Chapter 18

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.

XXVI

Howat Penny arrived in town late on the day when he was to dine with Mariana at the Polders. He entered a taxicab, and was carried smoothly through the thick, hot air; open electric cars, ladened with damp, pallid salespeople, passed with a harsh ringing; and the foliage in Rittenhouse Square hung dusty and limp and still. The houses beyond, on Nineteenth Street, where the Jannans' winter dwelling stood, were closed and blankly boarded. The small, provisional entrance before which he stopped opened, and a servant, out of livery, appeared. "Shall I tell the driver to return, sir?" he queried; "the telephone is disconnected." He issued instructions, and, with Howat Penny's bag, followed him into the darkened house.

The windows of a general chamber on the second floor had been thrown open; and there he found Mariana's brother. Kingsfrere Jannan was a young man with a broad white face, shadowed in pasty green, and leaden eyes. His countenance, Howat knew, masked a keen and avaricious temperament. He did uncommonly well at auction bridge in the clubs. Kingsfrere, in a grey morning coat with white linen gaiters and a relentless collar, nodded and lounged from the room; and Mariana soon appeared. "Perhaps, Howat," she said, "it would be better if you didn't dress. I have an idea the Polder men don't."

At the stubborn expression which possessed him she exclaimed sharply, "If you tell me that the Colonel or Gary Dilkes were always formally dressed at dinner I think I'll scream." Nevertheless, he had no intention of relinquishing a habit of years for the Polders, or the north end of the city; and when, later, he came down into the hall, where the man stood with his silk hat and cape, Mariana put an arm about his shoulders. "I wish every one could he as beautiful as yourself," she told him. They passed the Square, bathed in dusk and the beginning shimmer of arc lights, went through the flattened and faintly thunderous arch of a railway, and turned into a broad asphalt street, on which wide, glistening bulk windows gave place to sombre shops with lurid, flame-streaked vistas, and continuous residences beyond. Howat Penny gazed curiously at the tall, narrow dwellings, often a continuous, similar façade from street corner to corner, then diversified in elaborate, individual design. All, however, had deep stone steps leading to the sidewalk, thronged with figures in airy white dresses, coatless men smoking contentedly; there was a constant light vibration of laughing voices and subdued calling, and the fainter strains of mechanical music, the beat of popular marches and attenuated voices of celebrated singers.

The motor turned suddenly in to the curb, and they got out. The house before them, like its fellows, was entered from a high flight of red sandstone steps, and was built of a smooth, soapy green stone, with red coursings, an elaborate cornice and tiled Italian roof. No one was sitting outside, although there was a pile of circular, grass-woven cushions; and Howat sharply rang the bell. A maid in aproned black admitted them into a narrow hall, from which stairs mounted with a carved rail terminating in a newel post supporting an almost life-sized bronze nymph, whose flowing hair was encircled by a wreath of electrically lit flowers, and who held a dully shining sheaf of jonquils. There was no other illumination, and Howat Penny discovered in the obscurity a high mirror bristling with elk horns, on which hung various hats and outer garments. He stood helpless, apparently, in an attitude he found impossible to deny himself, waiting to be relieved of his coverings, when Mariana whispered angrily, "Don't be so rotten, Howat."

Finally the maid secured his cape, and he was conscious of a stir at the head of the stairs. Immediately after, a shrill, subdued voice carried to where he stood. "I told you," it said violently, "... dress suit." There was an answering murmur, in which he could distinguish, James Polder's impatient tones. The latter descended, and flooded the hall with, light from a globe in the ceiling. He was garbed in blue serge and flannels. "Isabella," he stated directly, belligerently even, "thinks we ought to change our clothes; but we never do, and I wouldn't hear of--of lying for effect." Howat Penny's dislike for him pleasantly increased. Mariana, in rose crêpe with a soft, dull gold girdle and long, trumpet-like sleeves of flowered gauze, smiled at him warmly. "It is a harmless pose of Howat's," she explained: "a concession to the ghosts of the past." She patted the elder on the shoulder.

Above, James Polder ushered them into a room hung with crimson and gilt stamped paper, an elaborately fretted cherry mantel about the asbestos rectangle of an artificial hearth, and a multitude of chairs and divans shrouded in linen. There was an upright, ebonized piano draped in a fringed, Roman scarf and holding a towering jar of roses, a great, carved easel with a painstaking, smooth oil painting of a dark man in an attitude of fixed dignity, and an expensively cased talking machine. The original, evidently, of the portrait, and a small, rotund woman in mauve brocade, advanced to meet them. Young Polder said, "My mother and father. This is Miss Jannan and Mr. Howat Penny."

