Chapter 6

Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace. She smiled at Howat as he moved closer to her. She never did things with her hands, he noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little heaps of white. She sat motionless, her arms at rest. His mother seemed far away. The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room wavered in his vision. Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of intoxicating, yellow wine. He had a curious sensation of floating in air, of tea roses. It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she still realized nothing.... She must know now, any minute. Howat saw that his mother had gone.

He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her. She raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened. Then her expression changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand. Her breast rose and fell, sharply, once. Howat picked her up by the shoulders and crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him. Ludowika's skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.

Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa. She hadn't struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her countenance, only a deep trouble. "Howat," she said softly, "you shouldn't have done that. It was brutal, selfish. You--you knew, after all that I told you; the premonition--" she broke off, anger shone brighter in her eyes. "How detestable men are!" She turned away from him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa. Unexpectedly he was almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.

He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come. "I was an imbecile," she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with bitterness; "Arcadia," she laughed. "I thought it was different here, that you were different; that feeling in my heart--but it's gone now, dead. I suppose I should thank you. But, do you know, I regret it; I would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single little delusion, longing. The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing new, unexpected, can happen. Kisses are almost the oldest things in the world, kisses and their results. What is there to be afraid of? You see, I learned it all quite young.

"I am an imbecile; only it came so suddenly. You would laugh at me if you knew what I was thinking. I can even manage a smile at myself." She appeared older, the Mrs. Winscombe who had first come to Myrtle Forge; her mouth was flippant. "The eternal Suzanna," she remarked, "the monotonous elders or younger." He paid little heed to her words; the coldness, the indifference, were fast leaving him. His heart was like the trip hammer at the Forge. Yellow wine. He was still standing above her, and he took her hands in his. She put up her face with a movement of bravado, of mockery, which he ignored.

"I didn't choose it," he told her; "it's ruined all that I was. Now, I don't care; there is nothing else. One thing you are wrong about--if there had been another in your life like myself you wouldn't be here with--as you are. I'm certain of that. It's the only thing I do know. My feeling may be a terrible misfortune; I didn't make it; I can't see the end. There isn't any, I think." He pressed her hands to his throat with a gesture that half dragged her from the sofa. A deeper colour stained her cheeks, and her breath caught. "Endless," he repeated, losing the word on her lips. She wilted into a corner of the sofa, and he strode over to the fire, stood gazing blindly at the pulsating embers. Howat returned to her almost immediately, but she made no sign of his nearness. The bitterness had left her face, she appeared weary, pallid; she sat heedlessly crumpling her flounces, a hand bent back on its wrist.

"I think it is something in myself," she said presently; "something a little wrong that I'm dreadfully tired of. Always men. Out here a Howat Penny, just like any fribble about the Court. God, I'd like to be that girl across the road, in the barnyard." He was back at the fire again when Gilbert Penny entered the room. The latter dropped a palm on Howat's shoulder.

"Schwar says the last sow metal was faulty," he declared; "the Furnace'll need some attention with Abner Forsythe deeper in the Provincial affairs. Splendid thing David's back. Look for a lot from David." Howat hoped desperately that Ludowika would not leave, go to her room, while his father was talking. "David says you have an understanding, will do great things. I hope so. I hope so. I won't damn him as an example but he will do you no harm. That is, if he touches your confounded person at all. A black Penny, Mrs. Winscombe," he said, turning to the figure spread in pale silk on the sofa. "Fortunate for you to have no such confounded, stubborn lot on your hands. Although," he added laughingly, "Felix Winscombe's no broken reed. But this boy of mine--you might think he had been run out of Shadrach," he tapped a finger on Howat's back. "Not like those fellows about the Court, anyway. They tell me he'll go fifty miles through the woods in a day. Now if we could only keep that at the iron trade--"

