IX

Ludowika's manner toward him became self-possessed, even animated; and,

Howat thought, preoccupied. She was expectant, with a slightly impatient

air, as if she were looking beyond his shoulder. The cause occurred to

him in a flash that ignited his anger like a ready-charged explosive.

She was waiting, desiring, the return of her husband. Felix Winscombe,

she thought, would mean--escape. He used the word deliberately,

realizing that that now expressed her attitude toward the Province,

toward him. It made no difference in his feeling for her, his

determination that nothing should take her from him. His power of

detachment vanished; he became utterly the instrument of his passion.

He didn't press upon her small expressions of his emotion; somehow,

without struggle, she had made them seem foolish; beyond that they were

inadequate. He was conscious of the approach of a great climax; his

feeling was above the satisfaction of trivial caresses. Soon, he told

himself, soon he would absolutely possess her, for as long as they

lived. Ultimately she must be happy with him. He thought the same things

in a ceaseless round; he walked almost without sight, discharging

mechanically the routine of daily existence; answering inevitable

queries in a perfunctory, dull voice. Myrtle Forge made a distant

background of immaterial colours and sounds for the slightly mocking

figure of Ludowika.

In mid-afternoon David arrived with a face stung scarlet by beating

wind, and a clatter of hoofs. He immediately found Gilbert Penny, and

the two men sat together with grave faces, lowered voices. Howat, who

had left the counting house at the sound of the hurried approach, caught

a few words as he drew near the others:

"... a bad attack, crumpled him up. Coming out from the city now." They

were talking about Felix Winscombe, who, it appeared, had been assaulted

by a knife-like pain; and was returning to Myrtle Forge. "Watlow saw no

reason why it should be dangerous," David continued; "he thinks perhaps

it came from unusual exertions, entertaining. A little rest, he says. He

thinks the Winscombes will be able to sail on the _Lindamira_ as they

planned."

Ludowika listened seriously to Gilbert Penny's few, temperate words of

preparation. "He has had a pain like that before," she told them. "It

always passes away. Felix is really very strong, in spite of his age. He

won't ordinarily go to bed, but I'll insist on that now, simply for

rest." Felix Winscombe appeared at the supper hour. He was helped out

of Abner Forsythe's leather-hung chaise, and assisted into the house.

Howat saw him under the hanging lamp in the hall; with a painful

surprise he realized that he was gazing at the haggard face of an old

man. Before he had never connected the thought of definite age with Mr.

Winscombe. The man's satirical virility had forbidden any of the

patronage unconsciously extended to the aged.

A trace of his familiar, mocking smile remained, but it was tremulous;

it required, Howat saw, great effort. An involuntary admiration

possessed him for the other's unquenchable courage. The latter protested

vehemently against being led to his room by Ludowika; but she ignored

his determination to go into supper, swept him away with a firm arm

about his waist.

The house took on the slightly strange and disordered aspect of illness;

voices were grave, low; in the morning Howat learned that Felix

Winscombe had had another vicious attack in the night. Dr. Watlow

arrived, and demanded assistance. Howat Penny, in the room where

Ludowika's husband lay exhausted in a bed canopied and draped in gay

India silk, followed Watlow's actions with a healthy feeling of

revulsion. The doctor bared Winscombe's spare chest, then filled a

shallow, thick glass with spirits; emptying the latter, he set fire to

the interior of the glass; and, when the blue flame had expired, clapped

the cupped interior over the prostrate man's heart. There was, it

seemed, little else that could be done; bleeding was judged for the

once unexpeditious.

An effort at commonplace conversation was maintained at dinner. Ludowika

openly discussed the arrangements for their return to London. Felix

Winscombe had rallied from the night; his wife said that it was

difficult to restrain him. The most comfortable provisions, she

continued, had been made for their passage on the _Lindamira_. Howat

heard her without resentment. He had no wish to contradict her

needlessly even in thought; he was immovably fixed. Mr. Winscombe's

debilitated return had completely upset his intentions. An entirely

different proceeding would now be demanded, but with an identical end.

What pity he felt for the elder had no power to reach or alter his

passion.

He returned to the counting house, and worked methodically through the

afternoon, with an increasing sense of being involved in an irresistible

movement. This gave him a feeling almost of tranquillity; from the

beginning he had not been responsible. In the face of illness the

Italian servant proved utterly undependable; he cringed, stricken with

dread, from the spectacle of suffering. And when late in the day Mr.

