Chapter 22

"Good night," she said ungraciously, to them both, and flickered away through the dark. James Polder was savagely biting his lips; his hands, the elder saw, were clenched. "Your wife," Howat proceeded, "how is she?" Polder gazed at him stonily, without reply. "I asked after your wife," Howat repeated irritably. "No," the other at last said, "you reminded me of her. I suppose you are right." He turned and walked abruptly from the porch, into the slowly dropping rain.

XXXIII

The road to Myrtle Forge mounted between rolling cultivated fields, the scattered, stone ruins of walls erected in the earliest iron days; and, after a pastoral course, came to the Forge dwelling, its shuttered bulk set in a tangle of bushes and rank grass. An ancient beech tree swept the ground with smooth, grey limbs, surrounded by long-accumulated dead leaves. James Polder shut off the motor by the low, stone wall that supported the lawn from the roadway; he crossed to the farm, where the house keys were kept, and Howat and Mariana moved slowly forward. A porch, added, the former said, in Jasper Penny's time, extended at the left; and they stood on the broken flooring and gazed down at a featureless tangle once a garden and the gnarled remainder of a small apple orchard beyond.

Polder soon returned, and they proceeded to a door on the further side, where the kitchen angle partly enclosed a flagging of broad stones. Inside, the house, empty of furnishing, was a place of echoes muffled in dust; the insidious, dank odours of corrupting wood and plaster; walls with melancholy, superimposed, stripping papers; older, sombrely blistered paint and panelled wainscoting varnished in an imitation, yellow graining. It was without a relic of past dignity. Mariana was unable to discover a souvenir of the generations of Pennys that had filled the rooms with the stir of their living. Once more outside they sat on the stone threshold of an office-like structure back of the main dwelling and indulged in cigarettes.

The disturbing tension of last night, Howat thought comfortably, had vanished. Mariana was flippant, James Polder enveloped in indolent ease. "The Forge," Howat Penny told them, "was below." A path descended across a steep face of sparse grass; and, at the bottom, Polder's interest revived. "It stood there," he indicated a fallen shed beyond a masoned channel, choked with the broken stones of its walls and tangled shrubbery. "You don't suppose a joke that size was the great Gilbert's plant. Here's the drop for the water power; yes, and the iron pinions of the overshot wheel." He climbed down a precarious wall, and stood perhaps twelve feet below them. Securing a rough bolt, he brought it up for their inspection. "Look at that forging," he cried; "after it has lain around for a century and a half. Like silk. Charcoal iron, and it was hammered, too. Metal isn't half worked any more. We could turn that into steel at almost nothing a ton." He showed them in the mouldering shed the foundation of the anvil, traced the probable shafting of the trip hammer, marked the location of the hearths. "Three," he decided; "and a cold trickle of air. A nigger pumping a bellows, probably. No, they could get that from the wheel," he drew an explanatory diagram in the blackened dust.

With the lunch basket on the running board of the motor they ate sitting on the low boundary wall of the lawn. The heat increased through the late May noon, and Howat remained while Mariana and James Polder wandered in the direction of the orchard. Finally the sun forced the former to move; and he, too, proceeded in a desultory manner, entering the shade of a grove of old maples. The trees, their earliest red leafage already emerald, followed the dry channel cut back from Canary Creek to the Forge, and he soon emerged at the broad, flashing course of the stream. A flat rock jutted into the hurrying water by an overthrown dam, its sun-heated expanse now in shadow; and he stayed, listening to the gurgling flow. Far above him a hawk wheeled in ambient space; a mill whistle sounded remotely from Jaffa.

The thought of Mariana hovered at the back of his lulled being; all he desired, he told himself, was her complete happiness. He might even have become reconciled to James Polder. His first, unfavourable opinion of the latter, he realized, had been modified by--by time. He had judged Polder solely in the light of an old standard. The fellow was painfully honest; good stuff there, iron ... the iron of the Pennys. But the other strain had betrayed him. A cursed shame. The material of the present, moulded, perhaps, into seemingly new forms, was always that of the past. This Polder was Essie Scofield and Jasper ... Byron. He, Howat Penny, was Penny and Jannan and Penny--Daniel, James, Casimir, and Howat once more, the older Howat who had married the widow of Felix Winscombe. Black again. He wondered what the blackness, not spent like his own, had brought the other. A headstrong, dark youth with the characteristic sloping eyebrows and slender, vigorous, carriage. The traditional rebellious spirit had involved Jasper in disgrace; it had thinned his own blood.

