They accomplished little the following morning. Mariana, in a scant
brown linen skirt, a sheer waist through which were visible precarious
incidentals and narrow black ribbon, and the confoundedest green
stockings he had ever seen, lounged indolently in a canvas swing. The
heat increased in a reddish haze through which the sun poured like
molten copper. "You'd better come inside," he said from the doorway;
"the house, shut up, is quite comfortable." Within the damp of the old,
stone walls made a comparative coolness. The shades were drawn down, and
they sat in an untimely twilight.
"When I think of how energetic Eliza will be," Mariana asserted, "I am
already overwhelmed. But you never look hot, Howat; you are always
beautiful." His flannels and straw-coloured silk coat were crisply
ironed; his hair, his scarf and lustrous yellow shoes, precise. "Howat,"
she continued almost anxiously, "you put a lot on, well--good form. You
think that the way a man knots his tie is tremendously significant--"
"Perhaps," he returned cautiously. "A good many years have shown me that
the right man usually wears the right things."
"Couldn't that be just the smallest bit unfair? Aren't there, after
all, droves of the right men in rubber collars? I don't know any," she
added hastily; "that is, not exactly the same. But it seems to me that
you have lived so exclusively in a certain atmosphere that you might
have got blinded to--to other things."
"Perhaps," he said again, complacently. "I can only judge by my own
feeling and experience. Now Mapleson, never was a finer conductor of
opera--you didn't catch him in a pink tie in the evening. And some of
those others, who failed in a couple of weeks, I give you my word, dress
shirts with forgetmenots."
She regarded him with a frowning, half closed vision. "It sounds wrong,"
she commented. "It's been your life, of course." He grew resentful under
her scrutiny, the implied criticism. A sudden suspicion entered his
mind, connected with her expression last evening, the young man whose
name he had omitted to ask. His reluctance to question her returned. But
if Mariana had attached herself to some rowdy, by heaven, he would....
He fixed the glass in his eye, and, pretending to be occupied with a
periodical, studied her. He realized that he would, could, do nothing.
She was a woman of determination, and, her father dead, a very adequate
income of her own. His fondness for Mariana resided principally in a
wish to see her free from the multitudinous snares that he designated in
a group as common. He was fearful of her entanglement in the cheap
implications of the undistinguished democracy more prevalent every year.
All that was notable, charming, in her, he felt, would be obliterated by
trite connection; he had no more patience for the conventional
fulfilment of her life than he had for the thought of women voting.
Howat Penny saw Mariana complete, fine, in herself, as the _Orpheo_ of
Christopher Gluck was fine and complete. He preferred the contained
artistry of such music to the cruder, more popular and moral, sounds.
Early in the afternoon she went to her room, although Honduras had no
occasion to go to the station for considerably more than an hour,
explaining that she must dress. Howat Penny sat with his palms on his
white flannelled knees, revolving, now, himself in the light of his
aspirations for Mariana. He wondered if, in the absence of any sympathy
for the mass of sentiment and living, he was blind, too, to her greatest
possibilities; if, in short, he was a vicious influence. Perhaps, as the
old were said to do, he had hardened into a narrow and erroneous
conception of values. Such doubts were both disturbing and unusual;
ordinarily he never hesitated in the exact expression of his vigorously
held opinions and prejudices; he seldom relaxed the critical elevation
of his standards. He was, he thought contemptuously, growing soft;
senility was diluting his fibre, blurring his inner vision.
Nothing of this was visible as he rose on Mariana's reappearance; there
was not a line relaxed; his handsome, dark profile was as pridefully
clear as if it had been stamped on a bronze coin. Mariana wore, simply,
blue, with an amber veiling of tulle about her shoulders, and a short
skirt that gave her a marked youthful aspect. She seemed ill at ease;
and avoided his gaze, hurrying out to meet the motor as it noisily
turned sharply in at the door. Howat Penny heard Eliza Provost's short,
impatient enunciation, and a rapid, masculine utterance. Eliza entered,
a girl with a decided, evenly pale face and brown eyes, in a severe
black linen suit and a small hat, and extended a direct hand, a slightly
smiling greeting. Mariana followed, for a moment filling the doorway.
