Chapter One

Jimmy the Bastard was cleaning boots, in a stone-paved room at the back of the house which commanded, through its chamfered windows, a view of the flagged yard, of a huddle of outhouses, and a glimpse, caught between the wing of the manor and the woodshed, of one of the paddocks where Raymond had some of his young stock out to grass. Beyond the paddock the ground rose towards the Moor, hidden from Jimmy’s indifferent gaze by a morning mist.

The room in which he worked was large, and dirty, and smelt of oil, boot-polish, and must. On a table against one wall a variety of lamps had been placed. Jimmy paid no attention to them. Theoretically, the cleaning and filling of the lamps was a part of his duty, but Jimmy disliked cleaning lamps, and never touched them. Later, one of the maids, driven to it by Reuben Lanner, would polish the glass chimneys, fill up the bowls with paraffin, and trim the wicks, grumbling all the time, not at Penhallow, the Master, who had never installed electric-light at Trevellin, but at Jimmy whom no one could force to perform his duties.

Under the windows, a wooden shelf accommodated the long row of boots and shoes awaiting Jimmy’s attention. Several tins of polish and blacking jostled a collection of brushes and rags. Jimmy dipped a brush into one of these tins, and, with something of the air of an epicure making his choice, picked up from the row one of Clara Hastings’s worn, single-barred, low-heeled black glace slippers. He began to spread on the blacking, without haste and without enthusiasm, but thoroughly, because he rather liked Mrs Hastings. When he came to them, he would clean Raymond’s gaiters and Bart’s topboots just as thoroughly, not from affection, but from the knowledge, born of experience, that neither of these sons of Penhallow would hesitate to lay their crops about his back if he cleaned brown boots with brushes used for black ones, or left a vestige of mud upon the soles.

Clara Hastings’s slippers were worn out of shape, the thin leather cut in places, and in others rubbed away. They were large, roomy slippers, and had never been any smarter than their owner, who went about Trevellin from year’s end to year’s end in ageless garments of no particular cut or style, with skirts uneven, and often muddied about the hems from Clara’s habit of wearing them at ankle-length, and trailing them over her gardenbeds, or through the untidy yards. Vivian Penhallow had said once that Aunt Clara’s name conjured up a vision of gaping plackets, frowsty flannel blouses, gold chains and brooches, and wisps of yellow-grey hair escaping from a multitude of pins. It was a fair description, and would in no way have perturbed Clara, had she heard it. At sixty three, a widow of many years’ standing, a pensioner under Penhallow’s roof, and with no apparent interest in anything beyond the stables and her fern-garden, Clara was as indifferent to the appearance she presented as she was indifferent to the jealousies and strifes which made Trevellin so horrible a prison to anyone not blessed with the strongest of nerves, and the most blunted of sensibilities.

Jimmy, uncritical of her deplorable shoes, did his best by them, and laid them aside. He was her nephew, by blood if not by law, but the relationship was unacknowledged by her, and unclaimed by him. Relations meant nothing to Jimmy, who was rather proud of being a bastard. Clara, accepting his presence at Trevellin without expostulation or repugnance, treated him as one of the servants, which indeed he was; and, beyond observing to Penhallow that if he took all his bastards under his roof there would be no end to it, never again referred to his parentage. The young Penhallows, with the robust brutality which still, after twenty years amongst them, made their stepmother wince and blush, did not attempt either to ignore or to conceal Jimmy’s relationship to their father. They called him Jimmy the Bastard. Excepting Ingram, Penhallow’s second son, who was married, and lived at the Dower House, and so did not come much into contact with him, they all disliked him, but in varying degrees. Eugene complained that he was insolent; Charmian knew he was dishonest; Aubrey was fastidiously disgusted by his slovenly appearance; the twins, Bartholomew and Conrad, objected to him on the score of his laziness; and Raymond, the eldest of Penhallow’s sons, hated him with an implacability that was none the less profound for being unexpressed. Jimmy returned his ill-will blatantly, but in silence. If he had dared, he would have left Raymond’s boots and gaiters uncleaned, but he did not dare. Penhallow might, in his peculiar fashion, be fond of his baseborn son, but Penhallow would only laugh if he heard of his being flogged. Penhallow had flogged and clouted all his legal offspring — not, indeed, into virtuous behaviour, but into some sort of an obedience to his imperious will — and although his great, bull-like frame was now rendered more or less quiescent by gout and dropsy, his lusty spirit had undergone no softening change. He had lived hard, intemperately, and violently, scornful of gentleness, brutal to weakness; his body had betrayed him, but his heart had learnt neither tolerance nor pity. He certainly showed a liking for Jimmy, but whether he encouraged him from affection, or from a malicious desire to enrage his legitimate children, no one, least of all Jimmy himself, knew.

There were eight pairs of shoes or boots laid out upon the shelf. Jimmy ran his eyes along the row, noting Eugene’s elegant patent-leather shoes, with their pointed toes and thin soles; the neat brogues, belonging to Vivian, his wife; Raymond’s stout boots and serviceable gaiters; Bart’s and Conrad’s riding-boots; a pair of cracked black shoes belonging to Reuben Lanner, who had lived and worked at Trevellin for as long as anyone, even Clara, could remember, and called himself Penhallow’s butler. Jimmy had no particular liking for Reuben, but he recognised the unique position he held in the house, and did not object to cleaning his shoes for him. But last on the row stood a cheap, jaunty pair of shoes, with high-heels and short toes, which instantly caught Jimmy’s eye, and brought a scowl to his dark face. He picked them up, and tossed them under the shelf on to the stone floor, with a gesture of ineffable contempt. He knew very well that they belonged to Loveday Trewithian, Mrs Penhallow’s personal maid, and he wasn’t going to clean that sly cat’s shoes for her, not he! She was a saucy piece, if ever there was one, he thought, slipping about the house so quiet and pretty-behaved, with her soft, ladyfied speech, and her eyes looking slantways under her long lashes. She was Reuben’s niece, and had started as kitchen-maid at Trevellin, of no more account than any other of the girls who performed ill-defined duties at the Manor. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Penhallow, who took a silly fancy to the girl, and had her out of the kitchen to wait upon herself, she wouldn’t have learnt to ape the manners of the gentry, nor yet have got ideas into her head which were above her station.

Jimmy gave her shoes a little kick. He knew what he knew: he’d seen Loveday and Bart kissing and cuddling when they thought themselves safe from discovery. She wouldn’t dare complain of him, not even to Mrs Penhallow, for fear he should up and tell the Master what she’d been fool enough to boast of to him. Penhallow didn’t give a damn for Bart’s making love to the girl: he wasn’t above pawing her about himself, if he got the chance; but let him but get wind of a marriage planned between the pair of them, and then wouldn’t the fur fly! Jimmy hadn’t told him yet, but he would one day if she gave him any of her airs.