His father went on insufferably, without end. Howat withdrew stiffly from the other's touch. Irresistibly he drifted back, back to Ludowika. She had not moved; her bent hand seemed dislocated. An immense tenderness for her overwhelmed him; his sheer passion vapourized into a poignant sweetness of solicitous feeling. He was protective; his jaw set rigidly, he enveloped her in an angry barrier from all the world. He had a sensation of standing at bay; in his mulberry damask, in brocade and silver buttons, he had an impression of himself stooped and savage, confronting a menacing dark with Ludowika flung behind him. Inexplicable tremors assailed him, vast fears. His father's deliberate voice destroyed the illusion; he saw the candles about him like white and yellow flowers, the suave interior. The others had returned. He heard Ludowika speaking; she laughed. His tension relaxed. Suddenly he was flooded with happiness, as if he had been drenched in sparkling, delightful water. He joined in the gay, trivial clamour that arose. Isabel Penny gazed at him speculatively.

There would, it appeared, be no other opportunity that evening for him to declare himself to Ludowika. He was vaguely conscious of his mother's scrutiny; he must avoid exposing Ludowika to any uncomfortable surmising. His thoughts leaped forward to a revelation that he began to feel was inevitable; he got even now a tangible pleasure from the consideration of an announcement of his passion for Ludowika Winscombe, a sheer insistence upon it in the face of an antagonistic world. But for the present he must be careful. This, the greatest event that had befallen him, summed up all that he innately was; it expressed him, a black Penny, absolutely; Howat felt the distance between himself, his convictions, and the convictions of the world, immeasurably widening. His feeling for Ludowika symbolized his isolation from the interwoven fabric of the plane of society; it gave at last a tangible bulk to his scorn.

As he had feared, presently she rose and went to her room. Myrtle took her place on the sofa. Gilbert Penny vanished with a broad witticism at the well known preference of youth, in certain situations, for its own council. David Forsythe made a wry face at Howat. Caroline gaily laid her arm across her mother's shoulder and propelled her from the room. David stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor; and Howat, hardly less clumsy, took his departure. He found Caroline awaiting him in the shadow of his door; she followed him and stood silent while he made a light. Her face was serious, and her hands clasped tightly. "Howat," she said in a small voice, "it's--it's, that is, David loves me. Whatever do you suppose father and Myrtle will say?"

"What do you think David is saying to Myrtle now?" he asked drily. "I am glad, Caroline; everything worked out straight for you. David is a damned good Quaker. For some others life isn't so easy." She laid a warm hand on his shoulder. "I wish you were happy, Howat." A slight irritation seized him at the facile manner in which she radiated her satisfaction, and he moved away. "David's going back to-night. I wish he wouldn't," she said troubled. "That long, dark way. Anything might happen. But he has simply got to be at his father's office in the morning. He is going to speak to him first, see what will be given us at the Furnace."

"It should be quite a family party at breakfast," Howat predicted.

VII

He was entirely right. Ludowika rarely appeared so early; Myrtle's face seemed wan and pinched, and her father rallied her on her indisposition after what should have been an entrancing evening. She declared suddenly, "I hate David Forsythe!" Gilbert Penny was obviously startled. Caroline half rose, as if she had finished breakfast; but she sat down again with an expression of determination. Howat looted about from his removed place of being. "I do!" Myrtle repeated. "At first he seemed to like--I mean I liked him, and then everything changed, got horrid. Some one interfered." Resentment, suspicion, dominated her, she grew shrill with anger. "I saw him making faces at Howat, as if he and Howat, as if Howat had, well--"

"Don't generalize," said Howat coolly; "be particular."

"As if you had deliberately spoiled any chance, yes," she declared defiantly, "any chance I had."

"That's ridiculous," Gilbert Penny declared. "What," he asked his wife, "are they all driving at?" She professed herself equally puzzled. "Howat would say nothing disadvantageous to young Forsythe. He knows what we all hope." Caroline suddenly leaned forward, speaking in a level voice: "This has nothing to do with Howat, but with me. I am going to tell you at once, so that you can all say what you wish, get as angry as you like, and then accept what--what had to be. David and I love each other; we are going to be married."

