches where the power leaped in points of light like
+violets.</p>
+
+<p>At another furnace, an opened door, where the heat poured out in a
+constricting blast, workmen were shovelling in powdery white stone;
+moving up with their heads averted, and quickly retreating with
+shielding arms. &quot;That's dolomite,&quot; James Polder's explanations went
+rapidly forward. &quot;They are banking up the furnace. The other, in the
+bins, is ferro manganese.&quot; He procured a pair of spectacles; and, with a
+protected gaze, Howat looked into a furnace, an appalling space of
+apparently bubbling milk over which played sheets of ignited gases. The
+skin on his forehead shrivelled like scorching paper.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I particularly wanted you to see a heat tapped,&quot; Polder told Mariana.
+&quot;And they're making a test at number four.&quot; They followed him to where a
+small ladle of metal had been dipped out of a furnace. It was poured,
+with a red-gold shower of sparks, into a mould, then dropped in a trough
+of water. The miniature ingot, broken under the wide sweep of a sledge,
+was examined by a lean, grizzled workman&mdash;&quot;the melter&quot;&mdash;who nodded. &quot;We
+must get back of the furnace,&quot; Polder continued, indicating a narrow
+opening between brick walls through the unstopped chinks of which
+seethed the scorifying blaze.</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny stood at a railing, looking down into an apparent confusion
+of slag and cars, pits and gigantic ladles and upright moulds set upon
+circular bases. A crane rumbled forward, grappled a hundred-ton ladle, a
+fabulous iron pot, and petulantly deposited it under a channel extending
+out from the base of the furnace where they had been stationed. A
+workman steadied himself below their level and picked with a long iron
+bar at a plugged opening. It was, James Polder went on, the most
+dangerous moment of the process&mdash;&quot;sometimes the furnace blows out.&quot; The
+labour of tapping was prolonged until Howat was conscious of an
+oppressive tension. Workmen had gathered, waiting, in the pit. More
+appeared along the railing above. This was, he felt, the supreme, the
+dramatic, height of steel making. The men suddenly seemed puny,
+insignificant, before the stupendous, volcanic energy they had evoked.
+The tapping stopped. Polder commenced, &quot;It will be rammed out from the
+front&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A stunning white flare filled the far roof with a dazzling illumination;
+and, in a dull explosion, a terrific billowing of heat, a cataract of
+liquid steel burst out through lambent orange and blue flames. It
+poured, searing the vision, into the ladle, over which rosy clouds
+accumulated in a bank drifting through the great space of the shed.
+Nothing, Howat thought, could contain, control, the appalling expansion,
+the furious volume, of seething white metal. He was obliged to turn
+away, blinded by sheets of complementary green hanging before his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>The uproar subsided, the flooding steel became bluer, a solid stream
+curving into the black depths of the ladle. Vapours of green and sulphur
+and lilac shivered into the denser ruby smoke and rising silver spray.
+Polder called a warning into Mariana's ear, they drew back as a lump of
+coal was heaved up from the pit, into the ladle. A dull vermilion blaze
+followed, and Howat Penny partly heard an explanation&mdash;&quot;recarburizing.&quot;
+He could now see the steel bubbling up to the rim of the container. Men,
+Polder said shortly, had fallen in.... Utterly unthinkable. With a
+sudorific heat that drove them still farther back the slag boiling on
+the steel flowed in a gold cascade over a great lip into a second
+receptacle below. That was soon filled, and gorgeous streams and pools
+widened across the riven ground. The steel itself escaped in a milky
+incandescence. &quot;A wild heat,&quot; James Polder told them, pleased. &quot;The
+bottom of a furnace may drop out. I was almost caught in the pit at
+Cambria.&quot; The crane chains swung forward, picked up the ladle of molten
+metal, and shifted it through the air to a position over a circular
+group of moulds. There, a valve opened, the steel poured into a central
+pipe. &quot;Bottom-filled,&quot; Polder concluded, assisting Mariana over the
+precarious flooring; &quot;the metal rises into the ingot forms.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They descended again, by the blackened brick, box-like office of the
+superintendent, to the level of the pit, retraced the way over the
+boardwalk. They passed a cavernous interior, filled with a continuous
+crashing, where a great sheet of flushing steel was propelled over a
+system of rollers through a black, dripping compression. &quot;I can take you
+to the Senate,&quot; James Polder told them, once more outside; &quot;or the
+Engineers' Society. Dinner will be ready at the club.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He conducted them into the serious interior of a large, solidly
+constructed dwelling that had been transformed into a club. The dining
+room was already filling but they secured a small table against the
+wall. Across the floor ten or twelve men were gathered in a circle.
+Some, Howat thought, were surprisingly young for the evident authority
+in their manner, pronouncements; others were grey, weatherworn, men with
+immobile faces often lost, in the middle of a gay period, in a sudden
+gravity of thought, silent calculation. He saw the smooth, deft hands of
+draughtsmen, and scarred, powerful hands that, like James Polder's, had
+laboured through apprenticeship in pit and mill shop.</p>
+
+<p>He recognized that Polder was more drawn than he had first observed. He
+was sapped by the crushing entity of the steel works, the enormous heat
+and energy and strain of the open hearth. If the younger did not lay off
+he would, unquestionably, break. Nevertheless, Howat was totally
+unprepared for the amazing suggestion quietly advanced by Mariana.
+&quot;Jimmy,&quot; she said, &quot;couldn't you come to Shadrach for those two weeks?
+You'd find the quiet there wonderful. And any doctor will advise you to
+leave your family for a proper rest. I'm certain Howat would be as nice
+as possible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A sudden, patent longing leaped to James Polder's countenance. Actually
+he stuttered with a surprised delight. Damn it, there was nothing for
+him, Howat, to do but stare like a helpless idiot. He ought to say
+something, second Mariana's impudent invitation, at once. She ignored
+him, gazing intently at the younger man. He, too, meeting Mariana's
+eyes, had apparently totally forgot the unimportant presence of Howat
+Penny. And he had been married to his Harriet for a scant half year!
+Howat Penny thought mechanically of the Polders' depressing house, the
+odours of old cooking and cheap cigarettes, the feverish yapping of the
+silky animal, Cherette, with matted, pinkish eyes. The precipitant,
+prideful, young fool! Why hadn't he held onto the merest memory, the
+most distant chance in the world, of Mariana, rather than fling himself,
+his injured self-opinion, into this stew?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Don't say it can't be managed,&quot; she persisted. &quot;Anything may. It's
+absolutely necessary; you can get a prescription&mdash;two weeks of green
+valley and robins and country eggs. Howat will take your money from you
+at penny sniff, and I'll&mdash;I'll come out for dinner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Harriet thought of going back to the family,&quot; he replied; &quot;but it
+might&mdash;&quot; he turned at last to Howat Penny. &quot;Would you have me?&quot; he asked
+directly. What, in thunder, choice of reply did he have? Howat couldn't
+point out the shamelessness of such an arrangement. Harriet, it seemed,
+was not to be considered; just as if she were a merely disinterested
+connection. He issued a belated period to the effect that Shadrach was
+spacious and Rudolph a capable attendant. It was, he saw, sufficient.
+&quot;We can write,&quot; said Mariana. She endeavoured to caress Howat's hand,
+but he indignantly frustrated her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I'll have to get back to the hearth,&quot; James Polder announced
+regretfully. &quot;It's been wonderful,&quot; he told Mariana Jannan. Howat
+scraped his chair at the baldness of Polder's pleasure. &quot;Your work is
+tremendous, Jim,&quot; she replied; &quot;the only stirring thing I have ever
+known in a particularly silly world. But you mustn't let it run you,
+too, into steel rails. President Polder,&quot; she smiled brilliantly at him.
+&quot;Why not?&quot; queried James, the sanguine, at once defiant, haggard and
+intense.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII" />XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The following day Howat Penny was both weary and irritable. Mariana
+declared, remorsefully, that she had selfishly dragged him away from
+Shadrach; and proposed countless trivial amends, which he fretfully
+blocked. He had no intention of affording her such a ready escape from a
+sense, he hoped, of error and responsibility. Before dinner, however, he
+found himself walking with her over the deep green sod that reached to
+the public road below. A mock orange hedge enclosed his lawn, bounding
+the cross roads, the upper course leading to Myrtle Forge; and beyond
+they passed, on the left, the collapsed stone walls and fallen shingles
+of what, evidently, had been a small blacksmith's shed. Farther along
+they came to the sturdy shell of an old, single-room building, erected,
+perhaps, when Shadrach Furnace was new, with weeds climbing through the
+rotten floor, and a fragment of steps, rising to the mouldering peak of
+a loft, still clinging to a wall.</p>
+
+<p>Without definite purpose they turned from the public way into an
+overgrown path, banked with matted blackberry bushes, and were soon
+facing the remains of the Furnace. It had been solidly constructed of
+unmasoned stone, bound by iron rods, and its bulk was largely unaffected
+by time. The hearth had fallen in, choked by luxuriant greenery; but the
+blank sides mounted to meet the walled path reaching out to its top from
+the abrupt hill against which it had been placed. Before it foundations
+could still be traced; and above, a rectangle of windowless stone walls
+survived, roofless and desolate. An abandoned road turned up the hill,
+and they followed it to where they could gaze into the upper ruin and
+the Furnace top below. Everywhere nature had marked or twisted aside cut
+stone and wood with its living greenery. Farther down a pathlike level
+followed the side of the hill, ending abruptly in a walled fall, and a
+confusion of broken beams, iron braces, and section of a large,
+wheel-like circumference. Out beyond were other crumbling remains of old
+activity&mdash;a stone span across the dried course of a water way, and a
+wide bank, showing through a hardy vegetation the grey-brown
+inequalities of slag.</p>
+
+<p>The stillness, broken only by the querulous melody of a robin, and a
+beginning, faint piping of frogs, was amazingly profound after the
+roaring energy of the Medial Works. The decay of Shadrach Furnace showed
+absolute against the crashing miles of industry on the broad river. A
+breath of honeysuckle lifted to Howat Penny; the sky was primrose.
+Mariana moved closer to him and took his arm. They said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>A warm light was spilling across the darkening grass from the lower
+windows of his dwelling, blurring in a dusk under the high leafage of
+aged maples. The white roses were already in bud on the vine climbing
+the lattices at his door, and Mariana fixed one in his buttonhole.
+&quot;Howat,&quot; she said, &quot;it isn't as if you were doing it just for Jim, but
+for a man, any man, really sick. I'll not even ask you to think of it
+for me. He can sit on the porch and converse with your owls, and poke
+about over the hills.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat considered the advisability of attempting to extract a promise
+from her that she would stay away from Shadrach if James Polder was
+there. He considered it&mdash;very momentarily. The possibility, he asserted
+to himself, was without any alleviating circumstance. What, in heaven's
+name, would Charlotte think if, as it well might, the knowledge came to
+her that Mariana and a Polder&mdash;that name she never repeated&mdash;a married
+Polder without his wife, were poking over the hills together at
+Shadrach? She would have him, Howat, examined for lunacy. Mariana
+demanded too much. He told her this with the dessert.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's only the commonest charity,&quot; she repeated. Her attack rapidly
+veered. &quot;Howat,&quot; she asked, &quot;do you really dislike Jimmy?&quot; Certainly, he
+asserted, he&mdash;he disapproved of him ... altogether. A headstrong young
+donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life. He would have to make
+the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself. &quot;It
+is terrific,&quot; she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of
+having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands. &quot;Perhaps something
+can still be done,&quot; she said, frowning, increasing the dangers of his
+position. He managed, by a stubborn silence, to check further
+conversation in that direction; hoping, vainly, that James Polder
+couldn't come, that Harriet, sensibly, would insist on his accompanying
+her, or that Byron would solemnly intervene.</p>
+
+<p>Mariana, later displaying a letter, dispelled his wishes. &quot;It's been
+arranged quite easily,&quot; she told him. &quot;Harriet will go home. I'd like to
+be here when he arrives, but I can't. You'll be a dear, Howat, won't
+you?&quot; she begged. &quot;I'm certain James will give you no trouble. And do
+send him to bed early.&quot; At this he grew satirical, and she laughed in an
+unaccustomed, nervous manner that upset him surprisingly. Honduras drove
+her to the station the next morning; and, three days later, deposited
+James Polder on the worn stone threshold under the climbing rose.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner the younger man faced him squarely across the apricot glow
+of the lamp in the middle room. &quot;This is the third time I've come here
+without an invitation from you,&quot; he said directly. &quot;It was Mariana this
+last. I shut my mouth on what I'd once have crammed down your throat,
+and came like any puppy. It wasn't on account of my health, there are
+miles of quiet country; it wasn't&mdash;&quot; he hesitated, then went
+on&mdash;&quot;altogether because of Mariana. I wanted to watch you closer; I want
+to find out what you are like inside, so I might understand some&mdash;some
+other things better. I can get out if it's a rank failure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat issued a polite, general dissent. &quot;Now, right there,&quot; Polder
+stated; &quot;you don't want me; you'd rather I was a thousand miles away,
+dead. Well&mdash;why don't you say so?&quot; He had not the least conception of a
+decent reticence of address, Howat Penny thought, resentfully, at the
+discomfort aroused by the young man's sharp attack.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certain amenities,&quot; he observed coldly, &quot;have been accepted as
+desirable, as obligations for&mdash;&quot; he hesitated, casting about for a
+phrase that would not too conspicuously exclude James Polder. &quot;Say it,&quot;
+the latter burst out rudely, &quot;gentlemen. And you all stand about with
+one thing to say and another in your head.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A degree of perception is always admirable,&quot; Howat Penny instructed
+him. &quot;That's a nasty one,&quot; Polder acknowledged; &quot;but I got into it
+myself. I can see that.&quot; His hand, seared with labour, was pressed on
+the table; and the elder realized that, since he had witnessed a heat
+tapped, he was not so censorious of the broken nails, the lines of
+indelible black. He caught James Polder's gaze, and turned from its
+intense questioning. Young cheeks had no business to be so gaunt.
+Polder picked up the figurine in red clay, studied it with a troubled
+brow, and replaced it with a gesture of hopelessness. &quot;Possibly,&quot; Howat
+Penny unexpectedly remarked, &quot;possibly you find beauty in a piece of
+open hearth steel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's useful,&quot; Polder declared; &quot;it has a tensile strength. I know what
+it will do. This,&quot; he indicated the fragment of a grace razed over
+twenty-three hundred years before, &quot;is good for nothing that I see.&quot;
+Now, Howat told himself, it was merely a question of tensile strength.
+His old enthusiasms, his passionate admiration for the operas of
+Christopher Gluck, the enthusiasms and admirations of his kind, were
+being pushed aside for things of more obvious practicality. The very
+term that had distinguished his world, men of breeding, had been
+discarded. Individuals like James Polder, blunt of speech, contemptuous,
+labour scarred, were paramount to-day.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts, he realized, were a part of the questioning thrust on him
+by the intrusion of Mariana's unfortunate affair into his old age. She
+was always dragging him to a perplexing spectacle for which he had
+neither energy nor inclination. But he'd be damned if he would allow the
+importunities of the young man beyond the table to complicate further
+his difficulties, and he retired abruptly behind the <i>Saturday Review</i>.
+&quot;You'd better get along up,&quot; he said brusquely, after a little.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast at an end, they settled into a not uncomfortable, mutual
+silence. They smoked; James Polder unfolded newspapers which he
+neglected to read; Howat went through the periodicals with audible
+expressions of displeasure. He wondered when Mariana would appear.
+Mariana made a fool of him, that was evident; however, he would put his
+foot on any philandering about Shadrach. He could be as blunt as James
+Polder when the occasion demanded. After lunch the latter fell asleep in
+his chair on the porch, pallidly insensible of the sparkling flood of
+afternoon. Howat rose and went into the house. It was indecent to see a
+countenance so wearily unguarded, shorn of all protective aggression.
+Mariana walked in unannounced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why didn't you telephone for Honduras?&quot; he complained. &quot;Always some
+infernal difference in what you do.&quot; She frowned. &quot;Suddenly,&quot; she
+admitted, &quot;I wasn't in a hurry to get here. I almost went back.
+Idiotic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sensible, it seems to me,&quot; he commented. &quot;That Polder is asleep on the
+porch.&quot; She nodded, &quot;Splendid. And you needn't try to look fierce. I can
+see through you and out the back.&quot; He lit a cigarette angrily. &quot;Going to
+stay for the night?&quot; he demanded. &quot;Several,&quot; she replied coolly. &quot;Three
+can play sniff.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, Mariana,&quot; he proclaimed, &quot;I won't have any nonsense, do you
+understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We can keep a photograph of Harriet on the table.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>James Polder entered, and put a temporary end to his determined speech.
+When the former saw Mariana his shameless pleasure, Howat thought, was
+beyond credence. Positively neither of them paid any more attention to
+him than they did to Rudolph. His irritation gave place to a deeper
+realization that an impossible situation threatened. There was nothing,
+obviously, that he could do to-day; but he would speak seriously to
+Mariana to-morrow; one or both of them would have to leave Shadrach.
+This determination took the present weight from his conscience; and,
+pottering about small concerns of his own, he ignored them comfortably.</p>
+
+<p>They appeared late, dirty and hot, for dinner; and it was eight o'clock
+before Mariana came down in a gown like a white-petalled flower. She
+wore no rings, but about her throat was a necklace of old-fashioned seed
+pearls in loops and rosettes. &quot;It's family,&quot; she told them; &quot;it belonged
+to Caroline Penny. And she married a Quaker, too; a David Forsythe.&quot; She
+stopped suddenly, and Howat Penny recalled the tradition that Caroline
+Penny, Gilbert's daughter, had appropriated her sister Myrtle's suitor.
+Mariana favoured him with a fleet glance, the quiver of a reprehensible
+wink. He glared back at her choking with suppressed wrath. &quot;I have a
+wonderful idea for to-morrow,&quot; she proceeded tranquilly; &quot;we'll take
+lunch, and leave Honduras, and go to Myrtle Forge for the day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her design was unfolded so rapidly, her directions to Rudolph so
+explicit, that he had no opportunity to oppose his plan of sending her
+away in the morning; and his impotence committed him to her suggestion.
+She could go in the evening almost as well. After dinner he rattled the
+dominoes significantly, but Mariana, smiling at him absently, went
+through the room and out upon the porch. Polder, with an obscure
+sentence, followed her. A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there
+was no wind; the night was warm.</p>
+
+<p>Howat glanced at his watch, after a period of restful ease, and saw that
+it was past ten. He moved resolutely outside. Mariana was banked with
+cushions in the canvas swing, and Polder sat with his body extended, his
+hands clasped behind his head, in a gloomy revery. The night,
+apparently, had robbed her countenance of any bloom; more than once in
+the past year Howat had seen her stamped with the premonitory scarring
+of time. Polder rose as he approached, and Mariana struggled upright.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good night,&quot; she said ungraciously, to them both, and flickered away
+through the dark. James Polder was savagely biting his lips; his hands,
+the elder saw, were clenched. &quot;Your wife,&quot; Howat proceeded, &quot;how is
+she?&quot; Polder gazed at him stonily, without reply. &quot;I asked after your
+wife,&quot; Howat repeated irritably. &quot;No,&quot; the other at last said, &quot;you
+reminded me of her. I suppose you are right.&quot; He turned and walked
+abruptly from the porch, into the slowly dropping rain.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII" />XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The road to Myrtle Forge mounted between rolling cultivated fields, the
+scattered, stone ruins of walls erected in the earliest iron days; and,
+after a pastoral course, came to the Forge dwelling, its shuttered bulk
+set in a tangle of bushes and rank grass. An ancient beech tree swept
+the ground with smooth, grey limbs, surrounded by long-accumulated dead
+leaves. James Polder shut off the motor by the low, stone wall that
+supported the lawn from the roadway; he crossed to the farm, where the
+house keys were kept, and Howat and Mariana moved slowly forward. A
+porch, added, the former said, in Jasper Penny's time, extended at the
+left; and they stood on the broken flooring and gazed down at a
+featureless tangle once a garden and the gnarled remainder of a small
+apple orchard beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Polder soon returned, and they proceeded to a door on the further side,
+where the kitchen angle partly enclosed a flagging of broad stones.
+Inside, the house, empty of furnishing, was a place of echoes muffled in
+dust; the insidious, dank odours of corrupting wood and plaster; walls
+with melancholy, superimposed, stripping papers; older, sombrely
+blistered paint and panelled wainscoting varnished in an imitation,
+yellow graining. It was without a relic of past dignity. Mariana was
+unable to discover a souvenir of the generations of Pennys that had
+filled the rooms with the stir of their living. Once more outside they
+sat on the stone threshold of an office-like structure back of the main
+dwelling and indulged in cigarettes.</p>
+
+<p>The disturbing tension of last night, Howat thought comfortably, had
+vanished. Mariana was flippant, James Polder enveloped in indolent ease.
+&quot;The Forge,&quot; Howat Penny told them, &quot;was below.&quot; A path descended across
+a steep face of sparse grass; and, at the bottom, Polder's interest
+revived. &quot;It stood there,&quot; he indicated a fallen shed beyond a masoned
+channel, choked with the broken stones of its walls and tangled
+shrubbery. &quot;You don't suppose a joke that size was the great Gilbert's
+plant. Here's the drop for the water power; yes, and the iron pinions of
+the overshot wheel.&quot; He climbed down a precarious wall, and stood
+perhaps twelve feet below them. Securing a rough bolt, he brought it up
+for their inspection. &quot;Look at that forging,&quot; he cried; &quot;after it has
+lain around for a century and a half. Like silk. Charcoal iron, and it
+was hammered, too. Metal isn't half worked any more. We could turn that
+into steel at almost nothing a ton.&quot; He showed them in the mouldering
+shed the foundation of the anvil, traced the probable shafting of the
+trip hammer, marked the location of the hearths. &quot;Three,&quot; he decided;
+&quot;and a cold trickle of air. A nigger pumping a bellows, probably. No,
+they could get that from the wheel,&quot; he drew an explanatory diagram in
+the blackened dust.</p>
+
+<p>With the lunch basket on the running board of the motor they ate sitting
+on the low boundary wall of the lawn. The heat increased through the
+late May noon, and Howat remained while Mariana and James Polder
+wandered in the direction of the orchard. Finally the sun forced the
+former to move; and he, too, proceeded in a desultory manner, entering
+the shade of a grove of old maples. The trees, their earliest red
+leafage already emerald, followed the dry channel cut back from Canary
+Creek to the Forge, and he soon emerged at the broad, flashing course of
+the stream. A flat rock jutted into the hurrying water by an overthrown
+dam, its sun-heated expanse now in shadow; and he stayed, listening to
+the gurgling flow. Far above him a hawk wheeled in ambient space; a mill
+whistle sounded remotely from Jaffa.</p>
+
+<p>The thought of Mariana hovered at the back of his lulled being; all he
+desired, he told himself, was her complete happiness. He might even have
+become reconciled to James Polder. His first, unfavourable opinion of
+the latter, he realized, had been modified by&mdash;by time. He had judged
+Polder solely in the light of an old standard. The fellow was painfully
+honest; good stuff there, iron ... the iron of the Pennys. But the other
+strain had betrayed him. A cursed shame. The material of the present,
+moulded, perhaps, into seemingly new forms, was always that of the
+past. This Polder was Essie Scofield and Jasper ... Byron. He, Howat
+Penny, was Penny and Jannan and Penny&mdash;Daniel, James, Casimir, and Howat
+once more, the older Howat who had married the widow of Felix Winscombe.
+Black again. He wondered what the blackness, not spent like his own, had
+brought the other. A headstrong, dark youth with the characteristic
+sloping eyebrows and slender, vigorous, carriage. The traditional
+rebellious spirit had involved Jasper in disgrace; it had thinned his
+own blood.</p>
+
+<p>Footfalls approached through the trees, and the others joined him. James
+Polder extended himself on the rock, and Mariana sat with her hands
+clasped about her slim knees. A silence intensified by the whispering
+stream enveloped them. The hawk circled above, and Howat had an
+extraordinary sense of the familiarity of the bird hanging in limitless
+space, of the warm stone and water choking in a smooth eddy. He had, as
+a boy, fished there. But his brain momentarily swam with a poignant,
+unrecognizable emotion, different from the sensation of childhood. He
+rose, confused and giddy. With old age, he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>Mariana followed. &quot;It's all over,&quot; she announced, decisively. &quot;We'll
+drive back and leave to-day.&quot; She sighed. &quot;That's gone already,&quot; James
+Polder showed her the sun slipping toward the western hills. She moved
+up to him, laid her hand on his arm. Howat Penny went ahead. He must
+speak to her after dinner. As the motor slowly gathered momentum he
+turned and looked back at the dark, pinkish dwelling in its tangle of
+grass and bushes run wild. Dusk appeared to have already gathered over
+it, although the sun still shone elsewhere in lengthening dusty gold
+bars; the wide-spread beech was sombre against blank shutters, the
+chimneys broken and cold.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV" />XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>A letter for James Polder was at Shadrach, and he opened it immediately,
+glancing over its scrawled sheet. Howat saw a curious expression
+overspread the other's countenance. He called, &quot;Mariana!&quot; in a sharp
+tone. She appeared from the foot of the steps. &quot;Harriet never went
+home,&quot; he told her; &quot;this is from Pittsburgh. She's back on the stage.&quot;
+A premonitory dread filled Howat Penny. Mariana stood quietly, her gaze
+lifted to Polder. &quot;She never went home,&quot; he repeated; &quot;but writes that
+suddenly she&mdash;she didn't want to, and couldn't stand Harrisburg another
+week. She saw some one and had a part, that ought to be good, offered to
+her; and, so&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that all, Jim?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No,&quot; he replied; &quot;there is more, absolutely unjustified. I think I'd
+like you to read it. It would be best.&quot; Mariana took the letter, and
+followed its irregular course. &quot;It's true enough,&quot; she said quietly, at
+the end. &quot;But I don't in the least mind, Jim. She had a perfect right to
+something of the sort. That is&mdash;I'm not annoyed about what she says of
+me, but it will upset you terribly. And it has been my fault, from the
+first.&quot; He protested vehemently, but she stopped him with a gesture;
+then walked to the door opening on the porch; where, her head up, she
+stood gazing out into the serene, failing light.</p>
+
+<p>James Polder followed her, and Howat heard the screen softly close. He
+was about to light a cigarette, but, his hand shaking, he laid it on the
+table. He put up his glass, without purpose, and then let it drop.
+Rudolph was placing the silver for dinner; old forks faintly marked with
+a crest that Isabel Howat had brought to her husband. A recurrence of
+the afternoon's sense of the continuity of all living flowed over him,
+whispering with old voices, old longing and sorrow and regret, mingled
+dim features, and the broken clasping of hands. He saw Mariana sweeping
+in a pale current&mdash;a remote, eternal passion winding through the
+transient body of life. She smiled, her subdued, mocking gaiety
+infinitely appealing, and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>They came in to dinner without changing the informal garb of the day.
+James Polder was silent, disturbed, but Mariana was serenely
+commonplace. Her voice, clear and high, went unimportantly on; until,
+turning to Howat Penny, she said without the changing of a tone. &quot;I want
+James to take me back to Harrisburg with him, but he won't.&quot; Howat
+endeavoured to meet this insanity with the silence usually opposed to
+Mariana's frequent wildness of statement. His knife scraped sharply
+against a plate; but, in the main, he successfully preserved an unmoved
+countenance. &quot;Now that Harriet has surrendered Mm,&quot; she persisted, &quot;I
+don't see why I can't be considered. It is the commonest sense&mdash;Jim
+can't live alone, properly, in that house; I can't exist properly
+without him. You see, Howat, how reasonable it seems.&quot; What he did
+perceive was that his attitude of inattention must be sharply deserted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your words, Mariana,&quot; he said coldly, &quot;'proper' and 'reasonable,' in
+the connection you have used them, would be ridiculous if they weren't
+disgraceful. I have been patient with a certain amount of rash talk,
+yes&mdash;and conduct, but this must be the end. I had intended to have you
+leave Shadrach this morning, then later. Either that or I'll be forced
+to make my excuses to James Polder.&quot; He glanced with a veiled anxiety at
+the latter but could read nothing from the lowered, pinched countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We could leave together if you are tired of us,&quot; Mariana continued.
+&quot;It's James, really, who is making all the trouble. He has some stupid
+idea about nobility of conduct and my best good. But the real truth is
+that he's afraid, for me, of course, and so he won't listen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Won't you show her that it is impossible?&quot; the younger man cried at
+Howat Penny. &quot;I can't take advantage of her heavenly courage. She
+doesn't realize the weight of opinion. It would make&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stuff,&quot; she interrupted. &quot;You'd make steel, and I would make an
+occasional dessert. You must be told, Jimmy, that the afternoon calling
+you have confused with life really isn't done any more. You have been
+brought up in rather a deadly way. You ought to be saved from yourself.
+I am a very mature person, and I am advising you calmly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The dinner had come to an end; a decanter, in old-fashioned blue and
+gold cutting, of brandy, a silver basket of oranges, the coffee cups and
+glasses, were all that remained; and James Polder played with the cut
+fruit, the half-full cordial glass before him. &quot;I am going to be
+brutally frank, Jimmy,&quot; she said again. &quot;You know that is a habit of
+mine, too. You are a very brilliant young man, but you are not
+omnipotent&mdash;you require stiffening, like a collar. And I would be a
+splendid laundress for you. Harriet is a long shot too lenient. I might
+not be so comfortable to live with, but I'd be bracing. I'd have you in
+that dirty little superintendent's box in no time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made no reply; and, obviously tormented, automatically squeezed a
+half orange into his goblet. Then he took a sip of brandy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Together, James,&quot; Mariana asserted, &quot;we would go up like a kite. By
+yourself&mdash;forgive me&mdash;you haven't enough patience, enough balance; you
+wouldn't fly steadily. You might break all your sticks on the ground.&quot;
+He moodily emptied what remained of his brandy into the goblet and
+orange juice, and pushed it impatiently away. &quot;I'd rather do that,&quot; he
+answered, &quot;than try to carry you with me on such a flight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny was conscious of a diminution of his fears. He had entirely
+underrated James Polder; the latter was an immense sight steadier than
+Mariana. His thoughts strayed momentarily to Harriet, back again in her
+public orbit. He could imagine that she had found Harrisburg insuperably
+dull, the hours with only Cherette empty after the emotional debauches
+of the plays elected by Vivian Blane. Yes, this young Polder would stand
+admirably firm. Mariana frowned at the cobalt smoke of her cigarette. &quot;I
+am in a very bad temper,&quot; she told them. &quot;No one for a minute thinks of
+what my feeling may be. You are both entirely concerned with your own
+nice sense of virtue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all, but of your future,&quot; Howat Penny asserted.</p>
+
+<p>Her lower lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently
+capable. She made no immediate reply. James Polder's fingers absently
+clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the
+thick liquid it contained. &quot;Just what do you recommend me to do?&quot;
+Mariana challenged Howat. &quot;Go through with a lifeful of winters like the
+last! Marry another Sam Lewis! I am not celebrated for reliability; it
+is only with Jimmy&mdash;&quot; she broke off. Howat Penny recalled her callous
+expression, photographed in Egyptian dress at a period ball, her
+description of the hard riding and reckless parties of the transplanted
+English colonies in the south.</p>
+
+<p>Polder lifted the goblet to his lips, but set it back untasted. Howat
+looked away from Mariana's scornful interrogation, unable to reply.
+Finally, &quot;I am old, as you once reminded me,&quot; he stated; &quot;I'm out of my
+time, don't understand, I can only remember, and remembering isn't any
+longer of use. The men I knew, the kind, I hope, I was, would ruin
+themselves a hundred times before compromising a woman. Polder appears
+to understand that. And women I had the privilege of meeting sacrificed
+themselves with a smile for what you dismiss as mere stupidity. God
+knows which is right. They looked the loveliest of creatures then. There
+was a standard, we thought high.... Things a man couldn't do. But I
+don't know&mdash;it seems so long ago.&quot; He stopped to watch James Polder take
+a sip of the mixture in his hand. The latter tasted it slowly, and then
+emptied the goblet. His face was blank, with eyes nearly closed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I could carry Jimmy up in my hands,&quot; Mariana said. &quot;Don't,&quot; she added
+vaguely, as he squeezed out the remaining half of his orange and poured
+fresh brandy into it. &quot;It's curious,&quot; he told her; &quot;not at all bad.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They moved out of the dining room, and Mariana and Polder continued to
+the porch. Howat stood with a hand resting on the mahogany cigarette
+box; he had the feeling of a man unexpectedly left by a train thundering
+into the distance. It would not stop, back, for him now; he was dropped.
+He sank relaxed into an accustomed chair; his brain surrendered its
+troubling; the waking somnolence settled over him. He was conscious of
+his surrounding, recognized its actuality; yet, at the same time, it
+seemed immaterial, like the setting of a dream. He roused himself after
+a little and smoked, nodding his head to emphasize the points of his
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>This Polder had shown the instinct of breeding; while Mariana was&mdash;just
+what she was he couldn't for the life of him determine. A hussy, he
+decided temporarily. After all, his own time, when black and white had
+been distinguishable, was best. Howat Penny relinquished, with a sigh,
+the effort to penetrate to-day; he was content to be left behind; out of
+the grinding rush, the dizzy speed, of progression. His day, when black
+had been black, was immeasurably superior; the women had been more
+charming, the men erect, clothed in proper garb and pride. Where, now,
+could be seen such an audience as Dr. Damrosch had gathered for his
+first season of German opera? Not, certainly, at the performance he had
+heard with Mariana two, no&mdash;three, winters ago. A vulgarized performance
+in the spirit of a boulevard caf&eacute;. The whole present air, he told
+himself, was wrong.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that it was past ten.
+Not a sound came from the porch; and he determined to go outside,
+exercise the discretion which Mariana had cast to the winds. However, he
+didn't stir; he could not summon the energy necessary for the combating
+of their impetuous youth. He unfolded a paper, but it drooped on his
+knees, slid, finally, to the floor. Then Mariana appeared, walked
+swiftly, without a word, through the room, and vanished upstairs. Not
+even a civil period at the end of the evening. After another, long wait
+James Polder entered. The latter stood uneasily by the table, with a
+furrowed brow, a ridiculous, twitching mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Polder went out into the dining room; where, through the doorway, Howat
+Penny could see him hovering over the silver basket of oranges, placed
+upon the sideboard. &quot;If you don't mind,&quot; he called back, and there were
+a rattle of knives, a thin ring of glass. The light was dim beyond, and
+he stood in the doorway with the brandy decanter and orange juice. He
+drained the mixture and leaned, absorbed, against the woodwork. &quot;This is
+a hell of a world!&quot; he exclaimed suddenly. &quot;Everything worth having is
+fenced off. A woman won't understand. Does any one suppose that I don't
+want Mariana! It's the responsibility. She's right&mdash;I am afraid of it.
+And she laughed at me. Nothing cowardly in her,&quot; his voice deepened.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is ignorance,&quot; Howat stated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought so, for a minute; you are wrong. She's had more experience
+than we'd get in a thousand years. The life she knows would fix that.
+She talked me into a tangled foolishness in five minutes; made me look
+like a whiskered hypocrite. Nothing I said sounded real, and yet I must
+be right. Suppose Harriet should turn nasty, suppose&mdash;oh, a thousand
+things.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It isn't arguable,&quot; Howat Penny agreed.</p>
+
+<p>This afforded the other no consolation. &quot;What is she to do?&quot; he
+demanded. &quot;Mariana won't settle quietly against a wall. She told you
+that. She's full of&mdash;of a sort of energy that must be at something.
+Mariana hasn't the anchor of most women&mdash;respectability.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Am I to gather that that is no longer considered admirable?&quot; the elder
+inquired. &quot;If you gather anything you are lucky,&quot; Polder replied
+gloomily. &quot;I'm not sure about my own name. Good-night,&quot; he disappeared
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Above, Howat slowly made his preparations for retiring, infinitely
+weary. Waking problems fell from him like a leaden weight into the sea
+of unconsciousness. He was relieved, at breakfast, to see Mariana come
+down in a hat, with the jacket of her suit on an arm. He waited for her
+to indicate the train by which she was leaving, so that he could tell
+Honduras to have the motor ready; but she sat around in a dragging
+silence. Polder walked up and down the room in which they were gathered.
+Howat wished he would stop his clattering movement. An expression of
+ill-nature deepened in Mariana; she looked her ugliest; and James Polder
+was perceptibly fogged from a lack of sleep. Finally he said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Look here, we can't go on like this.&quot; He stopped in front of Mariana,
+with a quivering face. She raised her eyebrows. &quot;Come outside,&quot; he
+begged. &quot;What's the use?&quot; she replied; but, at the same time, she rose.
+&quot;Don't get desperate, Howat,&quot; she said over her shoulder. &quot;Even I can't
+do any more; I can only take my shamelessness back to Andalusia.&quot; Polder
+held open the screen door; and as, without her jacket, she went out,
+Howat Penny had a final glimpse of the man bending at her side. Like two
+fish in a net, he thought ungraciously. He was worn out by their
+infernal flopping. With a determined movement of his shoulders, a fixing
+of his glass, he turned to the accumulation of his papers.</p>
+
+<p>Later he heard the changing gears of a motor. He thought for a moment
+that it was Honduras at his own car; then he recognized the stroke of a
+far heavier engine. The powerful, ungraceful bulk of an English machine
+was stopping at his door. Immediately after he distinguished the
+slightly harsh, dominating voice of Peter Provost. The latter entered,
+followed by Kingsfrere Jannan. Peter Provost, a member of the New York
+family and connection of the Jannans, had, since the elder Jannan's
+death, charge of the family's interest in the banking firm of Provost,
+Jannan and Provost. He occupied, Howat knew, a position of general
+advisor to Charlotte and her children. He was a large man who had never
+lost the hardness of a famous university career in the football field,
+with a handsome, cold countenance and spiked, grey moustache. He shook
+hands with Howat Penny, and plunged directly into his present purpose.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Kingsfrere,&quot; he said, &quot;has heard some cheap stuff in the city,
+principally about that young Polder married last fall. Personally, I
+laughed at it, but Charlotte seemed upset. This Polder's wife, an
+actress, has left her husband, and gone back to the stage because&mdash;so
+Byron asserted; you know Byron&mdash;Mariana had broken up their home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Old Polder said just that,&quot; Kingsfrere affirmed. &quot;And that wasn't
+all&mdash;he added that Mariana was out here with the fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Provost laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well,&quot; Howat Penny replied, &quot;James Polder is staying at Shadrach. He
+was asked here because his health was threatening. He had two weeks
+leave; and, although I wasn't really anxious, I said he might recuperate
+with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And Mariana?&quot; Provost inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Came out day before yesterday, late; leaving this morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny was conscious of a growing anger. There was no reason for
+his submitting to an interrogation by Peter Provost; he didn't have to
+justify his actions, the selection of his guests; and he had no
+intention of explaining his attitude toward Mariana. But Provost, it
+became evident, had no inclination to be intrusive. It was, he made that
+clear, wholly Charlotte. But Kingsfrere Jannan was increasingly
+impatient. &quot;Where is Polder?&quot; he demanded. Howat surveyed him with
+neither favour nor reply. Suddenly he understood the feeling of both
+men&mdash;they considered that he was too old to have any grip or
+comprehension of life. They were quietly but obviously relegating him to
+the back of the scene. His anger mounted; he was about to make a sharp
+reply, when he paused. There was a possibility that they were right; he
+was, undoubtedly, old; and he had been unable to influence, turn,
+Mariana, in the slightest degree. He didn't approve of her present,
+head-strong course ... only a few hours ago he had voluntarily, gladly,
+relinquished all effort to comprehend it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps,&quot; Provost suggested, &quot;since we are here we'd better talk to
+him. I suppose they're out about the place. You could send Rudolph.&quot;
+Howat replied that he would find them himself. He wanted, now, to
+prepare James Polder for any incidental unpleasantness. The latter, he
+knew, had a hasty temper, a short store of patience. After all, he had
+acted very well in a difficult situation. It had been Mariana. Howat
+Penny was aware of a growing sympathy for young Polder. His was a more
+engaging person than Kingsfrere's pasty presence and sharp reputation at
+cards. He got his hat, and went out over the thick, smooth sod, into the
+slumberous, blue radiance of the early summer noon.</p>
+
+<p>He found Mariana and James Polder sitting on a bank by the Furnace.
+&quot;Peter Provost's here with Kingsfrere,&quot; he told them quietly. &quot;They want
+to see.... James, about some nonsense bantered around town.&quot; Polder
+rose quickly, instantly antagonistic. &quot;At the house?&quot; he demanded,
+already moving away. Mariana stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
+&quot;Don't pay any attention to what they may say, Jimmy,&quot; she commanded.
+&quot;It isn't Peter Provost's affair, and Kingsfrere in a fatherly pose is a
+scream.&quot; They moved forward together. &quot;I'll see them,&quot; she added
+cuttingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I will attend to this,&quot; James Polder told her. &quot;I don't want any woman
+explaining my actions. They haven't a whisper on me. I'm glad enough of
+an opportunity to talk to a man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you lose your temper&mdash;&quot; Howat commenced, but Mariana impatiently
+interrupted him. &quot;Why shouldn't Jim lose his temper?&quot; she demanded. &quot;I
+would. Personally, I'd be glad if he did, although it mightn't be
+fortunate for Kingsfrere. He's a good deal of a dumpling. But I will be
+furious if you look guilty. Tell them we're mad about each other and
+that I am waiting for the smallest encouragement to go with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Howat Penny left Mariana at the door, and went in with Polder. Provost
+was seated, with an open paper; Kingsfrere studying the photograph of
+Scalchi. &quot;This,&quot; said Howat generally, &quot;is my guest, James Polder.&quot;
+Peter Provost extended his square, powerful hand; but the other, Jannan,
+made no movement. &quot;Well?&quot; Polder demanded aggressively. Howat Penny
+proceeded through the room to the porch, where he met Mariana. They
+walked to the further end and found chairs. &quot;What makes me sick,&quot;
+Mariana proceeded, &quot;is the way men calmly take everything into their own
+hands; as if women were still tied up, naughty bundles. Jim will have
+all the fun, and he has only said 'no' in horrified tones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Again he could think of no adequate reply. He listened in vain for the
+sound of raised voices within. &quot;What, in heaven's name, brought them?&quot;
+Howat told her what he had heard. &quot;I'm glad I did break up that mess
+they called a home,&quot; she asserted. &quot;It was rotten with stale beer and
+half pounds of liver for that disgusting animal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The heat increased in waves; a wagon passing on the road below was
+enveloped in a cloud of dust. &quot;I wish they'd hurry,&quot; Mariana said
+sharply. Howat Penny thought he heard Kingsfrere speaking in abrupt
+periods. Then a chair scraped, and Peter Provost's deliberate voice
+became audible. It was, however, impossible to distinguish his words;
+but suddenly Polder exclaimed, &quot;Say something I can pound into you.&quot;
+Mariana rose, her hands clenched. &quot;Go back to your mouldy little life!&quot;
+James Polder continued. &quot;I'm not surprised Miss Jannan wants to get out
+of it. I am sorry I hesitated. It seemed to me I couldn't offer her
+anything good enough; but that was before I'd listened to you.... And if
+you in particular come worming about me again I'll smash your flat
+face.&quot; The screen door was wrenched violently open, and James Polder
+strode up to Mariana. &quot;Suppose we get out of this slag pit,&quot; he said,
+his chest labouring; &quot;I can't breathe here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am ready, Jimmy,&quot; she replied quietly; &quot;perhaps Howat will look up a
+train and let Honduras drive us to the station.&quot; She laid her hand on
+his arm. &quot;Now we can forget them,&quot; she said. They turned, and, together,
+vanished into the house. Howat Penny followed them slowly. He found
+Peter Provost apparently undisturbed. &quot;Nothing to be done,&quot; the latter
+commented. &quot;I saw that immediately he turned up. Kingsfrere made a short
+effort, but it wasn't conspicuously successful; I imagine it rather
+worse than failed. God knows what's getting into these young women,
+Howat&mdash;Eliza and the rest of 'em&mdash;it's a gamble they don't. All right,
+Kingsfrere.&quot; Jannan lingered with a dark mutter, but the other
+unceremoniously drove him into the waiting car.</p>
+
+<p>Mariana soon descended, with Polder carrying two bags. &quot;One seven,&quot;
+Howat told them. In the extraordinary situation he found nothing
+adequate to say. Mariana might have been going unremarkably to Charlotte
+and her home; she was absolutely contained. James Polder had a dazed
+expression; without his companion, Howat thought, he would blunder into
+the walls. He stood, holding the bags until told to put them down.
+Honduras was soon at the door. Mariana moved forward, and mechanically
+Howat Penny made his customary pretence of avoiding her kiss. The warm
+fragrance of her lips remained long after she had gone.</p>
+
+<p>A pervasive stillness settled upon Shadrach; outside the sunlight lay on
+the hills in a thick, yellow veil; the cool interior held only the
+familiar crepitation of the old clock above. Now, he told himself, he
+could read the papers peacefully; but he sat with empty hands. Mariana
+had gone. &quot;Outrageous conduct,&quot; he said aloud, without conviction. His
+voice sounded thin, unfamiliar. His dreams of her continued superiority
+to the commonplace, of her fine aloofness like the elevation of the
+strains of <i>Orfeo</i>, had been utterly destroyed. He could not imagine a
+greater descent than the one which had overtaken her. As he rehearsed
+its details they seemed increasingly disgraceful. He could not forgive
+James Polder for his relapse, his shocking failure to maintain the
+standards, the obligations, bred into himself, Howat Penny, by so many
+years, and by blood. It was that miserable old business of Jasper's once
+more, blighting the present, betraying Mariana.</p>
+
+<p>This wheeled in his brain throughout summer. He had, as he expected, no
+word from her. Charlotte, too, sent no line; he was isolated in the
+increasing and waning heat, in a sea of greenery growing heavy and grey
+with dust, then swept by rain, and touched with the scarlet finality of
+frost. Rudolph lit again the hickory fires in the middle hearth; the
+days shortened rapidly; sitting before the glow of the logs he could
+see, through a western window, the afternoon expiring in a sullen red
+flame. The leaves streamed sibilantly by the eaves and accumulated in
+dry, russet heaps in angles and hollows; they burned in crackling fires,
+filling the air with a drifting haze rich with suggestion and memories.
+He saw the first snow on a leaden morning when the flexible and bald
+white covering, devoid of charm, held the significance of barrenness,
+death. All day this chilling similitude lingered in his mind. He walked
+about the house slowly, unpleasantly conscious of the striking of his
+feet on the wood floors.</p>
+
+<p>At Christmas a revival of spirit overtook him; a long letter came from
+Mariana, Bundy Provost sent him a tall silver tankard, with a lid, for
+his night table. Howat, polishing his glass with a maroon bandanna, read
+Mariana's letter in the yellow light of the lamp and burning logs.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been to see a new steel process,&quot; she wrote; &quot;the Duplex, with
+immense tilting furnaces and the Bessemer blast. I know a great deal
+about iron now; far more than a Howat Penny who should be an authority.
+Jim is frightfully busy, but lately he has been able to sleep after the
+night shift, which makes it better for every one. He is one of the best
+men here, and that comes from the Works, and the reorganization is
+slowly but surely progressing, and we are progressing with it. I am not
+a particle lonely, with only one servant; really don't want another,
+and make a great deal more than desserts. You have no idea how
+absorbing it is to have a lot of things that must be done. The days
+simply fade. You mustn't worry about me, Howat; I always hated polite
+affairs and parties and people; even when I was young as possible I was
+more than anything else a Hell in the Corner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, recognizing an old flippant phrase, and let his hand drop
+while he recalled Mariana&mdash;turning to him to hook her gown, constructing
+annoying towers with the dominoes, reprehensible and amusing. He resumed
+reading:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would be wonderful if&mdash;no, it is wonderful! But Howat, I can tell
+only you this, I wish oranges had never been invented.&quot; He drew his
+mouth into a compressed line. James was drinking. He remembered when the
+other first made the concoction of orange juice and brandy; he saw him
+clearly, leaning in the doorway to the dining room, with the emptied
+goblet, and a curious, introspective expression on his mobile
+countenance. &quot;He ought to be hung!&quot; he exclaimed sharply. The fellow
+should see himself as a mat for Mariana's feet. But that wasn't life, he
+realized; existence seemed to become more and more heedless of the
+proprieties, of the simplest concessions to duty. He saw the world as a
+ship which, admirably navigated a score or more years ago, had jammed
+its rudder. No one could predict what rocks the unmanageable sphere
+might be driving for.</p>
+
+<p>The significance born by that sentence robbed the remainder of the
+letter of pleasure. He read that Mariana had ordered the customary gift
+of cigarettes, and hoped they would last him longer than everybody knew
+they would. The implied affection of all the paragraphs was visible in
+the last words. He put the letter carefully away. The cigarettes were
+sufficient for a considerable time beyond customary. Something of his
+appetite had gone; the periods of half wakeful slumber in his chair drew
+out through whole evenings. The actual world retreated; his memories, as
+bright as ever, became a little confused; the years, figures, mingled
+incongruously; famous arias were transposed to operas in which they had
+not been sung.</p>
+
+<p>Winter retreated, but the latter part of March and April were bitterly
+cold; no leaves appeared; the ground remained barren; he seldom got out.</p>
+
+<p>The albums of programmes were brought from their place on the low
+shelves, but now, more than often, they were barely opened, scanned.
+Then, on an evening when belated snow was sifting through the cracks of
+the solid shutters, he came on an oblong package, wrapped in strong
+paper. He opened it, in a momentary revival of interest, of life. It was
+a tall ledger, bound in crumbling calf, with stained and wrinkled
+leaves. Howat had not seen it for twenty years, but he recalled
+immediately that it was a forge book kept in Gilbert Penny's day; then
+Myrtle Forge had been new, that other Howat alive. He opened it
+carefully, powdered his knees with leather dust, and studied the faded
+entries; what flourishing, pale violet initials, what rubicund lines and
+endings!</p>
+
+<p>There were two handwritings, listing commonplace transactions now
+invested by time with an accumulated, poignant significance, one smooth
+and clerkly, the other abrupt, with heavy, impatient strokes. Youth,
+probably, held at an unwelcome task; and, more than likely, Howat ...
+October, in seventeen fifty. Years of virility, of struggle and
+conquest, of iron&mdash;iron, James Polder had shown him, still uncorrupted,
+better than the metal of to-day&mdash;and iron-like men. The ledger slipped
+to the floor, tearing the spongy leather and crumbling the sere leaves.
+He recovered it, dismayed at the damage wrought. A sheet apparently had
+come loose, and he bent forward with difficulty, a swimming head. Howat
+made an attempt to find its place, when he discovered that it was not a
+part of the volume. It was, he saw, a note, obliterated by creases but
+with some lines still legible, hurriedly scrawled, by a woman:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must be more careful ... Your mother. So hot-headed, Howat. I can't
+do what you ask. I have a headache now thinking about Felix and you and
+myself. No one must find out.&quot; What followed was lost, then came a
+signature that, with the aid of a reading glass, he barely
+deciphered&mdash;&quot;Ludowika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was the name of the woman, a widow, Gilbert's son had married. Her
+first husband, Felix Winscombe, had died at Myrtle Forge during a
+diplomatic mission from England.... An old man with a young wife! His
+confusion, slowly resolving into a comprehension of what the note
+implied, filled him with an increasing revolt. The earlier Howat, too,
+like Jasper, in the tangle of an intrigue&mdash;not a public scandal and
+shame, as had been the later, but no less offensive. In a flare of anger
+Howat Penny crumpled the paper and flung it into the fire. There it
+instantly blackened, burst into flame and wavered, a shuddering cinder,
+up the chimney. He put the ledger, loosely wrapped in its covering, on
+the table, and sat breathing rapidly, curiously disturbed. The old
+fault, projected so unexpectedly out of the faithless burial of the
+past, struck at him with the weight of a personal affront.</p>
+
+<p>The heat subsided in the hearth, with the nightly ebbing of steam in the
+radiator; the hickory, disintegrating into blocks, faded from cherry red
+to pulsating, and finally dead, ash. Lost in the bitterness of his
+thoughts he made no movement to replenish the fire.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered if the explored histories of other families would show such
+scarring records as his own. Were there everywhere, back of each heart,
+puddles, sloughs, masked in the deceiving probity maintained for public
+view? And now&mdash;Mariana! Yet, somehow, her affair did not appear as ugly
+as these others. Stated coldly, in conventional terms, it was little
+different. Why, in plain words she had ... but Mariana evaded plain
+words, her challenging courage forbade them. Here was more than could be
+arraigned, convicted, by a stereotyped judgment. Or perhaps this was
+only his affection for her, blinding him to the truth.</p>
+
+<p>The first Howat and Jasper, striking contemptuously across the barriers
+of social morals, lived in Mariana, alone with James Polder in
+illegitimate circumstance, and in himself&mdash;an old man without family,
+without the supporting memory of actual achievement; the negative decay
+of a negative existence. His mind, confronted by a painful complexity of
+unanswerable problems, failed utterly. He was conscious of his impotence
+chilling his blood, deadening his nerves. Thin tears fell over his
+hollow cheeks; and he rose shakily, fiercely dragging at his bandanna.</p>
+
+<p>But he discovered that his hand was numb with cold. The fire lay black
+and dead. The shrilling wind, ladened with snow, wrenched at the
+shutters. The room was bitter. He must get up to bed ... warm blankets.
+A chill touched him with an icy breath. It overtook him midway on the
+stair, and he clung to the railing, appalled at its violence in his
+fragile being. He got, finally, to his room, to the edge of his bed,
+where he sat waiting for the assault to subside. He wanted Rudolph, but
+the effort to move to the door, call, appeared insuperable. The chill
+left him; and blundering, hideously delayed, he wrapped himself in the
+bed covering.</p>
+
+<p>Not all the wool in the world, he thought, would be sufficient to drive
+the cold from his body. He fell into a temporary exhaustion of sleep;
+but was waked later by sharp and oppressive pains in his chest,
+deepening when he breathed. The suffering must be mastered, and he lay
+with gripping hands, striving by force of will to overcome what he
+thought of as the brutal play of small, sharp knives. He conquered, it
+seemed; the pain grew less; but it had left an increasing difficulty in
+his breathing; it was a labour to absorb sufficient air even for his
+small, aged demands. Sleep deserted him; and he waited through seeming
+years for the delayed appearance of dawn. He had hoped that the new day
+would be sunny, warm; it was overcast, he could see the snow drifted in
+the lower window panes.</p>
+
+<p>Rudolph usually knocked at the door at half past eight; but, apparently,
+to-day he had forgot. Howat Penny's watch lay on the table, at his hand,
+yet it was far distant; he couldn't face the heavy effort of its
+inspection. At last the man came in with his even morning greeting.
+Howat was so exhausted that he could make no reply; and Rudolph moved
+silently to the bedside. His expression, for an instant, was deeply
+concerned. &quot;I have a cold, or something of the sort,&quot; the other said. He
+raised his head, but sank back, with a thin, audible inspiration. &quot;It
+would be best, sir, to have the doctor from Jaffa,&quot; the servant
+suggested. Howat, in the midst of protest, closed his eyes; the pain had
+returned. When he had again defeated it Rudolph was gone.</p>
+
+<p>The room blurred, lost its walls, became formless space; out of which,
+to his pleasurable surprise, he saw the carefully garbed figure of
+Colonel Mapleson walking toward him. He never forgot that tea rose!
+Confound him&mdash;probably another benefit for one of his indigent song
+birds. As Howat was about to speak the Colonel disappeared. It was
+Scalchi, in street dress, a yellow fur about her throat, warm,
+seductive. He had sent the divine Page the bouquet in paper lace. But
+she too vanished. He heard the strains of an orchestra; lingering he had
+missed the overture, and it might be the first duet&mdash;with Geister in
+superb voice. He was waiting for Mariana, that was it ... always late.
+Then her hand was under his arm. But it was the doctor from Jaffa.</p>
+
+<p>Rudolph was at the foot of the bed, and the two men moved aside,
+conversed impolitely in hushed tones. I'm sick, he thought lucidly. One
+word reached him&mdash;oxygen. It all melted away again, into a black lake
+with ghostly swans, a painted mouth and showering confetti; one of the
+supreme waltzes that Johann Strauss alone could compose. Later a woman
+in a folded linen cap was seated beside him, a chimera. But she laid
+cool fingers on his Wrist, held a brownish, distasteful mixture to his
+lips. A draught of egg nog was better, although it wasn't as persuasive
+as some he had had: Bundy Provost's, for example.</p>
+
+<p>Bundy was a galliard youth, but he was clear as ice underneath. He
+wouldn't have let them put that thing over his, Howat's, face. He tried
+to turn aside, but a cap of darkness descended upon him. Afterward his
+breathing was easier. A blue iron tank was standing nearby, and the
+nurse was removing a rubber mask attached to a flexible tube. The latter
+led from a glass bottle, with a crystal pipe into the tank; the bottle
+held water; and the water was troubled with subsiding, clear bubbles.
+More of the dark, unpleasant mixture, more egg nog. Why did they trouble
+and trouble him&mdash;already he was late getting to Irving Place.</p>
+
+<p>The opera, as he had feared, had commenced; and it was at once strange
+and familiar. The chorus and orchestra were singing in a deep ground
+tone; the stage was set with a row of great, seething furnaces; glaring
+white bars of light cut through vaporous, yellow gases and showered
+steel sparks where coppery figures were labouring obscurely in a flaming
+heat that rolled out over the audience. There was a shrilling of
+violins, and then a deafening blare of brass, an appalling volume of
+sound pouring out like boiling metal.... But here was Rudolph; the
+performance was at an end; it was time to go home.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I took the liberty of searching for&mdash;for Miss Jannan's address,&quot; the
+other told him. Well, and why not! &quot;Mr. Provost and Mrs. Jannan are away
+for a week.&quot; Howat hoped that Kingsfrere would not turn up with his
+flat face. He was conscious of smiling at a memory the exact shape of
+which escaped him&mdash;something humorous that had happened to the pasty
+youth. A refreshing air came in at the open windows, and he struggled
+for a full, satisfying breath. The relief of what he dimly recognized as
+oxygen followed. The nurse moved to the door and Mariana entered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Howat,&quot; she exclaimed, sitting beside him, &quot;how silly of you! A cold
+now with winter done. The snow is running away. And these soda-watery
+tanks.&quot; He felt a warmth communicated by her actual presence. &quot;It's just
+my breathing,&quot; he told her; &quot;it gets stopped up. A damned nuisance! Did
+Honduras meet you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She assured him that she had been correctly received, and vanished to
+remove her hat. Mariana must not sit in here, with the windows open, he
+told the nurse; but then, he added, it was no good giving Mariana
+advice. She wouldn't listen to it, except to do the opposite. She came
+back, in one of her eternal knitted things, this one like a ripe banana,
+and sat in the nurse's place. There was a great deal he wanted to know,
+in a few minutes, when he felt less oppressed. The night came swiftly,
+lit by his familiar lamps; Rudolph moved about in the orderly
+disposition of fresh white laundry. A coat needed pressing. It would do
+to-morrow. The doctor hurt him with a little scraping stab at the
+bottom of his ear.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mariana,&quot; he at last made the effort of speech, questioning: &quot;I have
+been bothered about your&mdash;your temporary arrangement. That Harriet, you
+know ... make trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, Howat,&quot; she replied, admirably detached; &quot;you don't read the
+important sheets of the papers! Harriet has made a tremendous success
+with what was supposed to be a small part. A New York manager has
+engaged her in letters of fire, for an unthinkable amount. James and I
+sent her our obscure compliments, but we were virtuously rebuked by a
+legal gentleman. Harriet, it seems, is going to cast us off.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Of all that she had said only the word obscure remained in his mind; and
+it roused in him an echo of his old, dogmatic pride. &quot;Mariana,&quot; he
+demanded, &quot;didn't the reorganization come about; isn't James Polder
+superintendent?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, then replied in a low, steady voice. &quot;Yes, Howat, it did;
+but they didn't move Jim up. An older, they said steadier, man was
+chosen.&quot; It was the oranges, he told himself, the oranges and brandy;
+the cursed young fool. &quot;You must come away, Mariana,&quot; he continued more
+faintly; &quot;fair trial, failure&mdash;something to yourself, our family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leave Jimmy because he wasn't made superintendent!&quot; she replied in an
+abstracted impatience. Then, &quot;I wonder about a smaller plant? Won't you
+understand, Howat,&quot; she leaned softly over him; &quot;I need Jim as badly as
+he needs me; perhaps more. If I had any superior illusions they have all
+gone. I can't tell us apart. Of course, I'd like him to get on, but
+principally for himself. Jim, every bit of him, the drinking and
+tempers, and tenderness you would never suspect, is my&mdash;oxygen. I can
+see that you want to know if I am happy; but I can't tell you, Howat.
+Perhaps that's the answer, and I am&mdash;I have a feeling of being a part of
+something outside personal happiness, something that has tied Jim and me
+together and gone on about a larger affair. You see, Howat, I wasn't
+consulted,&quot; she added in a more familiar impudence; &quot;whether I was
+pleased or not didn't appear to matter. In a position like that it's
+silly to talk about happiness as if it were like the thrill at your
+first ball.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He drifted away from her through the nebulous haze deepening about him.
+An occasional, objective buzzing penetrated to his removed place; but
+all the while he realized that he was getting farther and farther from
+such interruptions of an effort to distinguish a vaguely familiar,
+veiled shape. He saw, at last, that it was Howat, a black Penny. It was
+at once himself and that other Howat, yes, and Jasper. All three
+unremarkably merged into one. And the acts of the first, a dark young
+man with an erect, impatient carriage, a countenance and gaze of
+vigorous scorn, accumulated in a later figure, hardly less upright,
+slender, but touched with grey&mdash;a man in the middle of life. He paid
+with an anguished spirit for what had taken place; and at last an old
+man lingered with empty hands, the husk of a passion that had burned out
+all vitality.</p>
+
+<p>Mariana, too, had been drawn into the wide implications of this mingled
+past and present. But now, clearly, he recognized in her the meeting of
+spirit and flesh that had been denied to him. That was life, he thought,
+that was happiness. In the absence of such consummation he had come to
+nothing. In Jasper, in Susan Brundon who had married him over late, the
+two had warred.</p>
+
+<p>Life took the spirit to itself, mysteriously; wove the gold thread into
+its design of scarlet and earth and green, or else ... a hearth soon
+cold, the walls of a Furnace crumbled and broken, a ruin covered from
+memory by growing leafage and grass throbbing with the song of robins,
+the shrilling of frogs in the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor and nurse, Rudolph and Mariana, moved about him in a far, low
+stir. At times they approached on a lighter flood of oxygen. Mariana
+wiped his lips&mdash;an immaterial red stain. But what was that confounded
+opera the name of which he had forgot? It would be in his albums; in the
+first, probably. Downstairs. He had a sudden view of Mariana's face as
+she returned with the volume. An expression of piercing concern
+overwhelmed the reassuring smile she had for him.</p>
+
+<p>Howat understood at last, he was dying. An instinctive shuddering
+seized him; not in fear of the obliterating fact; but from a physical
+revulsion bred by his long years of delicate habit.</p>
+
+<p>Yet it wouldn't do to expose Mariana to the terrors; and, after a sharp,
+inward struggle, he said almost fretfully, &quot;Further on.&quot; She turned the
+pages slowly; but no one could read without a decent light. He moved his
+head, in an infinity of labour, toward the clear, grey opening of the
+window, and saw a pattern of flying geese wavering across the tranquil
+sky.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_END" id="THE_END" />THE END</h2>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer
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diff --git a/15135.txt b/15135.txt
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+++ b/15135.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Three Black Pennys
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
+
+Release Date: February 21, 2005 [EBook #15135]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE BLACK PENNYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Images provided
+by the Million Book Project.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE BLACK PENNYS
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE BLACK PENNYS
+
+
+A NOVEL
+
+
+JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS
+
+_By Arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf_
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY
+
+ALFRED A. KNOPF
+
+
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+_A DEDICATION_
+
+_Dear John Hemphill_
+
+_This is a record and act of memory
+of you at Dower House--of June
+nights on the porch, with the foliage
+of the willow tree powdered against
+the stars; the white-panelled hearth
+of the yellow room in smouldering
+winter dusks; dinner with the candles
+wavering in tepid April airs; and
+the blue envelopment of late September
+noons. A quiet reach like the old
+grey house and green fields, the little
+valleys filled with trees and placid
+town beyond the hill, where the calendar
+of our days and companionship is
+set._
+
+_Joseph Hergesheimer_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I THE FURNACE
+
+II THE FORGE
+
+III THE METAL
+
+
+
+
+I THE FURNACE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly
+wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already
+stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with
+patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening
+underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above
+the hills, wavered against the serene, ashen evening. Howat Penny,
+standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the
+shifting, regular flight would not come close enough for a shot. He
+dropped the butt of his gun to the ground. Then he raised it again,
+examining the hammer; the flint was loose, unsatisfactory. There was a
+probability that it would miss firing.
+
+He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his
+keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened,
+permeating him. He turned his dark, young face toward the transparent,
+green afterglow; the firm eyebrows drawn up at the temples, sombre eyes
+set, too, at a slight angle, a straight nose, impatient mouth and
+projecting chin. Below him, and to the left, a heavy, dark flame and
+silvery smoke were rolling from the stack of Shadrach Furnace. Figures
+were moving obscurely over the way that led from the coal house, set on
+the hill, to the top and opening of the furnace; finishing, Howat Penny
+knew, the charge of charcoal, limestone and iron ore.
+
+Shadrach Furnace had been freshly set in blast; it was on that account
+he was there, to represent, in a way, his father, who owned a half
+interest in the Furnace. However, he had paid little attention to the
+formality; his indifference was especially centred on the tedious
+processes of iron making, which had, at the same time, made his family.
+He had gone far out from the Furnace tract into an utterly uninhabited
+and virginal region, where he had shot at, and missed, an impressive
+buck and killed a small bear. Now, that he had returned, his apathy once
+more flooded him; but he had eaten nothing since morning, and he was
+hungry.
+
+He could go home, over the nine miles of road that bound the Furnace to
+Myrtle Forge and the Penny dwelling; there certain of whatever supper he
+would elect. But, he decided, he preferred something now, less formal.
