Penhallow (18 page)

‘Well, well, you never know what you can do till you try!’ said Clifford bracingly. Feeling himself to be standing on the brink of deep waters, he sought to escape by hailing Raymond, who was coming towards the table with Delia’s cup-and-saucer. ‘Hallo, Ray, old boy! Donkey’s years since I laid eyes on you! How’s the young stock?’

Raymond set the cup-and-saucer down before Clara, saying briefly: ‘Aunt Delia,’ and turned to his cousin. ‘I’ve got one hit, and several promising colts.’

‘Yes, Ingram told me about your Demon colt. I’d like to have a look at him. Got anything likely to suit me?’

‘I might have. Come up to the stables presently, and you can cast your eye over what I’ve got.’

‘If he weren’t a bit short of bone, that liver-chestnut would do nicely for Cliff, Ray,’ remarked Clara, replenishing Delia’s cup.

‘Cliff likes a lot in front of him,’ put in Bart. ‘Tell you what, Cliff, I’ll sell you my Thunderbolt!’

‘Why, what’s wrong with him?’ retorted Clifford.

‘I don’t like a sorrel,’ said Clara, with a decisive shake of her head.

‘A good horse,’ said Bart sententiously, ‘can’t be a bad colour. There’s nothing wrong with him.’

‘Barring his being at least three inches too long behind the saddle,’ interpolated Raymond dryly.

Realising that Clifford was now embarked fairly upon a discussion of horseflesh which would in all probability last for the rest of his stay, Clay relieved his feelings by saying, ‘O God!’ under his breath, and sighing audibly.

As might have been expected, the conversation gradually extended to nearly everyone else in the room; and after arguing loudly over the merits and demerits of quite half the horses at present in the stables or out to grass, the Penhallows surged out, under Penhallow’s direction, to conduct the guests to the stud-farm. As this lay at a considerable distance from the house, the services of all the available cars were requisitioned, Penhallow himself being hoisted into the dilapidated limousine, which Bart had had to fetch from the garage to accommodate him, the Vicar, Faith, Clara, and Phineas. Delia, after fluttering about in an aimless fashion for a few minutes, got into Raymond’s two-seater, reminding him that he had promised to show her his dear little colts. The only people to abstain from the expedition were Eugene and Vivian. The rest of the party drove off towards the uplands, taking in the hunting-stables on the way, and having most of the horses there paraded before them. Faith, who had developed a nagging headache, leaned back in the corner of the car with closed eyes, trying to shut her ears to the sound of insistent voices tossing scraps of hunting jargon to and fro; and Clay, standing in the yard amongst, yet apart from, his brothers, watched a succession of horses pass him, and with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, imagined the most restive apportioned to him. Raymond said, as Weens led out a bay whose chosen mode of progression was a sort of restless dance: ‘He might suit you, Clay.’

‘Quite a good frontispiece,’ Clay said judicially, thinking that the brute had a vicious eye. He could imagine how he would hump his back under a cold saddle, and could almost hear, in advance, his half brothers’ adjurations to himself to keep him walking, for God’s sake to keep his heels away from his sides! He knew he would soon part company with a horse like that, but he dared not say it.

Bart put him out of his agony. ‘Too nappy for Clay,’ Bart said. ‘What about that half-bred mare Con picked up at Tavistock?’

‘Oh, she’s a terrible brute!’ Conrad said. ‘I’m frightened to death of her. Clay could never hold her, except on a twisted snaffle.’

Clay thought resentfully that if ever he should say that he was frightened, which he had never possessed the moral courage to do, they would all mock at him unkindly. But his brothers often swore to their terror of some horse, or some jump, and not even Penhallow did more than laugh at such confessions.

‘Now, why shouldn’t Clay have my Ajax?’ Clara said. ‘I’m sure he’s a comfortable, safe ride.’

‘Oh, Clara darling, you old coper!’ Bart crowed. ‘He rides green, and well you know it! I’ll mount young Clay. I’ve got a nice little horse: no, really, a nice little horse, that’ll suit him down to the ground!’

A fantastic thought crossed Clay’s mind. He tried to picture the scene there would be if he were to say all that was in his head: that he hated horses, hated hunting, never took any but the easiest fence without expecting to be thrown, could not see a bullfinch without imagining himself lying beyond it with a broken neck. He knew that he would never have the moral courage to say any of these things, and indeed felt quite sick as his fancy played with the idea of what would happen if he did.