Footfalls approached through the trees, and the others joined him. James Polder extended himself on the rock, and Mariana sat with her hands clasped about her slim knees. A silence intensified by the whispering stream enveloped them. The hawk circled above, and Howat had an extraordinary sense of the familiarity of the bird hanging in limitless space, of the warm stone and water choking in a smooth eddy. He had, as a boy, fished there. But his brain momentarily swam with a poignant, unrecognizable emotion, different from the sensation of childhood. He rose, confused and giddy. With old age, he muttered.

Mariana followed. "It's all over," she announced, decisively. "We'll drive back and leave to-day." She sighed. "That's gone already," James Polder showed her the sun slipping toward the western hills. She moved up to him, laid her hand on his arm. Howat Penny went ahead. He must speak to her after dinner. As the motor slowly gathered momentum he turned and looked back at the dark, pinkish dwelling in its tangle of grass and bushes run wild. Dusk appeared to have already gathered over it, although the sun still shone elsewhere in lengthening dusty gold bars; the wide-spread beech was sombre against blank shutters, the chimneys broken and cold.

XXXIV

A letter for James Polder was at Shadrach, and he opened it immediately, glancing over its scrawled sheet. Howat saw a curious expression overspread the other's countenance. He called, "Mariana!" in a sharp tone. She appeared from the foot of the steps. "Harriet never went home," he told her; "this is from Pittsburgh. She's back on the stage." A premonitory dread filled Howat Penny. Mariana stood quietly, her gaze lifted to Polder. "She never went home," he repeated; "but writes that suddenly she--she didn't want to, and couldn't stand Harrisburg another week. She saw some one and had a part, that ought to be good, offered to her; and, so--"

"Is that all, Jim?"

"No," he replied; "there is more, absolutely unjustified. I think I'd like you to read it. It would be best." Mariana took the letter, and followed its irregular course. "It's true enough," she said quietly, at the end. "But I don't in the least mind, Jim. She had a perfect right to something of the sort. That is--I'm not annoyed about what she says of me, but it will upset you terribly. And it has been my fault, from the first." He protested vehemently, but she stopped him with a gesture; then walked to the door opening on the porch; where, her head up, she stood gazing out into the serene, failing light.

James Polder followed her, and Howat heard the screen softly close. He was about to light a cigarette, but, his hand shaking, he laid it on the table. He put up his glass, without purpose, and then let it drop. Rudolph was placing the silver for dinner; old forks faintly marked with a crest that Isabel Howat had brought to her husband. A recurrence of the afternoon's sense of the continuity of all living flowed over him, whispering with old voices, old longing and sorrow and regret, mingled dim features, and the broken clasping of hands. He saw Mariana sweeping in a pale current--a remote, eternal passion winding through the transient body of life. She smiled, her subdued, mocking gaiety infinitely appealing, and vanished.

They came in to dinner without changing the informal garb of the day. James Polder was silent, disturbed, but Mariana was serenely commonplace. Her voice, clear and high, went unimportantly on; until, turning to Howat Penny, she said without the changing of a tone. "I want James to take me back to Harrisburg with him, but he won't." Howat endeavoured to meet this insanity with the silence usually opposed to Mariana's frequent wildness of statement. His knife scraped sharply against a plate; but, in the main, he successfully preserved an unmoved countenance. "Now that Harriet has surrendered Mm," she persisted, "I don't see why I can't be considered. It is the commonest sense--Jim can't live alone, properly, in that house; I can't exist properly without him. You see, Howat, how reasonable it seems." What he did perceive was that his attitude of inattention must be sharply deserted.

