Part 2 (2/2)
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. Wins...o...b.. 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 G.o.d 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 b.a.l.l.s 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. Wins...o...b.. 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 wh.o.r.es 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.
Wins...o...b..'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. Wins...o...b.. yawned in the face of the a.s.sembly. 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 f.a.n.n.y 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.
Wins...o...b.. annoyed him by her att.i.tude 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. Wins...o...b.. 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 sc.r.a.ping 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 a.s.sumed 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, gla.s.s 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 s.h.i.+rtsleeves with a green cloth waistcoat and black legs. The Italian servant, Howat concluded. He pa.s.sed 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. Wins...o...b.. 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. Wins...o...b... 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 a.s.semblage.
Mr. Wins...o...b.. 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. Wins...o...b...”
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 st.u.r.dy 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.
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