Hatred of Penhallow surged up in her, for she now perceived that he was fighting her with diabolical cunning. She was tempted to urge Bart to run off with her, and so to be sure of him, but even in her anger she did not quite lose sight of prudence, and when Bart, feeling her tremble in his arms, asked her what was the matter, she said: “Nothing.”
Holding her in his arms made Bart feel that he could not wait to possess her. He said: “Damn the Guv’nor! Let’s take a chance, my little love!”
She shook her head. She wanted him, and loved him with a depth of feeling perhaps exceeding his for her, but she did not believe that he would succeed in making it living if his father’s support were to be withdrawn. Poverty was too real to her to be regarded lightly; she dreaded it and, even more, the effect she dimly felt that it would have on one of Bart’s temperament and upbringing. “We must wait,” she said, “a little while longer. Something may happen.”
“Seems pretty steep to be looking forward to the poor old Guv’nor’s death,” he said, grimacing. “That’s about what it amounts to.”
She did not answer. She had no compassion to waste on Penhallow, and would count his death a blessing.
“At the same time,” continued Bart, “I don’t see why he shouldn’t come round to the idea. He really doesn’t know anything about you, my bird.”
She was sure that Penhallow would remain obdurate, but she did not say so. She wanted time to think the matter over, and so agreed with Bart.
In this state of indecision the matter was allowed to rest, the only person to be satisfied being Penhallow, who was so satisfied that his mood was unusually mellow for several days.
Bart told the whole to his twin, and while Conrad agreed that someone ought to break Jimmy’s neck, he was so antagonistic to the idea of Bart’s marrying Loveday that a breach was created between them, a circumstance which confirmed the suspicions of the rest of the family of what Bart’s intentions were. Penhallow mentioned the affair to no one except Faith. He told her about it in a fit of temper, and for the purpose of laying the blame of it on her shoulders. It was just like her, he said, to raise Loveday out of her proper sphere, to throw her in Bart’s way, and to encourage her to develop ideas above her station. Faith was at first incredulous, but when she heard that the story did not rest upon Eugene’s unsupported testimony, but had in fact been admitted by Bart himself, she was so much upset that she burst into tears, thereby exasperating Penhallow into throwing a book at her. She was not physically hurt, but any form of violence was so nauseating to her that she looked for a moment as if she were going to faint. Penhallow recommended her roughly to have a drink of whisky. She shuddered, and her lips formed the word No.
“Well, don’t sit there staring at me like a ghost!” said Penhallow, “Why the devil will you be such a damned little fool? You ought to know by now that I hate snivelling women!”
“You struck me!” she said, as though the hurling of the book had wounded her more than his bitter tongue had done over and over again. It had certainly shocked her profoundly, for he had never raised his hand against her before, and she still cherished the belief that only a brute sunk beyond recall in depravity could offer violence to a woman, and that woman his wife.
“No, I didn’t,” he contradicted her. “I threw a book at you, and damme, you asked for it! Don’t put on those tragedy-queen airs, as though I’d been knocking you about for the past twenty years! Serve you right if I had knocked you about a bit! What have you ever done but whine, and complain, and pity yourself, and treat me to enough airs and graces to give any honest man a bellyache? Oh, I’m forgetting one thing, aren’t I? You presented me with a fine son! My God, what a son! A weedy young good-for-nothing, who mistakes a commoner for a blood-horse, and has to fill himself up with jumping-powder before he dare so much as look at a three-foot fence! If I weren’t a soft fool, I’d wash my hands of him, and turn him loose to find his own way in the world!”
She forgot her own injuries as soon as he mentioned Clay, and now said quickly: “Then do it! Nothing could be worse for him than to be kept here, in this house where everyone despises him!”
“What, and have him masquerading as a Penhallow, and bringing my name into contempt?” he said jeeringly. “No, by God! He’ll stay at home, under my eye, and he’ll do what a Penhallow should do, or I’ll know the reason why! If Ray won’t school him, Bart shall. He hasn’t got quite Ray’s seat, or hands, but he may be able to put a bit of courage into the boy. Head free and loins free: that’s what I taught my sons! And every one but that brat of yours learned it as soon as he could throw a leg over a horse!”
“Adam!” she said desperately, “can’t you understand that there’s more in life than horses?”
“Precious little, for one of my blood!” he said, adding caustically: “There’s women, of course, but he doesn’t seem to show much of a turn in that direction either.”
“He’s my son as well as yours!” she said, clasping her hands nervously. “You don’t understand him! You’ve never tried to understand him! He’s like me: he can’t bear being bullied and shouted at, and that’s all you do, or ever have done! If I hadn’t persuaded you to let him go to school you’d have broken his spirit years ago!”
“Bosh!” he retorted. “He hasn’t got any spirit to be broken.”
“Yes, he has!” she cried vehemently. “But he’s a delicate, highly strung boy, and your treatment of him is enough to drive him out of his mind! You encourage the others to bully him, and mock at him! You force him to do the sort of things he loathes! You don’t see what sort of an effect you’re having on his nerves!”
“So that’s the modern youth, is it?” he sneered. “The best cure I know for his kind of nerves is to be made to face up to your fences.”
