Penhallow (7 page)

‘I shall dance for joy on the day you’re buried!’

‘That’s the spirit!’ he applauded. ‘Damme, you’ve been badly reared, and you’d be the better for schooling, but there’s good stuff in you, by God there is! Go on! Toss your head, and gnash your little white teeth at me: I don’t mind your tantrums — like ‘em! I shall keep you here just to pass the time away. It’s a dull enough life I lead now, in all conscience: it would be a damned sight duller if you weren’t here to spit your venom at me every time your liver’s out of sorts.’

‘I’ll get the better of you!’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘You’d keep Eugene hanging round you until it’s too late for him to pick up the old threads again. You don’t care whether it’s bad for him, or how miserable you make me! All you care for is getting your own way! You’ve tyrannised over your sons all their lives, and over Faith, too, because she’s a weak fool, but you shan’t spoil my life, and so I warn you!’

‘Fight me, then!’ he encouraged her. ‘I know you’ve got claws. Why don’t you use ‘em?’ She did not answer him, for a soft knock fell on the door at that moment, and as Penhallow shouted ‘Come in ‘ her husband walked into the room.

Penhallow, third of the Penhallow brothers, was thirty-five years old, and resembled his elder brother, Ingram, except that he was more slenderly built, and looked to be more intelligent. He had the sallow complexion that often accompanies black hair, and he moved in a languid way. He enjoyed the convenient sort of ill-health which prevented his engaging upon any disagreeable task, but permitted his spending whole days following the hounds whenever he felt inclined to do so. He was adept at escaping from any form of unpleasantries, and extremely quick to detect the approach of a dilemma which might endanger his comfort. When he saw Vivian standing stockily in front of the fire, with her chin up, he perceptibly hesitated on the threshold.

Penhallow, observing this, said derisively: ‘Don’t run away, Eugene.! You’ve come just in time to see your wife scratch the eyes out of my head!’

Eugene had a smile of singular charm. He bestowed it now upon Vivian, in a glance which seemed to embrace her as well as to sympathise with her. She felt her bones turn to water, helpless in the grip of the love for him which still, after six years, consumed her. Her lip quivered as she looked at him; she moved instinctively towards him. He put his arm round her, and patted her. ‘What’s the trouble, little love?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, her voice sounding sulky because of the constriction in her throat. She smiled tremulously up into his face, gave his hand an eloquent squeeze, and swung out of the room.

It was characteristic of Eugene that, when she had gone, he made no attempt to discover what had happened to upset her. He lowered himself into a chair by the fire, remarking: ‘Yours is the only warm room in the house, sir. Has anyone told you that you ought not to be drinking wine, or would you like me to?’

‘Pour yourself out a glass,’ said Penhallow. ‘Do you more good than the chemists’ muck you pour into your belly.’

‘I haven’t inherited your digestion,’ replied Eugene, stretching his long legs towards the fire. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, Father, you ought to put central heating into this house. It’s damned cold.’

‘When I’m dead, you can start pulling the house about: you won’t do it in my time,’ responded Penhallow. ‘What’s brought you here this morning? Pleasure of my company?’

‘Oh, I do get a lot of pleasure out of your company,’ Eugene assured him. ‘I like this room, too. It’s utterly atrocious, artistically speaking — and that bit of so-called Dresden is a fake, though I don’t suppose you’ll take my word for it — but it has an atmosphere — er — not all due to that overfed bitch of yours.’

Penhallow grinned at him. ‘She’s old, like me. I’m overfed, too.’

‘But you don’t stink,’ murmured Eugene plaintively, stirring the spaniel with one elegantly shod foot. He turned his head, and said with a faint lift to his brows: ‘Are you really taking Clay away from college?’

‘Oh, so Faith’s been pouring out her grievances to you, has she? She hasn’t wasted much time. Yes, I am.’

‘Not to say pouring,’ Eugene corrected. ‘I don’t mean that that wasn’t the general idea — which just goes to show she must be very upset, because she doesn’t really like me: I can’t think why, for I’m sure I’m very nice to her — but I can’t bear listening to other people’s troubles, they’re always so boring. Besides, she’s decidedly hysterical, which I find most unnerving. So I came to sit with you. But she says you’re going to make him study law with Cliff?’

