Occasionally Mr. Winscombe's tenuous fingers dipped into a snuff box of black enamel and brilliants, and he lifted his hand languidly. The man's vitality, his sheer determination, were extraordinary. Even now he was far from impotence. He had, Howat had learned, completely dominated the Provincial Councils, forced a mutual compromise and agreement on them. He spoke of still more complicated affairs awaiting him in England. He damned the Italian's "white liver," and threatened to leave him in America. Dr. Watlow had been forced to return to the city.
Through the unaccustomed stir Howat was ceaselessly aware of his feeling for Ludowika; he thought of it with a sense of shame; but it easily drowned all other considerations. He continued to speculate about their future together. Whatever his father might conclude about his personal arrangements, the elder would see that he was necessary to the future of the Penny iron. They might live in one of the outlying stone dwellings at the Forge ... for the present. He was glad that Gilbert Penny, that he, was rich. Ludowika could continue to dress in rare fabrics, to step in elaborate pattens over the common earth. That could not help but influence, assuage, her in the end. The Pennys' position in the Province, too, was high; the most exclusive assemblies were open to them. He regarded his satisfaction in these details with something of Mr. Winscombe's bitter humour. In the past he had repudiated them with the utmost scorn. In the past—dim shapes, scenes, that appeared to have occurred years before, but which in reality reached to last month, trooped through his mind. Youth had vanished like a form dropping behind a hill. He looked back; it was gone; his feet hurried forward into the unguessed future; anxiety joined him; the scent that was Ludowika accompanied him, an illusive figure. He reached toward it.
He was standing at the foot of the bed where Felix Winscombe lay. The latter was restless, and complained of pains in his arms, reaching down to his fingers. Ludowika bent over him, her face stamped with concern. She regarded Howat with a new expression—narrowed eyes and a glimmer of flawless teeth: a look he had never foreseen there; but it was impotent before the thing that was. It had, however, the effect of intensifying his desire, his passion for her fragility of silk and flesh. He would kiss her hate on her mouth.
She sat by the bedside, and Howat took a place opposite her. Candles burned on a highboy, on a table at his back; and their auriferous light flowed in about the bedstead. The latter was draped from the canopy to the bases of the posts in a bright printing of pheasants and conventional thickets—cobalt and ruby and orange; and across a heavy counterpane half drawn up stalked a row of panoplied Indians in clipped zephyr. It was a nebulous enclosure with the shadows of the hangings wavering on the coloured wool and cold linen, on the long, seamed countenance of the prostrate man.
A clock in the hall struck slowly—it needed winding—ten blurred notes. Felix Winscombe took a sip of water. A minute snapping sounded from the hearth. A window stirred, and there was a dry turning of leaves without; wind. One of the Indians, Howat saw, had his arm raised, flourishing a blade; a stupid effigy of savage spleen. Beyond the drapery Ludowika's face was dim and white. It was like an ineffable May moon. Ludowika ... Penny. For the first time Howat thought of her endowed with his name, and it gave him a deep thrill of delight. He repeated it with moving but soundless lips—Ludowika Penny.
Her husband lay with his eyes closed, his head bowed forward on his chest, as if in sleep. At irregular intervals small, involuntary contractions of pain twitched at his mouth. At times, too, he muttered noiselessly. Extraordinary. Ludowika and Felix Winscombe and himself, Howat Penny. A world peopled only by them; the silence of the room dropped into infinite space, bottomless time. A sudden dread of such vast emptiness seized Howat; he felt that he must say something, recreate about them the illusion of safe and familiar spaces and walls. It seemed that he was unable to speak; a leaden inhibition lay on his power of utterance. He made a harsh sound in his throat, loud and startling. Felix Winscombe raised his head, and Ludowika cried faintly. Then silence again folded them.
Howat fastened his thoughts on trivial and practical affairs—the furnishing of the house where he would take Ludowika, what David and himself intended to do with the iron, and then his last, long talk with his mother. She was astonishingly wise; she had seen far into Ludowika and himself, but even her vision had stopped short of encompassing the magnitude of his passion; she had not realized his new patience and determination. He found himself counting the gorgeous birds in the bed-hangings—twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and stopped abruptly.
It had grown chilly in the room, and Ludowika had an India cashmere shawl about her shoulders. The sombre garnets and blues hid the tinsel gaiety of her gown and her bare shoulders. She appeared older than he had ever seen her before. Her face, carefully studied, showed no trace of beauty; her eyes were heavy, her lips dark; any efforts of animation were suspended. She showed completely the effect of her life in courts and a careless prodigality of hours and emotions. Howat, seeing all this, felt only a fresh accession of his hunger for her; she was far more compelling than when romantically viewed as a moon.
He sat with his chin propped on a palm; she was rigidly upright with her arms at her sides; Felix Winscombe moved higher on the pillows. His eyes glittered in a head like a modelling in clay; his arms stirred ceaselessly with weaving fingers. Howat could almost feel Ludowika's hatred striking at him across the bed. He smiled at her, and she faced him with an expression of stony unresponse. He thought luxuriantly of her in his arms, with the rain beating on the store house roof; he caught the odours of the damp, heaped merchandise, the distant clamour in the casting shed. He had a brutal impulse to lean forward and remind her of what had occurred, of the fact that she was his; he wanted to fling it against her present detachment, to mock her with it. Then he would crush her against his heart. Felix Winscombe raised up on an elbow, distorting the row of sanguinary Indians.
Ludowika moved to the edge of the bed, and put a firm, graceful arm about him. A grey shadow of pain fell on Mr. Winscombe's features. The silence was absolute. He seemed to be waiting in an attitude of mingled dread and resolution. He whispered an unintelligible period, the pain on his face sharpened, and he released himself from Ludowika's support. She sank back on her chair, gazing at her husband with wide, concerned eyes.