Of the rest of the party, Phineas stood beside Ingram, passing quite shrewd judgements on the various animals shown him; Clifford pointed out the excellence of the new stables to his politely uninterested wife; the Vicar stood near the limousine, exchanging hunting reminiscences with Penhallow; and Delia, holding her unsuitable hat on with one hand, and clutching her feather-boa with the other, remained at Raymond’s elbow, exclaiming continually, asking foolish questions, and receiving rather curt replies to them. Occasionally Penhallow shouted criticism, or demanded enlightenment of either Raymond or Ingram. There were few better judges of a horse, but he was in a perverse mood by this time, and stigmatised a favourite mare belonging to Raymond as short of a rib; told Ingram that a brown gelding of his breeding was tied in below the knee; and bestowed haphazardly amongst the rest of the horses shown him such belittling terms as flat-sided, goose-romped, sickle-hocked, peacocky, and roach-backed. His sons exchanged significant glances. Ingram tried to argue with him, but Raymond contemptuously ignored his strictures.

When the stables had been exhausted, the company got into the various cars again, and drove up the rough track to the stud-farm. The paddock in which the Demon colt had been placed abutted on this track, and they all stopped to observe this promising youngster. Penhallow’s keen eyes picked him out unerringly, and as he merely grunted, offering no immediate disparagement, it was considered that he privately considered that his eldest son had bred a winner. Everyone except Faith had some remark to make, or praise to bestow. Miss Ottery said the darling thing had such a pretty head. No one replied to this until the Vicar said, Indeed, indeed, if, he had to choose a horse on one point alone it would be on the head. Clay then stupefied everyone by suggesting that the colt was surely a bit straight-shouldered, a criticism which provoked a storm of condemnation and mockery only exceeded in violence by that which followed the discovery that he had been looking at the wrong colt. Even the Vicar gave an indulgent laugh, and said, Tut, tut, it was not like a Penhallow to make such a mistake. Red to the ears, Clay played first with the idea of murdering all his half-brothers, and then with that of committing suicide; while Penhallow made the Vicar sheer off from his side in a hurry by once more stating his doubts of Clay’s parentage.

By the time the stud-farm had been inspected, and Penhallow had offended the sensibilities of his wife by indulging in a very obstetric conversation with Mawgan, the groom, on the mares at present in use, most of the guests discovered that it was time to be going home. They all drove back to the house, and while the Vicar announced his intention of walking, and Penhallow commanded Clifford to attend him to his room, where he proposed instantly to go to bed, the under-gardener was summoned to drive the Otterys back to Bodmin in the limousine. Faith went upstairs to bathe her throbbing brow with eau-de-Cologne; Bart slid away to meet Loveday in the schoolroom; and Ingram, after telling Raymond that in his opinion the old man was breaking up, took Myra back to the Dower House.

Penhallow, as might have been expected, was considerably exhausted by his exertions, and consequently in a very bad temper. Nothing, however, would make him postpone his discussion with Clifford on Clay’s future. As soon as he had been undressed and got into bed, and revived with whisky-and-soda, he sent Jimmy to summon Clay to his presence, and then and there made such ruthless and sweeping plans for his immediate study of the law, that that unfortunate youth felt that he was being borne along on a flood tide it was useless to battle with. After that, Penhallow dismissed both him and Clifford, and might have enjoyed a much needed period of repose had he not suddenly bethought himself of Bart’s possible entanglement, and decided to have it out with the young fool then and there. Once more his bell pealed violently in the kitchen, and Jimmy was dispatched on this new errand. Since Bart was shut up with Loveday in the schoolroom, he had to report failure to find him. In his present mood, any opposition made Penhallow the more determined to get his way, and nothing would now do for him but to set the entire staff searching for Bart, regardless of what other and more important duties any of them might have to perform. By the time that Reuben, Sybilla, Martha, Jimmy, four housemaids, the kitchen-maid, and a woman who came in from the village to help with the rough work, had all been sent to different parts of the house and stables, and had most of them shouted ‘Mr Bart!’ in varying keys until they were hoarse, and such members of the family as were resting before dinner driven to the verge of desperation, Bart had emerged from the schoolroom, choosing a moment when the coast was temporarily clear, and had gone down the backstairs to his father’s room. As he omitted to inform those searching for him that he was now found, the hunt continued long after he had entered Penhallow’s room, and dinner was set back three-quarters of an hour in consequence.

