Part 8 (1/2)
An infinitely seductive, warm arm crept about his neck; she abandoned herself to a ruthless embrace. ”It's been wonderful, Howat; and--and it isn't over, yet. Nothing lasts, it's a mistake to demand too much. We must take what we may. Perhaps, even, later--in London. No, don't interrupt me. After all, I'm wiser than you are. I was swept away for a little. Impossibilities. I am what I am. I was always that, inside of me. If the longing I told you about had been stronger, it, and not the court, would have made me; but it was no more than a glimpse seen from a window, a thing far away. I'd never reach it. This, now, has been the best of me, all.”
He had a mingled sense of the truth and futility of her words. It was as if his pa.s.sion stood apart from them, dominating them, las.h.i.+ng him with desire. Nothing she might say, no necessity nor effort, could free them. The uselessness of words smote him. She spoke again, an urgent flow of dulcet sound against his ear; but it was without meaning, lost in the drumming of his blood. The stir of feet approached, and he released her, moving to the fireplace. It was Caroline. She stopped awkwardly, advancing a needless explanation of a trivial errand from the doorway, and vanished.
His position at Myrtle Forge was fast becoming impossible. There would be an explosion now at any moment. He took the fire tongs and idly rearranged the wood on the hearth. The flames blazed more brightly, their reflection squirmed over the lacquer frames on the walls, gleamed richly on polished black walnut, and fell across the Turkey floor carpet. It even reached through the pale candle light and flickered on Ludowika's dull red gown, flowered and clouded with blue. She was turned away from him, against the window; her shoulders drooped in an att.i.tude of dejection. The flames died away again.
IX
Ludowika's manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and, Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive.
She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband. Felix Wins...o...b.., she thought, would mean--escape. He used the word deliberately, realizing that that now expressed her att.i.tude toward the Province, toward him. It made no difference in his feeling for her, his determination that nothing should take her from him. His power of detachment vanished; he became utterly the instrument of his pa.s.sion.
He didn't press upon her small expressions of his emotion; somehow, without struggle, she had made them seem foolish; beyond that they were inadequate. He was conscious of the approach of a great climax; his feeling was above the satisfaction of trivial caresses. Soon, he told himself, soon he would absolutely possess her, for as long as they lived. Ultimately she must be happy with him. He thought the same things in a ceaseless round; he walked almost without sight, discharging mechanically the routine of daily existence; answering inevitable queries in a perfunctory, dull voice. Myrtle Forge made a distant background of immaterial colours and sounds for the slightly mocking figure of Ludowika.
In mid-afternoon David arrived with a face stung scarlet by beating wind, and a clatter of hoofs. He immediately found Gilbert Penny, and the two men sat together with grave faces, lowered voices. Howat, who had left the counting house at the sound of the hurried approach, caught a few words as he drew near the others:
”... a bad attack, crumpled him up. Coming out from the city now.” They were talking about Felix Wins...o...b.., who, it appeared, had been a.s.saulted by a knife-like pain; and was returning to Myrtle Forge. ”Watlow saw no reason why it should be dangerous,” David continued; ”he thinks perhaps it came from unusual exertions, entertaining. A little rest, he says. He thinks the Wins...o...b..s will be able to sail on the _Lindamira_ as they planned.”
Ludowika listened seriously to Gilbert Penny's few, temperate words of preparation. ”He has had a pain like that before,” she told them. ”It always pa.s.ses away. Felix is really very strong, in spite of his age. He won't ordinarily go to bed, but I'll insist on that now, simply for rest.” Felix Wins...o...b.. appeared at the supper hour. He was helped out of Abner Forsythe's leather-hung chaise, and a.s.sisted into the house.
Howat saw him under the hanging lamp in the hall; with a painful surprise he realized that he was gazing at the haggard face of an old man. Before he had never connected the thought of definite age with Mr.
Wins...o...b... The man's satirical virility had forbidden any of the patronage unconsciously extended to the aged.
A trace of his familiar, mocking smile remained, but it was tremulous; it required, Howat saw, great effort. An involuntary admiration possessed him for the other's unquenchable courage. The latter protested vehemently against being led to his room by Ludowika; but she ignored his determination to go into supper, swept him away with a firm arm about his waist.