"Your words, Mariana," he said coldly, "'proper' and 'reasonable,' in the connection you have used them, would be ridiculous if they weren't disgraceful. I have been patient with a certain amount of rash talk, yes--and conduct, but this must be the end. I had intended to have you leave Shadrach this morning, then later. Either that or I'll be forced to make my excuses to James Polder." He glanced with a veiled anxiety at the latter but could read nothing from the lowered, pinched countenance.

"We could leave together if you are tired of us," Mariana continued. "It's James, really, who is making all the trouble. He has some stupid idea about nobility of conduct and my best good. But the real truth is that he's afraid, for me, of course, and so he won't listen."

"Won't you show her that it is impossible?" the younger man cried at Howat Penny. "I can't take advantage of her heavenly courage. She doesn't realize the weight of opinion. It would make--"

"Stuff," she interrupted. "You'd make steel, and I would make an occasional dessert. You must be told, Jimmy, that the afternoon calling you have confused with life really isn't done any more. You have been brought up in rather a deadly way. You ought to be saved from yourself. I am a very mature person, and I am advising you calmly."

The dinner had come to an end; a decanter, in old-fashioned blue and gold cutting, of brandy, a silver basket of oranges, the coffee cups and glasses, were all that remained; and James Polder played with the cut fruit, the half-full cordial glass before him. "I am going to be brutally frank, Jimmy," she said again. "You know that is a habit of mine, too. You are a very brilliant young man, but you are not omnipotent--you require stiffening, like a collar. And I would be a splendid laundress for you. Harriet is a long shot too lenient. I might not be so comfortable to live with, but I'd be bracing. I'd have you in that dirty little superintendent's box in no time."

He made no reply; and, obviously tormented, automatically squeezed a half orange into his goblet. Then he took a sip of brandy.

"Together, James," Mariana asserted, "we would go up like a kite. By yourself--forgive me--you haven't enough patience, enough balance; you wouldn't fly steadily. You might break all your sticks on the ground." He moodily emptied what remained of his brandy into the goblet and orange juice, and pushed it impatiently away. "I'd rather do that," he answered, "than try to carry you with me on such a flight."

Howat Penny was conscious of a diminution of his fears. He had entirely underrated James Polder; the latter was an immense sight steadier than Mariana. His thoughts strayed momentarily to Harriet, back again in her public orbit. He could imagine that she had found Harrisburg insuperably dull, the hours with only Cherette empty after the emotional debauches of the plays elected by Vivian Blane. Yes, this young Polder would stand admirably firm. Mariana frowned at the cobalt smoke of her cigarette. "I am in a very bad temper," she told them. "No one for a minute thinks of what my feeling may be. You are both entirely concerned with your own nice sense of virtue."

"Not at all, but of your future," Howat Penny asserted.

Her lower lip assumed the contempt of which it was pre-eminently capable. She made no immediate reply. James Polder's fingers absently clasped the goblet before him; he drew it toward his plate, tipped the thick liquid it contained. "Just what do you recommend me to do?" Mariana challenged Howat. "Go through with a lifeful of winters like the last! Marry another Sam Lewis! I am not celebrated for reliability; it is only with Jimmy--" she broke off. Howat Penny recalled her callous expression, photographed in Egyptian dress at a period ball, her description of the hard riding and reckless parties of the transplanted English colonies in the south.

Polder lifted the goblet to his lips, but set it back untasted. Howat looked away from Mariana's scornful interrogation, unable to reply. Finally, "I am old, as you once reminded me," he stated; "I'm out of my time, don't understand, I can only remember, and remembering isn't any longer of use. The men I knew, the kind, I hope, I was, would ruin themselves a hundred times before compromising a woman. Polder appears to understand that. And women I had the privilege of meeting sacrificed themselves with a smile for what you dismiss as mere stupidity. God knows which is right. They looked the loveliest of creatures then. There was a standard, we thought high.... Things a man couldn't do. But I don't know--it seems so long ago." He stopped to watch James Polder take a sip of the mixture in his hand. The latter tasted it slowly, and then emptied the goblet. His face was blank, with eyes nearly closed.

