Part 1 (1/2)

The Three Black Pennys.

by Joseph Hergesheimer.

_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 companions.h.i.+p is set._

_Joseph Hergesheimer_

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 s.h.i.+fting, regular flight would not come close enough for a shot. He dropped the b.u.t.t 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; finis.h.i.+ng, 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. Wins...o...b.., 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, un.o.bstructed 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 cuc.u.mbers; but ... the Heydricks had no daughter, and the Gilkans had. Thomas Gilkan was only a founderman; his house had one room below and a part.i.tion above; and Mrs. Gilkan's casual fare could not be compared to Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was f.a.n.n.y 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 f.a.n.n.y 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, f.a.n.n.y 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 a.s.sociation 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 f.a.n.n.y 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-acc.u.mulating 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 las.h.i.+ng out at individuals or acts that conspicuously displeased him. This had occurred more than once at Myrtle Forge, when a.s.semblymen 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 p.r.o.nounced, after standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning s.p.a.ce; ”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 pa.s.sive 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 a.s.sailed.

His feeling for f.a.n.n.y 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 companions.h.i.+p. He had never considered her concretely as a possible source of physical pleasure. He was not easily excited s.e.xually, 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 s.e.x, 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. f.a.n.n.y was standing in the doorway, her straight, vigorous body sharp against the glow inside. ”Here's Mr. Howat Penny,” she called over her shoulder.