Part 19 (2/2)
”Imagine Isabella!” Jim Polder exploded. ”It's quite the thing,” that individual a.s.serted. ”Isabella,” her mother declared, ”it is twenty-five past seven. I wish you'd go out and see where dinner is.” She rose with an expression of mingled surprise and pain. ”Really, mother,” she said, ”that is an extraordinary request.” Her brother snorted. There was a sudden m.u.f.fled clamour of chimes from below, and Mrs. Polder gave a sigh of relief. ”I didn't want it spoiled,” she explained, descending; ”Jim would be wild after all his eagerness to have things nice.”
The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and had a high ceiling in varnished light wood. Byron Polder faced his wife at the opposite end of the table. Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother's right; and a waiting place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl. ”This is Kate,”
Mrs. Polder said proudly. Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent crepe de Chine waist that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a l.u.s.trous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up to the standard of old days, the divinity of Scalchi herself. She would have created a sensation in Delmonico's, the real Delmonico's. Gary and the Colonel--
”We think they're elegant,” Mrs. Polder's voice broke in on his revery.
He looked up and saw a great fish on a huge platter before his host, a fish in surprising semblance to life, had it not been for the rosettes of lemon, the green bed, which surrounded it. ”Gracious, no,” she answered Mariana's query; ”we don't do it home. Mr. Polder has them sent from a Rathskeller down town. He'll make a meal off one.” The latter was plainly chagrined at this light thrown on his petty appet.i.tes. He a.s.sumed an air of complete detachment in the portioning of the dish; but, at the same time, managed to supply himself liberally. The conversation was sporadic. Howat Penny found the dinner lavish, and divided his attention between it and Kate Polder. James and Mariana addressed general remarks to the table at succeeding intervals. Mr.
Polder gloomed, and Isabella went through the gestures, the accents, of the occasion with utter correctness. Howat studied Mariana, but he was unable to discover her thoughts; she was smiling and cordial; and apologized for losing her slipper. ”I always do,” she explained. James Polder hastily rose, and came around to a.s.sist her. The dinner was at an end, and she stood with a slim, silken foot outheld for him to replace the fragile object of search.
They rea.s.sembled above, and Mrs. Polder suggested music. ”My son says you are very fond of good music,” she addressed Howat Penny. ”I can tell you it is a lovely taste. We have the prettiest records that come.
Isabella, put on _Hark, Hark, the Lark_.” She obediently rose, and, revolving the handle of the talking machine, fixed the grooved, rubber disk and needle. Howat listened with a stony countenance to the ensuing strains. Such instruments were his particular detestation. Mrs. Polder waved her hand dreamily. ”Now,” she said, ”the _s.e.xtette_, and _The End of a Perfect Day_. No, Mr. Penny would like to hear _Salome_, I'm sure, with all those cymbals and creepy Eastern tunes.” An orgy of sound followed, applauded--perversely, he was certain--by Mariana. James, he saw, was as uneasy as himself; but for a totally different reason. He gazed at Mariana with a fierce devotion patent to the most casual eye; his expression was tormented with concern and longing.
”When do you return to Harrisburg?” Byron Polder inquired. ”My son,” he went on to Howat Penny, ”is a practical iron man. I say iron, although that is no longer the phrase, because of natural a.s.sociations. The present system of the manufacture of steel, as you doubtless know, evolved from the old Ironmasters, of whose blood James has a generous share. We look to him to re-establish, er--a departed importance. I need say no more.” His women's anxiety at this trend of speech became painful. ”Play a right lively piece,” Mrs. Polder interjected, and an intolerable cacophony of banjoes followed, making conversation futile.
The evening, Howat Penny felt, was a considerable success; by heaven, Mariana would never get herself into this! Byron Polder's innuendoes must have annoyed her nicely. When the mechanical disturbance ceased, Mrs. Polder said, ”I believe that's the bell.” Evidently she had been correct, for, immediately after, a young woman with bright gold hair, and a mobile, pink countenance unceremoniously entered the room. ”Oh!”
she exclaimed, in an instinctively statuesque surprise; ”I didn't know you were entertaining company.”
”Come right in, Harriet,” Mrs. Polder heartily proclaimed. ”Miss Jannan, Mr. Penny, this is Isabella's friend, Harriet de Barry, a near neighbour and a sweet girl. She's an actress, too; understudies Vivian Blane; and is better, lots say, than the lead.”
