Penhallow (13 page)

However, Dr Lifton was sufficiently impressed by the folly of Penhallow’s present conduct to warn Faith and Raymond severally that if they wished him to survive they must put a stop to his disastrous energy, and regulate drastically his consumption of wines and spirits. Raymond, when this was propounded to him, gave a short laugh, recommended the doctor to address his advice to the patient, and walked out of the room, saying that he had something better to do than to talk about impossibilities.

Faith, when similarly admonished, faltered that Dr Lifton knew what her husband was. He could not deny this, but said that he could not be responsible for the outcome if Penhallow continued to indulge his taste for strong drink to the extent he was now doing.

‘He says — he says you told him that he might take stimulants to keep his strength up,’ faltered Faith.

‘Mrs Penhallow, are you aware of the amount of liquor your husband consumes?’ demanded Lifton.

‘Yes — no — I mean, I’ve always said he drank too much, but it never seems to affect him. And really he does seem better now than he’s been all winter.’

‘He has the most amazing constitution I ever met with,’ said Lifton frankly. ‘But he can’t last at this rate. All this dashin’ about the country, too! It isn’t fit for him. You’ll have to use your influence with him, my dear.’

Faith was incapable of admitting that she possessed no influence over Penhallow — a fact of which he was well aware — and said rather vaguely: ‘Yes, of course. Only he has a — a very strong will, you know, Doctor.’

‘He’s the most obstinate old devil in the county, and well I know it!’ responded Lifton, not mincing matters.

Clara, when this conversation was reported to her, shook her head, and said that Lifton was an old woman,. and knew less about Penhallow’s constitution than she knew about the workings of a combustion engine. ‘He’s been sayin’ for years that Adam will kill himself with his goin’s on, but he’s not dead yet, my dear, nor likely to be. It’s my belief this heart-dropsy of his isn’t as bad as he likes to make out. You mark my words: he’ll go on for a good many years yet. As for all this dashin’ around, it’s the spring got into his blood. He’ll quieten down again if you don’t pester him or take any notice of his antics.’

Faith was roused to say with some indignation: ‘It’s impossible not to take any notice of him when he does such outrageous things! Do you know that he actually took Jimmy with him when he went to call on Rosamund the other day, and insisted on her more or less recognising the creature?’

‘He shouldn’t have done that,’ agreed Clara. ‘But there! He was always one to enjoy his bit of fun, and nothin’ ever tickles him more than to shock people. I’ve no patience with Rosamund for kickin’ up such a song and dance about it!’

‘Well, I think it was disgusting!’ said Faith. ‘And apart from anything else, taking Jimmy about with him in that way is simply making him more objectionable than he was before. Jimmy, I mean. He’s beginning to behave as though he could do exactly as he liked, and I’m sure I’m not surprised at it!’

‘I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,’ said Clara. ‘The boys will soon knock it out of him, if he gets above himself.’

‘Knock what out of whom?’ inquired Eugene, who had come into the room in time to overhear this remark.

‘Faith thinks your father’s makin’ a fool of Jimmy.’

‘Repulsive by-blow!’ said Eugene, lowering himself into an easy-chair. ‘He’s quite beneath my notice. Of course, I see that bringing him under our roof is a truly superb gesture, but if he’s a fair specimen of Father’s illegitimate offspring I can only be thankful that he hasn’t extended the practice of adoption to the rest of them.’

‘I don’t expect any of you to see the thing in an ordinarily decent light,’ said Faith, ‘but I regard his presence here as a direct insult to me!’

Eugene regarded her with some amusement. ‘Oh, I don’t think you need!’ he said sweetly. ‘That little episode was before your time.’

‘I sometimes think you none of you have any moral sense at all!’ Faith cried.

‘Well, not much, anyway,’ agreed Eugene. ‘Except Bart, of course.’

‘Bart!’

He smiled. ‘It does seem odd, doesn’t it? Deplorable:, too, one must admit. There is something almost suburban about the respectability of his present matrimonial intentions.’

Faith coloured hotly. ‘It isn’t true! Loveday has never dreamt of such a thing! If it hadn’t been for you starting what I can only call a malicious rumour, no one would ever have thought of it!’

Clara looked from one to the other of them, with an expression of mild dismay on her face. ‘You don’t mean it! Well, I thought he was up to something. But I don’t like that at all, and, what’s more, his father will never hear of it.’

‘Clara! It’s nothing but one of Eugene’s scandals! I’m perfectly sure Loveday has never looked at Bart!’

Clara looked unconvinced, merely remarking gloomily that she had said all along that Loveday was a sly gal. Thoroughly incensed, Faith left the room. Eugene yawned, and said reflectively that it was realy hard to discover what Penhallow had ever seen in her.

