Penhallow (29 page)

He felt a clammy sweat on his brow, and wiped it away with the back of one slightly trembling hand. Unless it lay hidden, in one of the envelopes he had abstracted to inspect at his leisure, there was no document that in any way concerned his birth. So intent was he upon the one object of his search, so hard-pressed for time, that he never noticed that the little tin box in which Penhallow, kept his money was missing from its usual place in the central cupboard. His mind veered towards the other cupboards in the room. He looked about him irresolutely, trying to recall what his father kept in them. He strode over to the marquetry chest, and began to pull open its drawers. They contained, as far as he had time to see, nothing but clothing. He crossed to the lacquer cabinet, and opened its doors, disclosing Penhallow’s ivory-backed hairbrushes, clothes-brushes, combs, and a variety of stud-boxes, corn-razors, and nail-scissors. He closed the doors again. He did not believe that Penhallow would have stowed such a document, if it existed, away out of his reach, and he began to think that Penhallow had invented it to alarm him. He walked to the door, and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. As he did so, Reuben came round the corner of the corridor, blowing his nose. He looked at Raymond over the edge of his damp handkerchief, and said rather huskily: ‘I’ve sent the gardener’s boy down to the village, but there’s nothing Lifton nor any other can do for the Master.’

‘I know that. Somebody had better tell Mrs Penhallow. I’m going upstairs to put some clothes on. Send one of the maids up with my shaving-water. And keep everyone out of that room until Lifton’s been.’

‘I shall stay with un, Mr Ray,’ Reuben replied, a touch of belligerence in his tone. ‘It’s little you or Mrs Penhallow cares, but I won’t leave un laying there alone, and that’s straight! I knawed un when he was not so high ,is that chest there, and the daringest young rascal from here to Land’s End! I never left un, never, and I won’t leave un now, when un’s stiff and cold!’

‘You can do as you like. Have you kicked that young swine out of bed? Where is he?’

"Jimmy!’ Reuben said, with one of his contemptuous sniffs: ‘He never come in last night, and he’s not back yet, the dirty loose fish that he is! And not the first time, not by a dozen times it isn’t!’

‘Well, that’s one of the abuses in this house that’s going to stop more quickly than the little bastard thinks for!’ Raymond said grimly.

Then he remembered the look he had surprised on Jimmy’s face the previous evening, and his eyelids flickered, and he turned away abruptly, and went up the stairs, feeling as though an icy hand had closed upon the pit of his stomach. His mind, at one moment lightened of its fear, plunged again into an abyss of uncertainty and dread. If Jimmy knew the truth, there could never be any security for him while he lived. Buy him off? Send him out to the colonies? He thought bitterly that he would do better to strangle the little beast. He could visualise, though as yet only vaguely, years of being bled white by Jimmy, of living for ever in the fear that Jimmy’s malice, or perhaps his own inability to satisfy a blackmailer’s greed, would prompt him to carry his story to Ingram. In an instant, his father’s death, which had seemed in the first shock of discovery to be no less than a direct intervention of providence in his favour, became fraught with lurking danger. There was Martha too. He would have to do something about her, though what he hardly knew. He fancied that her devotion to Penhallow would lead her to pursue the course she supposed him to have wished her to; her silence, then, would depend not upon bribery but upon what Penhallow might have said to her.

He went into his bedroom, and shut the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves when a gentle tap fell on one of the oaken panels, and Loveday Trewithian came in with a jug of boiling water. He looked at her frowning , realising that she was one of those most nearly affected by Penhallow’s death. She was a little pale, but her face was quite calm, and her dark eyes met his with no other discernible expression in them than one of timid respect.

‘I’ve brought your shaving-water, sir,’ she said, in her gentle way. ‘Things is a little at sixes and sevens.’

‘Thanks,’ he said briefly. ‘Doctor arrived yet?’

‘No, sir,’ she replied, setting the jug down on the old fashioned marble-topped wash-stand, and covering it with a folded towel. ‘Not yet.’

‘Tell Reuben to let me know as soon as he does. Does your mistress know what’s happened?’

‘She’s sleeping, Mr Ray. Leave me tell her when I take her tea in to her!’

‘You’d better do so at once. Mrs Hastings, too.’

‘Mrs Hastings went out early. She’s up at the stables.’ Loveday moved towards the door, adding as she reached it: ‘Bart, too.’

