They went down to the supper table silently, absorbed in thought. David
was placed where Mr. Winscombe had been seated, on Mrs. Penny's right,
and next to Myrtle. Gilbert Penny maintained a flow of high spirits; he
rallied every one at the table with the exception of, Howat noted,
Ludowika. Her hair was simply arranged and undecorated, she wore
primrose with gauze like smoke, an apparently guileless bodice with
blurred, warm suggestions of her fragrant body. Howat was conscious of
every detail of her appearance; she was stamped, as she was that
evening, indelibly on his inner being. He turned toward her but little,
addressed to her only the most perfunctory remarks; he was absorbed in
the realization that the most fateful moment he had met was fast
approaching. His father's cheerful voice continued seemingly
interminably; now it was a London beauty to which he affected to believe
David had given his heart. The latter replied stoutly:
"I brought that back safely enough; it's here the danger lies.
Humiliating to cross the ocean and then be lost in Canary Creek."
Gilbert Penny shot an obvious, humorous glance at Myrtle. She did not
meet it, but sat with lowered gaze. Caroline made a daring "nose" at
Howat; but he too failed to acknowledge her message. David's affair had
sunk from his thoughts. The drawing room was brilliantly lighted: there
was a constant stir of peacock silk, of yellow and apple green and coral
lutestring, of white shoulders, in the gold radiance of candles like
stiff rows of narcissi. Caroline drifted finally into the chamber back
of the dining room, and they could hear the tenuous vibrations of the
clavichord. Soon David had disappeared. The elder Penny discovered
Myrtle seated sullenly at her mother's side; and, taking her arm, he
escorted her in the direction of the suddenly silenced music.
Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace. She smiled at
Howat as he moved closer to her. She never did things with her hands, he
noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little
heaps of white. She sat motionless, her arms at rest. His mother seemed
far away. The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room
wavered in his vision. Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of
intoxicating, yellow wine. He had a curious sensation of floating in
air, of tea roses. It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she
still realized nothing.... She must know now, any minute. Howat saw that
his mother had gone.
He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her. She
raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened. Then her expression
changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand. Her breast
rose and fell, sharply, once. Howat picked her up by the shoulders and
crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him. Ludowika's
skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.
Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa. She
hadn't struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her
countenance, only a deep trouble. "Howat," she said softly, "you
shouldn't have done that. It was brutal, selfish. You--you knew, after
all that I told you; the premonition--" she broke off, anger shone
brighter in her eyes. "How detestable men are!" She turned away from
him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa. Unexpectedly he was
almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on
the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.
He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I
was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with
bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here,
that you were different; that feeling in my heart--but it's gone now,
dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I
would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single
little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing
new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the
world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see,
I learned it all quite young.
"I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if
you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself." She
appeared older, the Mrs. Winscombe who had first come to Myrtle Forge;
her mouth was flippant. "The eternal Suzanna," she remarked, "the
monotonous elders or younger." He paid little heed to her words; the
coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like
the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above
her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement
of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.
"I didn't choose it," he told her; "it's ruined all that I was. Now, I
don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about--if
there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here
with--as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My
feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the
end. There isn't any, I think." He pressed her hands to his throat with
a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained
her cheeks, and her breath caught. "Endless," he repeated, losing the
word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode
over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat
returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his
nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid;
she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its
wrist.
"I think it is something in myself," she said presently; "something a
little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat
Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. God, I'd like to be that
girl across the road, in the barnyard." He was back at the fire again
when Gilbert Penny entered the room. The latter dropped a palm on
Howat's shoulder.
"Schwar says the last sow metal was faulty," he declared; "the
Furnace'll need some attention with Abner Forsythe deeper in the
Provincial affairs. Splendid thing David's back. Look for a lot from
David." Howat hoped desperately that Ludowika would not leave, go to her
room, while his father was talking. "David says you have an
understanding, will do great things. I hope so. I hope so. I won't damn
him as an example but he will do you no harm. That is, if he touches
your confounded person at all. A black Penny, Mrs. Winscombe," he said,
turning to the figure spread in pale silk on the sofa. "Fortunate for
you to have no such confounded, stubborn lot on your hands. Although,"
he added laughingly, "Felix Winscombe's no broken reed. But this boy of
mine--you might think he had been run out of Shadrach," he tapped a
finger on Howat's back. "Not like those fellows about the Court, anyway.
They tell me he'll go fifty miles through the woods in a day. Now if we
could only keep that at the iron trade--"
His father went on insufferably, without end. Howat withdrew stiffly
from the other's touch. Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika.
She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated. An immense
tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer passion vapourized into a
poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling. He was protective; his jaw set
rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world. He had
a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and
silver buttons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage,
confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him. Inexplicable
tremors assailed him, vast fears. His father's deliberate voice
destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and
yellow flowers, the suave interior. The others had returned. He heard
Ludowika speaking; she laughed. His tension relaxed. Suddenly he was
flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling,
delightful water. He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose.
Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.
There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him
to declare himself to Ludowika. He was vaguely conscious of his mother's
scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable
surmising. His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to
feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the
consideration of an announcement of his passion for Ludowika Winscombe,
a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world. But for
the present he must be careful. This, the greatest event that had
befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a
black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his
convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening.
His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven
fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his
scorn.
As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room. Myrtle took
her place on the sofa. Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at
the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own
council. David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat. Caroline gaily laid
her arm across her mother's shoulder and propelled her from the room.
David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less
clumsy, took his departure. He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow
of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light.
Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly. "Howat," she said
in a small voice, "it's--it's, that is, David loves me. Whatever do you
suppose father and Myrtle will say?"
"What do you think David is saying to Myrtle now?" he asked drily. "I am
glad, Caroline; everything worked out straight for you. David is a
damned good Quaker. For some others life isn't so easy." She laid a warm
hand on his shoulder. "I wish you were happy, Howat." A slight
irritation seized him at the facile manner in which she radiated her
satisfaction, and he moved away. "David's going back to-night. I wish he
wouldn't," she said troubled. "That long, dark way. Anything might
happen. But he has simply got to be at his father's office in the
morning. He is going to speak to him first, see what will be given us at
the Furnace."
"It should be quite a family party at breakfast," Howat predicted.