The Three Black Pennys Part 12

"Her things have already come from the hotel," Miss Brundon proceeded.

"Where shall I send them?" Eunice broke in with a shrill protest. "Do I have to go? I don't want to." Her face was scarlet with revolt. "I can walk up and down the room with a book on my head, while another little girl had to be all done with a board to her back."

Jasper Penny wondered if he would see Miss Brundon again soon. The last was an afterthought bred by the realization that he could not permit her to depart absolutely from his life. There was a great deal that he, a rich and influential man of practical affairs, might do for her. He was certain that Susan Brundon needed exactly the a.s.sistance he could give; probably people robbed her, traded callously on her unsuspicious nature.

Yet, when the moment came to leave, he could think of nothing to say beyond the ba.n.a.lity of looking for her at the Jannans'.

"I go out very little," she told him; "the work here absorbs me; and, unfortunately, my eyes are not strong. They require constant rest." He expressed regret once more for any disturbance he might have caused; and, after hesitating awkwardly, left with Eunice hanging fretfully at his hand. What, in G.o.d's name, was he to do with the child? He walked slowly, his face half lost in the fur of his overcoat, oblivious, in his concentration on the difficulties of her situation, of Eunice progressing discontentedly at his side. A petulant complaint rose at intervals to an audible sob. Looking down, as the sobs threatened to become a continuous crying, he saw the top of the velvet bonnet and her diminutive hands in scarlet knitted mitts. He would have to stop dragging her from place to place; a suitable position for the present was all he hoped for now. There must be other inst.i.tutions, larger and farther away, to which Eunice could be sent. He had a vague memory of such a place somewhere on the Delaware, was it at Burlington?

But he could not continue living with his daughter at Sanderson's Hotel.

Jasper Penny decided that he would take her that afternoon to the house of the head machinist of his nail works at Jaffa, the town that, its beginning growing largely out of the Penny industries, lay a scant mile from Myrtle Forge. Speever was a superior man; his wife, a robust Cornish woman in a crisp ap.r.o.n, would give Eunice an energetic and proper care.

A thin, flexible mantle of snow lay over the drab earth, sweeping up to a Grecian marble edifice, making more dreary the bulk of the Eastern Penitentiary and foundation of Girard College, and emphasizing the winter desertion of the reaches of the Fairmount Water Works. She soon grew absorbed in the various aspects of their transportation--the echo of the whip cracking over the mules that drew the coaches across the covered viaduct, the labouring stationary engine and their slow ascent beyond. They saw, lining the river, a cemetery elevated starkly against the sky; and followed a ca.n.a.l by a broken, black flood between snowy banks.

Past a town with impressive residences and manufactories with low spreading veils of smoke, they came on a confusion of ca.n.a.ls and ca.n.a.l boats, lock dams and bridges, mules and raffish crews with tanned faces and brightly coloured jackets and boots. Again crossing the river and a shallow, tranquil valley, the train brigade rolled into the main street of Jaffa. It was a town of small brick dwellings, s.p.a.ced in orderly yards, echoing to the diminished clamour of the Penny Rolling Mills on the outskirts. Beyond the walls, starkly red against the snow, the blackened main street, the river was spotted with ice.

Edgar Speever's wife accepted Eunice with an immediate and unquestioning capability, and Jasper Penny turned away with a momentary but immense relief. In a few days, after the deed for the possession of the child had been executed, he could place her more permanently. He walked out to the miscellaneous group of buildings and cluttered yards that held his inherited activity; and in the small single-roomed building of the main office discussed with his superintendent the changes, improvements of process, then under way. The old nail machines, propelled by the feet and hands of an operator, and producing but one nail at a time, had been replaced by a high power engine, self-heading machinery. The superintendent complained of the pig from the new hot blast furnaces.

"Impure," he declared. "And this new stone coal firing, too, makes but poor stuff. It'll never touch the old charcoal forging. Hammered bar's at ninety, and I'm glad to get it then. The puddling furnaces will do something with the grey pig; we have eight in blast now, turning out the railroad and heavier bars. This year will see forty-five hundred tons of iron worked, and close to four thousand kegs of nails."

Jasper Penny listened attentively; it was his intention soon to dispense entirely with all the time-honoured methods of iron manufacture. Water power, with its unequal flow, any large employment of charcoal, growing increasingly expensive with the rapid diminishment of the forests, must give place to the steam blast machine and anthracite. If his manager was unable to change, develop, with the changing times he would find another, more scientific.

