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.
Suddenly Penhallow stopped. He was panting, and his face was dangerously suffused with colour. Bart, staring at him with hot, angry eyes, and his underlip out-thrust pugnaciously, wondered if he was going to go off in a fit. But the colour gradually receded from his cheeks, and his breathing grew more easy. He was no fool, and he knew that to rail at Bart was no way of bending him to his will. The boy was too like himself, and one half of his mind delighted in the mulishness which exacerbated the other half of it. “There, that’s enough!” he said a little thickly. “Young devil! Come here!”
“What for?” Bart asked sullenly.
“Because I tell you to!” Penhallow said, anger flaring up again momentarily.
Bart hesitated for a moment, and then, with a shrug of his shoulders, walked up to the bed. Penhallow put out a hand, and grasped his arm, pulling him down to sit on the edge of the bed. He transferred his grasp to Bart’s knee, and gripped it through the wh
ipcord breeches. Bart looked defensively at him. “Well?” he said.
“Damn it, you’re the best of the bunch!” Penhallow said. “You’ve got no sense, and you’re an impudent young dog, but there’s more of me in you than in any of your brothers. Now, Bart lad, there’s no point in quarrelling with me! I’m not going to last much longer, by what Lifton tells me.”
Bart’s simplicity was moved by this. He said in a slightly mollified tone: “I don’t want to quarrel with you, Guv’nor. Only I’m not going to be dictated to about this. I’m not a kid. I know what’ll suit me, and that’s Loveday.”
“If I hand Trellick over to you,” Penhallow said dryly. “What if I don’t?”
“I’ll manage somehow.”
“Talk sense! Who do you suppose is going to employ you? You don’t run well in harness, Bart. You’re too headstrong.”
“I’ll start a training stables of my own.”
“Where’s the money coming from? You’ll get none from me.”
“I don’t know, but you needn’t think you can force me to give Loveday up by cutting off supplies. I’m young, and strong, and I know enough about farming to get job any day of the week.”
“And what does Miss Loveday say to all this?” inquired Penhallow, the corners of his mouth beginning to lift.
He knew from Bart’s silence that he had set his finger on the weak link in his armour, and was satisfied. He tightened his grip on Bart’s knee. “Come on, my lad! Let’s have it from the shoulder! What are you going to do? Walk out on me? I can’t stop you!”
“Hell, why can’t you hand over Trellick, and let me please myself?” Bart exploded. “I’m not your heir. It doesn’t matter a tinker’s curse what I do! All that tosh about birth and breeding! It’s out-of-date — dead as mutton!”
“Well, I’m out-of-date,” said Penhallow. “Daresay I’ll be dead as mutton too before very long. Wait till I’m gone before you take that girl to church.”
Bart said awkwardly: “You’re all right, Guv’nor. See us all out.”
“Oh, no, I shan’t! I’m done, my boy. Drinking myself into my grave. I’ll be bound that old woman, Lifton, has told you so! Damned fool!”
Bart looked at him with a little concern in his face. “You’re good for years yet. Why don’t you ease up on the whisky a bit?”
“God damn it, do you suppose I want to add a few miserable years to my life?” Penhallow demanded. “Lying here, a useless hulk, gasping like a landed trout every time I so much as heave myself over in bed! I, who could throw any man to my inches, and better! No, by God! The sooner I’m laid underground the better I’ll be pleased!” He released Bart’s knee, giving it a little push, as though to drive him away. “Go and be damned to you! Marry the girl! I’ve taken some knocks in my time, and I can take this last one.”
“I say, Father, don’t!” Bart begged uncomfortably. “I don’t want to clear out, honestly I don’t! But I don’t see why you should be so cut up about it. I’m not going to be a ruddy literary bloke, like Eugene or Aubrey: I’m a farmer, and I want a wife who’ll be some use to me, not a blamed little fool like Vivian, or a cold poultice like Rosamund!”
Penhallow bit back an appreciative chuckle at this, and said: “I’m too old to change my way of thinking. It’ll be a bitter day to me when you tie yourself up to a wench out of my kitchen. I’m fond of you, Bart. I shall miss you like hell if you leave Trevellin. Wait till I’m gone, boy! When I’m in my grave I shan’t care what kind of a fool you make of yourself. You’ll get Trellick: I’ve left it to you in my will.”
Bart grinned at him. “Any strings tied to it, Guv’nor?” Penhallow shook his head. “No. It’s not entailed. I bought it with you in my eye. I want you to have it.”
“I know it’s unentailed. That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. No strings.”
