The Three Black Pennys | Page 2

affording Peter Heydrick a necessary, unobstructed
view of the Furnace stack while sitting in his house or when aroused at
night. The dwelling was inviting, at once slipping into the dusk and
emerging by reason of the warm glow within. Mrs. Heydrick, too, was

an excellent cook; there would be plenty of venison, roast partridge,
okra soup. Afterwards, under a late moon, he could go back to Myrtle
Forge; or he might stay at the Heydricks all night, and to-morrow kill
such a buck as he had lost.
The twilight darkened beneath the trees, the surrounding hills lost their
forms, in the east the distance merged into the oncoming night, but the
west was still translucent, green. There was a faint movement in the
leaves by the roadside, and a grey fox crossed, flattened on the ground,
and disappeared. Howat Penny could see the liquid gleam of its eyes as
it watched him. From the hill by the coal house came the heavy beating
of wild turkeys' wings.
He could go to Peter Heydrick's, where the venison would be excellent,
and Mrs. Heydrick was celebrated for her guinea pickle with
cucumbers; but ... the Heydricks had no daughter, and the Gilkans had.
Thomas Gilkan was only a founderman; his house had one room below
and a partition above; and Mrs. Gilkan's casual fare could not be
compared to Mrs. Heydrick's inviting amplitude. Yet there was Fanny
Gilkan, erect and flaming haired, who could walk as far as he could
himself, and carry her father's clumsy gun all the way.
His thoughts, deflected by Fanny Gilkan, left the immediate present of
supper, and rested upon the fact that his--his appreciation of her was
becoming known at the Furnace; while Dan Hesa must be circulating it,
with biting comments, among the charcoal burners. Dan Hesa, although
younger than Howat, was already contracting for charcoal, a forward
young German; and, Fanny had said with a giggle, he was paying her
serious attention. Howat Penny had lately seen a new moroseness
among the charcoal burners that could only have come from the
association of the son of Gilbert Penny and the potential owner of
Myrtle Forge with the founderman's daughter. 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.
That was his character: denial as a child had filled him with
slow-accumulating rage; later discipline at school had found him
utterly intractable. Something deep and instinctive within him resisted
every effort to make him a part of any social organization, however

admirable; he never formed any personal bonds with humanity in
particular. He had grown into a solitary being within whom were
immovably locked all the confidences, the spontaneous expressions of
self, that bind men into a solidarity of common failings and hopes. He
never offered, nor, apparently, required, any marks of sympathy; as a
fact, he rarely expressed anything except an occasional irrepressible
scorn lashing out at individuals or acts that conspicuously displeased
him. This had occurred more than once at Myrtle Forge, when
assemblymen or members of the Provincial Council had been seated at
dinner.
It was after such a scene that his mother had witnessed perhaps his only
attempt at self-explanation. "I am sorry you were disturbed," he had
pronounced, after standing and regarding her for a silent, frowning
space; "but for me there is something unendurable in men herding like
cattle, protecting their fat with warning boards and fences. I can't
manage the fiddling lies that keep up the whole silly pretence of the
stuffy show. If it gets much thicker," he had threatened, waving
vaguely toward the west, "I'll go out to the Ohio, or the French forts."
That this was not merely a passive but an active state of mind was
amply expressed by his resolute movement toward Thomas Gilkan's
house. He had, ordinarily, an unusual liking for the charcoal burners,
and had spent many nights in their huts, built, like the charring stacks,
of mud and branches. But, organized by Dan Hesa into an opposition, a
criticism of his choice of way, they offered an epitome of the
conditions he derided and assailed.
His feeling for Fanny Gilkan was in the greater part understood,
measured; there was a certain amount of inchoate, youthful response to
her sheer physical well being, a vague blur of pleasant sensation at her
proximity; but beyond that he felt no attraction except a careless
admiration for her endurance and dexterity in the woods, a certain relief
in the freedom of her companionship. He had never considered her
concretely as a possible source of physical pleasure. He was