Bart knew why he was being shouted for, and went to his father with the intention of obeying Loveday’s directions. But Penhallow, enraged by having been kept waiting, greeted him with an accusing stab of his finger, and the announcement that he knew very well where he had been, and that that was in a hiding-place with that bitch of a girl.

Bart was not prepared to allow even Penhallow to refer to Loveday in such terms, and his colour deepened at once, and his obstinate chin began to jut dangerously. ‘Who the devil are you talking about?’ he demanded.

‘To hell with your insolence, you young cub!’ thundered Penhallow. ‘I’m talking about Loveday Trewithian, and well you know it! I say you’ve just come from her!’

‘What of it?’ Bart shot at him. ‘Supposing I have? So what?’

Penhallow looked him over sardonically, and replied in a quieter tone: ‘That depends on what you’ve been hatching, the pair of you. There’s a damned queer story running around the house that you’ve offered the girl marriage.’

Bart turned away, and kicked a smouldering log in the hearth so that it broke, and the flames leaped up the chimney. ‘Yes, I know all about that,’ he said. "Jimmy the Bastard. I should have thought you’d have known better than to listen to what the little skunk tells you.’

‘Maybe I do,’ Penhallow said. ‘Now, look here, my boy! I don’t blame you for giving that girl a tumble: I’d do the same myself in your shoes. But don’t let’s have any nonsense about marrying her! She’s a handsome bit of goods, she moves well, and she doesn’t speak so badly, but don’t you be misled into thinking she’s your equal! She’s my butler’s niece, and if half Sybilla told me was true, her mother was as common as a barber’s chair before she got Trewithian to make an honest woman of her. There’s damned bad blood there, Bart, make no mistake about that!’

‘At that rate there must be some damned bad blood in me too!’ retorted Bart.

Penhallow grinned. ‘Now, don’t you give me any of your impudence! There may be wild blood in you, but there’s nothing in your breeding to give you the kind of genteel respectability that can’t let you look at a pretty girl without making you think of marriage. If she’s trying to blackmail you, make a clean breast of the whole affair, and no nonsense about it, and I’ll soon settle with her.’

‘She’s not,’ said Bart shortly, keeping a tight hold on his temper. He added: ‘She’s not that kind of a girl. What’s more, I’ve done nothing to be blackmailed about.’

Penhallow’s eyes narrowed. ‘You haven’t, eh? That’s what you say!’

‘It’s true.’

Penhallow brought his fist down upon the table beside him with such force that the glass and the decanter standing on it rang. ‘Then if it’s true, what the devil are you playing at?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t you stand there lying to me!’ roared Penhallow. ‘Do you think I was born yesterday?’

‘All right, I won’t!’ said Bart, wheeling to face him. ‘I am going to marry her, and be damned to you!’

Penhallow looked for a moment as though he would heave himself out of bed, but after glaring at Bart in hard-breathing silence, he relaxed against his pillows again, and drank what remained of the whisky in his glass. He set the glass down then, and said slowly: ‘Going to marry her, are you? We’ll see!’

‘You can’t stop me.’

This seemed to amuse Penhallow, for he smiled. ‘There’s a lot of things I can do, my lad, which you don’t know yet. Now, don’t let’s have any more of this tomfoolery! You can’t marry my butler’s niece, and if you don’t know it you ought to! I see what’s happened: the girl’s been playing you on the end of her line, and she’s made you think you’ll only get her by putting a ring on her finger. Don’t you believe it! There’s no need to tie yourself up for the sake of a little love-making. If she’s so high in her notions, there are plenty of other fish in the sea. Come to that, I’d as soon you left her alone. Reuben won’t like it if you mess about with her, and I don’t want to upset the old fellow. Damn it, we were boys together!’

‘I’m going to marry her,’ Bart repeated.

The obstinacy in his face and the dogged note in his voice infuriated Penhallow, and made him lose his temper again. He began to curse his son, and the whole room seemed to shudder with the repercussions of his fury. A torrent of invective, mingled with bitter jeering, poured from him; he shouted threats; broke into fierce, mocking laughter at Bart’s greenness; and very soon goaded Bart into losing control of himself, and giving him back threat for threat.