Penhallow

by Джорджетт Хейер

  “If he has told you to cash the cheque, it must be because Raymond wouldn’t,” she warned him. “Raymond will be very angry if you do it.”

  “Yes, lovely, I’m sure he will, but Father would be very angry if I didn’t, and of the two I prefer to face Ray,” he answered. “If you don’t see me again, it will either be because I have absconded with the money, or because I have failed to control that dreadful limousine. Good-bye, darling: do cheer up!”

  He walked away from her with another wave of his hand. She remained under the shadow of the big tree for a long time, thinking that it was easy for him, here only on a visit and with no intention of remaining, to recommend her to be cheerful. If Penhallow succeeded in forcing him to live at Trevellin, he would speedily lose his insouciance. She wondered what he meant, if he meant anything, by his talk of doing something desperate. She wished with all her heart that he would do something desperate, desperate enough to enrage Penhallow into bursting a blood-vessel. No one could think it a crime to put an end to a life so baleful; indeed, if Penhallow’s brain were going, it would almost be a kindness. She leaned her head back against the rough tree-trunk, closing her eyes, and letting her imagination stray into that halcyon world which lay beyond Penhallow’s grave. It was so real to her, down to the smallest detail of that little flat in London, that when she was roused, much later, by the sound of the gong, lustily beaten by Reuben in the hall, she felt as though she had really escaped for a happy hour from Trevellin, and had been wrenched back with a sickening jolt.

  Raymond did not come in to lunch, but Bart was present, and said that he did not know why Ray should not have returned, since as far as he knew, he had not had much to do that morning. Bart was out of spirits; ever since his interview with his father he had been restless, alternating between spurts of energy, and a moody listlessness until now foreign to his cheerful temperament. He hardly spoke until Aubrey entered the room, midway through the meal, and he for the first time beheld his attire. That did rouse him, and he expressed himself with brutal freedom. Eugene added his less brutal but more deadly mite, and as Charmian considered herself in honour bound to come to Aubrey’s support, the usual state of warfare soon reigned over the dining-room. Clay, who should have known better, joined in the condemnation of Aubrey’s sartorial taste and effeminate habits, and was promptly told by Bart that he was a cheeky young hound, and bidden to shut up. It was at this point that Faith began to cry, quite silently, but so uncontrollably that after a moment of biting her lips, and twisting her hands under the table, she got up, and hurried out of the room, leaving her pudding untouched on her plate.

  “I suppose,”. said Vivian viciously, “that you’ll all of you be satisfied when you’ve driven Faith into a lunatic asylum!”

  Bart looked a great deal surprised. “But what’s the matter with her? No one said anything to her!”

  “You shouldn’t have set on Clay,” said his aunt. “You know she doesn’t like it. Not but what he shouldn’t criticise his elders.”

  “Good lord, I only told him to shut up! Here, Clay, you’d better go after her, and tell her it’s all right! I didn’t mean to upset her.”

  “Tell her you’ve kissed, with tears,” recommended Eugene, drawing a dish of strawberries towards him.

  Charmian waited until Clay had left the room before delivering herself of her opinion. Then she said, leaning back in her chair, and driving one hand into the pocket of the slacks she was wearing: “It’s amazing to me that you none of you have the wit to see what’s happening under your noses. It’s my belief that Faith is heading for a nervous breakdown. I never saw her so much on edge in my life. She looks as though she hasn’t had a proper night’s rest for months.”

  Eugene, who could not bear anyone to encroach on his prerogative, said with light contempt: “My dear Char, we have all been sufficiently bored by the recital of Faith’s so-called insomnia already. If she had ever been called upon to suffer one tenth of what I go through nightly, she might have some cause to complain!”

  “There’s nothing whatsoever the matter with you, Eugene,” retorted his sister. “You are fast turning into a hypochondriac, and Vivian can apparently find nothing better to do than to encourage you. Don’t bother to rush to his defence, Vivian! I haven’t the slightest interest in either of you. But unless I’m much mistaken Faith has reached a breaking-point, and will probably have a complete collapse one of these days. When I look at her, I am reminded of the terrible time I went through with poor Leila once, when she had been living on her nerves for months, and they gave way under the strain.”

