Now that the moment which he had so carefully planned had arrived he was
curiously reluctant to precipitate Susan and himself into the future.
The lamps on a mantel, hooded in alabaster, cast a diffused radiance
over Susan's silvery dress, on her countenance faintly flushed above the
white folds of the shawl. "What is that sound?" she suddenly queried. "I
heard it all through supper and before. It seems to live in the walls,
the very air, here."
"The trip hammer of Myrtle Forge," he replied gravely. "I suppose it
might, fancifully, be called the beating of the Penny heart; it does
pound through every associated stone; and I have a notion that when it
stops we shall stop too. The Penny men have all been faithful to it, and
it has been faithful to us, given us a hold in a new country, a hold of
wrought iron."
"How beautiful," she murmured; "how strong and safe!"
"It pleases me that you feel that," he plunged directly into his
purpose; "for I intend to offer you all the strength and safety it
contains." Her hands fluttered to her cheeks; a sudden fear touched
her, yet her eyes found his unwaveringly. "If that were all," he
continued, standing above her, "if I had only to tell you of the iron,
if the metal were flawless, I'd be overwhelmed with gladness. But almost
no iron is perfect, the longest refining leaves bubbles, faults. Men are
like that, too ... Susan." She grew troubled, sensitively following his
mood; her hands were now pressed to her breast, her lips parted. She was
so bewilderingly pure, in her dim-lit, pearly haze of silk, that he
paused with an involuntary contraction of pain at what must follow.
"The child, Eunice," he struggled on; "I couldn't leave her at the
Academy because it might injure you. I had brought her in a most blind
egotism; and so I took her away. She is my daughter."
He saw that at first she totally missed the implication of his words.
"But," she stammered, "I was told you had no ... how would that--?" Then
she stopped as sharply as if a hand had compressed her throat. A vivid
mantle of colour rose in her face; she made a motion of rising, of
flight, but sank back weakly. "It is criminally indelicate to speak to
you of this," he said, "but it was absolutely necessary. I want to marry
you; in that circumstance a lie would be fatal, later or sooner."
She attempted to speak, her lips quivered, but only a low gasp was
audible. It was worse, even, than he had feared. Now, however, that he
had told her, he felt happier, more confident. Surely, after a little,
she would forgive, forget, "I want to marry you," he repeated, torn
with pity at her fragility, her visible suffering. "All that might hurt
you has been put out of my life, out of our future. The way is open
before us, the refining. I would do anything to spare you, believe that;
but the truth, now, best."
"Always," she said in a faint voice. "I am trying to--to realize. Oh! I
suppose such things do occur; but the child herself, you--don't see how
that, so near--" she broke off, gazing wide-eyed out of her misery. He
was conscious of the dull, regular beat of the Forge hammer. God, how
the imperfections persisted! But, he told himself savagely, in the end
the metal was steadfast. He would, certainly, overcome her natural
revulsion from what she had just heard. The colour had left her cheeks,
violet shadows gathered about her eyes; she seemed more unsubstantial
than ever. He would repay again and again the suffering he had brought
her. Having declared himself he was almost tranquil; there was a total
absence of the impetuous emotionalism of youth, the blind tyranny of
desire. His feeling was deeper, and accompanied by a far more involved
philosophy of self-recognition. At the same time, while acutely
conscious of his absolute need of Susan Brundon, he was at a loss to
discover its essence, shape. Before he had known her he had been
obsessed by a distaste for his existence; he had desperately wanted
something without definition ... And Susan was that desire, delicate,
clear-eyed Susan. Yet, still, the heart of her escaped him.
Jasper Penny had told himself that his new dissatisfaction was merely
the result of his accumulating years; but, beyond the fact that such an
increase might have brought him different and keener perceptions, that
explanation was entirely inadequate. He wanted a quality beyond his
experience, beyond, he realized, any material condition--Susan Brundon,
yes; but it was no comparatively simple urge of sex, the natural
selection of the general animal creation. There was no question of
passionate importunities; those, here, would be worse than futile; all
that he desired was beyond words, moving in obedience to a principle of
which he had not caught the slightest glimpse. Yet, confident of his
ultimate victory, he maintained the dominating presence of a black
Penny.
Susan Brundon had sunk back into the depths of her capacious chair; she
seemed utterly exhausted, as if she had been subjected to a prolonged
brutal strain. But still her eyes sought him steady in their hurt
regard. "There is so much that I can give you," he blundered,
immediately conscious of the sterility of his phrase. "I mean better
things--peace and attention and--and understanding. I won't attempt any
of the terms usual, commonplace, at such moments, you must take them,
where they are worthy, for granted. I only tell you a lamentable fact,
and ask you to marry me, promise you the tenderest care--"
"I know that," she replied, with obvious difficulty, hesitation. "I'll
not thank you. It is terribly difficult for me. I'd like to answer you
as you wish, I mean reply to--to your request. But the other, the child,
dragged about; there was such a distrust, a wariness, in her face."
