He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of
pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The
loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have
its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down
the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted
from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing
prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their
manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.
Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had
largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail
works by the canal at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle
Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.
Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself--the
pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery,
where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.
The old system of bellows had been replaced by a wood cylinder,
compressing air by piston into a chamber from which the blast was
regulated. A blacksmith's shed had been added in the course of time,
and a brick coke oven. He stopped at the Forge shed, filled with ruddy
light and shadow, the ringing of hammers, and silently watched the
malleable metal on the anvil. Flakes of glowing iron fell, changing from
ruby to blue and black.
The Penny iron! The Forge had been operated continuously since seventeen
twenty-seven, hammering out the foundation of his, Jasper's, position.
He had taken a not inconsiderable place in the succession of the men of
his family; in him the Pennys had reached their greatest importance,
wealth. But after him ... what? He was, now, the last Penny man. The
foothold Gilbert had cut out of the wild, which Howat and Casimir--an
outlandish name obviously traceable to his mother, the foreign
widow--had, in turn, increased for Daniel and Jasper, would be
dissipated. His great, great aunt, Caroline, marrying a solid Quaker,
had contributed, too, to the family stamina; while her granddaughter,
wedding a Jannan, had increased the social prestige and connections of
the family. The Jannans, bankers and lawyers, had already converted the
greater part of their iron inheritance into more speculative finance;
and the burden of the industry rested on Jasper Penny's shoulders.
At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible
monument of their endurance and rectitude, except for the tenuous,
momentary fact of Eunice, would be overthrown, forgot. He was conscious
of a strong inner protest against such oblivion. He had, of course,
often before lamented the fact that he had no son; but suddenly his loss
became a hundred times more poignant, regrettable. Jasper Penny caught
again the remembered, oppressive odour of foxglove, the aromatic reek of
brandy and oranges; one, in its implications, as sterile as the other.
He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of essential failure, a
recurrence of the dark mood that had enveloped him in leaving the
Jannans' ball.
Yet, he thought again, he was still in the midstride of his life, his
powers. His health was unimpaired; his presence bore none of the
slackening aspect of increasing years. These feelings occupied him,
speeding in a single cutter sleigh over the crisp snow of the road
leading from his home to Shadrach Furnace, where Graham Jannan and his
young wife had been newly installed in the foremens' dwelling. There was
a slight uneasiness about Graham's lungs, in consequence of which he had
been taken out of the banking house of an uncle, Jannan and Provost, and
set at the more robust task of picking up the management of an iron
furnace.
It was early afternoon; the sky was as dryly powdered with unbroken blue
as was the earth with white. The silver bells and scarlet pompons of the
harness crackled in the still, intense cold; and a blanched vapour hung
about the horse's head. Jasper Penny, enveloped in voluminous buffalo
robes and fur, gazed with an increased interest at the familiar, flowing
scene; nearby the forest had been cut, and suave, rolling fields
stretched to a far mauve haze of trees; the ultramarine smoke of
farmhouse chimneys everywhere climbed into the pale wash of sunlight;
orderly fence succeeded fence. How rapidly, and prosperous, the country
was growing! Even he could remember wide reaches of wild that were now
cultivated. The game, quail and wild turkey and deer, was fast
disappearing. The country was growing amazingly, too, extending through
the Louisiana Purchase, State by State, to Mexico and the Texan border.
The era of the greatness of the United States had hardly begun, while it
was more than probable that the greatness, the power, of the Penny
family faced an imminent destruction. His revolt at this, joining the
more personal sense of the emptiness of his existence, filled him with a
bitter energy, a determination to conquer, somehow, the obdurate facts
hemming him in.
The sleigh dropped over a rise into a shallow fold of hills, with a
collection of structures on a slope, and a number of solid, small grey
stone dwellings. He glanced subconsciously at the stack of Shadrach
Furnace, and saw that it was in blast--a colourless, lively flame, with
a thin, white smoke like crumpled muslin, playing about its base. The
metallic ring of a smithy rose at a crossing of roads, and, from the
cast house, drifted the refrain of a German song. He turned in by the
comparatively long, low façade of the house where the Jannans were
living.