  Bart broke into a roar of laughter. “Oh, gosh! I should think they damned well might! Anything would give way under the strain of having that lump of Turkish Delight living on it!”

  Aubrey intervened before Charmian could blister Bart for this irreverence. “Of course, I don’t suppose any of you will be at all interested, but I must inform you that Faith is not the only person in this house threatened with a nervous breakdown. And I do hope that when I so far forget myself as to render this board untenable by bursting into tears at it, you will remember that I am not uncountable for my actions.”

  “I expect,” said Clara wisely, “that she needs a change of air.”

  Clay came back into the room, with the news that his mother was lying down, so no more was said. Faith reappeared at tea-time, but from the look of dismay which came into her face when she paused on the threshold of the Long drawing-room it was plain that she would not have done so had she been informed that Penhallow intended to make one of the tea-party.

  He was wrapped in his aged dressing-gown, and it was evident that it had cost him an effort to get up at all. His eyes held a look of strain; his colour was bad; he eased himself in his wheeled chair from time to time, as though he were suffering a considerable degree of discomfort. He was quick to see Faith’s instinctive recoil. He said in his roughest, most derisive voice: “No, you wouldn’t have come down if you’d known you were going to find me here, would you? A fine wife you are! I might be dead for all the notice you ever take of me! Why haven’t you been near me all day? Eh? Why haven’t you?”

  She could never accustom herself to being rated in public, and the colour rushed to her face as she answered in a low tone: “I have not been very well, Adam.”

  He gave a sardonic bark of laughter at this. “Oh, you’ve not been very well!” he said, mimicking her. “That’s always your bleat!”

  Bart crossed the room with a plate of sandwiches, which he offered to Penhallow. “Hit one of your own size, Guv’nor!” he said briefly.

  Penhallow looked up at him under his brows. “You, for instance?”

  Bart grinned. “Sure! Go ahead!”

  Penhallow put up a hand, and pulled his ear. “Coming out as a champion, are you?” His glance swept the room, and alighted on Clay for an instant. He took a sandwich, and addressed his wife again. “I notice it isn’t your own brat who stands up for you, my dear,” he remarked.

  Clay turned scarlet, and tried to look as though he had not heard this sally. It was at this moment that Raymond entered the room.

  Penhallow forgot about his wife. He seemed to straighten himself in his chair when he saw Raymond. “Didn’t expect to find me up, did you?” he demanded challengingly.

  Raymond’s face was always impassive; it showed no change of expression now. “I don’t know that I thought much about it either way,” he replied. He walked over to the table, and waited to receive his tea-cup from Clara’s hands.

  “You’re lookin’ tired, Ray,” she remarked.

  “I’m all right,” he responded shortly. Conscious of his father’s gaze, he looked up, and met it squarely, his jaw hardening a little. Penhallow grinned at him, but whether in mockery, or in appreciation of his self-command, it would have been difficult to say.

  Penhallow began to stir his tea, in a way which made Aubrey exchange a pained glance with Charmian. “I shall sit up to dinner,” he announced.

/>   This piece of intelligence was greeted with such a marked lack of enthusiasm that Aubrey felt it incumbent on him to say: “How lovely for us, Father dear!”

  “I don’t know which of you gives me the worst bellyache, you or Clay!” said Penhallow, with a look of disgust. “I don’t want you slobbering over me!” His fiery glance again swept the room; his lip curled. “A nice, affectionate lot of children I’ve got!” he said scathingly.

  “One hates to criticise Father,” murmured Eugene in his sister’s ear, “but one cannot but feel that to be a most unreasonable remark.”

  “Considering you mean to sit up to dinner tomorrow, you’d better be in bed today, I should have thought,” said Clara.

