His thoughts darkened with the falling day; he supposed them to be
solely addressed to the problem of Eunice; but, in reality, they
constantly evaded his will, following countless trivialities, and
returned to his own, peculiar need. He made some small changes of dress
for the evening, replacing brown with glazed black boots, and struggled,
with one hand, through the ordeal of tying a formal neckcloth. He had
purposely left behind his negro servant as a possible source of
unguarded chatter. When Jasper Penny had finished he went in to Eunice
and found her awake. The new clothes lay in their open boxes; and,
lighting candles, he wondered if he had better have some one in to
assist her. "Can you fix yourself up in these?" he asked, indicating the
purchases.
"Oh, yes," she assured him gravely; "that is except the very backest
buttons." She stood by the folded piles of shirred muslin, the elaborate
velvets and silks and ribbons, obviously at a loss before such an
unparalleled choice; and he was once more disturbed by the attenuation
of her small body. But that could be soon remedied; she had suffered
other, far greater, irremedial, oppressions; her very birth had
confronted her, in the puritanical self-righteousness of his world, with
an almost insuperable barrier to happiness. Still back of that, even
before the birth of himself and Essie Scofield, back, back in the
unguessed past, Eunice had been shaped, condemned. Her fate had only
culminated in his own unbalanced passion, in a desire that had blinded
him like a flash of ignited powder, leaving him with a sense of utter
void, of inexplicable need. "For what?" he demanded unconsciously and
bitterly aloud.
Eunice, startled, dropped the garment in her hands. She gazed at him
with a shrinking dread. "Come," he told her gently, "that will be very
pretty; and, don't you think, the velvet bonnet with green?" After
supper he questioned her. "What time do you usually go to bed?" She
answered promptly, "When it got too cold to stay up, at Mr. Needles',
but I wouldn't know here."
"We might go to the Circus," he suggested, half doubtful of the
propriety of such a course. However, they went. She clung tightly to his
sleeve before the illuminated, high-pillared façade of Welches' Circus,
where Jasper took seats in a box. Eunice was breathless before the
gleaming white and gold of the interior, the fabulous, glittering
chandelier, the crimson draperies and great curtain with its
equestrienne on a curvetting steed. The orchestra, with a blare of
trombones, announced the raising of the curtain and appearance of Mr.
John Mays, the celebrated clown. He was followed by Chinese sports, the
Vision of Cupid and Zephyr, and the songs, the programme stated, of
Lowrie and Williams. These gentlemen, in superb yellow satin, emphasized
harmoniously the fact that
"And joy is but a flower,
The heart with sorrow meeting
Will wither 'neath its power."
Jasper Penny wondered abstractedly what was to be done with the tense,
excitable child at his side? A voice from the wings announced: "Mouse
and Harebell, the Lilliputian ponies, with Infant Jockies, the smallest
schooled racers in existence." And the word "schooled" recalled to him
the diffident woman he had met at Stephen Jannan's, the night before.
Miss ... Brundon. A place for the education of younger girls. He could
send Eunice there, for the present at any rate; and decide later upon
her ultimate situation. Miss Brundon had a sensitive, yes, distinctly, a
fine face. Her school, he remembered, was at Raspberry Alley, far out
Spruce Street, close to Tenth. He drew a deep breath of relief at this
bridging of the immediate complications the child presented.
The next morning, again in the Reaper coach, they rolled west over
Chestnut Street, past a theatre with elevated statues of Comedy and
Tragedy, the Arcade with its outside stairs mounting across the front,
stone mansions set back in gardens with gravelled paths, and the Moorish
bulk of Masonic Hall half hid by stores. Beyond the Circus they
proceeded on foot to a four square brick dwelling with weeping willows
and an arched wood sign above the entrance painted with the designation,
"Miss Brundon's Select Academy."
Jasper Penny found Miss Brundon in a small, bare, immaculate office. She
was sitting at a table; and, as he entered, with Eunice dragging
desperately at his hand, she half rose, with a quick, faint blush.
"Mr. Penny," she exclaimed, in a low, charming surprise. "I didn't
expect, so soon, to have the pleasure ... here, at my school." He firmly
moved Eunice from her position at his back. "An unexpected pleasure for
me," he replied. "I came to consult with you about this little girl--the
daughter of a friend of mine. A friend, I may add, in difficult
circumstances, and for whom I am prepared to do a great deal. I had
hoped--Stephen Jannan told me about your exceptional establishment--that
you could take her. She needs just the supervision that I am certain you
offer."
