The Three Black Pennys Part 8

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 pa.s.sion stood apart from them, dominating them, las.h.i.+ng 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 att.i.tude 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 Wins...o...b.., she thought, would mean--escape. He used the word deliberately, realizing that that now expressed her att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sion.

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 Wins...o...b.., who, it appeared, had been a.s.saulted 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 Wins...o...b..s 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 pa.s.ses 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 Wins...o...b.. appeared at the supper hour. He was helped out of Abner Forsythe's leather-hung chaise, and a.s.sisted 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.

Wins...o...b... 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 Wins...o...b.. had had another vicious attack in the night. Dr. Watlow arrived, and demanded a.s.sistance. 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 Wins...o...b..'s spare chest, then filled a shallow, thick gla.s.s with spirits; emptying the latter, he set fire to the interior of the gla.s.s; 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 Wins...o...b.. 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 pa.s.sage on the _Lindamira_. Howat heard her without resentment. He had no wish to contradict her needlessly even in thought; he was immovably fixed. Mr. Wins...o...b..'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 pa.s.sion.

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.

Wins...o...b.., partially drugged with opium, grew consciously weaker, Howat's a.s.sistance 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 Wins...o...b.. 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 s.h.i.+fts. Howat watched her without an emotion visible on his sombre countenance.

Occasionally Mr. Wins...o...b..'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 d.a.m.ned 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, a.s.suage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive a.s.semblies were open to them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of Mr. Wins...o...b..'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 Wins...o...b.. 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 pa.s.sion 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 Wins...o...b.. 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, flouris.h.i.+ng 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 Wins...o...b.. and himself, Howat Penny. A world peopled only by them; the silence of the room dropped into infinite s.p.a.ce, 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 s.p.a.ces 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 Wins...o...b.. raised his head, and Ludowika cried faintly.

Then silence again folded them.

Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs--the furnis.h.i.+ng 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompa.s.sing the magnitude of his pa.s.sion; 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 Wins...o...b.. 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 Wins...o...b.. 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. Wins...o...b..'s features. The silence was absolute. He seemed to be waiting in an att.i.tude 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 Wins...o...b..'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.

Wins...o...b..'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 rea.s.suring 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 Wins...o...b.. 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 pa.s.sed 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 Wins...o...b... Below the automatic sensations of the moment Howat was conscious of utter satisfaction. A miracle had given Ludowika to him; in the pa.s.sing 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 ma.s.s 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 acc.u.mulating 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 const.i.tute the main business of existence had lately faded before preoccupations and feelings ignored until now.

Jasper Penny saw, objectively, not so much the surrounding circ.u.mstance 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 ent.i.ty.

Jasper--a black Penny.