Penhallow (27 page)

Eugene and Vivian were still talking in their room; Charmian was whistling an air from La Boheme in the bathroom. Faith went into her room, and put the empty veronal phial back on the shelf beside the other bottles and pots that stood there. She felt strangely calm, as though she had not done. anything at all out of the ordinary, but she thought that her headache would be sure to return before she had spent many minutes amongst the Penhallows, so she swallowed a couple of aspirin tablets before going downstairs to join the party in the Yellow drawing-room.

No one paid much attention to her when she entered the room, and she went to sit down by the open window. Bart, who was standing by the pie-crust table upon which Reuben had set the tray with the sherry, had the decanter in his hand, and did indeed acknowledge his stepmother’s presence by lifting it suggestively, and saying: ‘Faith?’

She shook her head. There was a motley collection of glasses in the room, for it seemed that nothing broke quite so readily as a sherry glass, or was so hard to replace. Penhallow held one of an old set in his hand, and Clara had another; but Conrad was drinking from a tinted glass of thin Czecho-Slovakian ware, obtained from Woolworth’s; and Bart had a miniature club-tumbler. Faith thought dreamily that when she and Clay lived together in their London flat, everything should match.

Phineas’s call had left Penhallow in high good humour. Not even the appearance of Aubrey in his maroon velvet jacket provoked him to more than a sardonic crack of laughter. He said, a little boastfully, that he had not felt so well in years. Then he saw Bart look at him with narrowed, frowning eyes, and he added that he was going to die on his feet, or at any rate in his chair. When the time came to go in to dinner, he had his chair wheeled to the head of the table, remarking agreeably to Raymond that he was not going to be deposed yet. Raymond returned no answer to this jibe, but took his place between Charmian and Eugene. His brothers thought that the set look on his face betokened annoyance at Penhallow’s presence, and were amused at seeing him put out of countenance. But Penhallow’s resumption of the place which he had not sat in for so long affected him not at all. He was thinking of the strange interview which had taken place in the Yellow drawing-room after tea.

Hardly knowing what good, if any good at all, he hoped to do, he had joined his father and his uncle there, encountering, as he had entered the room, so bleak a look of hatred from Phineas that it had surprised a laugh out of him. In her dread of having her youthful indiscretion exposed by Penhallow, it appeared that Delia had cast herself upon her brother’s protection, openly acknowledging what Phineas had known, or perhaps only guessed, for forty years, but had shrunk fastidiously from facing. It was evident that he was furious at having the discreet veil in which he lived torn down by rude, Penhallow hands; and from the expression of distaste on his countenance it seemed that he blamed Raymond as much as Penhallow himself for the disturbance created in his ordered life.

‘Hallo, Ray!’ had said Penhallow genially. ‘Here’s your uncle been playing ostrich for forty years! You’ve upset his apple-cart nicely! What did you go running off to Delia for, you fool?’

‘To learn the truth!’ Raymond replied.

Penhallow had chuckled. ‘There’s an undutiful son for you! Mistrusting your own father! Didn’t I tell you that Delia was the sort of little fool who couldn’t keep a still tongue in her head? You might have known she’d scuttle off to blurt the whole thing out to Phineas, who didn’t want to hear it.’ He directed his attention to his visitor, scanning him appreciatively. ‘Knew it all along, didn’t you, Phin? Old pussy-cat Phin! I thought you did. Lacked the plain guts to tackle me! Lord, there was never more than one man in your family, and that was my Rachel!’

Phineas had passed his tongue between his lips. The hostility he had been at pains to disguise for so many years was naked in his eyes, but his dread of scandal was more powerful than his dislike of Penhallow, and he had not allowed himself to be goaded into any intemperate rejoinder. He had said smoothly, picking his words with care: ‘I conceive it to be useless, my dear Penhallow, to indulge in idle recriminations. I have come here today to learn from you what your object was in making this unsavoury disclosure to the — er — unfortunate outcome of an interlude in your past which I prefer not to dwell on.

‘That’s you, Ray,’ remarked Penhallow.

‘He wants an answer,’ Raymond had replied. ‘So do L’

One of his soundless laughs had shaken Penhallow. ‘Damme if I ever thought I was going to get so much amusement out of it when I told you!’ he had said. ‘Maybe I hadn’t got an object.’

Phineas had set his slightly trembling finger-tips together. ‘I require your assurance, Penhallow, that this affair will go no farther.’

