Part 5 (2/2)
Gilbert Penny shot an obvious, humorous glance at Myrtle. She did not meet it, but sat with lowered gaze. Caroline made a daring ”nose” at Howat; but he too failed to acknowledge her message. David's affair had sunk from his thoughts. The drawing room was brilliantly lighted: there was a constant stir of peac.o.c.k silk, of yellow and apple green and coral lutestring, of white shoulders, in the gold radiance of candles like stiff rows of narcissi. Caroline drifted finally into the chamber back of the dining room, and they could hear the tenuous vibrations of the clavichord. Soon David had disappeared. The elder Penny discovered Myrtle seated sullenly at her mother's side; and, taking her arm, he escorted her in the direction of the suddenly silenced music.
Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace. She smiled at Howat as he moved closer to her. She never did things with her hands, he noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little heaps of white. She sat motionless, her arms at rest. His mother seemed far away. The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room wavered in his vision. Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of intoxicating, yellow wine. He had a curious sensation of floating in air, of tea roses. It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she still realized nothing.... She must know now, any minute. Howat saw that his mother had gone.
He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her. She raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened. Then her expression changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand. Her breast rose and fell, sharply, once. Howat picked her up by the shoulders and crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him. Ludowika's skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.
Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa. She hadn't struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her countenance, only a deep trouble. ”Howat,” she said softly, ”you shouldn't have done that. It was brutal, selfish. You--you knew, after all that I told you; the premonition--” she broke off, anger shone brighter in her eyes. ”How detestable men are!” She turned away from him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa. Unexpectedly he was almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.
He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. ”I was an imbecile,” she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with bitterness; ”Arcadia,” she laughed. ”I thought it was different here, that you were different; that feeling in my heart--but it's gone now, dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see, I learned it all quite young.
”I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself.” She appeared older, the Mrs. Wins...o...b.. who had first come to Myrtle Forge; her mouth was flippant. ”The eternal Suzanna,” she remarked, ”the monotonous elders or younger.” He paid little heed to her words; the coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.
”I didn't choose it,” he told her; ”it's ruined all that I was. Now, I don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about--if there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here with--as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the end. There isn't any, I think.” He pressed her hands to his throat with a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained her cheeks, and her breath caught. ”Endless,” he repeated, losing the word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid; she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its wrist.
”I think it is something in myself,” she said presently; ”something a little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. G.o.d, I'd like to be that girl across the road, in the barnyard.” He was back at the fire again when Gilbert Penny entered the room. The latter dropped a palm on Howat's shoulder.
”Schwar says the last sow metal was faulty,” he declared; ”the Furnace'll need some attention with Abner Forsythe deeper in the Provincial affairs. Splendid thing David's back. Look for a lot from David.” Howat hoped desperately that Ludowika would not leave, go to her room, while his father was talking. ”David says you have an understanding, will do great things. I hope so. I hope so. I won't d.a.m.n him as an example but he will do you no harm. That is, if he touches your confounded person at all. A black Penny, Mrs. Wins...o...b..,” he said, turning to the figure spread in pale silk on the sofa. ”Fortunate for you to have no such confounded, stubborn lot on your hands. Although,”
he added laughingly, ”Felix Wins...o...b..'s no broken reed. But this boy of mine--you might think he had been run out of Shadrach,” he tapped a finger on Howat's back. ”Not like those fellows about the Court, anyway.
They tell me he'll go fifty miles through the woods in a day. Now if we could only keep that at the iron trade--”
His father went on insufferably, without end. Howat withdrew stiffly from the other's touch. Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika.
She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated. An immense tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer pa.s.sion vapourized into a poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling. He was protective; his jaw set rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world. He had a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and silver b.u.t.tons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage, confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him. Inexplicable tremors a.s.sailed him, vast fears. His father's deliberate voice destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and yellow flowers, the suave interior. The others had returned. He heard Ludowika speaking; she laughed. His tension relaxed. Suddenly he was flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling, delightful water. He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose.
Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.
There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him to declare himself to Ludowika. He was vaguely conscious of his mother's scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable surmising. His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the consideration of an announcement of his pa.s.sion for Ludowika Wins...o...b.., a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world. But for the present he must be careful. This, the greatest event that had befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening.
His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his scorn.
As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room. Myrtle took her place on the sofa. Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own council. David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat. Caroline gaily laid her arm across her mother's shoulder and propelled her from the room.
David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less clumsy, took his departure. He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light.
Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly. ”Howat,” she said in a small voice, ”it's--it's, that is, David loves me. Whatever do you suppose father and Myrtle will say?”
”What do you think David is saying to Myrtle now?” he asked drily. ”I am glad, Caroline; everything worked out straight for you. David is a d.a.m.ned good Quaker. For some others life isn't so easy.” She laid a warm hand on his shoulder. ”I wish you were happy, Howat.” A slight irritation seized him at the facile manner in which she radiated her satisfaction, and he moved away. ”David's going back to-night. I wish he wouldn't,” she said troubled. ”That long, dark way. Anything might happen. But he has simply got to be at his father's office in the morning. He is going to speak to him first, see what will be given us at the Furnace.”
”It should be quite a family party at breakfast,” Howat predicted.
VII
He was entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared suddenly, ”I hate David Forsythe!” Gilbert Penny was obviously startled.
Caroline half rose, as if she had finished breakfast; but she sat down again with an expression of determination. Howat looted about from his removed place of being. ”I do!” Myrtle repeated. ”At first he seemed to like--I mean I liked him, and then everything changed, got horrid. Some one interfered.” Resentment, suspicion, dominated her, she grew shrill with anger. ”I saw him making faces at Howat, as if he and Howat, as if Howat had, well--”
”Don't generalize,” said Howat coolly; ”be particular.”
”As if you had deliberately spoiled any chance, yes,” she declared defiantly, ”any chance I had.”
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