Part 6 (1/2)

”That's ridiculous,” Gilbert Penny declared. ”What,” he asked his wife, ”are they all driving at?” She professed herself equally puzzled. ”Howat would say nothing disadvantageous to young Forsythe. He knows what we all hope.” Caroline suddenly leaned forward, speaking in a level voice: ”This has nothing to do with Howat, but with me. I am going to tell you at once, so that you can all say what you wish, get as angry as you like, and then accept what--what had to be. David and I love each other; we are going to be married.”

Gilbert Penny's surprise slowly gave place to a dark tide suffusing his countenance. ”You and David,” he half stuttered, ”getting married--like that.” Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness from which she watched the conflicts of her family. ”I know I'm fearfully bold, yes, indecent,” Caroline went on, ”and undutiful, impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me, later. But I won't apologize for loving David.”

”Incredible,” her father p.r.o.nounced. ”A girl announcing, without the slightest warrant or authority, that she intends to marry. And trampling on her sister's heart in the bargain.” Howat expostulated, ”What does it matter which he marries? The main affair is to consolidate the families.” The elder glared at him. ”Be silent!” he commanded. Howat Penny's ever present resentment rose to the surface. ”I am not a girl,”

he stated; ”nor yet a n.i.g.g.e.r. And, personally, I think David was extremely wise.”

”I was sure of it,” Myrtle cried; ”he--he has talked against me, helped Caroline behind my back.” She sobbed thinly, with her arm across her eyes. ”If I thought anything like that had occurred,” their father a.s.serted, ”Howat would--” he paused, gazing heavily about at his family.

Howat's ill temper arose. ”Yes--?” he demanded with a sharp inflection.

”Be still, Howat,” his mother said unexpectedly. ”This is all very regrettable, Gilbert,” she told her husband; ”but it is an impossible subject of discussion.” Gilbert Penny continued hotly, ”He wouldn't stay about here.” She replied equably, ”On the contrary, Howat shall be at Myrtle Forge until he himself chooses to leave.”

Howat was conscious of a surprise almost as moving as that pictured on his father's countenance. He had never heard Isabel Penny speak in that manner before; perhaps at last she would reveal what he had long speculated over--her true, inner situation. But he saw at once that he was to be again disappointed; the speaker was immediately enveloped in her detachment, the air that seemed almost one of a spectator in the Penny household. She smiled deprecatingly. How fine she was, Howat thought. Gilbert Penny did not readily recover from his consternation; his surprise had notably increased to that. His mouth was open, his face red and agitated. ”Before the children, Isabel,” he complained. ”Don't know what to think. Surely, surely, you don't uphold Howat? Outrageous conduct if it's true. And Myrtle so gentle, never hurt any one in her life.” Myrtle circled the table, and found a place in his arms. ”If they had only told me,” she protested. ”If Caroline--” He patted her flushed cheeks. ”Don't give it another thought,” he directed; ”a girl as pretty as you! I'll take you to London, where you'll have a string of men, not Quakers, fine as peac.o.c.ks.” He bent his gaze on his son.

”Didn't I tell you last evening that the cast metal has been light?” he demanded. ”Must I beg you to go to the Furnace? Or perhaps that too conflicts with your mother's fears for you. There are stumps in the road.” There was a whisper of skirts at the door, and Ludowika Wins...o...b.. stood smiling at them. Myrtle turned her tear-swollen face upon her father's shoulder. Howat wondered if Ludowika had slept. He endeavoured in vain to discover from her serene countenance something of her thoughts of what had occurred. He had a sudden inspiration.

”I can go to Shadrach as soon as Adam saddles a horse,” he told his father. ”You were curious about the Furnace,” he added to Ludowika, masking the keen anxiety he felt at what was to follow; ”it's a sunny day, a pleasant ride.” She answered without a trace of feeling other than a casual politeness. ”Thank you, since it will be my only opportunity. I'll have to change.” She was gazing, Howat discovered, lightly at Isabel Penny. ”I must get the figures from Schwar,” his father said. Before he left the room he moved to his wife's side, rested his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a rea.s.suring nod.

