Part 13 (2/2)

XVII

Now that the moment which he had so carefully planned had arrived he was curiously reluctant to precipitate Susan and himself into the future.

The lamps on a mantel, hooded in alabaster, cast a diffused radiance over Susan's silvery dress, on her countenance faintly flushed above the white folds of the shawl. ”What is that sound?” she suddenly queried. ”I heard it all through supper and before. It seems to live in the walls, the very air, here.”

”The trip hammer of Myrtle Forge,” he replied gravely. ”I suppose it might, fancifully, be called the beating of the Penny heart; it does pound through every a.s.sociated stone; and I have a notion that when it stops we shall stop too. The Penny men have all been faithful to it, and it has been faithful to us, given us a hold in a new country, a hold of wrought iron.”

”How beautiful,” she murmured; ”how strong and safe!”

”It pleases me that you feel that,” he plunged directly into his purpose; ”for I intend to offer you all the strength and safety it contains.” Her hands fluttered to her cheeks; a sudden fear touched her, yet her eyes found his unwaveringly. ”If that were all,” he continued, standing above her, ”if I had only to tell you of the iron, if the metal were flawless, I'd be overwhelmed with gladness. But almost no iron is perfect, the longest refining leaves bubbles, faults. Men are like that, too ... Susan.” She grew troubled, sensitively following his mood; her hands were now pressed to her breast, her lips parted. She was so bewilderingly pure, in her dim-lit, pearly haze of silk, that he paused with an involuntary contraction of pain at what must follow.

”The child, Eunice,” he struggled on; ”I couldn't leave her at the Academy because it might injure you. I had brought her in a most blind egotism; and so I took her away. She is my daughter.”

He saw that at first she totally missed the implication of his words.

”But,” she stammered, ”I was told you had no ... how would that--?” Then she stopped as sharply as if a hand had compressed her throat. A vivid mantle of colour rose in her face; she made a motion of rising, of flight, but sank back weakly. ”It is criminally indelicate to speak to you of this,” he said, ”but it was absolutely necessary. I want to marry you; in that circ.u.mstance a lie would be fatal, later or sooner.”

She attempted to speak, her lips quivered, but only a low gasp was audible. It was worse, even, than he had feared. Now, however, that he had told her, he felt happier, more confident. Surely, after a little, she would forgive, forget, ”I want to marry you,” he repeated, torn with pity at her fragility, her visible suffering. ”All that might hurt you has been put out of my life, out of our future. The way is open before us, the refining. I would do anything to spare you, believe that; but the truth, now, best.”

”Always,” she said in a faint voice. ”I am trying to--to realize. Oh! I suppose such things do occur; but the child herself, you--don't see how that, so near--” she broke off, gazing wide-eyed out of her misery. He was conscious of the dull, regular beat of the Forge hammer. G.o.d, how the imperfections persisted! But, he told himself savagely, in the end the metal was steadfast. He would, certainly, overcome her natural revulsion from what she had just heard. The colour had left her cheeks, violet shadows gathered about her eyes; she seemed more unsubstantial than ever. He would repay again and again the suffering he had brought her. Having declared himself he was almost tranquil; there was a total absence of the impetuous emotionalism of youth, the blind tyranny of desire. His feeling was deeper, and accompanied by a far more involved philosophy of self-recognition. At the same time, while acutely conscious of his absolute need of Susan Brundon, he was at a loss to discover its essence, shape. Before he had known her he had been obsessed by a distaste for his existence; he had desperately wanted something without definition ... And Susan was that desire, delicate, clear-eyed Susan. Yet, still, the heart of her escaped him.

Jasper Penny had told himself that his new dissatisfaction was merely the result of his acc.u.mulating years; but, beyond the fact that such an increase might have brought him different and keener perceptions, that explanation was entirely inadequate. He wanted a quality beyond his experience, beyond, he realized, any material condition--Susan Brundon, yes; but it was no comparatively simple urge of s.e.x, the natural selection of the general animal creation. There was no question of pa.s.sionate importunities; those, here, would be worse than futile; all that he desired was beyond words, moving in obedience to a principle of which he had not caught the slightest glimpse. Yet, confident of his ultimate victory, he maintained the dominating presence of a black Penny.

Susan Brundon had sunk back into the depths of her capacious chair; she seemed utterly exhausted, as if she had been subjected to a prolonged brutal strain. But still her eyes sought him steady in their hurt regard. ”There is so much that I can give you,” he blundered, immediately conscious of the sterility of his phrase. ”I mean better things--peace and attention and--and understanding. I won't attempt any of the terms usual, commonplace, at such moments, you must take them, where they are worthy, for granted. I only tell you a lamentable fact, and ask you to marry me, promise you the tenderest care--”

”I know that,” she replied, with obvious difficulty, hesitation. ”I'll not thank you. It is terribly difficult for me. I'd like to answer you as you wish, I mean reply to--to your request. But the other, the child, dragged about; there was such a distrust, a wariness, in her face.”