“Adam, I beg of you, let Clay continue at Cambridge, and choose his own profession!”
“Now, don’t let’s have all that over again!” he said. “The whole thing’s settled. He can have a bit of a holiday before he starts work with Cliff, but start work with him he shall, make no mistake about that! If there’s anything in the boy at all, he’ll thank me for it one day. What the devil are we talking about Clay at all for? He’s provided for. It’s Bart, and that wench you took out of the kitchen, who’s on my mind just now.”
She got up jerkily, and said in an unsteady Voice: “You care nothing for Clay, Adam. Well, I care nothing for Bart, and his affairs, except that I consider Loveday far too good for him!”
She went towards the door, but he thundered at her to stop. She paused, her fingers already grasping the handle, and looked back at him with an expression on her face half of fear, half of defiance.
“Come back here, my girl!” he commanded grimly. “I’ve got something to say to you!”
“No!” she said, in a faint voice. “I can’t bear any more. I can’t!”
She made as if to open the door, but he said very distinctly: “If you leave this room till I say you may, I give you fair warning, my dear, I’ll have you brought back to me. I’ll send Jimmy for you, and tell him to see that you come.”
A sound like a whimper escaped her; she looked at him with strained, fearful eyes. “I think you’re mad!” she whispered.
“Oh, no, I’m not! Come here!”
She approached reluctantly, and perceptibly winced when he grasped her wrist. He pulled her down on to the bed, and she sat stiffly there, almost shivering under his hand. “Now, look you here, Faith, my girl!” he said. “A damned fool you’ve made of Loveday Trewithian, but what’s done can’t be undone. But if I find that you’ve been encouraging the girl to marry my son Bart I’ll make you sorry you were ever born! Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want her to marry Bart. Why should I encourage her?”
“Because you’re a sentimental little fool! There, that’ll do! You needn’t sit there looking as though you were a rabbit, and I was a boa-constrictor. I haven’t been such a bad husband to you.”
“I sometimes think that you have killed my soul!” she said in a trembling voice.
He almost threw her hand from him. “Oh, for God’s sake get out, and stay out!” he shouted. “Killed your soul indeed! What trashy book did you pick that up from? Get to hell out of this! Do you hear me. Get out!”
She got up from the bed with shaky haste, and left the room, conscious of having failed again to help Clay. When she reached the hall, and stood under the portrait of Rachel, she looked up at it, thinking that Rachel would not have failed in her place. The hard, painted eyes mocked her. “Fool!” Rachel seemed to say. “Haven’t you learnt yet how to handle Penhallow?”
She averted her gaze from the portrait, and thought of the new disaster which had fallen on the house. Although she had said that she considered Loveday to be too good for Bart, she was conventional enough to be shocked by the idea of his marrying her. It was one thing to raise the girl to the position of confidential maid; quite another to be obliged to receive her on equal terms, as a step daughter-in-law. Then she realised that when Loveday married Bart she would go away from Trevellin, leaving her old mistress without any other comforter than Clay, who was too miserable himself to have much sympathy to spare for his mother. She began already to feel herself deserted, and stood there, in the middle of the hall, with slow tears welling up in her eyes, and rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them away, but still they continued to fall. She knew that the whole family would blame her for Bart’s entanglement; and she felt that Loveday had acted treacherously towards her, abusing her trust, and perhaps only pretending to sympathise with her as a move in the deep game she had been playing.
But this was a minor evil compared with the terrible thing which had happened in Penhallow’s room. By dint of dwelling upon it, adding to it all his previous cruelties (though these had not included physical hurt), and recalling her own dutiful behaviour during the twenty years of their marriage, she very soon persuaded herself into believing that she was a deeply wronged woman. The habit of self-deception being engrained in her, she had always been incapable of perceiving that there were faults in her own character. Starting her married life on a misplaced belief that a husband, unless he were a brute, must think his wife perfect in all respects, a being to be ceaselessly cherished and indulged, she had never since been able to readjust her ideas; and as Penhallow from the outset fell lamentably short of her ideal, she early began to regard herself as a martyr. She belonged to that order of women who require a husband to combine the attributes of a lover and a father. This instinct had led her to feel a stronger attraction towards men many years her senior, and had finally betrayed her into marrying Penhallow. He had failed her; her temperament, as much as her lack of mental capacity, made it impossible for her to discern her own failures.
She heard footsteps approaching, and went out of the open front door into the garden. Here she was presently joined by Clay, who had been wandering about in an aimless fashion, awaiting the result of her interview with his father. Once glance at her face was sufficient to inform him that she had not succeeded in her mission. He said: “O God!” and slumped down upon a rustic seat, and gazed moodily at a hedge of fuchsia.
Faith sat down beside him, and, after blowing her nose, and dabbing at her reddened eyes, said: “I did my best. He just won’t listen.”
He was silent for a moment, kneading his hands together between his knees. His mouth worked; he said after a slight pause: “Mother!”
“Yes, dearest?”
“I can’t stick it.”
With a vague idea of consoling him, she said: “I know, but perhaps you may not mind the work as much as you think. One thing is that Clifford’s nice. I mean, he’s kind, and I’m sure he...”