"Of course," she replied immediately, "I'd be glad to have any one
recommended by you. I do think my school is unusual. You see, there is
almost no provision for the supervision of such young ladies. And I have
been very fortunate in my girls; I try not to be snobbish, Mr. Penny;
but, indeed, if a place like this is to be useful, some care is
required. Probably you would like an assurance of their studies and
deportment."
"No," he stopped her hastily; "it is quite enough to have seen you." A
deeper, painful colour suffused her cheeks. He had, he thought, been
inexcusably clumsy. He had unconsciously given voice to the conviction
that Miss Brundon, like her establishment, was exceptional. She was,
ordinarily, too pale for beauty; her countenance, with high, cheek
bones, was irregular; yet her eyes, tranquil blue, held a steady quality
almost the radiance of an inward light. Her diffidence, it was clear,
co-existed with a firm, inviolable spirit. He said, later:
"You will discover that there are many things Eunice requires, and I
would be obliged if you would procure them without stint, and send the
accounts to my Philadelphia office. The child has been in circumstances
of considerable poverty; but I wish to give her whatever advantages
money can bring. Yes--Eunice Scofield. And--" he hesitated, "in view of
this...."
"I understand, oh, completely," Susan Brundon interrupted him warmly.
"You don't wish your charity exposed; and not only on your own account,
but from consideration for the susceptibilities of the parents,
parent--a mother, I gather."
It had been, he thought, leaving, ridiculously simple. His meeting with
Miss Brundon was a fortunate chance. A fine, delicate, unworldly woman;
a fineness different from Phebe's, submerged in the pursuit of her own
salvation. The former, he realized, was close to forty. If she had been
sympathetic with a strange child such as Eunice how admirably she would
attend any of her own. Unmarried. The blindness of men, their fatuous
choice, suddenly surprised him.
He determined to proceed directly to Stephen Jannan, and put into motion
at once the solving of his daughter's future. Never, he repeated, should
Eunice fall again into the lax hands of Essie Scofield. Stephen would
advise him shrewdly, taking advantage of the law, or skilfully
overcoming its obstacles. He had unbounded faith in the power of money
where Essie was concerned; at the same time he had no intention of
laying himself open to endless extortion, threats, almost inevitable,
ultimate scandal. What a bog he had strayed into, a quagmire reaching
about him in every direction. He must discover firmer ground ahead,
release from the act of that other man, his youth. The memory of the
serene purity of Miss Brundon's office recurred to him like a breath
from the open spaces where he had first known the deep pleasure of an
utter freedom of spirit.
Jasper Penny, revolving the complications of his position, made his way
directly over the uneven sidewalk of Spruce Street to Fourth; there,
passing the high, narrow residences of Society Hill, he proceeded to
Stephen's office, beyond Chestnut. It was in a square brick edifice of
an earlier period, with a broad marble step and door and wide windows
coped in scoured white stone. The lawyer's private chamber was bare,
with snowy panelling and mahogany, the high sombre shelves of a
calf-bound law library, a ponderous cabriolet table, sturdy, rush-seated
Dutch chairs, and a Franklin stove with slender brass capitols and
shining hod.
"A chair, Jasper," Stephen Jannan directed. "You ought to know them,
they came out of Myrtle Forge--some of old Gilbert's. Your mother gave
them to me when she did over the house in this new French fancy." Jasper
Penny was momentarily at a loss for an adequate opening of the subject
that had brought him there. Finally he plunged directly into his
purpose. "You must know, Stephen," he said, "that I am decidedly
obligated to a Mrs. Scofield." Jannan nodded shortly. "The thing dragged
on for a number of years, but is quite dead now; in fact, it has been
for a considerable number of months. That, in itself, doesn't bother me;
it is comparatively simple; but there is a child, a girl, Stephen."
"I didn't know that," the other acknowledged. "It is an ugly difficulty.
Do you wish to legitimatize your--the child? There is marriage of
course."
"I have no intention of marrying Essie Scofield," Jasper Penny said
coldly. "And I am almost certain she wouldn't consent if I had. I am
quite willing to assume a proper responsibility; but there is a limit to
my conception of that. There was never any serious question of marriage;
there is none now. I simply wish to get complete control of Eunice; by
adoption, perhaps; she is seven years old."
