He was entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face
seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition
after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared
suddenly, "I hate David Forsythe!" Gilbert Penny was obviously startled.
Caroline half rose, as if she had finished breakfast; but she sat down
again with an expression of determination. Howat looted about from his
removed place of being. "I do!" Myrtle repeated. "At first he seemed to
like--I mean I liked him, and then everything changed, got horrid. Some
one interfered." Resentment, suspicion, dominated her, she grew shrill
with anger. "I saw him making faces at Howat, as if he and Howat, as if
Howat had, well--"
"Don't generalize," said Howat coolly; "be particular."
"As if you had deliberately spoiled any chance, yes," she declared
defiantly, "any chance I had."
"That's ridiculous," Gilbert Penny declared. "What," he asked his wife,
"are they all driving at?" She professed herself equally puzzled. "Howat
would say nothing disadvantageous to young Forsythe. He knows what we
all hope." Caroline suddenly leaned forward, speaking in a level voice:
"This has nothing to do with Howat, but with me. I am going to tell you
at once, so that you can all say what you wish, get as angry as you
like, and then accept what--what had to be. David and I love each other;
we are going to be married."
Gilbert Penny's surprise slowly gave place to a dark tide suffusing his
countenance. "You and David," he half stuttered, "getting married--like
that." Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily
without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness
from which she watched the conflicts of her family. "I know I'm
fearfully bold, yes, indecent," Caroline went on, "and undutiful,
impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me,
later. But I won't apologize for loving David."
"Incredible," her father pronounced. "A girl announcing, without the
slightest warrant or authority, that she intends to marry. And trampling
on her sister's heart in the bargain." Howat expostulated, "What does it
matter which he marries? The main affair is to consolidate the
families." The elder glared at him. "Be silent!" he commanded. Howat
Penny's ever present resentment rose to the surface. "I am not a girl,"
he stated; "nor yet a nigger. And, personally, I think David was
extremely wise."
"I was sure of it," Myrtle cried; "he--he has talked against me, helped
Caroline behind my back." She sobbed thinly, with her arm across her
eyes. "If I thought anything like that had occurred," their father
asserted, "Howat would--" he paused, gazing heavily about at his family.
Howat's ill temper arose. "Yes--?" he demanded with a sharp inflection.
"Be still, Howat," his mother said unexpectedly. "This is all very
regrettable, Gilbert," she told her husband; "but it is an impossible
subject of discussion." Gilbert Penny continued hotly, "He wouldn't stay
about here." She replied equably, "On the contrary, Howat shall be at
Myrtle Forge until he himself chooses to leave."
Howat was conscious of a surprise almost as moving as that pictured on
his father's countenance. He had never heard Isabel Penny speak in that
manner before; perhaps at last she would reveal what he had long
speculated over--her true, inner situation. But he saw at once that he
was to be again disappointed; the speaker was immediately enveloped in
her detachment, the air that seemed almost one of a spectator in the
Penny household. She smiled deprecatingly. How fine she was, Howat
thought. Gilbert Penny did not readily recover from his consternation;
his surprise had notably increased to that. His mouth was open, his face
red and agitated. "Before the children, Isabel," he complained. "Don't
know what to think. Surely, surely, you don't uphold Howat? Outrageous
conduct if it's true. And Myrtle so gentle, never hurt any one in her
life." Myrtle circled the table, and found a place in his arms. "If they
had only told me," she protested. "If Caroline--" He patted her flushed
cheeks. "Don't give it another thought," he directed; "a girl as pretty
as you! I'll take you to London, where you'll have a string of men, not
Quakers, fine as peacocks." He bent his gaze on his son.
"Didn't I tell you last evening that the cast metal has been light?" he
demanded. "Must I beg you to go to the Furnace? Or perhaps that too
conflicts with your mother's fears for you. There are stumps in the
road." There was a whisper of skirts at the door, and Ludowika Winscombe
stood smiling at them. Myrtle turned her tear-swollen face upon her
father's shoulder. Howat wondered if Ludowika had slept. He endeavoured
in vain to discover from her serene countenance something of her
thoughts of what had occurred. He had a sudden inspiration.
"I can go to Shadrach as soon as Adam saddles a horse," he told his
father. "You were curious about the Furnace," he added to Ludowika,
masking the keen anxiety he felt at what was to follow; "it's a sunny
day, a pleasant ride." She answered without a trace of feeling other
than a casual politeness. "Thank you, since it will be my only
opportunity. I'll have to change." She was gazing, Howat discovered,
lightly at Isabel Penny. "I must get the figures from Schwar," his
father said. Before he left the room he moved to his wife's side, rested
his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a reassuring nod.
