Chapter 7

The fact that struck him most sharply was that he was utterly without remorse for what had occurred; it had been inevitable. He experienced none of the fears against which Ludowika had exclaimed. He lingered over no self-accusations, the reproach of adultery. He was absolutely unable then to think of Felix Winscombe except as a person generally unconcerned. If he repeated silently the term husband it was without any sense of actuality; the satirical individual in the full bottomed wig, now absent in Maryland, had no importance in the passionate situation that had arisen between Ludowika and himself. Felix Winscombe would of course have to be met, dealt with; but so would a great many other exterior conditions.

Ludowika, in her linen mask, was enigmatic, a figure of mystery. A complete silence continued between them; at times they ambled with his hand on her body; then the inequalities of the road forced them apart. The clouds dissolved, the sky was immaculate, green, with dawning stars like dim white flowers. A faint odour of the already mouldering year rose from the wet earth. Suddenly Ludowika dragged the mask from her face. Quivering with intense feeling she cried:

"I'm glad, Howat! Howat, I'm glad!"

He contrived to put an arm about her, crush her to him for a precarious moment. "We have had an unforgettable day out of life," she continued rapidly; "that is something. It has been different, strangely apart, from all the rest. The rain and that musty little store house and the wonderful iron; a memory to hold, carry away--"

"To carry where?" he interrupted. "You must realize that I'll never let you go now. I will keep you if we have to go beyond the Endless Mountains. I will keep you in the face of any man or opposition created."

A wistfulness settled upon her out of which grew a slight hope. "I am afraid of myself, Howat," she told him; "all that I have been, my life--against me. But, perhaps, here, with you, it might be different. Perhaps I would be constant. Perhaps all the while I have needed this. Howat, do you think so? Do you think I could forget so much, drop the past from me, be all new and happy?"

He reassured her, only half intent upon the burden of her words. He utterly disregarded anything provisional in their position; happiness or unhappiness were unconsidered in the overwhelming determination that she should never leave him. No remote question of that entered his brain. The difficulties were many, but he dismissed them with an impatient gesture of his unoccupied hand. Gilbert Penny would be heavily censorious; he had, Howat recognized, the moral prejudices of a solid, unimaginative blood. But, lately, his father had sunk to a place comparatively insignificant in his thoughts. This was partly due to the complete manner in which Isabel Penny had silenced the elder at breakfast. His mother, Howat gladly felt, would give him the sympathy of a wise, broad understanding. David and Caroline would interpose no serious objection. Felix Winscombe remained; a virile figure in spite of his years; a man of assured position and a bitter will.

He determined to speak on the day that Felix Winscombe returned from Annapolis; there would be no concealment of what had occurred, and no hypocrisy. A decent regret at Winscombe's supreme loss. The other would not relinquish Ludowika without a struggle. Who would? It was conceivable that he would summon the assistance of the law, conceivable but not probable; the situation had its centre in a purely personal pride. Nothing essential could be won legally. A physical encounter was far more likely. Howat thought of that coldly. He had no chivalrous instinct to offer himself as a sop to conventional honour. In any struggle, exchange of shots, he intended to be victorious.... He would have the naming of the conditions.

"It's beautiful here," Ludowika broke into his speculations; "the great forests and Myrtle Forge. I can almost picture myself directing servants like your mother, getting supplies out of the store, and watching the charcoal and iron brought down to the Forge. The sound of the hammer has become a part of my dreams. And you, Howat--I have never before had a feeling like this for a man. There's a little fear in it even. It must be stronger than the other, than Europe; I want it to be." They could see below them the lighted windows at Myrtle Forge. The horses turned unguided into the curving way across the lawn. A figure stood obsequiously at the door; it was, Howat saw with deep automatic revulsion, the Italian servant. He wondered again impatiently at the persistently unpleasant impression the other made on him. Gilbert Penny was waiting in the hall, and Howat told him fully the result of his investigation.

