At Shadrach his customary decision returned; he went about, or sat
reading, well-ordered, cool-appearing, dogmatic. He learned from the
_Evening Post_ that Mariana was at Warrenton. She had carefully
described to him the Virginia country life, the gaiety and hard riding
of the transplanted English colonies; and he pictured her at the
successive horse shows, in the brilliant groups under the Doric columns
of the porticoes. Then, he saw, she had gone north; he found her picture
in a realistic Egyptian costume with bare, painted legs at an
extravagant ball. He studied her countenance, magnifying it with a
reading glass; but he saw nothing beyond a surface enjoyment of the
moment.
Then, to his utter surprise, on an evening after dinner, when he was
seated in the settling dusk of the porch, intent on the grey movements
of his familiar owls, a quick step mounted the path, and James Polder
appeared.
"I wanted to ask about Miss Jannan," the latter stated frankly and at
once. Howat Penny cleared his throat sharply. "I believe she is well,"
he stated formally. "You will find it cooler here." It struck him that
the young man was not deficient in that particular. More, of still
greater directness, followed. "I suppose you know," Polder stated, "that
I want to marry her ... and she won't."
"I had gathered something of the sort," the other admitted. "It's
natural, in a way." Polder proceeded gloomily: "I'd take her away from
so much. And, yet, look here--you can shut me up if you like--what's it
all about? Can you tell me that?" Howat Penny couldn't. "I'm not to
blame for that old mess any more than you. And it's not my fault if
something of--of which you think so much came to me by the back door.
I've always wanted what Mariana is," he burst out, "and I have never
been satisfied with what I could get. And when I saw her, hell--what's
the use!
"Any one in Harrisburg will tell you I am a good man," he reiterated, at
a slightly different angle. "When you kick through out of that racket of
hunkies and steel you've done something. Soon I'll be getting five or
six thousand." He paused, and the other said dryly, "Admirable." The
phrase seemed to him inadequate; it sounded in his ear as unpleasantly
as a false note. Yet he was powerless to alter it, change its brusque
accent. The personal tone of Polder's revelations was inherently
distasteful to him. He said, rising, "If you will excuse me I'll tell
Rudolph you will be here."
"But I won't," Polder replied; "there's a train back at eleven. I have
to be at the mills for the day shift to-morrow. I came out because I
had to talk a little about Mariana." He had deserted the more formal
address. "And I wanted to tell some one connected with her that I have
gimp of my own. I know why she won't marry me, and it's a small reason;
it would be small in--"
"Hold up," Howat Penny interrupted, incensed. "Am I to understand that
you came here to complain about Miss Jannan's conduct? That won't do,
you know."
"It's a small reason," the other insisted hotly. "Hardly more than the
idiotic fact that I'm not in the Social Register. I am ashamed of her,
and I said so. It was so little that I told her I wouldn't argue. She
could go to the devil."
"Really," the other observed, "really, I shall have to ask you to
control your language or leave."
"I wonder if she will?" the surprising James Polder sombrely speculated.
"I wonder if I am? But there are other women, with better hearts."
"Are we to construe this as a threat?" Howat asked in a delicately
balanced tone.
"For God's sake," he begged, "can't you be human!" The other suddenly
recalled Mariana's imploring anger at the Polders. "Don't be so rotten,
Howat." The confusion of his valuations, his habitual attitudes of
thought, returned. His gaze strayed to the obscured ruin of Shadrach
Furnace, at once a monument of departed vigour and present
disintegration. Perhaps, just as the energy had expired in the Furnace,
it had seeped from him. It might be that he was only a sere husk, a dry
bundle of inhibitions, insensible to the green humanity of life.
"I couldn't go on my knees to anything," the younger took up his burden.
"Wrong or not it is the way I'm made. I'd not hang about where I wasn't
wanted. Although you mightn't think it. And I am sorry I came here. I do
things like that all the time; I mean I do, say, exactly the opposite of
what I plan. You'll think I am a braying ass, of course."
"Stop for a breath," Howat Penny recommended; "a breath, and a
cigarette." He extended his case; and, in place of taking a cigarette,
Polder examined the case resentfully. "There is it," he declared;
"correct, like all the rest of you. And it's only old leather. But mine
would be different. I could sink and Mariana wouldn't put out a hand
just on account of that. It's wrong," he insisted. Expressed in that
manner it did seem to Howat Penny a small reason for the withholding of
any paramount salvation. Yet, he told himself, he had no intention,
desire, to undertake the weight of any reformation. A futile effort, he
added, with his vague consciousness of implacable destiny, his dim sense
of man moved from without, in locked progression. Polder was young,
rebellious; but he could grow older; he would grow older and comprehend;
or else beat himself to death on obdurate circumstance. What concerned
Howat was the hope that Mariana would be no further involved in either
process. She too had this to learn--that, in the end, blood was stronger
than will; the dead were terribly potent. He had, even, no inclination
to say any of this to the man frowning in the dusk at his side. It would
be useless, a mere preaching. An expression, too, of a slight but actual
sympathy for James Polder would be misleading. In the main Howat was
entirely careless of what might happen to the other; it was only where,
unfortunately, he touched Mariana that he entered into the elder's
world. He would sacrifice him for Mariana in an instant. Polder rose.
"I must leave," he announced. Howat Penny expressed no regret, and the
other hesitated awkwardly. "It's no use!" he finally exclaimed. "I can't
reach you; as if one of us spoke Patagonian. Hellish, it seems to me."
He turned and disappeared, as violently as he had come, over the
obscurity of the lawn. A reddish, misshapen moon hung low in the sky,
and gave the aging man an extraordinarily vivid impression of dead
planets, unthinkable wastes of time, illimitable systems and spaces.
James Polder's passionate resentment, his own emotion, were no more
articulate than the thin whirring of the locusts. He went quickly into
the house, to the warm glow of his lamp, the memories of his pictures,
the figurine in baked clay with Hermes' wand of victory.