Part 6 (2/2)

A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices, somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Wins...o...b... No, by G.o.d, never that last again!

He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool shock of the rain. Ludowika was m.u.f.fled in her cloak. Howat could see a renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the fluid iron.

Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road.

A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He searched his feelings curiously.

The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable then to think of Felix Wins...o...b.. except as a person generally unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed wig, now absent in Maryland, had no importance in the pa.s.sionate situation that had arisen between Ludowika and himself. Felix Wins...o...b.. would of course have to be met, dealt with; but so would a great many other exterior conditions.

Ludowika, in her linen mask, was enigmatic, a figure of mystery. A complete silence continued between them; at times they ambled with his hand on her body; then the inequalities of the road forced them apart.

The clouds dissolved, the sky was immaculate, green, with dawning stars like dim white flowers. A faint odour of the already mouldering year rose from the wet earth. Suddenly Ludowika dragged the mask from her face. Quivering with intense feeling she cried:

”I'm glad, Howat! Howat, I'm glad!”

He contrived to put an arm about her, crush her to him for a precarious moment. ”We have had an unforgettable day out of life,” she continued rapidly; ”that is something. It has been different, strangely apart, from all the rest. The rain and that musty little store house and the wonderful iron; a memory to hold, carry away--”

”To carry where?” he interrupted. ”You must realize that I'll never let you go now. I will keep you if we have to go beyond the Endless Mountains. I will keep you in the face of any man or opposition created.”

A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. ”I am afraid of myself, Howat,” she told him; ”all that I have been, my life--against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different.

Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while I have needed this.

Howat, do you think so? Do you think I could forget so much, drop the past from me, be all new and happy?”

He rea.s.sured her, only half intent upon the burden of her words. He utterly disregarded anything provisional in their position; happiness or unhappiness were unconsidered in the overwhelming determination that she should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain.

The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid, unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the elder at breakfast. His mother, Howat gladly felt, would give him the sympathy of a wise, broad understanding. David and Caroline would interpose no serious objection. Felix Wins...o...b.. remained; a virile figure in spite of his years; a man of a.s.sured position and a bitter will.

He determined to speak on the day that Felix Wins...o...b.. returned from Annapolis; there would be no concealment of what had occurred, and no hypocrisy. A decent regret at Wins...o...b..'s supreme loss. The other would not relinquish Ludowika without a struggle. Who would? It was conceivable that he would summon the a.s.sistance of the law, conceivable but not probable; the situation had its centre in a purely personal pride. Nothing essential could be won legally. A physical encounter was far more likely. Howat thought of that coldly. He had no chivalrous instinct to offer himself as a sop to conventional honour. In any struggle, exchange of shots, he intended to be victorious.... He would have the naming of the conditions.

”It's beautiful here,” Ludowika broke into his speculations; ”the great forests and Myrtle Forge. I can almost picture myself directing servants like your mother, getting supplies out of the store, and watching the charcoal and iron brought down to the Forge. The sound of the hammer has become a part of my dreams. And you, Howat--I have never before had a feeling like this for a man. There's a little fear in it even. It must be stronger than the other, than Europe; I want it to be.” They could see below them the lighted windows at Myrtle Forge. The horses turned unguided into the curving way across the lawn. A figure stood obsequiously at the door; it was, Howat saw with deep automatic revulsion, the Italian servant. He wondered again impatiently at the persistently unpleasant impression the other made on him. Gilbert Penny was waiting in the hall, and Howat told him fully the result of his investigation.

His father nodded, satisfied. ”You are taking hold a great bit better,”

he was obviously pleased. ”We must go over the whole iron situation with the Forsythes. It's time you and David stepped forward. I am getting bothered by new complications; the thing is spreading out so rapidly--steel and a thousand new methods and refinements. And the English opposition; I'm afraid you'll come into that.”

Ludowika did not again appear that evening, and Howat sat informally before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline.

Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled, almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be a subject to it always. All the elements of his captivity lay so entirely outside of him, beyond his power to measure or comprehend, that a feeling of helplessness came over him. He again had the sense of being swept twisting in an irresistible flood. But his confusion was dominated by one great a.s.surance--nothing should deprive him of Ludowika. An intoxicating memory invaded him, touched every nerve with delight and a tyrannical hunger. His fibre seemed to crumble, his knees turn to dust.

Years ago he had been poisoned by berries, and limpness almost like this had gone softly, treacherously, through him.

VIII

They entered into a period of secret contentment and understanding.

Ludowika displayed a grave interest in the details of the house and iron at Myrtle Forge; he explained the processes that resulted in the wrought blooms despatched by tons in the lumbering, mule-drawn wagons. They explored the farm, where she listened approvingly to the changes he proposed making, kitchen gardens to be planted, the hedges of roses and gravelled paths to be laid--for her. She suggested an Italian walk, latticed above, with a stone seat, and was indicating a corner that might be transformed into a semblance of an angle of Versailles, when, suddenly, she stopped, and clasped his wrist.

”No! No!” she exclaimed, with surprising energy. ”We'll have no France, no court, here, but only America; only you and myself, with no past, no memories, but just the future.” How that was to be realized neither of them considered; they avoided all practical issues, difficulties. They never mentioned Felix Wins...o...b..'s name. However, a long communication came from him for his wife. She read it thoughtfully, in the drawing room, awaiting dinner. No one else but Howat was present, and he was standing with his hand on her shoulder. ”Felix hasn't been well,” she remarked presently. ”For the first time he has spoken to me of his age.

The Maryland affair drags, and that has wearied him.”

”What does he say about returning?” Howat bluntly asked.

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