Part 4 (2/2)
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 ent.i.ty.
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 Wins...o...b.. 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 pa.s.sed over him, d.a.m.ned 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 G.o.d, but she had become himself! In the s.p.a.ce 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 ent.i.ty 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 pa.s.sion, founded on something beyond the thirst of flesh, founded perhaps on soaring companions.h.i.+ps, 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, f.a.n.n.y 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 superst.i.tions 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, surrept.i.tiously; his wrists would pound with an irregular, sultry circulation; longing would hara.s.s 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 Wins...o...b.. 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 att.i.tude of tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sion grew constantly stronger, more brutal.
In a last, vanis.h.i.+ng 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. Wins...o...b..'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 Wins...o...b..s' experience. He never thought of Felix Wins...o...b.. 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, astonis.h.i.+ng community of feeling with the older man; a momentary dislike of St. James, Versailles, the entire, treacherous, silk mob. A lover at fourteen!
Howat d.a.m.ned such a betrayal with a bitterness whose base lay deeply buried in s.e.x 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. Wins...o...b.. 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.
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