He gave Mrs Eugene Penhallow’s brogues a final rub, and set them down. He didn’t reckon much to Mrs Eugene; she was a foreigner; she didn’t understand Cornish ways, nor, seemingly, want to. She didn’t like living at Trevellin, either, and made no secret of it.

Picking up one of Eugene’s shoes, and spitting on its glossy surface, Jimmy grinned, and reflected that Mrs Eugene wouldn’t succeed in moving Eugene from quarters which he found comfortable, not if she tried till Doomsday. Jimmy was contemptuous of Eugene, a hypochondriac at thirty-five, always feeling the draughts, and talking about his weak chest. He was contemptuous of Mrs Eugene too, but more tolerantly. He couldn’t see what there was in Eugene to absorb her whole attention, or to make her so passionately devoted to him. She’d got spirit, too: she wasn’t a poor downtrodden thing, like Penhallow’s wife, who allowed herself to be bullied by the Penhallows as though she was nobody. She’d stand up to Penhallow, telling him off like a regular vixen, while he lay in his great bed, roaring with laughter at her, egging her on, saying things to make her lose her temper worse than ever, and telling her she was a grand little cat, even if she didn’t know a blood-mare from a stallion, and hadn’t had more sense than to marry a nincompoop like Eugene.

Jimmy turned his attention to Bart’s riding-boots, which bore every evidence of Bart’s having walked all about the farm in them, which he probably had. Bart, to whom the reading of a book was a penance, and the writing of a letter a Herculean labour, was going to be a farmer. No doubt, thought Jimmy, he planned to settle down at Trellick Farm with Loveday one of these fine days. Trellick was earmarked for Bart, but catch Penhallow handing it over to him if he married Loveday! He might whistle for it then: in Jimmy’s opinion he wouldn’t in any event make a go of it. He’d no head, not as much sense as Conrad, his twin, though from being the hardier and the more rollicking of the two it was he who always took the lead, and set an example for the other to follow. They were the youngest of Penhallow’s first family, and had reached the age of twenty-five without having achieved any other distinction than that of being two of the most bruising riders in the county, and of having placed their parent in the position of having to pay an incredible number of maintenance sums on their behalf at an age when most young gentlemen were innocently occupied at school. Not that Penhallow grudged the money. He himself, with a fine freedom from restraint which savoured of an earlier age, had done what lay in his power to perpetuate the distinctive Penhallow cast of countenance, and the sight of an unmistakable Penhallow amongst a knot of village brats seemed to afford him a degree of amusement which scandalised, and indeed alienated the more virtuous of his acquaintances.

The wonder was, thought Jimmy, turning it over in his curious mind, that Bart, whom anyone would have thought the spit and image of his father, should have taken it into his head to marry a girl like Loveday. She was a cunning one, sure enough, looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and twisting Bart round her impudent finger.

Jimmy picked up Bart’s second boot. His dark glance fell on Conrad’s, standing next in the row, and the sight of them, setting up a train of thought, made him smile to himself with a kind of malign satisfaction. Conrad, the cleverer yet the weaker of the twins, had for his brother a jealous devotion which, though it was undisturbed by Bart’s many casual village affairs, would be likely to prove a thorny barrier in the way of his marriage to Loveday or any other young woman. Maybe Conrad already guessed what was in the wind: Jimmy didn’t know about that, but it wouldn’t surprise him if he found that Bart had taken his twin into his confidence. In Jimmy’s opinion he was fool enough for anything, too thickheaded to realise that Conrad, adoring him, vying with him, quarrelling with him, would be ready to play any dirty trick that would rid him of a rival to his possession of him.

He was turning over in his mind the possible results of telling Penhallow what was going on under his roof when a footfall sounded on the flagged passage, and Loveday Trewithian came into the room, carrying the lamp from her mistress’s bedroom.

Jimmy scowled at her, but said nothing. Loveday set the lamp down on the table beside the others, and turned, smiling, towards him. Her warm brown eyes flickered over the shelf; he knew her well enough to be sure that the absence of her own shoes from the row had not escaped her, but she gave no sign. She watched him, at work on Bart’s second boot, and said presently in her rich, soft voice: “You do polish them clean-off, Jimmy.”

He was as impervious to her flattery as to the seductive note in her voice. “I won’t lay hand or brush to yours,” he said unamiably. “You can take ’em away.”

Her smile grew. She said gently: “You don’t need to be so set against me, my dear. I won’t do you any harm.”

He made a sound of derision. “You do me harm! That’s a good ’un!”

Her smile became a little saucy. “Aw, my dear, you’re jealous!”

“I ain’t got nothing to be jealous of you for, you dressy bit! If I was to tell the old man the tricks you’re up to with that Bart you’d smile ’t ’other side of your face!”

“Mister Bart!” she corrected mildly.

Jimmy sniffed. He turned his shoulder on her, but watched her out of the corners of his eyes as she bent to pick up her shoes from under the shelf.

“To be sure, I do be forgetting you’re in a way related, my dear,” she murmured.

The taunt left Jimmy unmoved. He said nothing, and she went away, carrying her shoes, and laughing a little. It annoyed him that she showed no resentment of his churlishness; he thought she was a poor-spirited girl, or else an uncommon deep ‘un.

He had not quite finished polishing Conrad’s boots when he heard Reuben Lanner shouting for him. In a leisurely way he went out into the passage. Reuben, a spare, grizzled man in a rather worn black suit of clothes, told him that he would have to take the Master’s breakfast in to him.

“Where’s Martha?” asked Jimmy, not because he didn’t want to wait on Penhallow, but because he was naturally disinclined to obey Reuben.

“No business of yours where she is,” responded Reuben, who, in common with the rest of the household, disliked Jimmy cordially.

“I ain’t finished the boots, nor I won’t for ten minutes.”

“That’ll do well enough,” said Reuben, rather disappointingly, and vanished through one of the doorways farther down the passage.

Jimmy went back to the boot-room. The command to carry Penhallow’s breakfast to him did not surprise him, any more than a command to take up Mrs Penhallow’s tray would have surprised him. There were a number of persons comprising the domestic staff at Trevellin, but nobody had any very clearly defined duties, and no member of the family would have been in the least astonished to have found himself waited on at table by the kitchenmaid, or even by one of the grooms. Nor would the servants have thought of objecting, in any very serious spirit, to being obliged to do work for which they had not been engaged. Reuben, and Sybilla, his wife, had been in Penhallow’s service for so long that they seemed to have no interests beyond the confines of the Manor; Jimmy was bound to the family by strong, if irregular, ties; and the maid-servants, all of them locally born girls, had only the vaguest ideas about their rights, and would not, in any case, have preferred to work in more orderly but stricter establishments than this sprawling, over-large, ill-run, but comfortably lax house.