+There were visitors at Myrtle Forge, Abner Forsythe, who owned the other
+half of Shadrach, his son David, newly back from England and the study
+of metallurgy, and a Mr. Winscombe, come out to the Provinces in
+connection with the Maryland boundary dispute, accompanied by his wife.
+All this Howat Penny regarded with profound distaste; necessary social
+and conversational forms repelled him. And it annoyed his father when he
+sat, apparently morose, against the wall, or retired solitary to his
+room.
+
+He would get supper here; they would be glad to have him at the house of
+Peter Heydrick, the manager of the Furnace. Half turning, he could see
+the dwelling at his back--a small, grey stone rectangle with a narrow
+portico on its solid face and a pale glimmer of candles in the lower
+windows. The ground immediately about it was cleared of brush and little
+trees, affording Peter Heydrick a necessary, unobstructed view of the
+Furnace stack while sitting in his house or when aroused at night. The
+dwelling was inviting, at once slipping into the dusk and emerging by
+reason of the warm glow within. Mrs. Heydrick, too, was an excellent
+cook; there would be plenty of venison, roast partridge, okra soup.
+Afterwards, under a late moon, he could go back to Myrtle Forge; or he
+might stay at the Heydricks all night, and to-morrow kill such a buck as
+he had lost.
+
+The twilight darkened beneath the trees, the surrounding hills lost
+their forms, in the east the distance merged into the oncoming night,
+but the west was still translucent, green. There was a faint movement
+in the leaves by the roadside, and a grey fox crossed, flattened on the
+ground, and disappeared. Howat Penny could see the liquid gleam of its
+eyes as it watched him. From the hill by the coal house came the heavy
+beating of wild turkeys' wings.
+
+He could go to Peter Heydrick's, where the venison would be excellent,
+and Mrs. Heydrick was celebrated for her guinea pickle with cucumbers;
+but ... the Heydricks had no daughter, and the Gilkans had. Thomas
+Gilkan was only a founderman; his house had one room below and a
+partition above; and Mrs. Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to
+Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny Gilkan, erect
+and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could himself, and carry
+her father's clumsy gun all the way.
+
+His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of
+supper, and rested upon the fact that his--his appreciation of her was
+becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it,
+with biting comments, among the charcoal burners. Dan Hesa, although
+younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward
+young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her
+serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness among
+the charcoal burners that could only have come from the association of
+the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of Myrtle Forge with
+the founderman's daughter. Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive
+in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he
+knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to
+Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior merits
+of the Heydrick table.
+
+That was his character: denial as a child had filled him with
+slow-accumulating rage; later discipline at school had found him utterly
+intractable. Something deep and instinctive within him resisted every
+effort to make him a part of any social organization, however admirable;
+he never formed any personal bonds with humanity in particular. He had
+grown into a solitary being within whom were immovably locked all the
+confidences, the spontaneous expressions of self, that bind men into a
+solidarity of common failings and hopes. He never offered, nor,
+apparently, required, any marks of sympathy; as a fact, he rarely
+expressed anything except an occasional irrepressible scorn lashing out
+at individuals or acts that conspicuously displeased him. This had
+occurred more than once at Myrtle Forge, when assemblymen or members of
+the Provincial Council had been seated at dinner.
+
+It was after such a scene that his mother had witnessed perhaps his only
+attempt at self-explanation. "I am sorry you were disturbed," he had
+pronounced, after standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning
+space; "but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like
+cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't
+manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the
+stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving vaguely
+toward the west, "I'll go out to the Ohio, or the French forts."
+
+That this was not merely a passive but an active state of mind was amply
+expressed by his resolute movement toward Thomas Gilkan's house. He had,
+ordinarily, an unusual liking for the charcoal burners, and had spent
+many nights in their huts, built, like the charring stacks, of mud and
+branches. But, organized by Dan Hesa into an opposition, a criticism of
+his choice of way, they offered an epitome of the conditions he derided
+and assailed.
+
+His feeling for Fanny Gilkan was in the greater part understood,
+measured; there was a certain amount of inchoate, youthful response to
+her sheer physical well being, a vague blur of pleasant sensation at her
+proximity; but beyond that he felt no attraction except a careless
+admiration for her endurance and dexterity in the woods, a certain
+relief in the freedom of her companionship. He had never considered her
+concretely as a possible source of physical pleasure. He was not easily
+excited sexually, and had had few adventures with women; something of
+his contempt, his indifference, removed him from that, too. His emotions
+were deep, vital; and hid beneath a shyness of habit that had grown into
+a suspicious reserve. All bonds were irksome to him, and instinctively
+he avoided the greater with the lesser; instinctively he realized that
+the admission of cloying influences, of the entanglements of sex, would
+more definitely bind him than any generality of society.
+
+It had, he thought, grown dark with amazing rapidity. He could now see a
+feeble light at the Gilkans, ahead and on the right. At the same moment
+a brighter, flickering radiance fell upon the road, the thick foliage of
+the trees. The blast was gathering at Shadrach Furnace. A clear, almost
+smokeless flame rose from the stack against the night-blue sky. It
+illuminated the rectangular, stone structure of the coal-house on the
+hill, and showed the wet and blackened roof of the casting shed below.
+The flame dwindled and then mounted, hanging like a fabulous oriflamme
+on a stillness in which Howat Penny could hear the blast forced through
+the Furnace by the great leather bellows.
+
+He turned in, over the littered ground before the Gilkan house. Fanny
+was standing in the doorway, her straight, vigorous body sharp against
+the glow inside. "Here's Mr. Howat Penny," she called over her shoulder.
+"Is everything off the table? There's not much," she turned to him, "but
+the end of the pork barrel." A meagre fire was burning in the large,
+untidy hearth; battered tin ovens had been drawn aside, and a pair of
+wood-soled shoes were drying. The rough slab of the table, pushed back
+against a long seat made of a partly hewed and pegged log, was empty
+but for some dull scarred pewter and scraps of salt meat. On the narrow
+stair that led above, a small, touselled form was sleeping--one of the
+cast boys at the Furnace.
+
+A thin, peering woman in a hickory-dyed wool dress moved forward
+obsequiously. "Mr. Penny!" she echoed the girl's announcement; "and here
+I haven't got a thing fit for you. Thomas Gilkan has been too busy to
+get out, and Fanny she'll fetch nothing unless the mood's on her. If I
+only had a fish I could turn over." She brushed the end of the table
+with a frayed sleeve. "You might just take a seat, and I'll look
+around."
+
+Fanny Gilkan listened to her mother with a comprehending smile. Fanny's
+face was gaunt, but her grey eyes were wide and compelling, her mouth
+was firm and bright; and her hair, her father often said, resembled the
+fire at the top of Shadrach. Howat knew that she was as impersonal, as
+essentially unstirred, as himself; but he had a clear doubt of Mrs.
+Gilkan. The latter was too anxious to welcome him to their unpretending
+home; she obviously moved to throw Fanny and himself together, and to
+disparage such suits as honest Dan Hesa's. He wondered if the older
+woman thought he might marry her daughter. And wondering he came to the
+conclusion that the other thing would please the mother almost as well.
+She had given him to understand that at Fanny's age she would know how
+to please any Mr. Howat Penny that chance fortune might bring her.
+
+That some such worldly advice had been poured into Fanny's ears he
+could not doubt; and he admired the girl's obvious scorn of such wiles
+and surrenders. She sat frankly beside him now, as he finished a
+wretched supper, and asked about the country in regions to which she had
+not penetrated. "It's a three days' trip," he finished a recital of an
+excursion of his own.
+
+"I'd like to go," she returned; "but I suppose I couldn't find it
+alone."
+
+He was considering the possibility of such a journey with her--it would
+be pleasant in the extreme--when her mother interrupted them from the
+foot of the stair.
+
+"A sensible girl," she declared, "would think about seeing the sights of
+a city, and of a cherry-derry dress with ribbons, instead of all this
+about tramping off through the woods with a ragged skirt about your
+naked knees."
+
+Fanny Gilkan's face darkened, and she glanced swiftly at Howat Penny. He
+was filling a pipe, unmoved. Such a trip as he had outlined, with Fanny,
+was fastening upon his thoughts. It would at once express his entire
+attitude toward the world, opinion, and the resentful charcoal burners.
+
+"You wouldn't really go," he said aloud, half consciously.
+
+The girl frowned in an effort of concentration, gazing into the thin
+light of the dying fire and two watery tallow dips. Her coarsely spun
+dress, coloured with sassafras bark and darker than the yellow hickory
+stain, drew about her fine shoulders and full, plastic breast. "I'd like
+it," she repeated; "but afterward. There is father--"
+
+She had said father, but Howat Penny determined that she was thinking of
+Dan Hesa; Dan was as strong as himself, if heavier; a personable young
+man. He would make a good husband. But that, he added, was in the
+future; Dan Hesa apparently didn't want to marry Fanny to-morrow, that
+week. Meanwhile a trip with him to the headwaters of a creek would not
+injure her in the least. His contempt of a world petty and iron-bound in
+endless pretence, fanning his smouldering and sullen resentment in
+general, flamed out in a determination to take her with him if possible.
+It would conclusively define, state, his attitude toward "men herding
+like cattle." He did not stop to consider what it might define for Fanny
+Gilkan. In the stir of his rebellious self there was no pause for
+vicarious approximations. If he thought of her at all it was in the
+indirect opinion that she was better without such a noodle as Dan Hesa
+threatened to become.
+
+"I'd get two horses from the Forge," he continued, apparently to his
+mildly speculative self; "a few things, not much would be necessary.
+That gun you carry," he addressed Fanny indirectly, "is too heavy. I'll
+get you a lighter, bound in brass."
+
+She repeated sombrely, leaning with elbows on the table, her chin in her
+hands, "And afterwards--"
+
+"I thought you were free of that," he observed; "it sounds like the
+town women, the barnyard crowd. I thought you were an independent
+person. Certainly," he went on coldly, "you can't mistake my attitude. I
+like you, but I am not in the least interested in any way that--that
+jour mother might appreciate. I am neither a seducer nor the type that
+marries."
+
+"I understand that, Howat," she assured him; "and I think, I'm not sure
+but I think, that what you mean wouldn't bother me either. Anyhow it
+shouldn't spoil the fun of our trip. But no one else in the world would
+believe that simple truth. If you could stay there, in those splendid
+woods or a world like them, why, it would be heaven. But you have to
+come back, you have to live on, perhaps for a great while, in the world
+of Shadrach and Myrtle Forge. I'm not sure that I'd refuse if you asked
+me to go, Howat. I just don't know if a woman can stand alone, for
+that's what it would come to afterward, against a whole lifeful of
+misjudgment. It might be better in the end, for everybody, if she
+continued home, made the best of things with the others."
+
+"You may possibly be right," he told her with a sudden resumption of
+indifference. After all, it was unimportant whether or not Fanny Gilkan
+went with him to the source of the stream he had discovered. Every one,
+it became more and more evident, was alike, monotonous. He wondered
+again, lounging back against the wall, about the French forts, outposts
+in a vast wilderness. There was an increasing friction between the
+Province and France, the legacy of King George's War, but Howat Penny's
+allegiance to place was as conspicuous by its absence as the other
+communal traits. Beside that, beyond Kaskaskia, at St. Navier and the
+North, there was little thought of French or English; the sheer problem
+of existence there drowned other considerations. He would, he thought,
+go out in the spring ... leave Myrtle Forge with its droning anvil, the
+endless, unvaried turning of water wheel, and the facile, trivial
+chatter in and about the house. David Forsythe, back from England in the
+capacity of master of fluxing metals, might acquire his, Howat's,
+interest in the Penny iron.
+
+Fanny Gilkan said, "You'll burn a hole in your coat with that pipe." He
+roused himself, and she moved across the room and pinched the smoking
+wicks. The embers on the hearth had expired, and the fireplace was a
+sooty, black cavern. Fanny, at the candles, was the only thing clearly
+visible; the thin radiance slid over the turn of her cheek; her hovering
+hand was like a cut-paper silhouette. It was growing late; Thomas Gilkan
+would soon be back from the Furnace; he must go. Howat had no will to
+avoid Gilkan, but the thought of the necessary conversational exchange
+wearied him.
+
+The sound of footsteps approached the house from without; it was, he
+thought, slightly annoyed, the founderman; but the progress deflected
+by the door, circled to a window at the side. A voice called low and
+urgent, "Seemy! Seemy!" It was repeated, and there was an answering
+mutter from the stair, a thick murmur and a deep sigh.
+
+The cast boy slipped crumpled and silent in bare feet across the floor.
+"Yes," he called back, rapidly waking.
+
+The voice from without continued, "They're going to start up the Oley."
+
+"What is it?" Fanny demanded.
+
+"The raccoon dogs," the boy paused at the door. "A lot of the furnacemen
+and woodcutters from round about are hunting."
+
+Fanny Gilkan leaned across the table to Howat, her face glowing with
+interest. "Come ahead," she urged; "we can do this anyhow. I like to
+hear the dogs yelping, and follow them through the night. You can bring
+your gun, I'll leave mine back, and perhaps we'll get something really
+big."
+
+Howat himself responded thoroughly to such an expedition; to the mystery
+of the primitive woods, doubly withdrawn in the dark; the calls of the
+others, near or far, or completely lost in a silence of stars; the still
+immensity of a land unguessed, mythical--endless trees, endless
+mountains, endless rivers with their headwaters buried in arctic
+countries beyond human experience, and emptying into the miraculous blue
+and gilded seas of the tropics.
+
+Fanny Gilkan would follow the dogs closely, too, with infinite swing
+and zest. She knew the country better than himself, better almost than
+any one else at the Furnace. He stirred at her urgency, and she caught
+his arm, dragging him from behind the table. She tied a linsey-woolsey
+jacket by its arms about her waist, and put out the candles. Outside the
+blast was steadily in progress at the stack; the clear glow of the flame
+shifted over the nearby walls, glinted on the new yellow of more distant
+foliage, fell in sharp or blurred traceries against the surrounding
+night.
+
+They could hear the short, impatient yelps of the dogs; but, before they
+reached them, the hunt was away. A lantern flickered far ahead, a minute
+blur vanishing through files of trees. Fanny turned to the right,
+mounting an abrupt slope thickly wooded toward the crown. A late moon,
+past full, shed an unsteady light through interlaced boughs, matted
+grape vines, creepers flung from tree to tree; it shone on a hurrying
+rill, a bright thread drawn through the brush. Fanny Gilkan jumped
+lightly from bank to bank. She made her way with lithe ease through
+apparently unbroken tangles. It was Fanny who went ahead, who waited for
+Howat to follow across a fallen trunk higher than his waist. She even
+mocked him gaily, declared that, through his slowness, they were
+hopelessly losing the hunt.
+
+However, the persistent barking of the dogs contrived to draw them on.
+They easily passed the stragglers, left a group gathered about a lantern
+and a black bottle. They caught up to the body of men, but preferred to
+follow a little outside of the breathless comments and main, stumbling
+progress. They stirred great areas of pigeons and countless indifferent
+coveys of partridges barely moved to avoid the swiftly falling feet. But
+no deer crossed near them, and the crashing of a heavy animal through
+the bushes diminished into such a steep gulley that they relinquished
+thought of pursuit. The chase continued for an unusual distance; the
+moon sank into the far, unbroken forest; the stars brightened through
+the darkest hour of the night.
+
+Fanny Gilkan and Howat proceeded more slowly now, but still they went
+directly, without hesitation, in the direction they chose. They crossed
+a log felled over a shallow, hurrying creek; the course grew steeper,
+more densely wooded. "Ruscomb Manor," Fanny pronounced over her
+shoulder. "Since a long way back," he agreed. Finally a sharper,
+stationary clamour announced that the object of the hunt had been
+achieved, and a raccoon treed. They made their way to the dim
+illumination cast on moving forms and a ring of dogs throwing themselves
+upward at the trunk of a tree. There was a concerted cry for "Ebo," and
+a wizened, grey negro in a threadbare drugget coat with a scarlet
+handkerchief about his throat came forward and, kicking aside the dogs,
+commenced the ascent of the smooth trunk that swept up to the obscure
+foliage above. There was a short delay, then a violent agitation of
+branches. A clawing shape shot to the ground, struggled to its feet, but
+the raccoon was instantly smothered in a snarling pyramid of dogs.
+
+Howat Penny was overwhelmingly weary. He had tramped all day, since
+before morning; while now another dawn was approaching, and the hunters
+were at least ten miles from the Furnace. He would have liked to stay,
+sleep, where he was; but the labour of preparing a proper resting place
+would be as great as returning to Shadrach. Besides, Fanny Gilkan was
+with him, with her new, cautious regard for the world's opinion. They
+stood silent for a moment, under a fleet dejection born of the hour and
+a cold, seeping mist of which he became suddenly conscious. The barrel
+of his gun was wet, and instinctively he wiped off the lock. Two men
+passing brushed heavily against him and stopped. "Who is it," one
+demanded, "John Rajennas? By God, it's a long way back to old Shadrach
+with splintering shoes." A face drew near Howat, and then retreated.
+"Oh, Mr. Penny! I didn't know you were up on the hunt." It was, he
+recognized, one of the coaling men who worked for Dan Hesa. The other
+discovered Fanny Gilkan. "And Fanny, too," the voice grew inimical. The
+men drew away, and a sharp whispering fluctuated out of the darkness.
+
+"Come," Howat Penny said sharply; "we must get back or stay out here for
+the rest of the night. I don't mind admitting I'd like to be where I
+could sleep." She moved forward, now tacitly taking a place behind him,
+and he led the return, tramping doggedly in the shortest direction
+possible.
+
+The hollows and stream beds were filled with the ghostly mist, and
+bitterly chill; the night paled slightly, diluted with grey; there was a
+distant clamour of crows. They entered the Furnace tract by a path at
+the base of the rise from where they had started. On the left, at a
+crossing of roads, one leading to Myrtle Forge, the other a track for
+the charcoal sleds, a blacksmith's open shed held a faint smoulder on
+the hearth. The blast from Shadrach Furnace rose perpendicular in the
+still air.
+
+Fanny Gilkan slipped away with a murmur. Howat abandoned all thought of
+returning to Myrtle Forge that night. But it was, he corrected the
+conclusion, morning. The light was palpable; he could see individual
+trees, the bulk of the cast-house, built directly against the Furnace;
+in the illusive radiance the coal house on the hill seemed poised on top
+of the other structures. A lantern made a reddish blur in the
+cast-house; it was warm in there when a blast was in progress, and he
+determined to sleep at once.
+
+Thomas Gilkan, with a fitful light, was testing the sealing clay on the
+face of the Furnace hearth; two men were rolling out the sand for the
+cast over the floor of the single, high interior, and another was
+hammering on a wood form used for stamping the pig moulds. The interior
+was soothing; the lights, blurred voices, the hammering, seemed to
+retreat, to mingle with the subdued, smooth clatter of the turning wheel
+without, the rhythmic collapse of the bellows. Howat Penny was losing
+consciousness when an apparently endless, stuttering blast arose close
+by. He cursed splenetically. It was the horn, calling the Furnace hands
+for the day; and he knew that it would continue for five minutes.
+
+Others had entered; a little group gathered about Thomas Gilkan's waning
+lantern. Far above them a window glimmered against the sooty wall. Howat
+saw that Dan Hesa was talking to Gilkan, driving in his words by a fist
+smiting a broad, hard palm. The group shifted, and the countenance of
+the man who had recognized Howat Penny in the woods swam into the pale
+radiance. His lassitude swiftly deserted him, receding before the
+instant resentment always lying at the back of his sullen
+intolerance--they were discussing him, mouthing some foul imputation
+about the past night. Hesa left the cast-house abruptly, followed by the
+charcoal burner; and Howat rose, the length of his rifle thrust forward
+under his arm, and walked deliberately forward.
+
+The daylight was increasing rapidly; and, as he approached, Thomas
+Gilkan extinguished the flame of the lantern. He was a small man, with a
+face parched by the heat of the furnace, and a narrowed, reddened vision
+without eyebrows or lashes. He was, Howat had heard, an unexcelled
+founder, a position of the greatest importance to the quality of metal
+run. There was a perceptible consciousness of this in the manner in
+which Gilkan moved forward to meet Gilbert Penny's son.
+
+"I don't want to give offence," the founderman said, "but, Mr. Penny,
+sir--" he stopped, commenced again without the involuntary mark of
+respect. "Mr. Penny, stay away from my house. There is more that I could
+say but I won't. That is all--keep out of my place. No names, please."
+
+Howat Penny's resentment swelled in a fiery anger at the stupidity that
+had driven Thomas Gilkan into making his request. A sense of humiliation
+contributed to an actual fury, the bitterer for the reason that he could
+make no satisfactory reply. Gilkan was a freedman; while he was
+occupying a dwelling at Shadrach Furnace it was his to conduct as he
+liked. Howat's face darkened--the meagre fool! He would see that there
+was another head founder here within a week.
+
+But there were many positions in the Province for a man of Gilkan's
+ability, there were few workmen of his sensitive skill with the charge
+and blast. Not only Howat's father, but Abner Forsythe as well, would
+search to the end all cause for the founderman's leaving. And, in
+consequence of that, any detestable misunderstanding must increase. He
+determined, with an effort unaccustomed and arduous, to ignore the
+other; after all Gilkan was but an insignificant mouthpiece for the
+familiar ineptitude of the world at large. Thomas Gilkan might continue
+at the Furnace without interference from him; Fanny marry her stupid
+labourer. Howat had seen symptoms of that last night. He would no longer
+complicate her existence with avenues of escape from a monotony which
+she patently elected.
+
+"Very well, Gilkan," he agreed shortly, choking on his wrath. He turned
+and tramped shortly from the interior. A sudden, lengthening sunlight
+bathed the open and a sullen group of charcoal burners about Dan Hesa.
+Their faces seemed ebonized by the grinding in of particles of blackened
+wood. Some women, even, in gay, primitive clothes, stood back of the
+men. As Howat passed, a low, hostile murmur rose. He halted, and met
+them with a dark, contemptuous countenance, and the murmur died in a
+shuffling of feet in the dry grass. He turned again, and walked slowly
+away, when a broken piece of rough casting hurtled by his head. In an
+overpowering rage he whirled about, throwing his rifle to his shoulder.
+A man detached from the group was lowering his arm; and, holding the
+sights hard on the other's metal-buttoned, twill jacket, Howat pulled
+the trigger. There was only an answering dull, ineffectual click.
+
+The rifle slid to the ground, and Howat stared, fascinated, at the man
+he had attempted to kill. The charcoal burners were stationary before
+the momentary abandon of Howat Penny's temper. "Right at me," the man
+articulated who had been so nearly shot into oblivion. "--saw the hammer
+fall." A tremendous desire to escape possessed Howat; a violent chill
+overtook him; his knees threatened the loss of all power to hold him up.
+He stepped backward, his gun stock trailing over the inequalities of the
+ground; then he swung about, and, in an unbroken silence, stumbled away.
+
+He was not running from anything the charcoal burner might say, do, but
+from a terrifying spectacle of himself; from the vision of a body shot
+through the breast, huddled in the sere underbrush. He was aghast at the
+unsuspected possibility revealed, as it were, out of a profound dark by
+the searing flash of his anger, cold at the thought of such absolute
+self-betrayal. Howat saw in fancy the bald triumph of a society to which
+his act consummated would have delivered him; a society that, as his
+peer, would have judged, condemned, him. Hundreds of faces--faces mean,
+insignificant, or pock-marked--merged into one huge, dominant
+countenance; hundreds of bodies, unwashed or foul with disease, or
+meticulously clean, joined in one body, clothed in the black robe of
+delegated authority, and loomed above him, gigantic and absurd and
+powerful, and brought him to death. Deeper than his horror, than any
+fear of physical consequences, lay the instinctive shrinking from the
+obliteration of his individual being, the loss of personal freedom.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+He was possessed by an unaccustomed desire to be at Myrtle Forge;
+usually it was the contrary case, and he was escaping from the
+complicated civilisation of his home; but now the well-ordered house,
+the serenity of his room, appeared astonishingly inviting. Howat
+progressed rapidly past the smithy, and turned to the right, about the
+Furnace dam, a placid and irregular reach of water holding the
+reflection of the trees on a mirror still dulled by a vanishing trace of
+mist, above which the leaves hung in the motionless air, in the aureate
+wash of the early sun, as if they had been pressed from gold foil.
+Beyond the dam the path--he had left the road that connected Forge and
+Furnace for a more direct way--followed the broad, rippling course of
+the Canary, the stream that supplied the life of Myrtle Forge. He
+automatically avoided the breaks in the rough trail; his mind, a dark
+and confused chamber, still lighted by appalling flashes of memory. A
+thing as slight, as incalculable, as a loose flint had been all that
+prevented.... He wondered if Fanny and Thomas Gilkan were right in their
+shared conviction; Fanny half persuaded, but the elder with a finality
+stamped with an accent of the heroic. Whether or not they were right
+didn't concern him, he decided; his only problem was to keep outside
+all such entanglements. And at present he wanted to sleep.
+
+The path left the creek and joined the road that swept about the face of
+the dwelling at Myrtle Forge. The lawn, squarely raised from the public
+way by a low brick terrace, showed the length of house behind the
+dipping, horizontal branches, the beginning, pale gold, of a widespread
+beech. It was a long structure of but two stories, built solidly out of
+a dark, flinty stone with an indefinite pinkish glow against the lush
+sod and sombre, flat greenery of a young English ivy about a narrow,
+stiff portico.
+
+Howat crossed the lawn above the house, where a low wing, holding the
+kitchen and pantries, extended at right angles from the dwelling's
+length. A shed with a flagging of broad stones lay inside the angle,
+where a robust girl with an ozenbrigs skirt caught up on bare legs and
+feet thrust into wooden clogs was scrubbing a steaming line of iron
+pots. He quickly entered the centre hall from a rear door, and mounted,
+as he hoped, without interruption to his room. That interior was
+singularly restful, pleasant, after the confused and dishevelling night.
+
+The sanded floor, patterned with a broom, held no carpet, nor were the
+walls covered, but white and bare save for a number of small, framed
+engravings--a view of Boston Harbour, Queene Anne's Tomb, and some black
+line satirical portrait prints. A stone fireplace, ready for lighting,
+had iron dogs and fender, and a screen lacquered in flowery wreaths on
+a slender black stem. At one side stood a hinge-bound chest, its oak
+panels glassy with age; on the other, an English set of drawers held a
+mirror stand and scattered trifles--razors and gold sleeve-buttons, a
+Barcelona handkerchief, candlesticks and flint, a twist of common,
+pig-tail tobacco; while from a drawer knob hung a banian of bright
+orange Chinese silk with a dark blue cord.
+
+By the side of his curled black walnut bed, without drapery, and set,
+like a French couch, low on three pairs of spiral legs, was a deep
+cushioned chair into which he sank and dragged off his sodden buckskin
+breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision--squat,
+rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with
+apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the floor.... He
+secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool, sibilant folds,
+he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, into an immediate profound
+slumber.
+
+The shadows of late afternoon were once more gathering when he woke. He
+lay, with hands clasped behind his head, watching a roseate glow
+disperse from the room. From without came the faint, clear voice of
+Marta Appletofft, across the road at the farm, calling the chickens; and
+he could hear the querulous whistling of the partridges that invariably
+deserted the fringes of forest to join the domesticated flocks at feed
+time. A sense of well-being flooded him; the project of St. Xavier, the
+French forts, drew far away; never before had he found Myrtle Forge so
+desirable. He was, he thought, growing definitely older. He was
+twenty-five.
+
+A light knock fell on his door, and he answered comfortably, thinking
+that it was his mother. But it was Caroline, his oldest sister. "How you
+have slept," she observed, closing the door at her back; "it was hardly
+nine when you came in, and here it is five. Mother heard you." Caroline
+Penny was a warm, unbeautiful girl with a fine, slender body, two years
+younger than himself. Her colouring was far lighter than Howat's; she
+had sympathetic hazel eyes, an inviting mouth, an illusive depression in
+one cheek that alone saved her from positive ugliness, and tobacco brown
+hair worn low with a long, turned strand. She had on a pewter-coloured,
+informal wrap over a black silk petticoat, lacking hoops, with a cut
+border of violet and silver brocade; and above low, green kid stays with
+coral tulip blossoms worked on the dark velvet of foliage were glimpses
+of webby linen and frank, young flesh.
+
+She came to the edge of the bed, where she sat with a yellow morocco
+slipper swinging from a silk clocked, narrow foot. He liked Caroline,
+Howat lazily thought. Although she did not in the least resemble their
+mother in appearance--she could not pretend to such distinction of
+being--Caroline unmistakably possessed something of the other's
+personality, far more than did Myrtle. She said generally, patently only
+delaying for the moment communications of much greater interest than
+himself, "Where were you last night?" He told her, and she plunged at
+once into a rich store of information.
+
+"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Winscombe are staying on? It's so,
+because of the fever in the city. David and his father stopped all
+night, too, and only left after breakfast. He's insane about London, but
+I could see that he's glad to get back to the Province. Mr. Forsythe is
+very abrupt, but ridiculously proud of him--"
+
+"These Winscombes," Howat interrupted, "what about them? The Forsythes
+are a common occurrence."
+
+"David's been gone more than three years," she replied. "And you should
+hear him talk; he's got a coat with wired tails in his box he's dying to
+wear, but is afraid of his father. Oh, the Winscombes! Well, he's rather
+sweet, sixty or sixty-five years old; very straight up the back, and
+wears the loveliest wigs. His servant fixes them on a stand--he turns
+the curls about little rolls of clay, ties them with paper, and then
+bakes it in the oven like a pudding. The servant is an Italian with a
+long duck's bill of a nose and quick little black eyes. He makes our
+negro women giggle like anything. It's evident he is fearfully
+impertinent. And, what do you think?--he hooks Mrs. Winscombe into her
+stays! Mother says that that isn't anything, really; Mrs. Winscombe is a
+lady of the court, and the most extraordinary happenings go on there.
+You see, mother knows a lot about her family, and it's very good; she's
+part Polish and part English, and her name's Ludowika. She's ages
+younger than her husband.
+
+"Myrtle doesn't like her,--" she stopped midway in her torrent of
+information. "I came in to talk to you about Myrtle," she went on in a
+different voice; "that is, partly about Myrtle, but more of myself and
+of--"
+
+"How long are the others going to stay?" he cut in heedlessly.
+
+"I don't know," she again repressed her own desire; "perhaps they will
+have to go back to Annapolis--don't ask me why--but they hope to sail
+from Philadelphia in a week or so. She has marvellous clothes, and I
+asked her if she would send me some babies from London. You know what
+they are, Howat--little wooden dolls to show off the fashion; but she
+made a harrowing joke, right in front of father and Mrs. Forsythe. The
+things she says are just beyond description; it seems that it's all
+right to talk anyway now if you call it classic. And she has fans with
+pictures and rhymes on, honestly--" words apparently failed her.
+
+Howat laughed. "Little Innocence," he said. He fell silent, thinking of
+their mother. The court, he knew, had been her right, too, by birth; and
+he wondered if, with the reminder of Mrs. Winscombe and her reflections
+of St. James, she regretted her marriage and removal to the Province.
+She was essentially lady, while Gilbert Penny had been the son of a
+small country squire. He had seen a profile of his father as a young
+man, at the time he had first met Isabel Kingsfrere Howat. It was a
+handsome profile, perhaps a shade heavy, but admirably balanced and
+stamped with decisive power. He had characteristically invested almost
+his last shilling in a tract of eight hundred acres in Pennsylvania and
+the passage of himself and his bride to the Province.
+
+It was natural for men so to adventure, but Howat thought of Isabel
+Penny with, perhaps, the only marked admiration he felt for any being.
+There had been a period, short but strenuous, of material difficulties,
+in which the girl--she had been hardly a woman in years--entirely
+unprepared for such a different activity, had been finely competent and
+courageous. This had not endured long because Gilbert Penny had been
+successful almost from the first day of his landing in a new world.
+Chance letters had enlisted the confidence of David Forsythe, a Quaker
+merchant of property and increasing importance; the latter became a part
+owner of an iron furnace situated not far from the Penny holding; he
+assisted Gilbert in the erection of a forge; and in less than twenty
+years Gilbert Penny had grown to be a half proprietor in the Furnace,
+with--
+
+"Howat," Caroline broke in on his thoughts sharply, "I came in, as I
+said, to talk about something very important to me, and I intend to do
+it." Even after that decided announcement she hesitated, a deeper
+colour stained her dear cheeks. "You mustn't laugh at me," she warned
+him; "or think I'm horrid. I can talk to you like this because you seem
+a--a little outside of things, as if you were looking on at a rather
+poorly done play; and you are entirely honest yourself."
+
+He nodded condescendingly, his interest at last retrieved from the
+contemplation of his mother as a young woman.
+
+"It's about David," Caroline stated almost defiantly. "Howat, I think
+I'm very fond of David. No, you mustn't interrupt me. When he went away
+I liked him a lot; but now that he is back, and quite grown up, it's
+more than liking ... Howat. His father brought him out here right away
+he returned, and for a special reason. He was very direct about it; he
+wants David to marry--Myrtle. I heard father--yes, I listened--and him
+talking it over, and our old darling was pleased to death. It's natural,
+Mr. Forsythe is one of the most influential men in the city; and father
+adores Myrtle more than anything else in the world." She paused, and he
+studied her in a growing wonder; suddenly she seemed older, her mouth
+was drawn in a hard line: a new Caroline. "You know Myrtle," she added.
+
+He did, and considered the youngest Penny with a new objectivity. Myrtle
+was an extremely pretty, even a beautiful girl. "You know Myrtle," she
+repeated; "and why father is so blind is more than I can understand.
+She doesn't care a ribbon for truth, she never thinks of anything but
+her own comfort and clothes, and--and she'd make David miserable. Myrtle
+simply can't fancy anybody but herself. That's very different from me,
+Howat; or yourself. You would be a burning lover." He laughed
+incredulously. "And I, well, I know what I feel.
+
+"It's practically made up for David to marry Myrtle, that is, to urge it
+all that's possible; and she will never care for him, while all he
+thinks of now is how good looking she is. I want David, terribly," she
+said, sitting erect with shut hands; "and I will be expected to step
+aside, to keep out of the way while Myrtle poses at him. Oh, I know all
+about it. I see her rehearsing before the glass. Or I will be expected
+to act as a contrast, a plain background, for Myrtle's beauty.
+
+"You see, there is no one I can talk to but yourself. Even mother
+wouldn't understand, completely; and she couldn't be honest about
+Myrtle. The best of mothers, after all, are women; and, Howat, there is
+always a curious formality between women, a little stiffness."
+
+"Well," he demanded, "what do you want me to say, or what did you think
+I might do?"
+
+"I don't know," she admitted, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "I
+suppose I just wanted a little support, or even some encouragement. I
+don't propose to let Myrtle walk off with David and not turn my hand.
+Of course I am not a beauty, but then I'm not a ninny, either. And I
+have a prettier figure; that is, it will still be pretty in ten or
+fifteen years; Myrtle's soft."
+
+"Good heavens," he exclaimed, half serious, "what Indians you all are!"
+
+"I'm quite shameless," she admitted, "and this is really what I
+thought--you can, perhaps, help me sometimes, I don't know how, but he
+will be out here a lot, men talk together--"
+
+"And I can tell him that Myrtle is an utterly untrustworthy person who
+would make him ultimately miserable. I'll remind him that her beauty is
+no deeper than he sees it. But that Caroline there, admirable girl,
+seething with affection in a figure warranted against time or
+accident--" her expression brought his banter to an end. He studied her
+seriously, revolved what she had said. She was right about Myrtle, who
+was undoubtedly a vain and silly little fish. His father's immoderate
+admiration for her had puzzled him as well as the elder sister. He
+remembered that never had he heard their mother express a direct opinion
+of Myrtle; but neither had Isabel Penny shown the slightest question of
+her husband's high regard for their youngest child. She was, he realized
+with a warming of his admiration, beautifully cultivated in the wisdom
+of the world.
+
+Caroline was vastly preferable to Myrtle, he felt that instinctively;
+and he was inclined to give her whatever assistance he could. But this
+would be negligible, and he said so. "You will have to do the trick by
+yourself," he advised her. "I wouldn't pretend to tell you how. As you
+said, you're not a ninny. And Myrtle's none too clever, although she
+will manage to seem so. It's wonderful how she'll pick up a hint or two
+and make a show. You see--she will be talking iron to David as if she
+had been raised in a furnace."
+
+"Men are so senseless!" Caroline exclaimed viciously. She rose. "It's
+been a help only to talk to you, Howat. I knew you'd understand. Supper
+will be along soon. Make yourself into a charmer for Mrs. Winscombe. I'm
+certain she thinks the men out here are frightful hobs." The light had
+dimmed rapidly in the room, and he moved over to the chest of drawers,
+where he lit the candles, settling over them their tall, carved glass
+cylinders.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+He dressed slowly, all that Caroline had said, and he thought, tangling
+and disentangling deliberately in his mind. Mrs. Winscombe ... thinking
+there were no presentable men in the Provinces. His hand strayed in the
+direction of a quince-coloured satin coat; but he chose instead a
+commonplace, dun affair with pewter buttons, and carelessly settled his
+shoulders in an unremarkable waistcoat. Then, although he could hear a
+concerted stir of voices below that announced impending supper, he
+slipped into a chair for half a pipe. He was indifferent, not diffident,
+and there was no hesitation in the manner in which he finally approached
+the company seated at supper. His place was, as usual, at his mother's
+side; but opposite him where Myrtle usually sat was a rigid, high
+shouldered man in mulberry and silver, jewelled buckles, and a full,
+powdered wig. He had thin, dark cheeks, a heavy nose above a firm mouth
+with a satirical droop, and small, unpleasantly penetrating eyes. An
+expression of general malice was, however, corrected by a high and
+serene brow.
+
+"Mr. Winscombe," Howat Penny's mother said, "my son." The former bowed
+with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which,
+Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech. He
+was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr. Penny; and that extravagant
+expression, delivered in a slightly harsh, negligent voice, heightened
+the impression of a personality strong and cold; a being as obdurate as
+an iron bar masquerading in coloured satin and formulating pretty
+phrases like the sheen on the surface of a deep November pool. Gilbert
+Penny echoed the introduction at the other end of the table.
+
+Howat saw, in the yellow candlelight, a woman not, he decided, any
+better looking than Caroline, in an extremely low cut gown of scarlet,
+with a rigid girdle of saffron brocade, a fluted tulle ruff tied with a
+scarlet string about a long, slim neck, and a cap of sheer cambric with
+a knot of black ribbons. Her eyes were widely opened and dark, her nose
+short, and her mouth full and petulant. She, too, was conventionally
+adequate; but her insincerity was clearer than her husband's, it was
+pronounced quickly, in an impertinent and musical voice, without the
+slightest pretence of the injection of any interest. Howat Penny felt,
+in a manner which he was unable to place, that she vaguely resembled
+himself; perhaps it lay in her eyebrows slanting slightly toward the
+temples; but it was vaguer, more elusive, than that.
+
+He considered it idly, through the course of supper. At intervals he
+heard her voice, a little, high-pitched laugh with a curious,
+underlying flatness: not of tone, her modulations were delicate and
+exact; but deeper. Again he was dimly conscious of an aspect of her
+which eluded every effort to fix and define. He could not even
+comprehend his dwelling upon the immaterial traits of a strange and
+indifferent woman; he was at a loss to understand how such inquiries
+assailed him. He grew, finally, annoyed, and shut his mind to any
+further consideration of her.
+
+Mrs. Penny was talking with charming earnestness to the man on her other
+hand. The amber radiance flickered over the beautiful curves of her
+shoulders and cast a warm shadow at the base of her throat. She smiled
+at her son; and her face, in spite of its present gaiety, held a
+definite reminder of her years, almost fifty; but when she turned again
+her profile, with slightly tilted nose and delightfully fresh lips and
+chin, was that of a girl no older than Caroline. Howat had often noticed
+this. It was amazing--with that slight movement she would seem to lose
+at once all the years that had accumulated since she was newly married.
+In a second she would appear to leave them all, her mature children, the
+heavy, palpably aging presence of Gilbert Penny, the house and
+obligations that had grown about her, and be remotely young, a stranger
+to the irrefutable proof that her youth had gone. At such moments he was
+almost reluctant to claim her attention, to bring her again, as it were,
+into the present, with so much spent, lapsed: at times he almost
+thought, in that connection, wasted.
+
+She had, in addition to her profile, a spirit of youth that had remained
+undimmed; as if there were within her a reserve warmth, a priceless
+gift, which life had never claimed; and it was the contemplation of that
+which gave Howat the impression that Isabel Penny's life had not fully
+flowered. He had never known her to express a regret of the way she had
+taken; he had never even surprised her in a perceptible retrospective
+dejection; but the conviction remained. Gilbert Penny had been an almost
+faultless husband, tender and firm and successful; but his wife had come
+from other blood and necessities than domestic felicities; she had been
+a part of a super-cultivation, a world of such niceties as the flawless
+courtesy of Mr. Winscombe discussing with her the unhappy passion of the
+Princess Caroline for Lord Hervey.
+
+Howat Penny thought sombrely of love, of the emotion that had
+brought--or betrayed?--Isabel Howat so far away from her birthright. It
+had gripped his sister no less tyrannically; stripping them, he
+considered, of their essential liberty. The thing was clear enough in
+his mind--nothing more than an animal instinct, humiliating to the human
+individual, to breed. It was the mere repetition of nature through the
+working of an automatic law. No such obscure fate, he determined, should
+overtake, obliterate, him. Yet it had involved his mother, a person of
+the first superiority. A slight chill, as if a breath of imminent winter
+had touched him, communicated itself to his heart.
+
+A trivial conversation was in progress across the table between Mrs.
+Winscombe and Myrtle. The latter was an embodiment of the familiar Saxon
+type of beauty; her hair was fair, infinitely pale gold, her complexion
+a delicately mingled crimson and white, her eyes as candidly blue as
+flowers. Her features were finely moulded, and her shoulders, slipping
+out from azure lutestring, were like smooth handfuls of meringue. Her
+voice was always formal, and it sounded stilted, forced, in comparison
+with Mrs. Winscombe's easy periods.
+
+The supper ended, and the company trailed into a drawing room at the
+opposite end of the house from the kitchen wing. Howat delayed, and
+Caroline, urged forward by Mr. Winscombe's sardonically ubiquitous bow,
+half lingered to cast back a glance of private understanding at her
+brother. When he decided reluctantly to follow he was kept back by the
+sound of a familiar explanation in his father's decisive, full tones.
+
+"Howat," he pronounced, obviously addressing the elder Winscombe, "is a
+black Penny. That is what we call them in our family. You see, the
+Pennys, some hundreds of years back, acquired a strong Welsh strain. I
+take it you are familiar with the Welsh--a solitary-living, dark lot.
+Unamenable to influence, reflect their country, I suppose; but lovers
+of music. I have a touch of that. Now any one would think that such a
+blood, so long ago, would have spread out, been diluted, in a thick
+English stock like the Pennys; or at least that we would all have had a
+little, here and there. But nothing of the sort; it sinks entirely out
+of sight for two or three and sometimes four generations; and then
+appears solid, in one individual, as unslacked as the pure, original
+thing. The last one was burned as a heretic in Mary's day; although I
+believe he would have equally stayed Catholic if the affair had been the
+other way around. Opposition's their breath. This boy--"
+
+"You must not figure to yourself, Mr. Winscombe," Mrs. Penny's even
+voice admirably cut in, "that the black is a word of reproach. I think
+we are both at times at a loss with Howat, he is so different from us,
+from the girls; but he is truly remarkable. I have an unusual affection
+for him; really, his honesty is extraordinary."
+
+He ought, he knew, either follow the others into the drawing room or
+move farther away. His father's explanation repelled him; but his
+mother's capital defence--it amounted to that--made it evident to him
+that he should, by his presence, give her what support he could.
+
+At the fireplace Gilbert Penny was lost in conversational depths with
+Mr. Winscombe. About the opening, now closed for the introduction of a
+hearth stove, were tiles picturing in gay glazes the pastoral history
+of Ruth, and above the mantel a long, clear mirror held a similitude of
+brilliant colour--the scarlet of Mrs. Winscombe's gown, Myrtle's azure
+lutestring on a petticoat of ruffled citron spreading over her hoops and
+little white kid slippers with gilt heels, Caroline's flowered Chinese
+silk. The room was large and square, with a Turkey floor carpet, and
+walls hung with paper printed in lavender and black perspectives from
+copper plates. A great many candles had been lighted, on tables and
+mantel, and in lacquer stands. One of the latter, at Mrs. Winscombe's
+side, showed her features clearly.
+
+Howat Penny saw that while she was actually no prettier than Caroline
+she was infinitely more vivid and compelling. Her face held an
+extraordinary potency; her bare arms and shoulders were more insistent
+than his sister's; there was about her a consciousness of the allurement
+of body, frankness in its employment. She made no effort to mask her
+feeling, which at present was one of complete indifference to her
+surroundings; and, not talking, a shadow had settled on her vision.
+Caroline was seated on a little sofa across from the fireplace, and she
+moved her voluminous skirt aside, made a place for him.
+
+"Almost nothing of Annapolis," Mrs. Winscombe replied to a query of what
+she had seen in Maryland. "We were there hardly two weeks, and I hadn't
+recovered from the trip across the sea. When I think of returning God
+knows I'd almost stay here. You wouldn't suppose one person could vent
+so much. I believe Felix went to a Jockey Club, there were balls and
+farces; but I kept in bed." Mrs. Penny asked, "And London--how are you
+amused there now?" The other retied the bow of a garter. "Fireworks,
+Roman candles to Mr. Handel's music, and Italian parties, Villeggiatura.
+Covent Garden with paper lanterns among the trees, seductions--"
+
+Gilbert Penny smote his hands on the chair arms. "This hectoring of our
+commerce will have to rest somewhere!" he declared; "taking the duty
+from pig iron, and then restricting its market to London, is no
+conspicuous improvement. It is those enactments that provide our
+currency with Spanish pieces instead of English pounds. The West Indies
+are too convenient to be overlooked." Mr. Winscombe replied stiffly,
+"The Government is prepared to meet infractions of its law." Mr. Penny
+muttered a period about Germany in England, with a more distant echo of
+Hanoverian whores and deformed firebrands. His guest sat with a harsh,
+implacable countenance framed in the long shadows of his elaborate wig,
+his ornate coat tails falling stiffly on either side of his chair.
+
+Howat, bred in the comparative simplicity of the Province, found the
+foppery of the aging man slightly ridiculous; yet he was aware that Mr.
+Winscombe's essential character had no expression in his satin and
+powder; his will was as rugged and virile as that of any adventuring
+frontiersman clad in untanned hides. He was, Howat decided, at little
+disadvantage with his young wife. He wondered if any deep bond bound the
+two. Their personal feelings were carefully concealed, and in this they
+resembled Isabel Howat, rather than Gilbert, her husband. The latter had
+a habit of expressing publicly his affectionate domestic relations. And
+Howat Penny decided that he vastly preferred the others' reserve.
+
+An awkward silence had developed on top of the brief political
+acerbities. There was no sound but the singing of the wood in the open
+stove. Myrtle had an absent, speculative gaze; Caroline was biting her
+lip; Mrs. Winscombe yawned in the face of the assembly. Gilbert Penny
+suggested cards, but there was no reply. Howat left the room by a door
+that opened on a rock threshold set in the lawn. The night was
+immaculate, still and cold, with stars brightening in the advance of
+winter. He walked about the house. The counting room of the forge was a
+separate stone structure back of the kitchen; and to the right, and
+farther away, was a second small building. The ground fell rapidly down
+to the Forge on the water power below. He could barely discern the
+towering bulk of the water wheel and roofs of the sheds.
+
+He felt uneasy, obscurely and emotionally disturbed. Already Fanny
+Gilkan seemed far away, to have dropped out of his life. He would give
+some gold to the charcoal burner he had attempted to shoot. Mrs.
+Winscombe annoyed him by her attitude toward Myrtle Forge, her
+unvarnished air of condescension. How old was she? A few years more than
+himself, he decided. The Italian hooked her into her stays. A picture of
+this formed in his thoughts and dissolved, leaving behind a faint
+stinging of his nerves. He recalled her bare--naked--arms ... the old
+man, her husband.
+
+She had spoken of Italian parties; he had seen a picture on a fan
+labelled Villeggiatura--a simpering exquisite in a lascivious embrace
+with a frail beauty on the bank of a stream, and a garland of stripped
+loves reeling about a slim, diapered Harlequin. It was a different
+scene, a different world, from the Province; and its intrusion in the
+person of Mrs. Winscombe was like an orris-scented air moving across the
+face of great trees sweeping their virginal foliage into the region of
+strong and pure winds.
+
+He was dimly conscious of the awakening in him of undivined pressures,
+the stirring of attenuated yet persisting influences. He was saturated
+in the space, the sheer, immense simplicity of the wild, hardly touched
+by the narrow strip of inhabited coast. He had given his existence to
+the woods, to hunting cunning beasts, the stoical endurance of blinding
+fatigue; he had scorned the, to him, sophistications of bricks and
+civilization. But now, in the length of an evening, something invidious
+and far different had become sentient in his being. Italian parties, and
+Covent Garden with lanterns among the trees ... Trees clipped and
+pruned, and gravel walks; seductions.
+
+A falling meteor flashed a brilliant arc across the black horizon,
+dropping into what illimitable wilderness? Fireworks set to the shrill
+scraping of violins. One mingled with the other in his blood, fretting
+him, spoiling the serene and sure vigour of youth, binding his feet to
+the obscure past. Yet colouring all was the other, the black Welsh blood
+of the Pennys. Ever since his boyhood he had heard the fact of his
+peculiar inheritance explained, accepted. In the past he had been what
+he was without thought, self-appraisal. But now he recognized an
+essential difference from his family; it came over him in a feeling of
+loneliness, of removal from the facile business of living in general.
+
+For the first time he wondered about his future. It was unguarded by the
+placid and safe engagements of the majority of lives. He would, he knew,
+ultimately possess Myrtle Forge, a part of Shadrach, and a considerable
+fortune. That was his obvious inheritance. But, suddenly, the material
+thing, the actual, grew immaterial, and the visionary assumed a dark and
+enigmatic reality.
+
+Howat abruptly quitted the night of the lawn, his sombre questioning,
+for the house. The candles had been extinguished in the drawing room. A
+square, glass lamp hung at the foot of the stairs; and there he
+encountered a man in a scratch wig, with a long nose flattened at the
+end. He bowed obsequiously--a posturing figure in shirtsleeves with a
+green cloth waistcoat and black legs. The Italian servant, Howat
+concluded. He passed noiselessly, leaving a reek of pomatum and the
+memory of a servile smile. Howat Penny experienced a strong sense of
+distaste, almost depression, at the other's silent proximity. It
+followed him to his room, contaminated his sleep with unintelligible
+whispering, oily and disturbing gestures, and fled only at the widening
+glimmer of dawn.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The sun had almost reached the zenith before Mrs. Winscombe appeared
+from her room. And at the same moment David Forsythe arrived on a spent
+grey mare. He had come over the forty rough miles which separated Myrtle
+Forge from the city in less than five hours. He was a year older than
+Howat, but he appeared actually younger--a candid youth with high colour
+and light, simply tied hair. He had, he told Howat, important messages
+from his father to Mr. Winscombe. The latter and Gilbert Penny were
+conversing amicably in the lower room at the right of the stairway--a
+chamber with a bed that, nevertheless, was used for informal assemblage.
+Mr. Winscombe wore an enveloping banian of russet brocade with deep
+furred cuffs, and a turban of vermilion silk comfortably replacing a
+wigged formality. Under that brilliant colour his face was as yellow as
+an orange.
+
+The written messages were delivered, and David returned to the lawn. The
+day was superb--a crystal cold through which the sun's rays filtered
+with a faintly perceptible glow. Caroline was standing at Howat's side,
+and she gave his hand a rapid pressure as David Forsythe approached.
+"Where's Myrtle?" the latter asked apparently negligently. Howat
+replied, "Still in the agony of fixing her hair--for dinner; she'll be
+at it again before supper." David whistled a vague tune. Caroline added,
+"You've got fearfully dressy yourself, since London." He replied
+appropriately, and then became more serious. "I wish," he told them,
+"that we belonged to the church of England; you know the Penns have gone
+back. It's pretty heavy at home after--after some other things. The
+Quakers didn't use to be so infernally solemn. You should see the swells
+about the Court; the greatest fun. And old George with a face like a
+plum--"
+
+"Don't you find anything here that pleases you?" Caroline demanded with
+asperity.
+
+"Myrtle's all right," he admitted; "not many of them are as pretty."
+
+"I'll tell her you've come," Caroline promptly volunteered; "she won't
+keep you waiting. There she is! No, it's Mrs. Winscombe."
+
+She was swathed in a ruffled lilac cloak quilted with a dull gold
+embroidery; satin slippers were buckled into high pattens of black
+polished wood; and her head, relatively small with tight-drawn hair, was
+uncovered. She was not as compelling under the sun as in candle light,
+he observed. Her face, unpainted, was pale, an expression of petulance
+discernible. Yet she was more potent than any other woman he had
+encountered. "Isn't that the garden?" she asked, waving beyond the end
+of the house. "I like gardens." She moved off in the direction
+indicated; and--as he felt she expected, demanded--he followed slightly
+behind.
+
+A short, steep terrace descended to a formally planted plot, now
+flowerless, enclosed by low privet hedges. There were walks of rolled
+bark, and, against a lower, denser barrier, a long, white bench. The
+ground still fell away beyond; and there was a sturdy orchard, cleared
+of underbrush, with crimson apples among the grey limbs. Beyond, across
+a low, tangled wild, an amphitheatre of hills rose against the sky,
+drawn from the extreme right about the facade of the dwelling. They
+seemed to enclose Myrtle Forge in a natural domain of its own; and,
+actually, Gilbert Penny owned most of the acreage within that immediate
+circle.
+
+Mrs. Winscombe sank on the garden bench, where she sat with a hand
+resting on either side of her. Above them a column of smoke rose from
+the kitchen against the blue. A second, heavier cloud rolled up from the
+Forge below. "They have been repairing the forebay," Howat explained;
+"the Forge has been closed. I'm supposed to be in the counting house."
+
+"You work?" she demanded surprised.
+
+"At the ledger, put things down--what the men are paid, mostly in
+tobacco and shoes, ozenbrigs and molasses and rum; or garters and
+handkerchiefs for the women. Then I enter the pig hauled from Shadrach,
+and the carriage of the blooms."
+
+"I don't understand any of that," she announced.
+
+"It probably wouldn't interest you; the pig's the iron cast at the
+furnace. It's worked in the forges, and hammered into blooms and
+anconies, chunks or stout bars of wrought iron. We do better than two
+tons a week." The sound of a short, jarring blow rose from the Forge, it
+was repeated, became a continuous part of the serene noon. "That's the
+hammer now," he explained. "It goes usually all day and most nights.
+We're used to it, don't hear it; but strangers complain."
+
+"Mr. Forsythe said your father was an Ironmaster, one of the biggest in
+the Province, and I suppose you'll become that too." She gazed about at
+the hills, sheeted in scarlet and yellow, at the wide sunny hollow that
+held Myrtle Forge. "Here," she added in a totally unexpected accent of
+feeling, "it is very beautiful, very big. I thought all the world was
+like St. James or Versailles. I've never been to Poland, my mother's
+family came from there to Paris, but I'm told they have forests and such
+things, too. This is different from Annapolis, that is only an echo of
+London, but here--" she gazed far beyond him into the profound noon.
+
+He recovered slowly from the surprise of her unlooked for speech,
+attitude. Howat studied her frankly, leaning forward with his elbows on
+his knees. Her discontent was paramount. It was deeper than he had
+supposed; like his there were disturbing qualities in her blood,
+qualities at a variance with the obvious part of her being. A sense of
+profound intimacy with her pervaded him.
+
+"This," she continued, "is like a cure at a Bath, a great bath of air
+and light. I should like to stay, I think.... Are you content?"
+
+"It always seemed crowded to me," he admitted. "Usually I get as far
+away as possible, into the woods, the real wilderness. But you heard my
+father last night--I'm a black Penny, a solitary, dark lot. You couldn't
+judge from what I might feel."
+
+"Your father and you are not sympathetic," she judged acutely. "He is
+practical, solid; but it isn't easy to say, even with an explanation,
+what you are. In London--but I'm sick of London. Myrtle Forge. It's
+appalling at night. I'd like to go into the real wilderness, leave off
+my hoops and stays, and bathe in a stream; a water nymph and you ... but
+that's only Watteau again, with a cicisbeo holding my shift and
+stockings. In London you'd be that, a lady's servant of love; but, in
+the Province, I wonder?"
+
+He sat half comprehending her words mingling in his brain with the
+pounding of the trip hammer at the Forge, one familiar and one
+unfamiliar yet not strange sound. Above them, on the lawn, he could see
+Myrtle--through the middle of the day the sun had increased its
+warmth--with skirts like the petals of a fabulous tea rose. The sun
+glinted on the living gold of her hair and bathed an arm white as snow.
+David was there no doubt. His thoughts dwelt for a moment on Caroline,
+then returned to Mrs. Winscombe, to himself. His entire attitude toward
+her, his observations, had been upset, disarmed, by her unexpected air
+of soft melancholy. In her lavender wrap she resembled a drooping branch
+of flowering lilac. She seemed very young; her air of sophistication,
+her sensuality of being, had vanished. Traces of her illness on
+shipboard still lingered darkly under her eyes. Asleep, he suddenly
+thought, her face would be very innocent, purified. This came to him
+involuntarily; there was none of the stinging of the senses she had
+evoked in him the night before. His instinct for preservation from any
+entanglements with life lay dormant before her surrender to influences
+that left her crumpled, without the slightest interest in any exterior
+fact.
+
+A sententious black servant in maroon livery and a bright worsted
+waistcoat announced dinner from the foot of the terrace, and they moved
+slowly toward the house. There was a concerted interest in the faces
+they found already about the table. Howat took his seat at his mother's
+side, Gilbert Penny assisted Mrs. Winscombe. David was placed between
+Caroline and Myrtle. Mr. Winscombe, again formally wigged and coated,
+was absorbed in thought. He said to his hostess, "It's the uncertainty
+that puts me in doubt. Ogle thought the thing thoroughly reviewed, when
+now Hamilton comes out with his damned Indians and Maryland rum.
+Forsythe suggests my presence in Council to-morrow, and it's barely
+possible that there will be a return to Annapolis. While Ludowika--"
+
+"I can't travel another ell over the atrocities they call roads here,"
+Mrs. Winscombe declared. "I expect to die returning to England as it is,
+and I won't put up with any more preliminary torment. You'll have to
+leave me."
+
+"At Myrtle Forge," Gilbert Penny added at once; "at Myrtle Forge as long
+as you like. Unless," he added with a smile, "you prefer the gaiety at
+Abner Forsythe's." A hot colour suffused David's cheeks.
+
+Mr. Winscombe bowed over the table, "I am inclined to take advantage of
+that. Ludowika would be the better without even Quaker gaiety for a
+little." He stopped, turned toward her. "I'd like it immensely," she
+replied simply. "I am sure it would give me back all that I've lost in
+passage. Perhaps," she leaned forward, smiling at Howat, "I could see
+something of what's behind those hills, go into the real Arcadia."
+
+"Out there," said Mr. Penny, "are the Endless Mountains."
+
+The faint, involuntary chill again invaded Howat; suddenly an unfamiliar
+imagery attached to the commonplace phrase uttered by his father--the
+Endless Mountains! It brought back his doubt, his questioning, of life.
+It was the inconceivable term endless, without any finality of ultimate
+rest, without even the arbitrary peace of death, that appalled him. He
+thought of life going on and on, with nothing consummated, nothing
+achieved nor final. He thought of the black Penny who had been burned as
+a heretic to ashes years before; yet Howat was conscious of the martyr's
+bitter stubbornness of soul, alive, still alive and unquenched, in
+himself. He wondered about the heritage to come. There was a further
+belief that it followed exclusively the male line. The Pennys, like many
+another comparatively obscure name, went far back into the primeval soil
+of civilization. If he had no issue the endlessness might be confounded;
+a fatality in his long, dangerous excursions would have vanquished the
+ineradicable Welsh blood. He might have no children; yesterday he would
+have made such a decision; but now he was less sure of himself, of his
+power to will. He was dimly conscious of vast exterior forces and
+traitorous factors within. It was as if momentarily he had been lifted
+to a cloud beyond time, from which he saw the entire, stumbling progress
+of humanity, its beginning hid in humid mist, moving into a nocturnal
+shadow like a thunder bank.
+
+He sat with chin on breast and sombre eyes until his mother laid her
+hand on his shoulder. "Howat," she protested, "you are too glum for the
+comfort of any one near you. I think you must make a pose of being
+black. I'd almost called one of the servants to fiddle in your ear."
+
+Howat smiled at her; he returned slowly to the actual, the particular.
+Mr. Winscombe had pushed back his chair, excusing himself in the
+pressure of necessary preparations. His wife disappeared with him,
+leaving behind the echo of a discussion about Cecco, the Italian
+servant. The women followed, with David at Myrtle's shoulder, leaving
+Howat and Gilbert Penny.
+
+The latter was still a handsome man, with his own hair silvered on a
+ruddy countenance, and a careful taste in clothes. His nose was
+predominant, with a wide-cleft mouth above a square chin. "I had
+thought," he said deliberately, "that you were employed in the counting
+house, but Schwar tells me that it has been a week since you were seen
+there." He raised a broad hand to silence Howat's reply. "While I can
+afford to keep you merely at hunting, the result to the table is so
+meagre that I'm not justified. There is no St. James here, in
+Pennsylvania, no gentlemen supported by the Crown for the purpose of
+amusement. You will have to sail for England if you expect that sort of
+thing." He rose, "You owe an intelligent interest in Myrtle Forge, to
+your sisters and mother, toward all that I have accomplished. It's a
+rich property, and it's growing bigger. Already young Forsythe has a
+list of improvements to be instituted at the Furnace--clerks and a
+manager and new system for carrying on the blast."
+
+"I'm not an iron man," Howat Penny told him, "I'm not a clerk. David
+can take all that over for you, particularly if he marries one of the
+girls."
+
+"What are you?" the elder demanded sharply.
+
+"You ought to know. You explained it fully enough to the Winscombes."
+
+"If it wasn't for that you'd have been dumping slag five years ago. What
+I hoped was that with maturity some sense of obligation would be born
+into you. What is this pretended affection for your mother worth if you
+are unwilling to conserve, make safe, her future, in case I die?" All
+that his father said was logical, just; but it only brought him a
+renewed sense of his impotence before very old and implacable inner
+forces.
+
+"I'll try again," he briefly agreed. "But I warn you, it will do little
+good. There is no pretence in the affection you spoke of, but--but
+something stronger--" he gave up as hopeless the effort to explain all
+that had swept through his mind.
+
+Gilbert Penny abruptly left the room.
+
+It transpired that the Italian servant was to be left at Myrtle Forge;
+he was now assisting the servants in strapping a box behind the chaise
+that was to carry Mr. Winscombe and David to the city. Howat pictured
+the long, supple hands of the Italian hooking Mrs. Winscombe into her
+clothes, and a sudden, hot revulsion clouded his brain. When the
+carriage had gone, and he stood in the contracted space of the counting
+room, before a long, narrow forge book open on a high desk, he was still
+conscious of a strong repulsion. It was idiotic to let such an
+insignificant fact as the Winscombes' man persistently annoy him. But,
+in a manner entirely unaccountable, this Cecco had become a symbol of
+much that was dark, potentially threatening, in his conjectures.
+
+The hammer fell with a full reiteration through the afternoon; the sun,
+at a small window, shifted a dusty bar across inkpots and quills and
+desk to a higher corner. He could hear the dull turning of the wheel and
+the thin, irregular splash of falling water. Other sounds rose at
+intervals--the tramping of mules dragging pig iron from Shadrach, the
+rumble of its deposit by the Forge. Emanuel Schwar entered with a piece
+of paper in his hand. "Eleven hundred weight of number two," he read;
+"at six pounds, and a load of charcoal. Jonas Hupp charged with three
+pairs of woollen stockings, and shoes for Minnie, four shillings more."
+
+Howat mechanically entered the enumerated items, his distaste for such a
+petty occupation mounting until it resembled a concrete power forcing
+him outside into the mellow end of the day. A figure darkened the
+doorway; it was Caroline. "I hardly saw him," she declared hotly.
+"Myrtle hung like a sickly flower in his buttonhole." Her hoops
+flattened as she made her way through the narrow entrance. "There's one
+thing about Myrtle," she continued, "she's frightfully proper in her
+narrow little ideas. Myrtle's a prude. And I promise you I won't be if I
+get a chance at David." She stood with vivid, parted lips, bright eyes;
+almost, Howat thought, charming. Such a spirit in Caroline amazed him;
+he hadn't conceived of its presence. He recognized a phase of his own
+contempt for customary paths, accepted limitations and proprieties.
+"Remember David's Quaker training," he told her in his habitual air of
+jest. "David's been to London," she replied. "I saw him pinch the
+Appletofft girl at the farm."
+
+Again in his room, he changed into more formal clothes than on the
+evening previous; he did this without a definite, conscious purpose; it
+was as if his attitude of mind required a greater suavity of exterior.
+He wore a London waistcoat, a gift from his mother, of magenta worked
+with black petals and black stone buttons; his breeches were without a
+wrinkle, and the tails of his coat, even if they were not wired like
+those David was said to have brought from England, had a not
+unsatisfactory swing.
+
+At supper Mrs. Winscombe sat at his left, Caroline and Myrtle had taken
+their customary places opposite, the elders had not been disturbed. Mrs.
+Winscombe had resumed the animation vanished at noon. She wore green and
+white, with plum-coloured ribbons, and a flat shirred cap tied under her
+chin. The fluted, clear lawn of her elbow sleeves was like a scented
+mist. He was again conscious of the warm seduction, the rare finish, of
+her body, like a flushed marble under wide hoops and dyed silk. She was
+talking to Myrtle about the Court. "I am in waiting with the Princess
+Amelia Sophia," she explained; "I have her stockings. There is a
+frightful racket of music and parrots and German, with old Handel
+bellowing and the King eternally clinking one piece of gold on another."