The latter saw that Mrs. Byron Polder was distinctly nervous; she twisted the diamonds that occupied a not inconsiderable portion of her short fingers, and smiled rigidly. "I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Jannan," she proceeded; "and Mr. Penny too." She held out a hand, then half withdrew it; but Mariana captured it in her direct palm. "Thank you," she replied. Byron Polder had a more confident poise; in reality there was a perceptible chill in his manner. He was a handsome man, with a cleanly-shaven face, introspective brown eyes and a petulant, drooping mouth. "You have succeeded in finding your way to my house," he pronounced enigmatically, gazing at Howat Penny.

It was, Howat thought, just such an ill-bred utterance as he had looked for from Byron Polder; and he made no effort to mitigate it. He was conscious of, and resolutely ignored, Mariana's veiled entreaty. "You don't know my girls," Mrs. Polder continued rapidly. "Here is Isabella, and Kate will be along for dinner." A tall, bony woman of, perhaps, thirty-five, in an appalling complication of ribbons and silk, moved forward with a conventional sentence. In her, Howat's appraisements went on, virginity had been perpetuated in a captious obsession. They stood awkwardly silent until James Polder exclaimed, "Good heavens, this isn't a wax works! Why don't we sit down?" The older woman glanced with a consuming anxiety at Isabella, and nodded violently toward an exit, "It's a quarter after seven," she said in a swift aside. Isabella, correctly disposed on a chair of muffled and mysterious line, resolutely ignored the appeal.

"I didn't suppose you'd be in the city," she addressed Mariana; "I read in the paper that you had gone to Watch Hill with Mrs. Ledyard B. Starr."

"You can see that I'm back," Mariana smiled. "The family, of course, are at Andalusia, but we have all been in town the past days. I am really staying with Howat at Shadrach."

"The former location of Shadrach Furnace, I believe," Byron Polder stated. "Now in ruins." Howat Penny accurately gathered that the other inferred the collapse not only of the Furnace. He secured the single glass in his eye and looked deliberately around. Isabella watched him with a tense interest. Mrs. Polder gave a short, perturbed giggle. "Just like George Arliss," she told her son. James Polder, on the edge of a chair, was twitching with repressed uneasiness; he frowned antagonistically and then gazed appealingly at Mariana. "I have been introduced to your cousin, Miss Provost," Isabella again took up her social thread. "A dear friend of mine, a talented actress, gave a recitation at Miss Provost's request, for suffrage."

"Eliza's splendid," Mariana pronounced.

"Peter Jannan Provost's daughter," Byron Polder added fully. But his voice indicated that even more, darkly unfavourable, might be revealed. "Miss Provost has been under arrest." Damn the solemn ass, Howat Penny thought. "She's been in the jug twice now," Mariana went on cheerfully; "Kingsfrere had to put up a bond the last time." Mrs. Polder was rapidly regaining her ease. "Wasn't her mamma scared?" she inquired. "I'd go on if Isabella was taken up."

"Imagine Isabella!" Jim Polder exploded. "It's quite the thing," that individual asserted. "Isabella," her mother declared, "it is twenty-five past seven. I wish you'd go out and see where dinner is." She rose with an expression of mingled surprise and pain. "Really, mother," she said, "that is an extraordinary request." Her brother snorted. There was a sudden muffled clamour of chimes from below, and Mrs. Polder gave a sigh of relief. "I didn't want it spoiled," she explained, descending; "Jim would be wild after all his eagerness to have things nice."

The dining room, resembling all the interior, was long and narrow, and had a high ceiling in varnished light wood. Byron Polder faced his wife at the opposite end of the table. Howat Penny sat beside Mariana, with Jim Polder across; Isabella was on her mother's right; and a waiting place was filled by a dark, surprisingly beautiful girl. "This is Kate," Mrs. Polder said proudly. Howat thought he had not seen such a handsome female for years. She wore a ruffled, transparent crêpe de Chine waist that clung in frank curves to full, graceful shoulders; her hair was a lustrous, black coil, and she had sultry, topaz eyes and a mouth drooping like her father's, but more warmly bowed. Kate Polder met the direct pleasure of his inspection with a privately conveyed admission that she understood and subscribed to it. Here, at last, was a girl up to the standard of old days, the divinity of Scalchi herself. She would have created a sensation in Delmonico's, the real Delmonico's. Gary and the Colonel--

