Part 10 (1/2)
Yet the need, the longing forward, so newly come into his consciousness, persisted, grew--it had become the predominate design of his weaving.
Through this he recognized a rea.s.sertion of his pride, the rigid pride of a black Penny, which, in the years immediately past, had been overwhelmed by a temporary inner confusion. Beyond forty men returned to their inheritance, their blood; this fact echoed vaguely among his memories of things heard; and he felt in himself its measure of truth.
His distaste for a largely muddled, pandering society, for men huddled, he thought, like domestic animals, returned in choking waves. In the maculate atmosphere of flat wine and stale cologne he had a sharp recurrence of the scent of pines, lifting warmly in sunny s.p.a.ce.
He produced a morocco bound note book, a gold pencil; and, with the latter poised, directed a close interrogation at Essie. Her face flushed with an ungovernable anger, and she pressed a hand over her labouring heart. ”Get her then; out Fourth Street, Camden; the Reverend Mr.
Needles. But afterwards don't come complaining to me. You ought to have seen to her; you've got the money, the influence. And you have done nothing, beyond some stinking dollars ... wouldn't even name her. Eunice Scofield, a child without--”
All that she had said was absolutely true, just.
”I suppose you'll even think I didn't give her the sums you sent; that d.a.m.ned Needles has been bleeding me, suspects something.” She stopped from a lack of breath; her darkened face was purplish, in the shadows.
”I haven't been well, either--a fierce pain here, in my heart.”
It was the brandy, he told her; she should leave the city, late wine parties, go back into the country. ”Go back,” she echoed bitterly.
”Where? How?” He winced--the past reaching inexorably into the future.
Jasper Penny made no attempt to ignore, forget, his responsibility; he admitted it to her; but at the same time the tyrannical hunger increased within him--the mingled desire for fresh paths and the nostalgia of the old freedom of spirit. But life, that had made him, had in the same degree created Essie; neither had been the result of the other; they had been swept together, descended blindly in company, submerged in the pa.s.sion that he had thought must last forever, but which had burned to ashes, to nothing more than a vague sense of putrefaction in life.
”Thank you,” he said formally, putting away the note book. ”Something, of course, must be done; but what, I can only say after I have seen Eunice. I am, undoubtedly, more to blame than yourself.”
”I suppose, in this holy strain, you'll end by giving her all and me nothing.”
”... what you are getting as long as you live?”
”That's little enough, when I hear how much you have, what all that iron is bringing you. Why, you could let me have twenty, thirty thousand, and never know it.”
”If you are unable to get on, that too will be rectified.”
”You are really not a bad old thing, Jasper,” she p.r.o.nounced, mollified.
”At one time--do you remember?--you said if ever the chance came you would marry me. Ah, you needn't fear, I wouldn't have you with all your iron, gold. I--” she stopped abruptly, uneasily. ”Not a bad old thing,”
she repeated, moving to secure a half-full gla.s.s.
”Why do you call me old?” he asked curiously.
”I hadn't thought of it before,” she admitted; ”but, this evening, you looked so solemn, and there is grey in your hair, that all at once you seemed like an old gentleman. Now Dan Culser,” she hesitated, and then swept on, ”he's what you'd name young.” At Daniel Culser's age, he told himself, he, Jasper Penny, could have walked the other blind; and now Essie Scofield was calling him old; she had noticed the grey in his hair. He rose to go, and she came close to him, a clinging, soft thing of flesh faintly reeking with brandy. ”I have a great deal to pay, where money goes I don't know, even a little would be a help.” He left some gold in her hand, thankful to purchase, at that slight price, a momentary release.
Outside Cherry Street was blackly cold, a gas lamp at the corner shed a watery, contracted illumination. He made his way back toward the hotel, but a sudden reluctance to mount to his lonely chambers possessed him.
Before the glimmering marble facade he took out his watch, a pale gold efflorescence in the gloom, and rang the hour in minute, clear notes.
The third quarter past ten. He recalled the ball, but then commencing, at Stephen Jannan's; there it would be indescribably gay, a house flooded with the music of quadrilles, light, polite-chatter; and he determined to proceed and have a cigar with Stephen.
He walked briskly up Mulberry Street to Sixth and there turned to the left. Jasper Penny soon pa.s.sed the shrouded silence of Independence Square, with the new Corinthian doorway of the State House showing vaguely through the irregularly grouped ailanthus trees. Beyond, the brick wall with its marble coping and high iron fence reached, on the opposite side, to the Jannan corner. The length of the brick dwelling, with white arched windows and coursings faced the vague emptiness of Was.h.i.+ngton Square, closed for the winter.
Inside the hall was bright and filled with the pungent warmth of fat hearth coal. A servant, with a phrase of recognition, directed him above, to a room burdened with masculine greatcoats and silk hats. There an attendant told him that Mr. Jannan was below. Jasper Penny had no intention of becoming a partic.i.p.ant in the hall, but neither did he propose to linger among wraps, listening to the supercilious chatter of young men in the extreme mode of bright blue coats, painfully tight black trousers with varnished pumps and expanses of ankle in grey silk.
One, inspecting him through an eyegla.s.s on a woven hair guard, expressed a pointed surprise at Jasper Penny's informal garb. ”Christoval!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. ”It approaches an insult to the da-da-darlings.” Another commenced to sing a popular minstrel air:
”Blink--a--ho--d.i.n.k! Ah! Ho!
”Roley Boley--Good morning Ladies all!”
Jasper Penny abruptly descended to a small room used for smoking. Young men, he thought impatiently, could no longer even curse respectably.