Part 15 (2/2)
A swiftly augmented concern gathered on Stephen Jannan's countenance.
”You were walking with Susan,” he repeated increduously. ”Yes,” Jasper a.s.serted, with a sharp inner dread. ”You don't know, but I want to marry her.” Stephen Jannan faced him with an exclamation of anger. ”You want to marry her, and, in consequence, drag her, Susan, into the dirtiest affair the city is like to know for years. Susan Brundon, with her Academy; all she has, all her labour, destroyed, ruined, pulled to pieces by slanderous tongues! By G.o.d, Jasper, what a beast you look! The most delicate woman, alive, the one farthest from just this sort of muck, being sworn in the Mayor's office, testifying in an obscene murder case, before the Sheriff and Constable, and heaven knows what police and vilely curious!”
A sickening feeling of utter destruction seized on Jasper Penny, a dropping of his entire being from the heights of yesterday to the last degradation. He felt the blood leave his heart and pound dizzily in his brain, and then recede, followed by an icy coldness, a wavering of the commonplace objects of the room. He raised his fingers to his collar, stared with burning eyes at Stephen Jannan. ”Everything spoiled,” the latter said again; ”her pupils will positively be taken from her at once by all the nice females. Her name will be p.r.o.nounced, smiled over, in every despicable quarter of the city, printed in the daily sheets. I--I can't forgive you for this. Susan, our especial joy!”
Jasper Penny saw in a flash, as vivid and remorseless as a stab of lightning, that this was all true. The fatality of the past, sweeping forward in a black, strangling tide, had overtaken not only himself but Susan, too; Susan, in soft merino, in an azure velvet cloak; her face against his. ”I shall go away at once,” he said hoa.r.s.ely. ”I'll never appear, and they can think what they will. Then there will be no necessity for her to come forward. She shall be spared that, no matter what it costs.”
”Romantic and youthful folly,” Jannan declared; ”loud-sounding and useless. How little you understand Susan--immediately it is known Culser was killed between seven and nine, whether you stay or go, she will come forward with the truth, free you from any suspicion. I tell you every detail will be canva.s.sed, familiar to the boys on the street. A man important as yourself, with all your industries and money, and such salacity, together with Susan Brundon, will make a pretty story. If I had a chance, Jasper, I'm almost certain I'd sacrifice you without a quiver. How could you? Susan Brundon! Never telling her--”
”On the contrary, she knew everything. I am not so low as you seem to think.”
”That has no importance now!” Stephen Jannan exclaimed impatiently. ”All that matters is to make it as easy as possible for her, I have, I think, enough position, influence, to keep the dregs out. But there will be enough present, even then. d.a.m.nable insinuations, winks, cross-questioning.”
His excitement faded before the exigencies of the unavoidable situation; he became cold, logical, legal. Jasper Penny listened, standing, to his instructions, the exact forecasting of every move probable at the hearing in the Mayor's chamber. ”After that,” Stephen added, ”we can face the problem of Susan's future. She thinks tremendously of her school. It will fall to pieces in her hands. There can be no question of material a.s.sistance; refused her own brother.
”Now, understand--stay in these rooms until I send for you. See no one.
I'll get on, go to Susan. The thing itself should be short; her character will a.s.sist you there. What a mess you have made of living, Jasper.”
XX
In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet mingled inner voices: Essie's younger, exuberant periods, her joy at presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low, diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the Academy. These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same. Back of them were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of a.s.sociated heat or cold, darkness or light:
He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius, regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced, the sense of Howat's nearness; integral with himself; merging into his own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring. His mother joined the immaterial company, accents, rigid with pride in him. And penetrating, binding, all was the dull beat of the trip hammer at Myrtle Forge. He had mechanically finished dressing, and stood absently twisting the drapery at a window. A fine tracery of lines had suddenly appeared about his eyes; the cold rays of the winter sun, streaming over his erect figure, accentuated the patches of grey plentiful in his hair.
He saw, on the street below, a parade of firemen, in scarlet tunics and bra.s.s helmets, dragging a glittering engine. The men walked evenly abreast, at cross ropes. A leader blew a brilliant fanfare on an embossed, silver horn. Women pa.s.sed, foreshortened into circular bells of colour, draped with gay pelerines and rich India shawls. He saw all and nothing. The horn of the firemen sounded without meaning on his distracted hearing. The flood of his suffering rose darkly, oppressing his heart, choking his breath. Perhaps if, as he had desired, he had gone away, Susan would be spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could keep her from the p.r.o.nouncement of the words that would free him and bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would take her fearful but determined into the pits of any h.e.l.l. His hands slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. G.o.d, why hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would have been already too late, he added in thought; it went back, back--
A knock sounded discreetly on the door: and, opening it, he saw a young man, remembered as a law student in Stephen's office. ”They are ready for you, sir, at the City Hall,” he stated, in an over-emphasized, professional calm.