Gilbert Penny's surprise slowly gave place to a dark tide suffusing his countenance. "You and David," he half stuttered, "getting married--like that." Myrtle was rigid in an indignation that left her momentarily without speech. Mrs. Penny, Howat saw, drew into the slight remoteness from which she watched the conflicts of her family. "I know I'm fearfully bold, yes, indecent," Caroline went on, "and undutiful, impertinent. I'm sorry, truly, for that. Perhaps you'll forgive me, later. But I won't apologize for loving David."

"Incredible," her father pronounced. "A girl announcing, without the slightest warrant or authority, that she intends to marry. And trampling on her sister's heart in the bargain." Howat expostulated, "What does it matter which he marries? The main affair is to consolidate the families." The elder glared at him. "Be silent!" he commanded. Howat Penny's ever present resentment rose to the surface. "I am not a girl," he stated; "nor yet a nigger. And, personally, I think David was extremely wise."

"I was sure of it," Myrtle cried; "he--he has talked against me, helped Caroline behind my back." She sobbed thinly, with her arm across her eyes. "If I thought anything like that had occurred," their father asserted, "Howat would--" he paused, gazing heavily about at his family.

Howat's ill temper arose. "Yes--?" he demanded with a sharp inflection. "Be still, Howat," his mother said unexpectedly. "This is all very regrettable, Gilbert," she told her husband; "but it is an impossible subject of discussion." Gilbert Penny continued hotly, "He wouldn't stay about here." She replied equably, "On the contrary, Howat shall be at Myrtle Forge until he himself chooses to leave."

Howat was conscious of a surprise almost as moving as that pictured on his father's countenance. He had never heard Isabel Penny speak in that manner before; perhaps at last she would reveal what he had long speculated over--her true, inner situation. But he saw at once that he was to be again disappointed; the speaker was immediately enveloped in her detachment, the air that seemed almost one of a spectator in the Penny household. She smiled deprecatingly. How fine she was, Howat thought. Gilbert Penny did not readily recover from his consternation; his surprise had notably increased to that. His mouth was open, his face red and agitated. "Before the children, Isabel," he complained. "Don't know what to think. Surely, surely, you don't uphold Howat? Outrageous conduct if it's true. And Myrtle so gentle, never hurt any one in her life." Myrtle circled the table, and found a place in his arms. "If they had only told me," she protested. "If Caroline--" He patted her flushed cheeks. "Don't give it another thought," he directed; "a girl as pretty as you! I'll take you to London, where you'll have a string of men, not Quakers, fine as peacocks." He bent his gaze on his son.

"Didn't I tell you last evening that the cast metal has been light?" he demanded. "Must I beg you to go to the Furnace? Or perhaps that too conflicts with your mother's fears for you. There are stumps in the road." There was a whisper of skirts at the door, and Ludowika Winscombe stood smiling at them. Myrtle turned her tear-swollen face upon her father's shoulder. Howat wondered if Ludowika had slept. He endeavoured in vain to discover from her serene countenance something of her thoughts of what had occurred. He had a sudden inspiration.

"I can go to Shadrach as soon as Adam saddles a horse," he told his father. "You were curious about the Furnace," he added to Ludowika, masking the keen anxiety he felt at what was to follow; "it's a sunny day, a pleasant ride." She answered without a trace of feeling other than a casual politeness. "Thank you, since it will be my only opportunity. I'll have to change." She was gazing, Howat discovered, lightly at Isabel Penny. "I must get the figures from Schwar," his father said. Before he left the room he moved to his wife's side, rested his hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him with a reassuring nod. Howat saw that, whatever it might be, the bond between them was secure, stronger than any differences of prejudices or blood, more potent than time itself. The group, the strain, about the table, broke up.

