"It's useful," Polder declared; "it has a tensile strength. I know what it will do. This," he indicated the fragment of a grace razed over twenty-three hundred years before, "is good for nothing that I see." Now, Howat told himself, it was merely a question of tensile strength. His old enthusiasms, his passionate admiration for the operas of Christopher Gluck, the enthusiasms and admirations of his kind, were being pushed aside for things of more obvious practicality. The very term that had distinguished his world, men of breeding, had been discarded. Individuals like James Polder, blunt of speech, contemptuous, labour scarred, were paramount to-day.
His thoughts, he realized, were a part of the questioning thrust on him by the intrusion of Mariana's unfortunate affair into his old age. She was always dragging him to a perplexing spectacle for which he had neither energy nor inclination. But he'd be damned if he would allow the importunities of the young man beyond the table to complicate further his difficulties, and he retired abruptly behind the Saturday Review. "You'd better get along up," he said brusquely, after a little.
Breakfast at an end, they settled into a not uncomfortable, mutual silence. They smoked; James Polder unfolded newspapers which he neglected to read; Howat went through the periodicals with audible expressions of displeasure. He wondered when Mariana would appear. Mariana made a fool of him, that was evident; however, he would put his foot on any philandering about Shadrach. He could be as blunt as James Polder when the occasion demanded. After lunch the latter fell asleep in his chair on the porch, pallidly insensible of the sparkling flood of afternoon. Howat rose and went into the house. It was indecent to see a countenance so wearily unguarded, shorn of all protective aggression. Mariana walked in unannounced.
"Why didn't you telephone for Honduras?" he complained. "Always some infernal difference in what you do." She frowned. "Suddenly," she admitted, "I wasn't in a hurry to get here. I almost went back. Idiotic."
"Sensible, it seems to me," he commented. "That Polder is asleep on the porch." She nodded, "Splendid. And you needn't try to look fierce. I can see through you and out the back." He lit a cigarette angrily. "Going to stay for the night?" he demanded. "Several," she replied coolly. "Three can play sniff."
"Look here, Mariana," he proclaimed, "I won't have any nonsense, do you understand?"
"We can keep a photograph of Harriet on the table."
James Polder entered, and put a temporary end to his determined speech. When the former saw Mariana his shameless pleasure, Howat thought, was beyond credence. Positively neither of them paid any more attention to him than they did to Rudolph. His irritation gave place to a deeper realization that an impossible situation threatened. There was nothing, obviously, that he could do to-day; but he would speak seriously to Mariana to-morrow; one or both of them would have to leave Shadrach. This determination took the present weight from his conscience; and, pottering about small concerns of his own, he ignored them comfortably.
They appeared late, dirty and hot, for dinner; and it was eight o'clock before Mariana came down in a gown like a white-petalled flower. She wore no rings, but about her throat was a necklace of old-fashioned seed pearls in loops and rosettes. "It's family," she told them; "it belonged to Caroline Penny. And she married a Quaker, too; a David Forsythe." She stopped suddenly, and Howat Penny recalled the tradition that Caroline Penny, Gilbert's daughter, had appropriated her sister Myrtle's suitor. Mariana favoured him with a fleet glance, the quiver of a reprehensible wink. He glared back at her choking with suppressed wrath. "I have a wonderful idea for to-morrow," she proceeded tranquilly; "we'll take lunch, and leave Honduras, and go to Myrtle Forge for the day."
Her design was unfolded so rapidly, her directions to Rudolph so explicit, that he had no opportunity to oppose his plan of sending her away in the morning; and his impotence committed him to her suggestion. She could go in the evening almost as well. After dinner he rattled the dominoes significantly, but Mariana, smiling at him absently, went through the room and out upon the porch. Polder, with an obscure sentence, followed her. A soft rain sounded on the porch roof; but there was no wind; the night was warm.