  “You keep your thoughts to yourself, old lady!” retorted Penhallow. “I daresay there’s a lot of you would like to see me keep my bed, but you’re going to be disappointed. By God, I’ve let you get so out of hand, the whole pack of you, it’s time I showed you who’s master at Trevellin!” He stabbed a finger at his wife. “And that goes for you too!” he said unnecessarily. “Don’t think you’re going to take to your bed with a headache, or any other such tomfoolery, because you’re not! And as for you,” he added, directing the accusing finger at Charmian, “you can make what kind of a guy of yourself you please in London, but you won’t do it here! You let me see you in those trousers again, and I’ll lay my stick across your bottom!”

  “Oh, no, you won’t!” said Charmian, with a look quite as fierce as his. “You’ve no sort of control over me, so don’t you think it! I’m not dependent on you! I shan’t burst into tears because you choose to shout at me! You’ll get as good as you give if you go for me!”

  “Oh, don’t! Please don’t!” Faith gasped, shrinking back in her chair involuntarily.

  Neither of the combatants paid the slightest heed to her. Battle was fairly joined, and had anyone wished to speak it would have been quite impossible to have done so above the thunder of Penhallow’s voice and the fury of Charmian’s more strident accents. Eugene, lounging on a sofa, lay laughing at them both; Clara went on drinking her tea in perfect unconcern; Clay found that his hand was trembling so much that he was obliged to set his cup-and-saucer down on the table beside him; and Conrad, entering the room when the quarrel was at its height, promptly encouraged his sister by calling out: “Loo in, Char! Loo in, good bitch!”

  Reuben Lanner, who had come in behind Conrad, crossed the room to his master’s chair, and shook his arm to attract his attention. “Shet your noise, Master, do!” he shouted in his ear.

  Penhallow broke off in the middle of an extremely coarse description of his daughter’s character to say: “What do you want, you old fool?”

  “It’s Mr Ottery wants to see you, Master. I’ve put un in the Yellow drawing-room.”

  The rage died out of Penhallow’s enflamed countenance quite suddenly. An interested gleam came into his eyes; he turned them towards Raymond in a speculative glance; a slow grin dispersed the remnants of his scowl. “Phineas, eh?” he said. His great frame shook with a soundless laugh. “Well, that’s very interesting, damme if it isn’t! Show him in! What do you want to put him in the Yellow room for?”

  “Because he wants to see you private, Master, that’s what for.”

  “Why on earth?” demanded Conrad, staring at him.

  Raymond, who had heard the message delivered with an imperceptible stiffening of his face, laid down his cup and-saucer, and said: “I’ll see him.”

  “You’re a damned fool, Ray,” said his father, but with more amusement than annoyance in his tone. “So old Phineas wants to see me! Well, well, and why shouldn’t he? Push me into the Yellow room, Reuben.”

  Raymond said no more. As Reuben pushed the wheeled chair forward, Penhallow put out a hand and grasped Charmian by the arm. “There, my girl! Give me a kiss! Damned if you don’t make me think of your mother when you fly into your tantrums, though God knows the messy way you live is enough to make her turn in her grave! But you’re a high-couraged filly, and that’s something!” He pulled her down as he spoke, gave her a noisy kiss, and a resounding spank, and let her go.

  As soon as he had been pushed out of the room, speculation on the cause of Phineas’s visit broke out, his brothers looking inquiringly at Raymond, who said, however, that he had no more idea than they.

  “Why, particularly, are you a "damned fool", Ray?” asked Eugene, a little curiosity in his eyes.

  Raymond shrugged. “I don’t know. Did you order those buckets, Bart?”

  “No, of course I didn’t. You said you’d attend to it yourself,” Bart replied, surprised.

  “Oh!” Raymond coloured slightly. “All right: slipped my memory.”

  “Good God, how are the mighty fallen!” exclaimed Conrad, folding a slice of bread-and-butter, and putting it into his mouth. “Chalk it up, somebody! The Great, the Methodical Ray has at last forgotten something he ought to have remembered! Keep it up, Ray: you’ll become quite human in time!”

  Raymond smiled in a rather perfunctory way, and soon after left the room. Aubrey sighed audibly. “There is something more than oppressive about this house,” he said. “I expect you’re all quite used to it, but coming as I do from the beautiful peace of my own chambers it strikes me quite too dreadfully forcibly.” He described a vague gesture with his delicate hands. “I shan’t say that an evil influence appears to me to brood over the place, because I do think esoteric remarks of that nature are terribly embarrassing, don’t you? But you all seem to me to be a trifle more than life-size, and definitely febrile!”