The horses footed abreast over the road that crossed the hills and forded the watered swales between Myrtle Forge and the Furnace. Ludowika, riding astride, enveloped and hooded in bottle green, had her face muffled in a linen riding mask. He wondered vainly what expression she bore. Speech he found unexpectedly difficult. His passion mounted and mounted within him, all his being swept unresistingly in its tide. Howat said at last:

"Are you still so angry at life, at yourself?"

"No," she replied; "I slept that foolishness away. I must have sounded like a character in _The Lying Valet._" Her present mood obscurely troubled him; he infinitely preferred her in the pale crumpled silk and candle light of the evening before. "I wish I could tell you what I feel," he said moodily.

"Why not?" she replied. "It's the most amusing thing possible. You advance and I seem to retreat; you reach forward and grasp--my fan, a handful of petticoat; you protest and sulk--"

"Perhaps in Vauxhall," he interrupted her savagely, "but not here, not like that, not with me. This is not a gavotte. I didn't want it; I tried to get away; but it, you, had me in a breath. At once it was all over. God knows what it is. Call it love. It isn't a thing under a hedge, I tell you that, for an hour. It's stronger than anything else that will ever touch me, it will last longer.... Like falling into a river. Perhaps I'm different, a black Penny, but what other men take like water, a woman, is brandy for me. I'm--I'm not used to it. I haven't wanted Kate here and Mary there; but only you. I've got to have you," he said with a marked simplicity. "I've got to, or there will be a bad smash."

Ludowika rode silently, hid in her mask. He urged his horse closer to her, and laid a hand on her swaying shoulder. "I didn't choose this," he repeated; "the blame's somewhere else." He felt a tremor run through her. "Why say blame?" she finally answered. "I hate moralities and excuses and tears. If you are set on being gloomy, and talking to heaven about damnation, take it all away from me." A shadow moved across the countryside, and he saw clouds rising out of the north. A sudden wind swept through the still forest, and immediately the air was aflame with rushing autumn leaves. They fell across Howat's face and eddied about the horses' legs. The grey bank deepened in space, the sun vanished; the wind was bleak. It seemed to Howat Penny that the world had changed, its gold stricken to dun and gaunt branches, in an instant. The road descended to the clustered stone houses about Shadrach Furnace.

The horses were left under the shed of the smithy at the primitive cross roads. Thomas Gilkan had gone to the river about a purchase of casting sand, but expected to be back for the evening run of metal. Fanny was away, Howat learned, visiting Dan Hesa's family. They would, of course, have dinner at the Heydricks; and the latter sent a boy home to prepare his wife. Ludowika and Howat aimlessly followed the turning road that mounted to the coal house. A levelled and beaten path, built up with stone, led out to the top of the stack, where a group of sooty figures were gathered about the clear, almost smokeless flame of the blast. Below they lingered on the grassy edge of the stream banked against the hillside and flooding smoothly to the clamorous fall and revolving wheel by the wood shed that covered the bellows. Pointed downward the latter spasmodically discharged a rush of air with a vast creasing of their dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace, voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows, dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song rose on the air.

Behind a blood red screen of sumach Howat again kissed Ludowika. Her arms tightened about his neck; she raised her face to him with an abandon that blinded him to the world about, and his entire being was drawn in an agony of desire to his lips. She sank limply into his rigid embrace, a warm sensuous burden with parted lips.

At the Heydricks he ate senselessly whatever was placed before him. The house, solidly built of grey stone traced with iron, had two rooms on the lower floor. The table was set before a fireplace that filled the length of the wall, its mantel a great, roughly squared log mortared into the stones on either side. Small windows opened through deep embrasures, a door bound with flowering, wrought hinges faced the road, and a narrow flight of stairs, with a polished rail and white post, led above. Mrs. Heydrick, a large woman in a capacious Holland apron and worsted shoes, moved about the table with steaming pewter trenchards while Heydrick and their guests dined.