‘ It’s about all he’s fit for,’ replied Penhallow. ‘He isn’t doing any good at Cambridge, and never would, if he lived there for the rest of his life.’

‘No, I feel sure you’re right,’ Eugene agreed. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s doing any harm either, though — which, if you come to consider the matter, seems to be a fair epitome of Clay’s character.’

‘‘There are times when I wonder if the little worm can possibly be a son of mine!’ said Penhallow, with a touch of violence.

‘Oh, I should think he must be, sir!’ said Eugene, with a flicker of his sweet smile. ‘I mean, I don’t want you to think that I’m criticising Faith, but she always seems to me to lack the sort of enterprise that — er — characterises our family. But do we really want Clay at Trevellin?’

‘You’ll put up with him,’ replied Penhallow curtly.

‘Oh, quite easily!’ agreed Eugene. ‘I shouldn’t dream of letting him worry me. I don’t somehow think that Ray will like it, though.’

Penhallow showed his teeth. ‘Ray’s not master here yet,’ he said unpleasantly.

‘No, thank God! I don’t think I should stay if he were. I find him very dull and worthy, you know. And then there’s Cliff!’

‘What’s the matter with him?’ demanded Penhallow.

‘He’s a damned dull dog, if you like, but he doesn’t live here.’

‘Ah, I wasn’t thinking of that! Merely I was wondering what weapons you had to employ to induce the poor dear fellow to take Clay on. I mean, there are limits even to Cliff’s good nature. Or aren’t there?’

‘Cliff,’ stated Clifford’s uncle, ‘will do as I tell him, and that’s all there is to it. He wouldn’t like to have his mother thrown on his hands — or, at any rate, that stiff-necked wife of his wouldn’t!’

‘Yes, I thought you’d probably been more than usually devilish,’ said Eugene, amused. ‘Poor old Clifford!’

Chapter Four

If she could have found Loveday Trewithian, Faith would have wept out all her troubles into that comfortably deep bosom, and would no doubt have been soothed and petted back to some semblance of calm, since she was very responsive to sympathy, and found a good deal of relief in making some kindly disposed person the recipient of her confidences. Upon leaving Penhallow’s room, almost the first member of the Household she encountered was Eugene, and such was her agitation, her urgent desire to unburden herself of Her latest woe, that she forgot for the moment that she had never liked him, and was indeed afraid of his soft, yet disquieting tongue, and began to tell him of his father’s brutality. From this infliction he very soon escaped; Vivian, who presently stalked through the hall on her way to the front door, brusquely refused to be detained, saying that she was going for a walk on the Moor, and didn’t want to talk to anyone. Faith went upstairs to her room, and rang the bell. It was answered by one of the housemaids, and a demand for Loveday was met with the intelligence that she had stepped out to the village for a reel of cotton. Faith was too much absorbed in her troubles to reflect that this was a very odd errand for Loveday to run in the middle of the morning. She dismissed Jane rather pettishly, and occupied herself for the next twenty minutes in dwelling upon her wrongs, Penhallow’s tyranny, and the injustice of his behaviour towards Clay. By this simple process she worked herself’ into a state of exaggerated desperation, in which she saw herself as one fighting with her back to the wall, and badly in need of an ally. Her nervous condition made inaction impossible to her, and after pacing about her room for some time, an abortive form of energy which exasperated far more than it relieved her, she decided to go to Liskeard, to see Clifford Hastings.

As she had never learnt to drive a car, and Liskeard was rather more than seven miles distant, this resolve necessitated the service of a chauffeur. It might have been supposed that in a household which employed a large number of servants there could be little difficulty about this, but although there were several grooms, stable-hands, gardeners, and boys employed on odd jobs, there was no official chauffeur. The Penhallows were inclined to despise motor-cars, and although Raymond often drove to outlying parts of the estate in a dilapidated runabout, and Conrad transported himself to and from his office in Bodmin in a dashing sports car, none of the family ever sat behind the wheel of a car from choice. A large landaulette of antique design and sober pace was kept for the use of the ladies, or to meet trains at Liskeard, and was driven either by one of the undergardeners, who had a turn for mechanics, or by Jimmy the Bastard, or, if these two failed, by one of the grooms, who was willing to oblige, but always managed to stall the car when he changed gear on the uphill way home.