"There are no laws of adoption, as such, in Pennsylvania," Jannan told
him. "The only State with that provision is Louisiana; there, by an act
of Legislature, the thing can be legalized. I could arrange it through
correspondence, a certain residence within the State. It would be
cumbersome and expensive, but possible." He paused, frowning. "Devilish
awkward," he muttered; "make a stench in a family such as ours.
However," he added, "a contract practically to the same effect can be
drawn. This, with her consent, would be entirely binding on Mrs.
Scofield. If the child can write it would be well to have her signature
on the deed. Bring them here; she should have counsel."
"After that, I suppose, the name could be arranged."
"Exactly. The child, of course, would have no legal status as your heir.
Anything she got would have to be willed direct." The other nodded. It
was all far more simple than he had hoped. He almost saw a definite
lightening of the future. "Is the girl with her mother now?" Jannan
queried.
"I took her away yesterday," Jasper Penny replied negligently. "We went
to the Circus, and at present she is at Miss Brandon's Academy." He was
surprised by the sudden concern on his cousin's handsome, florid
countenance. "By heaven, Jasper," the lawyer exclaimed, "am I to
understand that you took a--well, an illegitimate child, to Miss
Brundon, left her in the School? It's--it's incredible."
"Why not?"
"If such a thing were known it would ruin Susan Brundon over night.
Haven't you a conception of how this is regarded? She would be stripped
of pupils as if the place reeked of malignant fever. A most beastly
egotistical and selfish act."
"Never thought of that," Jasper Penny admitted. He saw again the fine,
sensitive face of Miss Brundon, presiding over the establishment that
was like an emanation of her diffident and courageous spirit; the last
person alive he would harm. And people were exactly as Stephen had said,
particularly women. They would destroy Susan Brundon ruthlessly, without
a moment's hesitation. He thought of her as suffering incalculably,
betrayed by his implied lie; he saw her eyes stricken with pain, her
hands twisting together.... He rose sharply.
"A blind, infernal fool!" he ejaculated, grasping his hat. "I'm glad I
saw you when I did. Put it right at once. Obliged, Stephen; come to you
later about changing my will and the rest."
He was in such haste to remove the danger of Eunice from Susan Brundon
that not until he again stood at the door of the Academy did he realize
what a difficult explanation lay before him. Unconsciously he had
reached a point where he would do his utmost to avoid hurting her.
Already she occupied an unusual elevation in his thoughts, an unworldly
plane bathed in a white radiance.
She was not in the office, but soon appeared, with a questioning gaze;
and, he felt, an appealing lessening of her reserve. He hesitated,
casting vainly about for an acceptable expression of his errand. Another
lie, he thought, acutely distressed, must be necessary. "I am extremely
sorry, Miss Brandon," he told her, "but unexpected developments in the
last hour make it necessary for me to remove Eunice from your school."
A slow flush invaded her countenance lifted to meet his troubled gaze.
"Mr. Penny!" she exclaimed, in a faint dismay. "Oh, I hope it is because
of nothing--nothing derogatory you have heard. Please tell me
directly--"
"Absolutely no," he replied, his voice carrying a vibrating reassurance.
"You are entirely without the need of recommendation, far beyond any
unfavourable report. I am profoundly disturbed by causing you
inconvenience, and I only hope to offer you sufficient apology; but I
shall have to take Eunice away with me, at once."
"Perhaps her mother can't bear separation."
"It is not that," he said grimly, a tangible hurt sharpening within;
"but something that cannot be gone into, with you." She turned away
immediately. "I will send for her," she replied. They stood facing but
mutually avoiding each other's gaze while Eunice was being fetched.
"Her things have already come from the hotel," Miss Brundon proceeded.
"Where shall I send them?" Eunice broke in with a shrill protest. "Do I
have to go? I don't want to." Her face was scarlet with revolt. "I can
walk up and down the room with a book on my head, while another little
girl had to be all done with a board to her back."
Jasper Penny wondered if he would see Miss Brundon again soon. The last
was an afterthought bred by the realization that he could not permit her
to depart absolutely from his life. There was a great deal that he, a
rich and influential man of practical affairs, might do for her. He was
certain that Susan Brundon needed exactly the assistance he could give;
probably people robbed her, traded callously on her unsuspicious nature.
Yet, when the moment came to leave, he could think of nothing to say
beyond the banality of looking for her at the Jannans'.