+
+Gilbert Penny listened with a tightening of his well shaped lips. "It's
+into that chamber pot we pour our sweat and iron," he asserted. Ludowika
+Winscombe studied him. "In England," she said, "the American provinces
+are supposed to lie hardly beyond the Channel, but here England seems to
+be at the other end of the world." Myrtle added, "I'd like it
+immensely."
+
+And Howat thought of Ludowika--he thought of her tentatively as
+Ludowika--in the brilliant setting of tropical silks and birds.
+
+He considered the change that had overtaken his father, English born, in
+the quarter century he had lived in America; the strong allegiance
+formed to ideas fundamentally different from those held at St. James;
+and he wondered if such a transformation would operate in Ludowika if
+she could remain in the Province. It was a fantastic query, and he
+impatiently dismissed it, returning to the contemplation of his mother's
+problematic happiness. He determined to question the latter if a
+permissible occasion arose; suddenly his interest had sharpened toward
+her mental situation. He compared the two women, what he could
+conjecture about Isabel Howat and Ludowika Winscombe; but something
+within him, automatic and certain, whispered that no comparison was
+possible. His mother possessed a quality of spirit that he had never
+found elsewhere; he could see, in spite of their resemblance of blood
+and position, that the elder could never have been merely provocative.
+Such distinctions, he divined, were the result of qualities mysterious
+and deeply concealed. Love, that he had once dismissed as the principle
+of blind procreation, became more complex, enigmatic. He had no
+increased desire to experience it, with the inevitable loss of personal
+liberty; but he began to be conscious of new depths, unexpected
+complications, in human relationship.
+
+He was not so sure of himself.
+
+They had moved to the less formal of the rooms used as places of
+gathering. The bed in a corner was hung in blue shalloon over ruffled
+white muslin, and there was blue at the windows. Against the wall a
+clavichord, set aside as obsolete, raised its dusky red ebony box on
+grooved legs. Myrtle was seated at it picking out an air from
+Belshazzar. She held each note in a silvery vibration that had the
+fragility of old age. Ludowika was by the fire, quartered across a
+corner; there was no stove, and the wood burning in the opening sent out
+frequent, pungent waves of smoke. She coughed and cursed. "Positively,"
+she declared, "I'll turn salt like a smoked herring."
+
+She rose, her gaze resting on Howat. "I must go out," she continued;
+"breathe." He was strangely reluctant to accompany her, his feet were
+leaden. Nevertheless, in a few moments he found himself at her side on
+the lawn. Her sophistication had again disappeared, beneath the stars
+drawn across the hills, over Myrtle Forge. There was a pause in the
+hammering below. "Take me down there," she commanded.
+
+He led the way on a beaten path that dropped sharply to a bridge of hewn
+logs crossing the spent water. The Forge, a long shed following the
+stream, was open on the opposite side; an enclosure of ruddy, vaporous
+gloom with pools of molten colour, clangorous sounds. The bubbling,
+white cores of three raised and hooded hearths were incessantly agitated
+with long rods by blackened and glistening shapes. At intervals a
+flushing rod was withdrawn from a fire and plunged in a trough of water;
+a cloud of ghostly steam arose, a forgeman's visage momentarily
+illuminated like a copper mask. A grimy lantern was hung above the
+anvil, its thin light falling on the ponderous head of the trip hammer
+suspended at right angles from a turning cogged shaft projection through
+the wall.
+
+The hearths, set in a row beyond the anvil, had at their back an
+obscure, mechanical stir, accompanied by the audible suction of squat,
+drum bellows. The labour was halted at a fire; half naked anatomies,
+herculean shoulders and incredible arms, gathered about its mouth with
+hooked bars. An incandescent mass was lifted, born, rayed in an
+intolerable white heat, into the air. A hammer was swung upon it; and,
+as if the metal were sentient, a violet radiance scintillated where the
+blow had fallen. The pasty iron was carried to the anvil, the hooks
+dropped for wide-jawed tongs; the trip hammer moved up and fell. The
+hardening metal darkened to a carnation from which chips scattered like
+gorgeous petals. The carnation faded under ringing blows; the petals,
+heaping in the penumbra under foot, were as vividly blue as gentians.
+The colour vanished from the solidifying bloom ... It was ashen, black.
+The hammering continued.
+
+A sense of the vast and antique simplicity of the forging, a feeling of
+hammering the earth itself into the superior purposes of man, enveloped
+Howat. He forgot for the moment his companion, lost in a swelling pride
+of Myrtle Forge, of his father's fibre--the iron of his character like
+the iron he successfully wrought. He could grasp Gilbert Penny's
+accomplishment here, take fire at its heroic quality; a thing he found
+impossible in the counting room above, recording such trivial details as
+wool stockings for Jonas Rupp. He could be a forgeman, he thought, but
+never a clerk; and in that limitation he realized that he was inferior
+to his father. There were aspects of himself beyond such discipline and
+control.
+
+Ludowika Winscombe grasped his arm. "Come away," she begged; "it's--it's
+savage, like Vulcan and dreadful, early legends." She hurried him,
+clinging to his arm, over the ascent to the orderly lawn, the tranquil
+shine of candle-lit windows. There, with her hood fallen from her head,
+she sat on a stone step.
+
+"You frighten me, a little," she confessed. "Are you at all like--like
+that below inside of you? I have a feeling that you might be. If you
+were one of the men about Vauxhall you'd be kissing me now ... if I
+liked you. But, although I do like you, I wouldn't kiss you for an
+emerald buckle." He recognized that she spoke seriously; her voice bore
+no connective suggestion. Kisses, it appeared, were no more to her than
+little flowers which she dealt out casually where she pleased. Yet the
+idea, with its intimate sensual implications, stayed in his thoughts. He
+considered kissing her, holding her mouth against his; and he was
+conscious of a sharp return of his stinging sense of her bodily
+seductiveness.
+
+At the same time an obscure uneasiness, rebellion, possessed him; it was
+the old, familiar feeling of revolt, of distaste for imprisoning
+circumstance. It came to him acutely, almost as if a voice had whispered
+in his ear, warning him, urging him into the wild, to escape threatening
+catastrophe. He determined to leave Myrtle Forge in the morning, to
+return to the stream he had followed into the serene heart of the woods.
+There he would stay until--until Ludowika Winscombe had gone. Howat had
+no especial sense of danger from her; only for the moment she typified
+the entire world of trivial artifice. He gazed at her with a conscious
+detachment possible because of the rarity in his existence of such
+figures as hers.
+
+She had risen, and her cloak fallen upon the grass. Howat could see her
+face beneath hair faintly powdered with silver dust and the ruffled
+patch of white tied pertly under her chin. Her smoothly turning
+shoulders, filmed in lawn, and low bodice crowned an extravagant
+circumference of ruffled silk and rosettes. Against the night of the
+Province, the invisible but felt presence of immutable hills, she was
+like a puppet, a grotesque figure of comedy. He regarded her sombrely
+from the step, his chin cupped in a hand.
+
+But, again, she surprised him, speaking entirely out of the character he
+had assigned her, in a spirit that seemed utterly incongruous, but which
+was yet warm with conviction. "I want to explain a great deal to you,"
+she said, "that really isn't explainable. It isn't sensible, and yet it
+is the strongest feeling I remember. It's about here and you and me. You
+can't picture my life, and so you don't know how strange this is, how
+different from all I've ever lived.
+
+"I think I told you I was born in Paris--you see some of us came to
+France when Louis took a Polish princess, and there my mother married an
+English gentleman. Well, it was always the Court, in France and in
+England. Always the Court--do you know what that means? It's a place
+where women are pretty pink and white candies that men are always
+picking over. It's a great bed with a rose silk counterpane and closed
+draperies. Champagne and music and scent and masques. Little plays with
+the intrigue in the audience; favours behind green hedges. I was in it
+when I was fourteen, and I had a lover the first year. He showed me how
+to make pleasure. Don't think that I was indifferent to this," she added
+directly; "that I wanted to escape it. I wasn't; I didn't. Only beneath
+everything I had a feeling of not being completely satisfied; I
+wanted--oh, not very strongly--something else, for an hour. At times the
+air seemed choking; and inside of me, but not in my body, I seemed
+choking too. I used to think about the Polish forests, and that would
+help a little."
+
+She resumed the place at his side, with her silk billowing against his
+knee. "This is it," she declared, her face set against the illimitable,
+still dark. "I recognized it only a little while ago. I think
+unconsciously I came to America hoping to find it; there was nothing at
+Annapolis, but here--" she drew a breath as deep, he noted, as her stays
+would permit. "It includes you, somehow," she continued; "as if you were
+the voice. What I said coming away from the Forge, about dreading you,
+was only momentary. I have another feeling, premonition--" she broke
+off, her manner changed. "All the Court believes in signs: Protestantism
+and vampires.
+
+"It seems unreal here; I mean St. James and all that was so
+tremendously important; incredibly stupid--the Princess Amelia's
+stockings. But you can't imagine the jealousy. Every bit of it shall go
+out of my thoughts. You'll help me, a harmless magic. I'll be as simple
+as that girl across the road, with the red cheeks, in a single slip. You
+must call me Ludowika; Ludowika and Howat. I'm not so terribly old, only
+twenty-nine."
+
+"I am going away to-morrow," he informed her; "I won't be back before
+you leave."
+
+A slight frown gathered about her eyes. Her face was very close to his.
+"But I don't like that either," she replied. "You were to be a part of
+it, its voice; excursions in the woods. Is it necessary, your absence?"
+
+He knew that it was not; and suddenly he was seized with the conviction
+that he would not go. It was as if, again, a voice outside him had
+informed him of the fact. But if there were no reason for his going
+there was as little for his remaining at Myrtle Forge; that was, so far
+as Ludowika Winscombe was concerned. He had been untouched by all that
+she had said; untouched except for a faint involuntary shiver as she had
+spoken of premonition. And that had vanished instantaneously. There was
+his duty in the counting house. But he was forced to admit to himself
+the insufficiency of that reason; it was too palpably false.
+
+He had not been moved by the intent of what she had said, but his
+imagination had been stirred, as if by the touch of delicate, pointed
+fingers, at her description of Court--a bed with a silk counterpane ...
+behind clipped greenery. He recalled the fan with its painted
+Villeggiatura, the naked, wanton loves. "Something different," she half
+repeated, with a sigh, an accent, of longing. Howat heard her with
+impatience; it was absurd to try to picture her tramping in the
+wilderness, breaking her way hour after hour through thorned underbrush,
+like Fanny Gilkan. She wouldn't progress a hundred yards in her unsteady
+pattens and fragile clothes.
+
+Suddenly the Italian servant appeared absolutely noiselessly at her
+side, speaking a ridiculous, oily gibberish. "At once," she replied. She
+turned to Howat. "My bed has been prepared. Are you going to-morrow?"
+
+"No," he answered awkwardly. She turned and left without further words.
+The servant walked behind her, resembling an unnatural shadow.
+
+The metallic clamour at the anvil rose and fell, diminished by the
+interposed bulk of the dwellings, ceaselessly forging the Penny iron,
+the Penny gold. He thought of himself as metal under the hammer; or
+rather ore at the furnace: he hadn't run clear in the casting; there
+were bubbles, bubbles and slag. Endless refinements--first the furnace
+and then the forge and then the metal. A contempt for the lesser degrees
+possessed him, for a flawed or clumsy forging, for weakness of the
+flesh, the fatality of easy surrender. An overwhelming, passionate
+emotion swept him to his feet, clenched his hands, filled him with a
+numbing desire to reach the last purification.
+
+The mood sank into an inexplicable nostalgia; he dragged the back of a
+hand impatiently across his vision. His persistent indifference, the
+inhibition that held him in a contemptuous isolation, again possessed
+him, Howat, a black Penny. A last trace of his emotion, caught in the
+flood of his paramount disdain, vanished like a breath of warm mist. He
+entered the house and mounted to his room; the stairs creaked but that
+was the only sound audible within. His candles burned without their
+protecting glasses in smooth, unwavering flames. When they were
+extinguished the darkness flowed in and blotted out familiar objects,
+folded him in a cloak of invisibility, obliterated him in sleep. As he
+lost consciousness he heard the trip hammer dully beating out Penny
+iron, Penny gold; beating out, too, the Penny men ... Slag and metal and
+ruffled muslin, roman candles and stars.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+There came to him in the counting house, the following afternoon,
+rumours and echoes of the day's happenings. David Forsythe had arrived
+after dinner, and there had been word from Mr. Winscombe; he would be
+obliged to return to Maryland, and trusted that Ludowika would not be an
+onerous charge. David was to take Myrtle and Caroline back with him to
+the city, for an exemplary Quaker party. "There's no good asking you,"
+he told Howat, lounging in the door of the counting room. David was
+flushed, his sleeve coated with dust. "Caroline," he exclaimed, "is as
+strong as a forgeman; she upset me on the grass as quickly as you
+please, hooked her knee behind me, and there I was. She picked me up,
+too, and laughed at me," he stopped, lost in thought. "Myrtle's really
+beautiful," he said again; "Caroline's not a thing to look at, and yet,
+do you know, a--a man looks at her. She is wonderfully graceful."
+
+Howat gave Caroline the vigorous stamp of his brotherly approval. "She
+understands a lot, for a girl," he admitted. "Of course Myrtle's a
+particular peach, but I'd never go to her if a buckle--" he stopped
+abruptly as Myrtle appeared at David's side. "Isn't he industrious?"
+she said indifferently. "You'd never guess how father's at him. Have you
+heard, Howat--Mrs. Winscombe will be here perhaps a month. It's a wonder
+you haven't gone away, you are so frightfully annoyed by people. Last
+night you were with her over an hour on the lawn. I could see that
+father thought it queer; but I explained to him that court women never
+thought of little things like, well, husbands."
+
+Howat gazed at her coldly, for the first time conscious that he actually
+disliked Myrtle. He made up his mind, definitely, to assist Caroline as
+far as possible. She was absurd, criticizing Mrs. Winscombe. "Where," he
+demanded, "did you get all that about courts? And your sudden, tender
+interest in husbands? That's new, too. You're not thinking of one for
+yourself, are you? He'd never see you down in the morning."
+
+A bright, angry colour flooded her cheeks. "You are as coarse as
+possible," she declared. "I'm sure I wish you'd stay away altogether
+from Myrtle Forge; you've never been anything but a bother." She left
+abruptly. "Sweet disposition." Howat grinned. "You are seeing family
+life as it's actually lived." Later his thoughts returned to what she
+had said about Ludowika Winscombe; he recalled the latter's speech,
+seated on the doorstep; some stuff about a premonition. Myrtle had
+suggested that he was interested in her. What ridiculous nonsense! If
+his father said anything on that score the other would discover that he
+was no longer a boy. Besides, such insinuations were a breach of
+hospitality. How Mrs. Winscombe would laugh at them if she suspected
+Myrtle's cheap folly.
+
+She had asked him to call her Ludowika. He decided that he would; really
+he couldn't get out of it now. It would do no harm. Ludowika! It was a
+nice name; undoubtedly Polish. He thought again about what she had said
+of Polish forests, the dissatisfaction that had followed her for so many
+years. A lover at fourteen. A surprising sentence formed of itself in
+his brain.--She had never had a chance. That pasty court life had
+spoiled her. It had no significance for himself; he was simply revolving
+a slightly melancholy fact.
+
+Felix Winscombe was a sere figure, yet he was extraordinarily full of a
+polished virility, rapier-like. Howat could see the dark, satirical face
+shadowed by the elaborate wig, the rigid figure in precise, foppish
+dress. He heard Winscombe's slightly harsh, dominant voice. His position
+in England was, he knew, secure, high. Ludowika had been very sensible
+in marrying him. That was the way, Howat Penny told himself, that
+marriage should be consummated. He would never marry. David Schwar
+appeared with a sheaf of papers, which he himself proceeded to docket,
+and Howat left the counting room.
+
+He met Ludowika almost immediately; she advanced more simply dressed
+than he had ever seen her before. She pointed downward to the water
+flashing over the great, turning wheel. "Couldn't we walk along the
+rill? There's a path, and it's beautiful in the shadow." The stream
+poured solid and green through the narrow, masoned course of the
+forebay, sweeping in a lucent arc over the lip of the fall. An earthen
+path followed the artificial channel through a dense grove of young
+maples, seeming to hold the sun in their flame-coloured foliage. Myrtle
+Forge was lost, the leaves shut out the sky; underfoot some were already
+dead. The wilderness marched up to the edges of the meagre clearings.
+
+Ludowika walked ahead, without speech; irregular patches of ruddy light
+slid over her flared skirt. Suddenly she stopped with an exclamation;
+the trees opened before them on the broad Canary sweeping between flat
+rocks, banks bluely green. Above, the course was broken, swift; but
+where they stood it was tranquil again, and crystal clear. Yellow rays
+plunging through the unwrinkled surface gilded the pebbles on the
+shallower bottom. A rock, broad and flat, extended into the stream by
+the partial, diagonal dam that turned the water into Myrtle Forge; and
+Ludowika found a seat with her slippers just above the current. Howat
+Penny sat beside her, then dropped back on the rocks, his hands clasped
+behind his head.
+
+A silence intensified by the whispering stream enveloped them. He
+watched a hawk, diminutive on the pale immensity above. "Heavens,"
+Ludowika finally spoke, "how wonderful ... just to sit, not to be
+bothered by--by things. Just to hear the water. Far away," she said
+dreamily; "girl."
+
+From where he lay he could see her arms, beautiful and bare, lost in
+soft Holland above the elbows; he could see the roundness of her body
+above the lowest of stays. Suddenly she fascinated him; he visualized
+her sharply, as though for the first time--a warm, intoxicating entity.
+He was profoundly disturbed, and sat erect; the stream, the woods,
+blurred in his vision. He felt as if his heart had been turned
+completely over in his body; the palms of his hands were wet. He had a
+momentary, absurd impulse to run, beyond Shadrach Furnace, beyond any
+distance he had yet explored, farther even than St. Xavier. Ludowika
+Winscombe gazed in serene, unconscious happiness before her. He felt
+that his face was crimson, and he rose, moved to the water's edge, his
+back toward her. He was infuriated at a trembling that passed over him,
+damned it in a savage and inaudible whisper.
+
+What particularly appalled him was the fact that his overmastering
+sensation came without the slightest volition of his own. He had had
+nothing to do with it, his will was powerless. He was betrayed like a
+fortified city whose gate had been thrown open by an unsuspected, a
+concealed, traitor inside. In an instant he had been invaded, his being
+levelled, his peculiar pride overthrown. He thought even that he heard a
+dull crash, as if something paramount had irremediably fallen,
+something that should have been maintained at any cost, until the end of
+life.
+
+Howat felt a sudden hatred of his companion; but that quickly
+evaporated; he discovered that she had spread, like a drop of carmine in
+a goblet of water, through his every nerve. By God, but she had become
+himself! In the space of a breath she was in his blood, in his brain;
+calling his hands about her, toward her smooth, beautiful arms. She was
+the scent in his nostrils, the sound a breeze newly sprung up stirred
+out of the leaves. A profound melancholy spread over him, a deep
+sadness, a conviction of loss. Ludowika was singing softly:
+
+"Last Sunday at St. James's prayers
+--dressed in all my whalebone airs."
+
+He had come on disaster. The realization flashed through his
+consciousness and was engulfed in the submerging of his being in the
+overwhelming, stinging blood that had swept him from his old security.
+Yet he had been so detached from the merging influences about him, his
+organization had been so complete in its isolation, his egotism so
+developed, that a last trace of his entity lingered sentient, viewing as
+if from a careened but still tenable deck the general submergence. His
+thoughts returned to the automatic operation of the consummation
+obliterating his person, the inexorable blind movement of the thing in
+which he had been caught, dragged into the maw of a supreme purpose. It
+was, of course, the law of mere procreation which he had before
+contemptuously recognized and dismissed; a law for animals; but he was
+no longer entirely an animal. Already he had considered the possibility
+of an additional force in the directing of human passion, founded on
+something beyond the thirst of flesh, founded perhaps on soaring
+companionships, on--on--The condition, the term, he was searching for
+evaded him.
+
+He thought of the word love; and he was struck by the vast inaccuracy of
+that large phrase. It meant, Howat told himself, literally nothing: what
+complex feeling Isabel Penny might have for her husband, Caroline's
+frank desire for David Forsythe, Myrtle's meagre emotion, Fanny Gilkan's
+sense of Hesa and life's necessary compromises, his own collapse--all
+were alike called love. It was not only a useless word but a dangerous
+falsity. It had without question cloaked immense harm, pretence; it had
+perpetuated old lies, brought them plausibly, as if in a distinguished
+and reputable company, out of past superstitions and credulity; the real
+and the meaningless, the good and the evil, hopelessly confused.
+
+They were seated at supper, four of them only; Isabel and Gilbert Penny,
+and, opposite him, Ludowika. Occasionally he would glance at her,
+surreptitiously; his wrists would pound with an irregular, sultry
+circulation; longing would harass him like the beating of a club. She,
+it seemed to him, grew gayer, younger, more simple, every hour.
+Happiness, peace, radiated in her gaze, the gestures of her hands. Howat
+wondered at what moment he would destroy it. Reprehensible. A moment
+must come--soon--when emotion would level his failing reserve, his
+falling defences. He thrilled at the thought of the inevitable
+disclosure. Would she fight against it, deny, satirize his tumult; or
+surrender? He couldn't see clearly into that; he didn't care. Then he
+wondered about the premonition of which she had spoken, deciding to ask
+her to be more explicit.
+
+An opportunity occurred later. Gilbert Penny had gone down to the Forge
+store, his wife had disappeared. Ludowika Winscombe and Howat were
+seated in the drawing room. Only a stand of candles was lit at her
+elbow; her face floated like a pale and lovely wafer against the
+billowing shadows of the chamber. The wood on the iron hearth was
+charring without flame. He questioned her bluntly, suddenly, out of a
+protracted silence. She regarded him speculatively, delaying answer.
+Then, "I couldn't tell you like this, now; it would be too silly; you
+would laugh at me. I hadn't meant to say even what I did. I'd prefer to
+ignore it."
+
+"What did you mean, what premonition came to you?" he insisted crudely.
+
+She seemed to draw away from him, increase in years and an attitude of
+tolerant amusement. Only an immediate reply would save them, he
+realized. He leaned forward unsteadily, with clenched hands. "I warned
+you," she proceeded lightly; "and if you do laugh my pride will suffer."
+In spite of her obvious determination to speak indifferently her voice
+grew serious, "I had a feeling that you mustn't kiss me, that
+this--America, the Province, Myrtle Forge, you, were for something
+different. You see, I had always longed for a peculiar experience,
+release, and when it came, miraculously, I thought, it must not be
+spoiled, turned into the old, old thing. That was all. It was in my
+spirit," she added almost defiantly, as if that claim might too be
+susceptible of derision.
+
+He settled back into his chair, turning upon her a gloomy vision.
+Whatever penalty threatened them, he knew, must fall. Nothing existing
+could keep him from it. He felt a fleet sorrow for her in the inevitable
+destruction of the release for which she had so long searched, her new
+peace, so soon to be smashed. All sorrow for himself had gone under.
+Isabel Penny returned to the drawing room, and moved about, her flowered
+silk at once gay and obscure in the semidarkness. "The fire, Howat," she
+directed; "it's all but out." He stirred the logs into a renewed blaze.
+
+A warm gilding flickered over Ludowika; she smiled at him, relaxed,
+content. He was surprised that she could not see the tumultuous feeling
+overpowering him. He had heard that women were immediately aware of
+such emotion. But he realized that she had been lulled into a false
+sense of security, of present immunity from "the old, old thing," by her
+own placidity. He did not know when his mother left the room. He
+wondered continuously when it would happen, when the bolt would fall,
+what she would do. Howat was hot and cold, and possessed by a subtle
+sense of improbity, a feeling resembling that of a doubtful advance
+through the dark, for a questionable end. This was the least part of
+him, insignificant; his passion grew constantly stronger, more brutal.
+In a last, vanishing trace of his superior consciousness he recognized
+that the thing must have happened to him as it did; it was the price of
+his more erect pride, his greater contempt, his solitary and unspent
+state.
+
+She rose suddenly and announced that she was about to retire. It saved
+them for the moment, for that day; he muttered something
+incomprehensible and she was gone.
+
+Isabel Penny returned and took Mrs. Winscombe's place before the fire.
+She spoke trivially, at random intervals. A great longing swept over him
+to tell his mother everything, try to find an escape in her wise
+counsel; but his emotion seemed so ugly that he could not lay it before
+her. Besides, he had a conviction that it would be hopeless: he was
+gone. She was discussing Ludowika now. "Really," she said, "they seem
+very well matched, a good arrangement." She was referring, he realized,
+to the Winscombes' experience. He never thought of Felix Winscombe as
+married, Ludowika's husband; he had ceased to think of him at all. The
+present moment banished everything else. "She has a quality usually
+destroyed by life about a Court," the leisurely voice went on; "she
+seems quite happy here, for a little, in a way simple. But, curiously
+enough, she disturbs your father. He can't laugh with her as he usually
+does with attractive women."
+
+It was natural, Howat thought, that Gilbert Penny should be uneasy
+before such a direct reminder of the setting from which he had taken
+Isabel Howat. It was a life, memories, in which the elder had no part;
+that consciousness dictated a part of his father's bitterness toward St.
+James, the Royal Government. But Gilbert Penny had never had serious
+reason to dread it. His wife had left it all behind, permanently,
+without, apparently, a regret. He had a sudden, astonishing community of
+feeling with the older man; a momentary dislike of St. James,
+Versailles, the entire, treacherous, silk mob. A lover at fourteen!
+Howat damned such a betrayal with a bitterness whose base lay deeply
+buried in sex jealousy.
+
+"I am glad," the other continued, "that you are not susceptible; I
+suppose you'll be off hunting in a day or more; Mrs. Winscombe is bright
+wine for a young man. Women like her play at sensation, like eating
+figs." He thought contemptuously what nonsense was talked in connection
+with feminine intuition; it was nothing more than a polite chimera,
+like all the other famous morals and inhibitions supposed to serve and
+direct mankind.
+
+He wondered once more about his mother, what the course of her life had
+been--happily occupied, filled, or merely self-contained, hiding much in
+a deep, even flow? Her head was turned away from him, and he could see
+the girlish profile, the astonishing illusion of youth renewed. Howat
+wanted to ask her how she had experienced, well--love, since there was
+no other word. It had come to her quickly, he knew; her affair with
+Gilbert Penny had been headlong, or else it would not have been at all;
+yet he felt she had not been the victim of such a tyranny as mastered
+himself. But, perhaps, after all, secretly, every one was--just
+animal-like. He repudiated this firmly, at once. He himself had felt
+that he was not entirely animal.
+
+"The girls," Isabel Penny said, "will be gallopading now. Myrtle has a
+new dress, her father gave it to her, an apricot mantua."
+
+"He's really idiotic about Myrtle," Howat declared irritably. His mother
+glanced swiftly at him. She made no comment. "Now Caroline! It's
+Caroline who ought to marry David Forsythe."
+
+"Such things must fall out as they will."
+
+God, that was true enough, terribly true! He rose and strode into the
+farther darkness of the drawing room, returning to the fireplace,
+marching away again. He saw the white glimmer of Ludowika's arms; he
+had a vision of her tying the broad ribbon about her rounded, silken
+knee. "... a man now," his mother's voice was distant, blurred.
+"Responsibilities; your father--" He had heard this before without being
+moved; but suddenly the words had a new actuality; he was a man now,
+that was to say he stood finally, irrevocably, alone, beyond assistance,
+advice. He had never heeded them; he had gone a high-handed, independent
+way, but the others had been there; unconsciously he had been aware of
+them, even counted on them. Now they had vanished.
+
+Caroline and Myrtle, bringing David with them again, returned on the
+following morning. It seemed to Howat that the former was almost lovely;
+she had a gayer sparkle, a clearer colour, than he had ever seen her
+possess before. On the other hand, Myrtle was dull; the dress, it
+seemed, had not been the unqualified success she had hoped for.
+Something newer had arrived in the meantime from London. Ludowika, it
+developed, had one of the later sacques in her boxes; but that, she said
+indifferently, must be quite dead now. It seemed to Howat that she too
+regarded Myrtle without enthusiasm. Ludowika and Myrtle had had very
+little to say to each other; Myrtle studied Mrs. Winscombe's apparel
+with a keen, even belligerent, eye; the other patronized the girl in a
+species of half absent instruction.
+
+The sky was flawless, leaden blue; the sunlight fell in an enveloping
+flood over the countryside, but it was pale, without warmth. There was
+no wind, not a leaf turned on the trees--a sinuous sheeting of the
+country-side like red-gold armour. But Howat knew that at the first stir
+of air the leaves would be in stricken flight, the autumn accomplished.
+Caroline dragged him impetuously down into the garden, among the brown,
+varnished stems of the withered roses, the sere, dead ranks of scarlet
+sage. "He hugged me," she told him; "I was quite breathless. It was in a
+hall, dark; but he didn't say anything. What do you think?" There was
+nothing definite that he might express; and he patted her shoulder. He
+had a new kinship with Caroline; Howat now understood her tempest of
+feeling, concealed beneath her commonplace daily aspect.
+
+Myrtle and David joined them, and he left, resumed his place at the high
+desk in the counting house. Strangely his energy of being communicated
+itself to the prosaic work before him. It was, he suddenly felt,
+important for him to master the processes of Myrtle Forge; it would not
+do for him to remain merely irresponsible, a juvenile appendage to the
+Penny iron. He would need all the position, the weight, he could assume;
+and money of his own. He found a savage pleasure in recording every
+detail put before him. He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of
+charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped
+to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in
+which London limited the Province's industries. For the first time he
+was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a
+personal concern in its output. He had always visualized it as
+automatically prosperous, a cause of large, inexact pride; but now it
+was all near to him; he considered the competition rapidly increasing
+here, and the jealous menace over seas.
+
+His final trace of careless youth had gone; he felt the advent of the
+constant apprehension that underlies all maturity, a sense of the
+proximity of blind accident, evil chance, disaster. At last he was
+opposed to life itself, with an immense stake to gain, to hold; in the
+midst of a seething, treacherous conflict arbitrarily ended by death.
+There was no cringing, absolutely no cowardice, in him. He was glad that
+it was all immediately about him; he was arrogant in pressing forward to
+take what he wanted from existence. He forgot all premonitions, doubt
+was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika
+Winscombe. She was something he would, had to, have.
+
+David Forsythe sat across the back of a chair in Howat's room as the
+latter dressed in the rapidly failing light. David had smuggled his
+London coat with the wired tails out to Myrtle Forge, and had the
+stiffened portion now spread smoothly out on either side. His cheerful,
+freshly-coloured face was troubled; he seemed constantly on the point of
+breaking into speech without actually becoming audible. Howat was
+thinking of Ludowika. It would happen to-night, he knew. He was at once
+apprehensive and glad.
+
+"You knew," David ventured finally, "that I'm supposed to ask Myrtle to
+marry me. That is, your father and mine hoped I would. Well," he drew a
+deep breath, "I don't think I shall. Of course, she is one of the
+prettiest girls any one ever saw, and she's quite bright--it's wonderful
+what she has picked up about the Furnace, but yet--" his speech suddenly
+ran out. With an effort Howat brought himself back from his own vastly
+more important concern. "Yes?" he queried, pausing with his fingers in
+the buttonholes of a mulberry damask coat. "I have decided to choose, to
+act, for myself," David announced; "this is a thing where every man must
+be absolutely free.--Caroline can have me if she likes."
+
+Howat could not avoid a momentary, inward flicker of amusement at David
+Forsythe's absolute freedom of choice. He felt infinitely older than the
+other, wiser in the circuitous mysteries of being. He pounded David on
+the back, exclaimed, "Good!"
+
+"I don't know whether to speak to Abner," the other proceeded
+unfilially, "or the great Penny first. I don't care too much for either
+job. It would be pleasanter to go to Caroline. I have an idea she
+doesn't exactly dislike me."
+
+"Perhaps I oughtn't to tell you," Howat replied gravely; "but Caroline
+thinks a lot of you. She has admitted it to me--"
+
+David Forsythe danced agilely about the more serious figure; he kicked
+Howat gaily from behind, ironically patted his cheek. "Hell's buttons!"
+he cried. "Why didn't you tell me that before? You cast iron ass! I'll
+marry Caroline if I have to take her to a charcoal burner's hut. She
+would go, too."
+
+Howat Penny gripped the other's shoulder, faced him with grim
+determination. "Do you fully realize that Myrtle Forge, Shadrach, will
+be us? They will be ours and our wives' and childrens'. We must stand
+together, David, whatever happens, whatever we may, personally, think.
+The iron is big now, but it is going to be great. We mustn't fail, fall
+apart. We'll need each other; there's going to be trouble, I think."
+
+David put out his hand. "I didn't know you felt like that, Howat," he
+replied, the effervescent youth vanished from him too. "It's splendid.
+We'll hammer out some good blooms together. And for the other, nothing
+shall ever make a breach between us."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+They went down to the supper table silently, absorbed in thought. David
+was placed where Mr. Winscombe had been seated, on Mrs. Penny's right,
+and next to Myrtle. Gilbert Penny maintained a flow of high spirits; he
+rallied every one at the table with the exception of, Howat noted,
+Ludowika. Her hair was simply arranged and undecorated, she wore
+primrose with gauze like smoke, an apparently guileless bodice with
+blurred, warm suggestions of her fragrant body. Howat was conscious of
+every detail of her appearance; she was stamped, as she was that
+evening, indelibly on his inner being. He turned toward her but little,
+addressed to her only the most perfunctory remarks; he was absorbed in
+the realization that the most fateful moment he had met was fast
+approaching. His father's cheerful voice continued seemingly
+interminably; now it was a London beauty to which he affected to believe
+David had given his heart. The latter replied stoutly:
+
+"I brought that back safely enough; it's here the danger lies.
+Humiliating to cross the ocean and then be lost in Canary Creek."
+
+Gilbert Penny shot an obvious, humorous glance at Myrtle. She did not
+meet it, but sat with lowered gaze. Caroline made a daring "nose" at
+Howat; but he too failed to acknowledge her message. David's affair had
+sunk from his thoughts. The drawing room was brilliantly lighted: there
+was a constant stir of peacock silk, of yellow and apple green and coral
+lutestring, of white shoulders, in the gold radiance of candles like
+stiff rows of narcissi. Caroline drifted finally into the chamber back
+of the dining room, and they could hear the tenuous vibrations of the
+clavichord. Soon David had disappeared. The elder Penny discovered
+Myrtle seated sullenly at her mother's side; and, taking her arm, he
+escorted her in the direction of the suddenly silenced music.
+
+Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace. She smiled at
+Howat as he moved closer to her. She never did things with her hands, he
+noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little
+heaps of white. She sat motionless, her arms at rest. His mother seemed
+far away. The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room
+wavered in his vision. Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of
+intoxicating, yellow wine. He had a curious sensation of floating in
+air, of tea roses. It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she
+still realized nothing.... She must know now, any minute. Howat saw that
+his mother had gone.
+
+He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her. She
+raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened. Then her expression
+changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand. Her breast
+rose and fell, sharply, once. Howat picked her up by the shoulders and
+crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him. Ludowika's
+skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.
+
+Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa. She
+hadn't struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her
+countenance, only a deep trouble. "Howat," she said softly, "you
+shouldn't have done that. It was brutal, selfish. You--you knew, after
+all that I told you; the premonition--" she broke off, anger shone
+brighter in her eyes. "How detestable men are!" She turned away from
+him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa. Unexpectedly he was
+almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on
+the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.
+
+He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I
+was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with
+bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here,
+that you were different; that feeling in my heart--but it's gone now,
+dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I
+would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single
+little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing
+new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the
+world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see,
+I learned it all quite young.
+
+"I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if
+you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself." She
+appeared older, the Mrs. Winscombe who had first come to Myrtle Forge;
+her mouth was flippant. "The eternal Suzanna," she remarked, "the
+monotonous elders or younger." He paid little heed to her words; the
+coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like
+the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above
+her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement
+of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.
+
+"I didn't choose it," he told her; "it's ruined all that I was. Now, I
+don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about--if
+there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here
+with--as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My
+feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the
+end. There isn't any, I think." He pressed her hands to his throat with
+a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained
+her cheeks, and her breath caught. "Endless," he repeated, losing the
+word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode
+over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat
+returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his
+nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid;
+she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its
+wrist.
+
+"I think it is something in myself," she said presently; "something a
+little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat
+Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. God, I'd like to be that
+girl across the road, in the barnyard." He was back at the fire again
+when Gilbert Penny entered the room. The latter dropped a palm on
+Howat's shoulder.
+
+"Schwar says the last sow metal was faulty," he declared; "the
+Furnace'll need some attention with Abner Forsythe deeper in the
+Provincial affairs. Splendid thing David's back. Look for a lot from
+David." Howat hoped desperately that Ludowika would not leave, go to her
+room, while his father was talking. "David says you have an
+understanding, will do great things. I hope so. I hope so. I won't damn
+him as an example but he will do you no harm. That is, if he touches
+your confounded person at all. A black Penny, Mrs. Winscombe," he said,
+turning to the figure spread in pale silk on the sofa. "Fortunate for
+you to have no such confounded, stubborn lot on your hands. Although,"
+he added laughingly, "Felix Winscombe's no broken reed. But this boy of
+mine--you might think he had been run out of Shadrach," he tapped a
+finger on Howat's back. "Not like those fellows about the Court, anyway.
+They tell me he'll go fifty miles through the woods in a day. Now if we
+could only keep that at the iron trade--"
+
+His father went on insufferably, without end. Howat withdrew stiffly
+from the other's touch. Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika.
+She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated. An immense
+tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer passion vapourized into a
+poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling. He was protective; his jaw set
+rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world. He had
+a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and
+silver buttons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage,
+confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him. Inexplicable
+tremors assailed him, vast fears. His father's deliberate voice
+destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and
+yellow flowers, the suave interior. The others had returned. He heard
+Ludowika speaking; she laughed. His tension relaxed. Suddenly he was
+flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling,
+delightful water. He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose.
+Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.
+
+There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him
+to declare himself to Ludowika. He was vaguely conscious of his mother's
+scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable
+surmising. His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to
+feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the
+consideration of an announcement of his passion for Ludowika Winscombe,
+a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world. But for
+the present he must be careful. This, the greatest event that had
+befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a
+black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his
+convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening.
+His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven
+fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his
+scorn.
+
+As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room. Myrtle took
+her place on the sofa. Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at
+the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own
+council. David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat. Caroline gaily laid
+her arm across her mother's shoulder and propelled her from the room.
+David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less
+clumsy, took his departure. He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow
+of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light.
+Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly. "Howat," she said
+in a small voice, "it's--it's, that is, David loves me. Whatever do you
+suppose father and Myrtle will say?"
+
+"What do you think David is saying to Myrtle now?" he asked drily. "I am
+glad, Caroline; everything worked out straight for you. David is a
+damned good Quaker. For some others life isn't so easy." She laid a warm
+hand on his shoulder. "I wish you were happy, Howat." A slight
+irritation seized him at the facile manner in which she radiated her
+satisfaction, and he moved away. "David's going back to-night. I wish he
+wouldn't," she said troubled. "That long, dark way. Anything might
+happen. But he has simply got to be at his father's office in the
+morning. He is going to speak to him first, see what will be given us at
+the Furnace."
+
+"It should be quite a family party at breakfast," Howat predicted.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+He was entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face
+seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition
+after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared
+suddenly, "I hate David Forsythe!" Gilbert Penny was obviously startled.
+Caroline half rose, as if she had finished breakfast; but she sat down
+again with an expression of determination. Howat looted about from his
+removed place of being. "I do!" Myrtle repeated. "At first he seemed to
+like--I mean I liked him, and then everything changed, got horrid. Some
+one interfered." Resentment, suspicion, dominated her, she grew shrill
+with anger. "I saw him making faces at Howat, as if he and Howat, as if
+Howat had, well--"
+
+"Don't generalize," said Howat coolly; "be particular."
+
+"As if you had deliberately spoiled any chance, yes," she declared
+defiantly, "any chance I had."
+
+"That's ridiculous," Gilbert Penny declared. "What," he asked his wife,
+"are they all driving at?" She professed herself equally puzzled. "Howat
+would say nothing disadvantageous to young Forsythe. He knows what we
+all hope." Caroline suddenly leaned forward, speaking in a level voice:
+"This has nothing to do with Howat, but with me. I am going to tell you
+at once, so that you can all say what you wish, get as angry as you
+like, and then accept what--what had to be. David and I love each other;
+we are going to be married."
+
+Gilbert Penny's surprise slowly gave place to a dark tide suffusing his
+countenance. "You and David," he half stuttered, "getting married--like
+that." Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily
+without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness
+from which she watched the conflicts of her family. "I know I'm
+fearfully bold, yes, indecent," Caroline went on, "and undutiful,
+impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me,
+later. But I won't apologize for loving David."
+
+"Incredible," her father pronounced. "A girl announcing, without the
+slightest warrant or authority, that she intends to marry. And trampling
+on her sister's heart in the bargain." Howat expostulated, "What does it
+matter which he marries? The main affair is to consolidate the
+families." The elder glared at him. "Be silent!" he commanded. Howat
+Penny's ever present resentment rose to the surface. "I am not a girl,"
+he stated; "nor yet a nigger. And, personally, I think David was
+extremely wise."
+
+"I was sure of it," Myrtle cried; "he--he has talked against me, helped
+Caroline behind my back." She sobbed thinly, with her arm across her
+eyes. "If I thought anything like that had occurred," their father
+asserted, "Howat would--" he paused, gazing heavily about at his family.
+
+Howat's ill temper arose. "Yes--?" he demanded with a sharp inflection.
+"Be still, Howat," his mother said unexpectedly. "This is all very
+regrettable, Gilbert," she told her husband; "but it is an impossible
+subject of discussion." Gilbert Penny continued hotly, "He wouldn't stay
+about here." She replied equably, "On the contrary, Howat shall be at
+Myrtle Forge until he himself chooses to leave."
+
+Howat was conscious of a surprise almost as moving as that pictured on
+his father's countenance. He had never heard Isabel Penny speak in that
+manner before; perhaps at last she would reveal what he had long
+speculated over--her true, inner situation. But he saw at once that he
+was to be again disappointed; the speaker was immediately enveloped in
+her detachment, the air that seemed almost one of a spectator in the
+Penny household. She smiled deprecatingly. How fine she was, Howat
+thought. Gilbert Penny did not readily recover from his consternation;
+his surprise had notably increased to that. His mouth was open, his face
+red and agitated. "Before the children, Isabel," he complained. "Don't
+know what to think. Surely, surely, you don't uphold Howat? Outrageous
+conduct if it's true. And Myrtle so gentle, never hurt any one in her
+life." Myrtle circled the table, and found a place in his arms. "If they
+had only told me," she protested. "If Caroline--" He patted her flushed
+cheeks. "Don't give it another thought," he directed; "a girl as pretty
+as you! I'll take you to London, where you'll have a string of men, not
+Quakers, fine as peacocks." He bent his gaze on his son.
+
+"Didn't I tell you last evening that the cast metal has been light?" he
+demanded. "Must I beg you to go to the Furnace? Or perhaps that too
+conflicts with your mother's fears for you. There are stumps in the
+road." There was a whisper of skirts at the door, and Ludowika Winscombe
+stood smiling at them. Myrtle turned her tear-swollen face upon her
+father's shoulder. Howat wondered if Ludowika had slept. He endeavoured
+in vain to discover from her serene countenance something of her
+thoughts of what had occurred. He had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"I can go to Shadrach as soon as Adam saddles a horse," he told his
+father. "You were curious about the Furnace," he added to Ludowika,
+masking the keen anxiety he felt at what was to follow; "it's a sunny
+day, a pleasant ride." She answered without a trace of feeling other
+than a casual politeness. "Thank you, since it will be my only
+opportunity. I'll have to change." She was gazing, Howat discovered,
+lightly at Isabel Penny. "I must get the figures from Schwar," his
+father said. Before he left the room he moved to his wife's side, rested
+his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a reassuring nod.
+Howat saw that, whatever it might be, the bond between them was secure,
+stronger than any differences of prejudices or blood, more potent than
+time itself. The group, the strain, about the table, broke up.
+
+The horses footed abreast over the road that crossed the hills and
+forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace.
+Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her
+face muffled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression
+she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His passion mounted
+and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its tide.
+Howat said at last:
+
+"Are you still so angry at life, at yourself?"
+
+"No," she replied; "I slept that foolishness away. I must have sounded
+like a character in _The Lying Valet._" Her present mood obscurely
+troubled him; he infinitely preferred her in the pale crumpled silk and
+candle light of the evening before. "I wish I could tell you what I
+feel," he said moodily.
+
+"Why not?" she replied. "It's the most amusing thing possible. You
+advance and I seem to retreat; you reach forward and grasp--my fan, a
+handful of petticoat; you protest and sulk--"
+
+"Perhaps in Vauxhall," he interrupted her savagely, "but not here, not
+like that, not with me. This is not a gavotte. I didn't want it; I tried
+to get away; but it, you, had me in a breath. At once it was all over.
+God knows what it is. Call it love. It isn't a thing under a hedge, I
+tell you that, for an hour. It's stronger than anything else that will
+ever touch me, it will last longer.... Like falling into a river.
+Perhaps I'm different, a black Penny, but what other men take like
+water, a woman, is brandy for me. I'm--I'm not used to it. I haven't
+wanted Kate here and Mary there; but only you. I've got to have you," he
+said with a marked simplicity. "I've got to, or there will be a bad
+smash."
+
+Ludowika rode silently, hid in her mask. He urged his horse closer to
+her, and laid a hand on her swaying shoulder. "I didn't choose this," he
+repeated; "the blame's somewhere else." He felt a tremor run through
+her. "Why say blame?" she finally answered. "I hate moralities and
+excuses and tears. If you are set on being gloomy, and talking to heaven
+about damnation, take it all away from me." A shadow moved across the
+countryside, and he saw clouds rising out of the north. A sudden wind
+swept through the still forest, and immediately the air was aflame with
+rushing autumn leaves. They fell across Howat's face and eddied about
+the horses' legs. The grey bank deepened in space, the sun vanished; the
+wind was bleak. It seemed to Howat Penny that the world had changed,
+its gold stricken to dun and gaunt branches, in an instant. The road
+descended to the clustered stone houses about Shadrach Furnace.
+
+The horses were left under the shed of the smithy at the primitive cross
+roads. Thomas Gilkan had gone to the river about a purchase of casting
+sand, but expected to be back for the evening run of metal. Fanny was
+away, Howat learned, visiting Dan Hesa's family. They would, of course,
+have dinner at the Heydricks; and the latter sent a boy home to prepare
+his wife. Ludowika and Howat aimlessly followed the turning road that
+mounted to the coal house. A levelled and beaten path, built up with
+stone, led out to the top of the stack, where a group of sooty figures
+were gathered about the clear, almost smokeless flame of the blast.
+Below they lingered on the grassy edge of the stream banked against the
+hillside and flooding smoothly to the clamorous fall and revolving wheel
+by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter
+spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their
+dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a
+dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace,
+voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows,
+dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.
+
+Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her
+arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an
+abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was
+drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid
+embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.
+
+At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The
+house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on
+the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the
+length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared
+into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep
+embrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road,
+and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led
+above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland apron and
+worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards
+while Heydrick and their guests dined.
+
+Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it
+seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by
+the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They
+were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The
+charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the
+cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled
+through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were
+unsteady, inexact.
+
+The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some
+scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant
+before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had
+taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they
+protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was
+restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's
+cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she
+took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with
+Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance. They stood for a while in
+the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for
+the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom
+of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure
+moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of
+rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling
+emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the
+murky interior.
+
+A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles
+accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on
+the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.
+Ludowika looked within. "For storing," Howat told her. Inside were piled
+sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.
+Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the
+door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly,
+and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms; then Ludowika
+stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders. She rested
+against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the
+ceiling. "For storage," he said again. He thought his throat had closed,
+and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was
+above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. "You
+see," he muttered; "things for the store ... the men, wool stockings,
+handkerchiefs ... against their pay." The drumming rain was scarcely a
+foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and
+canvas-sewed bales about the walls. "Ludowika," Howat said. He
+stopped--she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was
+individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.
+
+A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his
+blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices,
+somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses
+waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Winscombe. No, by God, never
+that last again!
+
+He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool
+shock of the rain. Ludowika was muffled in her cloak. Howat could see a
+renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about
+the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to
+call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to
+wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly
+the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which
+the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out
+of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans
+of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the
+fluid iron.
+
+Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up
+at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an
+expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond
+Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road.
+A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it
+would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new
+difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He
+searched his feelings curiously.
+
+The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without
+remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced
+none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over
+no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable
+then to think of Felix Winscombe except as a person generally
+unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without
+any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed
+wig, now absent in Maryland, had no importance in the passionate
+situation that had arisen between Ludowika and himself. Felix Winscombe
+would of course have to be met, dealt with; but so would a great many
+other exterior conditions.
+
+Ludowika, in her linen mask, was enigmatic, a figure of mystery. A
+complete silence continued between them; at times they ambled with his
+hand on her body; then the inequalities of the road forced them apart.
+The clouds dissolved, the sky was immaculate, green, with dawning stars
+like dim white flowers. A faint odour of the already mouldering year
+rose from the wet earth. Suddenly Ludowika dragged the mask from her
+face. Quivering with intense feeling she cried:
+
+"I'm glad, Howat! Howat, I'm glad!"
+
+He contrived to put an arm about her, crush her to him for a precarious
+moment. "We have had an unforgettable day out of life," she continued
+rapidly; "that is something. It has been different, strangely apart,
+from all the rest. The rain and that musty little store house and the
+wonderful iron; a memory to hold, carry away--"
+
+"To carry where?" he interrupted. "You must realize that I'll never let
+you go now. I will keep you if we have to go beyond the Endless
+Mountains. I will keep you in the face of any man or opposition
+created."
+
+A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. "I am
+afraid of myself, Howat," she told him; "all that I have been, my
+life--against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different.
+Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while I have needed this.
+Howat, do you think so? Do you think I could forget so much, drop the
+past from me, be all new and happy?"
+
+He reassured her, only half intent upon the burden of her words. He
+utterly disregarded anything provisional in their position; happiness or
+unhappiness were unconsidered in the overwhelming determination that she
+should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain.
+The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient
+gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily
+censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid,
+unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place
+comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the
+complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the elder at
+breakfast. His mother, Howat gladly felt, would give him the sympathy of
+a wise, broad understanding. David and Caroline would interpose no
+serious objection. Felix Winscombe remained; a virile figure in spite of
+his years; a man of assured position and a bitter will.
+
+He determined to speak on the day that Felix Winscombe returned from
+Annapolis; there would be no concealment of what had occurred, and no
+hypocrisy. A decent regret at Winscombe's supreme loss. The other would
+not relinquish Ludowika without a struggle. Who would? It was
+conceivable that he would summon the assistance of the law, conceivable
+but not probable; the situation had its centre in a purely personal
+pride. Nothing essential could be won legally. A physical encounter was
+far more likely. Howat thought of that coldly. He had no chivalrous
+instinct to offer himself as a sop to conventional honour. In any
+struggle, exchange of shots, he intended to be victorious.... He would
+have the naming of the conditions.
+
+"It's beautiful here," Ludowika broke into his speculations; "the great
+forests and Myrtle Forge. I can almost picture myself directing servants
+like your mother, getting supplies out of the store, and watching the
+charcoal and iron brought down to the Forge. The sound of the hammer has
+become a part of my dreams. And you, Howat--I have never before had a
+feeling like this for a man. There's a little fear in it even. It must
+be stronger than the other, than Europe; I want it to be." They could
+see below them the lighted windows at Myrtle Forge. The horses turned
+unguided into the curving way across the lawn. A figure stood
+obsequiously at the door; it was, Howat saw with deep automatic
+revulsion, the Italian servant. He wondered again impatiently at the
+persistently unpleasant impression the other made on him. Gilbert Penny
+was waiting in the hall, and Howat told him fully the result of his
+investigation.
+
+His father nodded, satisfied. "You are taking hold a great bit better,"
+he was obviously pleased. "We must go over the whole iron situation with
+the Forsythes. It's time you and David stepped forward. I am getting
+bothered by new complications; the thing is spreading out so
+rapidly--steel and a thousand new methods and refinements. And the
+English opposition; I'm afraid you'll come into that."
+
+Ludowika did not again appear that evening, and Howat sat informally
+before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline.
+Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled,
+almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his
+father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from
+just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he
+be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black
+Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious
+spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be
+a subject to it always. All the elements of his captivity lay so
+entirely outside of him, beyond his power to measure or comprehend, that
+a feeling of helplessness came over him. He again had the sense of being
+swept twisting in an irresistible flood. But his confusion was dominated
+by one great assurance--nothing should deprive him of Ludowika. An
+intoxicating memory invaded him, touched every nerve with delight and a
+tyrannical hunger. His fibre seemed to crumble, his knees turn to dust.
+Years ago he had been poisoned by berries, and limpness almost like this
+had gone softly, treacherously, through him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+They entered into a period of secret contentment and understanding.
+Ludowika displayed a grave interest in the details of the house and iron
+at Myrtle Forge; he explained the processes that resulted in the wrought
+blooms despatched by tons in the lumbering, mule-drawn wagons. They
+explored the farm, where she listened approvingly to the changes he
+proposed making, kitchen gardens to be planted, the hedges of roses and
+gravelled paths to be laid--for her. She suggested an Italian walk,
+latticed above, with a stone seat, and was indicating a corner that
+might be transformed into a semblance of an angle of Versailles, when,
+suddenly, she stopped, and clasped his wrist.
+
+"No! No!" she exclaimed, with surprising energy. "We'll have no France,
+no court, here, but only America; only you and myself, with no past, no
+memories, but just the future." How that was to be realized neither of
+them considered; they avoided all practical issues, difficulties. They
+never mentioned Felix Winscombe's name. However, a long communication
+came from him for his wife. She read it thoughtfully, in the drawing
+room, awaiting dinner. No one else but Howat was present, and he was
+standing with his hand on her shoulder. "Felix hasn't been well," she
+remarked presently. "For the first time he has spoken to me of his age.
+The Maryland affair drags, and that has wearied him."
+
+"What does he say about returning?" Howat bluntly asked.
+
+"Shortly, he hopes; that is, in another ten days. He says there is a
+good ship, the _Lindamira_, by the middle of November." Howat said,
+"Excellent." Ludowika gazed at him swiftly. "It will be difficult." His
+face became grim, but he made no direct reply. A silence fell on the
+room through which vibrated the blows of the trip hammer at the Forge.
+The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the
+counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a
+note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A
+flexibility that seemed entirely without bones. His eyes were jet slits,
+his lips shaven and mobile; a wig was repulsively saturated with scented
+grease. Yet it was not in actual details that he oppressed Howat; but by
+the vague suggestion of debasing commendations, of surreptitious
+understanding, insinuations. He seemed, absurdly, unreal, a symbol the
+intent of which Howat missed; he suppressed an insane movement to touch
+the Italian, discover if he was actually before him.
+
+He reread Ludowika's note whenever he was not actually employed in
+recording, until he was obliged to conceal it in the Forge book.
+
+Later Abner Forsythe arrived with David, and there was a stir of
+preparing rooms and communication with the farm. David's mother was
+dead, and Abner conducted the wedding negotiations with the Pennys. "I
+thought it would be the pretty little one," he said at the table, with a
+Quaker disregard of small niceties of feeling; "but, Gilbert, any girl
+of yours would be more than the young men of the present deserve." It
+was a difficult conversation for every one but Ludowika and Abner
+Forsythe. A greater ease appeared after supper. David and Caroline
+disappeared in the direction of the clavichord, from which sounded some
+scattered, perfunctory measures. The two elder men returned, over a
+decanter of French spirits, to the inevitable and engrossing subject of
+iron and the Crown regulations; Myrtle sat stiffly before the fireplace
+with Isabel Penny; and Howat moved up and across the room, his gaze
+lying on Ludowika, spread in an expanse of orange chiffon and bold
+silver tracery on the small sofa.
+
+She smiled at him once, but, for the most part, she was lost in revery.
+Ludowika had a fan, to hold against the fire; and her white fingers were
+playing with its polished black sticks and glazed paper printed with an
+ornamental bar of music. A faint colour stained her cheeks as he watched
+her, and set his heart tumultuously beating. He told himself over and
+over, with an unabated sense of wonder, that she was his. He longed for
+the moment when they could discard all pretence and be frankly,
+completely, together. That must happen after Felix Winscombe arrived.
+Meanwhile he was forced to content himself with a look, a quick or
+lingering contact of fingers, the crush of her body against his
+momentarily in a passage. They had returned once to the rock where he
+had first been intoxicated by her; in a strangling wave of emotion he
+had taken her into his arms; but she had broken away. The width of the
+stream and screen of trees had apparently disconcerted Ludowika, and she
+contrived to make him feel inexcusably young, awkward.
+
+But usually he dominated her; there was a depth to his passion that
+achieved patience, the calmness of unassailable fortitude. She gazed at
+him often with a surprise that bordered on fear; again she would delight
+in his mastery, beg him to hold her forever safe against the past. He
+reassured her of his ability and determination to accomplish that; there
+was not the shadow of a doubt in his own mind. He was more troubled now
+than formerly; but he was eager for the climax to pass, impatient to
+claim his own.
+
+As if a dam had been again thrown across the flood of his emotions he
+felt them mounting, growing more and more irrepressible. He slept in
+feverish snatches, with gaps in which he stared wide-eyed into the dark,
+trying to realize his coming joy, visualizing Ludowika, a brilliant
+apparition of flowing silk, on the night. He thought of the store house
+at the Furnace, of the rain beating on the roof, and Ludowika ... God,
+if that old man would only return, go, leave them! The clouds vanished
+and left the nights emerald clear, the constellations glittered in
+frosty immensities of silence. He stood at the open window with his
+shoulders bare, revelling in the cold air that flowed over him, defying
+winter, death itself. The moon waned immutably.
+
+David was now at Shadrach Furnace, living with the Heydricks, and the
+necessities that brought him to Myrtle Forge were endless. He was
+absolutely happy, and Howat watched him with mingled longing and envy.
+His affair, darker, more tragic in spite of a consummation that must be
+joyous, seemed infinitely more mature. Caroline was a nice enough girl,
+but Ludowika was supremely fascinating. David amused him:
+
+"Caroline is a miracle. Of course there are prettier, and Mrs. Winscombe
+has more air; but none has Caroline's charming manner. Of course, you
+have noticed it. Even a thick-headed brother couldn't miss that. We have
+plans for you, too. And it's no good your looking glum; we'll glum you."
+
+The amusement faded from Howat's countenance, and he listened sullenly
+to the end of the raillery. His temper was growing daily more uneven,
+the delight had largely left his reflections. His passion had become too
+insistent for happy conjecturing; the visions of Ludowika now only
+tormented him. Her eyes were like burning sapphires, her warm palms
+caressed his face; he was increasingly gaunt and shadowed. Once he gave
+a note for her to the Italian servant, loathing the hand that adroitly
+covered the folded sheet, the other's oblique smile; but she sent back
+word that she was suffering from a headache. He began to plan so that he
+would intercept her in unexpected places. She, too, was passionate in
+her admissions; but, somehow, some one always stumbled toward them, or
+they were summoned from beyond. He began to feel that this was not mere
+chance, but desired, deliberately courted, by Ludowika. Very well, he
+would end it all, as it were, with a shout when Felix Winscombe came
+back.
+
+When Felix Winscombe came back!
+
+He was, too, increasingly aware of his mother's scrutiny. Howat was
+certain that Isabel Penny had surmised a part of his feeling for
+Ludowika. He didn't greatly care; any one might know, he thought
+contemptuously. It had destroyed his sympathetic feeling for his mother,
+the only considerate bond that had existed with his family.
+Unconsciously he placed her on one side of a line, the other held only
+Ludowika and himself.
+
+He explained this to her in a sere reach of the garden. It was
+afternoon, the sun low and a haze on the hills. Ludowika had on a
+scarlet wrap, curiously vivid against the withered, brown aspect of the
+faded flower stems. "You and me," he repeated. She gazed, without
+answering, at the barrier of hills that closed in Myrtle Forge. From
+the thickets came the clear whistling of partridges, intensifying the
+unbroken tranquillity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was
+suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive
+forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a
+corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling
+always intensified by the thought of England. "The Province," he said
+disjointedly, "a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road
+this morning? Perhaps five with their women, some pack horses, kitchen
+tins and hide tents. The men wore buckskin, and furred caps, and the
+women's skirts were sewed leather. One was tramping along with a feeding
+baby. Well, God knows where they have been, how many days they have
+walked; their shoes were in shreds. And their faces, thin and serious,
+have looked steadily over rifles at death. The women, too. You'll only
+get them here, in a big country, a new--"
+
+"They were terrible," Ludowika declared; "savage. I was glad when they
+were by. The baby at the woman's great breast!" she shuddered at the
+memory. "Like animals."
+
+He gazed at her with a slight surprise; he had never heard her speak so
+bitterly. He saw her more clearly than ever before; as if her words had
+illuminated her extraordinary delicacy of being, had made visible all
+the infinite refinements of which she was the result. He had a
+recurrence of his sense of her incongruity here, balanced on polished
+black pattens, against the darkening hills. The sun disappeared, there
+was a cool flare of yellow light, and a feeling of impending evening.
+The hills were indigo, the forest a dimmer gold, a wind moved audible in
+the dry leaves.
+
+Ludowika gasped. "It's so--so huge," she said, "all the lonely miles. At
+times I can't bear to think of it." A faint dread invaded him. "Last
+night, when I couldn't sleep, a thing howled in the woods. And I got
+thinking of those naked men at the Forge, with their eyes rimmed in
+black, and--and--"
+
+He disregarded the publicity of their position and put an arm about her
+shoulders, in an overwhelming impulse to calm and reassure her; but she
+slipped away. "I'll be all right again," she promised; "but I think it's
+more cheerful with the candles. We'll get your sister to play Belshazzar
+and pretend we're across the green from St. James."
+
+A mood darker than any he had lately known settled over him. It was
+natural for Ludowika to be lonely, at first; but in a little she would
+grow to love the wild like himself. She must. The Province was to be her
+life. He was standing before the fire in the informal chamber beyond the
+dining room, watching his mother's vigorous hands deftly engaged in
+embroidery. There was no one present, and a sudden, totally desperate
+recklessness possessed him. Isabel Penny said:
+
+"Mr. Winscombe will be here shortly."
+
+"I wish it would be to-night," he declared. She raised her calm gaze
+with brows arched in inquiry. "There is something--" he broke off. "She
+belongs to me," he said in a low, harsh voice, "and not to that old
+man."
+
+Mrs. Penny secured her needle, and put the colourful web aside. She was,
+as he had been sure she would be, entirely composed, admirable. Her
+questioning look grew keener. "I was afraid of that," she admitted
+simply; "after the first. It is very unpleasant and difficult. This is
+not London, and your father will make no allowances. You are not any
+easier to bend, Howat. With Mrs. Winscombe--" she paused, "I am not
+certain. But there is no doubt about the husband."
+
+"She belongs to me," he reiterated sullenly.
+
+"There is no need for you to make yourself offensively clear. I know
+something of details of that kind. I told you once that they might mean
+only a very little to--to certain women. I am not prepared to judge
+about that. But I know you, what bitter feeling you are capable of. You
+are a very pure man, Howat; and for that reason such an occurrence would
+tear you up and across. There is no use in begging you to be cautious,
+diplomatic. Mr. Winscombe, too, is very determined; he has many
+advantages--maturity, coldness, experience. He won't spare you, either.
+It's excessively unfortunate."
+
+"I'll get it over as quickly as possible. I didn't want the thing to
+happen, it wasn't from any choice; it hit me like a bullet. Nothing else
+is of the slightest importance. I've gone over this again and again;
+I'll tell him and let him try what he can. Ludowika's gone from--from
+the fireworks and fiddles and stinking courts; I've got her, and, by
+God, I'll keep her!"
+
+"Talk quietly; you can't shout yourself into this. Are you certain that
+Mrs. Winscombe really finds the courts--stinking? I remember, at first,"
+she stopped. Even in the midst of his passion he listened for what
+revelation she might make; but none followed. She was silent for a
+minute. "They become a habit," she said finally; "love, loves, become a
+habit. Only men brought up in the same atmosphere can understand. At
+first Felix Winscombe will be infuriated with you for speaking, then he
+will realize more, and the trouble will follow. Are you certain that you
+have comprehended? It would be stupid to mistake an episode, you would
+succeed only in making yourself ridiculous."
+
+He lifted up both his hands and closed them with a quivering, relentless
+force.
+
+"Truly," Isabel Penny remarked, "truly I begin to be sorry for her.
+There is something she has yet to learn about men. Nothing can be said;
+and that is what your father will not penetrate. Howat, I am even a
+little afraid ... now. That, I believe, is unusual for me. It's your
+blackness, like powder. The explosion can kill. Nothing may be said.
+Life drags us along by the hair."
+
+Her questions about Ludowika joined to the memory of the latter's
+revulsion from the primitive conditions of the Province and added to the
+heaviness of his heart. He mentally denied his mother's suggestions,
+drove them from him, but they left a faint enduring sting, a vague
+unrest. His passion for Ludowika swelled, dominated, him; he forgot
+everything but his own, supreme desire. Nothing else stood before its
+flood; all thought of Ludowika's final happiness was lost with the other
+detritus. The tense closing of his hands had symbolized his feeling, his
+intent. He held her in a manner as nakedly primitive as the inchoate
+sexuality of the emotion that had engulfed him.
+
+Ludowika did not appear for supper, and he was possessed by a misery of
+vague apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a
+token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped
+the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately,
+without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his
+room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply,
+only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the
+affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court
+adventure. It was the Italian servant, Howat decided; and immediately he
+recognized why he disliked the other--it was because he expressed an
+aspect of slyness that lay over Ludowika and himself. He put that from
+him, too; but it was like brushing away cobwebs. His hunger for Ludowika
+increased all the while; it became more burningly material, insatiable
+and concrete.
+
+On the day following she clung to him, when opportunity offered, with a
+desperate energy of emotion. "You must hold me tighter," she told him.