By the time an untidy housemaid had come clattering down the backstairs in search of Mr Bart’s boots and gaiters, for which he was shouting, a message had been brought to the kitchen by Loveday from Mr Eugene, requiring Sybilla to send him up a glass of boiling water and his Bemax; and Jimmy had collected the various trays which were needed to accommodate the staggering number of dishes which made up Penhallow’s breakfast. Raymond Penhallow had come in from the stables, and was pealing the bell in the dining-room. Reuben Lanner began to pile a number of plates, pots, jugs, and dishes on to a heavy silver tray, and without bestirring himself to any noticeable degree presently bore his load off, down the flagged corridor, round a corner into another, up three steps, through a black-oak door, across a large, low pitched hall, and so to the dining-room, a long, panelled apartment which faced south on to the front drive. That the dining-room might be somewhat inconveniently placed, having regard to the position of the kitchen, was a thought that had long ceased to trouble his mind; and although the family often complained that food came cold to the table, and were perfectly well aware of the cause, none of them ever made the slightest attempt to remedy it. Clara had indeed once remarked that they ought to cut a serving-hatch through the wall, but she had not been attended to, the Penhallows having grown up with this inconvenience, and preferring it to any revolutionary change.

Raymond Penhallow was standing before the great stone fireplace, reading a letter, when Reuben came in. He was a sturdily built, dark man of thirty-nine, with a rather grim cast of countenance, a decided chin, and no small-talk. He had the strong, square hands of the practical man, the best seat on a horse of any man in the county, and a kind of rugged common sense which made him an excellent farmer, and a competent bailiff. It was generally thought that when Penhallow finally succumbed to the ailments which were supposed to beset him Raymond would make several changes at Trevellin, which, however disagreeable to the various members of the household at present subsisting upon Penhallow’s reckless bounty, would no doubt be extremely beneficial to the over-charged estate. In theory, he had managed the estate now for several years; in practice, he acted as an unpaid overseer for his father, and was at the mercy of Penhallow’s unpredictable whims. Penhallow showed a certain unwilling respect for his ability, but condemned his businesslike sense of the value of money as pettifogging, and, with a magnificent disregard for the drain upon his finances which the support of so many souls under his roof entailed, continued to maintain as many members of his family as could be brought under his sway with a careless but despotic open-handedness which savoured strongly of seigneurial times.

Reuben dumped the silver tray down upon an enormous sideboard of mahogany which occupied most of the wall-space at one end of the room. In a leisurely fashion, he began to arrange the plates and dishes. The fact that all three silver entree dishes were tarnished disturbed his complacency no more than the discovery that one of the plates did not match its fellows. He remarked dispassionately that that was another of the Spode plates gone, and added that they were down to five now. As Raymond vouchsafed no reply to this piece of information, he placed a singularly beautiful coffeepot of Queen Anne date on the table, and flanked it with an electro-plated milk jug, and a teapot of old Worcester.

“Master’s had a bad night,” he observed.

Raymond grunted.

“He had Martha out to him four times,” pursued Reuben, fitting a faded satin cosy over the teapot. “Seemingly there wasn’t much wrong with him, barring the gout. He’s clever enough now.”

This piece of information elicited no more response than the first. Reuben thoughtfully polished a thin Georgian spoon on his sleeve, and added: “He’s had a letter from young Aubrey. Seemingly, he’s got himself in debt again. That’s done Master good, that has.”

Raymond made no objection to this unceremonious reference to his younger brother, but the intelligence thus cavalierly conveyed to him brought a scowl to his like, and he looked up from the letter in his hand.

“I thought that ’ud fetch you,” said the retainer, sleeting his gaze with a kind of ghoulish satisfaction.

“I don’t want any damned impudence from you,” returned Raymond, moving to the table, and seating himself at the head of it.

Reuben gave a dry chuckle. Removing the lid from one of the entree dishes, he shovelled several pilchards on to a plate, and dumped this down before Raymond. “You don’t need to trouble yourself,” he observed. “Master says young Aubrey won’t get a farden out of him.” He pushed one of the toast-racks towards Raymond, and prepared to depart. “Next thing you know, we’ll have young Aubrey down here,” he said. “That’ll be clean-of that will!”

Raymond gave a short bark of sardonic laughter. Reuben, having unburdened himself of all the information at present at his disposal, took himself off, just as Clara Hastings came in from the garden, and entered the dining-room.

It would have been hard for anyone, casually encountering Clara, to have made an accurate guess at her age. She was, in fact, sixty-three years old, but although her harsh-featured countenance was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her untidy locks were only streaked with grey, and her limbs had the elasticity of a much younger woman’s. She was a tall, angular creature, and, rather unexpectedly, looked her best in the saddle. She had strong, bony hands, generally grimed with dirt, since she was an enthusiastic gardener, and rarely took the trouble to protect her hands with gloves. Her skirts never hung evenly round her, and since she wore them unfashionably long, and was continually catching her heels in them, their hems often sagged where the stitches had been rent. When enough of the hem had come unsewn to discommode her, she cobbled it up again, using whatever reel of cotton came first to her hand. She was always ready to spend more money than she could afford on her horses or her garden, but grudged every penny laid out in clothing. She had been known to watch, over a period of months, the gradual reduction in price of a hat in one of the cheaper shops at Liskeard, triumphantly acquiring it at last for a few grudged shillings in a clearance sale at the end of the year. As a bride of twenty-two, she had set out on her honeymoon in a new sealskin coat: as a widow of sixty-three, she still wore the same sealskin coat, brown now with age, and worn in places down to the leather. Neither her son, Clifford, a solicitor in Liskeard, nor any of the Penhallows paid the least attention to the deplorable appearance she so often presented, but her ill-chosen and occasionally frayed garments were a source of continual disgust to her daughter-in-law, Rosamund; an annoyance to Penhallow’s wife, Faith; and even roused Vivian from her absorption in more important cares to comment caustically upon them.

She was dressed this morning in a voluminous and shiny blue skirt imperfectly confining at the waist a striped flannel shirt-blouse; a woollen cardigan, shapeless and tufty from much washing, and faded to an indeterminate hue; a pair of cracked shoes; odd stockings; and a collection of gold chains, Cairngorm brooches, and old fashioned rings. Two strands of hair had already escaped from the complicated erection on the top of her head and a hairpin was dropping out of a loop of hair over one ear. She took her seat opposite Raymond, behind the cups and saucers, remarking as she did so that her grey had cast a shoe.

“I can’t spare any of the men,” responded Raymond. "Jimmy the Bastard will have to take him down to the smithy.”

Clara accepted this without comment, and began to pour out some coffee for him, and tea for herself: Having done this, she got up and went over to the sideboard, returning in a few moments with a plate upon which reposed a sausage, a fried egg, and several rashers of bacon. Raymond was studying a sheet of figures, and paid no attention to her. It occurred to neither of them that he should wait upon her.

“Your father was on the rampage again in the night,” remarked Clara presently.

“Reuben told me. He had Martha out of bed four times.”

“Gout?” inquired Clara.

“I don’t know. There’s a letter from Aubrey.”