His father nodded, satisfied. "You are taking hold a great bit better," he was obviously pleased. "We must go over the whole iron situation with the Forsythes. It's time you and David stepped forward. I am getting bothered by new complications; the thing is spreading out so rapidly--steel and a thousand new methods and refinements. And the English opposition; I'm afraid you'll come into that."

Ludowika did not again appear that evening, and Howat sat informally before a blazing hearth with his mother, Gilbert Penny and Caroline. Myrtle had retired with a headache. Howat felt pleasantly settled, almost middle-aged; he smoked a pipe with the deliberate gestures of his father. He wondered at the loss of his old restlessness, his revolt from just such placid scenes as the present. Never, he had thought, would he be caught, bound, with invidious affections, desires. Howat, a black Penny! He had been subjugated by a force stronger than his rebellious spirit. Suddenly, recalling Ludowika's doubt, he wondered if he would be a subject to it always. All the elements of his captivity lay so entirely outside of him, beyond his power to measure or comprehend, that a feeling of helplessness came over him. He again had the sense of being swept twisting in an irresistible flood. But his confusion was dominated by one great assurance--nothing should deprive him of Ludowika. An intoxicating memory invaded him, touched every nerve with delight and a tyrannical hunger. His fibre seemed to crumble, his knees turn to dust. Years ago he had been poisoned by berries, and limpness almost like this had gone softly, treacherously, through him.

VIII

They entered into a period of secret contentment and understanding. Ludowika displayed a grave interest in the details of the house and iron at Myrtle Forge; he explained the processes that resulted in the wrought blooms despatched by tons in the lumbering, mule-drawn wagons. They explored the farm, where she listened approvingly to the changes he proposed making, kitchen gardens to be planted, the hedges of roses and gravelled paths to be laid--for her. She suggested an Italian walk, latticed above, with a stone seat, and was indicating a corner that might be transformed into a semblance of an angle of Versailles, when, suddenly, she stopped, and clasped his wrist.

"No! No!" she exclaimed, with surprising energy. "We'll have no France, no court, here, but only America; only you and myself, with no past, no memories, but just the future." How that was to be realized neither of them considered; they avoided all practical issues, difficulties. They never mentioned Felix Winscombe's name. However, a long communication came from him for his wife. She read it thoughtfully, in the drawing room, awaiting dinner. No one else but Howat was present, and he was standing with his hand on her shoulder. "Felix hasn't been well," she remarked presently. "For the first time he has spoken to me of his age. The Maryland affair drags, and that has wearied him."

"What does he say about returning?" Howat bluntly asked.

"Shortly, he hopes; that is, in another ten days. He says there is a good ship, the _Lindamira_, by the middle of November." Howat said, "Excellent." Ludowika gazed at him swiftly. "It will be difficult." His face became grim, but he made no direct reply. A silence fell on the room through which vibrated the blows of the trip hammer at the Forge. The day was grey and definitely cold; a small cannon stove glowed in the counting house; but Ludowika kept mostly to her room. She sent him a note by the Italian, and Howat eyed the fellow bowing in the doorway. A flexibility that seemed entirely without bones. His eyes were jet slits, his lips shaven and mobile; a wig was repulsively saturated with scented grease. Yet it was not in actual details that he oppressed Howat; but by the vague suggestion of debasing commendations, of surreptitious understanding, insinuations. He seemed, absurdly, unreal, a symbol the intent of which Howat missed; he suppressed an insane movement to touch the Italian, discover if he was actually before him.

He reread Ludowika's note whenever he was not actually employed in recording, until he was obliged to conceal it in the Forge book.