"I could carry Jimmy up in my hands," Mariana said. "Don't," she added vaguely, as he squeezed out the remaining half of his orange and poured fresh brandy into it. "It's curious," he told her; "not at all bad."

They moved out of the dining room, and Mariana and Polder continued to the porch. Howat stood with a hand resting on the mahogany cigarette box; he had the feeling of a man unexpectedly left by a train thundering into the distance. It would not stop, back, for him now; he was dropped. He sank relaxed into an accustomed chair; his brain surrendered its troubling; the waking somnolence settled over him. He was conscious of his surrounding, recognized its actuality; yet, at the same time, it seemed immaterial, like the setting of a dream. He roused himself after a little and smoked, nodding his head to emphasize the points of his thought.

This Polder had shown the instinct of breeding; while Mariana was--just what she was he couldn't for the life of him determine. A hussy, he decided temporarily. After all, his own time, when black and white had been distinguishable, was best. Howat Penny relinquished, with a sigh, the effort to penetrate to-day; he was content to be left behind; out of the grinding rush, the dizzy speed, of progression. His day, when black had been black, was immeasurably superior; the women had been more charming, the men erect, clothed in proper garb and pride. Where, now, could be seen such an audience as Dr. Damrosch had gathered for his first season of German opera? Not, certainly, at the performance he had heard with Mariana two, no--three, winters ago. A vulgarized performance in the spirit of a boulevard café. The whole present air, he told himself, was wrong.

He looked at his watch, and was surprised to see that it was past ten. Not a sound came from the porch; and he determined to go outside, exercise the discretion which Mariana had cast to the winds. However, he didn't stir; he could not summon the energy necessary for the combating of their impetuous youth. He unfolded a paper, but it drooped on his knees, slid, finally, to the floor. Then Mariana appeared, walked swiftly, without a word, through the room, and vanished upstairs. Not even a civil period at the end of the evening. After another, long wait James Polder entered. The latter stood uneasily by the table, with a furrowed brow, a ridiculous, twitching mouth.

Polder went out into the dining room; where, through the doorway, Howat Penny could see him hovering over the silver basket of oranges, placed upon the sideboard. "If you don't mind," he called back, and there were a rattle of knives, a thin ring of glass. The light was dim beyond, and he stood in the doorway with the brandy decanter and orange juice. He drained the mixture and leaned, absorbed, against the woodwork. "This is a hell of a world!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Everything worth having is fenced off. A woman won't understand. Does any one suppose that I don't want Mariana! It's the responsibility. She's right--I am afraid of it. And she laughed at me. Nothing cowardly in her," his voice deepened.

"It is ignorance," Howat stated.

"I thought so, for a minute; you are wrong. She's had more experience than we'd get in a thousand years. The life she knows would fix that. She talked me into a tangled foolishness in five minutes; made me look like a whiskered hypocrite. Nothing I said sounded real, and yet I must be right. Suppose Harriet should turn nasty, suppose--oh, a thousand things."

"It isn't arguable," Howat Penny agreed.

This afforded the other no consolation. "What is she to do?" he demanded. "Mariana won't settle quietly against a wall. She told you that. She's full of--of a sort of energy that must be at something. Mariana hasn't the anchor of most women--respectability."

"Am I to gather that that is no longer considered admirable?" the elder inquired. "If you gather anything you are lucky," Polder replied gloomily. "I'm not sure about my own name. Good-night," he disappeared abruptly.

Above, Howat slowly made his preparations for retiring, infinitely weary. Waking problems fell from him like a leaden weight into the sea of unconsciousness. He was relieved, at breakfast, to see Mariana come down in a hat, with the jacket of her suit on an arm. He waited for her to indicate the train by which she was leaving, so that he could tell Honduras to have the motor ready; but she sat around in a dragging silence. Polder walked up and down the room in which they were gathered. Howat wished he would stop his clattering movement. An expression of ill-nature deepened in Mariana; she looked her ugliest; and James Polder was perceptibly fogged from a lack of sleep. Finally he said:

"Look here, we can't go on like this." He stopped in front of Mariana, with a quivering face. She raised her eyebrows. "Come outside," he begged. "What's the use?" she replied; but, at the same time, she rose. "Don't get desperate, Howat," she said over her shoulder. "Even I can't do any more; I can only take my shamelessness back to Andalusia." Polder held open the screen door; and as, without her jacket, she went out, Howat Penny had a final glimpse of the man bending at her side. Like two fish in a net, he thought ungraciously. He was worn out by their infernal flopping. With a determined movement of his shoulders, a fixing of his glass, he turned to the accumulation of his papers.