Clara stirred her tea reflectively. “I thought I heard him shoutin’,” she said. “Aubrey gettin’ into debt again’’

“So Reuben says. I shouldn’t be surprised. Damned young waster!”

“Your father won’t be happy till he’s got him down here,” said Clara. “He’s a queer boy. I never could make head nor tail of those bits of writing of his. I daresay they’re very clever, though. He won’t like it if he has to come down here.”

“Well, nor shall I,” said Raymond. “It’s bad enough having Eugene doing nothing except lounge on the sofa, and fancy himself ill all day.”

“Your father likes havin’ him,” said Clara.

“I’m damned if I know why he should.”

“He’s very amusin’,” said Clara.

Raymond having apparently nothing to say in answer to this, the interchange ceased. The clatter of heavy feet on the uncarpeted oak stairs, and a loud whistling, heralded the approach of one of the twins. It was Conrad, the younger of them. He was a good-looking young man, dark and aquiline like all his family, and, although taller than his eldest brother, was almost as stockily built. Though not considered to be as clever as Aubrey, his senior by three years, he had more brain than his twin, and had contrived to pass, after a prolonged period of study, the various examinations which enabled him to embrace the profession of land agent. Penhallow having bought him a junior partnership in a local firm of some standing, it was considered that unless the senior partners brought the partnership to an end, on account of his casual habit of absenting himself from the office on the slimmest of pretexts, he was permanently settled in life.

He came into the room, pushed the door to behind him, favoured his aunt with a laconic greeting, and helped himself largely from the dishes on the sideboard. “The old man’s had a bad night,” he announced, sitting down at the table.

“So we’ve already been told,” said Raymond.

“I heard him raising Cain somewhere in the small hours,” said Conrad, reaching out a long arm for the butter-dish. “Your grey’s cast a shoe, Aunt Clara.”

She handed him his coffee. “I know. Your brother says Jimmy can take him down to the village.”

“Bet you the old man keeps Jimmy dancing attendance on him all day,” said Conrad. “I don’t mind leading him down. I’m going that way. You’ll have to arrange to fetch him, though.”

“If you’re going to the village, you can drop that at the Dower House,” said Raymond, tossing a letter over to him.

Conrad pocketed it, and applied himself to his breakfast. He had reached the marmalade stage, and Raymond had lighted his pipe, before the elder twin put in an appearance.

Bartholomew came in with a cheerful greeting on his lips. There was a strong resemblance between him and Conrad, but he was the taller and the more stalwart of the two, and looked to be much the more goodhumoured, which indeed he was. He had a ruddy, open countenance, a roving eye, and a singularly disarming grin. He gave his twin a friendly punch in the ribs as he passed him on his way to the sideboard, and remarked that it was a fine day. “I say, Ray!” he added, looking over his shoulder. “What’s the matter with the Guv’nor?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. He had a bad night.”

“Gosh, don’t I know it!” said Bart. “But what’s got his goat this morning?”

“That fool Aubrey. Reuben says he’s got into debt again.”

“Hell!” said Bart. “That puts the lid on my chances of getting the Guv’nor to dip his hand in the coffer. Lend me a fiver, Ray, will you?”

“What do you want it for?”

“I owe most of it.”

“Well, go on owing it,” recommended Raymond. “I’ll see you farther before I let you owe it to me.”

“Blast you! Con?”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

Bart turned to Clara. “Auntie? Come on, be a sport, Clara! I swear I’ll pay it back.”

“I don’t know where you think I could find five pounds,” she said cautiously. “What with the vet’s bill, and me needin’ a new pair of boots, and “

“You can’t refuse your favourite nephew! Now, you know you haven’t the heart to, Clara darling!” wheedled Bart.

“Get along with you! You’re a bad boy,” Clara told him fondly. “I know where your money goes! You can’t get round your old aunt.”

Bart grinned at her, apparently satisfied with the result of his coaxing. Clara went on grumbling about her poverty and his shamelessness; Conrad and Raymond began to argue about a capped hock, a discussion which soon attracted Clara’s attention; and by the time Vivian Penhallow came into the dining-room the four members of the family already seated at the table were loudly disputing about the rival merits of gorse, an ordinary chain, or a strap-and-sinker to cure a stall-kicker.

Vivian Penhallow, Surrey-born, was a fish out of water amongst the Penhallows. She had met Eugene in London, had fallen in love with him almost at first sight, and had married him in spite of the protests of her family. While not denying that his birth was better than their own, that his manners were engaging, and his person attractive, Mr and Mrs Arden had felt that they would have preferred for their daughter a husband with some more tangible means of supporting her than they could perceive in Eugene’s desultory but graceful essays and poems. Since they knew him to be the third, and not the eldest, son of his father they did not place so much dependence on Penhallow’s providing for him as he appeared to. But Vivian was of age, and, besides being very much in love with Eugene, who was seven years her senior, she had declared herself to be sick to death of the monotony of her life, and had insisted that she hated conventional marriages, and would be happy to lead an impecunious existence with Eugene, rubbing shoulders with artists, writers, and other Bohemians. So she had married him, and would no doubt have made an excellent wife for him, had he seriously settled down to earn a living with his pen. But after drifting about the world for a few years, leading a hand-to-mouth existence which Vivian enjoyed far more than Eugene did, Eugene had suffered a serious illness, which was sufficiently protracted to exhaust his slender purse, and to induce him to look upon himself as a chronic invalid. He had naturally gone home to Trevellin to recuperate both his health and his finances, and Vivian had never since that date been able to prevail upon him to leave the shelter of the parental roof. Eugene declared himself to be quite unfit to cope with the cares of the world, and added piously that since his father was in a precarious state of health, he thought it his duty to remain at Trevellin. When Vivian represented to him her dislike of living as a guest in a household teeming with persons all more or less inimical to her, he patted her hand, talked vaguely of a roseate future when Penhallow should be dead and himself peculiarly independent, and begged her to be patient. A tendency on her part to pursue the subject had the effect of sending him to bed with a nervous headache, and since Vivian believed in his ailments, and was passionately determined to guard him from every harsh wind that blew, she never again tried to persuade him to leave Trevellin.

Since she was not country-bred, knew nothing about horses, and cared less, she was regarded by her brothers in-law with an almost complete indifference. Being themselves unable to imagine a more desirable abode than Trevellin, and having grown up to consider the tyranny of its master an everyday affair, they had none of them any conception of the canker of resentment which ate into Vivian’s heart. They thought her a moody little thing, laughed at her tantrums, and mocked at her absorption in Eugene. Without meaning to be unkind, they teased her unmercifully and were amused when she quarrelled with them. In their several ways, they were all of them imperceptive, and insensitive enough to make it impossible for them to understand why anyone should be hurt by their cheerful brutality.