"There is no good in thinking of that alone," he stated, with a return
of his customary decision. "No one can walk backwards into the future.
Try to consider only the immediate question, what I have asked you--will
you marry me?"
"Is that all you have to explain?" she asked. "Is there, now, no one
else that counts?" The edge of a cold dread entered his hopes. "If you
refer to the child's mother," he said stiffly, "she is amply well taken
care of, you need waste no sentimental thoughts on her."
"Ah!" Susan exclaimed, shrinking. Her hands closed tightly on the wide
silk of her skirt. The fear deepened within him; it would be impossible
to explain Essie to the woman before him. Essie, falsely draped in
conventional attributes, defied him to utter the simple truth. He raged
silently at his impotence, the inhibition that prevented the expression
of what might be said for himself. Essie Scofield had, like every one
else, lived in the terms of her being, attracting to herself what
essentially she was; it was neither bad nor good, but inevitable. His
contact with her had been the result of mutual qualities, qualities that
were no longer valid. Yet to say that would place him in a damnable
light, give him the aspect of the meanest opportunist. Susan breathed,
"That poor woman." It was precisely what he had expected, feared--the
adventitious illusion! He had an impulse to describe to her, even at the
price of his own condemnation, the condition in which he had found
Eunice; but that too perished silently. Jasper Penny grew restive under
the unusual restraint of his position.
"Do you mind--no more at present." Susan Brundon said. "I am upset;
please, another time; if it is necessary. I feel that I couldn't answer
anything now, I must go up; no, your mother will show me." She rose, and
he realized that she would listen no further. There was an astonishing
strength of purpose behind her deprecating presence. She was more
determined than himself. He watched her walk evenly from the room, heard
the low stir of voices beyond, with a feeling that he had been perhaps
fatally clumsy. All that he had said had been wrong, brutally selfish.
He had deliberately invited failure; he should have been patient,
waited; given her a chance to know and, if possible, value him, come to
depend on him, on his judgment, his ability in her welfare. But, in
place of making himself a necessity, he had launched at once into facts
which she must find hideous. She had said, "another time, if necessary."
His mouth drew into a set line--there would be another and another,
until he had persuaded, gained, her.
He lit a cigar, and walked discontentedly up and across the room. The
sound of the Forge hammer again crept into his consciousness: the Penny
iron--the fibre, the actuality, of the Penny men! He repeated this
arrogantly; but the declaration no longer brought reassurance; the
certainty even of the iron faded from him; he had failed there, too,
digging a pit of oblivion for all that their generations of toil had
accomplished. The past inexorably woven into the pattern of the future!
Eunice, so soon wary, distrustful, Susan had seen that immediately,
would perpetuate all that he wished dead--Essie and himself bound
together, projected in an undesirable immortality through endless lives
striving, like himself, to escape from old chains.
If he failed with Susan his existence would have been an unmitigated
evil; the iron, his petty, material triumphs, would rust, but the other
go on and on. His thoughts became a maze of pity for Eunice, infinite
regret of the past, a bitter energy of hope for what might follow.
He turned with pride to his forging--long-wrought charcoal iron; the
world would know no better. Still, with his penetration of the future,
he realized that the old, careful processes were doomed. He had
difficulty in assembling enough adequate workmen to fill the increasing
contracts for bar iron and rails now; and the demand, with the extension
of steam railways, would grow resistlessly. More wholesale methods of
production were being utilized daily; he was one of the foremost
adherents of "improvement"; but suddenly he felt a poignant regret at
the inevitable passing of the old order of great Ironmasters, the
principalities of furnaces and forges. He was still, he felt, such a
master of his men and miles of forests and clearings, lime pits and ore
banks, coal holes, mills, coke ovens, hearths and manufactories. He
might still drive to Virginia through a continuous line of his
interests; his domination over his labourers, in all their personal and
industrial implications, was patriarchal; he commanded, through their
allegiance and his entire grasp on every iota of their living, their
day's journey; but, he told himself, he was practically the last of his
kind.
New and different industrial combinations were locking together in great
agglomerations of widely-separated activities; the human was superseded
by the industrial machine, where men were efficient, subservient cogs in
a cold and successful automaton of business. A system of general credit
was springing up; the old, old payments in kind, in iron or even meal
and apparel, or gold, had given place to reciprocal understandings of
deferred indebtedness. The actual thousands of earlier commerce were
replaced by theoretical millions. His own realty, his personal property,
because of such understandings, were outside computation. They were, he
knew, reckoned in surprising figures; but in a wide-spread panic, forced
liquidation, the greater part of his wealth would break like straw. It
was the same with the entire country.
His thoughts returned to Susan, to the longing for the peace, the
inviolable security, she would bring to the centre, the heart, of his
life. No material catastrophe could shape, deplete, her richness of
spirit. Fragile as she was, with her need of rest, her diffidence and
pallor, she yet seemed to Jasper Penny the most--the only--secure thing
in the world. She defied, he murmured, death itself. Wonderful.