”There is no good in thinking of that alone,” he stated, with a return of his customary decision. ”No one can walk backwards into the future.

Try to consider only the immediate question, what I have asked you--will you marry me?”

”Is that all you have to explain?” she asked. ”Is there, now, no one else that counts?” The edge of a cold dread entered his hopes. ”If you refer to the child's mother,” he said stiffly, ”she is amply well taken care of, you need waste no sentimental thoughts on her.”

”Ah!” Susan exclaimed, shrinking. Her hands closed tightly on the wide silk of her skirt. The fear deepened within him; it would be impossible to explain Essie to the woman before him. Essie, falsely draped in conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth. He raged silently at his impotence, the inhibition that prevented the expression of what might be said for himself. Essie Scofield had, like every one else, lived in the terms of her being, attracting to herself what essentially she was; it was neither bad nor good, but inevitable. His contact with her had been the result of mutual qualities, qualities that were no longer valid. Yet to say that would place him in a d.a.m.nable light, give him the aspect of the meanest opportunist. Susan breathed, ”That poor woman.” It was precisely what he had expected, feared--the advent.i.tious illusion! He had an impulse to describe to her, even at the price of his own condemnation, the condition in which he had found Eunice; but that too perished silently. Jasper Penny grew restive under the unusual restraint of his position.

”Do you mind--no more at present.” Susan Brundon said. ”I am upset; please, another time; if it is necessary. I feel that I couldn't answer anything now, I must go up; no, your mother will show me.” She rose, and he realized that she would listen no further. There was an astonis.h.i.+ng strength of purpose behind her deprecating presence. She was more determined than himself. He watched her walk evenly from the room, heard the low stir of voices beyond, with a feeling that he had been perhaps fatally clumsy. All that he had said had been wrong, brutally selfish.

He had deliberately invited failure; he should have been patient, waited; given her a chance to know and, if possible, value him, come to depend on him, on his judgment, his ability in her welfare. But, in place of making himself a necessity, he had launched at once into facts which she must find hideous. She had said, ”another time, if necessary.”

His mouth drew into a set line--there would be another and another, until he had persuaded, gained, her.

He lit a cigar, and walked discontentedly up and across the room. The sound of the Forge hammer again crept into his consciousness: the Penny iron--the fibre, the actuality, of the Penny men! He repeated this arrogantly; but the declaration no longer brought rea.s.surance; the certainty even of the iron faded from him; he had failed there, too, digging a pit of oblivion for all that their generations of toil had accomplished. The past inexorably woven into the pattern of the future!

Eunice, so soon wary, distrustful, Susan had seen that immediately, would perpetuate all that he wished dead--Essie and himself bound together, projected in an undesirable immortality through endless lives striving, like himself, to escape from old chains.

If he failed with Susan his existence would have been an unmitigated evil; the iron, his petty, material triumphs, would rust, but the other go on and on. His thoughts became a maze of pity for Eunice, infinite regret of the past, a bitter energy of hope for what might follow.

He turned with pride to his forging--long-wrought charcoal iron; the world would know no better. Still, with his penetration of the future, he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had difficulty in a.s.sembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension of steam railways, would grow resistlessly. More wholesale methods of production were being utilized daily; he was one of the foremost adherents of ”improvement”; but suddenly he felt a poignant regret at the inevitable pa.s.sing of the old order of great Ironmasters, the princ.i.p.alities of furnaces and forges. He was still, he felt, such a master of his men and miles of forests and clearings, lime pits and ore banks, coal holes, mills, c.o.ke ovens, hearths and manufactories. He might still drive to Virginia through a continuous line of his interests; his domination over his labourers, in all their personal and industrial implications, was patriarchal; he commanded, through their allegiance and his entire grasp on every iota of their living, their day's journey; but, he told himself, he was practically the last of his kind.

New and different industrial combinations were locking together in great agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in a cold and successful automaton of business. A system of general credit was springing up; the old, old payments in kind, in iron or even meal and apparel, or gold, had given place to reciprocal understandings of deferred indebtedness. The actual thousands of earlier commerce were replaced by theoretical millions. His own realty, his personal property, because of such understandings, were outside computation. They were, he knew, reckoned in surprising figures; but in a wide-spread panic, forced liquidation, the greater part of his wealth would break like straw. It was the same with the entire country.

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