He noticed that she had omitted a prefix to this last name. It annoyed him, but he said nothing. She went away, and he began to shave himself. His face was still half-covered with lather when Eugene walked in without ceremony. He met Eugene’s eyes in the mirror, and could almost have laughed at the look of chagrin so clearly depicted in them. Whoever else might regard Penhallow’s death in the light of a blessing, Eugene was one who saw in it a disturbance to his own indolent peace. He was still in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, and since he had not yet shaved, and was as darkly complexioned as his brothers, his chin had a blue appearance detrimental to his good looks.

‘Ray, is this really true?’ he asked.

‘Good lord, you must know it’s true!’ Raymond answered.

‘Yes. That is, Vivian told me, but really I find it hard to take it in! It doesn’t seem at all possible. When did it happen? Have you any idea?’

‘None at all. He’s cold, that’s all I can tell you.’

Eugene gave a slight shudder. ‘You may spare me any further details.’ He looked Raymond over, his lips twisting into a wry smile. ‘Well, you’ve got what you’ve been waiting for, haven’t you? I congratulate you!’

Raymond wiped the soap off his razor. ‘Thanks.’

‘It must be a great day in your life,’ Eugene remarked. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown, and hunched his shoulders in the semblance of a shrug. ‘I suppose there isn’t anything I’m wanted to do, is there?’

‘What should there be?’

‘Nothing, I hope. I don’t propose to come down to breakfast. This has been a shock to me. I slept very badly, too.’

‘You didn’t hear anything?’

‘If I had heard anything I should have gone down,’ Eugene replied, turning to leave the room.

He was intercepted in the doorway by Bart, who came impetuously in, his whip still in his hands, and all the healthy colour drained from his cheeks. ‘Ray!’ he blurted out, thrusting rudely past Eugene. ‘Loveday says… the Guv’nor!’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Raymond answered, putting on his collar. ‘Looks as though he went in his sleep. I’m waiting for Lifton.’

‘Rame’s car is standing outside. When — who found…Was anyone with him?’

Raymond had quickly knotted his tie, and was putting on his coat. ‘No, no one. Martha found him dead when she went in this morning. Sorry, I must go down. Did you say Rame’s car?’

Loveday tapped on the half-open door at that moment. ‘The doctor’s here, Mr Ray. Dr Lifton has the influenza: it’s Dr Rame that’s come. I was thinking it might be well he should see the mistress when he’s finished downstairs. It will be a shock to her nerves. surely, when she knows what’s happened.’

‘If she wants him, she can send a message down. " Raymond replied unsympathetically, and went out of the room.

Loveday glanced towards Bart, standing rigidly by the window, and jerking at his whip-lash. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea, my dear,’ she said, pity and love warming her rich voice.

He gave his head a little shake. ‘No, I don’t want it.’ His stubborn mouth quivered. ‘I cursed him last night. I — Oh, Guv’nor!’

She went towards him, ignoring Eugene, who stood by the door, somewhat cynically regarding her. ‘Don’t you take on, my dear!’ she said. ‘It’s little he’d care for a curse or two. You were a good son to him, and he knew it.’

"No, I wasn’t. I thought — I didn’t even believe — But he was ill! I didn’t want him to die! I — oh, hell, I was dammed fond of him, the grand old devil that he was! And I wish to God he were alive now to — to bawl the lot of us out!’ His voice broke on something between a laugh and a sob; he brushed his hand across his brimming eyes, and pushed his way past Eugene out of the room.

‘I am afraid, my dear Loveday,’ said Eugene maliciously, ‘that you will find my brother Bart more upset by this event than perhaps you expected.’

‘It’s natural he should be,’ she-responded, picking up Raymond’s dressing-gown, and putting it away in the wardrobe. ‘If you please, sir!’

He stood aside to allow her to pass, a little nettled by her self-possession, and she went away towards the back of the house to fetch her mistress’s early tea-tray from the pantry.