The house took on the slightly strange and disordered aspect of illness; voices were grave, low; in the morning Howat learned that Felix Wins...o...b.. had had another vicious attack in the night. Dr. Watlow arrived, and demanded a.s.sistance. Howat Penny, in the room where Ludowika's husband lay exhausted in a bed canopied and draped in gay India silk, followed Watlow's actions with a healthy feeling of revulsion. The doctor bared Wins...o...b..'s spare chest, then filled a shallow, thick gla.s.s with spirits; emptying the latter, he set fire to the interior of the gla.s.s; and, when the blue flame had expired, clapped the cupped interior over the prostrate man's heart. There was, it seemed, little else that could be done; bleeding was judged for the once unexpeditious.
An effort at commonplace conversation was maintained at dinner. Ludowika openly discussed the arrangements for their return to London. Felix Wins...o...b.. had rallied from the night; his wife said that it was difficult to restrain him. The most comfortable provisions, she continued, had been made for their pa.s.sage on the _Lindamira_. Howat heard her without resentment. He had no wish to contradict her needlessly even in thought; he was immovably fixed. Mr. Wins...o...b..'s debilitated return had completely upset his intentions. An entirely different proceeding would now be demanded, but with an identical end.
What pity he felt for the elder had no power to reach or alter his pa.s.sion.
He returned to the counting house, and worked methodically through the afternoon, with an increasing sense of being involved in an irresistible movement. This gave him a feeling almost of tranquillity; from the beginning he had not been responsible. In the face of illness the Italian servant proved utterly undependable; he cringed, stricken with dread, from the spectacle of suffering. And when late in the day Mr.
Wins...o...b.., partially drugged with opium, grew consciously weaker, Howat's a.s.sistance was required.
Ludowika now remained in the room with her husband, and there was a discreet movement in and out by various members of the household.
Isabel Penny remained for an hour, Caroline took her place, Myrtle fluttered uncertainly in the doorway. Through the evening Felix Wins...o...b.. lay propped on pillows, his head covered by a black gros de Naples cap. His keen personality waned and revived on his long, yellow countenance. At one side wigs stood in a row on blocks, a brilliant, magenta coat lay in a huddle on a chair. At intervals he spoke, in a thinner, higher voice than customary, petulantly uneasy, or with a familiar, sardonic inflection. At the latter Ludowika would grow immensely cheered. She entirely ignored Howat on the occasions when he was in the room. He saw her mostly bent over leather boxes, into which disappeared her rich store of silk and gold brocades, shoes of purple morocco, soft white s.h.i.+fts. Howat watched her without an emotion visible on his sombre countenance.
Occasionally Mr. Wins...o...b..'s tenuous fingers dipped into a snuff box of black enamel and brilliants, and he lifted his hand languidly. The man's vitality, his sheer determination, were extraordinary. Even now he was far from impotence. He had, Howat had learned, completely dominated the Provincial Councils, forced a mutual compromise and agreement on them.
He spoke of still more complicated affairs awaiting him in England. He d.a.m.ned the Italian's ”white liver,” and threatened to leave him in America. Dr. Watlow had been forced to return to the city.
Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the future of the Penny iron. They might live in one of the outlying stone dwellings at the Forge ... for the present. He was glad that Gilbert Penny, that he, was rich. Ludowika could continue to dress in rare fabrics, to step in elaborate pattens over the common earth. That could not help but influence, a.s.suage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive a.s.semblies were open to them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of Mr. Wins...o...b..'s bitter humour. In the past he had repudiated them with the utmost scorn. In the past--dim shapes, scenes, that appeared to have occurred years before, but which in reality reached to last month, trooped through his mind. Youth had vanished like a form dropping behind a hill. He looked back; it was gone; his feet hurried forward into the unguessed future; anxiety joined him; the scent that was Ludowika accompanied him, an illusive figure. He reached toward it.
He was standing at the foot of the bed where Felix Wins...o...b.. lay. The latter was restless, and complained of pains in his arms, reaching down to his fingers. Ludowika bent over him, her face stamped with concern.
She regarded Howat with a new expression--narrowed eyes and a glimmer of flawless teeth: a look he had never foreseen there; but it was impotent before the thing that was. It had, however, the effect of intensifying his desire, his pa.s.sion for her fragility of silk and flesh. He would kiss her hate on her mouth.
She sat by the bedside, and Howat took a place opposite her. Candles burned on a highboy, on a table at his back; and their auriferous light flowed in about the bedstead. The latter was draped from the canopy to the bases of the posts in a bright printing of pheasants and conventional thickets--cobalt and ruby and orange; and across a heavy counterpane half drawn up stalked a row of panoplied Indians in clipped zephyr. It was a nebulous enclosure with the shadows of the hangings wavering on the coloured wool and cold linen, on the long, seamed countenance of the prostrate man.
A clock in the hall struck slowly--it needed winding--ten blurred notes.