A negro led the horse and sleigh back to a stable; and, briskly sounding
the polished iron doorknocker, he let himself into the dining room, a
chamber with a wide, pot-hung fireplace and plain mahogany consul tables
with wood chairs brightly painted with archaic flowers and scrolls in
gold. Standing at the far side of the room, delicately outlined against
a low, deeply embrasured window, was Susan Brundon.
A slow tide of colour rose to her ordinarily pale cheeks, corresponding
with a formless gladness permeating his own being. She wore ruffled
lavender with a clear lace pelerine caught at her breast by a knot of
straw-coloured ribbon and sprig of rose geranium. "Mr. Penny," she said,
with a little gasp of surprise; but her gaze was unwavering, candid.
"Why not?" he replied lightly. "I have a small interest in Shadrach. You
are surprising--so far from that absorbing Academy."
"It's my eyes again," she explained. "I am obliged to rest. There is a
very good assistant at the school; and Mary sweetly thought the country
would do me good."
"It is really miraculous," Mary Jannan stated, entering from the
kitchen; "she'll almost never. Weren't we lucky?" She was a small woman
with smooth brown hair and an air of quiet capability. "And it's
splendid to see you," she continued to Jasper Penny. "Don't for a
minute think you'll get off before to-morrow, perhaps not then. Graham
is out, chop-chopping wood. Actually--the suave Graham." She indicated a
high row of pegs for Jasper Penny's furs. "Everything is terribly
primitive. Most of the furniture was so sound that we couldn't bring
ourselves to discard it all, however old-fashioned. Little by little."
Graham Jannan entered, a tall, thin young man with crisp, pale yellow
hair and a clean shaven, sanguine countenance with challenging light
blue eyes. He greeted the older man with a firm, cold hand clasp. "I
suppose you've come out to discover what I have learned about iron.
Well, I know now that a sow is not necessarily a lady, and that some
blooms have no bouquet. Good rum has, though, after sleighing."
Upon alternately burning his fingers and throat with a steaming glass of
St. Croix, Jasper Penny and Graham Jannan proceeded to the Furnace
where, in the cast house, they watched the preparations for a flow of
metal. The head founder, McQuatty, bearded to the eyes and swathed in a
hide apron, stood at the Ironmaster's side. "The charcoal you'd get's
not worth a bawbee," he complained; "soft stuff would hardly run lead.
And where they'd cut six thousand cords of wood will no longer show more
than four. Shadrach ought to put out twenty-eight tons of pig in a week;
and you see the statements."
"Stone coal," Jasper Penny replied; "and a hot blast." He turned to
describe the latter to Jannan. "It'll come," the founder agreed, "and
the quality will go." He went forward to tap the clay-sealed hearth. The
liquid iron poured into the channels of its sand bed, sputtering and
slowly fading to dingy grey. "I'd like you to take hold of this," Jasper
Penny told the younger man; "great changes, improvements, are just over
the hill. I'll miss them--a link between the old and the new. But you
would see it all. The railroad will bring about an iron age; and then,
perhaps, steel. I look for trouble, too--this damned States Rights. The
South has been uneasy since the Carolina Nullification Act. It will be a
time for action." He gazed keenly at Graham Jannan. A promising young
man, he thought, with a considerable asset in his wife. A woman, the
right woman, could make a tremendous difference in a man's capabilities.
He elaborated this thought fantastically at dinner, sitting opposite
Susan Brundon. Mary Jannan wore orange crêpe, with black loops of ball
fringe and purple silk dahlias; and, beside her, Miss Brundon's dress
was noticeably simple. She volunteered little, but, when directly
addressed, answered in a gentle, hesitating voice that veiled the
directness, the conviction, of her replies. The right woman, Jasper
Penny repeated silently. Ten, fifteen, years ago, when he had been free,
he would have acted immediately on the feeling that Susan Brundon was
exactly the wife he wanted. But no such person had appeared at that
momentous period in his life.
