Part 16 (2/2)
When they had gone Jasper Penny and Jannan sat in a lengthening silence.
Stephen's hand moved among the papers on the table; the other drew a deep breath. ”I regret this tremendously for you,” Stephen Jannan said at last. He spoke with feeling; his momentary anger at the entanglement of Susan vanished. ”But it will pa.s.s, Jasper. You are too solid a man to be hurt permanently by private scandal. And you have no concrete political position to invite mud slinging. Yes, it will drop out of mind, and your iron will continue to support enterprise, extension.”
”But Susan,” Jasper Penny demanded, ”what about her? Where is she?”
”With Graham at Shadrach. She was badly torn, and I insisted on her retreating for a week or more. There is a very capable a.s.sistant at the Academy. It's too early to speak conclusively, but I am afraid that Susan's usefulness is ended there. Have you seen the cheaper sheets?
Every one, of course, is buying them. Rotten! The a.s.sistant, I understand, is anxious to procure the school, and I am considering allowing her the capital. Something might be arranged paying Susan an income.... If she would accept; confoundly difficult to come about.”
”I am going to marry her,” Jasper Penny a.s.serted once more.
”What was the initial trouble?” the other asked, tersely.
”Essie.” Stephen frowned.
”She would hit on that,” he agreed; ”stand until the last gasp of some fantastic conception of right.”
Jasper explained:
”She thinks I ought to marry Essie, mostly on account of the child. She likes me, too, Stephen; I think I may tell you that. Well, I'll keep at her and at her. In the end she will get tired of refusal.” The other shook his head doubtfully. ”I've known Susan a good many years, and I have never seen her lose an ideal, or even an idea, yet.”
Jasper Penny rose. ”Meanwhile I'll have to go through with this trial.
Thank G.o.d, Susan has no part in it.” He warmly gripped Stephen's palm.
”You're worth something in a life, immovable. Thank you, Stephen.”
XXII
It was early in April, an insidiously warm morning with the ailanthus trees in bud before the State House, when Jasper Penny left the court room where Essie had been freed. Provision had been made for her--she had had a severe collapse during the trial--and a feeling almost of renewed liberty of spirit permeated Jasper, as, with his overcoat on an arm, he turned to the left and walked over the street in the blandly expanding mildness. A train left shortly for Jaffa, and he was bound directly home, to Myrtle Forge, anxious to steep himself in the echo of the trip hammer mingled with the poignant harmony of spring sounds drifting from the farm and woods. He was possessed by a sharpened hunger for all the--now recognized--beauty of the place of his allegiance and birth, the serenity of the acres Gilbert Penny had beaten out of the wild of the Province. He was astonis.h.i.+ngly conscious of himself as a part of the whole Penny succession, proud of Gilbert, of Howat, who had always so engaged his fancy, of Casimir, and Daniel, his own father.
Theirs was a good heritage; their part of the earth, the ring of their iron, his particular characteristic of a black Penny, formed a really splendid ent.i.ty.
The low, horizontal branches of the beech tree on the lawn, older than the dwelling, opposed a pleasant variety on the long facade, built of stone with an appearance of dark pinkish malleability masking its obduracy. His mother was awaiting him on the narrow portico, and he at once told her of Essie's release. They stood together, gazing out across the turf, faintly emerald, over the public road, at the grey, solid group of farm buildings beyond. The farmer's daughter, in a white slip, emerged against the barnyard, and called the chickens in a high, musical note, scattering grain to a hysterical feathery mob. The air was still with approaching twilight; the sun slipped below the western trees and shadows gathered under the lilac bushes; the sky was April green.
”Your father has been dead twelve years,” Gilda Penny said unexpectedly.
He looked down and saw that she was decrepit, an old woman. Her mouth had sunken, her ears projected in dry folds from her scant strands of hair. He recalled Daniel Barnes Penny; the earliest memories of his mother, a vigorous, brown-faced woman with alert, black eyes, quick-stepping, dictatorial in the sphere of her house and dependents.
One after the other, like the sun, they were slipping out of the sight of Myrtle Forge; vanished and remained; pa.s.sed from falling hand to hand the unextinguished flame of life. Gilda Penny was merging fast into the formless dark. She clung with pathetically tense fingers to his arm as they turned into the house.
He had ordered a carriage immediately after an early supper; and, informing his coachman of his wish to proceed alone, drove quickly away through the dusk. He was going to Shadrach Furnace, to meet Susan for the first time since the unhappy occasion in the Mayor's chamber. He had decided, stifling his increasing impatience, not to see her until Essie's trial was over. Susan had been at Graham Jannan's house for nine weeks. Her sight, he had learned, had almost completely failed in a general exhaustion; but, with rigorous care, she had nearly recovered.
The Academy had been sold to the a.s.sistant mistress; and there was an expressed uncertainty about Susan's near future. It had, however, no existence in Jasper Penny's thoughts, plans--she must marry him; any other course would now be absurd. The track from Myrtle Forge to the Furnace was bound into his every thought and a.s.sociation; its familiarity, he mused, had been born in him; his horses, too, took correctly, without pressure, every turning of the way. The road mounted, and then dropped between rounded hills to the cl.u.s.tering buildings, where lighted, pale yellow windows floated on the dusk, crowned by the wide-flung radiance of the Furnace stack. The air was potent in the valley with the indeterminate scent of budding earth--the premonitory fragrance of blossoms; and, hardly less delicate, stars flowered whitely in blue s.p.a.ce.
He paused for a moment before entering Graham Jannan's house, saturated with the pastoral tranquillity, listening to the flutter of wings under the eaves. Then he went in. They had finished supper, but were lingering at the table, with the candles guttering in an air from the open door.
His greeting was simple and glad, and without restraint. Susan wore a dress like a white vapour, sprigged with pale buds, her throat and arms bare. She smiled the familiar, hesitating smile, met his questioning gaze with her undeviating courage. Jasper Penny took a chair opposite her. Little was said. Peace deepened about his spirit.
Graham, he saw, had a new ruddiness of health; he laid a shawl tenderly about his wife's shoulders; and Jasper remembered that a birth was imminent. Later he drifted with Susan to the door, and they pa.s.sed out into the obscurity beyond. Even now he was reluctant to speak, to break with importunities the serene mood. ”All the iron making,” she spoke at last, ”lovely. I have stood night after night in the cast house watching the metal pour out in its glorious colours. And, when I wake, I go to my window and see the reflections of the blast on the trees, on the first leaves. The charcoal burners come down like giants out of the mythology of the forest. And, when I first came, there was a racc.o.o.n hunt, with a great stirring of lanterns and barking dogs in the dark ... all lovely.”
”It is yours,” he said, bending over her. ”You can come here at your will. A house built. And Myrtle Forge, too; whatever I have, am.” He paused; but, without reply, continued more rapidly. ”It's over, the--the misery of the past weeks; the mistakes are dead; they are paid, Susan.
Now we may take what is left and make it as beautiful as possible. After suffering, reparation, happiness, is every one's due. And I am certain I can make you happy.”
A longer pause followed, in which he regarded her with an increasing anxiety. Her face was turned away, her progress grew slower until they stood by the shadowy bulk of a small stone structure. The door was open, and it seemed to him that she looked within. ”A store house,” he explained. Nothing was visible in the interior gloom but some obscure shapes, bales, piled against the walls, and the scant tracery of a rude stair leading up to a greater blackness above. She stopped, as if arrested by his period, laying a hand on the door frame.
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