Outside the early twilight made more grey the dingy sheds and buildings, the heaped slag; the long brick rectangle of the rolling mill, with its triple imposed, ventilated roof and the high, smoking stacks of the puddling furnaces, rising four from either length, gave out an undiminished, deafening uproar, the clamour of the bars falling out from the rollers, the spatter of hammers and dull dragging of heavy weights.

The engine of the nail works rent all other sound with an unaccustomed, harsh blast.... Jasper Penny was conscious of a deep, involuntary relief when he reached the comparative tranquillity, the secession of vexatious problems, accomplished by Myrtle Forge.

XIV

There was, as always, an elaborate, steaming supper, with his mother, in a pelisse of black silk ruching, and Amity Merken at their places. He noted that an empty chair had been put, as customary, at the opposite end of the table, and with a trace of impatience ordered its removal. He wondered momentarily at his petty act; and then his thoughts returned to Susan Brundon. Jasper Penny saw her blue gaze lifted to his face, the hesitating smile; he felt again the pervading influence of her delicate yet essentially unshrinking spirit. She would possess an enormous steadfastness of purpose, he decided; a potentiality of immovable self-sacrifice. Yet she was the gentlest person alive. An unusual and resplendent combination of traits, rare possibilities.

She had told him that she seldom went about--her school absorbed her, and her eyes needed care, rest. He must ask Stephen Jannan further about her. They were sitting, Jasper Penny, his mother and her sister, in the parlour; a large, square chamber hung with dark maroon paper and long, many ta.s.selled and corniced window curtains in sombre green plush. A white wedgewood mantel with ornaments in olive and blue, above a bra.s.s-fretted closed stove, supported a high mirror, against which were ranged a pair of tall astral lamps shining in green and red spars of light through their pendants, a French clock--a crystal ball in a miniature Ionic pavilion of gilt--and artificial bouquets of coloured wax under gla.s.s domes. A thick carpet of purplish black velvet pile covered the floor from wall to wall; stiff Adam chairs and settee with wheelbacks of black and gold were upholstered in dusky ruby and indigo.

Ebony tables of framed, inlaid onyx held tortoise sh.e.l.l and lacquer ornaments, an inlaid tulip-wood music-box, volumes in elaborately tooled morocco, and a globe where, apparently, metallic fish were suspended in a translucent, green gloom.

The light from the multiple candelabras of ormolu and cut l.u.s.tres streamed from the walls over Jasper Penny, sunk forward in profound absorption, and his mother's busy, fat hands working with gay worsteds.

At her side a low stand of rubbed Chinese vermilion held her spilling yarns. Her face was placid, dryly pinkish and full. An irreproachable, domestic female. Herself the daughter of a successful Pennsylvania German Ironmaster, her wealth had doubled the Penny successes. There had been other children; Jasper could only faintly remember two, mostly in the form of infantile whimpering.

The inevitable termination of the evening was readied by the appearance of a pitcher of steaming, spiced mulled wine. A cupful was formally presented to Amity Merken; Gilda Penny sipped hers with an audible satisfaction, and Jasper Penny absently drank the fragrant compound of cinnamon bark and lemon, cloves, sugar and claret. A measure of that, before retiring, could not but be beneficial to Susan Brundon, fatigued by the duties of her Academy. He thought of the sharper breath of the brandy and oranges compounded by Essie Scofield. A thin odour of foxglove clung to the memory of his wife.

XV

Jasper Penny supplemented Jannan's letter to Essie Scofield, asking for an appointment with his client at the law office, with a short communication laying before her the condition in which he had found Eunice, his knowledge of her neglect to provide their daughter with the funds he had sent for that purpose, and definite plans for his complete control of the child. At the despatch of this he felt that his duty, where Essie as a formal parent resided, was ended. It was now only a question of an agreement on terms. He got no reply, other than a notification from Stephen Jannan that a meeting had been arranged for the following week. And, at eleven o'clock, on a clear, thin blue winter morning, he mounted, with Eunice, to the entrance of Jannan's offices on Fourth Street.

Essie Scofield, in widespread mulberry silk with tight sleeves and broad steel b.u.t.tons, a close brimmed blue bonnet filled with lilacs and tied with an old rose ribbon, was more compelling than Jasper Penny had remembered her for, actually, years. A coffee-coloured India shawl, with a deep fringe and trace of a lining checkered in cherry and black slipping from her shoulders, toned her appearance to a potential dignity.

"Eunice," she exclaimed, as the child entered, "do come here at my side!" A small, cold mouth was silently raised for a straining embrace.

