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Updated: May 4, 2025
"Really," the other observed, "really, I shall have to ask you to control your language or leave." "I wonder if she will?" the surprising James Polder sombrely speculated. "I wonder if I am? But there are other women, with better hearts." "Are we to construe this as a threat?" Howat asked in a delicately balanced tone. "For God's sake," he begged, "can't you be human!"
All this failed to detract from his initial dislike of young Polder. There was a lack of breeding in the manner in which he sat in his chair, thrust forward on its edge, in his arrogant proclamation of ability, success. James Polder was anxious, he realized, to impress him, Howat Penny, with the fact that he was not negligible. Such things were utterly unimportant to him.
The days passed without feature, or word from Mariana, and Howat Penny fell into an almost slumberous monotony of existence. It was not unpleasant; occupied with small duties, intent on his papers, or wandering in a past that seemed to grow clearer, rather than fade, as time multiplied, he maintained his erect, carefully ordered existence.
A clawing shape shot to the ground, struggled to its feet, but the raccoon was instantly smothered in a snarling pyramid of dogs. Howat Penny was overwhelmingly weary. He had tramped all day, since before morning; while now another dawn was approaching, and the hunters were at least ten miles from the Furnace.
"Felix, the end of this week," she repeated. "I'll kill him," Howat whispered; "if he lifts a hand I'll shoot him through the head. This was forced on me; some one else, responsible, can pay." Her chin was up, her expression mocking. "Ridiculous, like any cloddish countryman." She walked deliberately away, seated herself in a graceful eddy of panniered silk.
He compared the value of pig metal, the cost of charcoal, wages, with the return of the blooms and anconies they shipped to England. Howat experienced his father's indignation at the manner in which London limited the Province's industries. For the first time he was conscious of an actual interest in the success of Myrtle Forge, a personal concern in its output.
Charcoal burners were lawless men, fugitive in character, often escaped from terms of indenture; Dan Hesa was, he knew, well liked by them; and the hazard created by his attraction to Fanny Gilkan drew Howat Penny irresistibly away from the superior merits of the Heydrick table.
He turned again, and walked slowly away, when a broken piece of rough casting hurtled by his head. In an overpowering rage he whirled about, throwing his rifle to his shoulder. A man detached from the group was lowering his arm; and, holding the sights hard on the other's metal-buttoned, twill jacket, Howat pulled the trigger. There was only an answering dull, ineffectual click.
It was, he made that clear, wholly Charlotte. But Kingsfrere Jannan was increasingly impatient. "Where is Polder?" he demanded. Howat surveyed him with neither favour nor reply. Suddenly he understood the feeling of both men they considered that he was too old to have any grip or comprehension of life. They were quietly but obviously relegating him to the back of the scene.
It was not until after dinner, when they were playing sniff, that he realized that she omitted the young man's name. He intended to ask it, but, his mind and hand hovering over an ivory domino, he forgot. "Twenty," he announced, reaching for the scoring pad. "Oh, hell, Howat!" she protested. "That's the game, almost."
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