+Her mood rapidly changed, and she complained of the eternal, pervasive
+fall of the forge hammer. "It will drive me mad," she declared almost
+wildly. "I can't bear to think of its going on and on, year after year;
+listening to it--" He heard her with sombre eyes. She had come to the
+counting house, empty for the moment but for themselves, and stood with
+her countenance shadowed by a frown. "If the hammer stops," he replied,
+waving his hand largely, "all this, the Pennys, stop, too. I'm afraid
+that sound of beating out iron will be always wrought through our lives.
+You will get accustomed to it--"
+
+Her expression grew petulant, resentful. "Do you mean that we couldn't,
+perhaps, go to England, if--if I wanted?" He moved closer to her,
+brushing the circumference of her skirt. "You asked me to hold you, to
+keep you from the past; and I am going to do it. London is all that you
+wish to forget; it must go completely out of your life ... never finger
+you again." A faint dread that deepened almost to antagonism was
+visible on her countenance. "I suppose to men talk like that seems a
+sign of strength, of possession; but it doesn't impress women, really.
+You see, women give, or else--there is nothing."
+
+"I had no thought of impressing you," he said simply; "I only repeated
+what came into my mind, what I mean. It would be a mistake for me to
+take you to England, and make both of us miserable. Beside, there is
+more to tend here than I'll ever accomplish." She objected, "But other
+people, workmen, will do the actual labour. Surely you are not going to
+keep on with anything so vulgar--" she indicated the office and desks.
+Her features sharpened with contempt. "I'll not be a clerk," he told her
+gravely. "But I am responsible for a great deal. You should understand
+that for you showed it to me. Most of what I am now has been you." He
+reached out his hands to her in a wave of tenderness, but she evaded
+him. She stood irresolute for a moment and then abruptly turned and
+disappeared.
+
+A white rim of new moon grew visible at the edge of dusk, and he stood
+gazing at it before he entered the dwelling. A dull unrest had become
+part of his inner tumult, a premonition falling over him like an
+advancing shadow. But above all his vague fears rose the knowledge that
+he would never let Ludowika go from him; that was the root of his being.
+Now she could never leave him. It was natural, he assured himself again,
+that she should feel doubts at first; everything here was so different
+from the life she had known; and women were variable. He would have to
+understand that, learn to accommodate himself to changing, surface
+moods, immovable underneath.
+
+She had put on for supper, he saw, a daring dress; and her expression
+was that which he had first noted, indifferent, slightly scoffing. Her
+shoulders and arms gleamed under fragile gauze, her bodice was hardly
+more than a caress of silk. He watched her every movement, and got a
+sort of satisfaction from the knowledge that she grew increasingly
+disturbed at his unwavering scrutiny. His mother's attitude toward Mrs.
+Winscombe had not changed by a shade, an inflection; she was correctly
+cordial in her slightly distant manner.
+
+In the ebb and flow of the evening Howat was left with Ludowika for a
+little, and he bent over her, kissing her sharply. She was coldly
+unresponsive; and he kissed her again, trying vainly to bring some
+warmth to her lips. She did not avoid him actually, but he felt that
+something in her, essential, slipped aside from his caress. His emotion
+changed to a mounting anger. "You will have to get over this now or
+later," he asserted. She said surprisingly, "Felix will be home this
+week." He stood with an arm half raised, his head turned, as he had been
+arrested by her period.
+
+"Well?" he demanded stupidly. Her tone had been beyond his
+comprehension. "Felix," she went on, apparently at random, "is very
+satisfactory." Something of her intent penetrated his stunned faculties.
+He advanced toward her dark with rage. "And if he is," he replied, "it
+will do him no good. It will do you no good, if you think--" he broke
+off from an accession of emotion. "What damned thing are you thinking
+of?"
+
+"The Princess Amelia's stockings," she answered pertly.
+
+"You'll never put them on her again, like any dirty chamber maid."
+
+"Felix, the end of this week," she repeated.
+
+"I'll kill him," Howat whispered; "if he lifts a hand I'll shoot him
+through the head. This was forced on me; some one else, responsible, can
+pay." Her chin was up, her expression mocking. "Ridiculous, like any
+cloddish countryman." She walked deliberately away, seated herself in a
+graceful eddy of panniered silk.
+
+A cold torment succeeded his rage; he had the feeling of being
+hopelessly trapped, stifling in his passion. He followed her. "Ludowika,
+this is horrible, so soon. I am willing to think that I am to blame;
+stupid; no experience. You will have to be patient with me. Naturally
+everything, now--" he broke off and wandered to a window, holding aside
+the draperies, gazing out into the night. The sky was so luminous that
+the barriers of surrounding hills were printed clearly against starry
+space. The forest swept about in a dark veil; nowhere could be seen a
+glimpse of habitation. He heard the wavering cry of an owl.
+
+The Province, immense, secretive! Paper lanterns strung in parks, hid
+music, provocative smiles only playing with the heart! It was
+tremendously unfortunate. Why must they suffer so unreasonably?
+Something, he was certain, had gone wrong; it lay both within them and
+outside; a force diverted, a purpose unaccomplished. It bent, broke,
+them like two twigs; they were no more than two bubbles, momentarily
+reflecting the sky, on a profound depth. A wind stirred, oppressed them,
+and they were gone. A great pity for Ludowika took its place in his
+feelings. He was sorry for himself. Suddenly the rustle of her skirts
+approached.
+
+An infinitely seductive, warm arm crept about his neck; she abandoned
+herself to a ruthless embrace. "It's been wonderful, Howat; and--and it
+isn't over, yet. Nothing lasts, it's a mistake to demand too much. We
+must take what we may. Perhaps, even, later--in London. No, don't
+interrupt me. After all, I'm wiser than you are. I was swept away for a
+little. Impossibilities. I am what I am. I was always that, inside of
+me. If the longing I told you about had been stronger, it, and not the
+court, would have made me; but it was no more than a glimpse seen from a
+window, a thing far away. I'd never reach it. This, now, has been the
+best of me, all."
+
+He had a mingled sense of the truth and futility of her words. It was
+as if his passion stood apart from them, dominating them, lashing him
+with desire. Nothing she might say, no necessity nor effort, could free
+them. The uselessness of words smote him. She spoke again, an urgent
+flow of dulcet sound against his ear; but it was without meaning, lost
+in the drumming of his blood. The stir of feet approached, and he
+released her, moving to the fireplace. It was Caroline. She stopped
+awkwardly, advancing a needless explanation of a trivial errand from the
+doorway, and vanished.
+
+His position at Myrtle Forge was fast becoming impossible. There would
+be an explosion now at any moment. He took the fire tongs and idly
+rearranged the wood on the hearth. The flames blazed more brightly,
+their reflection squirmed over the lacquer frames on the walls, gleamed
+richly on polished black walnut, and fell across the Turkey floor
+carpet. It even reached through the pale candle light and flickered on
+Ludowika's dull red gown, flowered and clouded with blue. She was turned
+away from him, against the window; her shoulders drooped in an attitude
+of dejection. The flames died away again.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Ludowika's manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and,
+Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient
+air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to
+him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive.
+She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband. Felix Winscombe,
+she thought, would mean--escape. He used the word deliberately,
+realizing that that now expressed her attitude toward the Province,
+toward him. It made no difference in his feeling for her, his
+determination that nothing should take her from him. His power of
+detachment vanished; he became utterly the instrument of his passion.
+
+He didn't press upon her small expressions of his emotion; somehow,
+without struggle, she had made them seem foolish; beyond that they were
+inadequate. He was conscious of the approach of a great climax; his
+feeling was above the satisfaction of trivial caresses. Soon, he told
+himself, soon he would absolutely possess her, for as long as they
+lived. Ultimately she must be happy with him. He thought the same things
+in a ceaseless round; he walked almost without sight, discharging
+mechanically the routine of daily existence; answering inevitable
+queries in a perfunctory, dull voice. Myrtle Forge made a distant
+background of immaterial colours and sounds for the slightly mocking
+figure of Ludowika.
+
+In mid-afternoon David arrived with a face stung scarlet by beating
+wind, and a clatter of hoofs. He immediately found Gilbert Penny, and
+the two men sat together with grave faces, lowered voices. Howat, who
+had left the counting house at the sound of the hurried approach, caught
+a few words as he drew near the others:
+
+"... a bad attack, crumpled him up. Coming out from the city now." They
+were talking about Felix Winscombe, who, it appeared, had been assaulted
+by a knife-like pain; and was returning to Myrtle Forge. "Watlow saw no
+reason why it should be dangerous," David continued; "he thinks perhaps
+it came from unusual exertions, entertaining. A little rest, he says. He
+thinks the Winscombes will be able to sail on the _Lindamira_ as they
+planned."
+
+Ludowika listened seriously to Gilbert Penny's few, temperate words of
+preparation. "He has had a pain like that before," she told them. "It
+always passes away. Felix is really very strong, in spite of his age. He
+won't ordinarily go to bed, but I'll insist on that now, simply for
+rest." Felix Winscombe appeared at the supper hour. He was helped out
+of Abner Forsythe's leather-hung chaise, and assisted into the house.
+Howat saw him under the hanging lamp in the hall; with a painful
+surprise he realized that he was gazing at the haggard face of an old
+man. Before he had never connected the thought of definite age with Mr.
+Winscombe. The man's satirical virility had forbidden any of the
+patronage unconsciously extended to the aged.
+
+A trace of his familiar, mocking smile remained, but it was tremulous;
+it required, Howat saw, great effort. An involuntary admiration
+possessed him for the other's unquenchable courage. The latter protested
+vehemently against being led to his room by Ludowika; but she ignored
+his determination to go into supper, swept him away with a firm arm
+about his waist.
+
+The house took on the slightly strange and disordered aspect of illness;
+voices were grave, low; in the morning Howat learned that Felix
+Winscombe had had another vicious attack in the night. Dr. Watlow
+arrived, and demanded assistance. Howat Penny, in the room where
+Ludowika's husband lay exhausted in a bed canopied and draped in gay
+India silk, followed Watlow's actions with a healthy feeling of
+revulsion. The doctor bared Winscombe's spare chest, then filled a
+shallow, thick glass with spirits; emptying the latter, he set fire to
+the interior of the glass; and, when the blue flame had expired, clapped
+the cupped interior over the prostrate man's heart. There was, it
+seemed, little else that could be done; bleeding was judged for the
+once unexpeditious.
+
+An effort at commonplace conversation was maintained at dinner. Ludowika
+openly discussed the arrangements for their return to London. Felix
+Winscombe had rallied from the night; his wife said that it was
+difficult to restrain him. The most comfortable provisions, she
+continued, had been made for their passage on the _Lindamira_. Howat
+heard her without resentment. He had no wish to contradict her
+needlessly even in thought; he was immovably fixed. Mr. Winscombe's
+debilitated return had completely upset his intentions. An entirely
+different proceeding would now be demanded, but with an identical end.
+What pity he felt for the elder had no power to reach or alter his
+passion.
+
+He returned to the counting house, and worked methodically through the
+afternoon, with an increasing sense of being involved in an irresistible
+movement. This gave him a feeling almost of tranquillity; from the
+beginning he had not been responsible. In the face of illness the
+Italian servant proved utterly undependable; he cringed, stricken with
+dread, from the spectacle of suffering. And when late in the day Mr.
+Winscombe, partially drugged with opium, grew consciously weaker,
+Howat's assistance was required.
+
+Ludowika now remained in the room with her husband, and there was a
+discreet movement in and out by various members of the household.
+Isabel Penny remained for an hour, Caroline took her place, Myrtle
+fluttered uncertainly in the doorway. Through the evening Felix
+Winscombe lay propped on pillows, his head covered by a black gros de
+Naples cap. His keen personality waned and revived on his long, yellow
+countenance. At one side wigs stood in a row on blocks, a brilliant,
+magenta coat lay in a huddle on a chair. At intervals he spoke, in a
+thinner, higher voice than customary, petulantly uneasy, or with a
+familiar, sardonic inflection. At the latter Ludowika would grow
+immensely cheered. She entirely ignored Howat on the occasions when he
+was in the room. He saw her mostly bent over leather boxes, into which
+disappeared her rich store of silk and gold brocades, shoes of purple
+morocco, soft white shifts. Howat watched her without an emotion visible
+on his sombre countenance.
+
+Occasionally Mr. Winscombe's tenuous fingers dipped into a snuff box of
+black enamel and brilliants, and he lifted his hand languidly. The man's
+vitality, his sheer determination, were extraordinary. Even now he was
+far from impotence. He had, Howat had learned, completely dominated the
+Provincial Councils, forced a mutual compromise and agreement on them.
+He spoke of still more complicated affairs awaiting him in England. He
+damned the Italian's "white liver," and threatened to leave him in
+America. Dr. Watlow had been forced to return to the city.
+
+Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his
+feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it
+easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about
+their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his
+personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the
+future of the Penny iron. They might live in one of the outlying stone
+dwellings at the Forge ... for the present. He was glad that Gilbert
+Penny, that he, was rich. Ludowika could continue to dress in rare
+fabrics, to step in elaborate pattens over the common earth. That could
+not help but influence, assuage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in
+the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive assemblies were open to
+them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of
+Mr. Winscombe's bitter humour. In the past he had repudiated them with
+the utmost scorn. In the past--dim shapes, scenes, that appeared to have
+occurred years before, but which in reality reached to last month,
+trooped through his mind. Youth had vanished like a form dropping behind
+a hill. He looked back; it was gone; his feet hurried forward into the
+unguessed future; anxiety joined him; the scent that was Ludowika
+accompanied him, an illusive figure. He reached toward it.
+
+He was standing at the foot of the bed where Felix Winscombe lay. The
+latter was restless, and complained of pains in his arms, reaching down
+to his fingers. Ludowika bent over him, her face stamped with concern.
+She regarded Howat with a new expression--narrowed eyes and a glimmer of
+flawless teeth: a look he had never foreseen there; but it was impotent
+before the thing that was. It had, however, the effect of intensifying
+his desire, his passion for her fragility of silk and flesh. He would
+kiss her hate on her mouth.
+
+She sat by the bedside, and Howat took a place opposite her. Candles
+burned on a highboy, on a table at his back; and their auriferous light
+flowed in about the bedstead. The latter was draped from the canopy to
+the bases of the posts in a bright printing of pheasants and
+conventional thickets--cobalt and ruby and orange; and across a heavy
+counterpane half drawn up stalked a row of panoplied Indians in clipped
+zephyr. It was a nebulous enclosure with the shadows of the hangings
+wavering on the coloured wool and cold linen, on the long, seamed
+countenance of the prostrate man.
+
+A clock in the hall struck slowly--it needed winding--ten blurred notes.
+Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the
+hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without;
+wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a
+blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's
+face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ...
+Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name,
+and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but
+soundless lips--Ludowika Penny.
+
+Her husband lay with his eyes closed, his head bowed forward on his
+chest, as if in sleep. At irregular intervals small, involuntary
+contractions of pain twitched at his mouth. At times, too, he muttered
+noiselessly. Extraordinary. Ludowika and Felix Winscombe and himself,
+Howat Penny. A world peopled only by them; the silence of the room
+dropped into infinite space, bottomless time. A sudden dread of such
+vast emptiness seized Howat; he felt that he must say something,
+recreate about them the illusion of safe and familiar spaces and walls.
+It seemed that he was unable to speak; a leaden inhibition lay on his
+power of utterance. He made a harsh sound in his throat, loud and
+startling. Felix Winscombe raised his head, and Ludowika cried faintly.
+Then silence again folded them.
+
+Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs--the
+furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and
+himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with
+his mother. She was astonishingly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika
+and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompassing the
+magnitude of his passion; she had not realized his new patience and
+determination. He found himself counting the gorgeous birds in the
+bed-hangings--twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and stopped
+abruptly.
+
+It had grown chilly in the room, and Ludowika had an India cashmere
+shawl about her shoulders. The sombre garnets and blues hid the tinsel
+gaiety of her gown and her bare shoulders. She appeared older than he
+had ever seen her before. Her face, carefully studied, showed no trace
+of beauty; her eyes were heavy, her lips dark; any efforts of animation
+were suspended. She showed completely the effect of her life in courts
+and a careless prodigality of hours and emotions. Howat, seeing all
+this, felt only a fresh accession of his hunger for her; she was far
+more compelling than when romantically viewed as a moon.
+
+He sat with his chin propped on a palm; she was rigidly upright with her
+arms at her sides; Felix Winscombe moved higher on the pillows. His eyes
+glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred
+ceaselessly with weaving fingers. Howat could almost feel Ludowika's
+hatred striking at him across the bed. He smiled at her, and she faced
+him with an expression of stony unresponse. He thought luxuriantly of
+her in his arms, with the rain beating on the store house roof; he
+caught the odours of the damp, heaped merchandise, the distant clamour
+in the casting shed. He had a brutal impulse to lean forward and remind
+her of what had occurred, of the fact that she was his; he wanted to
+fling it against her present detachment, to mock her with it. Then he
+would crush her against his heart. Felix Winscombe raised up on an
+elbow, distorting the row of sanguinary Indians.
+
+Ludowika moved to the edge of the bed, and put a firm, graceful arm
+about him. A grey shadow of pain fell on Mr. Winscombe's features. The
+silence was absolute. He seemed to be waiting in an attitude of mingled
+dread and resolution. He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on
+his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika's support. She
+sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes.
+
+Slowly the lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat
+started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless
+suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm. Howat watched him
+in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath.
+Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony
+gathering on Felix Winscombe's countenance, but a corresponding sense of
+complete helplessness settled like a leaden coffin about him. The other
+became unrecognizable; his face seemed to be set in an unnatural grin.
+His head drew back on a thin, corded neck, and a faint gasping for air
+stirred in the shadows. Even Howat felt the pain to be unendurable, and
+Ludowika, white as milk, had risen to her feet. She stood with a hand
+half raised beneath a fringed corner of the India shawl.
+
+It was incredible that the sufferer's agony should increase, but it was
+apparent that it did remorselessly. All humanity was obliterated in an
+excruciating spasm over which streamed some meagre tears. Mr.
+Winscombe's arms raised and dropped; and, suddenly relaxed, he slipped
+down upon the pillows. Immediately the torment vanished from his
+countenance; it became peaceful, released. The familiar mockery of the
+mouth came back. The head, slightly turned, seemed to regard Ludowika
+with contentment and interrogation. Howat was conscious of a relief
+almost as marked as that on the face before him. He had gripped his
+hands until they ached. The tension in the room, too, seemed spent. He
+was about to address a reassuring period to Ludowika, when, at a glimpse
+of her expression, the words died on his lips.
+
+He bent over the bed, with his hand on a ridged, still chest; he gazed
+down at flaccid eyes, a dropped chin. Felix Winscombe was dead.
+
+Howat raised up slowly, facing the woman through the draperies. She was
+gazing in an incredulous, shocked surprise at the limp, prostrate body
+capped in black gros de Naples. A shuddering fear passed over her, and
+then her eyes met those of Howat Penny. Even separated from him by the
+bed she drew away as if from his touch. He saw that she had forgotten
+the dead man in a sharp realization of the portent of the living. She
+glanced about the room in the panic of a trapped lark, an abject
+fright, searching for an escape.
+
+He realized that there was none; Ludowika now belonged to him
+absolutely; he was as remorseless as the pain that had killed Felix
+Winscombe. Below the automatic sensations of the moment Howat was
+conscious of utter satisfaction. A miracle had given Ludowika to him; in
+the passing of a breath all his difficulty had been ended. She was alone
+with him in a province of forests and iron and stars. He would make her
+forget the gardens of fireworks and scraping violins; but forget or not
+she was his ... Ludowika Penny.
+
+
+
+
+II THE FORGE
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+Jasper Penny stood at a window of his bed room, his left arm carried in
+a black silk handkerchief, gazing down at the long, low roof of Myrtle
+Forge, built by his great, great grandfather Gilbert over a hundred and
+ten years before. It was February, and he could hear the ringing blows
+of axes, cutting the ice out of the forebay to liberate the water power
+for the completion of a forging of iron destined to be rolled into
+tracks for the slowly lengthening Columbia Steam Railway System. It was
+midday, a grey sky held a brighter, diffused radiance where the veiled
+sun hung without warmth, and the earth was everywhere frozen
+granite-like. He could see beyond the Forge shed heaped charcoal, and
+the black mass seemed no more dead than the ground or bare, brittle
+trees sweeping down and up to where, on encircling hills, they were
+lifted sharply against the cloudy monotony.
+
+He was ordinarily impervious to the influence of weather, the more
+depressing aspects of nature; but now he was conscious of a dejection
+communicated, in part at least, he felt, by the bleak prospect without.
+Another, and infinitely more arresting, reason for this feeling had just
+stirred his thoughts--for the first time he was conscious of the
+invidious, beginning weariness of accumulating years. He was hardly past
+forty, and he impatiently repudiated the possibility that he was
+actually declining; in fact he had not yet reached the zenith of his
+capabilities, physical or mental; yet his broken arm, slow in mending,
+the pain, had unquestionably depleted him more than a similar accident
+ten years ago. Not only this, but, during the forced inaction, his mind
+had definitely taken a different cast; considerations that had seemed to
+constitute the main business of existence had lately faded before
+preoccupations and feelings ignored until now.
+
+Jasper Penny saw, objectively, not so much the surrounding circumstance
+as his own former acts and emotions; detached from his habitual being by
+hardly more than a month his past was posed before his critical
+judgment. Looked at in this manner his life appeared crowded with
+surprisingly meaningless gestures and words, his sheer youth an
+incomprehensible revolt. A greater part of that had been lately
+expressed by his mother, when he had returned to Myrtle Forge with an
+arm broken by a fall in a railroad coach travelling to Philadelphia. She
+had said, shaking her head with tightened lips:
+
+"I warned you plenty against those train brigades. It isn't safe nor
+sensible with a good horse service convenient. But then you have always
+been a knowing, head-strong boy and man.... A black Penny."
+
+How she would get along without that last phrase he was at a loss to
+conjecture, from his first consciousness he recalled it, now a term of
+reproach and now extenuation. Only a few weeks before she had repeated
+it in precisely the same tone of mingled admonition and complaint that
+had greeted his most boyish mishaps. He had grown so accustomed to it,
+not only from Gilda Penny but from every one familiar with the Pennys
+and their history, that it had become part of his automatic entity.
+Jasper--a black Penny.
+
+The course of his thoughts turned back to the earliest episodes
+remembered in that connection, to a time in which the especial quality
+had necessarily freest play. Now he characterized it as mere uninformed
+wildness; but he still recalled the tremendous impatience with which he
+had met the convenient enclosure of a practicable, organized society.
+Even at Myrtle Forge, where--in contrast to dwelling in the confines of
+a city--he had had a rare amount of actual freedom, a feeling of
+constriction had sent him day after day into the woods, hunting or
+merely idle along the upper reaches of still unsullied streams. Yet it
+had been an especial kind of wildness; he owed that recognition to his
+vanished youth. The term generally included champagne parties and the
+companionship of various but similar ladies of the circus or opera
+house. But nothing of that had then entered into his deep-rooted
+rebellion. He had had merely a curious passion for complete
+independence, an innate turning from street-bound affairs and men to the
+isolation and physical accomplishment of arduous excursions on horses or
+foot. He had, then, avoided, even dreaded, women. And that instinct, he
+told himself, shifting his injured arm to a more comfortable position,
+had been admirably founded.
+
+The ax blows ceased; from his position he could just see the top of the
+great wheel that drove the Forge trip hammer; and slowly the rim
+blurred, commencing to turn. The forebay was open. A pennant of black
+smoke, lurid with flaming cinders, twisted up in the motionless air. The
+hammer fell once, experimentally, with a faint jar, and a grimy figure
+shovelled charcoal into a barrow.
+
+His mind soon returned to the point where it had been deflected by the
+movement at the Forge; he could even visualize his mature boyhood--a
+straight, arrogant figure, black certainly, with up-sloping brows and an
+outthrust chin. And that, he thought, not without complacency, was not
+very far from a description of himself at present. There were, of
+course, the whiskers, severely trimmed on his spare face, and showing,
+in certain lights, a glimmer of silver; but he was as upright, as
+comfortably lean, now as then. He was still capable of prolonged
+physical exertion.... It was ridiculous to think of himself as
+definitely aging. Yet he was past forty, and the years seemed to go far
+more swiftly than at twenty-one.
+
+Women! The silent pronouncement included the smallest plural
+possible--only two; but it seemed to Jasper Penny that they comprised
+all the variations, the faults and virtues, of their entire sex. With a
+certain, characteristic formality, propriety, he considered his wife
+first, now a year dead. He wondered if she had found the orthodox and
+concrete heaven in the frequent ecstatic contemplation of which so much
+of her life had been spent. It had been that fine superiority to the
+material that had first attracted him to her, a quality of shining
+enthusiasm, of reflected inspiration from a vision, however trite, of
+eternal hymning; and it had been that same essence which finally held
+them apart through the greater number of their married years. Phebe's
+health, slowly ebbing, had drawn her farther and farther from the known
+world in general and the affairs and being of her husband in particular;
+her last strength had gone in the hysteria of protracted religious
+emotion, during which she had become scarcely more to Jasper Penny than
+an attenuated, rapt invalid lingering in his house.
+
+Her pale, still presence was usurped by a far different, animated and
+colourful, figure. He thought of Essie Scofield, of all that she
+paramountly held and expressed, with a reluctance that had lately,
+almost within the past week, grown to resemble resentment, if not actual
+irritation. Yet, however, casting back through the years, in his present
+remoteness, he was able to recreate her and his emotions as they had
+first, irresistibly moved together. The absolute opposite of Phebe,
+already withdrawing into her religious, incorporeal region, Essie
+Scofield had immediately swept him into the whirlpool of her vivid,
+physical personality. Before her the memory of his wife faded into
+insignificance. But there was no mere retrospect in the considering of
+Essie; very much alive she presented, outside the Penny iron, the one
+serious preoccupation, complication, of his future.
+
+At the time when he had first admitted, welcomed, her claim on him, he
+had felt a sudden energy in which he had recognized a play of the traits
+of a black Penny. Here was a satisfactory, if necessarily private,
+exercise of his inborn contempt for the evident hypocrisy, the
+cowardice, of perfunctory inhibitions and safe morals. That, however,
+had been speedily lost in his rocketing passion, flaring out of a quiet
+continence into giddy spaces of unrestraint. Essie, after a momentary
+surrender, had attempted retreat, expressing a doubt of the durability
+of their feeling; she had, in fact, made it painfully clear that she
+wished to escape from the uncomfortable volume of his fervour; but he
+had overborne her caution--her wisdom, he now expressed it.
+
+That, more than anything else, brought before him the undeniable passage
+of time, the fact that he was rapidly accomplishing middle age--the
+total extinguishing of an emotion which he had felt must outlast life.
+It had gone, and with it his youth. Of course, he had recognized that he
+was no longer thirty; he had been well aware of his years, but only
+during the last few weeks had there been the slight, perceptible
+dragging down.... On the black walnut dressing stand past the window lay
+a letter he had received from Essie that morning; it contained her usual
+appeal for an additional sum of money--he gave her, formally, six
+thousand dollars a year; and the manner of the demand, for the
+necessities of their daughter, showed his sharpened perceptions that she
+had never really experienced the blindness of a generous emotion.
+Eunice, the child, was incontrovertible proof of that--no more than an
+additional lever for her to swing.
+
+His face darkened, and he moved his shoulder impatiently, as if to throw
+off a burden grown unendurable. But it was fastened immovably--his
+responsibility was as baldly apparent as the February noon, its greyness
+now blotted by a wind-driven, metallic shift of snow.
+
+He had been criminally negligent of Eunice. This realization was
+accompanied by no corresponding warmth of parenthood; there was no
+quickening of blood at the thought of his daughter, but only a newborn
+condemnation of his neglected, proper pride. He had, thoughtlessly,
+descended to a singularly low level of conduct. And it must abruptly
+terminate. Jasper Penny had not seen Eunice for seven, nine, months; he
+would remedy this at once, supervise advantages, a proper place, for
+her. Afterward Essie and himself could make a mutually satisfactory
+agreement.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Throughout an excellent dinner, terrapin and bass, wild turkey with
+oysters and fruit preserved in white brandy, he maintained a sombre
+silence. His mother, on the right, her sister opposite--Phebe's place
+seemed scarcely emptier than when she had actually occupied it--held an
+intermittent verbal exchange patently keyed to Jasper Penny's mood. They
+were women with yellow-white, lace-capped hair, blanched eyebrows and
+lashes, and small, quick eyes on hardy, reddened faces. Gilda Penny was
+slightly the larger, more definite; Amity Merken had a timid, almost
+furtive, expression in the opulence of the Penny establishment, while
+Gilda was complacent; but otherwise the two women were identical. Their
+dresses were largely similar--Amity's a dun, Gilda Penny's grey, moire
+silk, high with a tight lace collar, and bands of jet trimming from
+shoulder to waist, there spreading over crinoline to the floor. Lace
+fell about their square, capable hands, and Gilda wore broad, locked
+bracelets checked in black and gold.
+
+Sherry, in blue cut decanters stoppered with gilt, gave place to port.
+An epergne of glass and burnished ormolu, in the form of supporting oak
+leaves, with numerous sockets for candles, was set, filled with fruit,
+in the centre of the table; silver lustre plates were laid; but Jasper
+Penny heedlessly fingered the stem of a wine glass. He said suddenly,
+"I'm going to the city this afternoon."
+
+"Is it safe yet?" his mother queried doubtfully. "Hadn't you better wait
+till to-morrow, when you can drive easily, or without stopping at a
+tavern?"
+
+He looked up impatiently. "I shall go by the railroad," he stated
+decisively. "Can't you understand that, with the future of iron almost
+dependent on steam, it is the commonest foresight for me to patronize
+such customers as the Columbia Railway! I have no intention of adding to
+the ignorant prejudice against improved methods of travelling."
+
+"There's your arm," she insisted with spirit.
+
+"An untried engine. The Hecla works along smoothly at twenty miles an
+hour." Amity cast a glance of swift appeal at her sister, but Gilda
+Penny persisted. "Ungodly," was the term she selected. Jasper ignored
+her. He had decided to straighten the tangled affair of Eunice at once;
+he would see Essie that evening, arrive at an understanding about the
+child's future. It would be even more difficult to terminate his
+connection with Essie herself. That, he now recognised, was his main
+desire. The affair had actually died before Phebe; but its onerous
+consequences remained, blighting the future.
+
+The future! It was that, he now discovered, which occupied him, rather
+than the past. A new need had become apparent, a restless desire
+analogous to the urge of seeking youth. Jasper Penny was aware of a
+great dissatisfaction, a vast emptiness, in his existence; he had a
+feeling of waste growing out of the sense of hurrying years. Somehow,
+obscurely, he had been cheated. He almost envied the commonality of men,
+not, like himself, black Pennys, impatient of assuaging relationships
+and beliefs. Yet this, too, turned into another phase of his
+inheritance--his need was not material, concrete, it had no worldly,
+graspable implications, and his general contempt was not less but
+greater. He wished to bring a final justification to his isolation
+rather than lose himself in the wide, undistinguished surge of living.
+
+"You'll stop at the Jannans?" his mother queried.
+
+"I think not, probably Sanderson's Hotel, Stephen is giving a ball
+to-night for Graham and his wife. I have some important transactions."
+Not an echo of his affair with Essie Scofield had, he knew, penetrated
+to Myrtle Forge. It was a most fortunate accident. The vulgarity
+consequent upon discovery would have been unbearable. Stephen Jannan,
+his cousin, a lawyer of wide city connections, must have learned
+something of the truth; but Stephen, properly, had said nothing; a
+comfortable obscurity had hid him from gabbled scandal. Now, soon, it
+would all be over. Unconsciously he drew a deeper breath of relief, of
+prospective freedom.
+
+The Hecla, a wooden barrelled engine with a tall, hinged stack, drew its
+brigade of canary-coloured chariot cars forward with a rapid bumping
+over inequal rails. Jasper Penny's seat, number nineteen, was
+fortunately in the centre, close by the stove, where a warmth hung that
+failed to reach to the doors. Lost in speculation the journey was both
+long and vague. Twilight deepened within the car, and two flickering
+candles were lit at either end, their pallid light serving only to cast
+thin, climbing shadows over the rocking, box-like interior. At irregular
+intervals the train stopped with a succession of subsiding crashes, and
+started again at the blowing of a horn; passengers would leave or enter;
+or it would prove to be merely a halt to take on cut and piled wood fuel
+for the engine.
+
+Finally the train brigade reached the inclined plane leading to the
+river and city; the engine was detached, and the cars, fastened to a
+hemp cable, were lowered spasmodically to where a team of mules drew
+them through a gloomy, covered bridge echoing to the slow hoof falls and
+creaking of loose planks. Jasper Penny fastened the elaborate frogs of
+his heavily furred overcoat over his injured arm, and with a florid
+bandanna wiped the cinders from his silk hat.
+
+The coaches rolled into the station shed, where he changed, taking a
+swaying Mulberry Street omnibus to Fourth, and Sanderson's Hotel. It was
+a towering, square structure of five stories, with a columned white
+portico, and high, divided steps. The clerk, greeting him with a precise
+familiar deference, directed him to a select suite with a private
+parlour, a sombre chamber of red plush, dark walls and thickly draped,
+long windows. There he sat grimly contemplating a distasteful prospect.
+He knew the casual, ill-prepared dinners presided over by Essie, the
+covertly insolent man servant; and an overpowering reluctance came upon
+him to sit again at her table. But the confusion of the hotel ordinary
+repelled him too: he had seen in passing a number of men who would
+endeavour to force his opinion on the specie situation or speculation in
+canals. He rose and pulled sharply at the tasselled bell rope, ordering
+grilled pheasant, anchovy toast and champagne to be served where he sat.
+
+Jasper Penny ate slowly, partly distracted by the market reports in the
+_U.S. Gazette_. Ninety-two and a half had been offered for Schuylkill
+Navigation, only fifteen for the West Chester Railroad, but Philadelphia
+and Trenton had gone to ninety-eight; while a three and a half dividend
+had been declared on the French Town Turnpike and Railway Company. He
+was annoyed afresh by the persistent refusal of the Government to award
+the mail to the Reading Steam System. His thoughts returned to Eunice,
+his daughter, the coming scene--it would at least be that--with Essie
+Scofield.
+
+It was but a short distance from the hotel to where Essie lived, over
+Fourth Street to Cherry; and almost immediately he turned by the three
+story brick dwelling at the corner and was at her door. The servant, in
+an untidy white jacket, stood stupidly blocking the narrow hall, until
+Jasper Penny with an angry impatience waved him aside. There were other
+silk hats and coats, and a woman's fringed wrap, on the stand where he
+left his stick and outer garments; and from above came a peal of mingled
+laughter. The presence of others, now, was singularly inopportune; it
+would be no good waiting for their departure--here such gatherings
+almost invariably drew out until dawn; and he abruptly decided that,
+after a short interval, he would give Essie to understand that he wished
+to talk to her privately.
+
+A young woman with a chalk-white face and oleaginous bandeaux of dead
+black hair, in scarlet and green tartan over an extravagant crinoline,
+was seated on a sofa between two men, each with an arm about her waist
+and wine glasses elevated in their free hands. Essie was facing them
+from a circular floor hassock, in a blue satin, informal robe over
+mussed cambric ruffles, heelless nonchalants, and her hair elaborately
+dressed with roses, white ribbons and a short ostrich feather. Her body,
+at once slim and full, was consciously seductive, and her face, slightly
+swollen and pasty in the shadows, bore the same, heedless unrestraint.
+Her dark, widely-opened eyes, an insignificant nose and shortly curved,
+scarlet lips, held almost the fixed, painted impudence of a cynically
+debased doll. She turned and surveyed Jasper Penny with a petulant,
+silent inquiry, and whatever gaiety was in progress abruptly terminated
+as he advanced into the room.
+
+"You never let me know you'd be here," Essie complained; "but I suppose
+I ought to be glad to see you anyway--after four months without a line.
+Jasper, Mr. Daniel Culser." The younger of the men on the sofa, a
+stolidly handsome individual with hard, blue eyes, rose with an
+over-emphasized composure. "Mr. Penny, extremely pleased." Jasper Penny
+was irritated by the other's instant identification, and he nodded
+bluntly. "Lambert Babb and Myrtilla Lewis," Essie continued
+indifferently. Babb, an individual of inscrutable age, with ashen
+whiskers and a blinking, weak vision in a silvery face, was audibly
+delighted. Myrtilla Lewis smiled professionally over her expanse of
+bewildering silk plaid. "Wine in the cooler," Essie added, and Daniel
+Culser moved to where a silver bucket reposed by a tray of glasses and
+broken, sugared rusks. Jasper Penny refused the offered drink, and found
+a chair apart from the others. A moody silence enveloped him which he
+found impossible to break, and an increasing uneasiness spread over the
+room.
+
+"Well," Essie Scofield commanded, "say something. You look as black as
+an Egyptian. What'll my friends think of you? I suppose it doesn't
+matter any more what it is to me; but you might play at being polite."
+
+"Don't chip at a man like that," Myrtilla advised. "Mr. Penny has a
+right to talk or not." She smiled more warmly at him, and he saw that
+she had had too much champagne. The room reeked with the thin, acrid
+odour of the wine, and a sickly perfume of vanilla essence. Essie, as
+usual, had a glass of her favourite drink--orange juice and French
+brandy--on the floor beside her, the brandy bottle and fresh oranges
+conveniently near. His repulsion for her deepened until it seemed as if
+actual fingers were compressing his throat, stopping his breath. He
+wondered suddenly how far he was responsible for her possible
+degeneration. But he had not been the first; her admission of that fact
+had in the beginning attracted him to an uncommon frankness in her
+peculiar make-up. He was willing to assume his fault, to pay for it,
+whatever payment was possible, and escape.... Not only from her, but
+from all that she embodied, from himself--what he had been--as much as
+anything else.
+
+"You are an Ironmaster," Mr. Babb finally announced; "in fact, one of
+our greatest manufacturers. Now, Mr. Penny, what is your personal
+opinion of engine as against the public coach? Will the railroad survive
+the experimental stage, and are such gentlemen as yourself behind it?"
+
+"I saw in the _Ledger_ some days back," Daniel Culser added, "that your
+arm had been broken travelling by steam."
+
+"One had nothing to do with the other," Jasper stated tersely, ignoring
+Babb's query, "but was entirely my own fault." The conversation lagged
+painfully again, during which Essie skilfully compounded another mixture
+of spirits and thick, yellow juice. She grew sullen with resentment at
+Jasper Penny's attitude, and exchanged enigmatic glances with Culser.
+The liquor brought a quick flush to her slightly pendulous cheeks, and
+she was enveloped in an increasing bravado. "Penny's a solemn old boy,"
+she announced generally. Lambert Babb attempted to embrace Myrtilla,
+but, her gaze on the newcomer, she pushed him away. "You got to be a
+gentleman with me," she proclaimed with a patently unsteady dignity. "My
+grandfather was a French noble."
+
+"What I'd like to know," Essie remarked, "is what's his granddaughter?"
+
+"Better'n you!" Myrtilla heatedly asserted; "one who'd appreciate a real
+man, and not be playing about private with a tailor's dummy." Daniel
+Culser's face grew noticeably pinker. "I'm going," Myrtilla continued,
+rising. "Mr. Penny, I'd be happy to meet you under more social
+conditions. Here I cannot remain for--for reasons. I might be tempted
+to--" Mr. Babb caught her arm under his, and, at an imperious gesture
+from Essie, piloted her from the room. Culser rose.
+
+"Don't go, Dan," Essie Scofield told him defiantly. But Jasper Penny
+maintained a silence that forced the younger man to make a stiff exit.
+"Well," Essie demanded, flinging herself on the deserted sofa, "now
+you've spoiled my evening. Why did you come at all if you couldn't
+behave genteel?"
+
+"Where, exactly, is Eunice?" he asked abruptly.
+
+She glanced at him with an instant masking of her resentment. "I've told
+you a hundred times--in the house of a very respectable clergyman. My
+letter was clear enough; she's had bronchitis, and there's the doctor,
+and--"
+
+"Just where is Eunice?" he repeated, interrupting her aggrieved recital.
+
+"Where I put her," her voice grew shrill. "You haven't asked to see her
+for near a year, you haven't even pretended an interest in--in your own
+daughter. I've done the best I could; you know I don't like children
+around; but I have attended to as much of my duty as you. Now you come
+out and insist on being unpleasant all in an hour. Why didn't you write?
+I'd had her here for you. Come back in two or three days."
+
+"To-morrow," he replied. "I am going to see her in the morning."
+
+"You just ain't. I did the best I knew, but, if it isn't all roses,
+you'll blame everything on me. I will have Eunice fetched--"
+
+"Where is she?" he asked still again, wearily.
+
+Every instinct revolted against the degradation into which he had
+blindly walked. His youth had betrayed him, involving him, practically a
+different man, in a payment which he realized had but commenced.... To
+escape. He had first thought of that with the unconscious conviction
+that the mere wish carried its fulfilment. In fact, it would be
+immensely difficult; a man, he saw, could not sever himself so casually
+from the past; it reached without visible demarcation into the present,
+the future. All was a piece, one with another; and Essie Scofield was
+drawn in a vivid thread through the entire fabric of his being.
+
+Yet the need, the longing forward, so newly come into his consciousness,
+persisted, grew--it had become the predominate design of his weaving.
+Through this he recognized a reassertion of his pride, the rigid pride
+of a black Penny, which, in the years immediately past, had been
+overwhelmed by a temporary inner confusion. Beyond forty men returned to
+their inheritance, their blood; this fact echoed vaguely among his
+memories of things heard; and he felt in himself its measure of truth.
+His distaste for a largely muddled, pandering society, for men huddled,
+he thought, like domestic animals, returned in choking waves. In the
+maculate atmosphere of flat wine and stale cologne he had a sharp
+recurrence of the scent of pines, lifting warmly in sunny space.
+
+He produced a morocco bound note book, a gold pencil; and, with the
+latter poised, directed a close interrogation at Essie. Her face flushed
+with an ungovernable anger, and she pressed a hand over her labouring
+heart. "Get her then; out Fourth Street, Camden; the Reverend Mr.
+Needles. But afterwards don't come complaining to me. You ought to have
+seen to her; you've got the money, the influence. And you have done
+nothing, beyond some stinking dollars ... wouldn't even name her. Eunice
+Scofield, a child without--"
+
+All that she had said was absolutely true, just.
+
+"I suppose you'll even think I didn't give her the sums you sent; that
+damned Needles has been bleeding me, suspects something." She stopped
+from a lack of breath; her darkened face was purplish, in the shadows.
+"I haven't been well, either--a fierce pain here, in my heart."
+
+It was the brandy, he told her; she should leave the city, late wine
+parties, go back into the country. "Go back," she echoed bitterly.
+"Where? How?" He winced--the past reaching inexorably into the future.
+Jasper Penny made no attempt to ignore, forget, his responsibility; he
+admitted it to her; but at the same time the tyrannical hunger increased
+within him--the mingled desire for fresh paths and the nostalgia of the
+old freedom of spirit. But life, that had made him, had in the same
+degree created Essie; neither had been the result of the other; they had
+been swept together, descended blindly in company, submerged in the
+passion that he had thought must last forever, but which had burned to
+ashes, to nothing more than a vague sense of putrefaction in life.
+
+"Thank you," he said formally, putting away the note book. "Something,
+of course, must be done; but what, I can only say after I have seen
+Eunice. I am, undoubtedly, more to blame than yourself."
+
+"I suppose, in this holy strain, you'll end by giving her all and me
+nothing."
+
+"... what you are getting as long as you live?"
+
+"That's little enough, when I hear how much you have, what all that iron
+is bringing you. Why, you could let me have twenty, thirty thousand, and
+never know it."
+
+"If you are unable to get on, that too will be rectified."
+
+"You are really not a bad old thing, Jasper," she pronounced, mollified.
+"At one time--do you remember?--you said if ever the chance came you
+would marry me. Ah, you needn't fear, I wouldn't have you with all your
+iron, gold. I--" she stopped abruptly, uneasily. "Not a bad old thing,"
+she repeated, moving to secure a half-full glass.
+
+"Why do you call me old?" he asked curiously.
+
+"I hadn't thought of it before," she admitted; "but, this evening, you
+looked so solemn, and there is grey in your hair, that all at once you
+seemed like an old gentleman. Now Dan Culser," she hesitated, and then
+swept on, "he's what you'd name young." At Daniel Culser's age, he told
+himself, he, Jasper Penny, could have walked the other blind; and now
+Essie Scofield was calling him old; she had noticed the grey in his
+hair. He rose to go, and she came close to him, a clinging, soft thing
+of flesh faintly reeking with brandy. "I have a great deal to pay, where
+money goes I don't know, even a little would be a help." He left some
+gold in her hand, thankful to purchase, at that slight price, a
+momentary release.
+
+Outside Cherry Street was blackly cold, a gas lamp at the corner shed a
+watery, contracted illumination. He made his way back toward the hotel,
+but a sudden reluctance to mount to his lonely chambers possessed him.
+Before the glimmering marble facade he took out his watch, a pale gold
+efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes.
+The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing,
+at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house
+flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he
+determined to proceed and have a cigar with Stephen.
+
+He walked briskly up Mulberry Street to Sixth and there turned to the
+left. Jasper Penny soon passed the shrouded silence of Independence
+Square, with the new Corinthian doorway of the State House showing
+vaguely through the irregularly grouped ailanthus trees. Beyond, the
+brick wall with its marble coping and high iron fence reached, on the
+opposite side, to the Jannan corner. The length of the brick dwelling,
+with white arched windows and coursings faced the vague emptiness of
+Washington Square, closed for the winter.
+
+Inside the hall was bright and filled with the pungent warmth of fat
+hearth coal. A servant, with a phrase of recognition, directed him
+above, to a room burdened with masculine greatcoats and silk hats. There
+an attendant told him that Mr. Jannan was below. Jasper Penny had no
+intention of becoming a participant in the hall, but neither did he
+propose to linger among wraps, listening to the supercilious chatter of
+young men in the extreme mode of bright blue coats, painfully tight
+black trousers with varnished pumps and expanses of ankle in grey silk.
+One, inspecting him through an eyeglass on a woven hair guard, expressed
+a pointed surprise at Jasper Penny's informal garb. "Christoval!" he
+ejaculated. "It approaches an insult to the da-da-darlings." Another
+commenced to sing a popular minstrel air:
+
+"Blink--a--ho--dink! Ah! Ho!
+
+"Roley Boley--Good morning Ladies all!"
+
+Jasper Penny abruptly descended to a small room used for smoking. Young
+men, he thought impatiently, could no longer even curse respectably.
+They lisped like females at an embroidery frame. When he was young,
+younger, he corrected himself, he could have outdrunk, outridden.... His
+train of thought was abruptly terminated by a group unexpectedly
+occupying the smoking room. He saw Stephen Jannan, his wife Liza, the
+newly married young Jannans, and a strange woman in glace muslin and a
+black Spanish lace shawl about her shoulders. Stephen greeted him
+cordially. "Jasper, just at the moment for a waltz with--with Susan."
+The stranger blushed painfully, made an involuntary movement backward,
+and Liza Jannan admonished her husband. "Do you know Miss Brundon,
+Jasper?" she asked.
+
+Jasper Penny bowed, and Miss Brundon, with an evident effort, smiled,
+her shy, blue eyes held resolutely on his countenance. She at once
+slipped into the background, talking in a low, clear voice to Graham
+Jannan's wife; while the older men enveloped themselves in a fragrant
+veil of cigars. "Come, Mary, Susan," Mrs. Jannan directed, "out of this
+horrid, masculine odour." Accompanied by her son the women left, and
+Stephen turned to his cousin. "Thought, of course, you knew Susan
+Brundon," he remarked. "A school mistress, but superior, and a lady. Has
+a place on Spruce Street, by Raspberry Alley, for select younger girls;
+unique idea, and very successful, I believe."
+
+Jasper Penny said comfortably, "Humm!" The other continued, "I want
+Graham to get out to Shadrach Furnace as soon as may be. That old stone
+house the foremen have occupied is nearly fixed for him. I am very well
+content, Jasper, to have him in the iron trade, with you practically at
+its head. No deliberate favours, remember, and I have told him to look
+for nothing. But, at the same time--you comprehend: folly not to push
+the boy on fast as possible. No reason for us all to go through with
+the hardships of the first Gilbert and his times. Must have been
+fatiguing, the wilderness and English troubles and all that."
+
+"Splendid, I should say," Jasper Penny replied. He repeated satirically
+the conversation he had heard above. "Makes me ill. You will remember
+there was a Howat, son of our original settler--now he must have been a
+lad! Married some widow or other; wild at first, but made iron in the
+end."
+
+"A black Penny, Jasper; resembled you. Personally, I like it better
+now." Jasper Penny surveyed with approbation Stephen's full, handsome
+presence. Jannan was a successful, a big, man. Well, so was he too. But
+he thought with keen longing of the time when he was twenty-one, and
+free, free to roam self-sufficient. He thought of that Howat Penny of
+which they had spoken, black as he was black in the family tradition; he
+had seen Hesselius's portrait of the other; and, but for the tied hair
+and continental buff, it might have been a replica of himself. It was
+curious--that dark strain of Welsh blood, cropping out undiminished,
+concrete, after generations. The one to hold it before Howat had been
+burned in Mary's time, in the sixteenth century, dead almost three
+hundred years. Jasper had a sudden, vivid sense of familiarity with the
+Howat who had married some widow or other. His mind returned to his own,
+peculiar problem, to Essie Scofield, to the burden with which he had
+encumbered himself, the payment that faced him for--for his sheer
+youth. He said abruptly, belated:
+
+"You fit the present formal ease of society, Stephen; you like it and it
+likes you. In a superficial way I have done well enough, but
+underneath--" his voice sank into silence. A profound, familiar
+dejection seized him; incongruously he thought of Miss Brundon's
+delicate shrinking from the mere contact of the amenities of speech.
+Super-sensitive. "I must go," he announced, and refused Stephen Jannan's
+invitation for the night.
+
+"Stay for some supper, anyhow," the other insisted, and, a hand on his
+arm, led him past the doors open upon the dancing.
+
+Chandeliers, great coruscating pendants of glass prisms and candles,
+glittered above the expanse of whirling crinoline and blue coats,
+vermilion turbans, gilt feathers and flowered hair. The light fell on
+shoulders as white and elegantly sloping as alabaster vases, draped in
+rose and citron, in blanched illusion frosted and looped with silver; on
+bouquets of camellias swinging from jewelled chains against ruffled and
+belled skirts swaying about the revealed symmetry of lacy silk stockings
+and fragile slippers. "Ah, Jasper," Stephen Jannan said; "in our time,
+what! Do you remember your first Wellington boots? The gambling room and
+veranda at Saratoga? Tender eyes, old boy, and little tapering hands."
+Jasper Penny replied, "It seems my hair is grey." Silence fell on them
+as they entered the dining room. A long table was burdened with
+elaborate pagodas of spun barley sugar topped with sprigs of orange
+blossom, the moulded creams of a Charlotte Polonaise, champagne jelly
+valanced with lemon peel, pyramids of glazed fruits on lacquered plates;
+with faintly iridescent Belleek and fluted glass and ormolu; and,
+everywhere, the pale multitudinous flames of candles and the fuller
+radiance of astral lamps hung with lustres. Jasper Penny idly tore open
+a bon bon wrapped in a verse on fringed paper,
+
+"Viens! Viens! ange du ciel, je t'aime! je t'aime!
+Et te le dire ici, c'est le bonheur supreme."
+
+Love and the great hour of life! He had missed both; one, perhaps, with
+the other. His marriage to Phebe, except for a brief flare at the
+beginning, had been as empty as the affair with Essie Scofield. God, how
+hollow living seemed! He had missed something; or else existence was an
+ugly deception, the false lure of an incomprehensible jest. The music
+beat in faint, mocking waves on his hearing, the lights of the supper
+shone in the gold bubbles of his wine glass. He drained it hurriedly.
+Outside the night, lying cold on deserted squares, blurred with gas
+lamps, was like a vain death after the idle frivolity of Stephen
+Jannan's ball. In an instant, in the shutting of a door, the blackness
+had claimed him; the gaiety of warm flesh and laughter vanished. Death
+... and he had literally nothing in his hands, nothing in his heart. A
+duty, Eunice, remained. The sound of his footfalls on the bricks, thrown
+back from blank walls, resembled the embodied, stealthy following of the
+injustice he had wrought.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+The following morning he made his way past the continuous produce arcade
+that held the centre of Market Street to the Camden Ferry. At the river
+the fish stall, with its circular green roof and cornucopias, reached
+almost to the gloomy ferry-house with its heavy odour of wet wood. The
+boat clattered through broken ice, by a trim packet ship, the
+_Susquehanna_, and into the narrow canal through Windmill Island. Camden
+was a depressing region of low, marshy land, its streets unpaved and
+without gas, the gutters full of frozen, stagnant water. He inquired the
+way to the Reverend Mr. Needles', passed a brick meeting house, and,
+turning into Fourth Street, isolated frame dwellings, coming at last to
+a dingy wooden house with broken panes in the upper windows and a
+collapsing veranda at the edge of a blackened, skeleton wood.
+
+A tall, gaunt woman in a ravelled worsted shawl answered his summons,
+and informed him, interrupted by a prolonged coughing, that Mr. Needles
+was away on circuit. "I came for a child staying with you," Jasper Penny
+explained shortly, suppressing an involuntary repulsion at the degraded
+surroundings. "She's not well," the woman replied, with instant
+suspicion. "I don't just like to let a chancy person see her." He
+discarded all subterfuge. "I am her father," he stated. The other
+shifted to a whining self-defence. "And her in this sink!" she
+exclaimed, gazing at Jasper Penny's furred coat, his glossy hat and
+gloves and ebony cane.
+
+"I did all for her I could, considering the small money I was promised,
+and then half the time I didn't get that, neither. The lady owes for
+three weeks right now. I suppose you'll have to come in," she concluded
+grudgingly. They entered a dark hall, clay cold. Beyond, in a slovenly
+kitchen hardly warmer, he found Eunice, his daughter; a curiously
+sluggish child with a pinched, hueless face and a meagre body in a man's
+worn flannel shirt and ragged skirt and stockings.
+
+"Here's your father," Mrs. Needles ejaculated.
+
+Eunice stood in the middle of the bare floor, staring with pallid, open
+mouth at the imposing figure of the man. She said nothing; and Jasper
+Penny found her silence more accusing than a shrill torrent of reproach.
+"She's kind of heavy like," Mrs. Needles explained. "I have come to take
+you away," Jasper Penny said. Then, turning to the woman: "Are those all
+the clothes she has?" She grew duskily red. "There are some others
+about, but I don't just know where, and then she spoils them so fast."
+
+"That's a lie," the child announced, with a faint patch of colour on
+either thin cheek. "Mr. Needles sold them." The man decided to ignore
+such issues; his sole wish now was to take Eunice away as speedily as
+possible. "Well," he directed impatiently, "get a shawl, something to
+wrap her in." He regretted vainly that he had not come for the child in
+a carriage. He paid without a question what the woman said was owing;
+and, with Eunice folded in a ragged plaid, prepared to depart. "I
+guess," the child decided, in a strangely mature voice, "we'd better
+take my medicine." She turned toward a mantel, Mrs. Needles made a quick
+movement in the same direction, but the small shape was before her.
+Jasper Penny took a bottle from the diminutive, cold hand. The label had
+been obliterated; but, impelled by a distrustful curiosity, he took out
+the cork.
+
+Laudanum!
+
+He was at the point of an indignant condemnation when the words perished
+without utterance--not the haggard woman before him, but himself, Jasper
+Penny, was entirely guilty. He, in reality, had given the drug to his
+daughter, placed her in this sorry and bitter poverty. "Come, Eunice,"
+he said, taking her by the hand, his face grey and stony.
+
+Once more in the city he walked with the child to the ferry and foot of
+Chestnut Street, where they found places in The Reaper, a stage brightly
+painted with snowy ships and drawn by four sorrel horses. His first
+concern was to purchase proper clothes for his daughter; then he would
+face the problem of her happier disposal. They passed the columned
+facade of the Philadelphia Bank, the Custom House with its wide steps
+set back from the street, hedged dwellings, and the United States Hotel
+to Independence Square and Sixth Street, where he lifted the child from
+the stage. They stopped before an entrance between bowed windows which
+had above it the sign, The Misses Dunlop, Millinery.
+
+Jasper Penny had had no idea that it would be so difficult to procure
+clothes for a girl of seven. At first he was told that the necessary
+garments could not be furnished, when discussion revealed the fact that
+a nearly complete, diminutive wardrobe, especially ordered from Paris
+and neglected by the customer, was to be had. In a surprisingly short
+while a sentimental saleswoman had apparelled Eunice in black velvet
+with rows of small bows and gold buckles and a lace collar, cambric
+pantaloon ruffles swinging about her ankles, a quilted pink satin bonnet
+tied, like those of her elders', with a bow under her right cheek, and a
+muff and tippet of ermine. Other articles--a frock of rose gros de
+chine, with a flounced skirt, a drab velvet bonnet turned in green
+smocked silk, and sheer underthings--he ordered delivered at Sanderson's
+Hotel.
+
+The effect of what laudanum Eunice had taken faded, and her lethargy was
+replaced by an equally still, incredulous amazement. She followed Jasper
+Penny about with the mechanical rigidity of a minute sleepwalker. They
+went into a jewelry store beyond, with a square low bow window and white
+trimming, where he purchased a ring with a ruby, and small gold
+bracelets with locks and chains. His restless desire was to clothe
+Eunice in money, to overwhelm her with gifts; yet, although an evident
+delight struggled through her stupefaction, he failed to get from the
+expenditure the release he sought. A leaden sense of blood guiltiness
+persisted in him. At Parkinson's, the confectioner opposite the State
+House, he bought her syllabubs, a frozen rose cordial and black cake. On
+leaving, he paused at the marble steps with a lantern on either side and
+awning drawn out over the pavement, considering the next move. It should
+be toys--a German doll, slate and coloured crayons and jumping-figures.
+Then he took her back to his rooms at the Hotel.
+
+Sitting in a stiff crimson chair opposite him, the doll clasped in
+straining fingers, and a flush of excitement on her sharp features, she
+presented an enormous difficulty. What, justly, was he to do with her?
+How could he provide for a reasonable happiness, a healthy, normal
+existence? He decided coldly that he would prevent Essie Scofield's
+influence from ever touching the child again. Essie, he knew, was
+utterly without any warmth of motherhood. She had solely and callously
+used their daughter to extort money from him. But, he admitted to
+himself, neither had he any feeling of parentage for the small, lonely
+figure before him; nothing but a burning self-accusation, a lacerated
+pride. His act proceeded entirely from his head in place of his heart.
+For that very reason, Jasper Penny thought, he could give his daughter a
+greater measure of security. He would see Stephen Jannan to-morrow and
+with the lawyer's assistance get complete control of Eunice's future. He
+must alter his will.
+
+None of this, however, assisted in solving the actual immediate
+necessity. There was, certainly, Myrtle Forge; his mother, however she
+might silently suffer, protest, would ultimately accede in his wishes.
+But it was a dreary place for a child, with only the companionship of
+old women. He was, for the greater part, away in the interest of his
+widely scattered activities, forges, furnaces, nail factories and
+rolling mills.
+
+He felt in anticipation the censure of the Penny connections that would
+rise like a wall and shut Eunice from the companionship of the other
+children, of the family, embittering her at what he had somewhere heard
+described as the formative period of growth. His home, he decided, for
+the present at least, was an undesirable place for his daughter.
+
+It was, he discovered, past two, and he remorsefully summoned a servant.
+He gazed with bewilderment at the list of dinner dishes tended him;
+bear's meat, he felt, canvas back duck or terrapin, was not a diet
+proper to seven; but he solved the perplexity by ordering snipe, rolled
+and sugared cakes filled with whipped cream and preserved strawberries,
+and a deep apple pandowdy. After this, and a block of nougat, Eunice
+discovered herself to be sleepy. As she lay with tossed arms and pale
+streaming hair under the feather coverlet of a great hotel bed he saw
+with a sharp uneasiness that, in a subtle but unmistakable accent, she
+resembled her mother, Essie Scofield.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+His thoughts darkened with the falling day; he supposed them to be
+solely addressed to the problem of Eunice; but, in reality, they
+constantly evaded his will, following countless trivialities, and
+returned to his own, peculiar need. He made some small changes of dress
+for the evening, replacing brown with glazed black boots, and struggled,
+with one hand, through the ordeal of tying a formal neckcloth. He had
+purposely left behind his negro servant as a possible source of
+unguarded chatter. When Jasper Penny had finished he went in to Eunice
+and found her awake. The new clothes lay in their open boxes; and,
+lighting candles, he wondered if he had better have some one in to
+assist her. "Can you fix yourself up in these?" he asked, indicating the
+purchases.
+
+"Oh, yes," she assured him gravely; "that is except the very backest
+buttons." She stood by the folded piles of shirred muslin, the elaborate
+velvets and silks and ribbons, obviously at a loss before such an
+unparalleled choice; and he was once more disturbed by the attenuation
+of her small body. But that could be soon remedied; she had suffered
+other, far greater, irremedial, oppressions; her very birth had
+confronted her, in the puritanical self-righteousness of his world, with
+an almost insuperable barrier to happiness. Still back of that, even
+before the birth of himself and Essie Scofield, back, back in the
+unguessed past, Eunice had been shaped, condemned. Her fate had only
+culminated in his own unbalanced passion, in a desire that had blinded
+him like a flash of ignited powder, leaving him with a sense of utter
+void, of inexplicable need. "For what?" he demanded unconsciously and
+bitterly aloud.
+
+Eunice, startled, dropped the garment in her hands. She gazed at him
+with a shrinking dread. "Come," he told her gently, "that will be very
+pretty; and, don't you think, the velvet bonnet with green?" After
+supper he questioned her. "What time do you usually go to bed?" She
+answered promptly, "When it got too cold to stay up, at Mr. Needles',
+but I wouldn't know here."
+
+"We might go to the Circus," he suggested, half doubtful of the
+propriety of such a course. However, they went. She clung tightly to his
+sleeve before the illuminated, high-pillared facade of Welches' Circus,
+where Jasper took seats in a box. Eunice was breathless before the
+gleaming white and gold of the interior, the fabulous, glittering
+chandelier, the crimson draperies and great curtain with its
+equestrienne on a curvetting steed. The orchestra, with a blare of
+trombones, announced the raising of the curtain and appearance of Mr.
+John Mays, the celebrated clown. He was followed by Chinese sports, the
+Vision of Cupid and Zephyr, and the songs, the programme stated, of
+Lowrie and Williams. These gentlemen, in superb yellow satin, emphasized
+harmoniously the fact that
+
+"And joy is but a flower,
+The heart with sorrow meeting
+Will wither 'neath its power."
+
+Jasper Penny wondered abstractedly what was to be done with the tense,
+excitable child at his side? A voice from the wings announced: "Mouse
+and Harebell, the Lilliputian ponies, with Infant Jockies, the smallest
+schooled racers in existence." And the word "schooled" recalled to him
+the diffident woman he had met at Stephen Jannan's, the night before.
+Miss ... Brundon. A place for the education of younger girls. He could
+send Eunice there, for the present at any rate; and decide later upon
+her ultimate situation. Miss Brundon had a sensitive, yes, distinctly, a
+fine face. Her school, he remembered, was at Raspberry Alley, far out
+Spruce Street, close to Tenth. He drew a deep breath of relief at this
+bridging of the immediate complications the child presented.
+
+The next morning, again in the Reaper coach, they rolled west over
+Chestnut Street, past a theatre with elevated statues of Comedy and
+Tragedy, the Arcade with its outside stairs mounting across the front,
+stone mansions set back in gardens with gravelled paths, and the Moorish
+bulk of Masonic Hall half hid by stores. Beyond the Circus they
+proceeded on foot to a four square brick dwelling with weeping willows
+and an arched wood sign above the entrance painted with the designation,
+"Miss Brundon's Select Academy."
+
+Jasper Penny found Miss Brundon in a small, bare, immaculate office. She
+was sitting at a table; and, as he entered, with Eunice dragging
+desperately at his hand, she half rose, with a quick, faint blush.
+
+"Mr. Penny," she exclaimed, in a low, charming surprise. "I didn't
+expect, so soon, to have the pleasure ... here, at my school." He firmly
+moved Eunice from her position at his back. "An unexpected pleasure for
+me," he replied. "I came to consult with you about this little girl--the
+daughter of a friend of mine. A friend, I may add, in difficult
+circumstances, and for whom I am prepared to do a great deal. I had
+hoped--Stephen Jannan told me about your exceptional establishment--that
+you could take her. She needs just the supervision that I am certain you
+offer."
+
+"Of course," she replied immediately, "I'd be glad to have any one
+recommended by you. I do think my school is unusual. You see, there is
+almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies. And I have
+been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny;
+but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is
+required. Probably you would like an assurance of their studies and
+deportment."
+
+"No," he stopped her hastily; "it is quite enough to have seen you." A
+deeper, painful colour suffused her cheeks. He had, he thought, been
+inexcusably clumsy. He had unconsciously given voice to the conviction
+that Miss Brundon, like her establishment, was exceptional. She was,
+ordinarily, too pale for beauty; her countenance, with high, cheek
+bones, was irregular; yet her eyes, tranquil blue, held a steady quality
+almost the radiance of an inward light. Her diffidence, it was clear,
+co-existed with a firm, inviolable spirit. He said, later:
+
+"You will discover that there are many things Eunice requires, and I
+would be obliged if you would procure them without stint, and send the
+accounts to my Philadelphia office. The child has been in circumstances
+of considerable poverty; but I wish to give her whatever advantages
+money can bring. Yes--Eunice Scofield. And--" he hesitated, "in view of
+this...."
+
+"I understand, oh, completely," Susan Brundon interrupted him warmly.
+"You don't wish your charity exposed; and not only on your own account,
+but from consideration for the susceptibilities of the parents,
+parent--a mother, I gather."
+
+It had been, he thought, leaving, ridiculously simple. His meeting with
+Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance. A fine, delicate, unworldly woman;
+a fineness different from Phebe's, submerged in the pursuit of her own
+salvation. The former, he realized, was close to forty. If she had been
+sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice how admirably she would
+attend any of her own. Unmarried. The blindness of men, their fatuous
+choice, suddenly surprised him.