"We'll go up, Eliza," she said, moving with the other to the stair, a
few feet distant. A man followed into the house, and Mariana half turned
on the bottom step. "Howat," she proceeded hurriedly, "this is James
Polder." Then she ascended with Eliza Provost.
An expression of amazement, deepening almost to dismay, was momentarily
visible on Howat Penny's countenance. His face felt hot, and there was
an uncomfortable pressure in his throat, such as might come from shock.
Surely Mariana wouldn't ... without warning him--! He was conscious of
the necessity, facing a tall, spare young man with an intent expression,
of a polite phrase; and he articulated an adequate something in a
noticeably disturbed tone. But, of course, he had made a mistake. James
Polder's intensity increased, concentrated in a gaze at once belligerent
and eager. He said:
"Then Miss Jannan didn't tell you. It was a mistake. It may be I am not
exactly desirable here," his voice sharpened, and he retreated a step
toward the door.
"No," Howat Penny replied; "she didn't." He found himself studying a
face at once youthful and lined, a good jaw contradicted by a mouth
already traced with discontent, and yellow-brown eyes kindling with a
surprising energy of resentment. "You are Byron Polder's son?" he said
in a manner that carried its own affirmation. "Eunice Scofield's
grandson."
"Eunice Penny's," the other interjected. "Your own grandfather saw to
that." His hand rested in the doorway, and he stopped Honduras, carrying
in the guests' bags. Howat Penny's poise rapidly returned. "Go right up,
Honduras," he directed; "the Windmill room, I think. I had never seen
you," he said to James Polder, as if in apology. "But your father has
been pointed out to me." He waved the younger man into the room beyond,
and moved forward the cigarettes.
James Polder took one with an evident relief in the commonplace act. He
struck a match and lit the cigarette with elaborate care. "Will you sit
for a little?" the elder proceeded. "Or perhaps you'd rather change at
once. I've no doubt it was sticky in the city."
"Thank you; perhaps I'd better--the last." Rudolph appeared, and
conducted the young man above. Howat Penny sat suddenly, his lips folded
in a stubborn line. Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be
familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some
very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy
affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather--it had been, he had
always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had,
before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had those of his
father.
The latter had been the child of a dangerously late marriage, a marriage
from which time and delay had stripped both material potency and
sustaining illusion. Jasper Penny had been nearing fifty when his son
was born; and that act of deliberate sacrifice on the part of his wife,
entering middle age, had imposed an inordinate amount of suffering on
her last years. Their child, it was true, had been of normal stature,
and lived to within a short space of a half century. But then he had
utterly collapsed, died in three days from what had first appeared a
slight cold; and, throughout his maturity, he had been a man of feverish
mind. His disastrous, blind struggle against the great, newly discovered
iron deposits of the Middle West was characteristic of his ill balance.
And, in his own, Howat Penny's, successive turn, the latter told himself
again, he had paid part of the price of his grandfather's indulgence.
It was incorporated in the Penny knowledge that Susan Brundon had
refused to marry Jasper while the other woman was alive. The latter had
died, some years after the disgraceful publicity of the murder and
trial; the wedding had then taken place; but it seemed to Howat Penny to
have been almost perfunctory. Yes, he had paid too, in the negative
philosophy, the critical sterility, of his existence. He recognized this
in one of the disconcerting flashes of perception that lately
illuminated him as if from without. Some essential proportion had been
disturbed. He looked up, at a slight sound, and saw Mariana standing
before him. His expression, he knew, was severe; he had been quite
upset.