Howat saw that, whatever it might be, the bond between them was secure,
stronger than any differences of prejudices or blood, more potent than
time itself. The group, the strain, about the table, broke up.
The horses footed abreast over the road that crossed the hills and
forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace.
Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her
face muffled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression
she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His passion mounted
and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its tide.
Howat said at last:
"Are you still so angry at life, at yourself?"
"No," she replied; "I slept that foolishness away. I must have sounded
like a character in _The Lying Valet._" Her present mood obscurely
troubled him; he infinitely preferred her in the pale crumpled silk and
candle light of the evening before. "I wish I could tell you what I
feel," he said moodily.
"Why not?" she replied. "It's the most amusing thing possible. You
advance and I seem to retreat; you reach forward and grasp--my fan, a
handful of petticoat; you protest and sulk--"
"Perhaps in Vauxhall," he interrupted her savagely, "but not here, not
like that, not with me. This is not a gavotte. I didn't want it; I tried
to get away; but it, you, had me in a breath. At once it was all over.
God knows what it is. Call it love. It isn't a thing under a hedge, I
tell you that, for an hour. It's stronger than anything else that will
ever touch me, it will last longer.... Like falling into a river.
Perhaps I'm different, a black Penny, but what other men take like
water, a woman, is brandy for me. I'm--I'm not used to it. I haven't
wanted Kate here and Mary there; but only you. I've got to have you," he
said with a marked simplicity. "I've got to, or there will be a bad
smash."
Ludowika rode silently, hid in her mask. He urged his horse closer to
her, and laid a hand on her swaying shoulder. "I didn't choose this," he
repeated; "the blame's somewhere else." He felt a tremor run through
her. "Why say blame?" she finally answered. "I hate moralities and
excuses and tears. If you are set on being gloomy, and talking to heaven
about damnation, take it all away from me." A shadow moved across the
countryside, and he saw clouds rising out of the north. A sudden wind
swept through the still forest, and immediately the air was aflame with
rushing autumn leaves. They fell across Howat's face and eddied about
the horses' legs. The grey bank deepened in space, the sun vanished; the
wind was bleak. It seemed to Howat Penny that the world had changed,
its gold stricken to dun and gaunt branches, in an instant. The road
descended to the clustered stone houses about Shadrach Furnace.
The horses were left under the shed of the smithy at the primitive cross
roads. Thomas Gilkan had gone to the river about a purchase of casting
sand, but expected to be back for the evening run of metal. Fanny was
away, Howat learned, visiting Dan Hesa's family. They would, of course,
have dinner at the Heydricks; and the latter sent a boy home to prepare
his wife. Ludowika and Howat aimlessly followed the turning road that
mounted to the coal house. A levelled and beaten path, built up with
stone, led out to the top of the stack, where a group of sooty figures
were gathered about the clear, almost smokeless flame of the blast.
Below they lingered on the grassy edge of the stream banked against the
hillside and flooding smoothly to the clamorous fall and revolving wheel
by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter
spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their
dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a
dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace,
voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows,
dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.
Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her
arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an
abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was
drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid
embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.
At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The
house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on
the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the
length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared
into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep
embrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road,
and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led
above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland apron and
worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards
while Heydrick and their guests dined.
Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it
seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by
the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They
were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The
charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the
cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled
through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were
unsteady, inexact.
The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some
scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant
before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had
taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they
protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was
restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's
cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she
took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with
Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance. They stood for a while in
the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for
the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom
of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure
moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of
rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling
emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the
murky interior.
A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles
accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on
the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door.
Ludowika looked within. "For storing," Howat told her. Inside were piled
sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides.
Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the
door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly,
and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms; then Ludowika
stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders. She rested
against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the
ceiling. "For storage," he said again. He thought his throat had closed,
and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was
above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. "You
see," he muttered; "things for the store ... the men, wool stockings,
handkerchiefs ... against their pay." The drumming rain was scarcely a
foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and
canvas-sewed bales about the walls. "Ludowika," Howat said. He
stopped--she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was
individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.
A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his
blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices,
somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses
waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Winscombe. No, by God, never
that last again!
He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool
shock of the rain. Ludowika was muffled in her cloak. Howat could see a
renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about
the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to
call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to
wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly
the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which
the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out
of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans
of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the
fluid iron.
Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up
at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an
expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond
Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road.
A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it
would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new
difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He
searched his feelings curiously.
The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without
remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced
none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over
no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable
then to think of Felix Winscombe except as a person generally
unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without
any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed
wig, now absent in Maryland, had no importance in the passionate
situation that had arisen between Ludowika and himself. Felix Winscombe
would of course have to be met, dealt with; but so would a great many
other exterior conditions.
Ludowika, in her linen mask, was enigmatic, a figure of mystery. A
complete silence continued between them; at times they ambled with his
hand on her body; then the inequalities of the road forced them apart.
The clouds dissolved, the sky was immaculate, green, with dawning stars
like dim white flowers. A faint odour of the already mouldering year
rose from the wet earth. Suddenly Ludowika dragged the mask from her
face. Quivering with intense feeling she cried:
"I'm glad, Howat! Howat, I'm glad!"
He contrived to put an arm about her, crush her to him for a precarious
moment. "We have had an unforgettable day out of life," she continued
rapidly; "that is something. It has been different, strangely apart,
from all the rest. The rain and that musty little store house and the
wonderful iron; a memory to hold, carry away--"
"To carry where?" he interrupted. "You must realize that I'll never let
you go now. I will keep you if we have to go beyond the Endless
Mountains. I will keep you in the face of any man or opposition
created."
A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. "I am
afraid of myself, Howat," she told him; "all that I have been, my
life--against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different.
Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while I have needed this.
Howat, do you think so? Do you think I could forget so much, drop the
past from me, be all new and happy?"
He reassured her, only half intent upon the burden of her words. He
utterly disregarded anything provisional in their position; happiness or
unhappiness were unconsidered in the overwhelming determination that she
should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain.
The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient
gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily
censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid,
unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place
comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the
complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the elder at
breakfast. His mother, Howat gladly felt, would give him the sympathy of
a wise, broad understanding. David and Caroline would interpose no
serious objection. Felix Winscombe remained; a virile figure in spite of
his years; a man of assured position and a bitter will.
He determined to speak on the day that Felix Winscombe returned from
Annapolis; there would be no concealment of what had occurred, and no
hypocrisy. A decent regret at Winscombe's supreme loss. The other would
not relinquish Ludowika without a struggle. Who would? It was
conceivable that he would summon the assistance of the law, conceivable
but not probable; the situation had its centre in a purely personal
pride. Nothing essential could be won legally. A physical encounter was
far more likely. Howat thought of that coldly. He had no chivalrous
instinct to offer himself as a sop to conventional honour. In any
struggle, exchange of shots, he intended to be victorious.... He would
have the naming of the conditions.
"It's beautiful here," Ludowika broke into his speculations; "the great
forests and Myrtle Forge. I can almost picture myself directing servants
like your mother, getting supplies out of the store, and watching the
charcoal and iron brought down to the Forge. The sound of the hammer has
become a part of my dreams. And you, Howat--I have never before had a
feeling like this for a man. There's a little fear in it even. It must
be stronger than the other, than Europe; I want it to be." They could
see below them the lighted windows at Myrtle Forge. The horses turned
unguided into the curving way across the lawn. A figure stood
obsequiously at the door; it was, Howat saw with deep automatic
revulsion, the Italian servant. He wondered again impatiently at the
persistently unpleasant impression the other made on him. Gilbert Penny
was waiting in the hall, and Howat told him fully the result of his
investigation.
His father nodded, satisfied. "You are taking hold a great bit better,"
he was obviously pleased. "We must go over the whole iron situation with
the Forsythes. It's time you and David stepped forward. I am getting
bothered by new complications; the thing is spreading out so
rapidly--steel and a thousand new methods and refinements. And the
English opposition; I'm afraid you'll come into that."
Ludowika did not again appear that evening, and Howat sat informally
before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline.
Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled,
almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his
father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from
just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he
be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black
Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious
spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be
a subject to it always. All the elements of his captivity lay so
entirely outside of him, beyond his power to measure or comprehend, that
a feeling of helplessness came over him. He again had the sense of being
swept twisting in an irresistible flood. But his confusion was dominated
by one great assurance--nothing should deprive him of Ludowika. An
intoxicating memory invaded him, touched every nerve with delight and a
tyrannical hunger. His fibre seemed to crumble, his knees turn to dust.
Years ago he had been poisoned by berries, and limpness almost like this
had gone softly, treacherously, through him.