However, then he had been a totally different being; perhaps the
appreciation of Miss Brundon, her actual reality, lay for him entirely
in his own perceptions. But if she would not have been the woman for him
then, by heaven, she was now! He expressed this unaware of its wide
implications, unconscious of the effect it would instantly have. The
thing silently uttered bred an enormously increased need, the absolute
determination that she was necessary to his most perfunctory being. The
thought of her alone, he discovered, had been sufficient to give him a
new energy, a sense of rare satisfaction.
Shortly expressed, he wanted to marry her; he had not, he told himself
oddly, ever been married. The word had a significance which heretofore
he had completely missed. A strange emotion stirred into being, a
longing thrown out from his new desire, the late-born feeling of
dissatisfaction; it was a wish for something in Susan Brundon which he
experienced but could not name. Roughly stated it was a hunger to
surround her with security, comfort, to fortify the, at best, doubtful
position of life in death for her. Yet he acknowledged to himself that
this regard for her safety was mostly the result of his own inner, blind
striving. Her happiness had magically become his. Beyond that he was
unable to penetrate.
After supper they gathered in the chamber beyond the dining room. Here
Jasper Penny found an incongruous mingling of old and new furniture.
There was a high, waxed walnut desk and cabinet, severely simple, and
before it a chair with a back of elaborately carved and gilded tulips
tufted in plum-coloured velvet. The thick carpet was a deep rose, and
the drapery of the mantel and windows garnet. A painted hood of
brilliant Chinese colours had been fastened before what was evidently an
open hearth, for which a coal stove was substituted. On the middle of
the floor was an oriental hassock in silver brocade; while a corner held
a spinet-piano decorated in roseate cupids, flower sprays and gold leaf.
Again, an old clock in Spanish mahogany, with a rudely painted glass
door, had been left on the wall.
Mary Jannan, at the piano, wove a delicate succession of arpeggios. She
sang, in a small and graceful voice, a cavatina, _Tanti Palpiti_. Then,
"Ah, que les amours ... de beaux heurs." Jasper Penny listened with an
unconscious, approving pretence of understanding. But when, in the
course of her repertoire, she reached _Sweet Sister Fay_, and _The Horn
of My Loved One I Hear_, his pleasure became active. Susan Brundon, on
the hassock, lifted her sensitive face to the mild candle light, and its
still pallor gave him a shock of delight. Her hands were folded in the
voluminous sweep of her crinoline; the ribbons at her breast rose and
fell softly.
Jasper Penny and Graham were smoking long, fragrant cigars that the
former had produced from a lacquered case, and Jannan had the
ingredients of the hot punch at his elbow. It amused the young man to
persuade Susan Brandon to take a sip from his glass; and they all
laughed at her subsequent gasping. Jasper Penny was astoundingly happy;
his being radiated a warmth and contentment more potent than that of the
St. Croix rum. It was accompanied by an extraordinary lightness of
spirit, a feeling of the desirability of life. The memory of his greying
hair had left him; not, it was true, to be replaced by the surging
emotions of youth, but by a deep satisfaction.
Susan Brundon, Susan ... the right woman. He marvelled again at the
brightness of spirit that shone in her--like a flame through a fine
paper lantern. Susan, at Myrtle Forge. His thought became concrete; he
knew now, definitely, that he had determined to marry her. His peace of
mind increased. There was no need for hurry, the mere idea was
irradiating; yet there must be no unnecessary delay. Incontrovertibly he
had passed forty. The best period in a man's life. They would go to the
West Indies, he decided. A ring with a square emerald, and roses of
pearls. It was, almost immediately, time to retire. His room, narrow
with a sloping wall, had a small window giving on a flawless rectangle
of snow like the purity of Susan Brundon.