Harriet de Barry made a comprehensive gesture. ”I wanted to say good-bye to you all,” she announced. ”I am going on tour. Leave at midnight. Just had a wire from Mrs. Blane.” There were polite Polder exclamations, regret, congratulations; through which the son of the house moodily gazed at the carpet. ”Haven't you anything to say to Hatty?” his mother demanded. ”And after all the pa.s.ses she sent you.” Howat Penny saw Mariana's gaze rest swiftly on the latest comer's obvious good looks; and the scrutiny, he was certain, held a cold feminine appraisal. As they descended to leave Mariana lingered on the stairs with Jim. The latter closed the door of the public motor with a low, intense mutter; and, moving away, Howat Penny lit a cigarette with a breath of audible relief.
”I don't know which I detest most,” Mariana declared viciously, ”you or myself.”
”You might include that fish,” he added plaintively. She gazed at him in cold contempt, with an ugly, protruding lip. Nothing else was said until they were in the opened room at the Jannans. Mariana flung herself on a broad divan, with her narrowed gaze fixed on the points of her slippers.
”Comfortable, isn't it,” she addressed him; ”this feeling of superiority?” He placidly nodded, inwardly highly pleased. ”I wish I'd married Jim the first week I knew him, without trying to be so dam'
admirable. Howat, what is it that makes people what they are, and aren't?” It was, he told her, difficult to express; but it had to do with inherited a.s.sociations. ”Mrs. Polder is as kind as possible,” she a.s.serted; ”and I could see that you were absorbed in Kate.”
”Really, Mariana,” he protested, ”at times you are a little rough. She is a very fine girl; in fact, reminds me of Scalchi. Old Byron, though, what--a regular catafalque!” A blundering step mounted to the stair; Kingsfrere entered and stood wavering and concerned, the collar wilted and a gaiter missing. ”Ought to do something about the front door,” he a.s.serted; ”frightful condition, no paint; and full of splinters. Very plump splinters,” he specified, examining a hand. Mariana surveyed him coolly, thoroughly. ”Sweet, isn't he?” she remarked. ”Kingsfrere Gilbert Todd Jannan.”
”That's absolutely all,” that individual a.s.sured her. ”Except if you want to add Sturgeon; some do. Hullow, Howat! Grand old boy, Howat,” he told her. ”But if he says I'm drunk, I will tell you one of Bundy's stories about him. This--this elegant deception tremendous noise with the song birds.” He sat abruptly on a providentially convenient chair.
There, limply, he hiccoughed. ”Sweet,” Mariana repeated. Kingsfrere finally rose, and, with a friendly wave, wandered from the room.
”It was good of you to take me, Howat,” she told him wearily. ”Although, now, I can see that you went willingly enough. You thought it would cure me. But of what, Howat--of love? Of a feeling that, perhaps, I'd found a reason for living?”
A decidedly uncomfortable feeling, doubt, invaded him. He had an unjustified sense of meddling, of blundering into a paramount situation to which he lacked the key. He had done nothing debatable, he a.s.sured himself; Mariana's inherent, well--prejudices, couldn't be charged to him. In the room where he was to sleep the uneasiness followed him. She was his greatest, his only concern. Howat Penny reviewed his desire for her, his preference for a Mariana untouched by the common surge of living. He recalled the discontent, the feeling of sterility, that had lately possessed him; the suspicion that his life had been in vain. All his philosophy, his acc.u.mulated convictions, were involved; and, tie in hand, he sat endeavouring to pierce the confusion of his ideas.
He was conscious of a slow change gathering within him; and, in itself, that consciousness was disturbing. It had a vaguely dark, chill aspect.
He s.h.i.+vered, in the room super-heated by summer; his blood ran thinner and cold. Howat Penny had a sudden, startling sense of his utter loneliness; there was absolutely no one, now, to whom he could turn for the understanding born of long and intimately affectionate a.s.sociation.
Mariana was lost to him in her own poignant affair ... No children. So many, so much, dead. His countenance, however, grew firm with the determination that age should not find him a coward. He had always been bitterly contemptuous of the men that, surfeiting their appet.i.tes, showed at the impotent last a cheap repentance. But he had done nothing pointedly wrong; he had--the inversion repeated itself--done nothing.
XXVII
At Shadrach his customary decision returned; he went about, or sat reading, well-ordered, cool-appearing, dogmatic. He learned from the _Evening Post_ that Mariana was at Warrenton. She had carefully described to him the Virginia country life, the gaiety and hard riding of the transplanted English colonies; and he pictured her at the successive horse shows, in the brilliant groups under the Doric columns of the porticoes. Then, he saw, she had gone north; he found her picture in a realistic Egyptian costume with bare, painted legs at an extravagant ball. He studied her countenance, magnifying it with a reading gla.s.s; but he saw nothing beyond a surface enjoyment of the moment.
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