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He forgot all premonitions, doubt was behind him; he no longer gauged the value of his desire for Ludowika Winscombe. She was something he would, had to, have. David Forsythe sat across the back of a chair in Howat's room as the latter dressed in the rapidly failing light.
He could barely discern the towering bulk of the water wheel and roofs of the sheds. He felt uneasy, obscurely and emotionally disturbed. Already Fanny Gilkan seemed far away, to have dropped out of his life. He would give some gold to the charcoal burner he had attempted to shoot. Mrs. Winscombe annoyed him by her attitude toward Myrtle Forge, her unvarnished air of condescension.
Winscombe bowed over the table, "I am inclined to take advantage of that. Ludowika would be the better without even Quaker gaiety for a little." He stopped, turned toward her. "I'd like it immensely," she replied simply. "I am sure it would give me back all that I've lost in passage.
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.
Last night you were with her over an hour on the lawn. I could see that father thought it queer; but I explained to him that court women never thought of little things like, well, husbands." Howat gazed at her coldly, for the first time conscious that he actually disliked Myrtle. He made up his mind, definitely, to assist Caroline as far as possible. She was absurd, criticizing Mrs. Winscombe.
Winscombe was like an orris-scented air moving across the face of great trees sweeping their virginal foliage into the region of strong and pure winds. He was dimly conscious of the awakening in him of undivined pressures, the stirring of attenuated yet persisting influences.
When he decided reluctantly to follow he was kept back by the sound of a familiar explanation in his father's decisive, full tones. "Howat," he pronounced, obviously addressing the elder Winscombe, "is a black Penny. That is what we call them in our family. You see, the Pennys, some hundreds of years back, acquired a strong Welsh strain.
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.
"Mr. Winscombe," Howat Penny's mother said, "my son." The former bowed with formal civility, but gave a baffling effect of mockery which, Howat discovered, enveloped practically every movement and speech. He was, he said, enchanted to meet Mr.
Ludowika listened seriously to Gilbert Penny's few, temperate words of preparation. "He has had a pain like that before," she told them. "It always passes away. Felix is really very strong, in spite of his age. He won't ordinarily go to bed, but I'll insist on that now, simply for rest." Felix Winscombe appeared at the supper hour.
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