Later Abner Forsythe arrived with David, and there was a stir of preparing rooms and communication with the farm. David's mother was dead, and Abner conducted the wedding negotiations with the Pennys. "I thought it would be the pretty little one," he said at the table, with a Quaker disregard of small niceties of feeling; "but, Gilbert, any girl of yours would be more than the young men of the present deserve." It was a difficult conversation for every one but Ludowika and Abner Forsythe. A greater ease appeared after supper. David and Caroline disappeared in the direction of the clavichord, from which sounded some scattered, perfunctory measures. The two elder men returned, over a decanter of French spirits, to the inevitable and engrossing subject of iron and the Crown regulations; Myrtle sat stiffly before the fireplace with Isabel Penny; and Howat moved up and across the room, his gaze lying on Ludowika, spread in an expanse of orange chiffon and bold silver tracery on the small sofa.

She smiled at him once, but, for the most part, she was lost in revery. Ludowika had a fan, to hold against the fire; and her white fingers were playing with its polished black sticks and glazed paper printed with an ornamental bar of music. A faint colour stained her cheeks as he watched her, and set his heart tumultuously beating. He told himself over and over, with an unabated sense of wonder, that she was his. He longed for the moment when they could discard all pretence and be frankly, completely, together. That must happen after Felix Winscombe arrived. Meanwhile he was forced to content himself with a look, a quick or lingering contact of fingers, the crush of her body against his momentarily in a passage. They had returned once to the rock where he had first been intoxicated by her; in a strangling wave of emotion he had taken her into his arms; but she had broken away. The width of the stream and screen of trees had apparently disconcerted Ludowika, and she contrived to make him feel inexcusably young, awkward.

But usually he dominated her; there was a depth to his passion that achieved patience, the calmness of unassailable fortitude. She gazed at him often with a surprise that bordered on fear; again she would delight in his mastery, beg him to hold her forever safe against the past. He reassured her of his ability and determination to accomplish that; there was not the shadow of a doubt in his own mind. He was more troubled now than formerly; but he was eager for the climax to pass, impatient to claim his own.

As if a dam had been again thrown across the flood of his emotions he felt them mounting, growing more and more irrepressible. He slept in feverish snatches, with gaps in which he stared wide-eyed into the dark, trying to realize his coming joy, visualizing Ludowika, a brilliant apparition of flowing silk, on the night. He thought of the store house at the Furnace, of the rain beating on the roof, and Ludowika ... God, if that old man would only return, go, leave them! The clouds vanished and left the nights emerald clear, the constellations glittered in frosty immensities of silence. He stood at the open window with his shoulders bare, revelling in the cold air that flowed over him, defying winter, death itself. The moon waned immutably.

David was now at Shadrach Furnace, living with the Heydricks, and the necessities that brought him to Myrtle Forge were endless. He was absolutely happy, and Howat watched him with mingled longing and envy. His affair, darker, more tragic in spite of a consummation that must be joyous, seemed infinitely more mature. Caroline was a nice enough girl, but Ludowika was supremely fascinating. David amused him:

"Caroline is a miracle. Of course there are prettier, and Mrs. Winscombe has more air; but none has Caroline's charming manner. Of course, you have noticed it. Even a thick-headed brother couldn't miss that. We have plans for you, too. And it's no good your looking glum; we'll glum you."

The amusement faded from Howat's countenance, and he listened sullenly to the end of the raillery. His temper was growing daily more uneven, the delight had largely left his reflections. His passion had become too insistent for happy conjecturing; the visions of Ludowika now only tormented him. Her eyes were like burning sapphires, her warm palms caressed his face; he was increasingly gaunt and shadowed. Once he gave a note for her to the Italian servant, loathing the hand that adroitly covered the folded sheet, the other's oblique smile; but she sent back word that she was suffering from a headache. He began to plan so that he would intercept her in unexpected places. She, too, was passionate in her admissions; but, somehow, some one always stumbled toward them, or they were summoned from beyond. He began to feel that this was not mere chance, but desired, deliberately courted, by Ludowika. Very well, he would end it all, as it were, with a shout when Felix Winscombe came back.

When Felix Winscombe came back!

