The room in which he sat had two windows, set in the deep recesses of
heavy stone walls, and three doors, two leading into opposite rooms and
the third opening without. The double lamp stood on a low, gate-legged
table of fibrous, time-blackened oak, together with an orderly array of
periodicals--the white, typographical page of the _Saturday Review_
under the dull rose of _The Living Age_ and chocolate-coloured bulk of
the _Unpopular, Gil Blas_, the mid-week _Boston Transcript_ and
yesterday's _New York Evening Post_. The table bore, in addition, a
green morocco case of dominoes; a mahogany box that, in a recess,
mysteriously maintained a visible cigarette; a study of Beethoven, in
French; an outspread volume by Anatole France, _Jacques Tournebroche_,
in a handsome paper cover; a set of copper ash trays; and a dull red
figurine, holding within its few inches the deathless spirit of a heroic
age. An angle of the wall before him was filled by a white panelled
fireplace, the mantel close against the ceiling; and on the other side
of a doorway, through which he could see Rudolph noiselessly preparing
the dinner table, was a swan-like sofa, in olive wood and pale yellow
satin, from the Venice of the _ottocento_. At his right, beyond a
window, mounted a tall, austere secretary in waxed walnut; and behind
him, under the white chair rail, bookcases extended across the width of
the room. Gustavus Hesselius' portrait of the first Howat Penny hung on
a yellow painted wall, his gilt-braided major's facings still vivid, his
dark, perceptible scorn undimmed. There were, too, framed in oak, a
large photograph of Tamagno, as Othello, with a scrawled, cordial
message; another of a graceful woman in the Page's costume of _Les
Huguenots_, signed "Sempre ... Scalchi"; a water colour drawing by Jan
Beers; and a Victorian lithograph in powdery foliage and brick of _The
Penny Rolling Mills. Jaffa_. A black-blue rug, from Myrtle Forge, partly
covered the broad, oak boards of the floor; and there was a comfortable
variety of chairs--sturdy, painted Dutch, winged Windsors and a slatted
Hunterstown rocker.
Howat Penny's gaze wandered over the familiar furnishing, come to him
surviving the generations of his family, or carefully procured for his
individual dictates. A sense of tranquillity, of haven, deepened about
him. "Rudolph," he inquired, "has Honduras gone for Miss Jannan?"
The man stopped in the doorway, answering in the affirmative. He was
slight, almost fragile, with close, dark hair that stood up across his
forehead, and dry, high-coloured cheeks. Rudolph hesitated, with a
handful of silver; and then returned to his task. Mariana would be
along immediately, Howat Penny thought. He put the album aside and rose,
moving toward the door that led without. He was a slender, erect figure,
with little to indicate his age except the almost complete silvering of
his hair--it had, evidently, been black--and a rigidity of body only
apparent to a sharp scrutiny.
A porch followed that length of the house, and doubled the end, where he
stood peering into the gathering dusk. The old willow tree, inhabited by
the owls, spread a delicate, blurred silhouette across a darkened vista
of shorn wheat fields, filled, in the hollows, with woods; and a lamp
glimmered from a farm house on a hill to the left. His lawn dropped to
the public road, the hedged enclosure swimming with fireflies; and
beyond he saw the wavering light shafts of his small motor returning
from the insignificant flag station on the railroad, a mile distant.
The noise of the engine increased, sliding into a lower gear on the
short curve of the driveway; and he met Mariana Jannan at the entrance
directly into the dining room. She insisted, to his renewed discomfort,
on kissing him. "It's wonderful here, after the city," she proclaimed;
"and I've had to be in town three sweltering days. I'll dress right
away."
Honduras, his coloured man, as indispensable outside as Rudolph was in,
followed with her bag up the narrow flight of steps to the floor above.
He waited through, he thought, a reasonable interval, and then called.
An indistinguishable reply floated down, mingled with the filling of a
tub; and another half hour passed before Mariana appeared in white
chiffon, securing a broad girdle of silver oak leaves, about her slight
waist. "Do you mind?" she turned before him; and, with an impatience
half assumed and half actual, he fastened the last hooks of her dress.
"As you know," he reminded her, "I don't attempt cocktails. Will you
have a gin and bitters?"
She wouldn't, frankly; and they embarked on dinner in a pleasant,
unstrained silence. Mariana was, he realized, the only person alive for
whom he had a genuine warmth of affection. She was a first cousin; her
Aunt Elizabeth had married James Penny, his father; but his fondness for
her had no root in that fact. It didn't, for example, extend to her
brother Kingsfrere. He speculated again on the reason for her marked
effect. Mariana was not lovely, as had been the charmers of his own day;
her features, with the exception of her eyes, were unremarkable. And her
eyes, variably blue, were only arresting because of their extraordinary
intensity of vision, their unquenchable and impertinent curiosity. A
girl absolutely different from all his cherished mental images; but, for
Howat Penny, always potent, always arousing a response from his
supercritical being, stirring his aesthetic heart. Everything he
possessed--his pictures, the albums, the moderate income, although she
had little need of that--had been willed to her. It would be hers then
just as it was, practically, now. And he was aware that her feeling
generously equalled his own.
