The following morning he made his way past the continuous produce arcade
that held the centre of Market Street to the Camden Ferry. At the river
the fish stall, with its circular green roof and cornucopias, reached
almost to the gloomy ferry-house with its heavy odour of wet wood. The
boat clattered through broken ice, by a trim packet ship, the
_Susquehanna_, and into the narrow canal through Windmill Island. Camden
was a depressing region of low, marshy land, its streets unpaved and
without gas, the gutters full of frozen, stagnant water. He inquired the
way to the Reverend Mr. Needles', passed a brick meeting house, and,
turning into Fourth Street, isolated frame dwellings, coming at last to
a dingy wooden house with broken panes in the upper windows and a
collapsing veranda at the edge of a blackened, skeleton wood.
A tall, gaunt woman in a ravelled worsted shawl answered his summons,
and informed him, interrupted by a prolonged coughing, that Mr. Needles
was away on circuit. "I came for a child staying with you," Jasper Penny
explained shortly, suppressing an involuntary repulsion at the degraded
surroundings. "She's not well," the woman replied, with instant
suspicion. "I don't just like to let a chancy person see her." He
discarded all subterfuge. "I am her father," he stated. The other
shifted to a whining self-defence. "And her in this sink!" she
exclaimed, gazing at Jasper Penny's furred coat, his glossy hat and
gloves and ebony cane.
"I did all for her I could, considering the small money I was promised,
and then half the time I didn't get that, neither. The lady owes for
three weeks right now. I suppose you'll have to come in," she concluded
grudgingly. They entered a dark hall, clay cold. Beyond, in a slovenly
kitchen hardly warmer, he found Eunice, his daughter; a curiously
sluggish child with a pinched, hueless face and a meagre body in a man's
worn flannel shirt and ragged skirt and stockings.
"Here's your father," Mrs. Needles ejaculated.
Eunice stood in the middle of the bare floor, staring with pallid, open
mouth at the imposing figure of the man. She said nothing; and Jasper
Penny found her silence more accusing than a shrill torrent of reproach.
"She's kind of heavy like," Mrs. Needles explained. "I have come to take
you away," Jasper Penny said. Then, turning to the woman: "Are those all
the clothes she has?" She grew duskily red. "There are some others
about, but I don't just know where, and then she spoils them so fast."
"That's a lie," the child announced, with a faint patch of colour on
either thin cheek. "Mr. Needles sold them." The man decided to ignore
such issues; his sole wish now was to take Eunice away as speedily as
possible. "Well," he directed impatiently, "get a shawl, something to
wrap her in." He regretted vainly that he had not come for the child in
a carriage. He paid without a question what the woman said was owing;
and, with Eunice folded in a ragged plaid, prepared to depart. "I
guess," the child decided, in a strangely mature voice, "we'd better
take my medicine." She turned toward a mantel, Mrs. Needles made a quick
movement in the same direction, but the small shape was before her.
Jasper Penny took a bottle from the diminutive, cold hand. The label had
been obliterated; but, impelled by a distrustful curiosity, he took out
the cork.
Laudanum!
He was at the point of an indignant condemnation when the words perished
without utterance--not the haggard woman before him, but himself, Jasper
Penny, was entirely guilty. He, in reality, had given the drug to his
daughter, placed her in this sorry and bitter poverty. "Come, Eunice,"
he said, taking her by the hand, his face grey and stony.
Once more in the city he walked with the child to the ferry and foot of
Chestnut Street, where they found places in The Reaper, a stage brightly
painted with snowy ships and drawn by four sorrel horses. His first
concern was to purchase proper clothes for his daughter; then he would
face the problem of her happier disposal. They passed the columned
façade of the Philadelphia Bank, the Custom House with its wide steps
set back from the street, hedged dwellings, and the United States Hotel
to Independence Square and Sixth Street, where he lifted the child from
the stage. They stopped before an entrance between bowed windows which
had above it the sign, The Misses Dunlop, Millinery.
Jasper Penny had had no idea that it would be so difficult to procure
clothes for a girl of seven. At first he was told that the necessary
garments could not be furnished, when discussion revealed the fact that
a nearly complete, diminutive wardrobe, especially ordered from Paris
and neglected by the customer, was to be had. In a surprisingly short
while a sentimental saleswoman had apparelled Eunice in black velvet
with rows of small bows and gold buckles and a lace collar, cambric
pantaloon ruffles swinging about her ankles, a quilted pink satin bonnet
tied, like those of her elders', with a bow under her right cheek, and a
muff and tippet of ermine. Other articles--a frock of rose gros de
chine, with a flounced skirt, a drab velvet bonnet turned in green
smocked silk, and sheer underthings--he ordered delivered at Sanderson's
Hotel.
The effect of what laudanum Eunice had taken faded, and her lethargy was
replaced by an equally still, incredulous amazement. She followed Jasper
Penny about with the mechanical rigidity of a minute sleepwalker. They
went into a jewelry store beyond, with a square low bow window and white
trimming, where he purchased a ring with a ruby, and small gold
bracelets with locks and chains. His restless desire was to clothe
Eunice in money, to overwhelm her with gifts; yet, although an evident
delight struggled through her stupefaction, he failed to get from the
expenditure the release he sought. A leaden sense of blood guiltiness
persisted in him. At Parkinson's, the confectioner opposite the State
House, he bought her syllabubs, a frozen rose cordial and black cake. On
leaving, he paused at the marble steps with a lantern on either side and
awning drawn out over the pavement, considering the next move. It should
be toys--a German doll, slate and coloured crayons and jumping-figures.
Then he took her back to his rooms at the Hotel.
Sitting in a stiff crimson chair opposite him, the doll clasped in
straining fingers, and a flush of excitement on her sharp features, she
presented an enormous difficulty. What, justly, was he to do with her?
How could he provide for a reasonable happiness, a healthy, normal
existence? He decided coldly that he would prevent Essie Scofield's
influence from ever touching the child again. Essie, he knew, was
utterly without any warmth of motherhood. She had solely and callously
used their daughter to extort money from him. But, he admitted to
himself, neither had he any feeling of parentage for the small, lonely
figure before him; nothing but a burning self-accusation, a lacerated
pride. His act proceeded entirely from his head in place of his heart.
For that very reason, Jasper Penny thought, he could give his daughter a
greater measure of security. He would see Stephen Jannan to-morrow and
with the lawyer's assistance get complete control of Eunice's future. He
must alter his will.
None of this, however, assisted in solving the actual immediate
necessity. There was, certainly, Myrtle Forge; his mother, however she
might silently suffer, protest, would ultimately accede in his wishes.
But it was a dreary place for a child, with only the companionship of
old women. He was, for the greater part, away in the interest of his
widely scattered activities, forges, furnaces, nail factories and
rolling mills.
He felt in anticipation the censure of the Penny connections that would
rise like a wall and shut Eunice from the companionship of the other
children, of the family, embittering her at what he had somewhere heard
described as the formative period of growth. His home, he decided, for
the present at least, was an undesirable place for his daughter.
It was, he discovered, past two, and he remorsefully summoned a servant.
He gazed with bewilderment at the list of dinner dishes tended him;
bear's meat, he felt, canvas back duck or terrapin, was not a diet
proper to seven; but he solved the perplexity by ordering snipe, rolled
and sugared cakes filled with whipped cream and preserved strawberries,
and a deep apple pandowdy. After this, and a block of nougat, Eunice
discovered herself to be sleepy. As she lay with tossed arms and pale
streaming hair under the feather coverlet of a great hotel bed he saw
with a sharp uneasiness that, in a subtle but unmistakable accent, she
resembled her mother, Essie Scofield.