‘Well, she’s a tiresome creature, and there’s no gettin’ away from that,’ conceded Clara. ‘But you shouldn’t tease her, Eugene, when you know it upsets her. I daresay she’s got a lot more to put up with than any of us realise. She’s worried too about Clay’s havin’ to come home, which isn’t what she wants. You leave her alone!’

‘If she doesn’t want Clay to come home I can even sympathise with her,’ replied Eugene. ‘Though I should hardly have expected Faith to show such good taste, I must say.’

‘Now, that’s enough!’ said Clara severely. ‘The doctor’s been here, and he says your father can’t go on like this.’

‘He’s been doing it for a good many years,’ said Eugene, selecting a fat Egyptian cigarette from his case, and lighting it.

Clara rubbed her nose. ‘Well, that’s what I say, but I’m sure I don’t know what’s got into the man, for I never knew him quite so wild as he is this year. He’s goin’ on as though someone had wound him up, and he couldn’t stop.’

‘Yes, I thought he seemed distinctly above himself,’ said Eugene, with detached interest. ‘Perhaps he’ll have a stroke, or something. That ought to please a good many of our number.’

Clara ignored this rider. ‘If this story you’ve got hold of about Bart is true, he’ll very likely burst a bloodvessel,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it at all, Eugene, and that’s the truth.’

‘Personally, I feel that Loveday is just the sort of wife to suit Bart down to the ground,’ replied Eugene, blowing smoke-rings, and lazily watching them float upwards. ‘Not, of course, that the rest of the family is likely to see it in that light. You’re all so hidebound.’

‘Now, don’t you go backin’ him up!’ Clara begged him. ‘There’ll be trouble enough without you addin’ to it. I never liked that gal.’

As Eugene showed no disposition to continue the discussion, she relapsed into silence. That she was unusually disturbed, however, was seen by her working nearly an inch of her crochet-pattern wrong, a thing no one had known her to do before.

In spite of her soothing remarks to Faith, she privately felt that Penhallow was working himself up to a crisis. His conduct had never been orthodox, but he had not until lately indulged in as many extravagances as were fast becoming commonplaces in his life. His career had been characterised by a sublime disregard for convention or public opinion; he seemed now to be taking a malignant delight in outraging his family and his acquaintance, a significant change in his mentality which made Clara uneasy. The robust and generally unthinking brutality of his maturity was changing to a deliberate, if irrational, cruelty, which seemed often to be as purposeless as it was ruthless. From having exercised his power over his dependants to force them to conform to that way of life which suited himself, he was now showing alarming signs of exercising an arbitrary tyranny for the sheer love of it. The wounds his rough tongue had dealt during the years of his rampant strength and health had seldom been intentional; now that his health had broken down, and his strength had failed, nothing seemed to please him more than to aim such wicked shafts at his victims as penetrated even the armour of a Penhallow. If he could upset the peace of mind of any of his household, he would lose no time in doing so, as if he were bent on revenging his physical helplessness on his family. The absence of motive for many of his wanton attacks made his sister wonder whether his brain was going. He had unblushingly boasted to her of the weapon he had used to compel Clifford to receive Clay as a pupil, and had appeared to be hugely entertained by her shocked face. She had said, with an odd dignity: ‘If you want me to leave Trevellin, Adam, you’ve only to tell me so. There’s no need to drag my boy into it that I know of. I can shift for myself.’

‘Lord, I don’t want to get rid of you, old girl!’ he had replied carelessly. ‘Catch Cliff calling my bluff! Made me laugh to see him squirming, though.’

Either he was impervious to the very natural feeling of hurt which she must experience from learning her son’s reluctance to receive her under his roof, or he had made the disclosure on purpose to enjoy her discomfiture. She could not be sure, and she would not gratify him by betraying a wound. A silent woman, she did not refer to the matter again; nor, in her behaviour, did she show the least sign of having taken his words seriously. But she was disturbed, filled with vague forebodings of disaster, regarding the growing indications of brewing strife in the house with a concern quite foreign to her aloof temperament.

Chapter Eight

Upon Clay’s learning of the fate that his father had in store for him, he lost little time in subjecting his mother to a spate of letters, which varied in tone between the darkly threatening and the wildly despairing. He informed her that death would be preferable to him than life at home; that the study of the law would kill his soul; that he had no intention of submitting to Penhallow’s arbitrary commands; that he had never had a chance in life; that no one understood him; and, finally, that his mother ought to do something about it.