Stephen Jannan proceeded at once, addressing Essie Scofield. "Mr. Penny informs me that he has written you explaining our purpose. I have already instructed you of the law in such a connexion, and there remains only your signatures to these papers. I begged you, if you will remember, to come with counsel, but since you have not done that it will be best for you to read this deed, which is quite clear in its intent."

Essie gazed dramatically at the paper the lawyer tended her. "It means,"

she said, "that I am to lose Eunice, and because I cannot offer her any advantages beyond those of a slim purse. I am a most unfortunate creature." Jasper Penny sc.r.a.ped his chair back impatiently, but Stephen enforced his silence with a gesture. "While my client understands that no monetary consideration can compensate for the breaking of ties of affection," Stephen Jannan went on smoothly, "and while he offers none in payment to that end, still we feel that some material recognition should be due you. Have you anything to say, suggest, at this point?"

Essie Scofield's arm was about Eunice's waist. "I am to be parted from my little daughter," she exclaimed; "and my tears are to be stopped with gold--an affectionate breast, a heart-wrung appeal, stilled by a bribe.

That is the price paid by a trusting, an unsuspicious, female. Long ago, when a mere girl, dazzled by--"

"We won't go into that," Jannan interrupted, "but confine ourselves to the immediate development. By signing the paper in question, and accepting a sum of money, you surrender all claim to this child, known as Eunice Scofield."

"How will that affect my--my position in other ways?" she demanded, in a suddenly shrewd, suspicious tone. "Not at all," the lawyer a.s.sured her.

She sobbed once, emotionally; and Eunice regarded her with a wide, unsparing curiosity. "A stranger to me," she gasped, with a paper white face and fluttering eyelids. Jasper Penny e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed sharply, "How much, Essie?" In a moment, he judged, familiar with a potential hysteria, she might faint, scream; there were clerks, people, in the next rooms. On the brink of collapse she hesitated, twisting her purple kid gloves.

"Ten thousand dollars," she said.

Stephen Jannan glanced swiftly at his cousin, and the latter nodded.

"That is satisfactory," Jannan announced. "A mere formality--witnesses."

Essie Scofield traced her signature in round, unformed characters; Jasper Penny followed with a hasty, small script; and Eunice, seated at the impressive table, printed her name slowly, blotting it with a trailing sleeve. The lawyer swung back the door of a heavy safe, and took out a package of white bills of exchange on the Bank of Pennsylvania. Essie counted the notes independently, thrust the money into a steel-beaded reticule with silk cords, and rose, gathering together her cashmere shawl. She ignored Eunice totally in the veiled gaze she directed at Jasper Penny. "It is better," she told him, "if you write first when you expect to visit me. Really, the last time, with some friends there, you were impossible." He bowed stiffly. "Don't let a sense of duty bring you," she concluded boldly. "I get on surprisingly well as it is, as it is," she reiterated, and, he thought, her voice bore almost a threat.

When she had gone the two men sat gazing in a common perplexity at the child. Stephen Jannan's lips were compressed, Jasper Penny's face was slightly drawn as if by pain. Eunice was investigating a thick stick of vermilion sealing wax and a steel die. "Well?" Jannan queried, nodding toward the table. "I thought something of Burlington," Penny replied, "but decided to place her in New York. Want to give her all the chance possible. I intend, at what seems the proper time, to secure her my own name." He stopped the objection clouding his cousin's countenance. "We won't argue that, please. Now about the will; the provision must be explicit and generous. There, at least, I am able to meet a just requirement." Jasper Penny's will was produced, a codicil projected, appended, and witnesses recalled.

"I wanted to inquire about Miss Brundon," Jasper said finally, the business despatched. "She seems to me very fragile for the conducting of an Academy. Is there no family, men, to support her? And her inst.i.tution--does it continue to progress well?"

"Very." Jannan replied to the last question first. "Her children come from the best families in the city; and, under my advice, her charges are high. She has a brother, I believe, a cotton merchant of New Orleans, and quite prosperous. But he has a large family, and Susan will not permit him to deprive it of a dollar for her benefit. As you say, she is not strong; but in spite of that she needs no man's patronage.

The finest qualities, Jasper, the most elevated spirit. A little too conscientious, perhaps; and, although she is thirty-nine, curiously ignorant of the world; but rare ... rare. It almost seems as if there were a conspiracy to keep ugly truths away from her."

Truths, Jasper Penny thought bitterly, such as had just been revealed in Stephen's office. There was, it seemed, nothing he could do for Susan Brundon. He envied the lawyer his position of familiar adviser, the ease with which the other spoke her name: Susan. He rose, fumbling with a jade seal. "Come, Eunice," he said, the lines deepening about his mouth and eyes. Stephen Jannan a.s.sisted him into the heavy, furred coat.