+
+He determined to proceed directly to Stephen Jannan, and put into motion
+at once the solving of his daughter's future. Never, he repeated, should
+Eunice fall again into the lax hands of Essie Scofield. Stephen would
+advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully
+overcoming its obstacles. He had unbounded faith in the power of money
+where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of
+laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable,
+ultimate scandal. What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching
+about him in every direction. He must discover firmer ground ahead,
+release from the act of that other man, his youth. The memory of the
+serene purity of Miss Brundon's office recurred to him like a breath
+from the open spaces where he had first known the deep pleasure of an
+utter freedom of spirit.
+
+Jasper Penny, revolving the complications of his position, made his way
+directly over the uneven sidewalk of Spruce Street to Fourth; there,
+passing the high, narrow residences of Society Hill, he proceeded to
+Stephen's office, beyond Chestnut. It was in a square brick edifice of
+an earlier period, with a broad marble step and door and wide windows
+coped in scoured white stone. The lawyer's private chamber was bare,
+with snowy panelling and mahogany, the high sombre shelves of a
+calf-bound law library, a ponderous cabriolet table, sturdy, rush-seated
+Dutch chairs, and a Franklin stove with slender brass capitols and
+shining hod.
+
+"A chair, Jasper," Stephen Jannan directed. "You ought to know them,
+they came out of Myrtle Forge--some of old Gilbert's. Your mother gave
+them to me when she did over the house in this new French fancy." Jasper
+Penny was momentarily at a loss for an adequate opening of the subject
+that had brought him there. Finally he plunged directly into his
+purpose. "You must know, Stephen," he said, "that I am decidedly
+obligated to a Mrs. Scofield." Jannan nodded shortly. "The thing dragged
+on for a number of years, but is quite dead now; in fact, it has been
+for a considerable number of months. That, in itself, doesn't bother me;
+it is comparatively simple; but there is a child, a girl, Stephen."
+
+"I didn't know that," the other acknowledged. "It is an ugly difficulty.
+Do you wish to legitimatize your--the child? There is marriage of
+course."
+
+"I have no intention of marrying Essie Scofield," Jasper Penny said
+coldly. "And I am almost certain she wouldn't consent if I had. I am
+quite willing to assume a proper responsibility; but there is a limit to
+my conception of that. There was never any serious question of marriage;
+there is none now. I simply wish to get complete control of Eunice; by
+adoption, perhaps; she is seven years old."
+
+"There are no laws of adoption, as such, in Pennsylvania," Jannan told
+him. "The only State with that provision is Louisiana; there, by an act
+of Legislature, the thing can be legalized. I could arrange it through
+correspondence, a certain residence within the State. It would be
+cumbersome and expensive, but possible." He paused, frowning. "Devilish
+awkward," he muttered; "make a stench in a family such as ours.
+However," he added, "a contract practically to the same effect can be
+drawn. This, with her consent, would be entirely binding on Mrs.
+Scofield. If the child can write it would be well to have her signature
+on the deed. Bring them here; she should have counsel."
+
+"After that, I suppose, the name could be arranged."
+
+"Exactly. The child, of course, would have no legal status as your heir.
+Anything she got would have to be willed direct." The other nodded. It
+was all far more simple than he had hoped. He almost saw a definite
+lightening of the future. "Is the girl with her mother now?" Jannan
+queried.
+
+"I took her away yesterday," Jasper Penny replied negligently. "We went
+to the Circus, and at present she is at Miss Brandon's Academy." He was
+surprised by the sudden concern on his cousin's handsome, florid
+countenance. "By heaven, Jasper," the lawyer exclaimed, "am I to
+understand that you took a--well, an illegitimate child, to Miss
+Brundon, left her in the School? It's--it's incredible."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"If such a thing were known it would ruin Susan Brundon over night.
+Haven't you a conception of how this is regarded? She would be stripped
+of pupils as if the place reeked of malignant fever. A most beastly
+egotistical and selfish act."
+
+"Never thought of that," Jasper Penny admitted. He saw again the fine,
+sensitive face of Miss Brundon, presiding over the establishment that
+was like an emanation of her diffident and courageous spirit; the last
+person alive he would harm. And people were exactly as Stephen had said,
+particularly women. They would destroy Susan Brundon ruthlessly, without
+a moment's hesitation. He thought of her as suffering incalculably,
+betrayed by his implied lie; he saw her eyes stricken with pain, her
+hands twisting together.... He rose sharply.
+
+"A blind, infernal fool!" he ejaculated, grasping his hat. "I'm glad I
+saw you when I did. Put it right at once. Obliged, Stephen; come to you
+later about changing my will and the rest."
+
+He was in such haste to remove the danger of Eunice from Susan Brundon
+that not until he again stood at the door of the Academy did he realize
+what a difficult explanation lay before him. Unconsciously he had
+reached a point where he would do his utmost to avoid hurting her.
+Already she occupied an unusual elevation in his thoughts, an unworldly
+plane bathed in a white radiance.
+
+She was not in the office, but soon appeared, with a questioning gaze;
+and, he felt, an appealing lessening of her reserve. He hesitated,
+casting vainly about for an acceptable expression of his errand. Another
+lie, he thought, acutely distressed, must be necessary. "I am extremely
+sorry, Miss Brandon," he told her, "but unexpected developments in the
+last hour make it necessary for me to remove Eunice from your school."
+
+A slow flush invaded her countenance lifted to meet his troubled gaze.
+"Mr. Penny!" she exclaimed, in a faint dismay. "Oh, I hope it is because
+of nothing--nothing derogatory you have heard. Please tell me
+directly--"
+
+"Absolutely no," he replied, his voice carrying a vibrating reassurance.
+"You are entirely without the need of recommendation, far beyond any
+unfavourable report. I am profoundly disturbed by causing you
+inconvenience, and I only hope to offer you sufficient apology; but I
+shall have to take Eunice away with me, at once."
+
+"Perhaps her mother can't bear separation."
+
+"It is not that," he said grimly, a tangible hurt sharpening within;
+"but something that cannot be gone into, with you." She turned away
+immediately. "I will send for her," she replied. They stood facing but
+mutually avoiding each other's gaze while Eunice was being fetched.
+"Her things have already come from the hotel," Miss Brundon proceeded.
+"Where shall I send them?" Eunice broke in with a shrill protest. "Do I
+have to go? I don't want to." Her face was scarlet with revolt. "I can
+walk up and down the room with a book on my head, while another little
+girl had to be all done with a board to her back."
+
+Jasper Penny wondered if he would see Miss Brundon again soon. The last
+was an afterthought bred by the realization that he could not permit her
+to depart absolutely from his life. There was a great deal that he, a
+rich and influential man of practical affairs, might do for her. He was
+certain that Susan Brundon needed exactly the assistance he could give;
+probably people robbed her, traded callously on her unsuspicious nature.
+Yet, when the moment came to leave, he could think of nothing to say
+beyond the banality of looking for her at the Jannans'.
+
+"I go out very little," she told him; "the work here absorbs me; and,
+unfortunately, my eyes are not strong. They require constant rest." He
+expressed regret once more for any disturbance he might have caused;
+and, after hesitating awkwardly, left with Eunice hanging fretfully at
+his hand. What, in God's name, was he to do with the child? He walked
+slowly, his face half lost in the fur of his overcoat, oblivious, in his
+concentration on the difficulties of her situation, of Eunice
+progressing discontentedly at his side. A petulant complaint rose at
+intervals to an audible sob. Looking down, as the sobs threatened to
+become a continuous crying, he saw the top of the velvet bonnet and her
+diminutive hands in scarlet knitted mitts. He would have to stop
+dragging her from place to place; a suitable position for the present
+was all he hoped for now. There must be other institutions, larger and
+farther away, to which Eunice could be sent. He had a vague memory of
+such a place somewhere on the Delaware, was it at Burlington?
+
+But he could not continue living with his daughter at Sanderson's Hotel.
+Jasper Penny decided that he would take her that afternoon to the house
+of the head machinist of his nail works at Jaffa, the town that, its
+beginning growing largely out of the Penny industries, lay a scant mile
+from Myrtle Forge. Speever was a superior man; his wife, a robust
+Cornish woman in a crisp apron, would give Eunice an energetic and
+proper care.
+
+A thin, flexible mantle of snow lay over the drab earth, sweeping up to
+a Grecian marble edifice, making more dreary the bulk of the Eastern
+Penitentiary and foundation of Girard College, and emphasizing the
+winter desertion of the reaches of the Fairmount Water Works. She soon
+grew absorbed in the various aspects of their transportation--the echo
+of the whip cracking over the mules that drew the coaches across the
+covered viaduct, the labouring stationary engine and their slow ascent
+beyond. They saw, lining the river, a cemetery elevated starkly against
+the sky; and followed a canal by a broken, black flood between snowy
+banks.
+
+Past a town with impressive residences and manufactories with low
+spreading veils of smoke, they came on a confusion of canals and canal
+boats, lock dams and bridges, mules and raffish crews with tanned faces
+and brightly coloured jackets and boots. Again crossing the river and a
+shallow, tranquil valley, the train brigade rolled into the main street
+of Jaffa. It was a town of small brick dwellings, spaced in orderly
+yards, echoing to the diminished clamour of the Penny Rolling Mills on
+the outskirts. Beyond the walls, starkly red against the snow, the
+blackened main street, the river was spotted with ice.
+
+Edgar Speever's wife accepted Eunice with an immediate and unquestioning
+capability, and Jasper Penny turned away with a momentary but immense
+relief. In a few days, after the deed for the possession of the child
+had been executed, he could place her more permanently. He walked out to
+the miscellaneous group of buildings and cluttered yards that held his
+inherited activity; and in the small single-roomed building of the main
+office discussed with his superintendent the changes, improvements of
+process, then under way. The old nail machines, propelled by the feet
+and hands of an operator, and producing but one nail at a time, had been
+replaced by a high power engine, self-heading machinery. The
+superintendent complained of the pig from the new hot blast furnaces.
+"Impure," he declared. "And this new stone coal firing, too, makes but
+poor stuff. It'll never touch the old charcoal forging. Hammered bar's
+at ninety, and I'm glad to get it then. The puddling furnaces will do
+something with the grey pig; we have eight in blast now, turning out the
+railroad and heavier bars. This year will see forty-five hundred tons of
+iron worked, and close to four thousand kegs of nails."
+
+Jasper Penny listened attentively; it was his intention soon to dispense
+entirely with all the time-honoured methods of iron manufacture. Water
+power, with its unequal flow, any large employment of charcoal, growing
+increasingly expensive with the rapid diminishment of the forests, must
+give place to the steam blast machine and anthracite. If his manager was
+unable to change, develop, with the changing times he would find
+another, more scientific.
+
+Outside the early twilight made more grey the dingy sheds and buildings,
+the heaped slag; the long brick rectangle of the rolling mill, with its
+triple imposed, ventilated roof and the high, smoking stacks of the
+puddling furnaces, rising four from either length, gave out an
+undiminished, deafening uproar, the clamour of the bars falling out from
+the rollers, the spatter of hammers and dull dragging of heavy weights.
+The engine of the nail works rent all other sound with an unaccustomed,
+harsh blast.... Jasper Penny was conscious of a deep, involuntary
+relief when he reached the comparative tranquillity, the secession of
+vexatious problems, accomplished by Myrtle Forge.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+There was, as always, an elaborate, steaming supper, with his mother, in
+a pelisse of black silk ruching, and Amity Merken at their places. He
+noted that an empty chair had been put, as customary, at the opposite
+end of the table, and with a trace of impatience ordered its removal. He
+wondered momentarily at his petty act; and then his thoughts returned to
+Susan Brundon. Jasper Penny saw her blue gaze lifted to his face, the
+hesitating smile; he felt again the pervading influence of her delicate
+yet essentially unshrinking spirit. She would possess an enormous
+steadfastness of purpose, he decided; a potentiality of immovable
+self-sacrifice. Yet she was the gentlest person alive. An unusual and
+resplendent combination of traits, rare possibilities.
+
+She had told him that she seldom went about--her school absorbed her,
+and her eyes needed care, rest. He must ask Stephen Jannan further about
+her. They were sitting, Jasper Penny, his mother and her sister, in the
+parlour; a large, square chamber hung with dark maroon paper and long,
+many tasselled and corniced window curtains in sombre green plush. A
+white wedgewood mantel with ornaments in olive and blue, above a
+brass-fretted closed stove, supported a high mirror, against which were
+ranged a pair of tall astral lamps shining in green and red spars of
+light through their pendants, a French clock--a crystal ball in a
+miniature Ionic pavilion of gilt--and artificial bouquets of coloured
+wax under glass domes. A thick carpet of purplish black velvet pile
+covered the floor from wall to wall; stiff Adam chairs and settee with
+wheelbacks of black and gold were upholstered in dusky ruby and indigo.
+Ebony tables of framed, inlaid onyx held tortoise shell and lacquer
+ornaments, an inlaid tulip-wood music-box, volumes in elaborately tooled
+morocco, and a globe where, apparently, metallic fish were suspended in
+a translucent, green gloom.
+
+The light from the multiple candelabras of ormolu and cut lustres
+streamed from the walls over Jasper Penny, sunk forward in profound
+absorption, and his mother's busy, fat hands working with gay worsteds.
+At her side a low stand of rubbed Chinese vermilion held her spilling
+yarns. Her face was placid, dryly pinkish and full. An irreproachable,
+domestic female. Herself the daughter of a successful Pennsylvania
+German Ironmaster, her wealth had doubled the Penny successes. There had
+been other children; Jasper could only faintly remember two, mostly in
+the form of infantile whimpering.
+
+The inevitable termination of the evening was readied by the appearance
+of a pitcher of steaming, spiced mulled wine. A cupful was formally
+presented to Amity Merken; Gilda Penny sipped hers with an audible
+satisfaction, and Jasper Penny absently drank the fragrant compound of
+cinnamon bark and lemon, cloves, sugar and claret. A measure of that,
+before retiring, could not but be beneficial to Susan Brundon, fatigued
+by the duties of her Academy. He thought of the sharper breath of the
+brandy and oranges compounded by Essie Scofield. A thin odour of
+foxglove clung to the memory of his wife.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Jasper Penny supplemented Jannan's letter to Essie Scofield, asking for
+an appointment with his client at the law office, with a short
+communication laying before her the condition in which he had found
+Eunice, his knowledge of her neglect to provide their daughter with the
+funds he had sent for that purpose, and definite plans for his complete
+control of the child. At the despatch of this he felt that his duty,
+where Essie as a formal parent resided, was ended. It was now only a
+question of an agreement on terms. He got no reply, other than a
+notification from Stephen Jannan that a meeting had been arranged for
+the following week. And, at eleven o'clock, on a clear, thin blue winter
+morning, he mounted, with Eunice, to the entrance of Jannan's offices on
+Fourth Street.
+
+Essie Scofield, in widespread mulberry silk with tight sleeves and broad
+steel buttons, a close brimmed blue bonnet filled with lilacs and tied
+with an old rose ribbon, was more compelling than Jasper Penny had
+remembered her for, actually, years. A coffee-coloured India shawl, with
+a deep fringe and trace of a lining checkered in cherry and black
+slipping from her shoulders, toned her appearance to a potential
+dignity.
+
+"Eunice," she exclaimed, as the child entered, "do come here at my
+side!" A small, cold mouth was silently raised for a straining embrace.
+Stephen Jannan proceeded at once, addressing Essie Scofield. "Mr. Penny
+informs me that he has written you explaining our purpose. I have
+already instructed you of the law in such a connexion, and there remains
+only your signatures to these papers. I begged you, if you will
+remember, to come with counsel, but since you have not done that it will
+be best for you to read this deed, which is quite clear in its intent."
+
+Essie gazed dramatically at the paper the lawyer tended her. "It means,"
+she said, "that I am to lose Eunice, and because I cannot offer her any
+advantages beyond those of a slim purse. I am a most unfortunate
+creature." Jasper Penny scraped his chair back impatiently, but Stephen
+enforced his silence with a gesture. "While my client understands that
+no monetary consideration can compensate for the breaking of ties of
+affection," Stephen Jannan went on smoothly, "and while he offers none
+in payment to that end, still we feel that some material recognition
+should be due you. Have you anything to say, suggest, at this point?"
+
+Essie Scofield's arm was about Eunice's waist. "I am to be parted from
+my little daughter," she exclaimed; "and my tears are to be stopped with
+gold--an affectionate breast, a heart-wrung appeal, stilled by a bribe.
+That is the price paid by a trusting, an unsuspicious, female. Long ago,
+when a mere girl, dazzled by--"
+
+"We won't go into that," Jannan interrupted, "but confine ourselves to
+the immediate development. By signing the paper in question, and
+accepting a sum of money, you surrender all claim to this child, known
+as Eunice Scofield."
+
+"How will that affect my--my position in other ways?" she demanded, in a
+suddenly shrewd, suspicious tone. "Not at all," the lawyer assured her.
+She sobbed once, emotionally; and Eunice regarded her with a wide,
+unsparing curiosity. "A stranger to me," she gasped, with a paper white
+face and fluttering eyelids. Jasper Penny ejaculated sharply, "How much,
+Essie?" In a moment, he judged, familiar with a potential hysteria, she
+might faint, scream; there were clerks, people, in the next rooms. On
+the brink of collapse she hesitated, twisting her purple kid gloves.
+
+"Ten thousand dollars," she said.
+
+Stephen Jannan glanced swiftly at his cousin, and the latter nodded.
+"That is satisfactory," Jannan announced. "A mere formality--witnesses."
+Essie Scofield traced her signature in round, unformed characters;
+Jasper Penny followed with a hasty, small script; and Eunice, seated at
+the impressive table, printed her name slowly, blotting it with a
+trailing sleeve. The lawyer swung back the door of a heavy safe, and
+took out a package of white bills of exchange on the Bank of
+Pennsylvania. Essie counted the notes independently, thrust the money
+into a steel-beaded reticule with silk cords, and rose, gathering
+together her cashmere shawl. She ignored Eunice totally in the veiled
+gaze she directed at Jasper Penny. "It is better," she told him, "if you
+write first when you expect to visit me. Really, the last time, with
+some friends there, you were impossible." He bowed stiffly. "Don't let a
+sense of duty bring you," she concluded boldly. "I get on surprisingly
+well as it is, as it is," she reiterated, and, he thought, her voice
+bore almost a threat.
+
+When she had gone the two men sat gazing in a common perplexity at the
+child. Stephen Jannan's lips were compressed, Jasper Penny's face was
+slightly drawn as if by pain. Eunice was investigating a thick stick of
+vermilion sealing wax and a steel die. "Well?" Jannan queried, nodding
+toward the table. "I thought something of Burlington," Penny replied,
+"but decided to place her in New York. Want to give her all the chance
+possible. I intend, at what seems the proper time, to secure her my own
+name." He stopped the objection clouding his cousin's countenance. "We
+won't argue that, please. Now about the will; the provision must be
+explicit and generous. There, at least, I am able to meet a just
+requirement." Jasper Penny's will was produced, a codicil projected,
+appended, and witnesses recalled.
+
+"I wanted to inquire about Miss Brundon," Jasper said finally, the
+business despatched. "She seems to me very fragile for the conducting of
+an Academy. Is there no family, men, to support her? And her
+institution--does it continue to progress well?"
+
+"Very." Jannan replied to the last question first. "Her children come
+from the best families in the city; and, under my advice, her charges
+are high. She has a brother, I believe, a cotton merchant of New
+Orleans, and quite prosperous. But he has a large family, and Susan will
+not permit him to deprive it of a dollar for her benefit. As you say,
+she is not strong; but in spite of that she needs no man's patronage.
+The finest qualities, Jasper, the most elevated spirit. A little too
+conscientious, perhaps; and, although she is thirty-nine, curiously
+ignorant of the world; but rare ... rare. It almost seems as if there
+were a conspiracy to keep ugly truths away from her."
+
+Truths, Jasper Penny thought bitterly, such as had just been revealed in
+Stephen's office. There was, it seemed, nothing he could do for Susan
+Brundon. He envied the lawyer his position of familiar adviser, the ease
+with which the other spoke her name: Susan. He rose, fumbling with a
+jade seal. "Come, Eunice," he said, the lines deepening about his mouth
+and eyes. Stephen Jannan assisted him into the heavy, furred coat.
+"Well, Jasper," he remarked sympathetically, "if we could but look
+ahead, if we were older in our youth, yes, and younger in our increasing
+age, the world would be a different place." He held out to Eunice a
+newly minted Brazilian goldpiece. "Good-bye," he addressed her; "command
+me if I can be of any use." She clutched the gold tightly, and Jasper
+Penny led her out into the winter street. "We must have dinner," he said
+gravely. "With some yellow rock candy," she added, "and syllabubs."
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of
+pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The
+loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have
+its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down
+the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted
+from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing
+prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their
+manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.
+Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had
+largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail
+works by the canal at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle
+Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.
+
+Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself--the
+pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery,
+where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.
+The old system of bellows had been replaced by a wood cylinder,
+compressing air by piston into a chamber from which the blast was
+regulated. A blacksmith's shed had been added in the course of time,
+and a brick coke oven. He stopped at the Forge shed, filled with ruddy
+light and shadow, the ringing of hammers, and silently watched the
+malleable metal on the anvil. Flakes of glowing iron fell, changing from
+ruby to blue and black.
+
+The Penny iron! The Forge had been operated continuously since seventeen
+twenty-seven, hammering out the foundation of his, Jasper's, position.
+He had taken a not inconsiderable place in the succession of the men of
+his family; in him the Pennys had reached their greatest importance,
+wealth. But after him ... what? He was, now, the last Penny man. The
+foothold Gilbert had cut out of the wild, which Howat and Casimir--an
+outlandish name obviously traceable to his mother, the foreign
+widow--had, in turn, increased for Daniel and Jasper, would be
+dissipated. His great, great aunt, Caroline, marrying a solid Quaker,
+had contributed, too, to the family stamina; while her granddaughter,
+wedding a Jannan, had increased the social prestige and connections of
+the family. The Jannans, bankers and lawyers, had already converted the
+greater part of their iron inheritance into more speculative finance;
+and the burden of the industry rested on Jasper Penny's shoulders.
+
+At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible
+monument of their endurance and rectitude, except for the tenuous,
+momentary fact of Eunice, would be overthrown, forgot. He was conscious
+of a strong inner protest against such oblivion. He had, of course,
+often before lamented the fact that he had no son; but suddenly his loss
+became a hundred times more poignant, regrettable. Jasper Penny caught
+again the remembered, oppressive odour of foxglove, the aromatic reek of
+brandy and oranges; one, in its implications, as sterile as the other.
+He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of essential failure, a
+recurrence of the dark mood that had enveloped him in leaving the
+Jannans' ball.
+
+Yet, he thought again, he was still in the midstride of his life, his
+powers. His health was unimpaired; his presence bore none of the
+slackening aspect of increasing years. These feelings occupied him,
+speeding in a single cutter sleigh over the crisp snow of the road
+leading from his home to Shadrach Furnace, where Graham Jannan and his
+young wife had been newly installed in the foremens' dwelling. There was
+a slight uneasiness about Graham's lungs, in consequence of which he had
+been taken out of the banking house of an uncle, Jannan and Provost, and
+set at the more robust task of picking up the management of an iron
+furnace.
+
+It was early afternoon; the sky was as dryly powdered with unbroken blue
+as was the earth with white. The silver bells and scarlet pompons of the
+harness crackled in the still, intense cold; and a blanched vapour hung
+about the horse's head. Jasper Penny, enveloped in voluminous buffalo
+robes and fur, gazed with an increased interest at the familiar, flowing
+scene; nearby the forest had been cut, and suave, rolling fields
+stretched to a far mauve haze of trees; the ultramarine smoke of
+farmhouse chimneys everywhere climbed into the pale wash of sunlight;
+orderly fence succeeded fence. How rapidly, and prosperous, the country
+was growing! Even he could remember wide reaches of wild that were now
+cultivated. The game, quail and wild turkey and deer, was fast
+disappearing. The country was growing amazingly, too, extending through
+the Louisiana Purchase, State by State, to Mexico and the Texan border.
+The era of the greatness of the United States had hardly begun, while it
+was more than probable that the greatness, the power, of the Penny
+family faced an imminent destruction. His revolt at this, joining the
+more personal sense of the emptiness of his existence, filled him with a
+bitter energy, a determination to conquer, somehow, the obdurate facts
+hemming him in.
+
+The sleigh dropped over a rise into a shallow fold of hills, with a
+collection of structures on a slope, and a number of solid, small grey
+stone dwellings. He glanced subconsciously at the stack of Shadrach
+Furnace, and saw that it was in blast--a colourless, lively flame, with
+a thin, white smoke like crumpled muslin, playing about its base. The
+metallic ring of a smithy rose at a crossing of roads, and, from the
+cast house, drifted the refrain of a German song. He turned in by the
+comparatively long, low facade of the house where the Jannans were
+living.
+
+A negro led the horse and sleigh back to a stable; and, briskly sounding
+the polished iron doorknocker, he let himself into the dining room, a
+chamber with a wide, pot-hung fireplace and plain mahogany consul tables
+with wood chairs brightly painted with archaic flowers and scrolls in
+gold. Standing at the far side of the room, delicately outlined against
+a low, deeply embrasured window, was Susan Brundon.
+
+A slow tide of colour rose to her ordinarily pale cheeks, corresponding
+with a formless gladness permeating his own being. She wore ruffled
+lavender with a clear lace pelerine caught at her breast by a knot of
+straw-coloured ribbon and sprig of rose geranium. "Mr. Penny," she said,
+with a little gasp of surprise; but her gaze was unwavering, candid.
+
+"Why not?" he replied lightly. "I have a small interest in Shadrach. You
+are surprising--so far from that absorbing Academy."
+
+"It's my eyes again," she explained. "I am obliged to rest. There is a
+very good assistant at the school; and Mary sweetly thought the country
+would do me good."
+
+"It is really miraculous," Mary Jannan stated, entering from the
+kitchen; "she'll almost never. Weren't we lucky?" She was a small woman
+with smooth brown hair and an air of quiet capability. "And it's
+splendid to see you," she continued to Jasper Penny. "Don't for a
+minute think you'll get off before to-morrow, perhaps not then. Graham
+is out, chop-chopping wood. Actually--the suave Graham." She indicated a
+high row of pegs for Jasper Penny's furs. "Everything is terribly
+primitive. Most of the furniture was so sound that we couldn't bring
+ourselves to discard it all, however old-fashioned. Little by little."
+Graham Jannan entered, a tall, thin young man with crisp, pale yellow
+hair and a clean shaven, sanguine countenance with challenging light
+blue eyes. He greeted the older man with a firm, cold hand clasp. "I
+suppose you've come out to discover what I have learned about iron.
+Well, I know now that a sow is not necessarily a lady, and that some
+blooms have no bouquet. Good rum has, though, after sleighing."
+
+Upon alternately burning his fingers and throat with a steaming glass of
+St. Croix, Jasper Penny and Graham Jannan proceeded to the Furnace
+where, in the cast house, they watched the preparations for a flow of
+metal. The head founder, McQuatty, bearded to the eyes and swathed in a
+hide apron, stood at the Ironmaster's side. "The charcoal you'd get's
+not worth a bawbee," he complained; "soft stuff would hardly run lead.
+And where they'd cut six thousand cords of wood will no longer show more
+than four. Shadrach ought to put out twenty-eight tons of pig in a week;
+and you see the statements."
+
+"Stone coal," Jasper Penny replied; "and a hot blast." He turned to
+describe the latter to Jannan. "It'll come," the founder agreed, "and
+the quality will go." He went forward to tap the clay-sealed hearth. The
+liquid iron poured into the channels of its sand bed, sputtering and
+slowly fading to dingy grey. "I'd like you to take hold of this," Jasper
+Penny told the younger man; "great changes, improvements, are just over
+the hill. I'll miss them--a link between the old and the new. But you
+would see it all. The railroad will bring about an iron age; and then,
+perhaps, steel. I look for trouble, too--this damned States Rights. The
+South has been uneasy since the Carolina Nullification Act. It will be a
+time for action." He gazed keenly at Graham Jannan. A promising young
+man, he thought, with a considerable asset in his wife. A woman, the
+right woman, could make a tremendous difference in a man's capabilities.
+
+He elaborated this thought fantastically at dinner, sitting opposite
+Susan Brundon. Mary Jannan wore orange crepe, with black loops of ball
+fringe and purple silk dahlias; and, beside her, Miss Brundon's dress
+was noticeably simple. She volunteered little, but, when directly
+addressed, answered in a gentle, hesitating voice that veiled the
+directness, the conviction, of her replies. The right woman, Jasper
+Penny repeated silently. Ten, fifteen, years ago, when he had been free,
+he would have acted immediately on the feeling that Susan Brundon was
+exactly the wife he wanted. But no such person had appeared at that
+momentous period in his life.
+
+However, then he had been a totally different being; perhaps the
+appreciation of Miss Brundon, her actual reality, lay for him entirely
+in his own perceptions. But if she would not have been the woman for him
+then, by heaven, she was now! He expressed this unaware of its wide
+implications, unconscious of the effect it would instantly have. The
+thing silently uttered bred an enormously increased need, the absolute
+determination that she was necessary to his most perfunctory being. The
+thought of her alone, he discovered, had been sufficient to give him a
+new energy, a sense of rare satisfaction.
+
+Shortly expressed, he wanted to marry her; he had not, he told himself
+oddly, ever been married. The word had a significance which heretofore
+he had completely missed. A strange emotion stirred into being, a
+longing thrown out from his new desire, the late-born feeling of
+dissatisfaction; it was a wish for something in Susan Brundon which he
+experienced but could not name. Roughly stated it was a hunger to
+surround her with security, comfort, to fortify the, at best, doubtful
+position of life in death for her. Yet he acknowledged to himself that
+this regard for her safety was mostly the result of his own inner, blind
+striving. Her happiness had magically become his. Beyond that he was
+unable to penetrate.
+
+After supper they gathered in the chamber beyond the dining room. Here
+Jasper Penny found an incongruous mingling of old and new furniture.
+There was a high, waxed walnut desk and cabinet, severely simple, and
+before it a chair with a back of elaborately carved and gilded tulips
+tufted in plum-coloured velvet. The thick carpet was a deep rose, and
+the drapery of the mantel and windows garnet. A painted hood of
+brilliant Chinese colours had been fastened before what was evidently an
+open hearth, for which a coal stove was substituted. On the middle of
+the floor was an oriental hassock in silver brocade; while a corner held
+a spinet-piano decorated in roseate cupids, flower sprays and gold leaf.
+Again, an old clock in Spanish mahogany, with a rudely painted glass
+door, had been left on the wall.
+
+Mary Jannan, at the piano, wove a delicate succession of arpeggios. She
+sang, in a small and graceful voice, a cavatina, _Tanti Palpiti_. Then,
+"Ah, que les amours ... de beaux heurs." Jasper Penny listened with an
+unconscious, approving pretence of understanding. But when, in the
+course of her repertoire, she reached _Sweet Sister Fay_, and _The Horn
+of My Loved One I Hear_, his pleasure became active. Susan Brundon, on
+the hassock, lifted her sensitive face to the mild candle light, and its
+still pallor gave him a shock of delight. Her hands were folded in the
+voluminous sweep of her crinoline; the ribbons at her breast rose and
+fell softly.
+
+Jasper Penny and Graham were smoking long, fragrant cigars that the
+former had produced from a lacquered case, and Jannan had the
+ingredients of the hot punch at his elbow. It amused the young man to
+persuade Susan Brandon to take a sip from his glass; and they all
+laughed at her subsequent gasping. Jasper Penny was astoundingly happy;
+his being radiated a warmth and contentment more potent than that of the
+St. Croix rum. It was accompanied by an extraordinary lightness of
+spirit, a feeling of the desirability of life. The memory of his greying
+hair had left him; not, it was true, to be replaced by the surging
+emotions of youth, but by a deep satisfaction.
+
+Susan Brundon, Susan ... the right woman. He marvelled again at the
+brightness of spirit that shone in her--like a flame through a fine
+paper lantern. Susan, at Myrtle Forge. His thought became concrete; he
+knew now, definitely, that he had determined to marry her. His peace of
+mind increased. There was no need for hurry, the mere idea was
+irradiating; yet there must be no unnecessary delay. Incontrovertibly he
+had passed forty. The best period in a man's life. They would go to the
+West Indies, he decided. A ring with a square emerald, and roses of
+pearls. It was, almost immediately, time to retire. His room, narrow
+with a sloping wall, had a small window giving on a flawless rectangle
+of snow like the purity of Susan Brundon.
+
+As he lay in bed, staring wakefully against the dark, another memory
+crept into his thoughts--the echo of a small, querulous voice, "yellow
+rock candy and syllabubs." Eunice! A sudden consternation seized him as
+he realized the necessity of telling Susan fully about his daughter. No
+escape, evasion, was possible. If she discovered the existence, the
+history, of the child afterward--he lingered over the happiness that
+term implied--it would destroy her. This, he told himself, was not
+merely melodrama; he was thinking of her delicate spirituality, so
+completely shielded from the bald fatality of facts. An increasing dread
+seized him at the thought of the hurt his revelation would inflict on
+her. The interweaving of life in life, consequence on consequence, the
+unbroken intricacy of the whole fabric of existence, realized anew,
+filled him with bitter rebellion. The blind commitment of a vanished
+youth, potent after years, still hung in a dark cloud over Susan
+Brundon. He was conscious of the past like an insuperable lead weight
+dragging at his attempted progress. The secret errors of all the pasts
+that had made him rose in a haggard, shadowy troop about his bed,
+perpetuated, multiplied, against his aspirations of tranquil release.
+
+Yet, he told himself, dressing in the bright flood of morning, if
+nothing perished but the mere, shredding flesh, one quality persisted
+equally with the other--the symbol of Essie Scofield was no more actual
+than Susan. He had breakfast early, with Graham Jannan; and, in a
+reviving optimism, arranged for the Jannans to bring Miss Brundon to
+Myrtle Forge for a night before her departure. He whirled away, in a
+sparkling veil of flung snow crystals, before the women appeared.
+
+Susan Brundon would, naturally, shrink from what he must tell her; but
+he was suddenly confident of his ability to convince her of the superior
+importance of the actuality of what they together might make of the
+future. He was accustomed to the bending of circumstance to his will; in
+the end he would prove stronger than any hesitancy she might, perhaps,
+reveal. His desire to have her had grown to such proportions that he
+could not, for an instant, think of existence without her as an intimate
+part. He even mentally determined when he should go to the city, the
+jeweller's, for the square emerald and flowered pearls. He would do over
+the rooms where he had lived in the thin formality of his marriage with
+Phebe, settle an amount on Essie ... shredding flesh. It would do the
+living woman no more injury than the dead. Oranges and brandy, satin and
+gold and ease.
+
+He wrote, through Stephen Jannan, to Essie Scofield that afternoon,
+stating the generous terms of his final arrangement with her, making it
+plain that all personal contact between them had reached an end.
+Hereafter she must exclusively address any unavoidable communications to
+Mr. Jannan. She disregarded this in a direct, inevitably complaining,
+laborious scrawl. However, he could read through it her obvious relief
+at complete independence. She would, she thought, stay where she was for
+a little ... a period of perfunctory sentimentality followed. He
+destroyed the letter, turning with deep pleasure to the message from
+Graham Jannan that he would bring Susan Brundon and Mary to Myrtle Forge
+the following day.
+
+His mother, with Amity Merken like a timid and reduced replica at her
+back, greeted the Jannans and Miss Brundon at the door. Jasper Penny
+came forward from the smoking room, to the right of the main entrance;
+where the men retired for an appetizer of gin and bitters. The older man
+was garbed with exact care. His whiskers were closely trimmed on either
+side of his severe mouth and shapely, dominant chin; and his sombre
+eyes, under their brows drawn up toward the temples, held an unusual
+raillery. Amity Merken, he learned, had desired to stay away from the
+supper table; but, to her distress, he forced her into a chair set by
+himself. Susan sat at the other end of the table, in the place that had
+been Phebe's. He gazed at her with a satisfaction without surprise; for
+it seemed to him that the woman beyond him had always occupied the fore
+of his existence. She wore pale grey, the opening at her neck filled
+with soft lace and pinned with a garnet brooch, and a deep-fringed,
+white silk shawl. The conversation was ambling, but, to Jasper Penny,
+pitched in a key of utter delight. He said little through supper; and,
+at its end, with Graham Jannan, immediately followed the others into the
+parlour.
+
+There Mary Jannan repeated her songs, French, English and Italian; and
+Jasper Penny listened with a poignant, emotional response. Graham and
+his wife had arranged to sleigh back to Shadrach Furnace that evening;
+but Susan Brundon was to stay at Myrtle Forge, and take the train from
+Jaffa to-morrow. The Jannans, finally, departed; and Jasper Penny,
+showing Susan through the chambers of the lower floor, succeeded in
+delaying her, seated, in the smoking room.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Now that the moment which he had so carefully planned had arrived he was
+curiously reluctant to precipitate Susan and himself into the future.
+The lamps on a mantel, hooded in alabaster, cast a diffused radiance
+over Susan's silvery dress, on her countenance faintly flushed above the
+white folds of the shawl. "What is that sound?" she suddenly queried. "I
+heard it all through supper and before. It seems to live in the walls,
+the very air, here."
+
+"The trip hammer of Myrtle Forge," he replied gravely. "I suppose it
+might, fancifully, be called the beating of the Penny heart; it does
+pound through every associated stone; and I have a notion that when it
+stops we shall stop too. The Penny men have all been faithful to it, and
+it has been faithful to us, given us a hold in a new country, a hold of
+wrought iron."
+
+"How beautiful," she murmured; "how strong and safe!"
+
+"It pleases me that you feel that," he plunged directly into his
+purpose; "for I intend to offer you all the strength and safety it
+contains." Her hands fluttered to her cheeks; a sudden fear touched
+her, yet her eyes found his unwaveringly. "If that were all," he
+continued, standing above her, "if I had only to tell you of the iron,
+if the metal were flawless, I'd be overwhelmed with gladness. But almost
+no iron is perfect, the longest refining leaves bubbles, faults. Men are
+like that, too ... Susan." She grew troubled, sensitively following his
+mood; her hands were now pressed to her breast, her lips parted. She was
+so bewilderingly pure, in her dim-lit, pearly haze of silk, that he
+paused with an involuntary contraction of pain at what must follow.
+
+"The child, Eunice," he struggled on; "I couldn't leave her at the
+Academy because it might injure you. I had brought her in a most blind
+egotism; and so I took her away. She is my daughter."
+
+He saw that at first she totally missed the implication of his words.
+"But," she stammered, "I was told you had no ... how would that--?" Then
+she stopped as sharply as if a hand had compressed her throat. A vivid
+mantle of colour rose in her face; she made a motion of rising, of
+flight, but sank back weakly. "It is criminally indelicate to speak to
+you of this," he said, "but it was absolutely necessary. I want to marry
+you; in that circumstance a lie would be fatal, later or sooner."
+
+She attempted to speak, her lips quivered, but only a low gasp was
+audible. It was worse, even, than he had feared. Now, however, that he
+had told her, he felt happier, more confident. Surely, after a little,
+she would forgive, forget, "I want to marry you," he repeated, torn
+with pity at her fragility, her visible suffering. "All that might hurt
+you has been put out of my life, out of our future. The way is open
+before us, the refining. I would do anything to spare you, believe that;
+but the truth, now, best."
+
+"Always," she said in a faint voice. "I am trying to--to realize. Oh! I
+suppose such things do occur; but the child herself, you--don't see how
+that, so near--" she broke off, gazing wide-eyed out of her misery. He
+was conscious of the dull, regular beat of the Forge hammer. God, how
+the imperfections persisted! But, he told himself savagely, in the end
+the metal was steadfast. He would, certainly, overcome her natural
+revulsion from what she had just heard. The colour had left her cheeks,
+violet shadows gathered about her eyes; she seemed more unsubstantial
+than ever. He would repay again and again the suffering he had brought
+her. Having declared himself he was almost tranquil; there was a total
+absence of the impetuous emotionalism of youth, the blind tyranny of
+desire. His feeling was deeper, and accompanied by a far more involved
+philosophy of self-recognition. At the same time, while acutely
+conscious of his absolute need of Susan Brundon, he was at a loss to
+discover its essence, shape. Before he had known her he had been
+obsessed by a distaste for his existence; he had desperately wanted
+something without definition ... And Susan was that desire, delicate,
+clear-eyed Susan. Yet, still, the heart of her escaped him.
+
+Jasper Penny had told himself that his new dissatisfaction was merely
+the result of his accumulating years; but, beyond the fact that such an
+increase might have brought him different and keener perceptions, that
+explanation was entirely inadequate. He wanted a quality beyond his
+experience, beyond, he realized, any material condition--Susan Brundon,
+yes; but it was no comparatively simple urge of sex, the natural
+selection of the general animal creation. There was no question of
+passionate importunities; those, here, would be worse than futile; all
+that he desired was beyond words, moving in obedience to a principle of
+which he had not caught the slightest glimpse. Yet, confident of his
+ultimate victory, he maintained the dominating presence of a black
+Penny.
+
+Susan Brundon had sunk back into the depths of her capacious chair; she
+seemed utterly exhausted, as if she had been subjected to a prolonged
+brutal strain. But still her eyes sought him steady in their hurt
+regard. "There is so much that I can give you," he blundered,
+immediately conscious of the sterility of his phrase. "I mean better
+things--peace and attention and--and understanding. I won't attempt any
+of the terms usual, commonplace, at such moments, you must take them,
+where they are worthy, for granted. I only tell you a lamentable fact,
+and ask you to marry me, promise you the tenderest care--"
+
+"I know that," she replied, with obvious difficulty, hesitation. "I'll
+not thank you. It is terribly difficult for me. I'd like to answer you
+as you wish, I mean reply to--to your request. But the other, the child,
+dragged about; there was such a distrust, a wariness, in her face."
+
+"There is no good in thinking of that alone," he stated, with a return
+of his customary decision. "No one can walk backwards into the future.
+Try to consider only the immediate question, what I have asked you--will
+you marry me?"
+
+"Is that all you have to explain?" she asked. "Is there, now, no one
+else that counts?" The edge of a cold dread entered his hopes. "If you
+refer to the child's mother," he said stiffly, "she is amply well taken
+care of, you need waste no sentimental thoughts on her."
+
+"Ah!" Susan exclaimed, shrinking. Her hands closed tightly on the wide
+silk of her skirt. The fear deepened within him; it would be impossible
+to explain Essie to the woman before him. Essie, falsely draped in
+conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth. He raged
+silently at his impotence, the inhibition that prevented the expression
+of what might be said for himself. Essie Scofield had, like every one
+else, lived in the terms of her being, attracting to herself what
+essentially she was; it was neither bad nor good, but inevitable. His
+contact with her had been the result of mutual qualities, qualities that
+were no longer valid. Yet to say that would place him in a damnable
+light, give him the aspect of the meanest opportunist. Susan breathed,
+"That poor woman." It was precisely what he had expected, feared--the
+adventitious illusion! He had an impulse to describe to her, even at the
+price of his own condemnation, the condition in which he had found
+Eunice; but that too perished silently. Jasper Penny grew restive under
+the unusual restraint of his position.
+
+"Do you mind--no more at present." Susan Brundon said. "I am upset;
+please, another time; if it is necessary. I feel that I couldn't answer
+anything now, I must go up; no, your mother will show me." She rose, and
+he realized that she would listen no further. There was an astonishing
+strength of purpose behind her deprecating presence. She was more
+determined than himself. He watched her walk evenly from the room, heard
+the low stir of voices beyond, with a feeling that he had been perhaps
+fatally clumsy. All that he had said had been wrong, brutally selfish.
+He had deliberately invited failure; he should have been patient,
+waited; given her a chance to know and, if possible, value him, come to
+depend on him, on his judgment, his ability in her welfare. But, in
+place of making himself a necessity, he had launched at once into facts
+which she must find hideous. She had said, "another time, if necessary."
+His mouth drew into a set line--there would be another and another,
+until he had persuaded, gained, her.
+
+He lit a cigar, and walked discontentedly up and across the room. The
+sound of the Forge hammer again crept into his consciousness: the Penny
+iron--the fibre, the actuality, of the Penny men! He repeated this
+arrogantly; but the declaration no longer brought reassurance; the
+certainty even of the iron faded from him; he had failed there, too,
+digging a pit of oblivion for all that their generations of toil had
+accomplished. The past inexorably woven into the pattern of the future!
+Eunice, so soon wary, distrustful, Susan had seen that immediately,
+would perpetuate all that he wished dead--Essie and himself bound
+together, projected in an undesirable immortality through endless lives
+striving, like himself, to escape from old chains.
+
+If he failed with Susan his existence would have been an unmitigated
+evil; the iron, his petty, material triumphs, would rust, but the other
+go on and on. His thoughts became a maze of pity for Eunice, infinite
+regret of the past, a bitter energy of hope for what might follow.
+
+He turned with pride to his forging--long-wrought charcoal iron; the
+world would know no better. Still, with his penetration of the future,
+he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had
+difficulty in assembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing
+contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension
+of steam railways, would grow resistlessly. More wholesale methods of
+production were being utilized daily; he was one of the foremost
+adherents of "improvement"; but suddenly he felt a poignant regret at
+the inevitable passing of the old order of great Ironmasters, the
+principalities of furnaces and forges. He was still, he felt, such a
+master of his men and miles of forests and clearings, lime pits and ore
+banks, coal holes, mills, coke ovens, hearths and manufactories. He
+might still drive to Virginia through a continuous line of his
+interests; his domination over his labourers, in all their personal and
+industrial implications, was patriarchal; he commanded, through their
+allegiance and his entire grasp on every iota of their living, their
+day's journey; but, he told himself, he was practically the last of his
+kind.
+
+New and different industrial combinations were locking together in great
+agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded
+by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in
+a cold and successful automaton of business. A system of general credit
+was springing up; the old, old payments in kind, in iron or even meal
+and apparel, or gold, had given place to reciprocal understandings of
+deferred indebtedness. The actual thousands of earlier commerce were
+replaced by theoretical millions. His own realty, his personal property,
+because of such understandings, were outside computation. They were, he
+knew, reckoned in surprising figures; but in a wide-spread panic, forced
+liquidation, the greater part of his wealth would break like straw. It
+was the same with the entire country.
+
+His thoughts returned to Susan, to the longing for the peace, the
+inviolable security, she would bring to the centre, the heart, of his
+life. No material catastrophe could shape, deplete, her richness of
+spirit. Fragile as she was, with her need of rest, her diffidence and
+pallor, she yet seemed to Jasper Penny the most--the only--secure thing
+in the world. She defied, he murmured, death itself. Wonderful.
+
+He moved slowly to his sombre bed room, with its dark velour hangings
+and ponderous black walnut furniture, precisely scrolled with gilt. The
+interior absorbed the light of a single lamp, robbing it of radiance. A
+clock deliberately struck the hour with an audible whirring of the
+spring. Jasper Penny took out from a drawer a tall, narrow ledger, its
+calf binding powdering in a yellow dust, with a blurring label,
+"Forgebook. Myrtle Forge, 1750." He sat, opening it on the arm of an old
+Windsor reading chair he had insisted on retaining among the recent
+upholstery, and studied the entries, some written in a small script with
+ornamental capitals and red lined day headings, others in an abrupt
+manner with heavy down strokes. The latter, he knew, had been made by
+his great grandfather, Howat.
+
+"Jonas Rupp charged with three pair of woollen stockings ... shoes for
+Minnie." Howat had been young when Minnie's shoes were new; twenty
+something--five or six. He must have married not long after.
+Howat--like himself--a black Penny. The special interest Jasper Penny
+felt for this particular ancestor grew so vivid that he almost felt the
+other's presence in the room at his shoulder. He consciously repressed
+the desire to turn suddenly and surprise the shadowy and yet clear
+figure in the gloom. The features of the youth so long gone, and yet,
+too, he felt, the replica of his own young years, were plain; the dark
+eyes, slanted brows, the impatient mouth.
+
+His community of sympathy with the other, who was still, in a measure,
+himself, was inexplicable; for obviously Howat had escaped Jasper's
+blundering--an early marriage, a son, the son whose name, like his
+mother's, made such an exotic note in a long, sound succession of
+Isabels and Carolines and Gilberts, was a far different tale from his
+own. Yet it persisted. It seemed to him that the silence of the room
+grew strained, there was the peculiar tension of a muteness desperately
+striving for utterance. He waited, listened, in a rigidity of which he
+was suddenly ashamed; ridiculous. He relaxed; the memory of his own
+youth flooded back, rapt him in visions, scents, sounds. The premonitory
+whirring of the clock spring sounded once more, followed by the slow,
+increasing strokes ... Again. His body wavered, on the verge of sleep,
+and he straightened himself sharply; then he rose and, putting back the
+Forgebook, undressed.
+
+Susan, at breakfast, her shoulders wrapped in a serious-toned pelerine,
+said little. Jasper Penny instinctively excluded her from a trivial
+conversation. She was, he decided, paler than usual, the shadows under
+her eyes were indigo. He was filled with self-condemnation. Mrs. Penny,
+gazing at her with a beady discernment, asked if her rest had been
+interrupted. "I am always an indifferent sleeper," Susan Brundon replied
+evasively. He followed her into the carriage that was to take her to the
+station at Jaffa; and, ignoring her slight gasp of protest, grasped the
+reins held by the negro coachman. However, they proceeded over the short
+distance to the town without speech. He was torn between a wish to spare
+her and the desire to urge his own purpose. But more immediately he
+wanted to make secure the near hour of his seeing her again. He asked,
+finally, "Will you be at the Jannans' this week, or are visitors
+received at the Academy?"
+
+"No," she replied to the first; "and I have very little time between
+classes. You see, they fill the whole day, tasks and pleasures. It is
+difficult for me to--to talk on a generality of themes with callers."
+
+"I have no intention of being diffuse," he replied pointedly. "I could
+confine my entire conversation to one request--"
+
+"Please," she interrupted pitiably. "I am utterly wretched now. The
+simplest gentility--" she paused, but her wish was clear. He restrained
+himself with difficulty. Drifting slowly across the scattered roofs of
+the town was the leaden smoke of his mills and fires; as they drove into
+the main street the thin crash of his iron was audible. Men everywhere
+bowed to him with marked respect. But the woman at his side sat erect,
+drawn away from him, unmoved by all that, to the world, he was. There
+was an appalling quality in her aloofness from what, materially, he
+might advance in extenuation; the things so generally potent here were
+no more than slag. He searched within for what might bend, influence,
+her, for whatever he might have of value in her eyes. He found nothing.
+It was a novel and painful experience; and it bred in him a certain
+anger; he became merely stubborn. He declared to himself, with an oath,
+that he would gain her; and he pulled up his horses viciously at the
+station rack. This, too, hurt her; she exclaimed faintly at the brutally
+drawn bits. A man hurried forward to take her bag, and then, in a
+blowing of horn, a harsh exhaust of steam, she was gone. A last, hurried
+impression of her delicate profile on a small pane of glass accompanied
+him back to Myrtle Forge. There his mother regarded him with an open
+concern. "Something's on your mind," she declared. "I passed your door
+at midnight, and there was light under it. I've often told you about
+sitting up late."
+
+"I'm getting along," he replied lightly. "You fail to do justice to the
+weight of my increasing majority. But, in a little, you'll be astonished
+at my renewed youth." He became serious in speaking, conscious of the
+new life Susan would, must, bring into his existence.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Since he had declared himself so decidedly and at once, no hesitation
+was possible; he must, he was aware, move remorselessly forward in
+assault. To sweep Susan Brundon into his desire, overwhelm her
+defences--he called them prejudices but immediately after withdrew that
+term--offered the greatest, the only promise of success. An obliterating
+snow fell for the following thirty hours, and a week went by in the
+readjustment to ordinary conditions of living and travel. But at the end
+of that period Jasper Penny left Myrtle Forge for the city, with a
+determined, an almost confident, mouth, and a bright, hard gaze. Late
+afternoon, he decided, would be the best time for his appearance at the
+Academy. And the western sky was a luminous, bright red when he passed
+under the stripped, uneasy branches of the willow trees to the school
+door.
+
+Miss Brundon's office, rigorous as the corridor of a hospital, had a
+table and uncompromising wooden chairs on a rectangle of bluish-pink
+carpet; a glowing, round stove held a place on a square of gleaming,
+embossed zinc, while the remaining surfaces were scrubbed oak flooring
+and white calcimine. A large geographer's globe, a sphere of pale,
+glazed yellow traced in violet and thin vermilion and cobalt, rested on
+an involuted mahogany stand; and a pile of text books covered in gay
+muslin made a single, decisive note of colour.
+
+She kept him waiting, he felt uneasily, a long while; perhaps she had a
+class; but he felt that that was not the reason for her delay. When she
+finally appeared in soft brown merino, with a deep fichu of old, dark
+lace, and black ribbons, she courageously held out a delightfully cool,
+smooth hand. "At first," she said directly, "I thought it would be
+better not to see you at all. Yet that wasn't genteel; and I felt, too,
+that I must speak to you. Even at the danger, perhaps, of trespassing
+into your privacy."
+
+"I have given you the absolute right to do that," he told her. "It will
+only bring me pleasure, to--to suppose I interest you enough--"
+
+"Ah, but you do," she cried with clasping fingers. "It has made my work
+here very difficult; the quiet has gone before echoes that I think every
+child must hear, echoes from spaces and things that appall me. Here, you
+see, I have lived so apart from others, perhaps selfishly, that I had
+grown accustomed to a false sense of peace. Only lessons and little
+questions, little hands. It seems now that I have been outside of life
+itself, in a cowardly seclusion. Yet it had always been that way; I
+didn't know." Her face was deeply troubled, the clear depths of her eyes
+held a new questioning doubt.
+
+"It's because of that, mainly, I ask you to marry me," he replied,
+standing before the table at which, unconsciously, she had taken her
+place; "it is because of your astonishing purity. You are so beautiful;
+and this quiet, peace--you must have it all your life; it is the air,
+the garden air, for you to flower in. I can give it to you, miles of it,
+farther than you can see. All that you care for heaped about you. But
+not that only," he insisted, "for I realized that no one lives to whom
+such things are less; I can give you something more, not to be talked
+about; whatever my life has been it has at least brought me to your
+feet. I have learned, for you, that there is a thing men must have, God
+knows exactly what--a craving to be satisfied, a--a reaching. And that
+itself, the knowledge of such need, is not without value. Because of it
+I again, and shall again, if necessary, ask you to marry me."
+
+She replied in a low voice. "You must marry the child's mother." For the
+first time she avoided him; bright blood burned in her cheeks; a hand on
+the edge of the table was straining, white. A sudden feeling of
+helplessness came over him, with, behind it, the ever-present edge of
+anger, of impatience. He took a step forward, as if to crush, by sheer
+insistence, her opposition; but he stopped. He lost entirely the sense
+of her fragile physical being; she seemed only a spirit, shining and
+high, and insuperably lovely. Then all feeling was lost but the
+realization that he could not--in any true sense--live without her.
+"Susan," he said, leaning forward, "you must marry me. Do you care for
+me at all?"
+
+Her breast rose and fell under the delicate contour of her wool gown.
+"The child's mother," she repeated, "you should marry her. How can you
+do differently? What can it matter if I care about you?" She raised a
+miserable face. "How can I?" she asked.
+
+He could think of no other answer than to repeat his supreme necessity
+for her. He struggled to tell her that this was an altogether different
+man from Essie Scofield's companion; but his words were unconvincing,
+limited by the inhibition of custom. A transparent dusk deepened in the
+room accompanied by a pause only broken by the faint explosions of the
+soft coal. The power of persuasion, of speech, appeared to have left
+him. There must be some convincing thing to say, some last,
+all-powerful, argument. It eluded him. The exasperation returned,
+spreading through his being.
+
+"Surely," she said laboriously, "there is only one course for you, for
+us all."
+
+"I'll never marry Essie Scofield!" he declared bluntly. His voice was
+unexpectedly loud, unpleasant; and it surprised him only less than Susan
+Brundon. She drew back, and the colour sank from her cheeks; an
+increasing fear of him was visible. "In the first place," he continued,
+"Essie probably wouldn't hear of it. And if I managed that it would be
+only to make a private hell for us both. It would not, it couldn't, last
+a month. There is nothing magical in marriage itself, there's no general
+salvation in it, nothing to change a man or woman. Why, by heaven,
+that's what you have taught me, that is the heart of my wanting you. You
+must feel it to understand." He circled the table and laid a hand on the
+back of her chair. "Susan."
+
+Her head was bowed, and he could see only her smooth, dark bands of hair
+and the whiteness of her neck. "Susan," he said again. "A second wrong
+will not cure the first. If one was inexcusable the other would be
+fatal. Married--to some one else, with yourself always before me--surely
+you must see the impossibility of that. And am I to come to nothing,
+eternally fail, because of the past? Isn't there any escape, any hope,
+any possibility? You don't realize how very much will go down with me. I
+am a man in the middle of life, and haven't the time, the elasticity, of
+youth. A few more years to the descent. But, with you, they could be
+splendidly useful, happy; happy, I think, for us both. I know that a
+great many people would say as you have, but it is wrong in every
+aspect, absolutely hopeless. Essie's values are totally different from
+yours; she has her own necessities; one measure will not do for all
+women."
+
+She rose and stood facing him, very near, her crinoline swaying against
+him, and said blindly, "You shall marry her."
+
+"I'll be damned if I do," Jasper Penny asserted. "I will marry you,
+you," he whispered, with his lips against the fineness of her ear. Her
+hands were on his shoulders; but she neither drew herself into his
+embrace nor repulsed him. He wanted to crush her softness in his arms,
+to kiss her still face into acquiescence. The quality, the kind, of his
+need made it impossible. She slipped back without a sound into her
+chair, drooping forward over the table.
+
+A sharp pity invaded him, holding him back from her, silencing the flow
+of his reasoning and appeal. It defeated, in the stirring tenderness of
+its consideration, his purpose. He could not continue tormenting her,
+racking her delicate, taut sensibilities by a hard insistence. He
+withdrew quietly, to where his hat and stick rested on a chair, and
+gathered them up. Still she didn't move, raise her head, break the low
+fumbling of the soft coal. He could no longer distinguish her clearly,
+she was blurring in a dusk deeping so imperceptibly that it seemed a
+gradual failing of his vision. The geographer's globe appeared to sway
+slightly, like a balloon tied to a string; the gay muslin of the piled
+text books had lost their designs. Suddenly the room without motion, the
+approaching night, the desirable presence of the woman growing more
+immaterial, more shadow-like to elude his reaching hands, presented a
+symbol, an epitome, of himself. Day fading swiftly into dark; dissolving
+the realities of table and flesh and floor; leaving only the hunger,
+the insuperable inner necessity and sense of loss.
+
+"Good-bye," he breathed. Jasper Penny saw that she raised her head, he
+caught the glimmering pallor of her face. But she said nothing, and sank
+back into the crumpled position on the table. He went out, closing the
+door of the office, shutting her into the loneliness of her resolve, her
+insistence.
+
+In the familiar rooms at Sanderson's Hotel he revolved again and again
+all that she had said. For a little he even endeavoured to inspect
+calmly the possibility of a marriage with Essie Scofield. Steeped in
+Susan's spirit he thought of it as a reparation, to Eunice, perhaps to
+Essie, but more certainly to an essence within himself. But immediately
+he saw the futility of such a course; the inexorable logic of existence
+could not be so easily placated, its rhyming of cause and effect
+defeated. All that he had told Susan Brundon recurred strengthened to an
+immovable conviction. The thought of marrying Essie was intolerable,
+farcical; to the woman herself it would mean utter boredom. Such a thing
+must lead inevitably to a greater misfortune than any of the past.
+Susan, in her resplendent ignorance of facts, failed to realize the
+impossibility of what she upheld. No, no, it was out of the question.
+
+He wondered if he had progressed in the other, his supreme, wish. And he
+felt, with a stirring of blood, that he had. Susan cared for him; her
+action had made that plain. That was a tremendous advantage; with
+another he would have thought it conclusive; but not--not quite with
+Susan Brundon. He had a deep regard for her determination, so surprising
+in the midst of her fragility. Yet, if pity had not prevented him, this
+afternoon, in her office, he might have forced her to a sharper
+realization of a more earthly need, the ache for sympathy, consolation,
+the imperative cry of self. That was his greatest difficulty, to
+overcome her lifelong habit of thinking of others before herself. Such,
+he knew, was the root of her appeal for Essie, rather than a cold,
+dogmatic conception. Self-effacement.
+
+At this a restive state followed; personally he had no confidence in the
+sacrifice of individual aims and happiness. Any course of that sort, he
+told himself, in the management of his practical affairs, would have
+resulted in his failure. There were a hundred men in the country
+plotting for his overthrow, anxious to take his position, scheming to
+undersell him, to discover the secret of the quality of his iron rails.
+Others he had deliberately, necessarily, ruined. No good would have been
+served by his stepping aside, allowing smaller men to flourish and annoy
+him, cut down his production by inconsiderable sales. He, and his
+family, had built a great, yes, and beneficial, industry by ruthlessly
+beating out a broad and broader way for their progress. It was needful
+to gaze fixedly at the end desirable and move in the straightest line
+possible.
+
+Susan stopped by the way. A thousand little acts of alleviation, at
+best temporary, interrupted her living. Children, not hers, dragged at
+her skirt. How much better for her to have a child of her own. Their
+child! A great deal that had been vague in his thoughts became concrete
+at that last period; not only the possible succession of the iron, but
+the comprehension that a child now, before the increasing sterility of
+multiplying years, would be an image of all his inmost craving and which
+must else be lost.
+
+Eunice was different. Pity, mingled with a rigid sense of his duty and a
+faint accent of parenthood, comprehended his feeling for her. He stated
+this to himself clearly, admitting what delinquency it carried. It was,
+simply, an incontrovertible fact; and it was his habit to meet such
+things squarely. A black Penny, he had no impulse to see existence in
+imposed sentimental or formally moral conceptions. From all this he
+returned with a feeling of delight to his personal longing for Susan
+Brundon; he saw her bowed over the table in an exhaustion almost an
+attitude of surrender. A slender, pliable figure in soft merino and
+lace. He saw her beyond the candles of Graham Jannan's supper table, a
+rose geranium at her breast. The motto of the bon bon partially
+returned:
+
+"... ange du ciel ... je t'aime!
+... le bon heur supreme!"
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+In the morning he walked over to Stephen Jannan's office on Fourth
+Street. The day was unexpectedly warm, and a mist rose about the wet
+bricks of the city. He proceeded directly into Stephen's private
+enclosure. "I was about to write you," the latter stated. "It's well
+enough for you to direct Mrs. Scofield to confine her pleas to me, and
+comparatively simple to picture her drawing a quarterly sum in an
+orderly manner; but how you are going to realize that happy conception
+is increasingly beyond me. I have to point out to her daily--a great
+nuisance it is--that she cannot have her income before it is due. Heaven
+knows what she has done with the other money in so short a while. She
+hasn't moved, apparently increased her establishment; at your direction
+the bills were settled, and heaven knows she had no reluctance in
+presenting all that were permissible and a number doubtful. There is, of
+course, one probability."
+
+Jasper Penny's thoughts returned to the stony, handsome youth he had
+seen in the company of Essie's friends, to the insinuations of the woman
+who had been removed protesting her superiority and warning him against
+a "tailor's dummy." Well, it was no longer his affair what Essie did
+with her money, what in her affections remained unimpaired. Rather it
+was reassuring that she had so promptly found solace; it enlarged his
+own feeling of freedom. "It got worse, yesterday," Stephen Jannan
+continued; "she came to the office, insisted on seeing me. Luckily I was
+busy with a mastership that kept me over three hours. But she left, I
+was told, with the air of one soon to return. She was brandied with
+purpose. There is no end, Jasper, to what I am prepared to do for you;
+but, my dear fellow, neither of us can have this. She wept. My young
+gentlemen were pierced with sympathetic curiosity. You must realize,
+Jasper, that you are not a sparrow, to float unnoticed from ledge to
+ledge."
+
+An angry impotence seized Jasper Penny. He was tempted to have Stephen
+Jannan turn over to Essie, at once, a conclusive sum of money. That
+would put an end to any communication between them, provide her with the
+power of self-gratification which for Essie Scofield spelled
+forgetfulness.... For a little, he was obliged, wearily, to add.
+Together with such a young man as he had seen in her house her capacity
+for expenditure would be limitless. She would come back to him with
+fresh demands, perhaps at an inconceivably awkward time, in a calculated
+hysteria--he had cause to know--surprisingly loud and convincing. Susan
+must be absolutely secured against that possibility. He could not help
+but think of the latter as yielding in the end, married to him.
+
+He gazed at Stephen Jannan in a sombre perplexity. "A nuisance," the
+other nodded. "Only time, I suppose, and the most rigid adherence to
+your statements will convince the lady of what she may expect. In the
+meanwhile, frankly, we had better put it in some other hands; not so
+much on my account as your own--the sympathetic young gentlemen, you
+see. That can be easily arranged."
+
+Jasper Penny was not thinking of the material Essie, the present,
+concrete problem; but he was once more absorbed in the manner in which
+her influence followed, apparently shaped, his existence. He was again
+appalled by the vitality of the past; the phrase itself was an error,
+there was no past. All that had gone, that was to come, met ceaselessly
+in the present, a confusion of hope and regret. It was evident that he
+would have to see Essie again, and explain that what she had from him
+depended entirely on her reciprocal attitude. This could only be
+satisfactory in person. He would go to her at once, to-day. An enormous
+reluctance to enter her house again possessed him. The mere act had the
+aspect of an acknowledgment of her continued potency, her influence over
+him. He put it off as long as possible, and it was past five when he
+finally walked slowly toward her door.
+
+She was in; and he saw, on the hall stand, a silk hat and overcoat cut
+in an extreme of current fashion. The servant preceded him above, toward
+the room usual for casual gatherings; and he heard a sudden low murmur,
+expostulation, follow the announcement of his name. Essie Scofield
+appeared at the top of the stairs. "Come up," she said in a hesitating,
+sullen voice. He mounted without reply. As he had expected Daniel Culser
+was present, and rose to greet him negligently, from a lounging attitude
+on the sofa. His coat, cut back to the knees, was relentlessly tapered,
+the collar enormously rolled and revered, and a white Marseilles
+waistcoat bore black spots as large as a Bolivian half dollar; while a
+black scarf, it was called the Du Casses, fell in an avalanche of
+ruffles. He moved toward the door, fitting his coat carefully about his
+slim waist, "I'm away, Essie," he proclaimed.
