In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet
mingled inner voices: Essie's younger, exuberant periods, her joy at
presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her
last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any
doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of
a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low,
diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice
continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin
complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the
Academy. These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one
rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same. Back of them
were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of
associated heat or cold, darkness or light:
He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius,
regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced,
the sense of Howat's nearness; integral with himself; merging into his
own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring. His mother joined the
immaterial company, accents, rigid with pride in him. And penetrating,
binding, all was the dull beat of the trip hammer at Myrtle Forge. He
had mechanically finished dressing, and stood absently twisting the
drapery at a window. A fine tracery of lines had suddenly appeared about
his eyes; the cold rays of the winter sun, streaming over his erect
figure, accentuated the patches of grey plentiful in his hair.
He saw, on the street below, a parade of firemen, in scarlet tunics and
brass helmets, dragging a glittering engine. The men walked evenly
abreast, at cross ropes. A leader blew a brilliant fanfare on an
embossed, silver horn. Women passed, foreshortened into circular bells
of colour, draped with gay pelerines and rich India shawls. He saw all
and nothing. The horn of the firemen sounded without meaning on his
distracted hearing. The flood of his suffering rose darkly, oppressing
his heart, choking his breath. Perhaps if, as he had desired, he had
gone away, Susan would be spared. But Stephen was right; nothing could
keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and
bind herself in intolerable ill. Her uprightness was terrible. It would
take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell. His hands
slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish. God, why
hadn't he recognized the desperation in Essie's quivering face! It would
have been already too late, he added in thought; it went back, back--
A knock sounded discreetly on the door: and, opening it, he saw a young
man, remembered as a law student in Stephen's office. "They are ready
for you, sir, at the City Hall," he stated, in an over-emphasized,
professional calm.