"I go out very little," she told him; "the work here absorbs me; and,
unfortunately, my eyes are not strong. They require constant rest." He
expressed regret once more for any disturbance he might have caused;
and, after hesitating awkwardly, left with Eunice hanging fretfully at
his hand. What, in God's name, was he to do with the child? He walked
slowly, his face half lost in the fur of his overcoat, oblivious, in his
concentration on the difficulties of her situation, of Eunice
progressing discontentedly at his side. A petulant complaint rose at
intervals to an audible sob. Looking down, as the sobs threatened to
become a continuous crying, he saw the top of the velvet bonnet and her
diminutive hands in scarlet knitted mitts. He would have to stop
dragging her from place to place; a suitable position for the present
was all he hoped for now. There must be other institutions, larger and
farther away, to which Eunice could be sent. He had a vague memory of
such a place somewhere on the Delaware, was it at Burlington?
But he could not continue living with his daughter at Sanderson's Hotel.
Jasper Penny decided that he would take her that afternoon to the house
of the head machinist of his nail works at Jaffa, the town that, its
beginning growing largely out of the Penny industries, lay a scant mile
from Myrtle Forge. Speever was a superior man; his wife, a robust
Cornish woman in a crisp apron, would give Eunice an energetic and
proper care.
A thin, flexible mantle of snow lay over the drab earth, sweeping up to
a Grecian marble edifice, making more dreary the bulk of the Eastern
Penitentiary and foundation of Girard College, and emphasizing the
winter desertion of the reaches of the Fairmount Water Works. She soon
grew absorbed in the various aspects of their transportation--the echo
of the whip cracking over the mules that drew the coaches across the
covered viaduct, the labouring stationary engine and their slow ascent
beyond. They saw, lining the river, a cemetery elevated starkly against
the sky; and followed a canal by a broken, black flood between snowy
banks.
Past a town with impressive residences and manufactories with low
spreading veils of smoke, they came on a confusion of canals and canal
boats, lock dams and bridges, mules and raffish crews with tanned faces
and brightly coloured jackets and boots. Again crossing the river and a
shallow, tranquil valley, the train brigade rolled into the main street
of Jaffa. It was a town of small brick dwellings, spaced in orderly
yards, echoing to the diminished clamour of the Penny Rolling Mills on
the outskirts. Beyond the walls, starkly red against the snow, the
blackened main street, the river was spotted with ice.
Edgar Speever's wife accepted Eunice with an immediate and unquestioning
capability, and Jasper Penny turned away with a momentary but immense
relief. In a few days, after the deed for the possession of the child
had been executed, he could place her more permanently. He walked out to
the miscellaneous group of buildings and cluttered yards that held his
inherited activity; and in the small single-roomed building of the main
office discussed with his superintendent the changes, improvements of
process, then under way. The old nail machines, propelled by the feet
and hands of an operator, and producing but one nail at a time, had been
replaced by a high power engine, self-heading machinery. The
superintendent complained of the pig from the new hot blast furnaces.
"Impure," he declared. "And this new stone coal firing, too, makes but
poor stuff. It'll never touch the old charcoal forging. Hammered bar's
at ninety, and I'm glad to get it then. The puddling furnaces will do
something with the grey pig; we have eight in blast now, turning out the
railroad and heavier bars. This year will see forty-five hundred tons of
iron worked, and close to four thousand kegs of nails."
Jasper Penny listened attentively; it was his intention soon to dispense
entirely with all the time-honoured methods of iron manufacture. Water
power, with its unequal flow, any large employment of charcoal, growing
increasingly expensive with the rapid diminishment of the forests, must
give place to the steam blast machine and anthracite. If his manager was
unable to change, develop, with the changing times he would find
another, more scientific.
Outside the early twilight made more grey the dingy sheds and buildings,
the heaped slag; the long brick rectangle of the rolling mill, with its
triple imposed, ventilated roof and the high, smoking stacks of the
puddling furnaces, rising four from either length, gave out an
undiminished, deafening uproar, the clamour of the bars falling out from
the rollers, the spatter of hammers and dull dragging of heavy weights.
The engine of the nail works rent all other sound with an unaccustomed,
harsh blast.... Jasper Penny was conscious of a deep, involuntary
relief when he reached the comparative tranquillity, the secession of
vexatious problems, accomplished by Myrtle Forge.