XXI
The restrained curiosity and inaudible comments which greeted his pa.s.sage through the lower floor of the hotel gave place to a livelier interest when he was readily recognized on the street. The news of the murder had, evidently, already become city property. He was indicated to individuals unaware of his ident.i.ty, with a rapid sketch of the crime, of fabulous ascribed possessions, and hinted oriental indulgence. He strode on rapidly, his shoulders squared, his expression contemptuous, challenging; but within he was possessed by an apprehension increasing at every step. It was not, fortunately, far from Sanderson's Hotel to the City Hall; west on Chestnut Street they reached their destination at the following corner. The loungers from the trees before the State House had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the entrance to the munic.i.p.al offices. The windows on either side of the marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building. He tried to recall if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; they whirled in a feverish course about the sole fact of the public degradation he had brought on Susan Brundon. They pa.s.sed the doors of civic departments, he saw their signs--Water, City Treasurer, and then entered the Mayor's chamber.
The latter was seated at a table facing the room with his back to a wide window, opening on the blank brick wall of the Philosophical Society building; and at one side the High Constable of the district in which the murder had been committed was conversing with the Sheriff. Beside them, Jasper Penny saw, there were only some clerks present and three policemen. The Mayor spoke equably to the Ironmaster, directed a chair placed for his convenience, and resumed the inspection of a number of reports. He had a gaunt, tight-lipped face framed in luxuriant whiskers, a severely moral aspect oddly contradicted by trousers of tremendous sporting plaid, a waistcoat of green buckskin ca.s.simere, while his silk hat held a rakish, forward angle. The Constable and Sheriff punctuated their converse by prodigious and dexterous spitting into a dangerously far receptacle, and the clerks and police murmured together. The Mayor, finally glancing at a watch enamelled, Jasper Penny saw, with a fay of the ballet, spoke to the room in general. ”Ten and past. Well! Well!
Where are the others? Who is to come still, Hoffernan?”
”Mr. Jannan, sir; and a witness,” a clerk answered. The other gazed at the paper before him.
”Susan Brundon,” he read in a loud, uncompromising tone. Jasper Penny's eyes narrowed belligerently; he would see that these pothouse politicians gave Susan every consideration possible. He was, with Stephen, a far from negligible force in the city elections. ”School mistress,” the Mayor read on. ”Never heard of her or her school. Ah--”
Stephen Jannan had entered with Susan.
Jasper rose as she came forward, and the Mayor had the grace to remove his hat. She wore, he saw, the familiar dress of wool, with a sober, fringed black silk mantle, black gloves and an inconspicuous bonnet. She met his harried gaze, and smiled; but beneath her greeting he was aware of a supreme tension. There was, however, no perceptible nervousness in the manner of her accepting an indicated place; she sat with her hands quietly folded in her lap, the mantle drooping back over the chair.
Stephen Jannan, facing the Mayor, made a concise statement in a cold, deliberate voice. ”I now propose to show your honour,” he finished, ”that, between the hours in which Daniel Culser is said to have been shot to death, my client was peacefully in the company of Miss Brundon, strolling in an opposite quarter of the city.”
”Hoffernan,” the Mayor p.r.o.nounced, waving toward the seated woman. The clerk advanced with a Bible; and, rising, Susan followed the words of the oath in a low, clear voice. To Jasper Penny the occasion seemed intolerably prolonged, filled with needless detail. Never had Susan Brundon appeared more utterly desirable, never had his need to protect, s.h.i.+eld, her been stronger. He--protect her, he added bitterly; rather he had betrayed her, dragged her immaculate sweetness down into the foul atmosphere of a criminal hearing. His attention, fastening on the trivialities of the interior, removed him in a species of self-hypnotism from the actualities of the scene. He heard, as if from a distance, the questioning of the Mayor, ”At what time, exactly, did you say? How did you know that?” Susan said, ”I saw the clock at the back of the hall. I noticed it because I wondered if the younger children had retired.”
”You say you walked with Mr. Penny--where?... How long did you remain at the river? No way of knowing. Seemed surprisingly short, I'll venture.”
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