Later he heard the changing gears of a motor. He thought for a moment that it was Honduras at his own car; then he recognized the stroke of a far heavier engine. The powerful, ungraceful bulk of an English machine was stopping at his door. Immediately after he distinguished the slightly harsh, dominating voice of Peter Provost. The latter entered, followed by Kingsfrere Jannan. Peter Provost, a member of the New York family and connection of the Jannans, had, since the elder Jannan's death, charge of the family's interest in the banking firm of Provost, Jannan and Provost. He occupied, Howat knew, a position of general advisor to Charlotte and her children. He was a large man who had never lost the hardness of a famous university career in the football field, with a handsome, cold countenance and spiked, grey moustache. He shook hands with Howat Penny, and plunged directly into his present purpose.

"Kingsfrere," he said, "has heard some cheap stuff in the city, principally about that young Polder married last fall. Personally, I laughed at it, but Charlotte seemed upset. This Polder's wife, an actress, has left her husband, and gone back to the stage because--so Byron asserted; you know Byron--Mariana had broken up their home."

"Old Polder said just that," Kingsfrere affirmed. "And that wasn't all--he added that Mariana was out here with the fellow."

Provost laughed.

"Well," Howat Penny replied, "James Polder is staying at Shadrach. He was asked here because his health was threatening. He had two weeks leave; and, although I wasn't really anxious, I said he might recuperate with me."

"And Mariana?" Provost inquired.

"Came out day before yesterday, late; leaving this morning."

Howat Penny was conscious of a growing anger. There was no reason for his submitting to an interrogation by Peter Provost; he didn't have to justify his actions, the selection of his guests; and he had no intention of explaining his attitude toward Mariana. But Provost, it became evident, had no inclination to be intrusive. It was, he made that clear, wholly Charlotte. But Kingsfrere Jannan was increasingly impatient. "Where is Polder?" he demanded. Howat surveyed him with neither favour nor reply. Suddenly he understood the feeling of both men--they considered that he was too old to have any grip or comprehension of life. They were quietly but obviously relegating him to the back of the scene. His anger mounted; he was about to make a sharp reply, when he paused. There was a possibility that they were right; he was, undoubtedly, old; and he had been unable to influence, turn, Mariana, in the slightest degree. He didn't approve of her present, head-strong course ... only a few hours ago he had voluntarily, gladly, relinquished all effort to comprehend it.

"Perhaps," Provost suggested, "since we are here we'd better talk to him. I suppose they're out about the place. You could send Rudolph." Howat replied that he would find them himself. He wanted, now, to prepare James Polder for any incidental unpleasantness. The latter, he knew, had a hasty temper, a short store of patience. After all, he had acted very well in a difficult situation. It had been Mariana. Howat Penny was aware of a growing sympathy for young Polder. His was a more engaging person than Kingsfrere's pasty presence and sharp reputation at cards. He got his hat, and went out over the thick, smooth sod, into the slumberous, blue radiance of the early summer noon.

He found Mariana and James Polder sitting on a bank by the Furnace. "Peter Provost's here with Kingsfrere," he told them quietly. "They want to see.... James, about some nonsense bantered around town." Polder rose quickly, instantly antagonistic. "At the house?" he demanded, already moving away. Mariana stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. "Don't pay any attention to what they may say, Jimmy," she commanded. "It isn't Peter Provost's affair, and Kingsfrere in a fatherly pose is a scream." They moved forward together. "I'll see them," she added cuttingly.

"I will attend to this," James Polder told her. "I don't want any woman explaining my actions. They haven't a whisper on me. I'm glad enough of an opportunity to talk to a man."