Winscombe, partially drugged with opium, grew consciously weaker,

Howat's assistance was required.

Ludowika now remained in the room with her husband, and there was a

discreet movement in and out by various members of the household.

Isabel Penny remained for an hour, Caroline took her place, Myrtle

fluttered uncertainly in the doorway. Through the evening Felix

Winscombe lay propped on pillows, his head covered by a black gros de

Naples cap. His keen personality waned and revived on his long, yellow

countenance. At one side wigs stood in a row on blocks, a brilliant,

magenta coat lay in a huddle on a chair. At intervals he spoke, in a

thinner, higher voice than customary, petulantly uneasy, or with a

familiar, sardonic inflection. At the latter Ludowika would grow

immensely cheered. She entirely ignored Howat on the occasions when he

was in the room. He saw her mostly bent over leather boxes, into which

disappeared her rich store of silk and gold brocades, shoes of purple

morocco, soft white shifts. Howat watched her without an emotion visible

on his sombre countenance.

Occasionally Mr. Winscombe's tenuous fingers dipped into a snuff box of

black enamel and brilliants, and he lifted his hand languidly. The man's

vitality, his sheer determination, were extraordinary. Even now he was

far from impotence. He had, Howat had learned, completely dominated the

Provincial Councils, forced a mutual compromise and agreement on them.

He spoke of still more complicated affairs awaiting him in England. He

damned the Italian's "white liver," and threatened to leave him in

America. Dr. Watlow had been forced to return to the city.

Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his

feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it

easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about

their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his

personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the

future of the Penny iron. They might live in one of the outlying stone

dwellings at the Forge ... for the present. He was glad that Gilbert

Penny, that he, was rich. Ludowika could continue to dress in rare

fabrics, to step in elaborate pattens over the common earth. That could

not help but influence, assuage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in

the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive assemblies were open to

them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of

Mr. Winscombe's bitter humour. In the past he had repudiated them with

the utmost scorn. In the past--dim shapes, scenes, that appeared to have

occurred years before, but which in reality reached to last month,

trooped through his mind. Youth had vanished like a form dropping behind

a hill. He looked back; it was gone; his feet hurried forward into the

unguessed future; anxiety joined him; the scent that was Ludowika

accompanied him, an illusive figure. He reached toward it.

He was standing at the foot of the bed where Felix Winscombe lay. The

latter was restless, and complained of pains in his arms, reaching down

to his fingers. Ludowika bent over him, her face stamped with concern.

She regarded Howat with a new expression--narrowed eyes and a glimmer of

flawless teeth: a look he had never foreseen there; but it was impotent

before the thing that was. It had, however, the effect of intensifying

his desire, his passion for her fragility of silk and flesh. He would

kiss her hate on her mouth.

She sat by the bedside, and Howat took a place opposite her. Candles

burned on a highboy, on a table at his back; and their auriferous light

flowed in about the bedstead. The latter was draped from the canopy to

the bases of the posts in a bright printing of pheasants and

conventional thickets--cobalt and ruby and orange; and across a heavy

counterpane half drawn up stalked a row of panoplied Indians in clipped

zephyr. It was a nebulous enclosure with the shadows of the hangings

wavering on the coloured wool and cold linen, on the long, seamed

countenance of the prostrate man.

A clock in the hall struck slowly--it needed winding--ten blurred notes.

Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the

hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without;

wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a

blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's

face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ...

Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name,

and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but

soundless lips--Ludowika Penny.

Her husband lay with his eyes closed, his head bowed forward on his

chest, as if in sleep. At irregular intervals small, involuntary

contractions of pain twitched at his mouth. At times, too, he muttered

noiselessly. Extraordinary. Ludowika and Felix Winscombe and himself,

Howat Penny. A world peopled only by them; the silence of the room

dropped into infinite space, bottomless time. A sudden dread of such

vast emptiness seized Howat; he felt that he must say something,

recreate about them the illusion of safe and familiar spaces and walls.

It seemed that he was unable to speak; a leaden inhibition lay on his

power of utterance. He made a harsh sound in his throat, loud and

startling. Felix Winscombe raised his head, and Ludowika cried faintly.

Then silence again folded them.

Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs--the

furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and

himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with

his mother. She was astonishingly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika

and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompassing the

magnitude of his passion; she had not realized his new patience and

determination. He found himself counting the gorgeous birds in the

bed-hangings--twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and stopped

abruptly.

It had grown chilly in the room, and Ludowika had an India cashmere

shawl about her shoulders. The sombre garnets and blues hid the tinsel

gaiety of her gown and her bare shoulders. She appeared older than he

had ever seen her before. Her face, carefully studied, showed no trace

of beauty; her eyes were heavy, her lips dark; any efforts of animation

were suspended. She showed completely the effect of her life in courts

and a careless prodigality of hours and emotions. Howat, seeing all

this, felt only a fresh accession of his hunger for her; she was far

more compelling than when romantically viewed as a moon.

He sat with his chin propped on a palm; she was rigidly upright with her

arms at her sides; Felix Winscombe moved higher on the pillows. His eyes

glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred

ceaselessly with weaving fingers. Howat could almost feel Ludowika's

hatred striking at him across the bed. He smiled at her, and she faced

him with an expression of stony unresponse. He thought luxuriantly of

her in his arms, with the rain beating on the store house roof; he

caught the odours of the damp, heaped merchandise, the distant clamour

in the casting shed. He had a brutal impulse to lean forward and remind

her of what had occurred, of the fact that she was his; he wanted to

fling it against her present detachment, to mock her with it. Then he

would crush her against his heart. Felix Winscombe raised up on an

elbow, distorting the row of sanguinary Indians.

Ludowika moved to the edge of the bed, and put a firm, graceful arm

about him. A grey shadow of pain fell on Mr. Winscombe's features. The

silence was absolute. He seemed to be waiting in an attitude of mingled

dread and resolution. He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on

his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika's support. She

sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes.

Slowly the lines in his face deepened, and a fine, gleaming sweat

started out on his brow. His face contorted in a spasm of voiceless

suffering, and he drew a stiff hand down either arm. Howat watched him

in a species of strained curiosity, with a suspension of breath.

Something, he felt, should be done to relieve the oppression of agony

gathering on Felix Winscombe's countenance, but a corresponding sense of

complete helplessness settled like a leaden coffin about him. The other

became unrecognizable; his face seemed to be set in an unnatural grin.

His head drew back on a thin, corded neck, and a faint gasping for air

stirred in the shadows. Even Howat felt the pain to be unendurable, and

Ludowika, white as milk, had risen to her feet. She stood with a hand

half raised beneath a fringed corner of the India shawl.

It was incredible that the sufferer's agony should increase, but it was

apparent that it did remorselessly. All humanity was obliterated in an

excruciating spasm over which streamed some meagre tears. Mr.

Winscombe's arms raised and dropped; and, suddenly relaxed, he slipped

down upon the pillows. Immediately the torment vanished from his

countenance; it became peaceful, released. The familiar mockery of the

mouth came back. The head, slightly turned, seemed to regard Ludowika

with contentment and interrogation. Howat was conscious of a relief

almost as marked as that on the face before him. He had gripped his

hands until they ached. The tension in the room, too, seemed spent. He

was about to address a reassuring period to Ludowika, when, at a glimpse

of her expression, the words died on his lips.

He bent over the bed, with his hand on a ridged, still chest; he gazed

down at flaccid eyes, a dropped chin. Felix Winscombe was dead.

Howat raised up slowly, facing the woman through the draperies. She was

gazing in an incredulous, shocked surprise at the limp, prostrate body

capped in black gros de Naples. A shuddering fear passed over her, and

then her eyes met those of Howat Penny. Even separated from him by the

bed she drew away as if from his touch. He saw that she had forgotten

the dead man in a sharp realization of the portent of the living. She

glanced about the room in the panic of a trapped lark, an abject

fright, searching for an escape.

He realized that there was none; Ludowika now belonged to him

absolutely; he was as remorseless as the pain that had killed Felix

Winscombe. Below the automatic sensations of the moment Howat was

conscious of utter satisfaction. A miracle had given Ludowika to him; in

the passing of a breath all his difficulty had been ended. She was alone

with him in a province of forests and iron and stars. He would make her

forget the gardens of fireworks and scraping violins; but forget or not

she was his ... Ludowika Penny.