Faith, their father’s second wife, had been crushed by the Penhallows; Vivian remained a rebel, and had even developed a kind of protective crust which rendered her indifferent to their contempt of herself. She never pretended to take an interest in the subjects which absorbed them, and said now, as she walked into the room in time to hear Conrad ask Bart whether he remembered a herring-gutted chestnut Aubrey had picked up cheap some years ago: “Oh, do shut up about horses! I want some fresh toast for Eugene. Sybilla sent him up slices like a doorsteps. I should have thought she must know by now that he likes very thin toast, not too much browned.”

She cast a frowning glance at the toast still remaining icy in the racks on the table, but Bart warded her off with one outstretched arm. “No, you don’t! Eugene is damned well not going to pinch our toast!”

She stalked over to the bell-rope, and tugged at it imperiously. “That’s cold, anyway. Sybilla must make some fresh for him. He’s had one of his bad nights.”

Both twins at once made derisive noises, which had the effect of bringing a flush to her cheeks. Even Raymond’s grim countenance relaxed into a faint smile. “There’s nothing the matter with Eugene, beyond a common lack of guts,” he said.

She said hotly: “Because you’ve never known a day’s illness in your life, you think no one else has a right to be delicate! Eugene suffers from the most terrible insomnia. If anything happens to upset him—”

A roar of laughter interrupted her. She shut her lips closely, her eyes flashing, and her nostrils a little distended.

“Now don’t tease the gal!” said Clara. “Eugene’s got a bit of indigestion, I daresay. He was always the one of you with the touchy stomach, and if he likes to call it insomnia there’s no harm in that that I know of."

“I don’t know how anyone can expect to get any rest in this house, with your father behaving as though there was no one but himself entitled to any consideration, and shouting for that disgusting old woman in the night loud enough to be heard a mile off!” cried Vivian furiously. “You wouldn’t like it if I said that there was nothing the matter with him, but nothing will ever make me believe that he couldn’t be perfectly well if he wanted to be!”

“Who said there was anything the matter with him?” demanded Bart. “He’s all right!”

“Then why does he rouse the whole house four times during the night?”

“Why shouldn’t he? His house, isn’t it?”

“He’s as selfish as the rest of you! He wouldn’t care if Eugene got ill again!”

Raymond got up from the table, and collected his letters. “You’d better tell him so,” he advised.

“I shall tell him so. I’m not afraid of him, whatever you may be!”

“Ah, you’re a grand girl, surely!” Bart said, lounging over to where she stood, and putting an arm round her shoulders. “Loo in, my dear, loo in! Give me a bitch-pack every time!”

She pushed him angrily away. “Oh, shut up!”

At this moment Reuben came in. “Was it one of you, ringing?” he asked severely.

“It was I,” said Vivian, in a cold voice. “Mr Eugene can’t eat the toast Sybilla sent up to him. Please tell her to make some more, thin, and not burnt!”

“Sybilla’s more likely to box his ears for him,” remarked Conrad, preparing to follow Raymond out of the room.

“I’ll tell her, m’m,” said Reuben disapprovingly, “but he always was a one for picking over his food, Master Eugene was, and if we was to start paying any attention to his fads there’d be no end to it. Many’s the time Master’s walloped him -’

“ If you’ll kindly do as I tell you?” snapped Vivian.

“You’re spoiling him,” said Reuben, shaking his head. “I’d give him fresh toast! Master Eugene indeed!”

Vivian with difficulty restrained herself from returning an answer to this, and after giving one of his disparaging sniffs Reuben withdrew.

“Stop worryin’ over the boy, my dear, and have your breakfast!” recommended Clara kindly. “Here’s your tea. Now sit down, do!”

Vivian took the cup-and-saucer, remarking that it was as black as ink, as usual, and sat down at the table. “I don’t know how you can bear that man’s impertinence,” she added. “He’s familiar, and slovenly, and impossible!”

“Well, you see, he’s been at Trevellin ever since he was a boy, and his father before him,” explained Clara mildly. “He doesn’t mean any harm, my dear, but it’s not a bit of good expecting him to be respectful to the boys. When you think of the times he’s chased them out of the larder with a stick, it’s not likely he would be. But never you mind!”

Vivian sighed, and relapsed into silence. She knew that Clara, though sympathetic, would never take her part against her own family. The only ally she had in the house was Faith, and she despised Faith.

Chapter Two

It was Faith Penhallow’s custom to breakfast in bed, a habit she had adopted not so much out of regard for her health, which was frail, but because she resented her sister-in-law’s calm assumption of the foot of the table, behind the coffee-cups. She had no real wish to pour out tea and coffee for a numerous household, but like a great many weak people she was jealous of her position, and she considered that Clara’s usurpation of her place at table made her appear ridiculous. She had several times hinted that it was the mistress of the house who ought to take the foot of the table, but while she was incapable of boldly stating a grievance Clara was equally incapable of recognising a hint. So Clara, having taken the seat upon her first coming home to the house of her birth, kept it, and Faith, refusing to acknowledge defeat, never came downstairs until after breakfast.

It was twenty years since Faith Clay Formby, a romantic girl of nineteen, had been swept off her feet by Adam Penhallow, a great, handsome, dark man, twenty two years her senior, and had left the shelter of her aunt’s house to marry him. She had been very pretty in those days, with large blue eyes, the softest of fair curls, and the most appealing mouth in the world. Penhallow’s age had lent him an added enchantment; he knew just how to handle a shy girl; and the knowledge that he was a rake did not in anyway detract from his charm. She had been flattered, had pictured to herself the future, when she would be mistress of a Manor in Cornwall, moving gracefully about the beautiful old house, worshipped by her (reformed) husband, adored by her stepchildren. She had meant to be so kind to his motherless family. She was prepared to encounter enmity, but she would win them over by her patience, and her understanding, until, within a few months, they would all confide in her, and vie with one another in waiting on her.

At first glance, Trevellin had been all and more than she had imagined. Situated not many miles from Liskeard, the big Tudor house, with its Dutch gables, its fall chimney-stacks, its many mullioned windows, was large enough and lovely enough to draw a gasp from her. She saw it on a clear summer’s evening, cool grey in a setting of pasture-land, with its walled gardens bright with flowers, its heavy oak doors standing hospitably open, and allowing her, before she set foot across the threshold, a glimpse of floors black with age, of a warped gateleg table, of a warming-pan hanging on a panelled wall. North of Trevellin, in the distance, the Moor rose up, grand in the mellow evening light. Penhallow had pointed out Rough Tor to her, and had asked her if she could smell the sharp peat-scent in the air. Oh, yes, it had quite come up to her expectations! Even the discovery that most of the bewildering number of rooms in the house were badly in need of decoration; that many of the carpets and curtains were shabby; that the most hideous examples of a Victorian cabinet-maker’s art stood cheek by jowl with pieces of Chippendale, or Hepplewhite; that it would have needed an army of servants to keep so rambling a house in good order, failed to dash her spirits. She would change all that.

But she couldn’t change Penhallow’s children.