"I can see," she proceeded slowly, "that I have been very wicked. I
didn't realize, Howat, that it might affect you; how real all that old
stir might be. I am tremendously sorry; you must know that I am awfully
fond of you. It was pure, young selfishness. I was afraid that if I
spoke first you wouldn't let him come. And it was important--I must see
him and talk to him and think about it. You can realize mother and
Kingsfrere!"
"Where did you meet him?" he demanded shortly.
"With Eliza, at a meeting," she went on more rapidly. "He's terribly
brilliant, and a steel man. Isn't it funny? The Pennys were steel, too;
or iron, and that's the same. I wish you could be nice to him or just
decent, until--until I know."
"Mariana!" he exclaimed, rising. "You don't mean that you are really--.
That you--"
"Perhaps, Howat," she answered gravely. "I have only seen him twice; and
he has said nothing; but, you see, I am an experienced young woman. No
other man has made the same impression."
"That," he declared coldly, "is unthinkable. You can't know all the
facts."
"I do; but, somehow, I don't care."
"Everything about him is impossible--his history, family ... Why, Eunice
Scofield, well, Penny, married a man from behind a counter, a fellow who
sold womens' gloves; yes, and more than half Jew. And this man's mother
was Delia Mullen, a daughter of the dirty ward leader. All this aside
from--from his bad blood."
"It's partly yours, you know," she said quietly. "After all, there are
other places I can see him." She turned away. "Eliza Provost is insane,"
he muttered. "No," Mariana returned, "only superior to narrow little
prejudices. She can see life, people, as they are. Jim Polder is one of
the most promising men in the steel mills. He is going up and up. That
is enough for Eliza, it is enough for me; and if it won't do for my
family--" she made an opening gesture with her fingers. Her expression
had hardened; she gazed at him with bright, contemptuous eyes. In a
moment the affectionate bonds between them seemed to have dissolved.
His feeling was one of mingled anger and concern; but he endeavoured to
regain his self-control, conscious that a hasty word more might do
irreparable harm.
"Of course, I can't have you meeting him about the streets," he stated.
"It is better here, if necessary. I am very much displeased," a note of
complaint appeared, and she immediately returned to him, laid a hand on
his shoulder. "Nothing is certain," she assured him. "I wanted to be
sure, that is all. I don't want to make a mess out of things."
It was a part of the very quality of emotional courage he had so lately
defined, extolled; a part of her disdain for ordinary prudence and
conventional approbation. A direct dislike for this James Polder invaded
him, a determined attitude of hyper-criticism. When the younger man
reappeared Howat Penny found justification for this attitude. The
details of Polder's apparel, although acceptable in the main, were
without nicety. His shoes were a crude tan, and his necktie from the
outer limbo. His hands, too, had a grimy surface and the nails were
broken, unkempt.
But it was evident that all the criticism was not to be limited to his
own. James Polder regarded the single glass with a scoffing lip, as if
it were the appendage of a ludicrous Anglomania. He glanced with
indifference at Howat Penny's pictures, books, the collected emblems of
his cultivated years. His brows raised at the photograph of Scalchi in
the Page's trunks--as if, the elder thought, she had been a "pony" in
the _Black Crook_--and was visibly amused at the great Mapleson, posed
in a dignified attitude by a broken column. An irrepressible and biting
scorn, Howat Penny saw, was, perhaps, the young man's strongest
attribute. He had violent opinions expressed in sudden, sharp movements,
gestures with his shoulders, swift frowns and fragmentary sentences.
Howat Penny had never seen a more ill-ordered youth, and he experienced
an increasing difficulty in keeping a marked asperity from his speech
and conduct. Eliza Provost shortly came down, and the three strolled out
into the ruddy light of late afternoon. Howat Penny consumed a long time
dressing for the evening; and, in the end, irritably summoned Rudolph.