‘You won’t get it,’ Penhallow answered genially.

Phineas’s voice had become a little shrill. ‘Have you considered what my sister’s position must be if any word of this disgraceful story passes your lips?’

‘Your position is what you mean, Phin!’ Penhallow had retorted. ‘A fat lot you ever cared for Delia’s troubles! All you want is to be able to live snug and soft in your damned respectability! Well, you won’t live quite so snug in future. Time some of the lard was sweated off you!’

‘What about me?’ Raymond had demanded, his words falling heavily between the two older men.

His father’s eyes had glinted at him mockingly. ‘You’ll learn to sing small, Ray. Maybe if you behave yourself I’ll hold my tongue.’

Raymond had been silent, bitterly envisaging his future at Penhallow’s hands.

‘I apprehend,’ had said Phineas, ‘that a woman why was once in my father’s employ, and later became nursemaid to your children, is also privy to this affair. I must insist that adequate steps be taken to ensure her silence.’

‘Oh you must insist, must you?’ had retorted Penhallow, kindling to quick wrath. ‘By God, Phineas.. I’d like to know where you think you are! This is my stamping ground, let me tell you, and the only man to do any insisting at Trevellin is Penhallow! Perhaps you’d like to offer old Martha a fat bribe? Or perhaps you’re going to insist that I should? That ‘ud be more like you, wouldn’t it, so careful as you are with your money? Well, I shan’t do it, but I’ve no objection to your trying it on! Lord, I’d like to see your smug face well scratched!"

‘If you are satisfied that the woman’s loyalty may be trusted,’ had replied Phineas, with what dignity he could muster, ‘I must of course bow to your superior knowledge of her character, but I would point out to you—’

‘You’ll bow to more than my superior knowledge of Martha’s character!’ Penhallow had interrupted brutally.

Phineas had been obliged to swallow that. For how long the interview had been prolonged Raymond did not know. He had left the room, perceiving that neither he nor Phineas was serving any other purpose in remaining than that of providing Penhallow with a sport after his own heart. From the exultant joviality of Penhallow’s present mood, he inferred that he had succeeded in thoroughly discomfiting Phineas. He was obviously enjoying an extension of his power, and had as obviously begun to exercise it in a fashion as fiendish as it was capricious, since he announced, with a good deal of relish, that the Otterys were going to join his birthday party on the morrow.

‘Well, it’s your party, sir,’ said Eugene, in a tone that left no one in any doubt of his own sentiments.

‘Who’s coming?’ asked Conrad. ‘Have old Ma Venngreen, and make it a real riot of clean fun!’

‘Damned if I don’t!’ said Penhallow gleefully. ‘Faith, my girl, you’ll attend to that!’

She was quietly eating her dinner, safe in the citadel of her knowledge that there would be no nightmare of a party to be endured. She raised her eyes, and said: ‘Very well, Adam.’ The length of the table separated them, but she had an odd fancy that he was farther removed from her than that.

Reuben, who had watched with patent disapproval his master’s zestful attack upon a lobster, interposed at this point, remarking severely that since shell-fish were fatal to Penhallow’s digestion the chances were that the party would have to put off, anyway.

The only result of this was to make Penhallow curse him cheerfully for being a meddling old buzzard, and demand the other half of his lobster. He next bethought himself of a piece of information likely to infuriate Raymond, and let it be widely known that he had sent Aubrey to cash a cheque for him in Bodmin that morning.

‘Going the pace a bit, aren’t you, Guv’nor?’ said Bart. ‘Thought you drew out a tidy bit not so long ago?’

‘What’s it got to do with you how much I choose to keep by me?’ demanded Penhallow. ‘If I have any damned criticism from any of you, I’ll give the whole three hundred to Aubrey to pay his debts with!’

‘Good lord!’ ejaculated Conrad. ‘You didn’t draw out three hundred at one blow, did you?’

‘Yes,’ said Aubrey, ‘and I do hope that you will all of you criticise him a great deal, because if Father were to give it to me it would be a very lovely gesture, I feel.’

‘We shouldn’t!’ Conrad retorted.

‘Well, I hope you’re as rich as you think you are. Father,’ said Charmian. ‘Though personally I should doubt it.’

Penhallow signed imperatively to Reuben to refill his wine-glass, and turned his head to look at Raymond. ‘Well? well?’ he said. ‘You’re not usually backward in giving me your opinion of my actions? Lost your tongue all of a sudden?’