Whatever picture she had conjured up faded, never again to be recalled, at that first sight of them, drawn up in formidable array for her inspection. It was forcibly borne in upon her that her eldest stepson was of the same age as herself, and a good deal more assured. Had Penhallow told her that Raymond was nineteen? She didn’t know; probably he had, but she was the type of woman who found little difficulty in glossing over such information as did not fit into her dream-pictures, and she had forgotten it.

There they had stood, seven of them, ranging in age from nineteen to five: Raymond, scowling and taciturn; Ingram, taller than Raymond, and brusque in manner; Eugene, a slim edition of Ingram, but with a livelier countenance, and, even at fifteen, a quick, bitter tongue; Charmian, five years younger than Eugene, as blackbrowed as the rest of the family, and quite as hardy; Aubrey looking, at eight, deceptively delicate; the twins, sturdy and unfriendly little boys of five, resisting all her attempts to cuddle them, and plunging after their great, rough brothers.

They showed no enmity towards their stepmother; they did not appear to feel the smallest pang of resentment at her stepping into their mother’s shoes. It was some time before she had realised that they had encountered, and taken for granted, too many of Penhallow’s mistresses to cavil at a second wife. She had a horrifying suspicion that they regarded her from the start as just another of Penhallow’s women, to be tolerated, but not admitted into their charmed circle. She had pictured them as neglected: she had never imagined that she would find them revelling in neglect, impatient of caresses, tumbling in and out of scrapes, scandalising the countryside, dodging their father’s wrath, never happy except when astride plunging horses, the very sight of which terrified her.

She had never had a chance to mother them. You couldn’t mother a young man as old as yourself; or striplings who despised the tenderer emotions; or a wild, wiry little girl who scornfully rescued you from a field full of aggressive-looking bullocks, and thought you a fool for calling a blood-mare “a pretty horse”. As for Aubrey, and the twins, their creature comforts were administered to them by Martha, and whatever fondness they had for any female was given to her. Her overtures had not been repulsed so much as endured; she had never been able to flatter herself that her marriage to Penhallow had made the smallest difference to any one of them.

She had tried, of course, to shape herself into the pattern Penhallow desired, even learning to ride under his ruthless instruction. She endured hours of sick terror in the saddle, never achieving mastery over any but the quietest old horse in the stable; and she cried because Penhallow roared with laughter at her; and sometimes wondered why she had married him, and still more why he had married her. She had not enough perception to realise that Penhallow never weighed a question in his impatient mind, never subordinated his body’s needs to the counsel of his brain, never troubled to look to the future. He had wanted to possess Faith, and since he could not get her without marrying her, he had married her, leaving the future to providence, or perhaps not even caring for it.

She had never understood him, probably never would; and although his love-making frightened her sometimes, she was too young and innocent to realise, until the knowledge was forcibly borne in upon her, that she had married an incontinent man who would never be faithful to one woman all his life long. She was shocked beyond measure, and bitterly hurt, when she first discovered that he had a mistress; and might have left him had she not been pregnant at the time. Her son, Clay, was born, and after that there could be no question of leaving Penhallow. But she did not love Penhallow any more. She was sickly all through the months of her pregnancy, nervous, and often peevish. Still living in a world of make-believe, forming her expectations on what she had read between the covers of novels, she imagined that Penhallow would treat her with loving solicitude, waiting on her tenderly, begging her to take care of herself, and certainly pacing the floor in an agony of dread while her child was born. But Rachel Ottery, his first wife, had borne her children without fuss or complication, riding her high-bred horses to within a few weeks of her deliveries, and making no more ado over the whole business than she would have made over the extraction of a tooth. Penhallow, then, had little patience with an ailing, querulous wife, and no more sympathy with her nervous fears than he had with what he thought was her squeamishness. Faith, who believed that the more primitive functions of the human body were “not nice”, and could only be spoken of under a veil of euphemism; who called bitches lady-dogs; and who would certainly tell the twins that God had sent them a little baby brother, felt her very soul shrink at Penhallow’s crudities. On the day that he jovially informed the Vicar that his wife was breeding, she knew that she had married a brute; and on that day died her youth.

Clay was born at four o’clock on a damp autumn day. Scent was breast-high; Penhallow was hunting. He came into Faith’s room at seven, mud-splashed, smelling of the stables and leather and spirits, singing out: “Well, my girl, well? How are you feeling now? Clever, eh? Where’s the young Penhallow? Let’s have a look at the little rascal!”

But he had not thought much of Clay, a wizened scrap, tucked up in a cradle all hung with muslin and blue ribbons. “Damme if ever I saw such a puny little rat!” he said, accustomed to Rachel’s bouncing, lusty babies. “Not much Penhallow about him!”

Perhaps because he saw so little of the Penhallow in this youngest son he permitted Faith to give him her own name, Clay. The child was inclined to be weakly, a fault ascribed by Penhallow to Faith’s cosseting of herself when she was bearing him. He was a tow-headed baby, darkening gradually to an indeterminate brown, and with his mother’s colouring he inherited her timid disposition. Nothing terrified him as much as the sound of his father’s voice upraised either in wrath, or in boisterous joviality; he would burst into tears if startled; he early developed a habit of sheltering behind his mother; and was continually complaining to her that his half-brothers had been unkind to him. In defence of him, Faith could find the courage to fight. She dared her stepsons to lay a finger on her darling, and was so sure that their rough ways must harm him that she instilled into his head a dread of them which they had in actual fact done little to deserve. The twins certainly bullied him, but the elder Penhallows, who would have goodnaturedly taught him to ride, and to fish, and to shoot, and to defend himself with his fists, had he shown the least spark of spirit, shrugged their shoulders, and generally ignored him. Fortunately for himself, he was intelligent, and managed to win a scholarship to a public school of good standing. Penhallow, who had allowed the younger sons of his first marriage to be educated locally, in the most haphazard fashion, said that as he didn’t seem to be good for much else, he might as well get some solid book-learning into his head, and raised no objection to his taking up the scholarship. Later, he was to consent to his going on to Cambridge, where he was at present. For this, Faith had Raymond to thank. “He’s no damned good to anyone, and we don’t want him here, eating his head off,” Raymond had said bluntly. Penhallow had seen the force of this argument. Clay was the only one of his sons whom he did not wish to keep at home. He said the sight of the boy’s pasty face and girlish ways turned his stomach.

The boy’s colouring had from the outset been a source of mortification to him. The Penhallows, with their usual forthrightness, animadverted frequently on the incongruity of light hair in a Penhallow; and casual visitors were all too apt to comment artlessly on it, saying that it was strange to meet a fair member of that family, resenting these remarks as much as Clay, wondered why the Penhallow in him should be expected to predominate, and would say in an aggrieved tone that , the first Mrs Penhallow had been as dark as Penhallow himself it was not surprising that his elder sons should be all dark as was apparently desired.

