Part 20 (1/2)
Then, to his utter surprise, on an evening after dinner, when he was seated in the settling dusk of the porch, intent on the grey movements of his familiar owls, a quick step mounted the path, and James Polder appeared.
”I wanted to ask about Miss Jannan,” the latter stated frankly and at once. Howat Penny cleared his throat sharply. ”I believe she is well,”
he stated formally. ”You will find it cooler here.” It struck him that the young man was not deficient in that particular. More, of still greater directness, followed. ”I suppose you know,” Polder stated, ”that I want to marry her ... and she won't.”
”I had gathered something of the sort,” the other admitted. ”It's natural, in a way.” Polder proceeded gloomily: ”I'd take her away from so much. And, yet, look here--you can shut me up if you like--what's it all about? Can you tell me that?” Howat Penny couldn't. ”I'm not to blame for that old mess any more than you. And it's not my fault if something of--of which you think so much came to me by the back door.
I've always wanted what Mariana is,” he burst out, ”and I have never been satisfied with what I could get. And when I saw her, h.e.l.l--what's the use!
”Any one in Harrisburg will tell you I am a good man,” he reiterated, at a slightly different angle. ”When you kick through out of that racket of hunkies and steel you've done something. Soon I'll be getting five or six thousand.” He paused, and the other said dryly, ”Admirable.” The phrase seemed to him inadequate; it sounded in his ear as unpleasantly as a false note. Yet he was powerless to alter it, change its brusque accent. The personal tone of Polder's revelations was inherently distasteful to him. He said, rising, ”If you will excuse me I'll tell Rudolph you will be here.”
”But I won't,” Polder replied; ”there's a train back at eleven. I have to be at the mills for the day s.h.i.+ft to-morrow. I came out because I had to talk a little about Mariana.” He had deserted the more formal address. ”And I wanted to tell some one connected with her that I have gimp of my own. I know why she won't marry me, and it's a small reason; it would be small in--”
”Hold up,” Howat Penny interrupted, incensed. ”Am I to understand that you came here to complain about Miss Jannan's conduct? That won't do, you know.”
”It's a small reason,” the other insisted hotly. ”Hardly more than the idiotic fact that I'm not in the Social Register. I am ashamed of her, and I said so. It was so little that I told her I wouldn't argue. She could go to the devil.”
”Really,” the other observed, ”really, I shall have to ask you to control your language or leave.”
”I wonder if she will?” the surprising James Polder sombrely speculated.
”I wonder if I am? But there are other women, with better hearts.”
”Are we to construe this as a threat?” Howat asked in a delicately balanced tone.
”For G.o.d's sake,” he begged, ”can't you be human!” The other suddenly recalled Mariana's imploring anger at the Polders. ”Don't be so rotten, Howat.” The confusion of his valuations, his habitual att.i.tudes of thought, returned. His gaze strayed to the obscured ruin of Shadrach Furnace, at once a monument of departed vigour and present disintegration. Perhaps, just as the energy had expired in the Furnace, it had seeped from him. It might be that he was only a sere husk, a dry bundle of inhibitions, insensible to the green humanity of life.
”I couldn't go on my knees to anything,” the younger took up his burden.
”Wrong or not it is the way I'm made. I'd not hang about where I wasn't wanted. Although you mightn't think it. And I am sorry I came here. I do things like that all the time; I mean I do, say, exactly the opposite of what I plan. You'll think I am a braying a.s.s, of course.”
”Stop for a breath,” Howat Penny recommended; ”a breath, and a cigarette.” He extended his case; and, in place of taking a cigarette, Polder examined the case resentfully. ”There is it,” he declared; ”correct, like all the rest of you. And it's only old leather. But mine would be different. I could sink and Mariana wouldn't put out a hand just on account of that. It's wrong,” he insisted. Expressed in that manner it did seem to Howat Penny a small reason for the withholding of any paramount salvation. Yet, he told himself, he had no intention, desire, to undertake the weight of any reformation. A futile effort, he added, with his vague consciousness of implacable destiny, his dim sense of man moved from without, in locked progression. Polder was young, rebellious; but he could grow older; he would grow older and comprehend; or else beat himself to death on obdurate circ.u.mstance. What concerned Howat was the hope that Mariana would be no further involved in either process. She too had this to learn--that, in the end, blood was stronger than will; the dead were terribly potent. He had, even, no inclination to say any of this to the man frowning in the dusk at his side. It would be useless, a mere preaching. An expression, too, of a slight but actual sympathy for James Polder would be misleading. In the main Howat was entirely careless of what might happen to the other; it was only where, unfortunately, he touched Mariana that he entered into the elder's world. He would sacrifice him for Mariana in an instant. Polder rose.