  “You’re perfectly right!” Charmian said. “But can you wonder at it?”

  “No, my sweet. At least, I don’t mean to waste my time in trying. I’m just profoundly repelled. Something so deplorably indecorous about an uninhibited display of the more violent emotions, don’t you agree? Ah, no! How unremembering of me! You have just demonstrated to us, haven’t you, darling, that you don’t agree at all?”

  As Eugene, who was as jealous of Aubrey’s clever tongue as he was of his success in the field of literature, began to engage him in a wordy duel, Faith got up, and quietly left the room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A hired car, which had presumably brought Phineas from Bodmin, was drawn up outside the front door. Faith saw it, as she crossed the hall towards the staircase, but beyond thinking fleetingly that it was strange that Phineas should have come so unexpectedly to call upon Penhallow she wasted no speculation on his visit. The throbbing in her temples had developed into a dull ache which seemed to emanate from a point midway between her brows. The skin across her forehead felt tight and unyielding; she smoothed it once or twice with her hand as she mounted the stairs. When she reached her room, she sat down in a chair by the window, not leaning back in it, but holding herself rigid, with her hands clasped in her lap, the fingers working a little. While she had cowered in the depths of the big chair in the Long drawing-room, wincing at the strident voices of Penhallow and Charmian, she had caught sight of Clay’s white face and had read the sick terror in it. She had seen how his hand shook when he set down his cup-and-saucer, and it had come to her quite suddenly that he and she must escape from Trevellin. He had cast her an imploring look which had recalled to her mind the way he used to run to her for protection when he was a little boy. She realised that for all his lofty talk, and his desperate pretences, he was still near enough to his childhood to cherish the shreds of that old, unreasoning trust in her ability to keep him safe from any hurt or any danger. Her love for him had nerved her in the past to fight his battles for him against her stepsons, and even against Penhallow himself; it flamed high in her heart now; she could not fail Clay.

  She began to think of what she must do. She supposed it would be easily possible for them both to leave Trevellin, and for an idle minute considered how such a flight could best be accomplished. Then she remembered that she had too little money to make it feasible; and that Clay was under age. She did not know whether
Penhallow could lay legal claim to him, but she thought it very likely. They would never be able to hide from him; he would hunt them down for the sheer sport of it.

  Her gaze was fixed and unseeing; she remained motionless, except for the working of her fingers. She thought and thought, trying to find the certain way of escape which must surely exist if she had the wit to perceive it. But every path she explored seemed to lead, in her overwrought brain, only to a huge painted bedstead, in which Penhallow lay roaring with laughter at her attempts to evade him.

  So real was this image that she gradually became convinced that there was no scheme she could evolve that he would not be able easily to frustrate. She had always been afraid of him: he was beginning now to assume grotesque proportions in her mind, so that she felt herself to be as powerless, while he lived, as some fairy-tale creature under an evil spell.

  She wished that her head would stop aching. She was tired, too; she had not slept naturally for several nights, and had been obliged lately to increase the veronal she took from twenty to thirty drops. She had sent Loveday to Liskeard the day before, to have the prescription made up again at the chemist’s, and Loveday had protested diffidently, telling her that it was not right that she should drug herself, that she ought to see Dr Rame about her insomnia, because he was younger than Dr Lifton, his partner, and was said to be a clever man, and very up-to-date. She had not listened to Loveday, partly because she had drawn away from the girl since her discovery that she meant to marry Bart, and partly because she did not like Dr Rame, and had come to think that she could not do without her sleeping-draught. The new bottle, as yet unopened, stood beside the old on the shelf above her wash-stand. She turned her eyes towards it, thinking that it was as well she had sent Loveday for it, since she would be obliged to broach it tonight, if her headache continued. If it were not for Clay, she thought she might be tempted to empty the bottle into her glass, and drink it all at a gulp, thus putting a painless end to herself.