"I can't get these damned studs in," he complained; "whatever do you
suppose women use for starch now?" Rudolph dexterously fixed the
emeralds, then held the black silk waistcoat. "And coats won't hang for
a bawbee," he went on. "Gentlemen like Gary Dilkes used to go regularly
to London, spring and fall, for their things. No doubt then about a man
of breeding. You didn't see the other kind around. Wouldn't have 'em."
Rudolph murmured consolingly. "Sat in the pit but never got into the
boxes," his voice grew thin, querulous. "I'm moving along, Rudolph," he
admitted suddenly; "the manners, and, by thunder, the music too, don't
suit me any more. Give me the old Academy days in Irving Place." He
hummed a bar from _Ernani_.
Through dinner he maintained a severe silence, listening with a frowning
disapproval to Eliza Provost's tranquil, subversive utterances. Howat
Penny couldn't think what her father was about, permitting her to
harangue loafers by the streets and saloons. She was, in a cold way--she
had Peter Jannan Provost's curious grey colouring--a handsome piece of a
girl, too. "A fine figger," he told himself.
Later, Mariana and James Polder had gone out on the porch, he faced with
reluctance the task of furnishing her with entertainment; but, to his
extreme relief, she procured a leather portfolio, and addressed herself
to a sheaf of papers. But that, in itself, was a peculiar way for a
young woman to spend an evening. She would have done it, he felt, if he
had been half his actual age. God help the man with a fancy for her!
Charming visions were woven on his memory from the fading skeins of the
past--a ride in a dilapidated, public fiacre after a masked ball in
Paris ... at dawn. Confetti tangled in coppery hair, a wilful mouth,
fragrantly painted, and phantomlike swans on a black lake. His silk hat
had been telescoped in the process of smacking a Frenchman's eye.
Perhaps, they had told each other, there would be cards later in the
day, an affair of honour. He forgot what, exactly, had happened; but
there had been no duel.
He looked up with a sudden concern, as if his thoughts might have been
clear to Eliza Provost, in irreproachable evening dress and shell rimmed
glasses, intent on statistical pages. Mariana and James Polder appeared;
the former, Howat Penny thought, disturbed. Polder's intense countenance
was sombre, his brow corrugated. Mariana, accompanied by Eliza, soon
after went up; and left the two men facing each other across a neutral
silence. "You manufacture steel, I believe," the elder finally stated.
"The Company does," Polder replied more exactly. "I've been in the open
hearth since I left school," he went on; "it was born in me, I've never
thought of anything else." His tone grew sharp, as if it might occur to
the other to contradict the legitimacy of his pursuit. "I have done well
enough, too," he said pridefully. "Most of them come on from college. I
went from shovelling slag in the pit, the crane, to second helper and
melter; they gave me the furnace after a year and now I am foreman. It
will be better still if a reorganization goes through. Not many men have
a chance at the superintendent's office under thirty-five."
"That is very admirable," Howat Penny said formally. He wondered,
privately, at the far channel into which the original Penny ability had
flowed. There could be no doubt, however objectionable, that James
Polder was the present repository of the family tradition. He had had it
from the source; and the iron had not, apparently, been corroded by
tainted blood. He was forced to admit that a coarser strain had,
perhaps, lent it endurance. All this failed to detract from his initial
dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in
which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant
proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized,
to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible.
Such things were utterly unimportant to him. He was unable to justify,
or even explain to himself, his standards of judgment. They were not
founded on admirable conduct, on achievement, what was known as solid
worth; but on vague accents, intuitive attitudes of mind visible in a
hundred trivial, even absurd, signs. The "right things" were more
indispensable to him than the sublimest attributes.
On the following morning Mariana, Eliza and Polder disappeared in his
car--it seemed that the latter was an accomplished mechanic in addition
to his other qualities--and Howat Penny faced the disagreeable
possibilities of the near future. Mariana would, he knew, meet this
fellow promiscuously if necessary. As she had indicated, it was
impossible to conceive of him in Charlotte Jannan's house. The latter
was a rigidly correct woman. She would, too, and properly, be nasty if
she learned that such meetings had taken place at Shadrach. The only
thing to do was to bring Mariana to what he designated as her senses.