‘You know very well what my opinion is,’ Raymond replied curtly.

‘To think I was forgetting that I’d already had the benefit of your criticism!’ Penhallow exclaimed. ‘Held a pistol to my head, didn’t you? Well, well, it’s been a foolish day one way or another! Clara, old lady, here’s to you!’

Raymond chanced to look up, as Penhallow was drinking his sister’s health. He found that Jimmy, who was helping Reuben to wait upon them all, was watching him covertly, an expression of mingled curiosity and gloating on his dark face. He stiffened, remembering what had seemed of little importance in the first shock of his discovery, that it had been Jimmy who had rushed in to pull him off his father’s throat that morning, and that with a promptitude which suggested that he had all the time been listening at the door. As he stared into Jimmy’s spiteful eyes, so deadly a look came into his own that Jimmy changed colour.

The blood seemed to Raymond to drum in his head. He lowered his gaze to his plate, thinking, He knows!

There were too many animated conversations in progress round the table for anyone to have leisure to observe this tiny interlude; nor did Raymond’s silence occasion any remark. It was supposed that one of his moody, taciturn fits had descended upon him. By the time that Bart addressed an inquiry to him across the table he had regained command over his faculties, and was able to answer with a calm that surprised himself.

Having disposed of several glasses of burgundy, Penhallow was inspired, when he was left alone with his sons at the table, to order Reuben to go down to the cellars to fetch up a couple of bottles of the ‘96 port.

‘Anyone would think,’ said Reuben dampingly, ‘that it was your birthday today, which it isn’t.’

‘I shan’t waste the ‘96 port on Venngreen and Phin Ottery,’ declared Penhallow. ‘You be off with you, and fetch it up! A glass of port. will do me a power of good.’

‘It won’t do your gout any good,’ grumbled Reuben, but he went off to obey the order.

When he had drunk as much port as he wanted to, and had reached that stage of boisterous elation which his wife so much dreaded, Penhallow had himself wheeled into the Long drawing-room to join the ladies. His intellect was just sufficiently clouded to prevent his keeping his usual strict tally on the various members of his family, so that both Clay and Bart were able to slip away unperceived; Clay to spend an unmolested evening morosely knocking the balls about in the billiard-room and Bart to keep an assignation with Loveday in the schoolroom. However, when Penhallow decided at last to go to bed, and it was discovered that Jimmy had taken French leave, and was nowhere to be found, he insisted on having Bart to help Reuben to undress him, and get him into his bed, and for the first time noticed his absence from the room. Conrad, who, for all his jealous of Loveday, would have been torn in pieces before, betraying his twin to their father, at once said that Bart was working on some accounts in Ray’s office, and went off to find him; while Reuben diverted Penhallow’s rising anger by announcing that he had had enough of Jimmy’s habit of sneaking off to the village as soon as his back was turned. Penhallow promptly forgot about Bart, and said that they all grudged poor little Jimmy his bit of fun, but that he was the only one amongst the whole pack who cared two pins for his old father.

‘A more unjust observation,’ murmured Eugene, ‘in face of the Bastard’s practice of deserting his post whenever he hears the call of the flesh, I have yet to listen to.’

‘Ah, you’re all jealous of Jimmy!’ said Penhallow, shaking his head. ‘You’re afraid of his cutting you out!’

An expression of acute nausea came into Eugene’s face, but as Conrad and Bart came back into the room at that moment, his reply was lost.

Bart was looking heated, Conrad having walked without warning into the schoolroom, where he had been sprawling in a deep chair, with Loveday on his knee, and interrupted this idyll by saying caustically that if he could think of something besides wenching for a few minutes Penhallow wanted him to assist him into bed.

Bart had leaped to his feet in quick wrath, and there would undoubtedly have been a minor brawl had not Loveday represented to him the folly of keeping his lather waiting, and so arousing his suspicions.

‘And where the devil have you been?’ demanded Penhallow. ‘Don’t give me any of your lies, because I know damned well what you’ve been up to!’

‘All right, then why ask me?’ Bart retorted. ‘What do you want me for, anyway? Where’s Jimmy?’

‘Need you ask?’ said Eugene. ‘He seeks his pleasures in the village. Unlike some others one might mention.’

‘Shut up, you swine!’ said Conrad, under his breath.