Part 18 (2/2)
”That,” he declared coldly, ”is unthinkable. You can't know all the facts.”
”I do; but, somehow, I don't care.”
”Everything about him is impossible--his history, family ... Why, Eunice Scofield, well, Penny, married a man from behind a counter, a fellow who sold womens' gloves; yes, and more than half Jew. And this man's mother was Delia Mullen, a daughter of the dirty ward leader. All this aside from--from his bad blood.”
”It's partly yours, you know,” she said quietly. ”After all, there are other places I can see him.” She turned away. ”Eliza Provost is insane,”
he muttered. ”No,” Mariana returned, ”only superior to narrow little prejudices. She can see life, people, as they are. Jim Polder is one of the most promising men in the steel mills. He is going up and up. That is enough for Eliza, it is enough for me; and if it won't do for my family--” she made an opening gesture with her fingers. Her expression had hardened; she gazed at him with bright, contemptuous eyes. In a moment the affectionate bonds between them seemed to have dissolved.
His feeling was one of mingled anger and concern; but he endeavoured to regain his self-control, conscious that a hasty word more might do irreparable harm.
”Of course, I can't have you meeting him about the streets,” he stated.
”It is better here, if necessary. I am very much displeased,” a note of complaint appeared, and she immediately returned to him, laid a hand on his shoulder. ”Nothing is certain,” she a.s.sured him. ”I wanted to be sure, that is all. I don't want to make a mess out of things.”
It was a part of the very quality of emotional courage he had so lately defined, extolled; a part of her disdain for ordinary prudence and conventional approbation. A direct dislike for this James Polder invaded him, a determined att.i.tude of hyper-criticism. When the younger man reappeared Howat Penny found justification for this att.i.tude. The details of Polder's apparel, although acceptable in the main, were without nicety. His shoes were a crude tan, and his necktie from the outer limbo. His hands, too, had a grimy surface and the nails were broken, unkempt.
But it was evident that all the criticism was not to be limited to his own. James Polder regarded the single gla.s.s with a scoffing lip, as if it were the appendage of a ludicrous Anglomania. He glanced with indifference at Howat Penny's pictures, books, the collected emblems of his cultivated years. His brows raised at the photograph of Scalchi in the Page's trunks--as if, the elder thought, she had been a ”pony” in the _Black Crook_--and was visibly amused at the great Mapleson, posed in a dignified att.i.tude by a broken column. An irrepressible and biting scorn, Howat Penny saw, was, perhaps, the young man's strongest attribute. He had violent opinions expressed in sudden, sharp movements, gestures with his shoulders, swift frowns and fragmentary sentences.
Howat Penny had never seen a more ill-ordered youth, and he experienced an increasing difficulty in keeping a marked asperity from his speech and conduct. Eliza Provost shortly came down, and the three strolled out into the ruddy light of late afternoon. Howat Penny consumed a long time dressing for the evening; and, in the end, irritably summoned Rudolph.
”I can't get these d.a.m.ned studs in,” he complained; ”whatever do you suppose women use for starch now?” Rudolph dexterously fixed the emeralds, then held the black silk waistcoat. ”And coats won't hang for a bawbee,” he went on. ”Gentlemen like Gary Dilkes used to go regularly to London, spring and fall, for their things. No doubt then about a man of breeding. You didn't see the other kind around. Wouldn't have 'em.”
Rudolph murmured consolingly. ”Sat in the pit but never got into the boxes,” his voice grew thin, querulous. ”I'm moving along, Rudolph,” he admitted suddenly; ”the manners, and, by thunder, the music too, don't suit me any more. Give me the old Academy days in Irving Place.” He hummed a bar from _Ernani_.
Through dinner he maintained a severe silence, listening with a frowning disapproval to Eliza Provost's tranquil, subversive utterances. Howat Penny couldn't think what her father was about, permitting her to harangue loafers by the streets and saloons. She was, in a cold way--she had Peter Jannan Provost's curious grey colouring--a handsome piece of a girl, too. ”A fine figger,” he told himself.
Later, Mariana and James Polder had gone out on the porch, he faced with reluctance the task of furnis.h.i.+ng her with entertainment; but, to his extreme relief, she procured a leather portfolio, and addressed herself to a sheaf of papers. But that, in itself, was a peculiar way for a young woman to spend an evening. She would have done it, he felt, if he had been half his actual age. G.o.d help the man with a fancy for her!
Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the past--a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in Paris ... at dawn. Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth, fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake. His silk hat had been telescoped in the process of smacking a Frenchman's eye.
Perhaps, they had told each other, there would be cards later in the day, an affair of honour. He forgot what, exactly, had happened; but there had been no duel.
He looked up with a sudden concern, as if his thoughts might have been clear to Eliza Provost, in irreproachable evening dress and sh.e.l.l rimmed gla.s.ses, intent on statistical pages. Mariana and James Polder appeared; the former, Howat Penny thought, disturbed. Polder's intense countenance was sombre, his brow corrugated. Mariana, accompanied by Eliza, soon after went up; and left the two men facing each other across a neutral silence. ”You manufacture steel, I believe,” the elder finally stated.
”The Company does,” Polder replied more exactly. ”I've been in the open hearth since I left school,” he went on; ”it was born in me, I've never thought of anything else.” His tone grew sharp, as if it might occur to the other to contradict the legitimacy of his pursuit. ”I have done well enough, too,” he said pridefully. ”Most of them come on from college. I went from shovelling slag in the pit, the crane, to second helper and melter; they gave me the furnace after a year and now I am foreman. It will be better still if a reorganization goes through. Not many men have a chance at the superintendent's office under thirty-five.”
”That is very admirable,” Howat Penny said formally. He wondered, privately, at the far channel into which the original Penny ability had flowed. There could be no doubt, however objectionable, that James Polder was the present repository of the family tradition. He had had it from the source; and the iron had not, apparently, been corroded by tainted blood. He was forced to admit that a coa.r.s.er strain had, perhaps, lent it endurance. All this failed to detract from his initial dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized, to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible.
Such things were utterly unimportant to him. He was unable to justify, or even explain to himself, his standards of judgment. They were not founded on admirable conduct, on achievement, what was known as solid worth; but on vague accents, intuitive att.i.tudes of mind visible in a hundred trivial, even absurd, signs. The ”right things” were more indispensable to him than the sublimest attributes.
On the following morning Mariana, Eliza and Polder disappeared in his car--it seemed that the latter was an accomplished mechanic in addition to his other qualities--and Howat Penny faced the disagreeable possibilities of the near future. Mariana would, he knew, meet this fellow promiscuously if necessary. As she had indicated, it was impossible to conceive of him in Charlotte Jannan's house. The latter was a rigidly correct woman. She would, too, and properly, be nasty if she learned that such meetings had taken place at Shadrach. The only thing to do was to bring Mariana to what he designated as her senses.
And, at the start, he had a conviction that he might fail.
She did not accompany Eliza Provost and Polder, when, late Sunday afternoon, they departed; but sat absorbed in thought through the evening meal. He found his affection for her increasing to an annoying degree; he was almost humble in his anxiety not to wound her.
”Life is so messy,” she said with sudden violence. ”You can't think, Howat, how I hate myself; the horridest things go round and round through my mind. We're all wrong--I'm more like you than I admitted--born sn.o.bs. I mean the kind who look down on people different from themselves. I can't help being on--on edge. I can tell you this, though, I care more for Jim Polder than for any other man I've ever met.
I'm mad about him; and yet, somehow, I can't quite think of marrying him. He's asked me already. But I knew he would.”
”You must wait,” he temporized; ”such things clear up after a little.”
”And if they don't?” she demanded. ”What if they are choked by a hundred cowardly or selfish thoughts? It can be too late so terribly soon, Howat. You must know that. You see, I can't decide what really is the most valuable, what should be held tight on to, or let go. There are two me's, it seems--one what I want and the other what I am. I want Jim and I'm Mariana Jannan. All that about Eunice or Essie, or whatever her name was, doesn't matter a bawbee, as you say. I hate it because I think at times it makes him unhappy. Really, I believe I am fonder of him because of it. We owe him something--the superior Jannans and Pennys. Why, Howat, he's your own blood, and you looked at him as if he were a grocer's a.s.sistant. And I watched hatefully for the little expressions that seemed common. Of course, out in those mills, he would pick up a lot that wouldn't touch us; and, after all, he could drop them.”
”If you have any thought of reforming him,” he commented dryly, ”you might as well see a wedding stationer.”
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