Faith used to stare at the portrait of Rachel Penhallow, which hung in the hall, trying to imagine what kind of a woman she had been, how she had managed to hold her own against Penhallow, or if she had not. She thought that she had: the painted face was strong, even arrogant, with hard challenging eyes, and a full underlie thrusting lip against the upper. Faith felt that she would have disliked Rachel, perhaps have been afraid of her; and sometimes, in one of her morbidly fanciful moods, she would take the notion into her head that the painted eyes mocked her. She would have liked to have thought that Rachel’s spirit brooded darkly over the house, for she was superstitious by inclination, but it was impossible to suppose that any other spirit than Penhallow’s reigned at Trevellin. So curious was she about her predecessor that during the early years of her marriage, she was forever trying to make those who had known Rachel intimately talk of her, even cultivating a friendship with Delia Ottery, who was Rachel’s younger sister, and who lived with her brother Phineas in a square grey house on the outskirts of Bodmin. But the inconsequent stories Delia told of Rachel did not help her to form a composite picture, because it was plain that Delia, admiring her sister, had yet had no real understanding of her. She knew what Rachel did, but not what Rachel was. She had an unspeculative mind, and was, besides, stupid and very shy. She had developed into the old maid of fiction: there could be nothing in common between her and Faith; and the friendship languished. It had lasted for long enough to provide the young Penhallows with food for ribaldry, Delia having always been regarded by them as the Family Eccentric.

It would have been better for Faith could she but have found a friend, but this she was unable to do, being convinced that she could have nothing in common with her neighbours. They were country-bred, and she was never able to interest herself in country pursuits, always preferring to dwell upon the amenities of the life she had abandoned when she married Penhallow rather than to adapt herself to circumstances. Her relations with the matrons of the district never extended beyond acquaintanceship. She blamed the inelasticity of their minds; it was not given to her to understand that a craving for sympathy was no foundation for friendship.

This craving had grown with the years; because of it she had taken Loveday Trewithian out of the kitchen, and had promoted her to be her personal maid, and, later, her confidante. Loveday was gentle, and patient. She would listen to Faith’s complainings, and agree that she was hardly used; and she invested her services with a tender cajolery immensely gratifying to a woman who all her life long had passionately desired to be cosseted, and considered.

“Oh, Loveday!” Faith said, in her fretful voice, when Loveday came into her bedroom. “Has anything happened?”

Beside the fair, faded woman in bed, with the thin hands and dilating blue eyes, Loveday Trewithian seemed to glow with life and vigour. She lifted the breakfast-tray from her mistress’s knees, and smiled  down at her warmly. “It’s nothing,” she said soothingly.

“I thought I heard Mr Penhallow shouting,” Faith said falteringly.

“Yes, sure,” Loveday said. “My uncle Reuben’s saying it’s Mr Aubrey that’s made him angry. You don’t need to upset yourself, ma’am.”

Faith relaxed on to her pillows with a little sigh, her mind relieved of its most pressing anxiety, that Clay, whose career at Cambridge was not fulfilling his early promise, might have done something to enrage his father. She watched Loveday set the tray down near the door, and begin to move about the room, laying out what clothes she thought Faith would wear. Her mind turned to a lesser care; she said: “The bath water was tepid again this morning. I do think Sybilla might pay a little attention to it."

“I’ll speak to her for you, ma’am, never fear! They say it’s the system that’s wrong.”

“Everything’s out-of-date or out-of-order in this house!” I’aith said.

“It isn’t fit for a delicate lady like you, ma’am, to have to live where there’s so little comfort,” murmured Loveday. “It’s wonderful the way you put up with it, surely.”

“Nobody cares whether it’s fit for me or not,” Faith said. “I’m used to that. Trevellin never agreed with me. I never feel well here, and you know how badly I sleep. I had to take my drops last night, and even then I had a wretched night!”

“It’s your nerves, and no wonder!” Loveday said. “You ought to get away for a change, ma’am, if I may say so. This is no place for you.”

“I wish I could go away, and never come back!” Faith said, half to herself.

A knock sounded on the door, and before she could reply to it Vivian had walked in. Loveday set the brushes straight on the dressing-table, picked up the breakfast tray, and went away. Faith saw from the crease between Vivian’s brows that she was in one of her moods, and at once said in a failing voice that she had passed a miserable night and had a splitting headache.

“I’m not surprised at all,” responded Vivian. “Your precious husband saw to it we should all have thoroughly disturbed nights.”

“Oh! I didn’t know,” Faith said nervously. “Was he awake in the night?”

“Was he! You’re lucky: you don’t sleep on his side of the house. When he wasn’t pealing his bell, he was shouting for Martha. Disgusting old hag!” Vivian took a cigarette from a battered packet in the pocket of her tweed jacket, and lit it. “Is it true that she was one of his mistresses?” she asked casually. “Eugene says she was.”

Faith flushed scarlet, and sat up in bed. “That’s just the sort of thing Eugene would say!” she said angrily. “And I should have thought you would have had more decent feeling than to have repeated it to me!”

“Oh, sorry!” Vivian answered. “Only Penhallow’s affairs are always so openly talked about that I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s no use pretending you don’t know anything about them, Faith, because of course you do. And for God’s sake don’t pretend that you mind, because I know darned well you don’t.”

"Well, I do mind!” said Faith. “You needn’t think that because I say nothing I like having that old woman in my house, doing all the sort of things for Adam which any decent man would have had a valet for! But I think it’s disgraceful of Eugene to go about saying she used to be Adam’s mistress! Even if it were true, such things are better not spoken of.”

“I don’t know,” Vivian said reflectively. “Practically the only thing I like about the Penhallows — except Eugene, of course — is their way of having everything aboveboard ;and freely spoken of. I mean, there’s nothing furtive about them.”

“I was brought up to consider that certain things were better left unsaid!” said Faith primly.

“So was I, and damned dull it was. If you wouldn’t pretend so much—”

“You seem to forget that I’m Eugene’s stepmother,” said Faith, snatching at the rags of her dignity.

“Oh, don’t be silly! You’re not quite eleven years older than I am, and I know perfectly well that you loathe this place as much as I do. But I do think you might do something to make it more possible! After all, you’re Penhallow’s wife! But just look at the servants, for a start! Sybilla’s just been extremely insolent to Eugene, and as for Reuben, and that loathsome creature, Jimmy-"

“It’s no use complaining to me,” interrupted Faith. “I can’t do anything about it. And Sybilla’s a good cook. I should like to know who else would stay in a place like this, or cook for a positive army of people on a stove that was out-of-date twenty years ago! I’m only thankful she and Reuben do stay.”

“And then there’s that maid of yours,” Vivian continued, disregarding her. “You’ll have to get rid of her, Faith.”

“Get rid of Loveday! I’ll do no such thing! She’s the one person in the house who considers me!”

“Yes, I know, but Aunt Clara always says she’s a double-faced girl.”