As he lay in bed, staring wakefully against the dark, another memory
crept into his thoughts--the echo of a small, querulous voice, "yellow
rock candy and syllabubs." Eunice! A sudden consternation seized him as
he realized the necessity of telling Susan fully about his daughter. No
escape, evasion, was possible. If she discovered the existence, the
history, of the child afterward--he lingered over the happiness that
term implied--it would destroy her. This, he told himself, was not
merely melodrama; he was thinking of her delicate spirituality, so
completely shielded from the bald fatality of facts. An increasing dread
seized him at the thought of the hurt his revelation would inflict on
her. The interweaving of life in life, consequence on consequence, the
unbroken intricacy of the whole fabric of existence, realized anew,
filled him with bitter rebellion. The blind commitment of a vanished
youth, potent after years, still hung in a dark cloud over Susan
Brundon. He was conscious of the past like an insuperable lead weight
dragging at his attempted progress. The secret errors of all the pasts
that had made him rose in a haggard, shadowy troop about his bed,
perpetuated, multiplied, against his aspirations of tranquil release.
Yet, he told himself, dressing in the bright flood of morning, if
nothing perished but the mere, shredding flesh, one quality persisted
equally with the other--the symbol of Essie Scofield was no more actual
than Susan. He had breakfast early, with Graham Jannan; and, in a
reviving optimism, arranged for the Jannans to bring Miss Brundon to
Myrtle Forge for a night before her departure. He whirled away, in a
sparkling veil of flung snow crystals, before the women appeared.
Susan Brundon would, naturally, shrink from what he must tell her; but
he was suddenly confident of his ability to convince her of the superior
importance of the actuality of what they together might make of the
future. He was accustomed to the bending of circumstance to his will; in
the end he would prove stronger than any hesitancy she might, perhaps,
reveal. His desire to have her had grown to such proportions that he
could not, for an instant, think of existence without her as an intimate
part. He even mentally determined when he should go to the city, the
jeweller's, for the square emerald and flowered pearls. He would do over
the rooms where he had lived in the thin formality of his marriage with
Phebe, settle an amount on Essie ... shredding flesh. It would do the
living woman no more injury than the dead. Oranges and brandy, satin and
gold and ease.
He wrote, through Stephen Jannan, to Essie Scofield that afternoon,
stating the generous terms of his final arrangement with her, making it
plain that all personal contact between them had reached an end.
Hereafter she must exclusively address any unavoidable communications to
Mr. Jannan. She disregarded this in a direct, inevitably complaining,
laborious scrawl. However, he could read through it her obvious relief
at complete independence. She would, she thought, stay where she was for
a little ... a period of perfunctory sentimentality followed. He
destroyed the letter, turning with deep pleasure to the message from
Graham Jannan that he would bring Susan Brundon and Mary to Myrtle Forge
the following day.
His mother, with Amity Merken like a timid and reduced replica at her
back, greeted the Jannans and Miss Brundon at the door. Jasper Penny
came forward from the smoking room, to the right of the main entrance;
where the men retired for an appetizer of gin and bitters. The older man
was garbed with exact care. His whiskers were closely trimmed on either
side of his severe mouth and shapely, dominant chin; and his sombre
eyes, under their brows drawn up toward the temples, held an unusual
raillery. Amity Merken, he learned, had desired to stay away from the
supper table; but, to her distress, he forced her into a chair set by
himself. Susan sat at the other end of the table, in the place that had
been Phebe's. He gazed at her with a satisfaction without surprise; for
it seemed to him that the woman beyond him had always occupied the fore
of his existence. She wore pale grey, the opening at her neck filled
with soft lace and pinned with a garnet brooch, and a deep-fringed,
white silk shawl. The conversation was ambling, but, to Jasper Penny,
pitched in a key of utter delight. He said little through supper; and,
at its end, with Graham Jannan, immediately followed the others into the
parlour.
There Mary Jannan repeated her songs, French, English and Italian; and
Jasper Penny listened with a poignant, emotional response. Graham and
his wife had arranged to sleigh back to Shadrach Furnace that evening;
but Susan Brundon was to stay at Myrtle Forge, and take the train from
Jaffa to-morrow. The Jannans, finally, departed; and Jasper Penny,
showing Susan through the chambers of the lower floor, succeeded in
delaying her, seated, in the smoking room.