”I must leave,” he announced. Howat Penny expressed no regret, and the other hesitated awkwardly. ”It's no use!” he finally exclaimed. ”I can't reach you; as if one of us spoke Patagonian. h.e.l.lish, it seems to me.”
He turned and disappeared, as violently as he had come, over the obscurity of the lawn. A reddish, misshapen moon hung low in the sky, and gave the aging man an extraordinarily vivid impression of dead planets, unthinkable wastes of time, illimitable systems and s.p.a.ces.
James Polder's pa.s.sionate resentment, his own emotion, were no more articulate than the thin whirring of the locusts. He went quickly into the house, to the warm glow of his lamp, the memories of his pictures, the figurine in baked clay with Hermes' wand of victory.
XXVIII
The heat dragged through the remainder of August and filled September with steaming days and heavy nights, followed by driving grey storms and premonitory, chill dawns. A period of sunny tranquillity succeeded, but crimson blots of sumach, the warmer tone of maples, made it evident that summer had lapsed. Honduras mulched the strawberries, and set new teeth in his lawn rakes. The days pa.s.sed without feature, or word from Mariana, and Howat Penny fell into an almost slumberous monotony of existence. It was not unpleasant; occupied with small duties, intent on his papers, or wandering in a past that seemed to grow clearer, rather than fade, as time multiplied, he maintained his erect, carefully ordered existence. Then, among his mail, he found a large, formal-appearing envelope which he opened with a mild curiosity. His att.i.tude of detachment was soon dispelled.
Mrs. Corinne de Barry desired the pleasure of his attendance at the wedding of her daughter, Harriet, to James Polder. Details, a church and hour, were appended. The headlong young man, he thought, with a smile, Mariana was well out of that. He had been wise in saying nothing to Charlotte; the thing had expired naturally. But, irrationally, he thought of Polder with a trace of contempt--a man who had, unquestionably, possessed Mariana Jannan's regard marrying the pink-faced understudy to a second-rate emotional actress! In a way it made him cross; the fellow should have shown a--a greater appreciation, delicacy. ”Commonplace,” he said decisively, aloud. The following day Mariana herself appeared, with a touch of sable and a small, wickedly becoming hat.
He was at lunch; and, without delay, she took the place smilingly laid for her by Rudolph. It was characteristic that she made no pretence of concealing the reason that had brought her to Shadrach. ”Jim's going to marry that Harriet de Barry,” she said at once, nicely casual. ”I had a card,” he informed her. ”It's to be on the thirtieth,” Mariana proceeded, ”at eight o'clock and in church. Of course you are going.”
”Not at all of course,” he replied energetically. ”And you'll stay away for the plainest decency.”
”We will go together,” she proceeded calmly. ”I want to see Jim married, happy.” She gazed at him with narrowed eyes.
”Mariana,” he told her, ”that's a shameful lie. It is cold, feminine curiosity. It's worse--the only vulgar thing I can remember your considering. I won't hear of it.” He debated the wisdom of recounting James Polder's last visit to Shadrach and decided in the negative. ”Let the young man depart with his Harriet in peace.”
”It's sickening, isn't it?” she queried. ”And yet it is so like Jim. He had a very objectional idea of his dignity; he was sensitive in a way that made me impatient. He couldn't forget himself, you see. That helped to make it difficult for me; I wasn't used to it; his feelings were always being damaged.”
Howat Penny nodded. ”You'll recall I emphasized that.” Mariana looked worn by her gaiety, he decided, white; for the first time in his memory she seemed older than her actual years. Her friends, he knew, her existence, bore the general appellation, fast; Howat had no share in the condemnatory aspect of the term, but he realized that it had a literal application. Their pace was feverish, and Mariana plainly showed its effects. Her voice, already noted as more mature, had, he was sure, hardened. She dabbled her lips thickly with a rouge stick. ”Mariana,” he said querulously, ”I wish, you'd stop this puppet dance you're leading.