"Well, Jasper," he remarked sympathetically, "if we could but look ahead, if we were older in our youth, yes, and younger in our increasing age, the world would be a different place." He held out to Eunice a newly minted Brazilian goldpiece. "Good-bye," he addressed her; "command me if I can be of any use." She clutched the gold tightly, and Jasper Penny led her out into the winter street. "We must have dinner," he said gravely. "With some yellow rock candy," she added, "and syllabubs."

XVI

He returned to Myrtle Forge from New York with a mingled sense of pleasure and the feeling that his place was unsupportably empty. The loneliness of which he had been increasingly conscious seemed to have its focus in his house. The following morning he walked restlessly down the short, steep descent to the Forge, lying on its swift water diverted from Canary Creek. Unlike a great many iron families of increasing prosperity, the Pennys had not erected the unsightly buildings of their manufacturing about the scene of their initial activity and mansion.

Jasper's father, Daniel Barnes Penny, under whose hand their success had largely multiplied, had grouped their first rolling mill and small nail works by the ca.n.a.l at Jaffa, preserving the pastoral aspect of Myrtle Forge, with its farmland and small, ancient, stone buildings.

Jasper had only made some unimportant changes at the Forge itself--the pigs were subjected to the working of two hearths now, the chafery, where the greater part of the sulphur was burned out, and the finery.

The old system of bellows had been replaced by a wood cylinder, compressing air by piston into a chamber from which the blast was regulated. A blacksmith's shed had been added in the course of time, and a brick c.o.ke oven. He stopped at the Forge shed, filled with ruddy light and shadow, the ringing of hammers, and silently watched the malleable metal on the anvil. Flakes of glowing iron fell, changing from ruby to blue and black.

The Penny iron! The Forge had been operated continuously since seventeen twenty-seven, hammering out the foundation of his, Jasper's, position.

He had taken a not inconsiderable place in the succession of the men of his family; in him the Pennys had reached their greatest importance, wealth. But after him ... what? He was, now, the last Penny man. The foothold Gilbert had cut out of the wild, which Howat and Casimir--an outlandish name obviously traceable to his mother, the foreign widow--had, in turn, increased for Daniel and Jasper, would be dissipated. His great, great aunt, Caroline, marrying a solid Quaker, had contributed, too, to the family stamina; while her granddaughter, wedding a Jannan, had increased the social prestige and connections of the family. The Jannans, bankers and lawyers, had already converted the greater part of their iron inheritance into more speculative finance; and the burden of the industry rested on Jasper Penny's shoulders.

At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible monument of their endurance and rect.i.tude, except for the tenuous, momentary fact of Eunice, would be overthrown, forgot. He was conscious of a strong inner protest against such oblivion. He had, of course, often before lamented the fact that he had no son; but suddenly his loss became a hundred times more poignant, regrettable. Jasper Penny caught again the remembered, oppressive odour of foxglove, the aromatic reek of brandy and oranges; one, in its implications, as sterile as the other.

He was possessed by an overwhelming sense of essential failure, a recurrence of the dark mood that had enveloped him in leaving the Jannans' ball.

Yet, he thought again, he was still in the midstride of his life, his powers. His health was unimpaired; his presence bore none of the slackening aspect of increasing years. These feelings occupied him, speeding in a single cutter sleigh over the crisp snow of the road leading from his home to Shadrach Furnace, where Graham Jannan and his young wife had been newly installed in the foremens' dwelling. There was a slight uneasiness about Graham's lungs, in consequence of which he had been taken out of the banking house of an uncle, Jannan and Provost, and set at the more robust task of picking up the management of an iron furnace.

It was early afternoon; the sky was as dryly powdered with unbroken blue as was the earth with white. The silver bells and scarlet pompons of the harness crackled in the still, intense cold; and a blanched vapour hung about the horse's head. Jasper Penny, enveloped in voluminous buffalo robes and fur, gazed with an increased interest at the familiar, flowing scene; nearby the forest had been cut, and suave, rolling fields stretched to a far mauve haze of trees; the ultramarine smoke of farmhouse chimneys everywhere climbed into the pale wash of sunlight; orderly fence succeeded fence. How rapidly, and prosperous, the country was growing! Even he could remember wide reaches of wild that were now cultivated. The game, quail and wild turkey and deer, was fast disappearing. The country was growing amazingly, too, extending through the Louisiana Purchase, State by State, to Mexico and the Texan border.