Fortunately for Faith, who resented Jimmy’s presence in the house so much that she would rather have postponed her visit to Liskeard than have demanded his services, the under-gardener was engaged in bedding-out plants in the front of the house, and so was easily found. By slipping a raincoat on over his working clothes, and setting a peaked cap upon his head, he was able speedily to transform himself into a chauffeur; and after an agreeable passage of arms with the head-gardener, who took instant exception to his absenting himself from his work on the front beds, he went off to bring the ancient laudaulette round from the garage.

Trevellin being situated above the village of Polzant, the way to Liskeard lay downhill, and eastward, into the valley of the Fowey. The landaulette crawled ponderously out of the lodge-gates, and lumbered off down the narrow lane, passing the Dower House, where Ingram Penhallow lived with his sharp-tongued wife, Myra, and his two sons, Rudolph and Bertram, whose ambitions were to resemble their twin uncles as nearly as possible, but who were at present, happily for all concerned, gracing a respectable public school some hundreds of miles away from Trevellin. The peculiar beauty of the countryside through which she was being carried was entirely unnoticed by Faith, who, besides being wholly engaged in rehearsing what she should presently say to her husband’s nephew, considered that it was all too familiar to her to be worthy of having any attention bestowed upon it. So absorbed was she in her thoughts that she failed to observe the Vicar’s wife, Mrs Venngreen, who was coming out of the village shop when the landaulette drove through Polzant, and who bowed to her. Mrs Venngreen was a Churchwoman of rigid principles, and rarely crossed the unhallowed threshold of Trevellin, but she was sorry for Faith, whom she thought a poor, downtrodden little thing, and sometimes asked her to tea at the Vicarage. Her husband, an easy-going gentleman of comfortable habit of body, who liked a good glass of wine, and who was not unmindful of the benefits accruing to the Church from Penhallow’s lavish, if casual, generosity, talked vaguely about the need to bear an open mind, and was not above visiting his eccentric parishioner. His curate, Simon Wells, no Cornishman, but a lean and severe Midlander, thought that his Vicar possessed to a remarkable degree the faculty of being able to shut his eyes to whatever he did not wish to see, and himself seemed more likely to curse the Penhallows, root and branch, than to accept their hospitality. As he was not a sporting parson, the Penhallows were scarcely aware of his existence, so that his deep disapproval of them troubled them not at all.

In due course, the landaulette reached the outskirts of Liskeard, and entered the town, passing between rows of Georgian houses to the establishment near the marketplace which bore a modest brass plate beside its front door indicating that the premises were occupied by Messrs Blazey, Blazey, Hastings, and Wembury. This, however, was misleading, the late Mr Blazey senior having deceased a good many years previously, Mr Blazey junior having become a sleeping partner, and Mr Wembury being a valetudinarian whose activities were mostly confined to the not too arduous duties attached to the various Trusts in his care.

The resident partner was Mr Hastings, to whose sanctum Faith, after a short period of waiting in a room inhabited by a shabby-looking clerk and a youth with a lack-lustre eye and a shock of unruly hair, was admitted.

Clifford Hastings was the same age as his cousin Raymond, but although rather stout he had a roundness of face and a freshness of complexion which made him appear the younger of the two. He was not in the least like his mother; and except that he was a good man to hounds, and was not above slipping his arm round the wrist of a pretty woman, he had little in common with his Penhallow relations.

When Faith came into the room, he rose from behind the desk piled high with papers, and littered with a collection of pens, ink-pots, blotters, pen-wipers, and coloured pencils, and came round the corner of it to shake hands with her. He was blessed with an uncritical, friendly disposition, and was always genuinely glad to see any of his relations. He greeted Faith with hearty good humour, saying: ‘Well, Faith! This is very nice of you! How are you, my dear? How’s Uncle Adam? And my mother? All well, eh? Sit down, and tell me all the news!’