"We think they're elegant," Mrs. Polder's voice broke in on his revery. He looked up and saw a great fish on a huge platter before his host, a fish in surprising semblance to life, had it not been for the rosettes of lemon, the green bed, which surrounded it. "Gracious, no," she answered Mariana's query; "we don't do it home. Mr. Polder has them sent from a Rathskeller down town. He'll make a meal off one." The latter was plainly chagrined at this light thrown on his petty appetites. He assumed an air of complete detachment in the portioning of the dish; but, at the same time, managed to supply himself liberally. The conversation was sporadic. Howat Penny found the dinner lavish, and divided his attention between it and Kate Polder. James and Mariana addressed general remarks to the table at succeeding intervals. Mr. Polder gloomed, and Isabella went through the gestures, the accents, of the occasion with utter correctness. Howat studied Mariana, but he was unable to discover her thoughts; she was smiling and cordial; and apologized for losing her slipper. "I always do," she explained. James Polder hastily rose, and came around to assist her. The dinner was at an end, and she stood with a slim, silken foot outheld for him to replace the fragile object of search.

They reassembled above, and Mrs. Polder suggested music. "My son says you are very fond of good music," she addressed Howat Penny. "I can tell you it is a lovely taste. We have the prettiest records that come. Isabella, put on _Hark, Hark, the Lark_." She obediently rose, and, revolving the handle of the talking machine, fixed the grooved, rubber disk and needle. Howat listened with a stony countenance to the ensuing strains. Such instruments were his particular detestation. Mrs. Polder waved her hand dreamily. "Now," she said, "the _Sextette_, and _The End of a Perfect Day_. No, Mr. Penny would like to hear _Salome_, I'm sure, with all those cymbals and creepy Eastern tunes." An orgy of sound followed, applauded--perversely, he was certain--by Mariana. James, he saw, was as uneasy as himself; but for a totally different reason. He gazed at Mariana with a fierce devotion patent to the most casual eye; his expression was tormented with concern and longing.

"When do you return to Harrisburg?" Byron Polder inquired. "My son," he went on to Howat Penny, "is a practical iron man. I say iron, although that is no longer the phrase, because of natural associations. The present system of the manufacture of steel, as you doubtless know, evolved from the old Ironmasters, of whose blood James has a generous share. We look to him to re-establish, er--a departed importance. I need say no more." His women's anxiety at this trend of speech became painful. "Play a right lively piece," Mrs. Polder interjected, and an intolerable cacophony of banjoes followed, making conversation futile.

The evening, Howat Penny felt, was a considerable success; by heaven, Mariana would never get herself into this! Byron Polder's innuendoes must have annoyed her nicely. When the mechanical disturbance ceased, Mrs. Polder said, "I believe that's the bell." Evidently she had been correct, for, immediately after, a young woman with bright gold hair, and a mobile, pink countenance unceremoniously entered the room. "Oh!" she exclaimed, in an instinctively statuesque surprise; "I didn't know you were entertaining company."

"Come right in, Harriet," Mrs. Polder heartily proclaimed. "Miss Jannan, Mr. Penny, this is Isabella's friend, Harriet de Barry, a near neighbour and a sweet girl. She's an actress, too; understudies Vivian Blane; and is better, lots say, than the lead."

Harriet de Barry made a comprehensive gesture. "I wanted to say good-bye to you all," she announced. "I am going on tour. Leave at midnight. Just had a wire from Mrs. Blane." There were polite Polder exclamations, regret, congratulations; through which the son of the house moodily gazed at the carpet. "Haven't you anything to say to Hatty?" his mother demanded. "And after all the passes she sent you." Howat Penny saw Mariana's gaze rest swiftly on the latest comer's obvious good looks; and the scrutiny, he was certain, held a cold feminine appraisal. As they descended to leave Mariana lingered on the stairs with Jim. The latter closed the door of the public motor with a low, intense mutter; and, moving away, Howat Penny lit a cigarette with a breath of audible relief.

"I don't know which I detest most," Mariana declared viciously, "you or myself."

"You might include that fish," he added plaintively. She gazed at him in cold contempt, with an ugly, protruding lip. Nothing else was said until they were in the opened room at the Jannans. Mariana flung herself on a broad divan, with her narrowed gaze fixed on the points of her slippers. "Comfortable, isn't it," she addressed him; "this feeling of superiority?" He placidly nodded, inwardly highly pleased. "I wish I'd married Jim the first week I knew him, without trying to be so dam' admirable. Howat, what is it that makes people what they are, and aren't?" It was, he told her, difficult to express; but it had to do with inherited associations. "Mrs. Polder is as kind as possible," she asserted; "and I could see that you were absorbed in Kate."