+
+"When will you come again, Daniel?" she asked with an oppressive
+humility. She gazed at Jasper Penny with a momentary delay; then, with
+an utter disregard of his presence, laid her hands on the younger man's
+shoulders. "Soon," she begged. Obviously ill at ease he abruptly
+released himself. "I don't care," she cried defiantly; "I'll tell the
+whole world you are the sweetest man in it. Jasper's nothing to me nor I
+to him. And I'm not afraid of him, of what he might threaten, either.
+Stay, Daniel, and you'll see. I will look out for us, Dan."
+
+Her unexpected frankness was inevitably followed by an awkward silence.
+Daniel Culser finally cursed below his breath, avoiding Jasper's cold
+inquiring gaze. "I'm glad I said it," Essie proceeded; "now he knows how
+things are." She went up again to the younger, and laid a clinging arm
+about his shoulders. "I'm mad about you, Daniel, you know it; there's
+nothing I wouldn't do for you, give you if I could. Isn't he beautiful?"
+she fatulously demanded of Jasper Penny.
+
+"You are making a fool of yourself and me," the subject of her adulation
+roughly declared. He removed her arm so forcibly that the scarlet print
+of his fingers was visible on her soft, dead white skin. "Probably you
+have gone and spoiled everything. And remember what I said. I am a man
+of my word."
+
+Jasper Penny dryly thought that the term man was singularly
+inappropriate in any connection with the meticulously garbed figure
+before him. Essie would have a difficult time with that stony youth. She
+regarded him with eyes of idolatry, drawing her fingers over the sleeve
+impatiently held aside from her touch. "I'm going," he stated once more,
+impolitely; but she barred him at the door. "I want you to stay," she
+cried excitedly; "hear what I am going to say, what I am going to do for
+you." She advanced toward Jasper Penny. "I asked that Jannan for more
+money because I had given Daniel all I had, and I wanted still more, to
+give him. I'll demand things all my life for him; everything I have is
+his." She gasped, at the verge of an emotional outburst. Her heart
+pounded unsteadily beneath an adventitious lace covering; her face was
+leaden with startling daubs of vermilion paint. "Give me a great deal
+of money, now, at once ... so that I can go to Daniel with my hands
+full."
+
+"That is why I came here," Jasper Penny replied; "to tell you that you
+must not use up your income at once, on the first week, almost, of its
+payment; because you will be able to get no more until another
+instalment is due. I haven't the slightest interest in where your money
+goes, it is absolutely your own; but I cannot have you after it every
+second day. The administration will be put in a different quarter,
+rigidly dispensed; and any continued inopportunities will only result in
+difficulties for yourself."
+
+She cursed him in a gasping, spent breath. Essie looked ill, he thought.
+Daniel Culser, listening at the door, made a movement to leave, but the
+woman prevented him, hanging about his neck. "No! No!" she exclaimed.
+"It will be all right, I can get it ... more. Be patient." Jasper Penny
+walked stiffly to the exit, where he paused at the point of repeating
+his warning. Essie Scofield was lifting a quivering, tear-drenched face
+to the vexation of the fashionable youth. He was attempting to repulse
+her, but she held him with a desperation of feeling. The elder descended
+the stairs without further speech.
+
+Outside, the warmth of the day had continued into dusk. The mist had
+thickened, above which, in a momentary rift, he could see the stars
+swimming in removed constellations. He was wrapped in an utter loathing
+of the scene through which he had passed, his undeniable part in it. It
+was all hideous beyond words. His late need, his sense of void and
+illimitable longing, tormented him ceaselessly. He was sick with
+rebellion against life, an affair of cunning traps and mud and fog.
+Above the obscured and huddled odium of the city the distances were
+clear, serene. Above the degradation ... Susan. A tyrannical desire to
+see her possessed him, an absolute necessity for the purification of her
+mere presence. Unconsciously he quickened his step, charged with
+purpose; but he couldn't go to the Academy now; it was six o'clock. He
+must delay an hour at least. Habit prompted him to a supper which he
+left untried on its plates, the lighting of a cigar, quickly cold,
+forgot. At seven he hurried resolutely over the dark streets with the
+dim luminosity of occasional gas lamps floating on the unstirring white
+gloom. The bricks under foot were soggy, and the curved sign above her
+entrance, the bare willows, dropped a pattering moisture.
+
+She saw him immediately, not in the familiar office, but in a hall laid
+with cold matting and nearly filled by a stairway, lit with a lamp at
+the further end. "I am sorry," she told him; "I have no place to take
+you. The rhetoric mistress is correcting papers there," she indicated
+the shut door. He made no immediate answer, content to gaze at her
+sensitive, appealing countenance. "It is so warm," she said finally,
+colouring at his intentness, "and I have been indoors all day. I might
+get my things. We could, perhaps ... a walk," she spoke rapidly, her
+head bent from him. She drew back, then hesitated. "Very well," he
+replied. Susan disappeared, but she quickly returned, in a little violet
+bonnet bound and tied with black, and a dark azure velvet cloak furred
+at her wrists and throat. She held a muff doubtfully; but, in the end,
+took it with her.
+
+Outside, the mist and night enveloped them in a close, damp veil. They
+turned silently to the right, passing the narrow mouth of Currant Alley,
+and Quince Street beyond. The bricks became precarious, and gave place
+to a walk of boards; the corners about a broad, muddy way were built up;
+but farther on the dwellings were scattered--lighted windows showed
+dimly behind bare catalpas, iron fences enclosed orderly patches between
+sodden flats, gas lamps grew fewer.
+
+A deep, all-pervading contentment surrounded Jasper Penny, an
+unreasoning, happy warmth. He said nothing, his stick now striking on
+the boards, now sinking into earth, and gazed down at Susan, her face
+hid by the rim of her bonnet. This companionship was the best, all, that
+life had to offer. He felt no need to importune her about the future,
+their marriage; curiously it seemed as though they had been married, and
+were walking in the security, the peace, of a valid and enduring bond.
+There was no necessity for talk, laborious explanation, periods
+infinitely more empty than this silence. They walked as close to each
+other as her skirt would permit; and at times her muff, swinging on a
+wrist, would brush softly against him. How strangely different the
+actual values of existence were from the emphasized, trite moments and
+emotions. In the middle of his life, at the point of his greatest
+capability for experience, his most transcendent happiness came from the
+present, the deliberate, unquestioning walk with Susan, the aimless
+progress through an invisible city and under a masked clear heaven of
+stars. No remembered thrill compared with it, reached the same height,
+achieved a similar dignity of consummation.
+
+The way became more uneven; low clustered sheds rose out of the darkness
+against a deeper black beyond, and they came to the river. The bank was
+marshy, but a track of pounded oyster shells, visible against the mud,
+led to a wharf extending into the solid, voiceless flow of the water.
+Jasper Penny stood with Susan gazing into the blanketing gloom. A wan,
+disintegrated radiance shone from a riding light in the rigging of a
+vessel, and a passing warm blur flattened over the wet deck as a lantern
+was carried forward. No other lights, and no movement, rose from the
+river; no sound was audible at their back. The city, from the evidence
+of Jasper Penny's sensibilities, did not exist; it had fallen out of his
+consciousness; suddenly its bricked miles, its involved life stilled or
+hectic, stealthy in the dark, seemed a thing temporary, adventitious;
+he had an extraordinary feeling of sharing in a permanence, a
+continuity, outlasting stone, iron, human tradition. He had been swept,
+he thought, into a movement where centuries were but the fretful ticking
+of seconds. "Outside death," he said fantastically, unconsciously aloud.
+A remarkable sentence recurred to him, the most profound, he told
+himself, ever written: "Before he was I am." Its vast implications
+easily evaded his finite mind, just as the essence of his present
+rapture--it was no less--lay beyond his grasp. He lingered over it; gave
+it up ... returned to Susan.
+
+"Wonderful," she said gravely, with a comprehensive wave of her muff.
+And her simplicity thrilled him the more with the knowledge that she
+shared his feeling. She drew up the fur collar of her cloak, shivered;
+and, in the wordless harmony that pervaded them, they turned and
+retraced their way.
+
+The rhetoric mistress had left the office with a low turned lamp, and
+Jasper Penny stopped, taking the furred wrap from Susan's shoulders. She
+slowly untied the velvet strings of her bonnet, and laid it on the
+table. She extended her hands toward him, and, taking their cool
+slightness, he drew her to him. She rested with the fragrance of her
+cheek against his face, with her hands pressed to his breast. They stood
+motionless; he closed his eyes, and she was gone. He was confused in the
+dimness empty except for himself, and fumbled with, his gloves. Susan's
+wrap lay limply over a chair; the damp bonnet ribbons trailed toward the
+floor. He looked slowly about, noting every object--a pile of folded
+yellow papers, the stove, the globe bearing a quiver of light on its
+varnished surface.
+
+The willow trees and board above the entrance were dripping ceaselessly;
+the lights of the city, increasing at its centre, like the discs of
+floating sunflowers. If he slept he was unaware of it, the magic joy so
+equally penetrated his waking and subconscious hours, the feeling of an
+elevation higher than years and mountains was so strong. The morning, he
+found, was again cold, and clear. He must go out to Jaffa, where new
+blast machines demanded attention; but, the day after--
+
+His thoughts were broken by a sharp rap on the outer door. Mr. Stephen
+Jannan was below, and demanded to see him immediately. Stephen's
+appearance at the hotel at that early hour, he recognized, was unusual.
+But a glance at his cousin's serious aspect showed him at once that the
+reason was urgent. Stephen Jannan, as customary, was particularly
+garbed; and yet he had an expression of haste, disturbance. He said at
+once, in the bedroom where Jasper Penny was folding his scarf.
+
+"That young waster, Culser, Daniel Culser, was shot and killed in Mrs.
+Scofield's house last evening."
+
+The ends of the scarf fell neglected over the soft, cambric frills of
+his shirt. Jasper Penny swallowed dryly. "At what time?" he asked.
+
+"He was seen in the Old White Bear Tavern at about seven, then
+apparently he went back to the woman's. The servant said he found the
+body at something past nine, and that there had been no other caller but
+yourself."
+
+His hearer expressed a deep, involuntary relief. "I was there late in
+the afternoon," he acknowledged; "but I left around six." Stephen
+Jannan, too, showed a sudden relaxation. "I have already sent a message
+to the Mayor," he continued; "confident that you would clear yourself
+without delay. Mrs. Scofield's history is, of course, known to the
+police. You have only to establish your alibi; she, Essie Scofield,
+can't be found for the moment. She may have taken an early stage out of
+the city; but it is probable that she has only moved into another police
+district. Just where were you, Jasper?"
+
+The latter said stupidly, "Walking with Susan Brundon."
+
+A swiftly augmented concern gathered on Stephen Jannan's countenance.
+"You were walking with Susan," he repeated increduously. "Yes," Jasper
+asserted, with a sharp inner dread. "You don't know, but I want to marry
+her." Stephen Jannan faced him with an exclamation of anger. "You want
+to marry her, and, in consequence, drag her, Susan, into the dirtiest
+affair the city is like to know for years. Susan Brundon, with her
+Academy; all she has, all her labour, destroyed, ruined, pulled to
+pieces by slanderous tongues! By God, Jasper, what a beast you look! The
+most delicate woman, alive, the one farthest from just this sort of
+muck, being sworn in the Mayor's office, testifying in an obscene murder
+case, before the Sheriff and Constable, and heaven knows what police and
+vilely curious!"
+
+A sickening feeling of utter destruction seized on Jasper Penny, a
+dropping of his entire being from the heights of yesterday to the last
+degradation. He felt the blood leave his heart and pound dizzily in his
+brain, and then recede, followed by an icy coldness, a wavering of the
+commonplace objects of the room. He raised his fingers to his collar,
+stared with burning eyes at Stephen Jannan. "Everything spoiled," the
+latter said again; "her pupils will positively be taken from her at once
+by all the nice females. Her name will be pronounced, smiled over, in
+every despicable quarter of the city, printed in the daily sheets. I--I
+can't forgive you for this. Susan, our especial joy!"
+
+Jasper Penny saw in a flash, as vivid and remorseless as a stab of
+lightning, that this was all true. The fatality of the past, sweeping
+forward in a black, strangling tide, had overtaken not only himself but
+Susan, too; Susan, in soft merino, in an azure velvet cloak; her face
+against his. "I shall go away at once," he said hoarsely. "I'll never
+appear, and they can think what they will. Then there will be no
+necessity for her to come forward. She shall be spared that, no matter
+what it costs."
+
+"Romantic and youthful folly," Jannan declared; "loud-sounding and
+useless. How little you understand Susan--immediately it is known Culser
+was killed between seven and nine, whether you stay or go, she will come
+forward with the truth, free you from any suspicion. I tell you every
+detail will be canvassed, familiar to the boys on the street. A man
+important as yourself, with all your industries and money, and such
+salacity, together with Susan Brundon, will make a pretty story. If I
+had a chance, Jasper, I'm almost certain I'd sacrifice you without a
+quiver. How could you? Susan Brundon! Never telling her--"
+
+"On the contrary, she knew everything. I am not so low as you seem to
+think."
+
+"That has no importance now!" Stephen Jannan exclaimed impatiently. "All
+that matters is to make it as easy as possible for her, I have, I think,
+enough position, influence, to keep the dregs out. But there will be
+enough present, even then. Damnable insinuations, winks,
+cross-questioning."
+
+His excitement faded before the exigencies of the unavoidable situation;
+he became cold, logical, legal. Jasper Penny listened, standing, to his
+instructions, the exact forecasting of every move probable at the
+hearing in the Mayor's chamber. "After that," Stephen added, "we can
+face the problem of Susan's future. She thinks tremendously of her
+school. It will fall to pieces in her hands. There can be no question of
+material assistance; refused her own brother.
+
+"Now, understand--stay in these rooms until I send for you. See no one.
+I'll get on, go to Susan. The thing itself should be short; her
+character will assist you there. What a mess you have made of living,
+Jasper."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet
+mingled inner voices: Essie's younger, exuberant periods, her joy at
+presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her
+last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any
+doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of
+a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low,
+diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice
+continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin
+complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the
+Academy. These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one
+rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same. Back of them
+were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of
+associated heat or cold, darkness or light:
+
+He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius,
+regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced,
+the sense of Howat's nearness; integral with himself; merging into his
+own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring. His mother joined the
+immaterial company, accents, rigid with pride in him. And penetrating,
+binding, all was the dull beat of the trip hammer at Myrtle Forge. He
+had mechanically finished dressing, and stood absently twisting the
+drapery at a window. A fine tracery of lines had suddenly appeared about
+his eyes; the cold rays of the winter sun, streaming over his erect
+figure, accentuated the patches of grey plentiful in his hair.
+
+He saw, on the street below, a parade of firemen, in scarlet tunics and
+brass helmets, dragging a glittering engine. The men walked evenly
+abreast, at cross ropes. A leader blew a brilliant fanfare on an
+embossed, silver horn. Women passed, foreshortened into circular bells
+of colour, draped with gay pelerines and rich India shawls. He saw all
+and nothing. The horn of the firemen sounded without meaning on his
+distracted hearing. The flood of his suffering rose darkly, oppressing
+his heart, choking his breath. Perhaps if, as he had desired, he had
+gone away, Susan would be spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could
+keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and
+bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would
+take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands
+slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why
+hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would
+have been already too late, he added in thought; it went back, back--
+
+A knock sounded discreetly on the door: and, opening it, he saw a young
+man, remembered as a law student in Stephen's office. "They are ready
+for you, sir, at the City Hall," he stated, in an over-emphasized,
+professional calm.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+The restrained curiosity and inaudible comments which greeted his
+passage through the lower floor of the hotel gave place to a livelier
+interest when he was readily recognized on the street. The news of the
+murder had, evidently, already become city property. He was indicated to
+individuals unaware of his identity, with a rapid sketch of the crime,
+of fabulous ascribed possessions, and hinted oriental indulgence. He
+strode on rapidly, his shoulders squared, his expression contemptuous,
+challenging; but within he was possessed by an apprehension increasing
+at every step. It was not, fortunately, far from Sanderson's Hotel to
+the City Hall; west on Chestnut Street they reached their destination at
+the following corner. The loungers from the trees before the State House
+had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the
+entrance to the municipal offices. The windows on either side of the
+marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and
+Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building. He tried to recall
+if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might
+be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; they whirled in a
+feverish course about the sole fact of the public degradation he had
+brought on Susan Brundon. They passed the doors of civic departments, he
+saw their signs--Water, City Treasurer, and then entered the Mayor's
+chamber.
+
+The latter was seated at a table facing the room with his back to a wide
+window, opening on the blank brick wall of the Philosophical Society
+building; and at one side the High Constable of the district in which
+the murder had been committed was conversing with the Sheriff. Beside
+them, Jasper Penny saw, there were only some clerks present and three
+policemen. The Mayor spoke equably to the Ironmaster, directed a chair
+placed for his convenience, and resumed the inspection of a number of
+reports. He had a gaunt, tight-lipped face framed in luxuriant whiskers,
+a severely moral aspect oddly contradicted by trousers of tremendous
+sporting plaid, a waistcoat of green buckskin cassimere, while his silk
+hat held a rakish, forward angle. The Constable and Sheriff punctuated
+their converse by prodigious and dexterous spitting into a dangerously
+far receptacle, and the clerks and police murmured together. The Mayor,
+finally glancing at a watch enamelled, Jasper Penny saw, with a fay of
+the ballet, spoke to the room in general. "Ten and past. Well! Well!
+Where are the others? Who is to come still, Hoffernan?"
+
+"Mr. Jannan, sir; and a witness," a clerk answered. The other gazed at
+the paper before him.
+
+"Susan Brundon," he read in a loud, uncompromising tone. Jasper Penny's
+eyes narrowed belligerently; he would see that these pothouse
+politicians gave Susan every consideration possible. He was, with
+Stephen, a far from negligible force in the city elections. "School
+mistress," the Mayor read on. "Never heard of her or her school. Ah--"
+Stephen Jannan had entered with Susan.
+
+Jasper rose as she came forward, and the Mayor had the grace to remove
+his hat. She wore, he saw, the familiar dress of wool, with a sober,
+fringed black silk mantle, black gloves and an inconspicuous bonnet. She
+met his harried gaze, and smiled; but beneath her greeting he was aware
+of a supreme tension. There was, however, no perceptible nervousness in
+the manner of her accepting an indicated place; she sat with her hands
+quietly folded in her lap, the mantle drooping back over the chair.
+Stephen Jannan, facing the Mayor, made a concise statement in a cold,
+deliberate voice. "I now propose to show your honour," he finished,
+"that, between the hours in which Daniel Culser is said to have been
+shot to death, my client was peacefully in the company of Miss Brundon,
+strolling in an opposite quarter of the city."
+
+"Hoffernan," the Mayor pronounced, waving toward the seated woman. The
+clerk advanced with a Bible; and, rising, Susan followed the words of
+the oath in a low, clear voice. To Jasper Penny the occasion seemed
+intolerably prolonged, filled with needless detail. Never had Susan
+Brundon appeared more utterly desirable, never had his need to protect,
+shield, her been stronger. He--protect her, he added bitterly; rather he
+had betrayed her, dragged her immaculate sweetness down into the foul
+atmosphere of a criminal hearing. His attention, fastening on the
+trivialities of the interior, removed him in a species of self-hypnotism
+from the actualities of the scene. He heard, as if from a distance, the
+questioning of the Mayor, "At what time, exactly, did you say? How did
+you know that?" Susan said, "I saw the clock at the back of the hall. I
+noticed it because I wondered if the younger children had retired."
+
+"You say you walked with Mr. Penny--where?... How long did you remain at
+the river? No way of knowing. Seemed surprisingly short, I'll venture."
+Why didn't Stephen put an end to such ill-timed jocularity? "And Mr.
+Penny had spoken to you of his--his relations with Mrs. Scofield, the
+woman in whose house Culser was killed. Did he refer to her on this
+particular evening, standing by the river's brink?" Susan replied in the
+negative. "Did he seem ill at ease, worried about anything? Was he
+hurried in manner?"
+
+To all of this Susan Brundon answered no, in a voice that constantly
+grew lower, but which never faltered, hesitated. The Mayor turned aside
+for a whispered consultation with the High Constable. The former nodded.
+"Have you any--shall we say--proprietary interest in Mr. Penny's
+affairs?" Her reply was hardly audible in the room stilled for what
+might be revealed. "No," she breathed, her gloved fingers interlacing.
+Jasper Penny's lips were drawn in a hard line; Stephen gazed fixedly at
+the floor. The Mayor gesticulated affably toward the lawyer. "That'll
+do," he declared. "Pleasure, Mr. Penny, to have you so completely
+cleared. I shall have to demand your assistance further,
+though--knowledge of Mrs. Scofield. And, in the case of her apprehension
+and trial, you will, of course, be called. Communication will be made
+through Mr. Jannan. No doubt in our mind now of the facts." A policeman
+opened the door and a surge of the curious pressed in. "Take her away,"
+Jasper Penny whispered to Jannan; "this is damnable."
+
+Susan rose, gathering up her mantle, and moved to Stephen Jannan's side.
+He offered his arm with a formal courtesy, and together they made their
+way out through the corridor. Jasper, lost in a moody abstraction,
+waited until they had vanished; and then, with a lowered head, walked
+rapidly over Chestnut Street in the direction of the terminus of the
+railroad for Jaffa. A brigade of cars was made up; he took a place and
+was immediately dragged on and over the viaduct to the plane and waiting
+engine beyond. He could see, from the demeanour of the loungers on the
+Jaffa platform, that the news of the murder, his connection with it, had
+preceded him. To-morrow's papers would provide them with full accounts,
+the name of Susan Brundon among the maculate details.... The meanest
+cast boy in his works would regard him, the knowledge of Essie, with a
+leer.
+
+His mother was at the main door of Myrtle Forge, pale but composed.
+"Take Mr. Penny's overcoat," she brusquely directed a servant. He had
+never seen a more delectable supper than the one awaiting him; and he
+tasted most of what found its way to his plate--he owed that to the
+maternal solicitude secretly regarding him, hastily masked as he met his
+mother's gaze. Sitting later in accustomed formality the dulness of a
+species of relief folded him. The minor sounds of his home, the
+deliberate loudness of an old clock, the minute warring of his mother's
+bone needles, her sister's fits of coughing, painfully restrained,
+soothed his harried being; subjected to an intolerable strain his
+overwrought nerves had suddenly relaxed; he sank back in a loose, almost
+somnolent, state. A mental indolence possessed him; the keen incentives
+of life appeared far, unimportant, his late rebellions and desires
+inexplicable. Even the iron was a heavy load; the necessity of
+constantly meeting new conditions with new processes, of uprooting month
+by month most with which the years had made him familiar, seemed beyond
+his power.
+
+A faint dread crept into his consciousness; he roused himself sharply,
+straightened his shoulders, glanced about to see if his tacit surrender
+had been noticed--this lassitude creeping over him, the indifference,
+was, at last, the edge of the authentic shadow of age, of decay; it was
+the deadening of the sensibilities preceding death. He banished it
+immediately, and all his desire, his need, his sense of the horror of
+the past day, surged back, reanimated him, sent the blood strongly to
+its furthest confines. But, none the less, a vague, disturbing memory of
+the other lingered at the back of his perceptions; he had a fresh
+realization of the necessity for him to make haste, to take at
+once--before the hateful anodyne of time had betrayed his vigour--what
+life still, and so fully, held.
+
+His desire for Susan increased to an intensity robbing it of a greater
+part of the early joy; it had, now, a fretful aspect drawing him into
+long and painfully minute rehearsals of his every contact with her, and
+of the disgraceful publicity brought upon her by his past. At the usual
+hour the hot wine appeared; the glassful was pressed on Amity Merken;
+his mother drank hers with the familiar, audible satisfaction. An old
+custom, an old compound, brought from Germany many years ago, binding,
+in its petty immortality, distant times, places, beings. He saw that his
+mother was noticeably less able than she had been the week before; her
+hands fumbled at her knitting, shook holding the glass. Her lined face
+quivered as she said good night. He bent and kissed a hot, dry brow,
+conscious of the blanched skull under her fading colour, her ebbing
+warmth. He had done this, too--hastened her death; she must have
+suffered inordinately in her prideful affection. She said nothing,
+beyond the repeated admonition that he must not sit up into the night.
+
+The next day he forced himself to read to the end the report of the
+murder in the _Gazette_. The references to Susan Brundon were as scant
+as, evidently, Stephen Jannan could arrange; but her name, her Academy,
+were invested with an odious publicity. Jasper Penny saw again that he
+was a person of moment; his part in the affair gave it a greatly
+augmented importance. Yet now the worst, he told himself, was at an end;
+the publicity would recede; after a decent interval he could see Susan.
+
+This mood was interrupted by an imperative communication from
+Stephen--he must be in the other's office at eleven o'clock to-morrow.
+Nothing more definite was said; but Jasper Penny was not wholly
+surprised to see Essie Scofield huddled in a chair at the lawyer's
+table. She had made an attempt at the bravado of apparel, but it had
+evidently failed midway; her hair hung loosely about a damp brow, the
+strings of her bonnet were in disarray, a shawl partially hid a bodice
+wrongly fastened. Her face was apathetic, with leaden shadows and dark
+lips ceaselessly twisting, now drawn into a petulant line, now drooping
+in childish impotence. She glanced at him fleetly as he entered, but
+said nothing. Robbed of the pretensions of pride, stripped of feminine
+subterfuge, she was appalling. He involuntarily recalled the Essie who
+had swept him into a riot of emotion--a vivid and palpitating creature
+radiating the exuberance of careless health and youth. She could not, he
+calculated, be beyond thirty-seven now. He abruptly ceased his
+speculation, turned from her, with a feeling of impropriety. Stephen
+Jannan said shortly:
+
+"Al Schimpf will be here. It seemed to me he was the best man to retain.
+It's obvious that I can't defend her. You will, of course, require
+everything possible done." Essie Scofield shivered. "I don't want to go
+into court," she articulated, "and answer all the dreadful questions."
+There was a stir without, and a hugely fat man in a black cape fastened
+with a silver chain and velvet collar entered. Al Schimpf's face was so
+burdened with rolling chins that he disregarded the customary fashion of
+whiskers, but a grizzled moustache lay above his well-formed lips, and
+an imperial divided his heavy, aggressive chin. He was, evidently, fully
+informed of the case before him; for, after saluting Jannan and Jasper
+Penny, he, seated himself directly before Essie Scofield, fastening upon
+her an unwavering, glacial gaze.
+
+"Now, pay attention," he proceeded at once.
+
+"I'll go over a few facts--this Daniel Culser, you were in love with
+him; no length you wouldn't go, lost your senses completely; and he--all
+he cared about was the money he could wring out of you. As soon as you
+were paid the sums that Mr. Penny allowed you, this Culser got it from
+you; he took every cent and wanted more. Said he would leave you unless
+you got hold of something really worth while. Then, of course, you
+carried on, promised to get him more and more; said you could force a
+fortune from Mr. Penny, anything to keep the young man. Hey?" he
+demanded suddenly.
+
+The woman looked up with a haggard wonder, an irrepressible shudder; her
+hands raised and fell, and she nodded dumbly.
+
+"Then, while Culser was in the house, Mr. Penny unexpectedly turned up
+and said--perhaps before Daniel himself--that you could expect nothing
+more, and made it plain that he was not to be intimidated. Daniel Culser
+was for leaving you, didn't intend to hang around for a bloody little
+quarterly; and, when you realized that he meant, or you thought he
+meant, what he said, you went crazy and shot him.... What!" He got no
+response from her now; she cowered away from him, hiding behind an
+updrawn shoulder, a fold of the shawl. "But listen to this," Al Schimpf
+shot at her, leaning forward, "here's what happened, and you must
+remember every fact:
+
+"The fellow had been around the house day after day. You had encouraged
+him at first; but then you got frightened; he beat you--hear
+that?--struck you with his fist, and threatened worse if you didn't go
+through old Penny's pocket for him. He even hinted at something you
+might do together, and then get away with a mint. Culser was at it when
+Mr. Penny called, and took it up when he left, at about six o'clock. He
+said he wanted money bad, debts were hounding him; and he was going to
+get it out of Penny, out of you. There's where you said you would warn
+Jasper Penny; and remember how he struck you, in the back, because you
+turned, and it hurts yet--there up by the left shoulder, the left
+shoulder, the left! Then, he had been drinking in your house and at a
+tavern, he threatened to kill you if you didn't do what he wanted. You
+honestly thought he'd do it, and snatched a pistol out of a table
+drawer, and.... Do you understand? That's what happened, and it's all
+you know. Said he would kill you, apparently commenced then, and you
+acted in self-protection. Now, repeat that."
+
+She gazed at him in a trembling confusion. "But," she objected, "he was
+only--he said. Oh! I was afraid I'd lose him." The lawyer moved closer
+to her, his unwinking, grey-green eyes like slate. "He said he'd kill
+you," he reiterated; "remember that, if you don't want to hang. He
+struck you; where?" After a long pause she replied haltingly, "In the
+back." Al Schimpf nodded, "Good. And he said you both were to get away
+with a mint. He told you it would be easy; the old man would gladly buy
+silence; and, by heaven, if he didn't--"
+
+Jasper Penny stonily watched the intolerable degradation of the woman
+bullied into the safety of a lie. This was worse than anything that had
+gone before; he fell deeper and deeper into a strangling, humiliating
+self-loathing. Stephen Jannan's handsome countenance was fixed and pale;
+one hand lay on the table, empty and still. In the silence between
+Schimpf's insistent periods Jasper Penny could hear Essie's sobbing
+inspirations; he was unable to keep his gaze from her countenance,
+jelly-like and robbed of every trace of human dignity. He wondered
+vaguely at an absence of any sense of responsibility for what Essie
+Scofield had become; he felt that an attitude of self-accusation, of
+profound regret for the way they had taken together, should rest upon
+him; but the thought, the effort, were perfunctory, obviously insincere.
+If now he had a different, perhaps deeper, sense of responsibility, he
+had known nothing of it in the first months of his contact with her....
+A different man, he reiterated; and one as faithfully representative as
+he was to-day. But totally another; men changed, evolved, progressed.
+Jasper Penny was convinced that it was a progression; but in a broad
+manner beyond all hope of his comprehension, and entirely outside
+dogmatic good and evil. The germ of it must have been in him from the
+first; his burning necessity for Susan, he told himself, had been born
+in him, laid dormant until, yes--it had been stirred into activity by
+Essie Scofield, by the revulsion which had followed that natural
+development.
+
+He was suddenly conscious that Al Schimpf had ceased domineering Essie.
+The lawyer swung about, facing them with an expression of commonplace
+satisfaction. "It's all in fine order," he declared. "I want, if
+possible, to study our jury through a preliminary case or so. We shall,
+of course, surrender our client at once, without making any difficulty
+about moving her from one police district to another. I can produce a
+witness to the fact that this Culser openly said that he expected
+shortly to come into more money. And he had dishonoured debts all about.
+You will have to appear, Mr. Penny; no way out of that, but our defence
+should go like a song. Now, Mrs. Scofield, I have a carriage outside."
+
+When they had gone Jasper Penny and Jannan sat in a lengthening silence.
+Stephen's hand moved among the papers on the table; the other drew a
+deep breath. "I regret this tremendously for you," Stephen Jannan said
+at last. He spoke with feeling; his momentary anger at the entanglement
+of Susan vanished. "But it will pass, Jasper. You are too solid a man to
+be hurt permanently by private scandal. And you have no concrete
+political position to invite mud slinging. Yes, it will drop out of
+mind, and your iron will continue to support enterprise, extension."
+
+"But Susan," Jasper Penny demanded, "what about her? Where is she?"
+
+"With Graham at Shadrach. She was badly torn, and I insisted on her
+retreating for a week or more. There is a very capable assistant at the
+Academy. It's too early to speak conclusively, but I am afraid that
+Susan's usefulness is ended there. Have you seen the cheaper sheets?
+Every one, of course, is buying them. Rotten! The assistant, I
+understand, is anxious to procure the school, and I am considering
+allowing her the capital. Something might be arranged paying Susan an
+income.... If she would accept; confoundly difficult to come about."
+
+"I am going to marry her," Jasper Penny asserted once more.
+
+"What was the initial trouble?" the other asked, tersely.
+
+"Essie." Stephen frowned.
+
+"She would hit on that," he agreed; "stand until the last gasp of some
+fantastic conception of right."
+
+Jasper explained:
+
+"She thinks I ought to marry Essie, mostly on account of the child. She
+likes me, too, Stephen; I think I may tell you that. Well, I'll keep at
+her and at her. In the end she will get tired of refusal." The other
+shook his head doubtfully. "I've known Susan a good many years, and I
+have never seen her lose an ideal, or even an idea, yet."
+
+Jasper Penny rose. "Meanwhile I'll have to go through with this trial.
+Thank God, Susan has no part in it." He warmly gripped Stephen's palm.
+"You're worth something in a life, immovable. Thank you, Stephen."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+It was early in April, an insidiously warm morning with the ailanthus
+trees in bud before the State House, when Jasper Penny left the court
+room where Essie had been freed. Provision had been made for her--she
+had had a severe collapse during the trial--and a feeling almost of
+renewed liberty of spirit permeated Jasper, as, with his overcoat on an
+arm, he turned to the left and walked over the street in the blandly
+expanding mildness. A train left shortly for Jaffa, and he was bound
+directly home, to Myrtle Forge, anxious to steep himself in the echo of
+the trip hammer mingled with the poignant harmony of spring sounds
+drifting from the farm and woods. He was possessed by a sharpened hunger
+for all the--now recognized--beauty of the place of his allegiance and
+birth, the serenity of the acres Gilbert Penny had beaten out of the
+wild of the Province. He was astonishingly conscious of himself as a
+part of the whole Penny succession, proud of Gilbert, of Howat, who had
+always so engaged his fancy, of Casimir, and Daniel, his own father.
+Theirs was a good heritage; their part of the earth, the ring of their
+iron, his particular characteristic of a black Penny, formed a really
+splendid entity.
+
+The low, horizontal branches of the beech tree on the lawn, older than
+the dwelling, opposed a pleasant variety on the long facade, built of
+stone with an appearance of dark pinkish malleability masking its
+obduracy. His mother was awaiting him on the narrow portico, and he at
+once told her of Essie's release. They stood together, gazing out across
+the turf, faintly emerald, over the public road, at the grey, solid
+group of farm buildings beyond. The farmer's daughter, in a white slip,
+emerged against the barnyard, and called the chickens in a high, musical
+note, scattering grain to a hysterical feathery mob. The air was still
+with approaching twilight; the sun slipped below the western trees and
+shadows gathered under the lilac bushes; the sky was April green.
+
+"Your father has been dead twelve years," Gilda Penny said unexpectedly.
+He looked down and saw that she was decrepit, an old woman. Her mouth
+had sunken, her ears projected in dry folds from her scant strands of
+hair. He recalled Daniel Barnes Penny; the earliest memories of his
+mother, a vigorous, brown-faced woman with alert, black eyes,
+quick-stepping, dictatorial in the sphere of her house and dependents.
+One after the other, like the sun, they were slipping out of the sight
+of Myrtle Forge; vanished and remained; passed from falling hand to hand
+the unextinguished flame of life. Gilda Penny was merging fast into the
+formless dark. She clung with pathetically tense fingers to his arm as
+they turned into the house.
+
+He had ordered a carriage immediately after an early supper; and,
+informing his coachman of his wish to proceed alone, drove quickly away
+through the dusk. He was going to Shadrach Furnace, to meet Susan for
+the first time since the unhappy occasion in the Mayor's chamber. He had
+decided, stifling his increasing impatience, not to see her until
+Essie's trial was over. Susan had been at Graham Jannan's house for nine
+weeks. Her sight, he had learned, had almost completely failed in a
+general exhaustion; but, with rigorous care, she had nearly recovered.
+The Academy had been sold to the assistant mistress; and there was an
+expressed uncertainty about Susan's near future. It had, however, no
+existence in Jasper Penny's thoughts, plans--she must marry him; any
+other course would now be absurd. The track from Myrtle Forge to the
+Furnace was bound into his every thought and association; its
+familiarity, he mused, had been born in him; his horses, too, took
+correctly, without pressure, every turning of the way. The road mounted,
+and then dropped between rounded hills to the clustering buildings,
+where lighted, pale yellow windows floated on the dusk, crowned by the
+wide-flung radiance of the Furnace stack. The air was potent in the
+valley with the indeterminate scent of budding earth--the premonitory
+fragrance of blossoms; and, hardly less delicate, stars flowered whitely
+in blue space.
+
+He paused for a moment before entering Graham Jannan's house, saturated
+with the pastoral tranquillity, listening to the flutter of wings under
+the eaves. Then he went in. They had finished supper, but were lingering
+at the table, with the candles guttering in an air from the open door.
+His greeting was simple and glad, and without restraint. Susan wore a
+dress like a white vapour, sprigged with pale buds, her throat and arms
+bare. She smiled the familiar, hesitating smile, met his questioning
+gaze with her undeviating courage. Jasper Penny took a chair opposite
+her. Little was said. Peace deepened about his spirit.
+
+Graham, he saw, had a new ruddiness of health; he laid a shawl tenderly
+about his wife's shoulders; and Jasper remembered that a birth was
+imminent. Later he drifted with Susan to the door, and they passed out
+into the obscurity beyond. Even now he was reluctant to speak, to break
+with importunities the serene mood. "All the iron making," she spoke at
+last, "lovely. I have stood night after night in the cast house watching
+the metal pour out in its glorious colours. And, when I wake, I go to my
+window and see the reflections of the blast on the trees, on the first
+leaves. The charcoal burners come down like giants out of the mythology
+of the forest. And, when I first came, there was a raccoon hunt, with a
+great stirring of lanterns and barking dogs in the dark ... all lovely."
+
+"It is yours," he said, bending over her. "You can come here at your
+will. A house built. And Myrtle Forge, too; whatever I have, am." He
+paused; but, without reply, continued more rapidly. "It's over, the--the
+misery of the past weeks; the mistakes are dead; they are paid, Susan.
+Now we may take what is left and make it as beautiful as possible. After
+suffering, reparation, happiness, is every one's due. And I am certain I
+can make you happy."
+
+A longer pause followed, in which he regarded her with an increasing
+anxiety. Her face was turned away, her progress grew slower until they
+stood by the shadowy bulk of a small stone structure. The door was open,
+and it seemed to him that she looked within. "A store house," he
+explained. Nothing was visible in the interior gloom but some obscure
+shapes, bales, piled against the walls, and the scant tracery of a rude
+stair leading up to a greater blackness above. She stopped, as if
+arrested by his period, laying a hand on the door frame.
+
+"Why don't you answer me, Susan?" he proceeded. "You know that I want to
+marry you; surely it is all right now. Everything possible has been
+done. A great deal of life remains." Her answer was so low that it
+almost escaped him; the faintest breath of pain, of longing and regret.
+"I can't," she whispered; "not with her, the child. I can't."
+
+"That," he replied gently, "is a mistaken idea of responsibility, a
+needless sacrifice. I could never urge you into an injustice, a wrong;
+at last I have got above that; what I want is the most reasonable thing
+imaginable, the best, in every conceivable way, for yourself and--any
+other. You are harming, depriving, no one. You are taking nothing but
+your own, what has been yours, and only yours, from the first moment I
+saw, no--from my birth. What has happened brought me in a straight road
+to you, the long road I have never, really, left."
+
+"I can't," she said still again. "I want to, Jasper. Oh, with a heart
+full of longing; I am so tired that I would almost give the rest of my
+life for another secure hour with you. And I would pay that to give you
+what you want, what you should have. But something stronger than I am,
+more than all this, holds me; I can't forget that miserable woman, nor
+her child and yours, so thin and suspicious. I am not good enough to be
+her mother myself, even if I felt I had the right. Inside of me I am
+quite wicked, selfish. I want my own. But not with the other woman
+outside. She'd be looking in at the windows, Jasper, looking in at my
+heart. I would hear her." She leaned against her arm, her face hid, her
+shoulders trembling.
+
+The musty odour of the stores floated out and enveloped him. He was
+suddenly annoyed. Susan herself lost some of her beauty, her radiance.
+He muttered that she was merely stubborn, blind to reality, to
+necessity. His attitude hardened, and he commenced to argue in a low,
+insistent voice. She made no reply, but remained supported in the
+doorway, a vague form against the inner dark.
+
+"You must change your mind," he asserted; "you can't be eternally so
+foolish. There is absolutely no question of my marrying Essie Scofield."
+
+"I don't want you to, really," she admitted in an agonized whisper. "I
+shall never again ask you to do that. Ah, God, how low I am."
+
+He saw, in an unsparing flash of comprehension, that it was useless. She
+would never marry him as long as the past stayed embodied, actual, to
+peer into their beings. A return of his familiar irritability, spleen,
+possessed him. "You are too pure for this world," he said brutally. She
+turned and stood facing him, meeting his scorn with an uplifted
+countenance. A shifting reflection from the Furnace stack fell over her
+in a wan veil, over the vaporous, sprigged white of her dress, her bare
+throat and arms, her cheeks wet with tears. Out of it her eyes, wide
+with pain, steadily met his angry scrutiny. Out of it she smiled at him
+before the reflection died.
+
+
+
+
+III THE METAL
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+In the warm, subdued light of a double lamp with apricot glass shades
+Howat Penny was turning over the pages, stiff with dry paste, of an
+album filled with opera programmes. The date of the brief, precisely
+penned label on the black cover was 1883-84; it was the first of a
+number of such thick, recording volumes he had gathered; and the operas,
+the casts, were of absorbing interest. At once a memento of the heroic
+period of American music and of his first manhood, the faded crudely
+embellished strips of paper, bearing names, lyric tenors and sopranos of
+limpid, bird-like song long ago lost in rosy and nebulous clouds of
+fable and cherished affection, roused remembered pleasures sharper than
+any calm actuality of to-day. He paused with a quiet exclamation, the
+single glass adroitly held in his left, astigmatic, eye fastened on the
+announcement of a famous evening, a famous name. His sense of the leaf
+before him blurred in the vivid memory of Patti, singing Martha in the
+campaign brought by Mapleson in the old Academy of Music against the
+forces of the new Metropolitan Opera House. He had been one of a
+conservative number that had supported the established opera, declaring
+heatedly that the Diva and Mapleson were an unapproachable musical
+combination, before which the shoddier magnificence of its rival,
+erected practically in a few summer months, would speedily fade.
+
+Nevertheless, he recalled, the widely heralded performance had been
+coolly received. Patti, although she had not perceptibly failed in
+voice, had been unable to inspire the customary enthusiasm; and the
+scene at the evening's end, planned to express her overwhelming triumph
+and superiority, when the horses had been taken from her carriage and it
+had been dragged by hand to the portal of the Windsor Hotel, had been no
+better than perfunctory. The wily Mapleson had arranged that beforehand,
+Howat Penny realized, with a faint, reminiscent smile on his severe
+lips--the "enthusiastic mob" had been coldly recruited, at a price, from
+the choristers. Another memory of Patti, and of that same performance,
+flooded back--the dinner given her in the Brunswick. He saw again the
+room where, on a divan, she had received her hosts, the seventy or more
+men of fashion grouped in irreproachable black and white, with her suave
+manager, the inevitable tea rose in his lapel, on a knee before Adelina,
+kissing her hand. The dinner had been laid in the ball room, lit with a
+multitude of wax candles. The features, appearance, of the more
+prominent men, of Mahun Stetson and Daly and William Steinway, were
+clear still. The original plan had been to include ladies at the
+dinner, but the latter, affecting outrage at the Diva's affair with the
+Marquis de Caux, had refused to lend their countenance to the singer's
+occasion. His smile broadened--this was so characteristic of New York in
+the eighties. How different it had been; but it was no better, he added
+silently, now.
+
+It was mid-August, and the air floating in through an open door was
+ladened with the richness of ultra-luxuriant vegetation, the persistent,
+metallic whirring of locusts, the mechanical repetition of katydids. One
+of the owls that inhabited the old willow tree before the house cried
+softly.... How different! He straightened up from the book open on his
+knees, and the glass fell with a small clatter over his formal, starched
+linen, swinging for an instant on its narrow ribbon. The unwavering lamp
+light was deflected in green points through the emeralds of his studs.
+
+The thought of bygone, gala nights of opera fastened on him with a
+peculiar significance--suddenly they seemed symbolic of his lost youth.
+Such tides of impassioned song, such poignant, lyric passion, such
+tragic sacrifice and death, were all in the extravagant key of youth.
+The very convention of opera, the glorified unreality of its language,
+the romantic impossibility of its colour, the sparkling dress like the
+sparkling voices and blue gardens and gilded halls, were the authentic
+expression of the resplendent vagaries of early years.
+
+The winter of eighty three and four; his first season of New York
+music. The autumn before he had returned from the five years spent in
+Europe, in Paris practically, with Bundy Provost, related to him by a
+marriage in the past generation, through the Jannans. He had gone abroad
+immediately after his graduation as a lawyer; and in the indolent
+culture of the five Parisian years, he now realized, he had permanently
+lost all hold on his profession. At his return he had drifted
+imperceptibly into an existence of polite pleasure. It had been
+different with Bundy; he had gone into the banking house of Provost,
+lately established in New York; and, with the extraordinary pertinacity
+and acumen sometimes developed by worldly and rich young men, he had
+steadily risen to a place of financial importance. An opening had, of
+course, been offered to Howat Penny when he had definitely decided not
+to settle in Philadelphia, where the Pennys had always been associated,
+and pursue the law. And, at first, he had occupied a desk in the Provost
+counting rooms. But he had soon grown discontented, he disliked routine
+and a clerk's condition; and, after two years of annoyed effort,
+withdrew to lead a more congenial existence on a secure, adequate
+income.
+
+"It was a mistake," he said aloud, in a decided, clearly modulated
+voice, gazing blankly into the warm stillness of the room. It had come
+partly from his innate impatience with any inferior state whatever, and
+part from the old inability to identify himself with the practicalities
+of existence. He had always viewed with distaste the apparently
+necessary compromises of successful living; the struggle for money,
+commercial supremacy, seemed unendurably ugly; the jargon and
+subterfuges of financial competition beneath his exacting standard of
+personal dignity. That had been his expression at the time--permeated by
+an impatient sense of superiority; but now he felt that there was
+something essential lacking in himself. An absence of proper balance.
+Solely concerned with the appearance, the insignificant surface, of such
+efforts as Bundy Provost's, their moving, masculine spirit had evaded
+him. Yes, it had been a mistake. He had missed the greatest pleasure of
+all, that of accumulating power and influence, of virile achievement.
+
+Well, it was over now; he was old; his life, his chance, had gone; and
+all that remained were memories of Patti smiling disdainfully in the
+flare of oil torches about her carriage; the only concrete record of so
+many years the scrap books such as that on his knees.
+
+It had been an error; yet there had been, within him, no choice, no
+intimation of a different, more desirable, consummation. Bundy had gone
+one way and himself another in obedience to forces beyond their
+understanding or control. They had done, briefly, what they were. There
+was no individual blame to attach, no applause; spare moralizing to
+append. He returned to the pages before him, to the memories of the
+radiant Ambre and Marimon, the sylvan echoes of Campanini singing
+Elvino.
+
+Now his recovered glass was intent on a programme of the rapidly
+successful Metropolitan forces, of the new German Opera, with
+Seidl-Krauss singing Elizabeth, and Brandt in _Fidelio_. Even here,
+after so long, he vibrated again to the exquisite beauty of Lenore's
+constancy and love. Then Dr. Damrosch dead, the sonorous funeral in the
+Opera House ... That had been changed with the rest; the baignoires were
+gone, the tiers of boxes newly curved; gone the chandeliers and Turkey
+red carpet and gold threaded brocade that had seemed the final
+expression of luxury. Lehmann in the premier of _Tristan und Isolde_,
+with the vast restrained enthusiasm and tensity when, at the end of the
+third act, Niemann bared his wounded breast. Eames' rise; but that, and
+what followed, were in successive books. He closed the one under his
+hand.
+
+As the years drew nearer the present their features became larger, more
+indistinct, their music grew louder, dissonant. He had retired further
+and further from an opera, a life, with which he was increasingly out of
+harmony. Or rather, he added, life moved away from the aging. It was as
+if the surrounding affair became objective; as if, once a participant in
+a cast--a production, however, less than grand--he had been conducted to
+a seat somewhere in the midst of a great, shadowy audience, from which
+he looked out of the gloom at the brilliant, removed spectacle. The
+final fact that had taken him from the setting of so many of his years
+had been the increasing expense of a discriminating existence in New
+York. Again his distaste for anything short of absolute nicety had
+dictated the form and conditions of his living. When the situation of
+his rooms had definitely declined, and the cost of possible
+locations--he could not endure a club--became prohibitive; when his once
+adequate, unaugmented income assumed the limitations of a mere
+sufficiency; and when, too, the old, familiar figures, the swells of his
+own period and acquaintance had vanished one by one with their vanishing
+halls of assembly--he had retreated to the traditional place of his
+family. He had gone back to the home of the Pennys in America.
+
+Not, however, to Myrtle Forge itself, the true centre of his
+inheritance. The house there had been uninhabited since his father's
+early years; it was a closed and melancholy memento; he had reanimated a
+comfortable stone dwelling at Shadrach Furnace; its solid grey facade
+drawn out by two happy additions to the original, small square. It had
+been, traditionally, at first, the house of the head furnacemen;
+sometime after that, perhaps a hundred years, Graham Jannan, newly
+married, had lived there while occupied with the active manufacture of
+iron; and three summers back he, Howat Penny, the last Penny now, had
+returned to the vicinity of Jaffa.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+The room in which he sat had two windows, set in the deep recesses of
+heavy stone walls, and three doors, two leading into opposite rooms and
+the third opening without. The double lamp stood on a low, gate-legged
+table of fibrous, time-blackened oak, together with an orderly array of
+periodicals--the white, typographical page of the _Saturday Review_
+under the dull rose of _The Living Age_ and chocolate-coloured bulk of
+the _Unpopular, Gil Blas_, the mid-week _Boston Transcript_ and
+yesterday's _New York Evening Post_. The table bore, in addition, a
+green morocco case of dominoes; a mahogany box that, in a recess,
+mysteriously maintained a visible cigarette; a study of Beethoven, in
+French; an outspread volume by Anatole France, _Jacques Tournebroche_,
+in a handsome paper cover; a set of copper ash trays; and a dull red
+figurine, holding within its few inches the deathless spirit of a heroic
+age. An angle of the wall before him was filled by a white panelled
+fireplace, the mantel close against the ceiling; and on the other side
+of a doorway, through which he could see Rudolph noiselessly preparing
+the dinner table, was a swan-like sofa, in olive wood and pale yellow
+satin, from the Venice of the _ottocento_. At his right, beyond a
+window, mounted a tall, austere secretary in waxed walnut; and behind
+him, under the white chair rail, bookcases extended across the width of
+the room. Gustavus Hesselius' portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on
+a yellow painted wall, his gilt-braided major's facings still vivid, his
+dark, perceptible scorn undimmed. There were, too, framed in oak, a
+large photograph of Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial
+message; another of a graceful woman in the Page's costume of _Les
+Huguenots_, signed "Sempre ... Scalchi"; a water colour drawing by Jan
+Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery foliage and brick of _The
+Penny Rolling Mills. Jaffa_. A black-blue rug, from Myrtle Forge, partly
+covered the broad, oak boards of the floor; and there was a comfortable
+variety of chairs--sturdy, painted Dutch, winged Windsors and a slatted
+Hunterstown rocker.
+
+Howat Penny's gaze wandered over the familiar furnishing, come to him
+surviving the generations of his family, or carefully procured for his
+individual dictates. A sense of tranquillity, of haven, deepened about
+him. "Rudolph," he inquired, "has Honduras gone for Miss Jannan?"
+
+The man stopped in the doorway, answering in the affirmative. He was
+slight, almost fragile, with close, dark hair that stood up across his
+forehead, and dry, high-coloured cheeks. Rudolph hesitated, with a
+handful of silver; and then returned to his task. Mariana would be
+along immediately, Howat Penny thought. He put the album aside and rose,
+moving toward the door that led without. He was a slender, erect figure,
+with little to indicate his age except the almost complete silvering of
+his hair--it had, evidently, been black--and a rigidity of body only
+apparent to a sharp scrutiny.
+
+A porch followed that length of the house, and doubled the end, where he
+stood peering into the gathering dusk. The old willow tree, inhabited by
+the owls, spread a delicate, blurred silhouette across a darkened vista
+of shorn wheat fields, filled, in the hollows, with woods; and a lamp
+glimmered from a farm house on a hill to the left. His lawn dropped to
+the public road, the hedged enclosure swimming with fireflies; and
+beyond he saw the wavering light shafts of his small motor returning
+from the insignificant flag station on the railroad, a mile distant.
+
+The noise of the engine increased, sliding into a lower gear on the
+short curve of the driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance
+directly into the dining room. She insisted, to his renewed discomfort,
+on kissing him. "It's wonderful here, after the city," she proclaimed;
+"and I've had to be in town three sweltering days. I'll dress right
+away."
+
+Honduras, his coloured man, as indispensable outside as Rudolph was in,
+followed with her bag up the narrow flight of steps to the floor above.
+He waited through, he thought, a reasonable interval, and then called.
+An indistinguishable reply floated down, mingled with the filling of a
+tub; and another half hour passed before Mariana appeared in white
+chiffon, securing a broad girdle of silver oak leaves, about her slight
+waist. "Do you mind?" she turned before him; and, with an impatience
+half assumed and half actual, he fastened the last hooks of her dress.
+"As you know," he reminded her, "I don't attempt cocktails. Will you
+have a gin and bitters?"
+
+She wouldn't, frankly; and they embarked on dinner in a pleasant,
+unstrained silence. Mariana was, he realized, the only person alive for
+whom he had a genuine warmth of affection. She was a first cousin; her
+Aunt Elizabeth had married James Penny, his father; but his fondness for
+her had no root in that fact. It didn't, for example, extend to her
+brother Kingsfrere. He speculated again on the reason for her marked
+effect. Mariana was not lovely, as had been the charmers of his own day;
+her features, with the exception of her eyes, were unremarkable. And her
+eyes, variably blue, were only arresting because of their extraordinary
+intensity of vision, their unquenchable and impertinent curiosity. A
+girl absolutely different from all his cherished mental images; but, for
+Howat Penny, always potent, always arousing a response from his
+supercritical being, stirring his aesthetic heart. Everything he
+possessed--his pictures, the albums, the moderate income, although she
+had little need of that--had been willed to her. It would be hers then
+just as it was, practically, now. And he was aware that her feeling
+generously equalled his own.
+
+His speculation, penetrating deeper than customary, rewarded him with
+the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That
+was it--the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any
+penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a
+possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious
+prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the
+correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, now almost lost. And he
+rated aristocracy of bearing higher than any other condition or fact.
+
+He wondered a little at her patent pleasure in visiting him, an old man,
+so frequently. Hardly a month passed but that, announced by telegram,
+she did not appear and stay over night, or for a part of the week. She
+would recount minutely the current gaiety of her polite existence. He
+knew the names of her associates, a number of them had been exhibited to
+him at Shadrach; the location of their country places; and what men
+temporarily monopolized her interest. None of the latter had been
+serious. He was, selfishly, glad of that; and waited uneasily through
+her every visit until she assured him that her affections had not been
+possessed. However, this condition, he knew, must soon come to an end;
+Mariana was instinct with sex; and a short while before he had sent his
+acknowledgment of her twenty-sixth birthday.
+
+She sat occupied with salad against the cavernous depths of a fireplace
+that, between the kitchen door and a built-in cupboard, filled the side
+of the dining room. The long mantel above her head was ladened with the
+grey sheen of pewter, and two uncommonly large, fluted bowls of blue
+Stiegel glass. In the centre of the table linen, the Sheffield and
+crystal and pictorial Staffordshire, was a vivid expanse of rose
+geraniums. She broke off a flower and pinned it with the diamond bar on
+her breast. "Howat," she said, "to-morrow's Saturday, and I've asked two
+people out until Sunday night. Eliza Provost and a young man. Do you
+mind?"
+
+"Tell Rudolph," he replied. It was not until after dinner, when they
+were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man's
+name. He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an
+ivory domino, he forgot. "Twenty," he announced, reaching for the
+scoring pad. "Oh, hell, Howat!" she protested. "That's the game,
+almost." She emptied her coffee cup, and speculatively fingered one of
+the thin cigars in the box at his hand. "It's the customary thing in
+Peru," she observed, pinching the end from the cigar and lighting it. He
+watched her absently, veiled in the fragrant, bluish smoke.
+Automatically his thoughts returned to the women that, at a breath of
+scandal, had refused to attend the dinner to Patti. So much changed; the
+years fled like birds in a mist.
+
+"I feel like a politician," she told him. "Eliza Provost would pat me on
+the back. She's talking from a soap box on the street corners now,
+winging men for such trifles as forced birth. I'm fond of Eliza; she's
+got a splendid crust. I wish you'd get excited about my rights; but your
+interest really goes no further than a hat from Camille Marchais. You
+are deleterious, Howat. Isn't that a lovely word! Which was the first
+double?" He blocked and won the game. "Fifty-five," she announced; "and
+ninety-five before. I owe you a dollar and a half."
+
+She paid the debt promptly from a flexible gold mesh bag on the table;
+then stooped and wandered among his books. Howat Penny turned to
+yesterday's _Evening Post_, and Mariana settled beyond the lamp. Outside
+the locusts were desperately shrill, and the heavy ticking of an old
+clock grew audible. "I don't like George Moore!" she exclaimed. He
+raised surprised, inquiring eyebrows. "He is such a taster," she added,
+but particularized no more. She sat, with the scarlet bound book clouded
+in the white chiffon of her lap, gazing at the wall. Her lips were
+parted, and a brighter colour rose in her cheeks. Her attitude, her
+expression, vaguely disturbed him; he had never seen her more warmly,
+dangerously, alive. A new reluctance stopped the question forming in
+his mind; she seemed to have retreated from him. "Moore is a very great
+artist," he said instead.
+
+"That's little to me," she replied flippantly, rising. "I think I'll go
+up; and I almost think I will kiss you again." He grumbled a protest,
+and watched her trail from the room, the silver girdle and chiffon
+emphasizing her thin, vigorous body, the lamplight falling on her bare,
+sharp shoulders. Howat Penny had early acquired a habit of long hours,
+and it was past one when he put aside his papers, stood for a moment on
+the porch. The fireflies were gone, the locusts seemed farther away, and
+the soft, heavy flight of an owl rose from the warm grass.
+
+Below, on the right, he could vaguely see the broken bulk of what had
+been Shadrach Furnace, the ruined shape of the past. The Pennys no
+longer made iron. His father had marked the last casting. They no longer
+listened to the beat of the trip hammer, but to the light rhythm of a
+conductor's baton; they heard, in place of ringing metal, a tenor's
+grace notes. Soon they would hear nothing. They went out, for all time,
+with himself. It was fitting that the last, true to their peculiar
+inheritance, should be a black Penny. He, Howat, was that--the ancient
+Welsh blood finally gathered in a cup of life before it was spilled.
+
+Old influences quickened within him; but, attenuated, they were no more
+than regrets. They came late to trouble his remnant of living. He was
+like the Furnace, a sign of what had been; yet, he thought in
+self-extenuation, he had brought no dishonour, no dragging of the
+tradition through the muck of a public scandal. Not that ... nor
+anything else. Now, when it was absurd, he was resentful of the part he
+had played in life; like a minor, cracked voice, he extended a former
+figure with a saving touch of humour, importuning the director because
+he had not been cast in the great roles. The night mist came up and
+brushed him; he was conscious of a sudden chill, an aching of the
+wrists. "Cracked," he repeated, aloud, and retreated into the house;
+where, Rudolph gone up, he put out the lights and stiffly retired.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+They accomplished little the following morning. Mariana, in a scant
+brown linen skirt, a sheer waist through which were visible precarious
+incidentals and narrow black ribbon, and the confoundedest green
+stockings he had ever seen, lounged indolently in a canvas swing. The
+heat increased in a reddish haze through which the sun poured like
+molten copper. "You'd better come inside," he said from the doorway;
+"the house, shut up, is quite comfortable." Within the damp of the old,
+stone walls made a comparative coolness. The shades were drawn down, and
+they sat in an untimely twilight.
+
+"When I think of how energetic Eliza will be," Mariana asserted, "I am
+already overwhelmed. But you never look hot, Howat; you are always
+beautiful." His flannels and straw-coloured silk coat were crisply
+ironed; his hair, his scarf and lustrous yellow shoes, precise. "Howat,"
+she continued almost anxiously, "you put a lot on, well--good form. You
+think that the way a man knots his tie is tremendously significant--"
+
+"Perhaps," he returned cautiously. "A good many years have shown me that
+the right man usually wears the right things."
+
+"Couldn't that be just the smallest bit unfair? Aren't there, after
+all, droves of the right men in rubber collars? I don't know any," she
+added hastily; "that is, not exactly the same. But it seems to me that
+you have lived so exclusively in a certain atmosphere that you might
+have got blinded to--to other things."
+
+"Perhaps," he said again, complacently. "I can only judge by my own
+feeling and experience. Now Mapleson, never was a finer conductor of
+opera--you didn't catch him in a pink tie in the evening. And some of
+those others, who failed in a couple of weeks, I give you my word, dress
+shirts with forgetmenots."
+
+She regarded him with a frowning, half closed vision. "It sounds wrong,"
+she commented. "It's been your life, of course." He grew resentful under
+her scrutiny, the implied criticism. A sudden suspicion entered his
+mind, connected with her expression last evening, the young man whose
+name he had omitted to ask. His reluctance to question her returned. But
+if Mariana had attached herself to some rowdy, by heaven, he would....
+He fixed the glass in his eye, and, pretending to be occupied with a
+periodical, studied her. He realized that he would, could, do nothing.
+She was a woman of determination, and, her father dead, a very adequate
+income of her own. His fondness for Mariana resided principally in a
+wish to see her free from the multitudinous snares that he designated in
+a group as common. He was fearful of her entanglement in the cheap
+implications of the undistinguished democracy more prevalent every year.
+All that was notable, charming, in her, he felt, would be obliterated by
+trite connection; he had no more patience for the conventional
+fulfilment of her life than he had for the thought of women voting.
+Howat Penny saw Mariana complete, fine, in herself, as the _Orpheo_ of
+Christopher Gluck was fine and complete. He preferred the contained
+artistry of such music to the cruder, more popular and moral, sounds.
+
+Early in the afternoon she went to her room, although Honduras had no
+occasion to go to the station for considerably more than an hour,
+explaining that she must dress. Howat Penny sat with his palms on his
+white flannelled knees, revolving, now, himself in the light of his
+aspirations for Mariana. He wondered if, in the absence of any sympathy
+for the mass of sentiment and living, he was blind, too, to her greatest
+possibilities; if, in short, he was a vicious influence. Perhaps, as the
+old were said to do, he had hardened into a narrow and erroneous
+conception of values. Such doubts were both disturbing and unusual;
+ordinarily he never hesitated in the exact expression of his vigorously
+held opinions and prejudices; he seldom relaxed the critical elevation
+of his standards. He was, he thought contemptuously, growing soft;
+senility was diluting his fibre, blurring his inner vision.
+
+Nothing of this was visible as he rose on Mariana's reappearance; there
+was not a line relaxed; his handsome, dark profile was as pridefully
+clear as if it had been stamped on a bronze coin. Mariana wore, simply,
+blue, with an amber veiling of tulle about her shoulders, and a short
+skirt that gave her a marked youthful aspect. She seemed ill at ease;
+and avoided his gaze, hurrying out to meet the motor as it noisily
+turned sharply in at the door. Howat Penny heard Eliza Provost's short,
+impatient enunciation, and a rapid, masculine utterance. Eliza entered,
+a girl with a decided, evenly pale face and brown eyes, in a severe
+black linen suit and a small hat, and extended a direct hand, a slightly
+smiling greeting. Mariana followed, for a moment filling the doorway.
+"We'll go up, Eliza," she said, moving with the other to the stair, a
+few feet distant. A man followed into the house, and Mariana half turned
+on the bottom step. "Howat," she proceeded hurriedly, "this is James
+Polder." Then she ascended with Eliza Provost.
+
+An expression of amazement, deepening almost to dismay, was momentarily
+visible on Howat Penny's countenance. His face felt hot, and there was
+an uncomfortable pressure in his throat, such as might come from shock.
+Surely Mariana wouldn't ... without warning him--! He was conscious of
+the necessity, facing a tall, spare young man with an intent expression,
+of a polite phrase; and he articulated an adequate something in a
+noticeably disturbed tone. But, of course, he had made a mistake. James
+Polder's intensity increased, concentrated in a gaze at once belligerent
+and eager. He said:
+
+"Then Miss Jannan didn't tell you. It was a mistake. It may be I am not
+exactly desirable here," his voice sharpened, and he retreated a step
+toward the door.
+
+"No," Howat Penny replied; "she didn't." He found himself studying a
+face at once youthful and lined, a good jaw contradicted by a mouth
+already traced with discontent, and yellow-brown eyes kindling with a
+surprising energy of resentment. "You are Byron Polder's son?" he said
+in a manner that carried its own affirmation. "Eunice Scofield's
+grandson."
+
+"Eunice Penny's," the other interjected. "Your own grandfather saw to
+that." His hand rested in the doorway, and he stopped Honduras, carrying
+in the guests' bags. Howat Penny's poise rapidly returned. "Go right up,
+Honduras," he directed; "the Windmill room, I think. I had never seen
+you," he said to James Polder, as if in apology. "But your father has
+been pointed out to me." He waved the younger man into the room beyond,
+and moved forward the cigarettes.
+
+James Polder took one with an evident relief in the commonplace act. He
+struck a match and lit the cigarette with elaborate care. "Will you sit
+for a little?" the elder proceeded. "Or perhaps you'd rather change at
+once. I've no doubt it was sticky in the city."