And, at the start, he had a conviction that he might fail.
She did not accompany Eliza Provost and Polder, when, late Sunday
afternoon, they departed; but sat absorbed in thought through the
evening meal. He found his affection for her increasing to an annoying
degree; he was almost humble in his anxiety not to wound her.
"Life is so messy," she said with sudden violence. "You can't think,
Howat, how I hate myself; the horridest things go round and round
through my mind. We're all wrong--I'm more like you than I
admitted--born snobs. I mean the kind who look down on people different
from themselves. I can't help being on--on edge. I can tell you this,
though, I care more for Jim Polder than for any other man I've ever met.
I'm mad about him; and yet, somehow, I can't quite think of marrying
him. He's asked me already. But I knew he would."
"You must wait," he temporized; "such things clear up after a little."
"And if they don't?" she demanded. "What if they are choked by a hundred
cowardly or selfish thoughts? It can be too late so terribly soon,
Howat. You must know that. You see, I can't decide what really is the
most valuable, what should be held tight on to, or let go. There are two
me's, it seems--one what I want and the other what I am. I want Jim and
I'm Mariana Jannan. All that about Eunice or Essie, or whatever her name
was, doesn't matter a bawbee, as you say. I hate it because I think at
times it makes him unhappy. Really, I believe I am fonder of him because
of it. We owe him something--the superior Jannans and Pennys. Why,
Howat, he's your own blood, and you looked at him as if he were a
grocer's assistant. And I watched hatefully for the little expressions
that seemed common. Of course, out in those mills, he would pick up a
lot that wouldn't touch us; and, after all, he could drop them."
"If you have any thought of reforming him," he commented dryly, "you
might as well see a wedding stationer."
"I could influence him," she insisted; "I'd at least count for as much
as those shovellers and furnace men."
"But not," he proceeded relentlessly, "against the Essie Scofield you
dismissed so easily. I don't doubt for a minute the unhappiness you
spoke of; it would he a part of his inheritance; and you'd never charm
it out of him. Damn it, Mariana," he burst out, "he's inferior! That's
all, inferior." Anger and resentment destroyed his caution, his planned
logic, restraint. "I can see what your life would be, if you can't. You
would live in a no-man's land; and all the clergymen in the world
couldn't make you one."
"It wouldn't be the clergymen, Howat," she said simply. "And you mustn't
think I am only a silly with her first young man. I have kissed them
before, Howat; yes, and liked it. I am not happy with Jim; it's
something else, like tearing silk. He is so confident and so helpless;
he's drinking now, too."
"I suppose that is an added attraction," he commented. She chose to
ignore this. "I half promised him," she continued, "to take dinner with
his family. He will be in the city next week. I said I thought you'd
bring me."
"Well, I won't," he replied in a startled energy. "Mariana, you're out
of your head. Go to Byron Polder's house! Me!" In his excitement he
dropped a lighted cigarette on the Chinese rug. "I have no one else,"
she told him. "Perhaps I'll marry Jim, and go away ... I thought you
might want to be with me, at the last."
He fumbled for his glass, fixed it in his eye, and then dropped it out,
clearing his throat sharply. He rose and crossed the room, and looked
out through the open door at the night. The stars were hazy, and there
was a constant reflection of lightning on the horizon. Howat Penny swore
silently at his increasing softness, his betrayal by his years. Yet it
might be a good thing for her to see the Polder family assembled,
Byron--he was a pretentious looking fool--at one end of the table and
Delia Mullen Polder at the other. There were more children, too. But if
it became necessary, heaven knew how he would explain all this to
Charlotte. "I believe," he said, apparently innocently, "that they live
in the north end of the city."
"It won't damage you," she replied indirectly. Already, he thought with
poignant regret, a part of the old Mariana had gone; her voice was
older, darker with maturity.