At his death the name, the long and faithful labour, the tangible
monument of their endurance and rectitude, 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.
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