+
+"Thank you; perhaps I'd better--the last." Rudolph appeared, and
+conducted the young man above. Howat Penny sat suddenly, his lips folded
+in a stubborn line. Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be
+familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some
+very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy
+affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather--it had been, he had
+always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had,
+before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had those of his
+father.
+
+The latter had been the child of a dangerously late marriage, a marriage
+from which time and delay had stripped both material potency and
+sustaining illusion. Jasper Penny had been nearing fifty when his son
+was born; and that act of deliberate sacrifice on the part of his wife,
+entering middle age, had imposed an inordinate amount of suffering on
+her last years. Their child, it was true, had been of normal stature,
+and lived to within a short space of a half century. But then he had
+utterly collapsed, died in three days from what had first appeared a
+slight cold; and, throughout his maturity, he had been a man of feverish
+mind. His disastrous, blind struggle against the great, newly discovered
+iron deposits of the Middle West was characteristic of his ill balance.
+And, in his own, Howat Penny's, successive turn, the latter told himself
+again, he had paid part of the price of his grandfather's indulgence.
+
+It was incorporated in the Penny knowledge that Susan Brundon had
+refused to marry Jasper while the other woman was alive. The latter had
+died, some years after the disgraceful publicity of the murder and
+trial; the wedding had then taken place; but it seemed to Howat Penny to
+have been almost perfunctory. Yes, he had paid too, in the negative
+philosophy, the critical sterility, of his existence. He recognized this
+in one of the disconcerting flashes of perception that lately
+illuminated him as if from without. Some essential proportion had been
+disturbed. He looked up, at a slight sound, and saw Mariana standing
+before him. His expression, he knew, was severe; he had been quite
+upset.
+
+"I can see," she proceeded slowly, "that I have been very wicked. I
+didn't realize, Howat, that it might affect you; how real all that old
+stir might be. I am tremendously sorry; you must know that I am awfully
+fond of you. It was pure, young selfishness. I was afraid that if I
+spoke first you wouldn't let him come. And it was important--I must see
+him and talk to him and think about it. You can realize mother and
+Kingsfrere!"
+
+"Where did you meet him?" he demanded shortly.
+
+"With Eliza, at a meeting," she went on more rapidly. "He's terribly
+brilliant, and a steel man. Isn't it funny? The Pennys were steel, too;
+or iron, and that's the same. I wish you could be nice to him or just
+decent, until--until I know."
+
+"Mariana!" he exclaimed, rising. "You don't mean that you are really--.
+That you--"
+
+"Perhaps, Howat," she answered gravely. "I have only seen him twice; and
+he has said nothing; but, you see, I am an experienced young woman. No
+other man has made the same impression."
+
+"That," he declared coldly, "is unthinkable. You can't know all the
+facts."
+
+"I do; but, somehow, I don't care."
+
+"Everything about him is impossible--his history, family ... Why, Eunice
+Scofield, well, Penny, married a man from behind a counter, a fellow who
+sold womens' gloves; yes, and more than half Jew. And this man's mother
+was Delia Mullen, a daughter of the dirty ward leader. All this aside
+from--from his bad blood."
+
+"It's partly yours, you know," she said quietly. "After all, there are
+other places I can see him." She turned away. "Eliza Provost is insane,"
+he muttered. "No," Mariana returned, "only superior to narrow little
+prejudices. She can see life, people, as they are. Jim Polder is one of
+the most promising men in the steel mills. He is going up and up. That
+is enough for Eliza, it is enough for me; and if it won't do for my
+family--" she made an opening gesture with her fingers. Her expression
+had hardened; she gazed at him with bright, contemptuous eyes. In a
+moment the affectionate bonds between them seemed to have dissolved.
+His feeling was one of mingled anger and concern; but he endeavoured to
+regain his self-control, conscious that a hasty word more might do
+irreparable harm.
+
+"Of course, I can't have you meeting him about the streets," he stated.
+"It is better here, if necessary. I am very much displeased," a note of
+complaint appeared, and she immediately returned to him, laid a hand on
+his shoulder. "Nothing is certain," she assured him. "I wanted to be
+sure, that is all. I don't want to make a mess out of things."
+
+It was a part of the very quality of emotional courage he had so lately
+defined, extolled; a part of her disdain for ordinary prudence and
+conventional approbation. A direct dislike for this James Polder invaded
+him, a determined attitude of hyper-criticism. When the younger man
+reappeared Howat Penny found justification for this attitude. The
+details of Polder's apparel, although acceptable in the main, were
+without nicety. His shoes were a crude tan, and his necktie from the
+outer limbo. His hands, too, had a grimy surface and the nails were
+broken, unkempt.
+
+But it was evident that all the criticism was not to be limited to his
+own. James Polder regarded the single glass with a scoffing lip, as if
+it were the appendage of a ludicrous Anglomania. He glanced with
+indifference at Howat Penny's pictures, books, the collected emblems of
+his cultivated years. His brows raised at the photograph of Scalchi in
+the Page's trunks--as if, the elder thought, she had been a "pony" in
+the _Black Crook_--and was visibly amused at the great Mapleson, posed
+in a dignified attitude by a broken column. An irrepressible and biting
+scorn, Howat Penny saw, was, perhaps, the young man's strongest
+attribute. He had violent opinions expressed in sudden, sharp movements,
+gestures with his shoulders, swift frowns and fragmentary sentences.
+
+Howat Penny had never seen a more ill-ordered youth, and he experienced
+an increasing difficulty in keeping a marked asperity from his speech
+and conduct. Eliza Provost shortly came down, and the three strolled out
+into the ruddy light of late afternoon. Howat Penny consumed a long time
+dressing for the evening; and, in the end, irritably summoned Rudolph.
+"I can't get these damned studs in," he complained; "whatever do you
+suppose women use for starch now?" Rudolph dexterously fixed the
+emeralds, then held the black silk waistcoat. "And coats won't hang for
+a bawbee," he went on. "Gentlemen like Gary Dilkes used to go regularly
+to London, spring and fall, for their things. No doubt then about a man
+of breeding. You didn't see the other kind around. Wouldn't have 'em."
+Rudolph murmured consolingly. "Sat in the pit but never got into the
+boxes," his voice grew thin, querulous. "I'm moving along, Rudolph," he
+admitted suddenly; "the manners, and, by thunder, the music too, don't
+suit me any more. Give me the old Academy days in Irving Place." He
+hummed a bar from _Ernani_.
+
+Through dinner he maintained a severe silence, listening with a frowning
+disapproval to Eliza Provost's tranquil, subversive utterances. Howat
+Penny couldn't think what her father was about, permitting her to
+harangue loafers by the streets and saloons. She was, in a cold way--she
+had Peter Jannan Provost's curious grey colouring--a handsome piece of a
+girl, too. "A fine figger," he told himself.
+
+Later, Mariana and James Polder had gone out on the porch, he faced with
+reluctance the task of furnishing her with entertainment; but, to his
+extreme relief, she procured a leather portfolio, and addressed herself
+to a sheaf of papers. But that, in itself, was a peculiar way for a
+young woman to spend an evening. She would have done it, he felt, if he
+had been half his actual age. God help the man with a fancy for her!
+Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the
+past--a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in
+Paris ... at dawn. Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth,
+fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake. His silk hat
+had been telescoped in the process of smacking a Frenchman's eye.
+Perhaps, they had told each other, there would be cards later in the
+day, an affair of honour. He forgot what, exactly, had happened; but
+there had been no duel.
+
+He looked up with a sudden concern, as if his thoughts might have been
+clear to Eliza Provost, in irreproachable evening dress and shell rimmed
+glasses, intent on statistical pages. Mariana and James Polder appeared;
+the former, Howat Penny thought, disturbed. Polder's intense countenance
+was sombre, his brow corrugated. Mariana, accompanied by Eliza, soon
+after went up; and left the two men facing each other across a neutral
+silence. "You manufacture steel, I believe," the elder finally stated.
+
+"The Company does," Polder replied more exactly. "I've been in the open
+hearth since I left school," he went on; "it was born in me, I've never
+thought of anything else." His tone grew sharp, as if it might occur to
+the other to contradict the legitimacy of his pursuit. "I have done well
+enough, too," he said pridefully. "Most of them come on from college. I
+went from shovelling slag in the pit, the crane, to second helper and
+melter; they gave me the furnace after a year and now I am foreman. It
+will be better still if a reorganization goes through. Not many men have
+a chance at the superintendent's office under thirty-five."
+
+"That is very admirable," Howat Penny said formally. He wondered,
+privately, at the far channel into which the original Penny ability had
+flowed. There could be no doubt, however objectionable, that James
+Polder was the present repository of the family tradition. He had had it
+from the source; and the iron had not, apparently, been corroded by
+tainted blood. He was forced to admit that a coarser strain had,
+perhaps, lent it endurance. All this failed to detract from his initial
+dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in
+which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant
+proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized,
+to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible.
+Such things were utterly unimportant to him. He was unable to justify,
+or even explain to himself, his standards of judgment. They were not
+founded on admirable conduct, on achievement, what was known as solid
+worth; but on vague accents, intuitive attitudes of mind visible in a
+hundred trivial, even absurd, signs. The "right things" were more
+indispensable to him than the sublimest attributes.
+
+On the following morning Mariana, Eliza and Polder disappeared in his
+car--it seemed that the latter was an accomplished mechanic in addition
+to his other qualities--and Howat Penny faced the disagreeable
+possibilities of the near future. Mariana would, he knew, meet this
+fellow promiscuously if necessary. As she had indicated, it was
+impossible to conceive of him in Charlotte Jannan's house. The latter
+was a rigidly correct woman. She would, too, and properly, be nasty if
+she learned that such meetings had taken place at Shadrach. The only
+thing to do was to bring Mariana to what he designated as her senses.
+And, at the start, he had a conviction that he might fail.
+
+She did not accompany Eliza Provost and Polder, when, late Sunday
+afternoon, they departed; but sat absorbed in thought through the
+evening meal. He found his affection for her increasing to an annoying
+degree; he was almost humble in his anxiety not to wound her.
+
+"Life is so messy," she said with sudden violence. "You can't think,
+Howat, how I hate myself; the horridest things go round and round
+through my mind. We're all wrong--I'm more like you than I
+admitted--born snobs. I mean the kind who look down on people different
+from themselves. I can't help being on--on edge. I can tell you this,
+though, I care more for Jim Polder than for any other man I've ever met.
+I'm mad about him; and yet, somehow, I can't quite think of marrying
+him. He's asked me already. But I knew he would."
+
+"You must wait," he temporized; "such things clear up after a little."
+
+"And if they don't?" she demanded. "What if they are choked by a hundred
+cowardly or selfish thoughts? It can be too late so terribly soon,
+Howat. You must know that. You see, I can't decide what really is the
+most valuable, what should be held tight on to, or let go. There are two
+me's, it seems--one what I want and the other what I am. I want Jim and
+I'm Mariana Jannan. All that about Eunice or Essie, or whatever her name
+was, doesn't matter a bawbee, as you say. I hate it because I think at
+times it makes him unhappy. Really, I believe I am fonder of him because
+of it. We owe him something--the superior Jannans and Pennys. Why,
+Howat, he's your own blood, and you looked at him as if he were a
+grocer's assistant. And I watched hatefully for the little expressions
+that seemed common. Of course, out in those mills, he would pick up a
+lot that wouldn't touch us; and, after all, he could drop them."
+
+"If you have any thought of reforming him," he commented dryly, "you
+might as well see a wedding stationer."
+
+"I could influence him," she insisted; "I'd at least count for as much
+as those shovellers and furnace men."
+
+"But not," he proceeded relentlessly, "against the Essie Scofield you
+dismissed so easily. I don't doubt for a minute the unhappiness you
+spoke of; it would he a part of his inheritance; and you'd never charm
+it out of him. Damn it, Mariana," he burst out, "he's inferior! That's
+all, inferior." Anger and resentment destroyed his caution, his planned
+logic, restraint. "I can see what your life would be, if you can't. You
+would live in a no-man's land; and all the clergymen in the world
+couldn't make you one."
+
+"It wouldn't be the clergymen, Howat," she said simply. "And you mustn't
+think I am only a silly with her first young man. I have kissed them
+before, Howat; yes, and liked it. I am not happy with Jim; it's
+something else, like tearing silk. He is so confident and so helpless;
+he's drinking now, too."
+
+"I suppose that is an added attraction," he commented. She chose to
+ignore this. "I half promised him," she continued, "to take dinner with
+his family. He will be in the city next week. I said I thought you'd
+bring me."
+
+"Well, I won't," he replied in a startled energy. "Mariana, you're out
+of your head. Go to Byron Polder's house! Me!" In his excitement he
+dropped a lighted cigarette on the Chinese rug. "I have no one else,"
+she told him. "Perhaps I'll marry Jim, and go away ... I thought you
+might want to be with me, at the last."
+
+He fumbled for his glass, fixed it in his eye, and then dropped it out,
+clearing his throat sharply. He rose and crossed the room, and looked
+out through the open door at the night. The stars were hazy, and there
+was a constant reflection of lightning on the horizon. Howat Penny swore
+silently at his increasing softness, his betrayal by his years. Yet it
+might be a good thing for her to see the Polder family assembled,
+Byron--he was a pretentious looking fool--at one end of the table and
+Delia Mullen Polder at the other. There were more children, too. But if
+it became necessary, heaven knew how he would explain all this to
+Charlotte. "I believe," he said, apparently innocently, "that they live
+in the north end of the city."
+
+"It won't damage you," she replied indirectly. Already, he thought with
+poignant regret, a part of the old Mariana had gone; her voice was
+older, darker with maturity.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+Howat Penny arrived in town late on the day when he was to dine with
+Mariana at the Polders. He entered a taxicab, and was carried smoothly
+through the thick, hot air; open electric cars, ladened with damp,
+pallid salespeople, passed with a harsh ringing; and the foliage in
+Rittenhouse Square hung dusty and limp and still. The houses beyond, on
+Nineteenth Street, where the Jannans' winter dwelling stood, were closed
+and blankly boarded. The small, provisional entrance before which he
+stopped opened, and a servant, out of livery, appeared. "Shall I tell
+the driver to return, sir?" he queried; "the telephone is disconnected."
+He issued instructions, and, with Howat Penny's bag, followed him into
+the darkened house.
+
+The windows of a general chamber on the second floor had been thrown
+open; and there he found Mariana's brother. Kingsfrere Jannan was a
+young man with a broad white face, shadowed in pasty green, and leaden
+eyes. His countenance, Howat knew, masked a keen and avaricious
+temperament. He did uncommonly well at auction bridge in the clubs.
+Kingsfrere, in a grey morning coat with white linen gaiters and a
+relentless collar, nodded and lounged from the room; and Mariana soon
+appeared. "Perhaps, Howat," she said, "it would be better if you didn't
+dress. I have an idea the Polder men don't."
+
+At the stubborn expression which possessed him she exclaimed sharply,
+"If you tell me that the Colonel or Gary Dilkes were always formally
+dressed at dinner I think I'll scream." Nevertheless, he had no
+intention of relinquishing a habit of years for the Polders, or the
+north end of the city; and when, later, he came down into the hall,
+where the man stood with his silk hat and cape, Mariana put an arm about
+his shoulders. "I wish every one could he as beautiful as yourself," she
+told him. They passed the Square, bathed in dusk and the beginning
+shimmer of arc lights, went through the flattened and faintly thunderous
+arch of a railway, and turned into a broad asphalt street, on which
+wide, glistening bulk windows gave place to sombre shops with lurid,
+flame-streaked vistas, and continuous residences beyond. Howat Penny
+gazed curiously at the tall, narrow dwellings, often a continuous,
+similar facade from street corner to corner, then diversified in
+elaborate, individual design. All, however, had deep stone steps leading
+to the sidewalk, thronged with figures in airy white dresses, coatless
+men smoking contentedly; there was a constant light vibration of
+laughing voices and subdued calling, and the fainter strains of
+mechanical music, the beat of popular marches and attenuated voices of
+celebrated singers.
+
+The motor turned suddenly in to the curb, and they got out. The house
+before them, like its fellows, was entered from a high flight of red
+sandstone steps, and was built of a smooth, soapy green stone, with red
+coursings, an elaborate cornice and tiled Italian roof. No one was
+sitting outside, although there was a pile of circular, grass-woven
+cushions; and Howat sharply rang the bell. A maid in aproned black
+admitted them into a narrow hall, from which stairs mounted with a
+carved rail terminating in a newel post supporting an almost life-sized
+bronze nymph, whose flowing hair was encircled by a wreath of
+electrically lit flowers, and who held a dully shining sheaf of
+jonquils. There was no other illumination, and Howat Penny discovered in
+the obscurity a high mirror bristling with elk horns, on which hung
+various hats and outer garments. He stood helpless, apparently, in an
+attitude he found impossible to deny himself, waiting to be relieved of
+his coverings, when Mariana whispered angrily, "Don't be so rotten,
+Howat."
+
+Finally the maid secured his cape, and he was conscious of a stir at the
+head of the stairs. Immediately after, a shrill, subdued voice carried
+to where he stood. "I told you," it said violently, "... dress suit."
+There was an answering murmur, in which he could distinguish, James
+Polder's impatient tones. The latter descended, and flooded the hall
+with, light from a globe in the ceiling. He was garbed in blue serge and
+flannels. "Isabella," he stated directly, belligerently even, "thinks we
+ought to change our clothes; but we never do, and I wouldn't hear of--of
+lying for effect." Howat Penny's dislike for him pleasantly increased.
+Mariana, in rose crepe with a soft, dull gold girdle and long,
+trumpet-like sleeves of flowered gauze, smiled at him warmly. "It is a
+harmless pose of Howat's," she explained: "a concession to the ghosts of
+the past." She patted the elder on the shoulder.
+
+Above, James Polder ushered them into a room hung with crimson and gilt
+stamped paper, an elaborately fretted cherry mantel about the asbestos
+rectangle of an artificial hearth, and a multitude of chairs and divans
+shrouded in linen. There was an upright, ebonized piano draped in a
+fringed, Roman scarf and holding a towering jar of roses, a great,
+carved easel with a painstaking, smooth oil painting of a dark man in an
+attitude of fixed dignity, and an expensively cased talking machine. The
+original, evidently, of the portrait, and a small, rotund woman in mauve
+brocade, advanced to meet them. Young Polder said, "My mother and
+father. This is Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny."
+
+The latter saw that Mrs. Byron Polder was distinctly nervous; she
+twisted the diamonds that occupied a not inconsiderable portion of her
+short fingers, and smiled rigidly. "I am very pleased to meet you, Miss
+Jannan," she proceeded; "and Mr. Penny too." She held out a hand, then
+half withdrew it; but Mariana captured it in her direct palm. "Thank
+you," she replied. Byron Polder had a more confident poise; in reality
+there was a perceptible chill in his manner. He was a handsome man, with
+a cleanly-shaven face, introspective brown eyes and a petulant, drooping
+mouth. "You have succeeded in finding your way to my house," he
+pronounced enigmatically, gazing at Howat Penny.
+
+It was, Howat thought, just such an ill-bred utterance as he had looked
+for from Byron Polder; and he made no effort to mitigate it. He was
+conscious of, and resolutely ignored, Mariana's veiled entreaty. "You
+don't know my girls," Mrs. Polder continued rapidly. "Here is Isabella,
+and Kate will be along for dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps,
+thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved
+forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went
+on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood
+awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't
+a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a
+consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit,
+"It's a quarter after seven," she said in a swift aside. Isabella,
+correctly disposed on a chair of muffled and mysterious line, resolutely
+ignored the appeal.
+
+"I didn't suppose you'd be in the city," she addressed Mariana; "I read
+in the paper that you had gone to Watch Hill with Mrs. Ledyard B.
+Starr."
+
+"You can see that I'm back," Mariana smiled. "The family, of course, are
+at Andalusia, but we have all been in town the past days. I am really
+staying with Howat at Shadrach."
+
+"The former location of Shadrach Furnace, I believe," Byron Polder
+stated. "Now in ruins." Howat Penny accurately gathered that the other
+inferred the collapse not only of the Furnace. He secured the single
+glass in his eye and looked deliberately around. Isabella watched him
+with a tense interest. Mrs. Polder gave a short, perturbed giggle. "Just
+like George Arliss," she told her son. James Polder, on the edge of a
+chair, was twitching with repressed uneasiness; he frowned
+antagonistically and then gazed appealingly at Mariana. "I have been
+introduced to your cousin, Miss Provost," Isabella again took up her
+social thread. "A dear friend of mine, a talented actress, gave a
+recitation at Miss Provost's request, for suffrage."
+
+"Eliza's splendid," Mariana pronounced.
+
+"Peter Jannan Provost's daughter," Byron Polder added fully. But his
+voice indicated that even more, darkly unfavourable, might be revealed.
+"Miss Provost has been under arrest." Damn the solemn ass, Howat Penny
+thought. "She's been in the jug twice now," Mariana went on cheerfully;
+"Kingsfrere had to put up a bond the last time." Mrs. Polder was rapidly
+regaining her ease. "Wasn't her mamma scared?" she inquired. "I'd go on
+if Isabella was taken up."
+
+"Imagine Isabella!" Jim Polder exploded. "It's quite the thing," that
+individual asserted. "Isabella," her mother declared, "it is twenty-five
+past seven. I wish you'd go out and see where dinner is." She rose with
+an expression of mingled surprise and pain. "Really, mother," she said,
+"that is an extraordinary request." Her brother snorted. There was a
+sudden muffled clamour of chimes from below, and Mrs. Polder gave a sigh
+of relief. "I didn't want it spoiled," she explained, descending; "Jim
+would be wild after all his eagerness to have things nice."
+
+The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and
+had a high ceiling in varnished light wood. Byron Polder faced his wife
+at the opposite end of the table. Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with
+Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother's right; and a waiting
+place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl. "This is Kate,"
+Mrs. Polder said proudly. Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome
+female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent crepe de Chine waist
+that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a
+lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth
+drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the
+direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission
+that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up
+to the standard of old days, the divinity of Scalchi herself. She would
+have created a sensation in Delmonico's, the real Delmonico's. Gary and
+the Colonel--
+
+"We think they're elegant," Mrs. Polder's voice broke in on his revery.
+He looked up and saw a great fish on a huge platter before his host, a
+fish in surprising semblance to life, had it not been for the rosettes
+of lemon, the green bed, which surrounded it. "Gracious, no," she
+answered Mariana's query; "we don't do it home. Mr. Polder has them sent
+from a Rathskeller down town. He'll make a meal off one." The latter was
+plainly chagrined at this light thrown on his petty appetites. He
+assumed an air of complete detachment in the portioning of the dish;
+but, at the same time, managed to supply himself liberally. The
+conversation was sporadic. Howat Penny found the dinner lavish, and
+divided his attention between it and Kate Polder. James and Mariana
+addressed general remarks to the table at succeeding intervals. Mr.
+Polder gloomed, and Isabella went through the gestures, the accents, of
+the occasion with utter correctness. Howat studied Mariana, but he was
+unable to discover her thoughts; she was smiling and cordial; and
+apologized for losing her slipper. "I always do," she explained. James
+Polder hastily rose, and came around to assist her. The dinner was at an
+end, and she stood with a slim, silken foot outheld for him to replace
+the fragile object of search.
+
+They reassembled above, and Mrs. Polder suggested music. "My son says
+you are very fond of good music," she addressed Howat Penny. "I can tell
+you it is a lovely taste. We have the prettiest records that come.
+Isabella, put on _Hark, Hark, the Lark_." She obediently rose, and,
+revolving the handle of the talking machine, fixed the grooved, rubber
+disk and needle. Howat listened with a stony countenance to the ensuing
+strains. Such instruments were his particular detestation. Mrs. Polder
+waved her hand dreamily. "Now," she said, "the _Sextette_, and _The End
+of a Perfect Day_. No, Mr. Penny would like to hear _Salome_, I'm sure,
+with all those cymbals and creepy Eastern tunes." An orgy of sound
+followed, applauded--perversely, he was certain--by Mariana. James, he
+saw, was as uneasy as himself; but for a totally different reason. He
+gazed at Mariana with a fierce devotion patent to the most casual eye;
+his expression was tormented with concern and longing.
+
+"When do you return to Harrisburg?" Byron Polder inquired. "My son," he
+went on to Howat Penny, "is a practical iron man. I say iron, although
+that is no longer the phrase, because of natural associations. The
+present system of the manufacture of steel, as you doubtless know,
+evolved from the old Ironmasters, of whose blood James has a generous
+share. We look to him to re-establish, er--a departed importance. I need
+say no more." His women's anxiety at this trend of speech became
+painful. "Play a right lively piece," Mrs. Polder interjected, and an
+intolerable cacophony of banjoes followed, making conversation futile.
+
+The evening, Howat Penny felt, was a considerable success; by heaven,
+Mariana would never get herself into this! Byron Polder's innuendoes
+must have annoyed her nicely. When the mechanical disturbance ceased,
+Mrs. Polder said, "I believe that's the bell." Evidently she had been
+correct, for, immediately after, a young woman with bright gold hair,
+and a mobile, pink countenance unceremoniously entered the room. "Oh!"
+she exclaimed, in an instinctively statuesque surprise; "I didn't know
+you were entertaining company."
+
+"Come right in, Harriet," Mrs. Polder heartily proclaimed. "Miss Jannan,
+Mr. Penny, this is Isabella's friend, Harriet de Barry, a near neighbour
+and a sweet girl. She's an actress, too; understudies Vivian Blane; and
+is better, lots say, than the lead."
+
+Harriet de Barry made a comprehensive gesture. "I wanted to say good-bye
+to you all," she announced. "I am going on tour. Leave at midnight. Just
+had a wire from Mrs. Blane." There were polite Polder exclamations,
+regret, congratulations; through which the son of the house moodily
+gazed at the carpet. "Haven't you anything to say to Hatty?" his mother
+demanded. "And after all the passes she sent you." Howat Penny saw
+Mariana's gaze rest swiftly on the latest comer's obvious good looks;
+and the scrutiny, he was certain, held a cold feminine appraisal. As
+they descended to leave Mariana lingered on the stairs with Jim. The
+latter closed the door of the public motor with a low, intense mutter;
+and, moving away, Howat Penny lit a cigarette with a breath of audible
+relief.
+
+"I don't know which I detest most," Mariana declared viciously, "you or
+myself."
+
+"You might include that fish," he added plaintively. She gazed at him in
+cold contempt, with an ugly, protruding lip. Nothing else was said until
+they were in the opened room at the Jannans. Mariana flung herself on a
+broad divan, with her narrowed gaze fixed on the points of her slippers.
+"Comfortable, isn't it," she addressed him; "this feeling of
+superiority?" He placidly nodded, inwardly highly pleased. "I wish I'd
+married Jim the first week I knew him, without trying to be so dam'
+admirable. Howat, what is it that makes people what they are, and
+aren't?" It was, he told her, difficult to express; but it had to do
+with inherited associations. "Mrs. Polder is as kind as possible," she
+asserted; "and I could see that you were absorbed in Kate."
+
+"Really, Mariana," he protested, "at times you are a little rough. She
+is a very fine girl; in fact, reminds me of Scalchi. Old Byron, though,
+what--a regular catafalque!" A blundering step mounted to the stair;
+Kingsfrere entered and stood wavering and concerned, the collar wilted
+and a gaiter missing. "Ought to do something about the front door," he
+asserted; "frightful condition, no paint; and full of splinters. Very
+plump splinters," he specified, examining a hand. Mariana surveyed him
+coolly, thoroughly. "Sweet, isn't he?" she remarked. "Kingsfrere Gilbert
+Todd Jannan."
+
+"That's absolutely all," that individual assured her. "Except if you
+want to add Sturgeon; some do. Hullow, Howat! Grand old boy, Howat," he
+told her. "But if he says I'm drunk, I will tell you one of Bundy's
+stories about him. This--this elegant deception tremendous noise with
+the song birds." He sat abruptly on a providentially convenient chair.
+There, limply, he hiccoughed. "Sweet," Mariana repeated. Kingsfrere
+finally rose, and, with a friendly wave, wandered from the room.
+
+"It was good of you to take me, Howat," she told him wearily. "Although,
+now, I can see that you went willingly enough. You thought it would cure
+me. But of what, Howat--of love? Of a feeling that, perhaps, I'd found a
+reason for living?"
+
+A decidedly uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an
+unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation
+to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he assured
+himself; Mariana's inherent, well--prejudices, couldn't be charged to
+him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed him. She
+was his greatest, his only concern. Howat Penny reviewed his desire for
+her, his preference for a Mariana untouched by the common surge of
+living. He recalled the discontent, the feeling of sterility, that had
+lately possessed him; the suspicion that his life had been in vain. All
+his philosophy, his accumulated convictions, were involved; and, tie in
+hand, he sat endeavouring to pierce the confusion of his ideas.
+
+He was conscious of a slow change gathering within him; and, in itself,
+that consciousness was disturbing. It had a vaguely dark, chill aspect.
+He shivered, in the room super-heated by summer; his blood ran thinner
+and cold. Howat Penny had a sudden, startling sense of his utter
+loneliness; there was absolutely no one, now, to whom he could turn for
+the understanding born of long and intimately affectionate association.
+Mariana was lost to him in her own poignant affair ... No children. So
+many, so much, dead. His countenance, however, grew firm with the
+determination that age should not find him a coward. He had always been
+bitterly contemptuous of the men that, surfeiting their appetites,
+showed at the impotent last a cheap repentance. But he had done nothing
+pointedly wrong; he had--the inversion repeated itself--done nothing.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+At Shadrach his customary decision returned; he went about, or sat
+reading, well-ordered, cool-appearing, dogmatic. He learned from the
+_Evening Post_ that Mariana was at Warrenton. She had carefully
+described to him the Virginia country life, the gaiety and hard riding
+of the transplanted English colonies; and he pictured her at the
+successive horse shows, in the brilliant groups under the Doric columns
+of the porticoes. Then, he saw, she had gone north; he found her picture
+in a realistic Egyptian costume with bare, painted legs at an
+extravagant ball. He studied her countenance, magnifying it with a
+reading glass; but he saw nothing beyond a surface enjoyment of the
+moment.
+
+Then, to his utter surprise, on an evening after dinner, when he was
+seated in the settling dusk of the porch, intent on the grey movements
+of his familiar owls, a quick step mounted the path, and James Polder
+appeared.
+
+"I wanted to ask about Miss Jannan," the latter stated frankly and at
+once. Howat Penny cleared his throat sharply. "I believe she is well,"
+he stated formally. "You will find it cooler here." It struck him that
+the young man was not deficient in that particular. More, of still
+greater directness, followed. "I suppose you know," Polder stated, "that
+I want to marry her ... and she won't."
+
+"I had gathered something of the sort," the other admitted. "It's
+natural, in a way." Polder proceeded gloomily: "I'd take her away from
+so much. And, yet, look here--you can shut me up if you like--what's it
+all about? Can you tell me that?" Howat Penny couldn't. "I'm not to
+blame for that old mess any more than you. And it's not my fault if
+something of--of which you think so much came to me by the back door.
+I've always wanted what Mariana is," he burst out, "and I have never
+been satisfied with what I could get. And when I saw her, hell--what's
+the use!
+
+"Any one in Harrisburg will tell you I am a good man," he reiterated, at
+a slightly different angle. "When you kick through out of that racket of
+hunkies and steel you've done something. Soon I'll be getting five or
+six thousand." He paused, and the other said dryly, "Admirable." The
+phrase seemed to him inadequate; it sounded in his ear as unpleasantly
+as a false note. Yet he was powerless to alter it, change its brusque
+accent. The personal tone of Polder's revelations was inherently
+distasteful to him. He said, rising, "If you will excuse me I'll tell
+Rudolph you will be here."
+
+"But I won't," Polder replied; "there's a train back at eleven. I have
+to be at the mills for the day shift to-morrow. I came out because I
+had to talk a little about Mariana." He had deserted the more formal
+address. "And I wanted to tell some one connected with her that I have
+gimp of my own. I know why she won't marry me, and it's a small reason;
+it would be small in--"
+
+"Hold up," Howat Penny interrupted, incensed. "Am I to understand that
+you came here to complain about Miss Jannan's conduct? That won't do,
+you know."
+
+"It's a small reason," the other insisted hotly. "Hardly more than the
+idiotic fact that I'm not in the Social Register. I am ashamed of her,
+and I said so. It was so little that I told her I wouldn't argue. She
+could go to the devil."
+
+"Really," the other observed, "really, I shall have to ask you to
+control your language or leave."
+
+"I wonder if she will?" the surprising James Polder sombrely speculated.
+"I wonder if I am? But there are other women, with better hearts."
+
+"Are we to construe this as a threat?" Howat asked in a delicately
+balanced tone.
+
+"For God's sake," he begged, "can't you be human!" The other suddenly
+recalled Mariana's imploring anger at the Polders. "Don't be so rotten,
+Howat." The confusion of his valuations, his habitual attitudes of
+thought, returned. His gaze strayed to the obscured ruin of Shadrach
+Furnace, at once a monument of departed vigour and present
+disintegration. Perhaps, just as the energy had expired in the Furnace,
+it had seeped from him. It might be that he was only a sere husk, a dry
+bundle of inhibitions, insensible to the green humanity of life.
+
+"I couldn't go on my knees to anything," the younger took up his burden.
+"Wrong or not it is the way I'm made. I'd not hang about where I wasn't
+wanted. Although you mightn't think it. And I am sorry I came here. I do
+things like that all the time; I mean I do, say, exactly the opposite of
+what I plan. You'll think I am a braying ass, of course."
+
+"Stop for a breath," Howat Penny recommended; "a breath, and a
+cigarette." He extended his case; and, in place of taking a cigarette,
+Polder examined the case resentfully. "There is it," he declared;
+"correct, like all the rest of you. And it's only old leather. But mine
+would be different. I could sink and Mariana wouldn't put out a hand
+just on account of that. It's wrong," he insisted. Expressed in that
+manner it did seem to Howat Penny a small reason for the withholding of
+any paramount salvation. Yet, he told himself, he had no intention,
+desire, to undertake the weight of any reformation. A futile effort, he
+added, with his vague consciousness of implacable destiny, his dim sense
+of man moved from without, in locked progression. Polder was young,
+rebellious; but he could grow older; he would grow older and comprehend;
+or else beat himself to death on obdurate circumstance. What concerned
+Howat was the hope that Mariana would be no further involved in either
+process. She too had this to learn--that, in the end, blood was stronger
+than will; the dead were terribly potent. He had, even, no inclination
+to say any of this to the man frowning in the dusk at his side. It would
+be useless, a mere preaching. An expression, too, of a slight but actual
+sympathy for James Polder would be misleading. In the main Howat was
+entirely careless of what might happen to the other; it was only where,
+unfortunately, he touched Mariana that he entered into the elder's
+world. He would sacrifice him for Mariana in an instant. Polder rose.
+
+"I must leave," he announced. Howat Penny expressed no regret, and the
+other hesitated awkwardly. "It's no use!" he finally exclaimed. "I can't
+reach you; as if one of us spoke Patagonian. Hellish, it seems to me."
+He turned and disappeared, as violently as he had come, over the
+obscurity of the lawn. A reddish, misshapen moon hung low in the sky,
+and gave the aging man an extraordinarily vivid impression of dead
+planets, unthinkable wastes of time, illimitable systems and spaces.
+James Polder's passionate resentment, his own emotion, were no more
+articulate than the thin whirring of the locusts. He went quickly into
+the house, to the warm glow of his lamp, the memories of his pictures,
+the figurine in baked clay with Hermes' wand of victory.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+The heat dragged through the remainder of August and filled September
+with steaming days and heavy nights, followed by driving grey storms and
+premonitory, chill dawns. A period of sunny tranquillity succeeded, but
+crimson blots of sumach, the warmer tone of maples, made it evident that
+summer had lapsed. Honduras mulched the strawberries, and set new teeth
+in his lawn rakes. The days passed without feature, or word from
+Mariana, and Howat Penny fell into an almost slumberous monotony of
+existence. It was not unpleasant; occupied with small duties, intent on
+his papers, or wandering in a past that seemed to grow clearer, rather
+than fade, as time multiplied, he maintained his erect, carefully
+ordered existence. Then, among his mail, he found a large,
+formal-appearing envelope which he opened with a mild curiosity. His
+attitude of detachment was soon dispelled.
+
+Mrs. Corinne de Barry desired the pleasure of his attendance at the
+wedding of her daughter, Harriet, to James Polder. Details, a church and
+hour, were appended. The headlong young man, he thought, with a smile,
+Mariana was well out of that. He had been wise in saying nothing to
+Charlotte; the thing had expired naturally. But, irrationally, he
+thought of Polder with a trace of contempt--a man who had,
+unquestionably, possessed Mariana Jannan's regard marrying the
+pink-faced understudy to a second-rate emotional actress! In a way it
+made him cross; the fellow should have shown a--a greater appreciation,
+delicacy. "Commonplace," he said decisively, aloud. The following day
+Mariana herself appeared, with a touch of sable and a small, wickedly
+becoming hat.
+
+He was at lunch; and, without delay, she took the place smilingly laid
+for her by Rudolph. It was characteristic that she made no pretence of
+concealing the reason that had brought her to Shadrach. "Jim's going to
+marry that Harriet de Barry," she said at once, nicely casual. "I had a
+card," he informed her. "It's to be on the thirtieth," Mariana
+proceeded, "at eight o'clock and in church. Of course you are going."
+
+"Not at all of course," he replied energetically. "And you'll stay away
+for the plainest decency."
+
+"We will go together," she proceeded calmly. "I want to see Jim married,
+happy." She gazed at him with narrowed eyes.
+
+"Mariana," he told her, "that's a shameful lie. It is cold, feminine
+curiosity. It's worse--the only vulgar thing I can remember your
+considering. I won't hear of it." He debated the wisdom of recounting
+James Polder's last visit to Shadrach and decided in the negative. "Let
+the young man depart with his Harriet in peace."
+
+"It's sickening, isn't it?" she queried. "And yet it is so like Jim. He
+had a very objectional idea of his dignity; he was sensitive in a way
+that made me impatient. He couldn't forget himself, you see. That helped
+to make it difficult for me; I wasn't used to it; his feelings were
+always being damaged."
+
+Howat Penny nodded. "You'll recall I emphasized that." Mariana looked
+worn by her gaiety, he decided, white; for the first time in his memory
+she seemed older than her actual years. Her friends, he knew, her
+existence, bore the general appellation, fast; Howat had no share in the
+condemnatory aspect of the term, but he realized that it had a literal
+application. Their pace was feverish, and Mariana plainly showed its
+effects. Her voice, already noted as more mature, had, he was sure,
+hardened. She dabbled her lips thickly with a rouge stick. "Mariana," he
+said querulously, "I wish, you'd stop this puppet dance you're leading.
+I wish you would marry."
+
+"I tried to," she coolly replied, "but you spoiled my young dream of
+happiness."
+
+"That isn't true," he asserted sharply, perturbed. "Anything that
+happened, or didn't happen, was only the result of yourself, of what you
+are. I am extremely anxious to have you settled, and your legs out of
+the Sunday papers. I--I am opposed to your present existence; it's gone
+on too long. I believe I'd rather see you orating on the streets, like
+Eliza Provost. And, by thunder, I never thought I should come to that!
+Champagne and those damnable syncopated tunes played by hysterical
+niggers make a poor jig." He spoke impetuously, unconscious of any
+reversal of previous judgments, opinions.
+
+"You are so difficult to please, Howat," she said wearily; "you were
+aghast at the thought of my marrying James, and now you are complaining
+of the natural alternative. The truth is," she added brutally, "you are
+old-fashioned; you think life goes on just as it did when the Academy of
+Music was the centre of your world. And nothing is the same." She rose,
+and, with a lighted cigarette and half-shut eyes, fell into a rhythmic
+step of sensuous abandon. "You see," she remarked, pausing. An
+increasing dread for her filled his heart. He felt, in response to her
+challenge, a sudden bewilderment in the world of to-day. Things, Howat
+Penny told himself, were marching to the devil. He said this irritably,
+loud, and she laughed. "I'm going in by an early train," she proceeded.
+"We have left the country. Will you stop for me on the thirtieth? Early,
+Howat, so we can be sure of a good place."
+
+His helplessness included the subject of her remarks; he would, he
+realized, be at James Polder's wedding, but he persisted in his opinion.
+"A low piece of business," Howat declared. When she had gone he felt
+that he had not penetrated her actual attitude toward Polder's
+deflection. He had not for a moment got beneath her casual manner, her
+lightness, pretended or actual. He wished vehemently that he were back
+again in the past he comprehended, among the familiar figures that had
+thronged the notable dinner to Patti, the women who had floated so
+graciously through the poetry of departed waltzes. He got out his albums
+once more, scrutinized through his polished glass the programmes of
+evenings famous in song. But he went to bed a full two hours earlier
+than customary; his feet positively dragged up the stairs; above he sat
+strangely exhausted, breathing heavily for, apparently, no reason
+whatever.
+
+He retraced, with Mariana, the course over the broad, asphalt way into
+the north end of the city early on the evening of the thirtieth. They
+found the church easily, by reason of a striped canvas tunnel stretched
+out to the curb; and a young man with plastered hair and a gardenia led
+them, Mariana on his arm, to a place on the centre aisle. The church had
+a high nave newly vaulted in maple, and stained glass windows draped
+with smilax, garish in colour against electric lights. Above the altar a
+great illuminated cross maintained an unsteady flickering; and--it was
+unseasonably cold--heating steam pipes gave out an expanding racket.
+
+The pews through the centre filled rapidly; there was a low, excited
+chatter of voices, and a spreading tropical expanse of the dyed
+feathers and iridescent foliage of womens' hats. An overpowering scent
+of mingled perfumes rose and filled the interior. The strains of an
+organ grew audible, contesting with the rattle of the steam pipes. Howat
+Penny was detached, critical. Mariana, in a dull, black satin wrap of
+innumerable soft folds and wide paisley collar slipping from a
+sheath-like bodice of gleaming, cut steel beading, was silent,
+incurious. He turned to her, to point out an extravagant figure, but he
+said nothing. She was, evidently, in no mood for the enjoyment of the
+ridiculous. This disturbed him; he had not thought that she would be
+so--so concerned. He suppressed an impatient exclamation, and returned
+to the scrutiny of the culminating ceremony.
+
+Here was a sphere, vastly larger than his own, to the habits and
+prejudices of which he was complete stranger. It was as James Polder had
+said--as if one or the other spoke Patagonian. He had no wish to acquire
+the language about him; a positive antagonism to his surrounding
+possessed him, beyond reason. He thought--how different Mariana is from
+all this, and was annoyed again at her serious bearing. Then he was
+surprised by his presence there at all; confound the girl, why didn't
+she play with her own kind! Yet only the other day the glimpse she had
+given him of her natural associates had filled him with dread. His mind,
+striving to encompass the problem of Mariana's existence, failed to
+overcome the walls built about him by time, by habit. He gave it up. The
+louder pealing of the organ announced immediate developments.
+
+There was a stir in the front of the church, a clergyman in white
+vestment advanced; and, at a sudden murmurous interest, a twisting of
+heads, the wedding procession moved slowly up the aisle. The ushers,
+painstakingly adopting various lengths of stride to the requirements of
+the organ, passed in pairs; then followed an equal number of young
+women, among whom he instantly recognized the handsome presence of Kate
+Polder, in drooping blue bonnets, with prodigious panniers of
+celestial-hued silk, carrying white enamelled shepherd's crooks from
+which depended loops of artificial buttercups. An open space ensued, in
+the centre of which advanced a child with starched white skirts
+springing out in a lacy wheel about spare, bare knees, her pale yellow
+hair tied in an overwhelming blue bow; and holding outstretched, in a
+species of intense and quivering agony, a white velvet cushion to which
+were pinned two gold wedding bands.
+
+After that, Howat Penny thought, the prospective bride could furnish
+only the diminished spectacle of an anti-climax. Led by the virginal
+presence of Isabella Polder she floated forward in a foam of white tulle
+and dragging satin attached below her bare, full shoulders. A floating
+veil, pinned with a wreath of orange blossoms, manifestly wax, covered
+the metallic gold of her hair. Her countenance was unperturbed,
+statuesque, and pink. As the sentimental clamour of the organ died the
+steam pipes took up, with renewed vigour, their utilitarian noise. "Why
+don't they turn them off?" Mariana exclaimed in his ear. Personally he
+enjoyed such an accompaniment to what he designated as the performance.
+
+He cast the participants in their inevitable roles--the bride as prima
+donna, James Polder the heroic tenor. Mrs. Corinne de Barry, a thin,
+concerned figure in glistening lavender, supported a lamenting mezzo,
+the bulky, masculine figure at her side, with an imposing diamond on a
+hand like two bricks, was beautifully basso--
+
+His train of thought was abruptly upset by James Polder's familiar,
+staccato utterance. The precipitant young man! It stamped out all Howat
+Penny's humorous condescension; his sensitive ear was conscious of a
+note, almost, of desperation. He avoided looking at Mariana. Damn it,
+the thing unexpectedly cut at him like a knife. James Polder said, "I
+will." The clear, studied tones of Harriet de Barry, understudy to
+Vivian Blane, were spoiled by the crackling of steam. Howat moved
+uneasily; he had an absurd sense of guilt; he hated the whole
+proceeding. What was that Polder, whose voice persisted so darkly in his
+hearing, about, getting himself into such a snarl? He recalled what the
+younger had said on his porch--"women with better hearts." He had
+implored him, Howat Penny, to be "more human." The memory, too, of the
+shaken tone of that request bothered him. Now it appeared that he might
+have been, well, more human. He composed himself, facing such
+sentimental illusions, into a savage indifference to what remained of
+the ceremony; he ignored the passage of Polder, with Harriet Polder on
+his arm; the relief of the unspeakable child carrying the white velvet
+cushion no longer in the manner of a hot plate; the united bridesmaids
+and ushers. "Thank heaven, that's over!" he ejaculated in the
+deeply-comfortable space of the Jannan's motor laundalet. "But it
+isn't," Mariana said briefly. She sat silent, with her head turned from
+him, through the remainder of the short drive about Rittenhouse Square.
+Then she went abruptly to her room.
+
+Charlotte Jannan and her oldest child, Sophie Lewis, were above in the
+living room. The former was handsome in a rigid way; her countenance,
+squarely and harshly formed, with grey hair exactly waved and pinned,
+had an expression of cold firmness; her voice was assertive and final.
+Sophie, apparently midway in appearance between Kingsfrere and Mariana,
+was gracefully proportioned, and gave an impression of illusive beauty
+by means of a mystery of veils, such as were caught up on her hat now.
+They were discussing, he discovered, the family.
+
+"It's an outrage, Howat," Charlotte told him, "you never married, and
+that the name will go. Here's Mariana at twenty-seven, almost, and
+nothing in sight; and Sophie flatly refuses, after only one, to have
+another child. I wish now I'd had a dozen. It is really the duty of the
+proper people. And Eliza Provost won't hear of a man! I tell Sophie it's
+their own fault when they complain about society to-day. It's the fault
+of this charity work and athletics, too; both extremely levelling.
+Hundreds of women wind bandages or go to the hunt races and gabble about
+votes for no reason under heaven but superior associates."
+
+"Howat will feelingly curse the present with you," Sophie said rising.
+"I must go. Borrow the motor, if you don't mind. I saw in the paper a
+Polder was married." Howat Penny lit a cigarette, admirably stolid. "A
+name I never repeat," Charlotte Jannan said when her daughter had left.
+He heard again the echo of James Polder's intense voice, "I will."
+Something of his dislike for him, he discovered, had evaporated. Howat
+thought of Mariana, in her room--alone with what feelings? He realized
+that Charlotte would never have forgiven her for any excursion in that
+direction. He himself had been, was, entirely opposed to such a
+connection. However, he could now dismiss it into the past that held a
+multitude of similarly futile imaginings.
+
+Charlotte, he inferred, had no elasticity; it was a quality the absence
+of which he had not before noted. She was a little narrow in her
+complacency. Her patent satisfaction in Sophie was a shade too--too
+worldly. Sam Lewis was, of course, irreproachably situated; but he was,
+at the same time, thick-witted, an indolent appendage for his name.
+Suddenly he felt poignantly sorry for Mariana; in a way she seemed to
+have been trapped by life. James Polder resembled her in that he had
+been caught in an ugly net of circumstance. A great deal had been upset
+since his day, when the boxes and pit had been so conveniently
+separated; old boundaries no longer defined, limited, their content;
+social demarcations were being obliterated by a growing disaffection. It
+was very unfortunate, for, as he was seeing, unhappiness ensued. It was
+bound to. An irritability seized him at being dragged into such useless
+conjecturing; into, at his age, confusing complications; and he greeted
+with relief the long, low front of his dwelling at Shadrach, its old
+grey stone a seeming outcropping of the old green turf, the aged,
+surrounding trees.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Mariana, however, followed him almost immediately. She stood before him
+in an informal, belted black wool sweater, a ridiculously inadequate
+skirt, and the solid shoes he detested on women. But he soon forgot her
+garb.
+
+"Howat," she told him, "I have made a cowardly and terrible mistake. I
+was meant to marry Jimmy, and I didn't. Perhaps I have ruined his life.
+Mine will be nothing without him." They were in the middle room, and a
+fire of hickory was burning in the panelled hearth. She dropped on a
+chair, and sat gazing into the singing flames. Here it's all to do over,
+he thought, with a feeling of weariness. "He may get along very well
+with his Harriet," he remarked, resentful of his dissipated contentment.
+
+"You know he won't," she replied sharply. "He loves me; and I love him,
+Howat. I never knew how much, or how little anything else mattered,
+until I was in my room, after his wedding. It wasn't a wedding, really,"
+she declared. "All that doesn't make one. He'll find it out, too. Jimmy
+will be desperate, and I'm afraid he will drink harder. He told me they
+were getting frightfully strict about that at the Works. And there's
+that reorganization; it will embitter him if he isn't made
+superintendent. He has worked splendidly for it. That woman he--he went
+off with is a squash," she said vindictively. "She will be in bed when
+he goes away in the morning, and in crepe de Chine negligee when he gets
+back. Perhaps it won't last," she added thoughtfully.
+
+The sense of future security generated in Howat Penny by the marriage
+abruptly departed. He fumbled with his glass, directed it at Mariana.
+"What do you mean by that?" he demanded. "I would go to him like a shot,
+if he needed me," she coolly returned. The dreadful part of it was that
+he was sure she would. "Nonsense," he asserted, hiding his concern;
+"there will be no fence climbing." All this came from the letting down
+of conversational bars, the confounded books he found about on tables.
+Words, like everything else, had lost their meanings. In his day a bad
+woman was bad, a good, likewise, good; but the Lord couldn't tell them
+apart now. It was the dancing, too. Might as well be married to a man,
+he thought.
+
+Mariana was haggard, the paint on her face crudely--paint. He saw that
+there were tears in her eyes, and he turned away confused, rose. The
+slot in his cigarette box refused to open, and he shook it violently,
+then put it back with a clatter. "Tell Rudolph you're here," he said
+disjointedly; and, miserable, left the room. Dressing he stood at a
+window; the west held a narrow strip of crimson light under a windy mass
+of cloud. The ruin of Shadrach Furnace was sombre. Within, the room was
+almost bare. There was a large, high-posted bed without drapings, a
+vermilion lacquered table, dark with age, supporting a glass lamp at its
+side; a set of drawers with old brass handles; a pair of stiff Adam
+chairs with wheel backs; and a modern mahogany dressing case, variously
+and conveniently divided, a clear mirror in the door.
+
+The day failed rapidly, and he lit a pair of small lamps on the set of
+drawers. The sun sank in no time at all. Mariana, crying. The girl ought
+to go to her mother, and not come out to him, an old man, with her
+intimate troubles. "A name I never repeat," Charlotte had said. That was
+just like her. Small sympathy there, and no more understanding. He
+knotted his tie hurriedly, askew; and gathered the ends once more. It
+tired him a little to dress in the evening; often he longed to stay
+relaxed, pondering, until Rudolph called him to dinner. But every day
+something automatic, tyrannical, dragged him up to his room, encased him
+in rigid linen, formal black. Mariana, against the fireplace, ate
+listlessly; and, later, he beat her with shameful ease at sniff.
+
+"You can't do that," he pointed out with asperity, when she
+thoughtlessly joined unequal numbers. "Why not?" she asked. She must be
+addled. "It's against the rule." Mariana said, "I'm tired of rules."
+She always had put away the dominoes, but to-night she ignored them, and
+he returned the pieces to their morocco case. She relapsed into silence
+and a chair; and he sat with gaze fixed on the hickory in the fireplace,
+burning to impalpable, white ash.
+
+What a procession of logs had been there reduced to dust, warming
+generations of men now cold. The thought of all those lapsed winters and
+lives soothed him; the clamour of living seemed to retreat, to leave him
+in a grey tranquillity. His head sank forward, and his narrow, dark
+hands rested in absolute immobility on the arms of his chair. He roused
+suddenly to discover that Mariana had gone up, and that there were only
+some fitful, rosy embers of fire left. In November it had been his
+custom to go into town for the winter; and it was time for him to make
+such arrangement; but, all at once, he was overwhelmingly reluctant to
+face the change, the stir, of moving. The city seemed intolerably noisy,
+oppressive; the thought of the hurrying, indifferent crowds disconcerted
+him. At Shadrach it was quiet, familiar, spacious. He had had enough of
+excursions, strange faces, problems.... He would speak to Rudolph. Stay.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+The countryside, it appeared to Howat Penny, flamed with autumn and
+faded in a day. Throughout the night he heard the crisp sliding of dead
+leaves over the roof, the lash of the wind swung impotently about the
+rectangular, stone block of his dwelling. At the closing of shutters the
+December gales only penetrated to him in a thin, distant complaint. The
+burning hickory curtained the middle room with a ruddy warmth. It was a
+period of extreme peace; he slept for long hours in a deep chair, or sat
+lost in a simulation of sleep, living again in the past. The present was
+increasingly immaterial, unimportant; old controversies occupied him,
+long since stilled; and among the memories of opera, of Eames as a
+splendid girl, forgotten roles, were other, vaguer associations,
+impressions which seemed to linger from actual happenings, but
+persistently evaded definition. At times, his eyes closed, the glow of
+his fireplace burned hotter, more lurid, and was filled with faintly
+clamorous sounds; at times there was, woven through his half-wakeful
+dreaming, a monotonous beat ... such as the fall of a hammer. He saw,
+too, strange and yet familiar faces--a girl in silk like an extravagant
+tea rose; a countenance seamed and glistening with pain floated in
+shadow; and then another mocked and mocked him. Once he heard the
+drumming of rain, close above; and the illusion was so strong that he
+made his way to the door; a black void was glistening with cold and
+relentless stars.... Now he was standing by a dark, hurrying river,
+nothing else was visible; and yet he was thrilled by a sense of utter
+rapture.
+
+He developed a feeling of the impermanence of life, his hold upon it no
+stronger than the tenuous cord of a balloon straining impatiently in
+great, unknown currents. The future lost all significance, reality;
+there were only memories; the vista behind was long and clear, but the
+door to to-morrow was shut. Looking into his mirror the reflection was
+far removed; it was hollow-cheeked and silvered, unfamiliar. He half
+expected to see a different face, not less lean, but more arrogant, with
+a sharply defined chin. The actual, blurred visage accorded ill with his
+trains of thought; it was out of place among the troops of gala youth.
+
+A wired letter, a customary present of cigarettes, came from Mariana on
+Christmas, gifts from Charlotte and Bundy Provost. There was champagne
+at his place for dinner; and he sealed crisp money in envelopes
+inscribed Rudolph, Honduras, and the names of the cook and maid. He
+drank the wine solemnly; the visions were gone; and he saw himself as an
+old man lingering out of his time, alone. There was, however, little
+sentimental melancholy in the realization; he held an upright pride, the
+inextinguishable accent of a black Penny. His disdain for the
+commonality of life still dictated his prejudices. He informed Rudolph
+again that the present opera was without song; and again Rudolph gravely
+echoed the faith that melody was the heart of music.
+
+The winds grew even higher, shriller; the falls of snow vanished before
+drenching, brown rains, and the afternoons perceptibly lengthened. There
+was arbutus on the slopes, robins, before he recognized that April was
+accomplished. A farmer ploughed the vegetable garden behind the house;
+and Honduras dragged the cedar bean poles from their resting place.
+Mariana soon appeared.
+
+"I wouldn't miss the spring at Shadrach for a hundred years of
+hibiscus," she told him. He gathered that she had been south. She
+brought him great pleasure, beat him with annoying frequency at sniff,
+and was more companionable than ever before. She had, he thought, forgot
+James Polder; and he was careful to avoid the least reference to the
+latter. Mariana was a sensible girl; birth once more had told.
+
+She was better looking than he had remembered her, more tranquil; a
+distinguished woman. It was incredible that a man approximately her
+equal had not appeared. Then, without warning--they were seated on the
+porch gazing through the tender green foliage of the willow at the
+vivid young wheat beyond--she said:
+
+"Howat, I am certain that things are going badly with Jimmy. He wrote to
+me willingly in the winter, but twice since then he hasn't answered a
+letter."
+
+He suppressed a sharp, recurrent concern. "It's that Harriet," he told
+her, capitally diffident. "You are stupid to keep it up. What chance
+would he have had answering her letters married to you?"
+
+"This is different," she replied confidently. He saw that he had been
+wrong--nothing had changed, lessened. Howat swore silently. That
+damnable episode might well spoil her entire existence. But he wisely
+avoided argument, comment. A warm current of air, fragrant with apple
+blossoms, caught the ribbon-like smoke of his cigarette and dissipated
+it. She smiled with half-closed eyes at the new flowering of earth. Her
+expression grew serious, firm. "I think we'd better go out to
+Harrisburg," she remarked, elaborately casual, "and see Jimmy for
+ourselves."
+
+He protested vehemently, but--from experience in that quarter--with a
+conviction of futility. "She'll laugh at you," he told Mariana. "Haven't
+you any proper pride?" She shook her head.
+
+"Not a scrap. It's just that quality in Jim that annoyed me, and spoiled
+everything. I'd cook for them if it would do any good." Irritation
+mastered him. "This is shameful, Mariana," he declared. "Don't your
+position, your antecedents, stand for anything? If I had Jasper Penny
+here I would tell him what I thought of his confounded behaviour!" He
+rose, and walked the length of the porch and back.
+
+"The first part of next week?" she queried. "I won't go a mile," he
+stated, in sheer bravado. "Then," said Mariana, "I must do it alone." He
+muttered a period in which the term hussy was solely audible. "Which of
+us?" she asked, calmly. "Actually," he exploded, "I feel sorry for that
+Harriet. I sympathize with her. She got the precious James fair enough,
+and the decent thing for you is to keep away."
+
+"But I'm not decent either," Mariana continued. "If you could know what
+is in my head you'd recognize that. I seem to have no good qualities. I
+don't want them, Howat," her voice intensified; "I want Jim."
+
+He was completely silenced by this desire persisting in spite of every
+established obstacle. It summoned an increasing response at the core of
+his being. Such an attitude was, more remotely, his own; but in him it
+had been purely negative, an inhibition rather than a challenge; he had
+kept out of life instead of actively defying it. In him the family
+inheritance of blackness was subsiding with the rest.
+
+Howat maintained until the moment of their departure his protest, his
+perverse community with Harriet Polder. "You'll find a happy house," he
+predicted, "and come home like a fool. I hope you do. It ought to help
+make you more reasonable. She will tell James to give you a comfortable
+chair, and apologize for not asking you to dinner." She gazed through
+the car window without replying. He realized that he had never seen
+Mariana more becomingly dressed--she wore a rough, silver-coloured suit
+with a short jacket, a pale green straw hat, like the new willow leaves,
+across the blueness of her eyes, and an innumerably ruffled and flounced
+waist of thinnest batiste. A square, deep emerald hung from a platinum
+chain about her neck; and a hand, stripped of its thick white glove,
+showed an oppressive, prismatic glitter of diamonds.
+
+The morning was filled with dense, low, grey cloud, under which the
+river on their left flowed without a glimmer of brightness. Howat was
+aware of an increasing sulphurous pall, and suddenly the train was
+passing an apparently endless confusion of great, corrugated iron sheds,
+rows of towering, smoking stacks, enormous, black cylinders, systems of
+tracks over which shrilling locomotives hauled carloads of broken slag,
+or bumped strings of trucks, with reckless energy, in and out of the
+grimy interiors. The overpowering magnitude of the steel works--Howat
+Penny needed no assurance of its purpose--exceeded every preconception.
+
+Shut between the river and an abrupt hillside, where scattered dwellings
+and sparse trees and ground were coated with a soft monotony of
+rose-brown dust, the mills were jumbled in mile-long perspectives.
+Above the immediate noise of the train he could hear the sullen, blended
+roar of an infinity of strident sounds--the screaming of whistles, a
+choked, drumming thunder, rushing blasts of air, the shattering impact
+of steel rails, raw steam, and a multitudinous clangour of metal and
+jolting wheels and connective power. He passed rusting mountains
+straddled by giant gantries, the towering lifts of mammoth cranes, banks
+of chalk-white stone, dizzy super-structures mounted by spasmodic skips.
+
+As the train proceeded with scarcely abated speed, and the vast
+operation continued without a break, mill on mill, file after file of
+stacks, Howat Penny's senses were crushed by the spectacle of such
+incredible labour. Suddenly a column of fire, deep orange at the core,
+raying through paler yellow to a palpitating white brilliancy, shot up
+through the torn vapours, the massed and shuddering smoke, to the
+clouds, and was sharply withdrawn in a coppery smother pierced by a
+rapid, lance-like thrust of steel-blue flame.
+
+These stupendous miles were, to-day, the furnaces and forges that
+Gilbert Penny had built and operated in the pastoral clearings of the
+Province. Howat recalled the single, diminutive shed of Myrtle Forge,
+the slender stream, the wheel, its sole power; the solitary stack of
+Shadrach Furnace, recreated in his vision, opposed its insignificant
+bulk against the living greenery of overwhelming forests. Now the
+forests were gone, obliterated by the mills that had grown out of
+Gilbert's energy and determination, his pioneer courage. His spirit, the
+indomitable will of a handful of men, a small, isolated colony, had
+swept forward in a resistless tide, multiplying invention, improvement,
+with success until, as Howat had seen, their flares reached to the
+clouds, their industry spread in iron cities. James Polder had a part in
+this. Here, under the ringing walls of the steel mills, he got a fresh
+comprehension of the bitter, restless virility of the younger man.
+
+Out of the station Mariana furnished the driver of a public motor with
+James Polder's address, and they twisted through congested streets, past
+the domed Capitol, rising from intense green sod, flanked by involved
+groups of sculpture, to a quieter reach lying parallel with the river.
+They discovered Polder's house occupying a corner, one of a short row of
+yellow brick with a scrap of lawn bound by a low wall, and a porch
+continuous across the face of the dwellings.
+
+The door opened after a long interval, and a woman with bare arms and a
+spotted kitchen apron admitted them to an interior faintly permeated
+with the odours of cooking. There were redly varnished chairs, upright
+piano, a heavily framed saccharine print of loves and a flushed,
+sleeping divinity; a table scarred by burning cigarettes, holding cerise
+knitting on needles one of which was broken, glasses with dregs of beer,
+a photograph in a tarnished silver frame of Harriet de Barry Polder
+with undraped shoulders and an exploited dimple, and a copy of a
+technical journal. A fretful, shrill barking rose at their heels; and
+Howat Penny swung his stick at a diminutive, silky white dog with
+matted, pinkish eyes, obsessed by an impotent fury.
+
+An indolent voice drifted from above. "Cherette!" And a low, masculine
+protest was audible. Mariana Jannan's face was inscrutable. The woman
+continued audibly, "How can I--like this? You will have to see what it
+is." A moment later James Polder, drawing on a coat, descended the
+stairs. He saw Mariana at once, and stood arrested with one foot on the
+floor, and a hand clutching the rail. A sudden pallor invaded his
+countenance and Howat turned away, inspecting the print. But he could
+not close his hearing to the suppressed eagerness, the stammering joy,
+of Polder's surprise.
+
+"And you, too," he said to the elder, with a crushing grip. Howat
+immediately recognized that the other was marked by an obvious ill
+health; his eyes were hung with shadows, like smudges of the iron dust,
+and his palm was hot and wet. "Harriet," he called up the stair, "here's
+Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny to see us." A complete silence above,
+then a sharp rustle, replied to his announcement. "Harriet will be right
+down," he continued; "fixing herself up a little first. Have trouble
+finding us? Second Street is high for a foreman, but we're moving out
+against the future."
+
+The dog maintained a stridulous barking; and James Polder carried her,
+in an ecstasy of snarling ill-temper, out. "Cherette doesn't appreciate
+callers," he stated, with an expression that contradicted the mildness
+of his words. His gaze, Howat thought, rested on Mariana with the
+intensity of a fanatic Arab at the apparition of Mohammed. And Mariana
+smiled back with a penetrating comprehension and sympathy. The
+proceeding made Howat Penny extremely uncomfortable; it was--was
+barefaced. He hoped desperately that something more appropriately casual
+would meet the appearance of Harriet. Mariana said:
+
+"You haven't been well." Polder replied that it was nothing. "I get a
+night shift," he explained, "and I've never learned to sleep through the
+day. We're working under unusual pressure, too; inhuman contracts,
+success." He smiled without gaiety. "You didn't answer my letter," the
+outrageous Mariana proceeded. Howat withered mentally at her cool
+daring, and Polder, now flushed, avoided her gaze. The necessity of
+answer was bridged by the descent of his wife. Her face, as always,
+brightly coloured, was framed in an instinctively effective twist of
+gold hair; and she wore an elaborately braided, white cloth skirt, a
+magenta georgette crepe waist, with a deep, boyish collar, drawn tightly
+across her full, soft body.
+
+"Isn't it fierce," she demanded cheerfully, "with Jim out as many nights
+as he's in bed?" She produced a pasteboard package of popular
+cigarettes and offered them to Howat Penny and Mariana. "Sorry, I can't
+smoke any others," she explained, striking a match. "I heard you saying
+he doesn't look right," she addressed Mariana. "And it's certainly the
+truth. Who would with what he does? I tell him our life is all broke up.
+One night stands used to get me, but they're a metropolitan run compared
+with this. Honest to God," she told them good naturedly, "I've
+threatened to leave him already. I'd rather see him a property man with
+me on the road."