He was, too, increasingly aware of his mother's scrutiny. Howat was certain that Isabel Penny had surmised a part of his feeling for Ludowika. He didn't greatly care; any one might know, he thought contemptuously. It had destroyed his sympathetic feeling for his mother, the only considerate bond that had existed with his family. Unconsciously he placed her on one side of a line, the other held only Ludowika and himself.

He explained this to her in a sere reach of the garden. It was afternoon, the sun low and a haze on the hills. Ludowika had on a scarlet wrap, curiously vivid against the withered, brown aspect of the faded flower stems. "You and me," he repeated. She gazed, without answering, at the barrier of hills that closed in Myrtle Forge. From the thickets came the clear whistling of partridges, intensifying the unbroken tranquillity that surrounded the habitations. Howat was suddenly conscious of the pressure of vast, unguessed regions, primitive forces, illimitable wildernesses. It brought uppermost in him a corresponding zest in the sheer spaciousness of the land, a feeling always intensified by the thought of England. "The Province," he said disjointedly, "a place for men. Did you see those that followed the road this morning? Perhaps five with their women, some pack horses, kitchen tins and hide tents. The men wore buckskin, and furred caps, and the women's skirts were sewed leather. One was tramping along with a feeding baby. Well, God knows where they have been, how many days they have walked; their shoes were in shreds. And their faces, thin and serious, have looked steadily over rifles at death. The women, too. You'll only get them here, in a big country, a new--"

"They were terrible," Ludowika declared; "savage. I was glad when they were by. The baby at the woman's great breast!" she shuddered at the memory. "Like animals."

He gazed at her with a slight surprise; he had never heard her speak so bitterly. He saw her more clearly than ever before; as if her words had illuminated her extraordinary delicacy of being, had made visible all the infinite refinements of which she was the result. He had a recurrence of his sense of her incongruity here, balanced on polished black pattens, against the darkening hills. The sun disappeared, there was a cool flare of yellow light, and a feeling of impending evening. The hills were indigo, the forest a dimmer gold, a wind moved audible in the dry leaves.

Ludowika gasped. "It's so--so huge," she said, "all the lonely miles. At times I can't bear to think of it." A faint dread invaded him. "Last night, when I couldn't sleep, a thing howled in the woods. And I got thinking of those naked men at the Forge, with their eyes rimmed in black, and--and--"

He disregarded the publicity of their position and put an arm about her shoulders, in an overwhelming impulse to calm and reassure her; but she slipped away. "I'll be all right again," she promised; "but I think it's more cheerful with the candles. We'll get your sister to play Belshazzar and pretend we're across the green from St. James."

A mood darker than any he had lately known settled over him. It was natural for Ludowika to be lonely, at first; but in a little she would grow to love the wild like himself. She must. The Province was to be her life. He was standing before the fire in the informal chamber beyond the dining room, watching his mother's vigorous hands deftly engaged in embroidery. There was no one present, and a sudden, totally desperate recklessness possessed him. Isabel Penny said:

"Mr. Winscombe will be here shortly."

"I wish it would be to-night," he declared. She raised her calm gaze with brows arched in inquiry. "There is something--" he broke off. "She belongs to me," he said in a low, harsh voice, "and not to that old man."

Mrs. Penny secured her needle, and put the colourful web aside. She was, as he had been sure she would be, entirely composed, admirable. Her questioning look grew keener. "I was afraid of that," she admitted simply; "after the first. It is very unpleasant and difficult. This is not London, and your father will make no allowances. You are not any easier to bend, Howat. With Mrs. Winscombe--" she paused, "I am not certain. But there is no doubt about the husband."

"She belongs to me," he reiterated sullenly.

"There is no need for you to make yourself offensively clear. I know something of details of that kind. I told you once that they might mean only a very little to--to certain women. I am not prepared to judge about that. But I know you, what bitter feeling you are capable of. You are a very pure man, Howat; and for that reason such an occurrence would tear you up and across. There is no use in begging you to be cautious, diplomatic. Mr. Winscombe, too, is very determined; he has many advantages--maturity, coldness, experience. He won't spare you, either. It's excessively unfortunate."