To all of these effusions Faith replied suitably; and although she had no idea what she could possibly do about it, she quite agreed that it was her sacred duty to protect her only son from Penhallow’s tyranny. She paid a great many visits to Clifford’s office, and would no doubt have paid more had he not prudently instructed his clerk to deny her; and tried successively to enlist the support of each of Clay’s half-brothers. This attempt was unattended by success. Eugene and the twins, while viewing Clay’s prospective sojourn at Trevellin with disfavour, were yet too little affected by it to meddle in what was admittedly a sleeveless errand; Ingram, who believed in keeping upon easy terms with everyone except Raymond, gave her a good deal of sympathy, agreed with every word she had to say, promised to do what he could, and left it at that; and Raymond replied curtly that Penhallow was already aware of his disapproval, and that to say anything more on the subject was a waste of time which he for one did not propose to indulge in. He added that since, under the terms of Penhallow’s will, Faith would be in possession of an ample jointure upon his death, she had better contain her soul in patience for a year or two, at the end of which time she would no doubt be in a position to finance Clay in whatever wild-cat scheme for his advancement he had taken into his head. This brusquely delivered piece of advice so much annoyed Faith that she succumbed to one of her nervous attacks, complained of headache and insomnia, and sent Loveday to Bodmin to procure for her at the chemist’s a quantity of drugs the free consumption of which might have been expected to have ruined any but the most resilient constitution; and bored everyone by describing the increasing number of veronal-drops now necessary to induce the bare minimum of sleep.

It might have been supposed that she would have found, if not an ally, a sympathiser in Vivian, but Vivian, besides feeling that anyone who had been fool enough to marry Penhallow deserved whatever was coming to her, was a great deal too absorbed in her own troubles to have any attention to spare for another’s. Her last interview with Penhallow on the question of her enforced residence at Trevellin seemed to have stirred the fire of her resentment to a flame. Every petty inconvenience or annoyance became a major ill in her eyes; she tried in a variety of ways to inspire Eugene with a desire to break away from his family; wrung from a reluctant editor a half-promise to employ him as dramatic critic on his paper; obtained orders to view a number of desirable flats in London; and even evolved an energetic plan for earning money on her own account by conducting interested foreigners round London, and pointing out places of note to them. None of these schemes came to fruition, because it was beyond her power to goad Eugene into making the least alteration in his indolent habits. A perpetual crease dwelled between her straight brows; she developed an uncomfortable trick of pacing up and down rooms, smoking rapidly as she did so, and obviously hammering out ways and means in her impatient brain. It was the freely expressed opinion of Conrad that she would shortly blow up, and this, indeed, was very much the impression she conveyed to a disinterested onlooker. Inaction being insupportable to anyone of her restless temperament, and the natural outlet for her enemy being effectively plugged by her husband’s refusal to bestir himself, she took to tramping for miles over the Moor, an exercise which might have had a more beneficial effect upon the state of hey mind had she not occupied it the whole time in brooding over the insufferable nature of her position at Trevellin. When in the house, she spent her time between ministering to Eugene’s comfort, quarrelling with her brothers-in-law, and finding fault with the domestic arrangements.

It was she who was the loudest in condemnation of Jimmy’s increasing idleness, and of his dissipated habits, which were becoming daily more marked. She said that he spent all the money which Penhallow casually bestowed upon him at the nearest public-house, and complained that he had several times answered her in a most insolent manner. No one paid any heed to this charge, but none of the Penhallows was blind to the deterioration in their baseborn relative. Penhallow was becoming still more dependent upon him, and seemed to prefer his ministrations even to Martha’s. As it amused him to encourage Jimmy to recount for his edification any items of news current in the house, it was not surprising that the young man should have begun to presume upon his position, which he did to such an unwise extent upon one occasion that Bart kicked him down the backstairs, causing him to sprain his wrist, and to break a rib. He picked himself up, muttering threats of vengeance, and directing so malevolent a look upwards at Bart that that irate young gentleman started to come down the stairs to press his lesson home more indelibly still. Jimmy took himself off with more haste than dignity, fortified himself with a considerable quantity of gin, and in this pot-valiant condition went to Penhallow’s room, where he made a great parade of his hurts, and said sullenly that he wasn’t going to stay at Trevellin to be knocked about by them as was no better than himself. Had he received the slightest encouragement, he would have embarked upon an account of his suspicions of Bart’s intentions towards Loveday, but Penhallow interrupted him, barking at him: ‘Damn your impudence, who are you to say where you’ll stay? You’ll stay where I tell you! Broken a rib, have you? What of it? Serve you right for getting on the wrong side of that young devil of mine! I’ve spoilt you, that’s what I’ve done!’