+
+"It must be a little wearing," Mariana agreed; "but then, you know, your
+husband is a steel man. This is his life." Howat Penny could see the
+cordiality ebbing from the other woman's countenance. Positively,
+Mariana ought to be ... "I can get that," Harriet Polder informed her.
+"We are only hanging on till Jim's made superintendent. Then we'll be
+regular inhabitants. Any other small thing?" At the sharpening note of
+her voice James Polder hurriedly proceeded with general facts. "You'll
+want to see the Works, as much as I can show you. Hardly any of the
+public are let through now. It will interest you, sir, to see what the
+Penny iron trade has become. I can take you down this afternoon. Harriet
+will find us some lunch." The latter moved in a sensuous deliberation,
+followed by a thin, acidulous trail of smoke, into inner rooms. "When do
+you have to go back?" Polder asked.
+
+"This evening," Howat told him; "we just stopped to--"
+
+"To see how you were," Mariana interrupted him baldly, studying the
+younger man with a concerned frown. "You ought to rest, you know," she
+decided. "That's possible," he returned. "I thought of asking for a
+couple of weeks. I hurried back right after I was married. They are
+coming to me." She enigmatically regarded Howat Penny; he saw that she
+was about to speak impetuously; but, to his great relief, she stopped.
+"It's been pretty hard on Harriet," he said instead. "After the stage
+and audiences, and all that." Mariana's expression was cold. Confound
+her, why didn't she help the fellow! Howat Penny fidgeted with his
+stick. What a stew Polder had gotten himself into. This was worse, even,
+than the marriage threatened.
+
+Lunch was a spasmodic affair of cutlets hardening in grease, blue boiled
+potatoes, sandy spinach and blanched ragged bread. There was more beer;
+but Jim, his wife proceeded, liked whiskey and water with his meals. The
+former glanced uneasily at Mariana, tranquilly cutting up her cutlet.
+The diamonds on her narrow, delicate hand flashed, the emerald at her
+throat was superb. Their surroundings were doubly depressing contrasted
+with her fastidious dress and person. Before her composure Harriet
+Polder seemed over-florid; a woman of trite phrases, commonplace,
+theatrical attitudes and emotions. As lunch progressed the latter
+relapsed into a sulky silence; she glanced surreptitiously at Mariana's
+apparel; and consumed cigarettes with a straining assumption of easy
+indifference.
+
+Howat Penny was acutely uncomfortable, and Polder scowled at his plate.
+The whiskey and water shook in a tense, unsteady hand. He rose from the
+table with a violent relief. He proposed almost immediately that they go
+over to the Works, and Mariana turned pleasantly to his wife. "Shall you
+get a hat?" The other hesitated, then asserted defiantly, "I've always
+said I wouldn't go into that rackety place, and I won't now. It's bad
+enough to have it tramped back over things." Mariana extended a hand.
+"Then good-bye," she proceeded. "I think we won't get back here. We're
+tremendously obliged for the lunch. It has been interesting to see where
+Jim lives." Harriet Polder's cheeks were darker than pink as they moved
+out to the sidewalk. "Jim," she called, with an unmistakably proprietary
+sounding of the familiar diminution; "don't forget my cigarettes, and a
+half pound of liver for Cherette."
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+James Polder conducted them to the river, sweeping away in a wide curve
+beneath solid grey stone bridges into a region of towering hills. They
+turned to the left, and, walking on a high embankment, passed blocks of
+individually pretentious dwellings, edifices of carved granite,
+alternating with the simpler brick faces of an older period. A narrow,
+whitely dusty sweep of green park was followed by a speedy degeneration
+of the riverside; the houses shrunk to rows of wood marked by the grime
+of steel mills. Soon after they reached a forbidding fence; and, passing
+a watchman's inspection, entered into a clamorous region of sheds,
+tracks and confusing levels such as Howat Penny had viewed from the
+train.
+
+"I'm in the open hearth," Polder told them, leading the way over a
+narrow boardwalk, still skirting the broad expanse of the river. "It's a
+process, really, but the whole mill is called after it. We make steel
+from iron scrap; that's our specialty in the Medial Works; and our
+stuff's as good as the best. The bigger concerns mostly use pig. Turn in
+here." They were facing the towering end of an iron shed, and mounted a
+steep ascent to gain the upper entrance. The multiplication of noises
+beat in an increasing volume about Howat Penny. Below him a locomotive
+screeched with a freight of slag; beyond was a heap of massive, broken
+moulds; and a train of small trucks held empty iron boxes beside an
+enormous bank of iron scrap dominated by a huge crane swinging a
+circular magnet that dispassionately picked up ton loads and bore them
+to the waiting cars.
+
+Inside he gazed through a long vista under a roof lost in tenebrious
+shadow. On one side were ranged the furnaces, a continuous bank of brick
+bound in iron; each furnace with five doors, closed with black slides in
+which a round opening emitted an intolerable, dazzling white glare. But
+few men, Howat thought, were visible in proportion to the magnitude of
+the work; deliberately engaged, with leather shields hanging from their
+wrists and blue spectacles pushed up on their grimy brows.
+
+A crane advanced with the shrill racket of an electric gong, its
+operator caged in midair, and herculean grappling chains swinging. A
+grinding truck, filling the width of floor, moved forward to where Howat
+stood. It was, Polder told him, the charging machine. An iron beam
+projected opposite the furnace doors, and it was locked into one of the
+charging boxes, filled with scrap metal, standing on the rails against
+the furnaces. A man behind him dragged forward a lever, the slide which
+covered a door rose ponderously on a blinding, incandescent core, and
+the beam thrust forward into the blaze, turning round and round in the
+emptying of the box. It was withdrawn, the slide dropped, and the
+machine retreated, its complex movements controlled by a single engineer
+at crackling switches where the power leaped in points of light like
+violets.
+
+At another furnace, an opened door, where the heat poured out in a
+constricting blast, workmen were shovelling in powdery white stone;
+moving up with their heads averted, and quickly retreating with
+shielding arms. "That's dolomite," James Polder's explanations went
+rapidly forward. "They are banking up the furnace. The other, in the
+bins, is ferro manganese." He procured a pair of spectacles; and, with a
+protected gaze, Howat looked into a furnace, an appalling space of
+apparently bubbling milk over which played sheets of ignited gases. The
+skin on his forehead shrivelled like scorching paper.
+
+"I particularly wanted you to see a heat tapped," Polder told Mariana.
+"And they're making a test at number four." They followed him to where a
+small ladle of metal had been dipped out of a furnace. It was poured,
+with a red-gold shower of sparks, into a mould, then dropped in a trough
+of water. The miniature ingot, broken under the wide sweep of a sledge,
+was examined by a lean, grizzled workman--"the melter"--who nodded. "We
+must get back of the furnace," Polder continued, indicating a narrow
+opening between brick walls through the unstopped chinks of which
+seethed the scorifying blaze.
+
+Howat Penny stood at a railing, looking down into an apparent confusion
+of slag and cars, pits and gigantic ladles and upright moulds set upon
+circular bases. A crane rumbled forward, grappled a hundred-ton ladle, a
+fabulous iron pot, and petulantly deposited it under a channel extending
+out from the base of the furnace where they had been stationed. A
+workman steadied himself below their level and picked with a long iron
+bar at a plugged opening. It was, James Polder went on, the most
+dangerous moment of the process--"sometimes the furnace blows out." The
+labour of tapping was prolonged until Howat was conscious of an
+oppressive tension. Workmen had gathered, waiting, in the pit. More
+appeared along the railing above. This was, he felt, the supreme, the
+dramatic, height of steel making. The men suddenly seemed puny,
+insignificant, before the stupendous, volcanic energy they had evoked.
+The tapping stopped. Polder commenced, "It will be rammed out from the
+front--"
+
+A stunning white flare filled the far roof with a dazzling illumination;
+and, in a dull explosion, a terrific billowing of heat, a cataract of
+liquid steel burst out through lambent orange and blue flames. It
+poured, searing the vision, into the ladle, over which rosy clouds
+accumulated in a bank drifting through the great space of the shed.
+Nothing, Howat thought, could contain, control, the appalling expansion,
+the furious volume, of seething white metal. He was obliged to turn
+away, blinded by sheets of complementary green hanging before his eyes.
+
+The uproar subsided, the flooding steel became bluer, a solid stream
+curving into the black depths of the ladle. Vapours of green and sulphur
+and lilac shivered into the denser ruby smoke and rising silver spray.
+Polder called a warning into Mariana's ear, they drew back as a lump of
+coal was heaved up from the pit, into the ladle. A dull vermilion blaze
+followed, and Howat Penny partly heard an explanation--"recarburizing."
+He could now see the steel bubbling up to the rim of the container. Men,
+Polder said shortly, had fallen in.... Utterly unthinkable. With a
+sudorific heat that drove them still farther back the slag boiling on
+the steel flowed in a gold cascade over a great lip into a second
+receptacle below. That was soon filled, and gorgeous streams and pools
+widened across the riven ground. The steel itself escaped in a milky
+incandescence. "A wild heat," James Polder told them, pleased. "The
+bottom of a furnace may drop out. I was almost caught in the pit at
+Cambria." The crane chains swung forward, picked up the ladle of molten
+metal, and shifted it through the air to a position over a circular
+group of moulds. There, a valve opened, the steel poured into a central
+pipe. "Bottom-filled," Polder concluded, assisting Mariana over the
+precarious flooring; "the metal rises into the ingot forms."
+
+They descended again, by the blackened brick, box-like office of the
+superintendent, to the level of the pit, retraced the way over the
+boardwalk. They passed a cavernous interior, filled with a continuous
+crashing, where a great sheet of flushing steel was propelled over a
+system of rollers through a black, dripping compression. "I can take you
+to the Senate," James Polder told them, once more outside; "or the
+Engineers' Society. Dinner will be ready at the club."
+
+He conducted them into the serious interior of a large, solidly
+constructed dwelling that had been transformed into a club. The dining
+room was already filling but they secured a small table against the
+wall. Across the floor ten or twelve men were gathered in a circle.
+Some, Howat thought, were surprisingly young for the evident authority
+in their manner, pronouncements; others were grey, weatherworn, men with
+immobile faces often lost, in the middle of a gay period, in a sudden
+gravity of thought, silent calculation. He saw the smooth, deft hands of
+draughtsmen, and scarred, powerful hands that, like James Polder's, had
+laboured through apprenticeship in pit and mill shop.
+
+He recognized that Polder was more drawn than he had first observed. He
+was sapped by the crushing entity of the steel works, the enormous heat
+and energy and strain of the open hearth. If the younger did not lay off
+he would, unquestionably, break. Nevertheless, Howat was totally
+unprepared for the amazing suggestion quietly advanced by Mariana.
+"Jimmy," she said, "couldn't you come to Shadrach for those two weeks?
+You'd find the quiet there wonderful. And any doctor will advise you to
+leave your family for a proper rest. I'm certain Howat would be as nice
+as possible."
+
+A sudden, patent longing leaped to James Polder's countenance. Actually
+he stuttered with a surprised delight. Damn it, there was nothing for
+him, Howat, to do but stare like a helpless idiot. He ought to say
+something, second Mariana's impudent invitation, at once. She ignored
+him, gazing intently at the younger man. He, too, meeting Mariana's
+eyes, had apparently totally forgot the unimportant presence of Howat
+Penny. And he had been married to his Harriet for a scant half year!
+Howat Penny thought mechanically of the Polders' depressing house, the
+odours of old cooking and cheap cigarettes, the feverish yapping of the
+silky animal, Cherette, with matted, pinkish eyes. The precipitant,
+prideful, young fool! Why hadn't he held onto the merest memory, the
+most distant chance in the world, of Mariana, rather than fling himself,
+his injured self-opinion, into this stew?
+
+"Don't say it can't be managed," she persisted. "Anything may. It's
+absolutely necessary; you can get a prescription--two weeks of green
+valley and robins and country eggs. Howat will take your money from you
+at penny sniff, and I'll--I'll come out for dinner."
+
+"Harriet thought of going back to the family," he replied; "but it
+might--" he turned at last to Howat Penny. "Would you have me?" he asked
+directly. What, in thunder, choice of reply did he have? Howat couldn't
+point out the shamelessness of such an arrangement. Harriet, it seemed,
+was not to be considered; just as if she were a merely disinterested
+connection. He issued a belated period to the effect that Shadrach was
+spacious and Rudolph a capable attendant. It was, he saw, sufficient.
+"We can write," said Mariana. She endeavoured to caress Howat's hand,
+but he indignantly frustrated her.
+
+"I'll have to get back to the hearth," James Polder announced
+regretfully. "It's been wonderful," he told Mariana Jannan. Howat
+scraped his chair at the baldness of Polder's pleasure. "Your work is
+tremendous, Jim," she replied; "the only stirring thing I have ever
+known in a particularly silly world. But you mustn't let it run you,
+too, into steel rails. President Polder," she smiled brilliantly at him.
+"Why not?" queried James, the sanguine, at once defiant, haggard and
+intense.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+The following day Howat Penny was both weary and irritable. Mariana
+declared, remorsefully, that she had selfishly dragged him away from
+Shadrach; and proposed countless trivial amends, which he fretfully
+blocked. He had no intention of affording her such a ready escape from a
+sense, he hoped, of error and responsibility. Before dinner, however, he
+found himself walking with her over the deep green sod that reached to
+the public road below. A mock orange hedge enclosed his lawn, bounding
+the cross roads, the upper course leading to Myrtle Forge; and beyond
+they passed, on the left, the collapsed stone walls and fallen shingles
+of what, evidently, had been a small blacksmith's shed. Farther along
+they came to the sturdy shell of an old, single-room building, erected,
+perhaps, when Shadrach Furnace was new, with weeds climbing through the
+rotten floor, and a fragment of steps, rising to the mouldering peak of
+a loft, still clinging to a wall.
+
+Without definite purpose they turned from the public way into an
+overgrown path, banked with matted blackberry bushes, and were soon
+facing the remains of the Furnace. It had been solidly constructed of
+unmasoned stone, bound by iron rods, and its bulk was largely unaffected
+by time. The hearth had fallen in, choked by luxuriant greenery; but the
+blank sides mounted to meet the walled path reaching out to its top from
+the abrupt hill against which it had been placed. Before it foundations
+could still be traced; and above, a rectangle of windowless stone walls
+survived, roofless and desolate. An abandoned road turned up the hill,
+and they followed it to where they could gaze into the upper ruin and
+the Furnace top below. Everywhere nature had marked or twisted aside cut
+stone and wood with its living greenery. Farther down a pathlike level
+followed the side of the hill, ending abruptly in a walled fall, and a
+confusion of broken beams, iron braces, and section of a large,
+wheel-like circumference. Out beyond were other crumbling remains of old
+activity--a stone span across the dried course of a water way, and a
+wide bank, showing through a hardy vegetation the grey-brown
+inequalities of slag.
+
+The stillness, broken only by the querulous melody of a robin, and a
+beginning, faint piping of frogs, was amazingly profound after the
+roaring energy of the Medial Works. The decay of Shadrach Furnace showed
+absolute against the crashing miles of industry on the broad river. A
+breath of honeysuckle lifted to Howat Penny; the sky was primrose.
+Mariana moved closer to him and took his arm. They said nothing.
+
+A warm light was spilling across the darkening grass from the lower
+windows of his dwelling, blurring in a dusk under the high leafage of
+aged maples. The white roses were already in bud on the vine climbing
+the lattices at his door, and Mariana fixed one in his buttonhole.
+"Howat," she said, "it isn't as if you were doing it just for Jim, but
+for a man, any man, really sick. I'll not even ask you to think of it
+for me. He can sit on the porch and converse with your owls, and poke
+about over the hills."
+
+Howat considered the advisability of attempting to extract a promise
+from her that she would stay away from Shadrach if James Polder was
+there. He considered it--very momentarily. The possibility, he asserted
+to himself, was without any alleviating circumstance. What, in heaven's
+name, would Charlotte think if, as it well might, the knowledge came to
+her that Mariana and a Polder--that name she never repeated--a married
+Polder without his wife, were poking over the hills together at
+Shadrach? She would have him, Howat, examined for lunacy. Mariana
+demanded too much. He told her this with the dessert.
+
+"It's only the commonest charity," she repeated. Her attack rapidly
+veered. "Howat," she asked, "do you really dislike Jimmy?" Certainly, he
+asserted, he--he disapproved of him ... altogether. A headstrong young
+donkey who had made a shocking mess of his life. He would have to make
+the best of a bad affair for which no one was to blame but himself. "It
+is terrific," she agreed, almost cheerfully; and he had a vague sense of
+having, somehow, delivered himself into her hands. "Perhaps something
+can still be done," she said, frowning, increasing the dangers of his
+position. He managed, by a stubborn silence, to check further
+conversation in that direction; hoping, vainly, that James Polder
+couldn't come, that Harriet, sensibly, would insist on his accompanying
+her, or that Byron would solemnly intervene.
+
+Mariana, later displaying a letter, dispelled his wishes. "It's been
+arranged quite easily," she told him. "Harriet will go home. I'd like to
+be here when he arrives, but I can't. You'll be a dear, Howat, won't
+you?" she begged. "I'm certain James will give you no trouble. And do
+send him to bed early." At this he grew satirical, and she laughed in an
+unaccustomed, nervous manner that upset him surprisingly. Honduras drove
+her to the station the next morning; and, three days later, deposited
+James Polder on the worn stone threshold under the climbing rose.
+
+After dinner the younger man faced him squarely across the apricot glow
+of the lamp in the middle room. "This is the third time I've come here
+without an invitation from you," he said directly. "It was Mariana this
+last. I shut my mouth on what I'd once have crammed down your throat,
+and came like any puppy. It wasn't on account of my health, there are
+miles of quiet country; it wasn't--" he hesitated, then went
+on--"altogether because of Mariana. I wanted to watch you closer; I want
+to find out what you are like inside, so I might understand some--some
+other things better. I can get out if it's a rank failure."
+
+Howat issued a polite, general dissent. "Now, right there," Polder
+stated; "you don't want me; you'd rather I was a thousand miles away,
+dead. Well--why don't you say so?" He had not the least conception of a
+decent reticence of address, Howat Penny thought, resentfully, at the
+discomfort aroused by the young man's sharp attack.
+
+"Certain amenities," he observed coldly, "have been accepted as
+desirable, as obligations for--" he hesitated, casting about for a
+phrase that would not too conspicuously exclude James Polder. "Say it,"
+the latter burst out rudely, "gentlemen. And you all stand about with
+one thing to say and another in your head."
+
+"A degree of perception is always admirable," Howat Penny instructed
+him. "That's a nasty one," Polder acknowledged; "but I got into it
+myself. I can see that." His hand, seared with labour, was pressed on
+the table; and the elder realized that, since he had witnessed a heat
+tapped, he was not so censorious of the broken nails, the lines of
+indelible black. He caught James Polder's gaze, and turned from its
+intense questioning. Young cheeks had no business to be so gaunt.
+Polder picked up the figurine in red clay, studied it with a troubled
+brow, and replaced it with a gesture of hopelessness. "Possibly," Howat
+Penny unexpectedly remarked, "possibly you find beauty in a piece of
+open hearth steel."
+
+"It's useful," Polder declared; "it has a tensile strength. I know what
+it will do. This," he indicated the fragment of a grace razed over
+twenty-three hundred years before, "is good for nothing that I see."
+Now, Howat told himself, it was merely a question of tensile strength.
+His old enthusiasms, his passionate admiration for the operas of
+Christopher Gluck, the enthusiasms and admirations of his kind, were
+being pushed aside for things of more obvious practicality. The very
+term that had distinguished his world, men of breeding, had been
+discarded. Individuals like James Polder, blunt of speech, contemptuous,
+labour scarred, were paramount to-day.
+
+His thoughts, he realized, were a part of the questioning thrust on him
+by the intrusion of Mariana's unfortunate affair into his old age. She
+was always dragging him to a perplexing spectacle for which he had
+neither energy nor inclination. But he'd be damned if he would allow the
+importunities of the young man beyond the table to complicate further
+his difficulties, and he retired abruptly behind the _Saturday Review_.
+"You'd better get along up," he said brusquely, after a little.
+
+Breakfast at an end, they settled into a not uncomfortable, mutual
+silence. They smoked; James Polder unfolded newspapers which he
+neglected to read; Howat went through the periodicals with audible
+expressions of displeasure. He wondered when Mariana would appear.
+Mariana made a fool of him, that was evident; however, he would put his
+foot on any philandering about Shadrach. He could be as blunt as James
+Polder when the occasion demanded. After lunch the latter fell asleep in
+his chair on the porch, pallidly insensible of the sparkling flood of
+afternoon. Howat rose and went into the house. It was indecent to see a
+countenance so wearily unguarded, shorn of all protective aggression.
+Mariana walked in unannounced.
+
+"Why didn't you telephone for Honduras?" he complained. "Always some
+infernal difference in what you do." She frowned. "Suddenly," she
+admitted, "I wasn't in a hurry to get here. I almost went back.
+Idiotic."
+
+"Sensible, it seems to me," he commented. "That Polder is asleep on the
+porch." She nodded, "Splendid. And you needn't try to look fierce. I can
+see through you and out the back." He lit a cigarette angrily. "Going to
+stay for the night?" he demanded. "Several," she replied coolly. "Three
+can play sniff."
+
+"Look here, Mariana," he proclaimed, "I won't have any nonsense, do you
+understand?"
+
+"We can keep a photograph of Harriet on the table."
+
+James Polder entered, and put a temporary end to his determined speech.
+When the former saw Mariana his shameless pleasure, Howat thought, was
+beyond credence. Positively neither of them paid any more attention to
+him than they did to Rudolph. His irritation gave place to a deeper
+realization that an impossible situation threatened. There was nothing,
+obviously, that he could do to-day; but he would speak seriously to
+Mariana to-morrow; one or both of them would have to leave Shadrach.
+This determination took the present weight from his conscience; and,
+pottering about small concerns of his own, he ignored them comfortably.
+
+They appeared late, dirty and hot, for dinner; and it was eight o'clock
+before Mariana came down in a gown like a white-petalled flower. She
+wore no rings, but about her throat was a necklace of old-fashioned seed
+pearls in loops and rosettes. "It's family," she told them; "it belonged
+to Caroline Penny. And she married a Quaker, too; a David Forsythe." She
+stopped suddenly, and Howat Penny recalled the tradition that Caroline
+Penny, Gilbert's daughter, had appropriated her sister Myrtle's suitor.
+Mariana favoured him with a fleet glance, the quiver of a reprehensible
+wink. He glared back at her choking with suppressed wrath. "I have a
+wonderful idea for to-morrow," she proceeded tranquilly; "we'll take
+lunch, and leave Honduras, and go to Myrtle Forge for the day."
+
+Her design was unfolded so rapidly, her directions to Rudolph so
+explicit, that he had no opportunity to oppose his plan of sending her
+away in the morning; and his impotence committed him to her suggestion.
+She could go in the evening almost as well. After dinner he rattled the
+dominoes significantly, but Mariana, smiling at him absently, went
+through the room and out upon the porch. Polder, with an obscure
+sentence, followed her. A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there
+was no wind; the night was warm.
+
+Howat glanced at his watch, after a period of restful ease, and saw that
+it was past ten. He moved resolutely outside. Mariana was banked with
+cushions in the canvas swing, and Polder sat with his body extended, his
+hands clasped behind his head, in a gloomy revery. The night,
+apparently, had robbed her countenance of any bloom; more than once in
+the past year Howat had seen her stamped with the premonitory scarring
+of time. Polder rose as he approached, and Mariana struggled upright.
+
+"Good night," she said ungraciously, to them both, and flickered away
+through the dark. James Polder was savagely biting his lips; his hands,
+the elder saw, were clenched. "Your wife," Howat proceeded, "how is
+she?" Polder gazed at him stonily, without reply. "I asked after your
+wife," Howat repeated irritably. "No," the other at last said, "you
+reminded me of her. I suppose you are right." He turned and walked
+abruptly from the porch, into the slowly dropping rain.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+The road to Myrtle Forge mounted between rolling cultivated fields, the
+scattered, stone ruins of walls erected in the earliest iron days; and,
+after a pastoral course, came to the Forge dwelling, its shuttered bulk
+set in a tangle of bushes and rank grass. An ancient beech tree swept
+the ground with smooth, grey limbs, surrounded by long-accumulated dead
+leaves. James Polder shut off the motor by the low, stone wall that
+supported the lawn from the roadway; he crossed to the farm, where the
+house keys were kept, and Howat and Mariana moved slowly forward. A
+porch, added, the former said, in Jasper Penny's time, extended at the
+left; and they stood on the broken flooring and gazed down at a
+featureless tangle once a garden and the gnarled remainder of a small
+apple orchard beyond.
+
+Polder soon returned, and they proceeded to a door on the further side,
+where the kitchen angle partly enclosed a flagging of broad stones.
+Inside, the house, empty of furnishing, was a place of echoes muffled in
+dust; the insidious, dank odours of corrupting wood and plaster; walls
+with melancholy, superimposed, stripping papers; older, sombrely
+blistered paint and panelled wainscoting varnished in an imitation,
+yellow graining. It was without a relic of past dignity. Mariana was
+unable to discover a souvenir of the generations of Pennys that had
+filled the rooms with the stir of their living. Once more outside they
+sat on the stone threshold of an office-like structure back of the main
+dwelling and indulged in cigarettes.
+
+The disturbing tension of last night, Howat thought comfortably, had
+vanished. Mariana was flippant, James Polder enveloped in indolent ease.
+"The Forge," Howat Penny told them, "was below." A path descended across
+a steep face of sparse grass; and, at the bottom, Polder's interest
+revived. "It stood there," he indicated a fallen shed beyond a masoned
+channel, choked with the broken stones of its walls and tangled
+shrubbery. "You don't suppose a joke that size was the great Gilbert's
+plant. Here's the drop for the water power; yes, and the iron pinions of
+the overshot wheel." He climbed down a precarious wall, and stood
+perhaps twelve feet below them. Securing a rough bolt, he brought it up
+for their inspection. "Look at that forging," he cried; "after it has
+lain around for a century and a half. Like silk. Charcoal iron, and it
+was hammered, too. Metal isn't half worked any more. We could turn that
+into steel at almost nothing a ton." He showed them in the mouldering
+shed the foundation of the anvil, traced the probable shafting of the
+trip hammer, marked the location of the hearths. "Three," he decided;
+"and a cold trickle of air. A nigger pumping a bellows, probably. No,
+they could get that from the wheel," he drew an explanatory diagram in
+the blackened dust.
+
+With the lunch basket on the running board of the motor they ate sitting
+on the low boundary wall of the lawn. The heat increased through the
+late May noon, and Howat remained while Mariana and James Polder
+wandered in the direction of the orchard. Finally the sun forced the
+former to move; and he, too, proceeded in a desultory manner, entering
+the shade of a grove of old maples. The trees, their earliest red
+leafage already emerald, followed the dry channel cut back from Canary
+Creek to the Forge, and he soon emerged at the broad, flashing course of
+the stream. A flat rock jutted into the hurrying water by an overthrown
+dam, its sun-heated expanse now in shadow; and he stayed, listening to
+the gurgling flow. Far above him a hawk wheeled in ambient space; a mill
+whistle sounded remotely from Jaffa.
+
+The thought of Mariana hovered at the back of his lulled being; all he
+desired, he told himself, was her complete happiness. He might even have
+become reconciled to James Polder. His first, unfavourable opinion of
+the latter, he realized, had been modified by--by time. He had judged
+Polder solely in the light of an old standard. The fellow was painfully
+honest; good stuff there, iron ... the iron of the Pennys. But the other
+strain had betrayed him. A cursed shame. The material of the present,
+moulded, perhaps, into seemingly new forms, was always that of the
+past. This Polder was Essie Scofield and Jasper ... Byron. He, Howat
+Penny, was Penny and Jannan and Penny--Daniel, James, Casimir, and Howat
+once more, the older Howat who had married the widow of Felix Winscombe.
+Black again. He wondered what the blackness, not spent like his own, had
+brought the other. A headstrong, dark youth with the characteristic
+sloping eyebrows and slender, vigorous, carriage. The traditional
+rebellious spirit had involved Jasper in disgrace; it had thinned his
+own blood.
+
+Footfalls approached through the trees, and the others joined him. James
+Polder extended himself on the rock, and Mariana sat with her hands
+clasped about her slim knees. A silence intensified by the whispering
+stream enveloped them. The hawk circled above, and Howat had an
+extraordinary sense of the familiarity of the bird hanging in limitless
+space, of the warm stone and water choking in a smooth eddy. He had, as
+a boy, fished there. But his brain momentarily swam with a poignant,
+unrecognizable emotion, different from the sensation of childhood. He
+rose, confused and giddy. With old age, he muttered.
+
+Mariana followed. "It's all over," she announced, decisively. "We'll
+drive back and leave to-day." She sighed. "That's gone already," James
+Polder showed her the sun slipping toward the western hills. She moved
+up to him, laid her hand on his arm. Howat Penny went ahead. He must
+speak to her after dinner. As the motor slowly gathered momentum he
+turned and looked back at the dark, pinkish dwelling in its tangle of
+grass and bushes run wild. Dusk appeared to have already gathered over
+it, although the sun still shone elsewhere in lengthening dusty gold
+bars; the wide-spread beech was sombre against blank shutters, the
+chimneys broken and cold.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+A letter for James Polder was at Shadrach, and he opened it immediately,
+glancing over its scrawled sheet. Howat saw a curious expression
+overspread the other's countenance. He called, "Mariana!" in a sharp
+tone. She appeared from the foot of the steps. "Harriet never went
+home," he told her; "this is from Pittsburgh. She's back on the stage."
+A premonitory dread filled Howat Penny. Mariana stood quietly, her gaze
+lifted to Polder. "She never went home," he repeated; "but writes that
+suddenly she--she didn't want to, and couldn't stand Harrisburg another
+week. She saw some one and had a part, that ought to be good, offered to
+her; and, so--"
+
+"Is that all, Jim?"
+
+"No," he replied; "there is more, absolutely unjustified. I think I'd
+like you to read it. It would be best." Mariana took the letter, and
+followed its irregular course. "It's true enough," she said quietly, at
+the end. "But I don't in the least mind, Jim. She had a perfect right to
+something of the sort. That is--I'm not annoyed about what she says of
+me, but it will upset you terribly. And it has been my fault, from the
+first." He protested vehemently, but she stopped him with a gesture;
+then walked to the door opening on the porch; where, her head up, she
+stood gazing out into the serene, failing light.
+
+James Polder followed her, and Howat heard the screen softly close. He
+was about to light a cigarette, but, his hand shaking, he laid it on the
+table. He put up his glass, without purpose, and then let it drop.
+Rudolph was placing the silver for dinner; old forks faintly marked with
+a crest that Isabel Howat had brought to her husband. A recurrence of
+the afternoon's sense of the continuity of all living flowed over him,
+whispering with old voices, old longing and sorrow and regret, mingled
+dim features, and the broken clasping of hands. He saw Mariana sweeping
+in a pale current--a remote, eternal passion winding through the
+transient body of life. She smiled, her subdued, mocking gaiety
+infinitely appealing, and vanished.
+
+They came in to dinner without changing the informal garb of the day.
+James Polder was silent, disturbed, but Mariana was serenely
+commonplace. Her voice, clear and high, went unimportantly on; until,
+turning to Howat Penny, she said without the changing of a tone. "I want
+James to take me back to Harrisburg with him, but he won't." Howat
+endeavoured to meet this insanity with the silence usually opposed to
+Mariana's frequent wildness of statement. His knife scraped sharply
+against a plate; but, in the main, he successfully preserved an unmoved
+countenance. "Now that Harriet has surrendered Mm," she persisted, "I
+don't see why I can't be considered. It is the commonest sense--Jim
+can't live alone, properly, in that house; I can't exist properly
+without him. You see, Howat, how reasonable it seems." What he did
+perceive was that his attitude of inattention must be sharply deserted.
+
+"Your words, Mariana," he said coldly, "'proper' and 'reasonable,' in
+the connection you have used them, would be ridiculous if they weren't
+disgraceful. I have been patient with a certain amount of rash talk,
+yes--and conduct, but this must be the end. I had intended to have you
+leave Shadrach this morning, then later. Either that or I'll be forced
+to make my excuses to James Polder." He glanced with a veiled anxiety at
+the latter but could read nothing from the lowered, pinched countenance.
+
+"We could leave together if you are tired of us," Mariana continued.
+"It's James, really, who is making all the trouble. He has some stupid
+idea about nobility of conduct and my best good. But the real truth is
+that he's afraid, for me, of course, and so he won't listen."
+
+"Won't you show her that it is impossible?" the younger man cried at
+Howat Penny. "I can't take advantage of her heavenly courage. She
+doesn't realize the weight of opinion. It would make--"
+
+"Stuff," she interrupted. "You'd make steel, and I would make an
+occasional dessert. You must be told, Jimmy, that the afternoon calling
+you have confused with life really isn't done any more. You have been
+brought up in rather a deadly way. You ought to be saved from yourself.
+I am a very mature person, and I am advising you calmly."
+
+The dinner had come to an end; a decanter, in old-fashioned blue and
+gold cutting, of brandy, a silver basket of oranges, the coffee cups and
+glasses, were all that remained; and James Polder played with the cut
+fruit, the half-full cordial glass before him. "I am going to be
+brutally frank, Jimmy," she said again. "You know that is a habit of
+mine, too. You are a very brilliant young man, but you are not
+omnipotent--you require stiffening, like a collar. And I would be a
+splendid laundress for you. Harriet is a long shot too lenient. I might
+not be so comfortable to live with, but I'd be bracing. I'd have you in
+that dirty little superintendent's box in no time."
+
+He made no reply; and, obviously tormented, automatically squeezed a
+half orange into his goblet. Then he took a sip of brandy.
+
+"Together, James," Mariana asserted, "we would go up like a kite. By
+yourself--forgive me--you haven't enough patience, enough balance; you
+wouldn't fly steadily. You might break all your sticks on the ground."
+He moodily emptied what remained of his brandy into the goblet and
+orange juice, and pushed it impatiently away. "I'd rather do that," he
+answered, "than try to carry you with me on such a flight."
+
+Howat Penny was conscious of a diminution of his fears. He had entirely
+underrated James Polder; the latter was an immense sight steadier than
+Mariana. His thoughts strayed momentarily to Harriet, back again in her
+public orbit. He could imagine that she had found Harrisburg insuperably
+dull, the hours with only Cherette empty after the emotional debauches
+of the plays elected by Vivian Blane. Yes, this young Polder would stand
+admirably firm. Mariana frowned at the cobalt smoke of her cigarette. "I
+am in a very bad temper," she told them. "No one for a minute thinks of
+what my feeling may be. You are both entirely concerned with your own
+nice sense of virtue."
+
+"Not at all, but of your future," Howat Penny asserted.
+
+Her lower lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently
+capable. She made no immediate reply. James Polder's fingers absently
+clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the
+thick liquid it contained. "Just what do you recommend me to do?"
+Mariana challenged Howat. "Go through with a lifeful of winters like the
+last! Marry another Sam Lewis! I am not celebrated for reliability; it
+is only with Jimmy--" she broke off. Howat Penny recalled her callous
+expression, photographed in Egyptian dress at a period ball, her
+description of the hard riding and reckless parties of the transplanted
+English colonies in the south.
+
+Polder lifted the goblet to his lips, but set it back untasted. Howat
+looked away from Mariana's scornful interrogation, unable to reply.
+Finally, "I am old, as you once reminded me," he stated; "I'm out of my
+time, don't understand, I can only remember, and remembering isn't any
+longer of use. The men I knew, the kind, I hope, I was, would ruin
+themselves a hundred times before compromising a woman. Polder appears
+to understand that. And women I had the privilege of meeting sacrificed
+themselves with a smile for what you dismiss as mere stupidity. God
+knows which is right. They looked the loveliest of creatures then. There
+was a standard, we thought high.... Things a man couldn't do. But I
+don't know--it seems so long ago." He stopped to watch James Polder take
+a sip of the mixture in his hand. The latter tasted it slowly, and then
+emptied the goblet. His face was blank, with eyes nearly closed.
+
+"I could carry Jimmy up in my hands," Mariana said. "Don't," she added
+vaguely, as he squeezed out the remaining half of his orange and poured
+fresh brandy into it. "It's curious," he told her; "not at all bad."
+
+They moved out of the dining room, and Mariana and Polder continued to
+the porch. Howat stood with a hand resting on the mahogany cigarette
+box; he had the feeling of a man unexpectedly left by a train thundering
+into the distance. It would not stop, back, for him now; he was dropped.
+He sank relaxed into an accustomed chair; his brain surrendered its
+troubling; the waking somnolence settled over him. He was conscious of
+his surrounding, recognized its actuality; yet, at the same time, it
+seemed immaterial, like the setting of a dream. He roused himself after
+a little and smoked, nodding his head to emphasize the points of his
+thought.
+
+This Polder had shown the instinct of breeding; while Mariana was--just
+what she was he couldn't for the life of him determine. A hussy, he
+decided temporarily. After all, his own time, when black and white had
+been distinguishable, was best. Howat Penny relinquished, with a sigh,
+the effort to penetrate to-day; he was content to be left behind; out of
+the grinding rush, the dizzy speed, of progression. His day, when black
+had been black, was immeasurably superior; the women had been more
+charming, the men erect, clothed in proper garb and pride. Where, now,
+could be seen such an audience as Dr. Damrosch had gathered for his
+first season of German opera? Not, certainly, at the performance he had
+heard with Mariana two, no--three, winters ago. A vulgarized performance
+in the spirit of a boulevard cafe. The whole present air, he told
+himself, was wrong.
+
+He looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that it was past ten.
+Not a sound came from the porch; and he determined to go outside,
+exercise the discretion which Mariana had cast to the winds. However, he
+didn't stir; he could not summon the energy necessary for the combating
+of their impetuous youth. He unfolded a paper, but it drooped on his
+knees, slid, finally, to the floor. Then Mariana appeared, walked
+swiftly, without a word, through the room, and vanished upstairs. Not
+even a civil period at the end of the evening. After another, long wait
+James Polder entered. The latter stood uneasily by the table, with a
+furrowed brow, a ridiculous, twitching mouth.
+
+Polder went out into the dining room; where, through the doorway, Howat
+Penny could see him hovering over the silver basket of oranges, placed
+upon the sideboard. "If you don't mind," he called back, and there were
+a rattle of knives, a thin ring of glass. The light was dim beyond, and
+he stood in the doorway with the brandy decanter and orange juice. He
+drained the mixture and leaned, absorbed, against the woodwork. "This is
+a hell of a world!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Everything worth having is
+fenced off. A woman won't understand. Does any one suppose that I don't
+want Mariana! It's the responsibility. She's right--I am afraid of it.
+And she laughed at me. Nothing cowardly in her," his voice deepened.
+
+"It is ignorance," Howat stated.
+
+"I thought so, for a minute; you are wrong. She's had more experience
+than we'd get in a thousand years. The life she knows would fix that.
+She talked me into a tangled foolishness in five minutes; made me look
+like a whiskered hypocrite. Nothing I said sounded real, and yet I must
+be right. Suppose Harriet should turn nasty, suppose--oh, a thousand
+things."
+
+"It isn't arguable," Howat Penny agreed.
+
+This afforded the other no consolation. "What is she to do?" he
+demanded. "Mariana won't settle quietly against a wall. She told you
+that. She's full of--of a sort of energy that must be at something.
+Mariana hasn't the anchor of most women--respectability."
+
+"Am I to gather that that is no longer considered admirable?" the elder
+inquired. "If you gather anything you are lucky," Polder replied
+gloomily. "I'm not sure about my own name. Good-night," he disappeared
+abruptly.
+
+Above, Howat slowly made his preparations for retiring, infinitely
+weary. Waking problems fell from him like a leaden weight into the sea
+of unconsciousness. He was relieved, at breakfast, to see Mariana come
+down in a hat, with the jacket of her suit on an arm. He waited for her
+to indicate the train by which she was leaving, so that he could tell
+Honduras to have the motor ready; but she sat around in a dragging
+silence. Polder walked up and down the room in which they were gathered.
+Howat wished he would stop his clattering movement. An expression of
+ill-nature deepened in Mariana; she looked her ugliest; and James Polder
+was perceptibly fogged from a lack of sleep. Finally he said:
+
+"Look here, we can't go on like this." He stopped in front of Mariana,
+with a quivering face. She raised her eyebrows. "Come outside," he
+begged. "What's the use?" she replied; but, at the same time, she rose.
+"Don't get desperate, Howat," she said over her shoulder. "Even I can't
+do any more; I can only take my shamelessness back to Andalusia." Polder
+held open the screen door; and as, without her jacket, she went out,
+Howat Penny had a final glimpse of the man bending at her side. Like two
+fish in a net, he thought ungraciously. He was worn out by their
+infernal flopping. With a determined movement of his shoulders, a fixing
+of his glass, he turned to the accumulation of his papers.
+
+Later he heard the changing gears of a motor. He thought for a moment
+that it was Honduras at his own car; then he recognized the stroke of a
+far heavier engine. The powerful, ungraceful bulk of an English machine
+was stopping at his door. Immediately after he distinguished the
+slightly harsh, dominating voice of Peter Provost. The latter entered,
+followed by Kingsfrere Jannan. Peter Provost, a member of the New York
+family and connection of the Jannans, had, since the elder Jannan's
+death, charge of the family's interest in the banking firm of Provost,
+Jannan and Provost. He occupied, Howat knew, a position of general
+advisor to Charlotte and her children. He was a large man who had never
+lost the hardness of a famous university career in the football field,
+with a handsome, cold countenance and spiked, grey moustache. He shook
+hands with Howat Penny, and plunged directly into his present purpose.
+
+"Kingsfrere," he said, "has heard some cheap stuff in the city,
+principally about that young Polder married last fall. Personally, I
+laughed at it, but Charlotte seemed upset. This Polder's wife, an
+actress, has left her husband, and gone back to the stage because--so
+Byron asserted; you know Byron--Mariana had broken up their home."
+
+"Old Polder said just that," Kingsfrere affirmed. "And that wasn't
+all--he added that Mariana was out here with the fellow."
+
+Provost laughed.
+
+"Well," Howat Penny replied, "James Polder is staying at Shadrach. He
+was asked here because his health was threatening. He had two weeks
+leave; and, although I wasn't really anxious, I said he might recuperate
+with me."
+
+"And Mariana?" Provost inquired.
+
+"Came out day before yesterday, late; leaving this morning."
+
+Howat Penny was conscious of a growing anger. There was no reason for
+his submitting to an interrogation by Peter Provost; he didn't have to
+justify his actions, the selection of his guests; and he had no
+intention of explaining his attitude toward Mariana. But Provost, it
+became evident, had no inclination to be intrusive. It was, he made that
+clear, wholly Charlotte. But Kingsfrere Jannan was increasingly
+impatient. "Where is Polder?" he demanded. Howat surveyed him with
+neither favour nor reply. Suddenly he understood the feeling of both
+men--they considered that he was too old to have any grip or
+comprehension of life. They were quietly but obviously relegating him to
+the back of the scene. His anger mounted; he was about to make a sharp
+reply, when he paused. There was a possibility that they were right; he
+was, undoubtedly, old; and he had been unable to influence, turn,
+Mariana, in the slightest degree. He didn't approve of her present,
+head-strong course ... only a few hours ago he had voluntarily, gladly,
+relinquished all effort to comprehend it.
+
+"Perhaps," Provost suggested, "since we are here we'd better talk to
+him. I suppose they're out about the place. You could send Rudolph."
+Howat replied that he would find them himself. He wanted, now, to
+prepare James Polder for any incidental unpleasantness. The latter, he
+knew, had a hasty temper, a short store of patience. After all, he had
+acted very well in a difficult situation. It had been Mariana. Howat
+Penny was aware of a growing sympathy for young Polder. His was a more
+engaging person than Kingsfrere's pasty presence and sharp reputation at
+cards. He got his hat, and went out over the thick, smooth sod, into the
+slumberous, blue radiance of the early summer noon.
+
+He found Mariana and James Polder sitting on a bank by the Furnace.
+"Peter Provost's here with Kingsfrere," he told them quietly. "They want
+to see.... James, about some nonsense bantered around town." Polder
+rose quickly, instantly antagonistic. "At the house?" he demanded,
+already moving away. Mariana stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
+"Don't pay any attention to what they may say, Jimmy," she commanded.
+"It isn't Peter Provost's affair, and Kingsfrere in a fatherly pose is a
+scream." They moved forward together. "I'll see them," she added
+cuttingly.
+
+"I will attend to this," James Polder told her. "I don't want any woman
+explaining my actions. They haven't a whisper on me. I'm glad enough of
+an opportunity to talk to a man."
+
+"If you lose your temper--" Howat commenced, but Mariana impatiently
+interrupted him. "Why shouldn't Jim lose his temper?" she demanded. "I
+would. Personally, I'd be glad if he did, although it mightn't be
+fortunate for Kingsfrere. He's a good deal of a dumpling. But I will be
+furious if you look guilty. Tell them we're mad about each other and
+that I am waiting for the smallest encouragement to go with you."
+
+Howat Penny left Mariana at the door, and went in with Polder. Provost
+was seated, with an open paper; Kingsfrere studying the photograph of
+Scalchi. "This," said Howat generally, "is my guest, James Polder."
+Peter Provost extended his square, powerful hand; but the other, Jannan,
+made no movement. "Well?" Polder demanded aggressively. Howat Penny
+proceeded through the room to the porch, where he met Mariana. They
+walked to the further end and found chairs. "What makes me sick,"
+Mariana proceeded, "is the way men calmly take everything into their own
+hands; as if women were still tied up, naughty bundles. Jim will have
+all the fun, and he has only said 'no' in horrified tones."
+
+Again he could think of no adequate reply. He listened in vain for the
+sound of raised voices within. "What, in heaven's name, brought them?"
+Howat told her what he had heard. "I'm glad I did break up that mess
+they called a home," she asserted. "It was rotten with stale beer and
+half pounds of liver for that disgusting animal!"
+
+The heat increased in waves; a wagon passing on the road below was
+enveloped in a cloud of dust. "I wish they'd hurry," Mariana said
+sharply. Howat Penny thought he heard Kingsfrere speaking in abrupt
+periods. Then a chair scraped, and Peter Provost's deliberate voice
+became audible. It was, however, impossible to distinguish his words;
+but suddenly Polder exclaimed, "Say something I can pound into you."
+Mariana rose, her hands clenched. "Go back to your mouldy little life!"
+James Polder continued. "I'm not surprised Miss Jannan wants to get out
+of it. I am sorry I hesitated. It seemed to me I couldn't offer her
+anything good enough; but that was before I'd listened to you.... And if
+you in particular come worming about me again I'll smash your flat
+face." The screen door was wrenched violently open, and James Polder
+strode up to Mariana. "Suppose we get out of this slag pit," he said,
+his chest labouring; "I can't breathe here."
+
+"I am ready, Jimmy," she replied quietly; "perhaps Howat will look up a
+train and let Honduras drive us to the station." She laid her hand on
+his arm. "Now we can forget them," she said. They turned, and, together,
+vanished into the house. Howat Penny followed them slowly. He found
+Peter Provost apparently undisturbed. "Nothing to be done," the latter
+commented. "I saw that immediately he turned up. Kingsfrere made a short
+effort, but it wasn't conspicuously successful; I imagine it rather
+worse than failed. God knows what's getting into these young women,
+Howat--Eliza and the rest of 'em--it's a gamble they don't. All right,
+Kingsfrere." Jannan lingered with a dark mutter, but the other
+unceremoniously drove him into the waiting car.
+
+Mariana soon descended, with Polder carrying two bags. "One seven,"
+Howat told them. In the extraordinary situation he found nothing
+adequate to say. Mariana might have been going unremarkably to Charlotte
+and her home; she was absolutely contained. James Polder had a dazed
+expression; without his companion, Howat thought, he would blunder into
+the walls. He stood, holding the bags until told to put them down.
+Honduras was soon at the door. Mariana moved forward, and mechanically
+Howat Penny made his customary pretence of avoiding her kiss. The warm
+fragrance of her lips remained long after she had gone.
+
+A pervasive stillness settled upon Shadrach; outside the sunlight lay on
+the hills in a thick, yellow veil; the cool interior held only the
+familiar crepitation of the old clock above. Now, he told himself, he
+could read the papers peacefully; but he sat with empty hands. Mariana
+had gone. "Outrageous conduct," he said aloud, without conviction. His
+voice sounded thin, unfamiliar. His dreams of her continued superiority
+to the commonplace, of her fine aloofness like the elevation of the
+strains of _Orfeo_, had been utterly destroyed. He could not imagine a
+greater descent than the one which had overtaken her. As he rehearsed
+its details they seemed increasingly disgraceful. He could not forgive
+James Polder for his relapse, his shocking failure to maintain the
+standards, the obligations, bred into himself, Howat Penny, by so many
+years, and by blood. It was that miserable old business of Jasper's once
+more, blighting the present, betraying Mariana.
+
+This wheeled in his brain throughout summer. He had, as he expected, no
+word from her. Charlotte, too, sent no line; he was isolated in the
+increasing and waning heat, in a sea of greenery growing heavy and grey
+with dust, then swept by rain, and touched with the scarlet finality of
+frost. Rudolph lit again the hickory fires in the middle hearth; the
+days shortened rapidly; sitting before the glow of the logs he could
+see, through a western window, the afternoon expiring in a sullen red
+flame. The leaves streamed sibilantly by the eaves and accumulated in
+dry, russet heaps in angles and hollows; they burned in crackling fires,
+filling the air with a drifting haze rich with suggestion and memories.
+He saw the first snow on a leaden morning when the flexible and bald
+white covering, devoid of charm, held the significance of barrenness,
+death. All day this chilling similitude lingered in his mind. He walked
+about the house slowly, unpleasantly conscious of the striking of his
+feet on the wood floors.
+
+At Christmas a revival of spirit overtook him; a long letter came from
+Mariana, Bundy Provost sent him a tall silver tankard, with a lid, for
+his night table. Howat, polishing his glass with a maroon bandanna, read
+Mariana's letter in the yellow light of the lamp and burning logs.
+
+"I have been to see a new steel process," she wrote; "the Duplex, with
+immense tilting furnaces and the Bessemer blast. I know a great deal
+about iron now; far more than a Howat Penny who should be an authority.
+Jim is frightfully busy, but lately he has been able to sleep after the
+night shift, which makes it better for every one. He is one of the best
+men here, and that comes from the Works, and the reorganization is
+slowly but surely progressing, and we are progressing with it. I am not
+a particle lonely, with only one servant; really don't want another,
+and make a great deal more than desserts. You have no idea how
+absorbing it is to have a lot of things that must be done. The days
+simply fade. You mustn't worry about me, Howat; I always hated polite
+affairs and parties and people; even when I was young as possible I was
+more than anything else a Hell in the Corner."
+
+He smiled, recognizing an old flippant phrase, and let his hand drop
+while he recalled Mariana--turning to him to hook her gown, constructing
+annoying towers with the dominoes, reprehensible and amusing. He resumed
+reading:
+
+"It would be wonderful if--no, it is wonderful! But Howat, I can tell
+only you this, I wish oranges had never been invented." He drew his
+mouth into a compressed line. James was drinking. He remembered when the
+other first made the concoction of orange juice and brandy; he saw him
+clearly, leaning in the doorway to the dining room, with the emptied
+goblet, and a curious, introspective expression on his mobile
+countenance. "He ought to be hung!" he exclaimed sharply. The fellow
+should see himself as a mat for Mariana's feet. But that wasn't life, he
+realized; existence seemed to become more and more heedless of the
+proprieties, of the simplest concessions to duty. He saw the world as a
+ship which, admirably navigated a score or more years ago, had jammed
+its rudder. No one could predict what rocks the unmanageable sphere
+might be driving for.
+
+The significance born by that sentence robbed the remainder of the
+letter of pleasure. He read that Mariana had ordered the customary gift
+of cigarettes, and hoped they would last him longer than everybody knew
+they would. The implied affection of all the paragraphs was visible in
+the last words. He put the letter carefully away. The cigarettes were
+sufficient for a considerable time beyond customary. Something of his
+appetite had gone; the periods of half wakeful slumber in his chair drew
+out through whole evenings. The actual world retreated; his memories, as
+bright as ever, became a little confused; the years, figures, mingled
+incongruously; famous arias were transposed to operas in which they had
+not been sung.
+
+Winter retreated, but the latter part of March and April were bitterly
+cold; no leaves appeared; the ground remained barren; he seldom got out.
+
+The albums of programmes were brought from their place on the low
+shelves, but now, more than often, they were barely opened, scanned.
+Then, on an evening when belated snow was sifting through the cracks of
+the solid shutters, he came on an oblong package, wrapped in strong
+paper. He opened it, in a momentary revival of interest, of life. It was
+a tall ledger, bound in crumbling calf, with stained and wrinkled
+leaves. Howat had not seen it for twenty years, but he recalled
+immediately that it was a forge book kept in Gilbert Penny's day; then
+Myrtle Forge had been new, that other Howat alive. He opened it
+carefully, powdered his knees with leather dust, and studied the faded
+entries; what flourishing, pale violet initials, what rubicund lines and
+endings!
+
+There were two handwritings, listing commonplace transactions now
+invested by time with an accumulated, poignant significance, one smooth
+and clerkly, the other abrupt, with heavy, impatient strokes. Youth,
+probably, held at an unwelcome task; and, more than likely, Howat ...
+October, in seventeen fifty. Years of virility, of struggle and
+conquest, of iron--iron, James Polder had shown him, still uncorrupted,
+better than the metal of to-day--and iron-like men. The ledger slipped
+to the floor, tearing the spongy leather and crumbling the sere leaves.
+He recovered it, dismayed at the damage wrought. A sheet apparently had
+come loose, and he bent forward with difficulty, a swimming head. Howat
+made an attempt to find its place, when he discovered that it was not a
+part of the volume. It was, he saw, a note, obliterated by creases but
+with some lines still legible, hurriedly scrawled, by a woman:
+
+"You must be more careful ... Your mother. So hot-headed, Howat. I can't
+do what you ask. I have a headache now thinking about Felix and you and
+myself. No one must find out." What followed was lost, then came a
+signature that, with the aid of a reading glass, he barely
+deciphered--"Ludowika."
+
+That was the name of the woman, a widow, Gilbert's son had married. Her
+first husband, Felix Winscombe, had died at Myrtle Forge during a
+diplomatic mission from England.... An old man with a young wife! His
+confusion, slowly resolving into a comprehension of what the note
+implied, filled him with an increasing revolt. The earlier Howat, too,
+like Jasper, in the tangle of an intrigue--not a public scandal and
+shame, as had been the later, but no less offensive. In a flare of anger
+Howat Penny crumpled the paper and flung it into the fire. There it
+instantly blackened, burst into flame and wavered, a shuddering cinder,
+up the chimney. He put the ledger, loosely wrapped in its covering, on
+the table, and sat breathing rapidly, curiously disturbed. The old
+fault, projected so unexpectedly out of the faithless burial of the
+past, struck at him with the weight of a personal affront.
+
+The heat subsided in the hearth, with the nightly ebbing of steam in the
+radiator; the hickory, disintegrating into blocks, faded from cherry red
+to pulsating, and finally dead, ash. Lost in the bitterness of his
+thoughts he made no movement to replenish the fire.
+
+He wondered if the explored histories of other families would show such
+scarring records as his own. Were there everywhere, back of each heart,
+puddles, sloughs, masked in the deceiving probity maintained for public
+view? And now--Mariana! Yet, somehow, her affair did not appear as ugly
+as these others. Stated coldly, in conventional terms, it was little
+different. Why, in plain words she had ... but Mariana evaded plain
+words, her challenging courage forbade them. Here was more than could be
+arraigned, convicted, by a stereotyped judgment. Or perhaps this was
+only his affection for her, blinding him to the truth.
+
+The first Howat and Jasper, striking contemptuously across the barriers
+of social morals, lived in Mariana, alone with James Polder in
+illegitimate circumstance, and in himself--an old man without family,
+without the supporting memory of actual achievement; the negative decay
+of a negative existence. His mind, confronted by a painful complexity of
+unanswerable problems, failed utterly. He was conscious of his impotence
+chilling his blood, deadening his nerves. Thin tears fell over his
+hollow cheeks; and he rose shakily, fiercely dragging at his bandanna.
+
+But he discovered that his hand was numb with cold. The fire lay black
+and dead. The shrilling wind, ladened with snow, wrenched at the
+shutters. The room was bitter. He must get up to bed ... warm blankets.
+A chill touched him with an icy breath. It overtook him midway on the
+stair, and he clung to the railing, appalled at its violence in his
+fragile being. He got, finally, to his room, to the edge of his bed,
+where he sat waiting for the assault to subside. He wanted Rudolph, but
+the effort to move to the door, call, appeared insuperable. The chill
+left him; and blundering, hideously delayed, he wrapped himself in the
+bed covering.
+
+Not all the wool in the world, he thought, would be sufficient to drive
+the cold from his body. He fell into a temporary exhaustion of sleep;
+but was waked later by sharp and oppressive pains in his chest,
+deepening when he breathed. The suffering must be mastered, and he lay
+with gripping hands, striving by force of will to overcome what he
+thought of as the brutal play of small, sharp knives. He conquered, it
+seemed; the pain grew less; but it had left an increasing difficulty in
+his breathing; it was a labour to absorb sufficient air even for his
+small, aged demands. Sleep deserted him; and he waited through seeming
+years for the delayed appearance of dawn. He had hoped that the new day
+would be sunny, warm; it was overcast, he could see the snow drifted in
+the lower window panes.
+
+Rudolph usually knocked at the door at half past eight; but, apparently,
+to-day he had forgot. Howat Penny's watch lay on the table, at his hand,
+yet it was far distant; he couldn't face the heavy effort of its
+inspection. At last the man came in with his even morning greeting.
+Howat was so exhausted that he could make no reply; and Rudolph moved
+silently to the bedside. His expression, for an instant, was deeply
+concerned. "I have a cold, or something of the sort," the other said. He
+raised his head, but sank back, with a thin, audible inspiration. "It
+would be best, sir, to have the doctor from Jaffa," the servant
+suggested. Howat, in the midst of protest, closed his eyes; the pain had
+returned. When he had again defeated it Rudolph was gone.
+
+The room blurred, lost its walls, became formless space; out of which,
+to his pleasurable surprise, he saw the carefully garbed figure of
+Colonel Mapleson walking toward him. He never forgot that tea rose!
+Confound him--probably another benefit for one of his indigent song
+birds. As Howat was about to speak the Colonel disappeared. It was
+Scalchi, in street dress, a yellow fur about her throat, warm,
+seductive. He had sent the divine Page the bouquet in paper lace. But
+she too vanished. He heard the strains of an orchestra; lingering he had
+missed the overture, and it might be the first duet--with Geister in
+superb voice. He was waiting for Mariana, that was it ... always late.
+Then her hand was under his arm. But it was the doctor from Jaffa.
+
+Rudolph was at the foot of the bed, and the two men moved aside,
+conversed impolitely in hushed tones. I'm sick, he thought lucidly. One
+word reached him--oxygen. It all melted away again, into a black lake
+with ghostly swans, a painted mouth and showering confetti; one of the
+supreme waltzes that Johann Strauss alone could compose. Later a woman
+in a folded linen cap was seated beside him, a chimera. But she laid
+cool fingers on his Wrist, held a brownish, distasteful mixture to his
+lips. A draught of egg nog was better, although it wasn't as persuasive
+as some he had had: Bundy Provost's, for example.
+
+Bundy was a galliard youth, but he was clear as ice underneath. He
+wouldn't have let them put that thing over his, Howat's, face. He tried
+to turn aside, but a cap of darkness descended upon him. Afterward his
+breathing was easier. A blue iron tank was standing nearby, and the
+nurse was removing a rubber mask attached to a flexible tube. The latter
+led from a glass bottle, with a crystal pipe into the tank; the bottle
+held water; and the water was troubled with subsiding, clear bubbles.
+More of the dark, unpleasant mixture, more egg nog. Why did they trouble
+and trouble him--already he was late getting to Irving Place.
+
+The opera, as he had feared, had commenced; and it was at once strange
+and familiar. The chorus and orchestra were singing in a deep ground
+tone; the stage was set with a row of great, seething furnaces; glaring
+white bars of light cut through vaporous, yellow gases and showered
+steel sparks where coppery figures were labouring obscurely in a flaming
+heat that rolled out over the audience. There was a shrilling of
+violins, and then a deafening blare of brass, an appalling volume of
+sound pouring out like boiling metal.... But here was Rudolph; the
+performance was at an end; it was time to go home.
+
+"I took the liberty of searching for--for Miss Jannan's address," the
+other told him. Well, and why not! "Mr. Provost and Mrs. Jannan are away
+for a week." Howat hoped that Kingsfrere would not turn up with his
+flat face. He was conscious of smiling at a memory the exact shape of
+which escaped him--something humorous that had happened to the pasty
+youth. A refreshing air came in at the open windows, and he struggled
+for a full, satisfying breath. The relief of what he dimly recognized as
+oxygen followed. The nurse moved to the door and Mariana entered.
+
+"Howat," she exclaimed, sitting beside him, "how silly of you! A cold
+now with winter done. The snow is running away. And these soda-watery
+tanks." He felt a warmth communicated by her actual presence. "It's just
+my breathing," he told her; "it gets stopped up. A damned nuisance! Did
+Honduras meet you?"
+
+She assured him that she had been correctly received, and vanished to
+remove her hat. Mariana must not sit in here, with the windows open, he
+told the nurse; but then, he added, it was no good giving Mariana
+advice. She wouldn't listen to it, except to do the opposite. She came
+back, in one of her eternal knitted things, this one like a ripe banana,
+and sat in the nurse's place. There was a great deal he wanted to know,
+in a few minutes, when he felt less oppressed. The night came swiftly,
+lit by his familiar lamps; Rudolph moved about in the orderly
+disposition of fresh white laundry. A coat needed pressing. It would do
+to-morrow. The doctor hurt him with a little scraping stab at the
+bottom of his ear.
+
+"Mariana," he at last made the effort of speech, questioning: "I have
+been bothered about your--your temporary arrangement. That Harriet, you
+know ... make trouble."
+
+"Why, Howat," she replied, admirably detached; "you don't read the
+important sheets of the papers! Harriet has made a tremendous success
+with what was supposed to be a small part. A New York manager has
+engaged her in letters of fire, for an unthinkable amount. James and I
+sent her our obscure compliments, but we were virtuously rebuked by a
+legal gentleman. Harriet, it seems, is going to cast us off."
+
+Of all that she had said only the word obscure remained in his mind; and
+it roused in him an echo of his old, dogmatic pride. "Mariana," he
+demanded, "didn't the reorganization come about; isn't James Polder
+superintendent?"
+
+She hesitated, then replied in a low, steady voice. "Yes, Howat, it did;
+but they didn't move Jim up. An older, they said steadier, man was
+chosen." It was the oranges, he told himself, the oranges and brandy;
+the cursed young fool. "You must come away, Mariana," he continued more
+faintly; "fair trial, failure--something to yourself, our family."
+
+"Leave Jimmy because he wasn't made superintendent!" she replied in an
+abstracted impatience. Then, "I wonder about a smaller plant? Won't you
+understand, Howat," she leaned softly over him; "I need Jim as badly as
+he needs me; perhaps more. If I had any superior illusions they have all
+gone. I can't tell us apart. Of course, I'd like him to get on, but
+principally for himself. Jim, every bit of him, the drinking and
+tempers, and tenderness you would never suspect, is my--oxygen. I can
+see that you want to know if I am happy; but I can't tell you, Howat.
+Perhaps that's the answer, and I am--I have a feeling of being a part of
+something outside personal happiness, something that has tied Jim and me
+together and gone on about a larger affair. You see, Howat, I wasn't
+consulted," she added in a more familiar impudence; "whether I was
+pleased or not didn't appear to matter. In a position like that it's
+silly to talk about happiness as if it were like the thrill at your
+first ball."
+
+He drifted away from her through the nebulous haze deepening about him.
+An occasional, objective buzzing penetrated to his removed place; but
+all the while he realized that he was getting farther and farther from
+such interruptions of an effort to distinguish a vaguely familiar,
+veiled shape. He saw, at last, that it was Howat, a black Penny. It was
+at once himself and that other Howat, yes, and Jasper. All three
+unremarkably merged into one. And the acts of the first, a dark young
+man with an erect, impatient carriage, a countenance and gaze of
+vigorous scorn, accumulated in a later figure, hardly less upright,
+slender, but touched with grey--a man in the middle of life. He paid
+with an anguished spirit for what had taken place; and at last an old
+man lingered with empty hands, the husk of a passion that had burned out
+all vitality.
+
+Mariana, too, had been drawn into the wide implications of this mingled
+past and present. But now, clearly, he recognized in her the meeting of
+spirit and flesh that had been denied to him. That was life, he thought,
+that was happiness. In the absence of such consummation he had come to
+nothing. In Jasper, in Susan Brundon who had married him over late, the
+two had warred.
+
+Life took the spirit to itself, mysteriously; wove the gold thread into
+its design of scarlet and earth and green, or else ... a hearth soon
+cold, the walls of a Furnace crumbled and broken, a ruin covered from
+memory by growing leafage and grass throbbing with the song of robins,
+the shrilling of frogs in the meadow.
+
+The doctor and nurse, Rudolph and Mariana, moved about him in a far, low
+stir. At times they approached on a lighter flood of oxygen. Mariana
+wiped his lips--an immaterial red stain. But what was that confounded
+opera the name of which he had forgot? It would be in his albums; in the
+first, probably. Downstairs. He had a sudden view of Mariana's face as
+she returned with the volume. An expression of piercing concern
+overwhelmed the reassuring smile she had for him.
+
+Howat understood at last, he was dying. An instinctive shuddering
+seized him; not in fear of the obliterating fact; but from a physical
+revulsion bred by his long years of delicate habit.
+
+Yet it wouldn't do to expose Mariana to the terrors; and, after a sharp,
+inward struggle, he said almost fretfully, "Further on." She turned the
+pages slowly; but no one could read without a decent light. He moved his
+head, in an infinity of labour, toward the clear, grey opening of the
+window, and saw a pattern of flying geese wavering across the tranquil
+sky.
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Three Black Pennys, by Joseph Hergesheimer
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