"I'll get it over as quickly as possible. I didn't want the thing to happen, it wasn't from any choice; it hit me like a bullet. Nothing else is of the slightest importance. I've gone over this again and again; I'll tell him and let him try what he can. Ludowika's gone from--from the fireworks and fiddles and stinking courts; I've got her, and, by God, I'll keep her!"

"Talk quietly; you can't shout yourself into this. Are you certain that Mrs. Winscombe really finds the courts--stinking? I remember, at first," she stopped. Even in the midst of his passion he listened for what revelation she might make; but none followed. She was silent for a minute. "They become a habit," she said finally; "love, loves, become a habit. Only men brought up in the same atmosphere can understand. At first Felix Winscombe will be infuriated with you for speaking, then he will realize more, and the trouble will follow. Are you certain that you have comprehended? It would be stupid to mistake an episode, you would succeed only in making yourself ridiculous."

He lifted up both his hands and closed them with a quivering, relentless force.

"Truly," Isabel Penny remarked, "truly I begin to be sorry for her. There is something she has yet to learn about men. Nothing can be said; and that is what your father will not penetrate. Howat, I am even a little afraid ... now. That, I believe, is unusual for me. It's your blackness, like powder. The explosion can kill. Nothing may be said. Life drags us along by the hair."

Her questions about Ludowika joined to the memory of the latter's revulsion from the primitive conditions of the Province and added to the heaviness of his heart. He mentally denied his mother's suggestions, drove them from him, but they left a faint enduring sting, a vague unrest. His passion for Ludowika swelled, dominated, him; he forgot everything but his own, supreme desire. Nothing else stood before its flood; all thought of Ludowika's final happiness was lost with the other detritus. The tense closing of his hands had symbolized his feeling, his intent. He held her in a manner as nakedly primitive as the inchoate sexuality of the emotion that had engulfed him.

Ludowika did not appear for supper, and he was possessed by a misery of vague apprehensions. He must know something of her thoughts, have a token from her of some feeling like his own; and, waiting, he stopped the Italian on the stairs. The latter knew his purpose immediately, without a spoken word; and he followed Howat's brusque gesture to his room. He hastily wrote a note; and the latter brought him back a reply, only partly satisfactory, with an air of relish. For the first time the affair had the hateful appearance of an intrigue, like a court adventure. It was the Italian servant, Howat decided; and immediately he recognized why he disliked the other--it was because he expressed an aspect of slyness that lay over Ludowika and himself. He put that from him, too; but it was like brushing away cobwebs. His hunger for Ludowika increased all the while; it became more burningly material, insatiable and concrete.

On the day following she clung to him, when opportunity offered, with a desperate energy of emotion. "You must hold me tighter," she told him. Her mood rapidly changed, and she complained of the eternal, pervasive fall of the forge hammer. "It will drive me mad," she declared almost wildly. "I can't bear to think of its going on and on, year after year; listening to it--" He heard her with sombre eyes. She had come to the counting house, empty for the moment but for themselves, and stood with her countenance shadowed by a frown. "If the hammer stops," he replied, waving his hand largely, "all this, the Pennys, stop, too. I'm afraid that sound of beating out iron will be always wrought through our lives. You will get accustomed to it--"

Her expression grew petulant, resentful. "Do you mean that we couldn't, perhaps, go to England, if--if I wanted?" He moved closer to her, brushing the circumference of her skirt. "You asked me to hold you, to keep you from the past; and I am going to do it. London is all that you wish to forget; it must go completely out of your life ... never finger you again." A faint dread that deepened almost to antagonism was visible on her countenance. "I suppose to men talk like that seems a sign of strength, of possession; but it doesn't impress women, really. You see, women give, or else--there is nothing."