Howat saw that, whatever it might be, the bond between them was secure, stronger than any differences of prejudices or blood, more potent than time itself. The group, the strain, about the table, broke up.

The horses footed abreast over the road that crossed the hills and forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace.

Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her face m.u.f.fled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His pa.s.sion mounted and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its tide.

Howat said at last:

”Are you still so angry at life, at yourself?”

”No,” she replied; ”I slept that foolishness away. I must have sounded like a character in _The Lying Valet._” Her present mood obscurely troubled him; he infinitely preferred her in the pale crumpled silk and candle light of the evening before. ”I wish I could tell you what I feel,” he said moodily.

”Why not?” she replied. ”It's the most amusing thing possible. You advance and I seem to retreat; you reach forward and grasp--my fan, a handful of petticoat; you protest and sulk--”

”Perhaps in Vauxhall,” he interrupted her savagely, ”but not here, not like that, not with me. This is not a gavotte. I didn't want it; I tried to get away; but it, you, had me in a breath. At once it was all over.

G.o.d knows what it is. Call it love. It isn't a thing under a hedge, I tell you that, for an hour. It's stronger than anything else that will ever touch me, it will last longer.... Like falling into a river.

Perhaps I'm different, a black Penny, but what other men take like water, a woman, is brandy for me. I'm--I'm not used to it. I haven't wanted Kate here and Mary there; but only you. I've got to have you,” he said with a marked simplicity. ”I've got to, or there will be a bad smash.”

Ludowika rode silently, hid in her mask. He urged his horse closer to her, and laid a hand on her swaying shoulder. ”I didn't choose this,” he repeated; ”the blame's somewhere else.” He felt a tremor run through her. ”Why say blame?” she finally answered. ”I hate moralities and excuses and tears. If you are set on being gloomy, and talking to heaven about d.a.m.nation, take it all away from me.” A shadow moved across the countryside, and he saw clouds rising out of the north. A sudden wind swept through the still forest, and immediately the air was aflame with rus.h.i.+ng autumn leaves. They fell across Howat's face and eddied about the horses' legs. The grey bank deepened in s.p.a.ce, the sun vanished; the wind was bleak. It seemed to Howat Penny that the world had changed, its gold stricken to dun and gaunt branches, in an instant. The road descended to the cl.u.s.tered stone houses about Shadrach Furnace.

The horses were left under the shed of the smithy at the primitive cross roads. Thomas Gilkan had gone to the river about a purchase of casting sand, but expected to be back for the evening run of metal. f.a.n.n.y was away, Howat learned, visiting Dan Hesa's family. They would, of course, have dinner at the Heydricks; and the latter sent a boy home to prepare his wife. Ludowika and Howat aimlessly followed the turning road that mounted to the coal house. A levelled and beaten path, built up with stone, led out to the top of the stack, where a group of sooty figures were gathered about the clear, almost smokeless flame of the blast.

Below they lingered on the gra.s.sy edge of the stream banked against the hillside and flooding smoothly to the clamorous fall and revolving wheel by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace, voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows, dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.

Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.

At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep embrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road, and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland ap.r.o.n and worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards while Heydrick and their guests dined.

Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were unsteady, inexact.

The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without a.s.sistance. They stood for a while in the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the murky interior.

A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles acc.u.mulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.

Ludowika looked within. ”For storing,” Howat told her. Inside were piled sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.

Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly, and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms; then Ludowika stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders. She rested against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the ceiling. ”For storage,” he said again. He thought his throat had closed, and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. ”You see,” he muttered; ”things for the store ... the men, wool stockings, handkerchiefs ... against their pay.” The drumming rain was scarcely a foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and canvas-sewed bales about the walls. ”Ludowika,” Howat said. He stopped--she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.