His speculation, penetrating deeper than customary, rewarded him with
the thought that she was unusual in the courage of her emotions. That
was it--the courage of her emotions! There was a total lack of any
penurious trait, any ulterior thought of appraising herself against a
possible advantageous barter. She was never concerned with a conscious
prudery in the arrangement of her skirt. Mariana was aristocratic in the
correct sense of the term; a sense, he realized, now almost lost. And he
rated aristocracy of bearing higher than any other condition or fact.
He wondered a little at her patent pleasure in visiting him, an old man,
so frequently. Hardly a month passed but that, announced by telegram,
she did not appear and stay over night, or for a part of the week. She
would recount minutely the current gaiety of her polite existence. He
knew the names of her associates, a number of them had been exhibited to
him at Shadrach; the location of their country places; and what men
temporarily monopolized her interest. None of the latter had been
serious. He was, selfishly, glad of that; and waited uneasily through
her every visit until she assured him that her affections had not been
possessed. However, this condition, he knew, must soon come to an end;
Mariana was instinct with sex; and a short while before he had sent his
acknowledgment of her twenty-sixth birthday.
She sat occupied with salad against the cavernous depths of a fireplace
that, between the kitchen door and a built-in cupboard, filled the side
of the dining room. The long mantel above her head was ladened with the
grey sheen of pewter, and two uncommonly large, fluted bowls of blue
Stiegel glass. In the centre of the table linen, the Sheffield and
crystal and pictorial Staffordshire, was a vivid expanse of rose
geraniums. She broke off a flower and pinned it with the diamond bar on
her breast. "Howat," she said, "to-morrow's Saturday, and I've asked two
people out until Sunday night. Eliza Provost and a young man. Do you
mind?"
"Tell Rudolph," he replied. It was not until after dinner, when they
were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man's
name. He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an
ivory domino, he forgot. "Twenty," he announced, reaching for the
scoring pad. "Oh, hell, Howat!" she protested. "That's the game,
almost." She emptied her coffee cup, and speculatively fingered one of
the thin cigars in the box at his hand. "It's the customary thing in
Peru," she observed, pinching the end from the cigar and lighting it. He
watched her absently, veiled in the fragrant, bluish smoke.
Automatically his thoughts returned to the women that, at a breath of
scandal, had refused to attend the dinner to Patti. So much changed; the
years fled like birds in a mist.
"I feel like a politician," she told him. "Eliza Provost would pat me on
the back. She's talking from a soap box on the street corners now,
winging men for such trifles as forced birth. I'm fond of Eliza; she's
got a splendid crust. I wish you'd get excited about my rights; but your
interest really goes no further than a hat from Camille Marchais. You
are deleterious, Howat. Isn't that a lovely word! Which was the first
double?" He blocked and won the game. "Fifty-five," she announced; "and
ninety-five before. I owe you a dollar and a half."
She paid the debt promptly from a flexible gold mesh bag on the table;
then stooped and wandered among his books. Howat Penny turned to
yesterday's _Evening Post_, and Mariana settled beyond the lamp. Outside
the locusts were desperately shrill, and the heavy ticking of an old
clock grew audible. "I don't like George Moore!" she exclaimed. He
raised surprised, inquiring eyebrows. "He is such a taster," she added,
but particularized no more. She sat, with the scarlet bound book clouded
in the white chiffon of her lap, gazing at the wall. Her lips were
parted, and a brighter colour rose in her cheeks. Her attitude, her
expression, vaguely disturbed him; he had never seen her more warmly,
dangerously, alive. A new reluctance stopped the question forming in
his mind; she seemed to have retreated from him. "Moore is a very great
artist," he said instead.
"That's little to me," she replied flippantly, rising. "I think I'll go
up; and I almost think I will kiss you again." He grumbled a protest,
and watched her trail from the room, the silver girdle and chiffon
emphasizing her thin, vigorous body, the lamplight falling on her bare,
sharp shoulders. Howat Penny had early acquired a habit of long hours,
and it was past one when he put aside his papers, stood for a moment on
the porch. The fireflies were gone, the locusts seemed farther away, and
the soft, heavy flight of an owl rose from the warm grass.
Below, on the right, he could vaguely see the broken bulk of what had
been Shadrach Furnace, the ruined shape of the past. The Pennys no
longer made iron. His father had marked the last casting. They no longer
listened to the beat of the trip hammer, but to the light rhythm of a
conductor's baton; they heard, in place of ringing metal, a tenor's
grace notes. Soon they would hear nothing. They went out, for all time,
with himself. It was fitting that the last, true to their peculiar
inheritance, should be a black Penny. He, Howat, was that--the ancient
Welsh blood finally gathered in a cup of life before it was spilled.
Old influences quickened within him; but, attenuated, they were no more
than regrets. They came late to trouble his remnant of living. He was
like the Furnace, a sign of what had been; yet, he thought in
self-extenuation, he had brought no dishonour, no dragging of the
tradition through the muck of a public scandal. Not that ... nor
anything else. Now, when it was absurd, he was resentful of the part he
had played in life; like a minor, cracked voice, he extended a former
figure with a saving touch of humour, importuning the director because
he had not been cast in the great rôles. The night mist came up and
brushed him; he was conscious of a sudden chill, an aching of the
wrists. "Cracked," he repeated, aloud, and retreated into the house;
where, Rudolph gone up, he put out the lights and stiffly retired.