Faith had fallen asleep on the previous evening without the aid of narcotics. She had gone up to her room soon after Penhallow had been wheeled out of the Long drawing-room, and, as Loveday assisted her to undress, she had noticed with vague surprise that the nightly headache which she had come to regard as inevitable was for once absent. She supposed that the aspirin she had swallowed before going down to dinner must still be operating on her system, and she had told Loveday, with a little sigh, that she felt as though she could sleep naturally. A feeling of deep peace hung over her, undisturbed by any twinge of remorse for what she had done. She was very tired, but not with the nervous fatigue which made it impossible for her to relax her limbs and to be still in her bed. Almost as soon as she had laid her head upon the pillow, her eyelids had begun to sink over her eyes; and as she thought, not of Penhallow but of the little flat in London, she drifted into a deep peaceful sleep from which she did not arouse until Loveday drew back the curtains next morning.

She seemed then to herself to be rising to the surface of a vast ocean of sleep, and as she stirred, and opened her eyes, she murmured: ‘Oh, I have had such a loverly sleep!’

Loveday came towards the bed with her mistress’s bed jacket in her hand. Faith stretched herself, and yawned, not immediately remembering the events of the previous day. She asked what the time was, and when Loveday told her, half past eight, she said, sitting up, and putting her arms into the sleeves of the jacket: ‘Why, how late! You shouldn’t have let me sleep on, Loveday!’

Loveday turned to the table beside the bed, and poured out a cup of tea. ‘No, ma’am, I know. But you were sleeping so sound I didn’t care to wake you. There’s some bad news you have to hear, ma’am.’

As she spoke these words, remembrance of what she had done came flooding back to Faith, and she gave a stifled exclamation. After so good a night’s rest, with its soothing effect upon her overwrought nerves, it now seemed to her that she must have been mad, and she could almost have believed that she had dreamt the whole. She recalled quite clearly her every action, and even her thoughts, which, appearing reasonable to her at the time, seemed in the light of morning to partake of the nature of insanity. The wish that Penhallow might die was still present; but the resolution to bring about his death had departed from her mind as suddenly as it had entered it. So unreal did her action seem to her that she felt as divorced from it as though she had performed it in a trance.

She raised her eyes to Loveday’s face. ‘Bad news?’ she faltered, clasping her hands tightly together.

‘It’s the Master, ma’am.’

Then she had done it. She had succeeded. She swallowed, but found herself unable to speak. She waited, her gaze fixed on Loveday’s face with an expression on it of wonder and of dread.

‘The Master’s dead, ma’am.’

A sound that was hardly a cry broke from her; she buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh, Loveday! Oh, Loveday! Oh, no, no!’

Loveday put her arms round her, drawing her to lie against her deep, warm breasts. ‘There, my dear, there! Don’t you take on, now. He went in his sleep, the way anyone would wish for him.’

Faith wept, but not for sorrow, nor yet for pity. She wept for her own madness, which had turned her into a murderess, and for relief that her long purgatory was ended. Loveday rocked her, and murmured to her, and after a little while she stopped, and groped for her handkerchief. Loveday found it for her, and when she had dried her eyes, she coaxed her to drink her tea. She was leaning back against her banked-up pillows, sipping the tea between spasmodic sobs, when Vivian came into the room. When she saw Vivian, she thought how she had set her free too, and her eyes filled with weak tears again. She said: ‘Oh, Vivian!’

Vivian’s uncompromising honesty made it impossible for her to understand how anyone could weep for what she was glad of. She said bluntly: ‘I don’t see what you’ve  got to cry for. We all know that you’ve been miserable for years.’

‘Oh, don’t!’ Faith begged, the tears brimming over ‘Don’t talk like that, please!’

‘Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t pretend that I care. It would be sheer hypocrisy. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best thing that has ever happened in this house!’

Faith was really shocked by this speech, for although she had been able to do what perhaps Vivian had never contemplated doing, she was incapable of facing an unvarnished truth, and was already seeing her action, not as a crime, but as a deed undertaken as much for the good of others as for her own peace. Loveday, whispering comfort, had spoken of Penhallow’s death as a release from suffering, and she realised without effort that this was true, and had begun to believe that she had been at least to some extent actuated by this thought when she had determined to poison Penhallow. But not even to herself did she use that harsh word. There were plenty of euphemisms for the ugly terms, Murder and Poison, and they came more naturally to her brain, so that she had no need consciously to evade the cruder words.

‘It’s been a shock to her,’ Loveday said, in a reproving tone. ‘Indeed, Mrs Eugene, you didn’t ought to speak like that, with the poor gentleman lying there dead.’ She paid no heed to the angry flush that stained Vivian’s cheeks, but turned from her to her mistress, asking whether she should prepare the bath for her.