He moved slowly to his sombre bed room, with its dark velour hangings
and ponderous black walnut furniture, precisely scrolled with gilt. The
interior absorbed the light of a single lamp, robbing it of radiance. A
clock deliberately struck the hour with an audible whirring of the
spring. Jasper Penny took out from a drawer a tall, narrow ledger, its
calf binding powdering in a yellow dust, with a blurring label,
"Forgebook. Myrtle Forge, 1750." He sat, opening it on the arm of an old
Windsor reading chair he had insisted on retaining among the recent
upholstery, and studied the entries, some written in a small script with
ornamental capitals and red lined day headings, others in an abrupt
manner with heavy down strokes. The latter, he knew, had been made by
his great grandfather, Howat.
"Jonas Rupp charged with three pair of woollen stockings ... shoes for
Minnie." Howat had been young when Minnie's shoes were new; twenty
something--five or six. He must have married not long after.
Howat--like himself--a black Penny. The special interest Jasper Penny
felt for this particular ancestor grew so vivid that he almost felt the
other's presence in the room at his shoulder. He consciously repressed
the desire to turn suddenly and surprise the shadowy and yet clear
figure in the gloom. The features of the youth so long gone, and yet,
too, he felt, the replica of his own young years, were plain; the dark
eyes, slanted brows, the impatient mouth.
His community of sympathy with the other, who was still, in a measure,
himself, was inexplicable; for obviously Howat had escaped Jasper's
blundering--an early marriage, a son, the son whose name, like his
mother's, made such an exotic note in a long, sound succession of
Isabels and Carolines and Gilberts, was a far different tale from his
own. Yet it persisted. It seemed to him that the silence of the room
grew strained, there was the peculiar tension of a muteness desperately
striving for utterance. He waited, listened, in a rigidity of which he
was suddenly ashamed; ridiculous. He relaxed; the memory of his own
youth flooded back, rapt him in visions, scents, sounds. The premonitory
whirring of the clock spring sounded once more, followed by the slow,
increasing strokes ... Again. His body wavered, on the verge of sleep,
and he straightened himself sharply; then he rose and, putting back the
Forgebook, undressed.
Susan, at breakfast, her shoulders wrapped in a serious-toned pelerine,
said little. Jasper Penny instinctively excluded her from a trivial
conversation. She was, he decided, paler than usual, the shadows under
her eyes were indigo. He was filled with self-condemnation. Mrs. Penny,
gazing at her with a beady discernment, asked if her rest had been
interrupted. "I am always an indifferent sleeper," Susan Brundon replied
evasively. He followed her into the carriage that was to take her to the
station at Jaffa; and, ignoring her slight gasp of protest, grasped the
reins held by the negro coachman. However, they proceeded over the short
distance to the town without speech. He was torn between a wish to spare
her and the desire to urge his own purpose. But more immediately he
wanted to make secure the near hour of his seeing her again. He asked,
finally, "Will you be at the Jannans' this week, or are visitors
received at the Academy?"
"No," she replied to the first; "and I have very little time between
classes. You see, they fill the whole day, tasks and pleasures. It is
difficult for me to--to talk on a generality of themes with callers."
"I have no intention of being diffuse," he replied pointedly. "I could
confine my entire conversation to one request--"
"Please," she interrupted pitiably. "I am utterly wretched now. The
simplest gentility--" she paused, but her wish was clear. He restrained
himself with difficulty. Drifting slowly across the scattered roofs of
the town was the leaden smoke of his mills and fires; as they drove into
the main street the thin crash of his iron was audible. Men everywhere
bowed to him with marked respect. But the woman at his side sat erect,
drawn away from him, unmoved by all that, to the world, he was. There
was an appalling quality in her aloofness from what, materially, he
might advance in extenuation; the things so generally potent here were
no more than slag. He searched within for what might bend, influence,
her, for whatever he might have of value in her eyes. He found nothing.
It was a novel and painful experience; and it bred in him a certain
anger; he became merely stubborn. He declared to himself, with an oath,
that he would gain her; and he pulled up his horses viciously at the
station rack. This, too, hurt her; she exclaimed faintly at the brutally
drawn bits. A man hurried forward to take her bag, and then, in a
blowing of horn, a harsh exhaust of steam, she was gone. A last, hurried
impression of her delicate profile on a small pane of glass accompanied
him back to Myrtle Forge. There his mother regarded him with an open
concern. "Something's on your mind," she declared. "I passed your door
at midnight, and there was light under it. I've often told you about
sitting up late."
"I'm getting along," he replied lightly. "You fail to do justice to the
weight of my increasing majority. But, in a little, you'll be astonished
at my renewed youth." He became serious in speaking, conscious of the
new life Susan would, must, bring into his existence.