Howat Penny's face burned as if from a violent fever; his veins, it seemed, were channels through which ran burning wine. He was deafened by the tumult within him. Heydrick's voice sounded flat and blurred. They were conscious at Shadrach of the thin quality of the last metal. The charge had been poorly made up; he, Heydrick, had said at once, when the cinders had come out black, that the lime had been short. His words fled through Howat's brain like racing birds; the latter's motions were unsteady, inexact.

The clouds had now widened in a sagging plain across the sky, some scattered rain pattered coldly on the fallen leaves. It was pleasant before the hickory burning in the deep fireplace; the Heydricks had taken for granted that they would wait there for Thomas Gilkan, and they protested when Howat and Ludowika moved toward the door. But Howat was restless beyond any possibility of patiently hearing Mrs. Heydrick's cheerful, trivial talk. He was so clumsy with Ludowika's cloak that she took it from him, and, with a careless, feminine scorn in common with Mrs. Heydrick, got into it without assistance. They stood for a while in the cast house, watching a keeper rolling and preparing the pig bed for the evening flow. They were pressed close together in a profound gloom of damp warmth rising from the wet sand and furnace. An obscure figure moved a heavy and faintly clanging pile of tamping bars. The sound of rain on the roof grew louder, continuous. A poignant and then strangling emotion clutched at Howat Penny's throat. Silently they turned from the murky interior.

A grey rain was plastering the leaves on the soggy ground; puddles accumulated in the scarred road; the smoke from the smithy hung low on the roof. At the left a small, stone house had a half opened door. Ludowika looked within. "For storing," Howat told her. Inside were piled sledges and cinder hooks, bars and moulds, and bales of tanned hides. Ludowika explored in the shadows. A sudden eddy of wind slammed to the door through which they had entered. They drew together irresistibly, and stood for a long while, crushed in each other's arms; then Ludowika stepped back with her cloak sliding from her shoulders. She rested against precarious steps leading aloft through a square opening in the ceiling. "For storage," he said again. He thought his throat had closed, and that he must suffocate. A mechanical impulse to show her what was above set his foot upon the lower step, and he caught her waist. "You see," he muttered; "things for the store ... the men, wool stockings, handkerchiefs ... against their pay." The drumming rain was scarcely a foot above their heads; an acrid and musty odour rose from the boxes and canvas-sewed bales about the walls. "Ludowika," Howat said. He stopped--she had shut her eyes. All that was Howat Penny, that was individually sentient, left him with a pounding rush.

A faint sound, infinitely far removed, but insistent, penetrated his blurred senses. It grew louder; rain, rain beating on the roof. Voices, somewhere, outside. Ringing blows on an anvil, a blacksmith, and horses waiting. Myrtle Forge. Ludowika. Ludowika Winscombe. No, by God, never that last again!

He stood outside with his head bare and his face lifted to the cool shock of the rain. Ludowika was muffled in her cloak. Howat could see a renewed activity in the cast house; a group of men were gathered about the furnace hearth, in which he saw Thomas Gilkan. He moved forward to call the latter; but a tapping was in progress, and he was forced to wait. Gilkan swung a long bar against a low, clay face, and instantly the murky interior was ablaze with a crackling radiance against which the tense figures wavered in magnified silhouettes. The metal poured out of the furnace in a continuous, blinding white explosion hung with fans of sparkling gold; the channels of the pig bed rapidly filled with the fluid iron.

Finally Howat Penny lifted Ludowika to her saddle and swung himself up at her side. The rain had stopped; below the eastern rim of cloud an expanse showed serenely clear. Their horses soberly took the rise beyond Shadrach Furnace and merged into the gathering dusk of the forest road. A deep tranquillity had succeeded the tempest of Howat's emotions; it would not continue, he knew; already the pressure of immense, new difficulties gathered about him; but momentarily he ignored them. He searched his feelings curiously.