But when Penhallow discovered that the sprained wrist made it impossible for Jimmy to perform many of the duties in the sick-room which had been allotted to him, he swore, and commanded Bart to leave the lad alone.

‘I’ll break every bone in his body, if he gives me any of his lip!’ promised Bart.

Penhallow regarded him with an irascibility not unmixed with pride. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said mildly. ‘I need him to wait on me. When I’m gone you can please yourself. Until then you’ll please me!’

Bart scowled down at him, as he lay in his immense bed. ‘What you want with such a dirty little tick beats me. Guv’nor!’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t let him come within a ten-foot pole of me, if I were in your shoes!’

As this interchange took place after dinner, when the entire family had been gathered together in Penhallow’ room, after the custom which he had instituted upon first taking to his bed and ever afterwards refused to modify , it seemed good to several other people to join in the conversation, each one adding his or her mite to the general condemnation of Jimmy’s character and habits. Even Ingram, who had limped up from the Dower House to pass the evening in his father’s room, gave it as his opinion that the air of Trevellin would be purer for Jimmy’s absence; while Conrad asserted that he had lately missed a number of small articles, and was prepared to bet that they had found their way into Jimmy’s pocket.

‘You’re all of you jealous of poor little Jimmy,’ said Penhallow, becoming maudlin. ‘You’re afraid of what I’ll leave him in my will. He’s the only one of the whole pack of you who cares tuppence about his old father.’

Everyone knew that Penhallow was under no illusions about the nature of his misbegotten offspring, and was merely trying to promote a general feeling of annoyance, but only Raymond, who contented himself with giving a contemptuous laugh, could resist the temptation of picking up the glove tossed so provocatively into the midst of the circle.

They were all present, scattered about the great room, which was lit by candles in the wall-sconces, and in massive chandeliers of Sheffield plate, which stood upon tables wherever they were needed. There was also an oil lamp upon the refectory table, brought in by Faith, who complained that she could not see to sew by the flickering candle-light. She sat with her fair head bent over a wisp of embroidery, her workbasket open on the oak table at her elbow, the scissors in it caught by the flames of the candles on the wall, and flashing back brilliant points of light. She had chosen a straight-backed Jacobean chair, and drooped in it, seldom looking up from her work, her whole pose suggesting that she was enduring a nightly penance. Her sister-in-law occupied an arm-chair on one side of the fire, opposite to the one in which Raymond sat, glancing through the pages of the local paper. Clara was wearing a tea-gown, once black, now rusty with age; she had turned the skirt up over her knees to preserve it from the scorching heat of the leaping fire in the huge hearth, and displayed the flounces of an ancient petticoat. Her bony fingers were busy with her crochet; a pair of pince-nez perched on the high bridge of her nose, and was secured to her person by a thin gold chain. attached to a brooch, pinned askew on her flat chest. The disreputable cat, Beelzebub, lay asleep in her lap. Near to her, seated astride a spindle-legged chair with a rotting brocade seat, was Conrad. He had crossed his arms along the delicately curved back of the chair, and was resting his chin on them. Eugene, after a slight disputee with Ingram, had obtained sole possession of the chesterfield at the foot of the bed, and lay on it in an attitude of lazy grace. Vivian, wearing a dress of flaring scarlet, was a splash of colour in the open space immediately before the fire, hugging her knees on a stool between Clara’s and Raymond’s chairs, turning her back upon the bed, staring moodily into the flames. Ingram, oddly discordant in a dinner jacket and a stiff shirt, which Myra insisted on his wearing every evening, sat in a deep chair pulled away from the fire, with one leg stretched out before him for greater ease, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and his fingertips lightly pressed together. Bart was leaning up against the lacquer cabinet with his hands in his pockets, the light from the candles above his head, which was wavering in the draught from the windows, playing strange tricks with his face, giving it a saturnine expression, making him look, Faith thought, glancing up from her work, like a devil, which he was not. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of the cigars Penhallow and Raymond were smoking, which overcame the thinner, more acrid fumes of the twins’ cheap cigarettes. How unhealthy it was, Faith thought, to sleep in a room stale with tobacco smoke! How hot it was in here, how fantastic the candle-light, dazzling the eyes, making the red lacquer cabinet glow as though it were on fire, casting queer shadows in the corners of the room, playing over the strong, dark faces of Penhallow and his sons! She gave a little inward shudder, and bent again over her needlework, wondering how many purgatorial evenings lay ahead of her, and how she could save Clay from being drawn into a circle as alien to him as it was to her.

"Jealous of Jimmy the Bastard!’ Ingram was saying. ‘Oh, come now, sir, that’s a bit too steep!’