Part 5 (1/2)
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 astonis.h.i.+ng 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.”
G.o.d, 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 a.s.sistance, 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. Wins...o...b..'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 kins.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sume; 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 compet.i.tion 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 Wins...o...b... 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 b.u.t.tonholes 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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. ”h.e.l.l's b.u.t.tons!”
he cried. ”Why didn't you tell me that before? You cast iron a.s.s! 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. Wins...o...b.. 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.”