Not being in the mood for an exchange of ordinary civilities, Faith wasted no time in answering his inquiries, but plunged at once into the nature of her errand to him. ‘Cliff, I’ve come to beg you to help me!’

He retreated again to his chair behind the desk. A look of slight uneasiness crossed his placid features, for although he was a kindly man, he shared, in common with the majority of his fellow-creatures, a dread of becoming entangled in another person’s trials. However, he folded his hands on the blotter before him, and said cheerfully: ‘Anything I can do to help you of course I should be only too glad to do! What is it?’

She sat bolt upright in the chair on the other side of the desk, gripping her handbag between her nervous hands. ‘It’s about Clay!’ she said breathlessly.

The look of uneasiness on Cliffs face deepened. He carefully rearranged various small objects in front of him, and replied: ‘About Clay! Oh, yes! Quite! As a matter of fact, Uncle Adam sent for me a couple of days ago to talk to me about him.’

‘I know,’ she interrupted. ‘He told me today. Cliff’, you mustn’t take him! Please say you won’t consent!’

He perceived that this was going to be an extremely difficult interview. ‘Well, but, Faith-’

‘I suppose Adam is going to pay you to take him, but I know that wouldn’t weigh with you! I don’t know how these things are arranged, but-’

‘It simply means that he’ll be articled to me,’ he explained, glad of the opportunity afforded to lead her away from the main point at issue. ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll-’

‘He’d hate it!’ she declared vehemently. ‘Adam’s only doing it because he’s never liked Clay, and he delights in upsetting me! Clay is going to write!’

‘Well, well, I don’t know any reason why he shouldn’t write, if he has a bent that way. In his spare time, you know.’

She said impatiently: ‘You don’t understand. It would be death to Clay to be cooped up in a stuffy office, slaving over a lot of horrible deeds and things. He isn’t cut out for it.’

He looked a little startled. He was not very well acquainted with Clay Penhallow, the boy being twenty years his junior, but he had not supposed, from the little he’d seen of him, that he was made of such fiery metal   as could not endure to be confined within four walls. He said feebly: ‘Oh, well, you know, it’s not such a bad life! Not like a London practice, you know. I mean; I see that the lad reared as he has been it would be a bit trying for him to be obliged to live in London all the year round. But you take my life! Of course, I can’t spare the time my cousins can, but I manage to hunt once a week, and sometimes twice, and I get quite a bit of fishing, besides ‘

‘It isn’t that! Clay isn’t interested in sport. He would like to live in London! But he’s artistic! It would simply kill him to be tied to a desk!’

If Clifford felt that a young gentleman of this character would scarcely be an asset to the firm of Blazey, Blazey, Hastings, and Wembury, he concealed it, merely remarking: ‘I see. Quite!’

‘Besides, I don’t want him to be a solicitor,’ continued Faith. ‘Or even a barrister. I mean, it isn’t in the least his line for one thing, and for another, I should simply hate a son of mine to spend his time defending people whom he knew to be guilty.’

This ill-formed view of the activities of barristers-at law made Clifford blink, but since Clay was not destined for the Bar there seemed to be little point in disabusing his mother’s mind of its feminine belief that every barrister spent his life defending blood-stained criminals. He did indeed wonder vaguely why a barrister should be almost invariably credited, first, with a criminal practice, and second, with a prescience which made it possible for him to feel certain of his client’s guilt or innocence, but this thought he also kept to himself. He said: ‘I quite understand your point of view, but it isn’t really such a bad life, Faith. In any case, Uncle Adam—’

‘Adam’s only doing it to hurt me!’ declared Faith, on a rising note which made Clifford stir uneasily in his chair, and hope that she was not going to treat him to a fit of hysterics. ‘I had it out with him this morning. I can’t tell you the things he said: sometimes I think he’s absolutely insane! He told me he’d arranged it all with you, so I thought my only hope was to come at once to see you, and explain that I don’t want you to let Clay be articled to you, or whatever it is! After all, Adam hasn’t any hold over you, Cliff? He can’t do anything to you if you refuse, and you can easily keep out of his way, if he flies into one of his awful rages!’