“It isn’t that — though that’s bad enough! It’s having to go on living here. I — I simply can’t!”
“You’ll have me, darling. And it may not be for very long, perhaps. I mean, one never knows what may turn up.”
He paid no attention to this. “Mother, I — I hate Father!” he said, as though the words were wrenched out of him.
“Oh, dearest, you mustn’t say that!”
“It’s true. What’s more, he hates me. He’ll make my life a hell on earth. He and the twins between them. It isn’t so bad now, but you wait till the hunting-season starts! I know just what’ll happen: I’ve been through it before. They’ll expect me to master all the most rawmouthed brutes in the stable, and they’ll go for me day and night, pulling my style to bits, telling me that all I need is a little jumping-powder when I don’t happen to feel like hunting. You heard Ray, the other day! You’d think it was a worse crime to pull your horse right into a fence than to embezzle a bank! I loathe horses! I loathe hunting! But what do you suppose would happen if I said that I don’t approve of blood-sports? Actually, I think they’re absolutely wrong, but that’s a detail.”
“I know so well how you feel,” Faith sighed, with more sympathy than tact. “I was always terrified of riding.”
He reddened, and replied rather loftily: “It isn’t that, so much as that I simply disapprove of the whole business. Of course, the others are utterly incapable of understanding that! All they think about is hunting! If you’re unlucky enough to be born a Penhallow you’ve got to be a good man across country, and God help you if you’re not! Yes, and if you refuse to take a drop fence, which nobody likes, hang it all, you’re told you’ve got no heart! Actually, I’ve always had a sort of premonition about jumping, but it isn’t the sort of thing one talks about, and I’ve never said anything about it.”
“Oh, darling, whatever do you mean?” exclaimed Faith.
“Oh, nothing!” Clay said. “Merely that I have a sort of feeling — some people would call it an intuition, I expect that that’s how I shall meet my end.”
His mother responded in the most gratifying way to this dark pronouncement, expressing so much horror at the grim thought conjured up before her that he was soon obliged to try to calm her fears, and even to admit that he had not so far experienced any definite vision of his own lifeless form stretched beside an oxer. He made her promise not to mention the matter to his half brothers. He said that they would only laugh, or put up jumps in one of the paddocks and school him over them until he went mad. Having, in this artless fashion, added a considerable weight of anxiety to the load already bowing Faith’s shoulders down, he said that as far as he could see he might just as well be dead for all the good he was ever likely to do now that his career had been blighted, and walked off to throw pebbles moodily into a pond below the south lawn.
Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when the two remaining members of the family, Charmian and Aubrey, arrived at Trevellin to spend a week there in honour of Penhallow’s sixty-second birthday.
They journeyed down together, and were met at Liskeard by Jimmy the Bastard, driving the limousine. Only two years separated them in age, Charmian being thirty, and Aubrey twenty-eight; but although both lived in London they rarely met, and only discovered a sort of affinity between themselves when forced to return to the parental roof. Here, by tacit consent, they formed a defensive alliance against the barbarity of the rest of the family.
In appearance, both were dark, with aquiline features, but Charmian was stockily built, and did her best, by cutting her strong, wiry hair short and wearing the most masculine garments she could find, to look as much like a man as possible; while Aubrey, a slender young man with an exotic taste in pullovers and socks, affected a great many feminine weaknesses, such as a horror of mice, and revolted his more robust brothers by assuming a decidedly fin-de-siecle manner. He was generally held to be the cleverest of the Penhallows; had published two novels, both of which had enjoyed a moderate success; a quantity of verse conceived in so modern a medium as to baffle the comprehension of the greater part of the reading world; and was at present working in collaboration with one of his artistic friends on the libretto for a satirical revue. He inhabited a set of chambers near S
t James’s Street; which were at the moment furnished in the Turkish style; rode a showy hack in the Park; contrived to hunt at least once a week with the Grafton; and divided his time between his artistic and his sporting friends. Occasionally, it amused him to bring both together at one of his evening parties, as a result of which the intellectuals went away saying that Aubrey was too adorably whimsical for words, and probably a case of split personality, which was what one found so intriguing in him; and the sportsmen agreed amongst themselves that if Penhallow weren’t such a damned good man to hounds, really, one wouldn’t quite know what to think.
Charmian, rendered independent of Penhallow by the timely demise of a godmother who had left her a sum of money sufficient to provide her with a small income, shared a flat with a very feminine blonde, who resembled nothing so much as a pink fondant. The Penhallows had only once been gratified by a sight of this object of their masterful sister’s passionate solicitude, Charmian having on one occasion brought her down to spend the weekend at Trevellin. The visit had not been repeated. Leila Morpeth and the Penhallows had not found themselves with anything in common; and the younger Penhallows had been so transfixed with amazement at the spectacle of Charmian hovering protectively over an opulent female of generous proportions, who had a habit of referring to herself as “poor little me” in accents suggestive of extreme childhood, that they were struck dumb, and mercifully only recovered full power of self expression when the visitor had departed with Charmian on Monday morning.
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