Bart flushed. "Jolly good of you, Guv’nor!” he said gruffly. “Puts me in a filthy position, though. I’m not going to give Loveday up.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t care a damn what you do when I’ve gone. All I’m asking is that you have a bit of patience, Bart.”
A vague, half-formed suspicion formed in Bart’s mind. He said: “I shan’t change, you know.”
Penhallow’s lips curled a little. “No harm done, then. If you do change, I shall be glad; if you don’t, it won’t have done either of you any harm to wait a while. You’re young yet.”
Bart got up. “I’ll think about it,” he said reluctantly. “That’s right: you think about it,” said his father, with the utmost cordiality.
Chapter Eleven
When Bart had left the room, Penhallow settled himself, with a chuckle, more comfortably amongst his pillows. He thought he had Bart’s measure, and was fairly confident that he had averted the disaster of his marriage. It amused him to reflect how easy it was to disarm this most hot-headed of his sons. Bart had a tender heart; Penhallow did not think that Loveday would find it a simple matter to induce him to darken what he had been led to believe were his father’s last weeks on earth.
She made no such attempt. When Bart came out of Penhallow’s room she was awaiting him by the door into Clara’s garden. She saw at once that he was looking troubled, and directed an inquiring glance up at him. He took her by the wrist, and briefly said that he must talk to her. She went with him into the garden, without demur, though she should have been in her mistress’s room by that time, and let him lead her through it to the gate in the crumbling grey wall which led to the orchard. Here they sat down in their favourite place, out of sight of any window; and Bart, with his arm about her waist, told her what had passed between him and his father.
She was quick to see, and in a measure to appreciate, Penhallow’s cleverness. She thought that his appeal to Bart’s affection was pure artifice, but she did not say so, because she saw that Bart really did think that his father was nearing the close of his life, and was inclined to be distressed about it. For herself, she believed that Penhallow expected to live for many more years; and she felt certain that now that he was in possession of their secret he would never make Bart independent of him by handing Trellick over to him. She ventured to suggest this to Bart. He wrinkled his brow, considering it, and finally replied: “Well, if he doesn’t die, and won’t give me Trellick, we shall just have to cut loose. I’m not afraid if you’re not. I shall get Trellick in the end. He meant that all right. You know, Loveday, he’s an old devil sure enough, but it’s quite true that I’ve always been more or less his favourite. He’s been rather decent to me, one way and another, and it does seem a bit low-down not to agree to wait a bit before I marry. He knows I won’t give you up. And naturally I don’t mean to hang about for ever.” His arm tightened round her; he turned her face up to his, and kissed her, and fondled her cheek. “All the same, my girl, if you’re willing to take a risk with me I’m ready to burn my boats, and marry you tomorrow — today, if I could!”
She said: “No.” She was thinking, slowly, but acutely, realising more completely the hold Penhallow had established over them both. She discounted his assurance to Bart that no matter whom he married he should have Trellick in the end. He had known how to disarm his son, and would not, she thought, abide by his word an instant longer than it suited him to do. She was filled with resentment, but she concealed it. She tilted her head, which rested on Bart’s shoulder, so that she could watch his face, and asked timidly: “Am I to be turned off?”
“No! Good lord, no!”
She twined her fingers in his. “Did he say so, Bartlove?”
“No, he didn’t say so, but he knows damned well I’d walk out of the house tonight, if he sent you away!”
She was silent, turning it over in her mind. After a few moments she made him tell it all to her again, how his father had first stormed at him, and then softened towards him; how he had said that he did not care what Bart did once he was dead. At this point she interrupted to say: “That’s queer-seeming to me.”
She was again silent. She was beginning to perceive the purpose behind Penhallow’s apparent unreason. Pondering it, she did not doubt that she was to be kept on at Trevellin, for that would suit Penhallow’s plan admirably. He knew Bart: he was banking on one of two things happening, either fatal to her hopes of becoming Bart’s wife. She guessed, without precisely formulating the thought, that Penhallow expected his son’s impatience to get the better of him. For that reason, then, he would keep her hovering in Bart’s sight. She had been brought up too close to the soil to be trammelled with sentimentality, and her experience taught her to know that if she allowed Bart to enjoy her body outside the bond of wedlock it was unlikely that he would afterwards think it necessary to marry her. If, on the other hand, she denied him, he would sooner or later look elsewhere for a woman, for he was a healthy and a lusty young man, with a passionate and certainly not very profound nature. She did not suppose for a moment that he would always be faithful to her when they were married, but she was quite sure that she could handle him, that whatever favours he might bestow elsewhere he would return to his wife, just as his father had returned to Rachel Penhallow. But that he would accord as much fidelity as that to a woman who was his neither in name nor in deed was beyond the bounds of her expectation.
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