“I don’t want to listen to what Clara says! She’s a spiteful old woman, and just because I’m fond of Love day—”

“No, it isn’t that. They all say the same. Bart’s at his old tricks again. It’s absolutely fatal to employ good-looking servants in this house. I should have thought you must have known that.”

“Loveday Trewithian is a thoroughly nice girl, and I won’t hear a word against her!”

“Eugene says she means to marry Bart.”

Faith’s blue eyes started a little. She stammered: “I don’t believe it! Bart wouldn’t—”

“I know he’s never wanted to marry any of his other bits of stuff,” said Vivian, “but honestly, Faith, he does seem to have gone in off the deep end this time. Conrad’s livid with jealousy. You must have noticed it! Eugene says—

“I don’t want to hear what Eugene says! He always was a mischief-maker, and I don’t believe one word of this!”

Any criticism of Eugene at once alienated Vivian. She put out her cigarette in the grate, and got up, saying coldly: “You can believe what you like, but if you’ve a grain of sense you’ll get rid of the girl. I don’t know if Bart means to marry her or not, and I care less, but if it’s true, and Penhallow gets to hear of it, you’ll wish you’d paid attention to me, that’s all.”

“I don’t believe a word of it!” Faith repeated, on the verge of tears.

Vivian opened the door, remarking over her shoulder: “You never believe anything you don’t want to believe. I’ve no patience with people like you.”

After she had gone, Faith lay for quite half an hour thinking how brutal Vivian had been, and how rude, and how no one cared for her nerves, or hesitated to upset her when she had had a bad night. It was characteristic of her that she did not let her mind dwell on the unwelcome tidings which Vivian had imparted. If they were true, there would be the sort of trouble she dreaded; but she did not want to dismiss Loveday, and so she refused even to contemplate the possibility of their being true.

It was past ten o’clock when Faith at last got up and began to dress. Fortunately for herself, and indeed for the rest of the household, it was Sybilla Lanner who undertook the housekeeping at Trevellin. She had done so from the time of Rachel’s death. An attempt by Faith, in the early days of her marriage, to take the reins into her own hands had failed, not because Sybilla opposed it, or showed the slightest jealousy of the new Mrs Penhallow, but because Faith had no idea how to cater for a large family, and was, besides, the kind of woman who could never remember people’s individual tastes. Easy-going, slovenly, wasteful Sybilla, never planning ahead, always sending one of the maids running to the village to buy another couple of loaves of bread or a tin of baking powder, yet never forgot that Mr Raymond would not touch treacle, or that Mr Conrad liked his eggs fried on both sides, or that the Master would not eat a pasty unless scalded cream was served with it, in the old-fashioned way. On the only two occasions that Faith’s aunt, who had brought her up, visited her at Trevellin, she had exclaimed against Sybilla’s extravagance, and had tried to introduce her to more methodical ways. She had failed. Sybilla, soft-spoken like all her race, agreed with every word she said, and continued to rule the kitchen as she had ruled it for years.

By the time Faith came out of her bedroom it was eleven o’clock, and the family had dispersed. The maids were still making beds, emptying slops, and raising a dust with long-handled brooms; for since no one bothered to oversee their work they went about it in a cheerful, leisurely fashion, with a good deal of chatter, and singing, and no attention paid to the clock. Faith remarked, encountering a stout girl who had just come out of Raymond’s room with a dustpan-and-brush in her hand, that the rooms ought to have been finished an hour ago. The girl agreed with her, smiling good-humouredly, and adding that they did seem to be a bit behindhand today. They were always behindhand. Faith passed on, down the wide, oaken stair, feeling irritated, knowing that she ought to look after the maids better, but telling herself that she had neither the health nor the energy to train raw country girls.

The stairs led down to the central hall, a low-pitched, irregularly-shaped space with several passages leading from it, and a number of doors. Rachel’s portrait hung over the great stone fireplace, facing the staircase; a gateleg table, with a bowl of flowers on it, stood in the middle of the hall; there were several Jacobean chairs, with tall carved backs, and worn seats; a faded Persian rug; a large jar containing peacocks’ feathers, which stood in one corner; an ancient oak coffer; a coal-scuttle of tarnished copper; two saddle-back armchairs; a Chippendale what-not, its several tiers piled with old newspapers, magazines, garden-scissors, balls of string, and other such oddments; and a kneehole-desk, of hideous design, under one of the windows which flanked the open front door. Besides Rachel’s portrait, the walls bore several landscapes, in heavy gilt frames; a collection of mounted masks and pads; four stags’ heads; two warming-pans; a glass case enclosing a stuffed otter; and a fumed oak wall-fixture, from whose hooks depended a number of hunting-crops and dog-whips.

The season was late spring, and the air which stole in through the open Gothic door was sharp, and made Faith shiver. She crossed the hall to the morning-room, a pleasantly shabby apartment which looked out on to a tangle of shrubbery and flower-beds. There was no one in the room, or in the Yellow drawing-room which led out of it. She guessed that her sister-in-law was either gardening amongst the ferns which were her obsession, or driving herself along the hollow lanes in her high dogcart, behind the rawboned horse which Faith always thought so like her. She looked about for the morning’s paper, and, not finding it, left the room, and went to look in the dining-room for it. She was returning with it in her hand when Reuben came into the hall from the broad passage which led to the western end of the house, and delivered an unwelcome message.

“Master wants to see you, m’m.”

“Oh! Yes, of course. I was just going,” she said. She always hoped that the servants were not aware of her dread of Penhallow, who seemed to her so much more monstrous now that he was confined nearly always to his bed. “Loveday tells me that he isn’t so well this morning,” she added.

“I knew how it would be when he was so set on having Sybilla bake him a starry-gaze pie,” responded Reuben gloomily. " It never did agree with him.”

Faith barely repressed a shudder. Penhallow had suddenly taken it into his head, on the previous day, to demand a dish rarely seen now in Cornwall. He had wanted to know why starry-gaze pies were never served at Trevellin, had recalled those made under his grandmother’s auspices, had reviled the modern generation for turning away from the customs of their fathers, and had ended by sending for Sybilla, and commanding her to make him a starry-gaze pie for his dinner. By God, they should all of them have starry-gaze pie for dinner, and know what good Cornish food could be like! He had got up from his huge bed, and had had himself wheeled into the dining-room to preside over this memorable meal, and had had the pie set down before him, so that he could serve it with his own hands. Since eight persons sat down to dinner, the pie was of generous proportions, a great mound of pastry through which protruded the heads of a number of pilchards. Faith had felt sick, but she had forced herself to eat some of it, lacking the moral courage which made Vivian reject it with loathing.

She thought privately that a bout of indigestion served her husband right; and hoped that it might prevent his again demanding this objectionable dish.

As though he read this thought, Reuben said: “But no one won’t get him to believe it was the pie, tell him till Doomsday, set in his ways, that’s what he is.”

It seemed to her beneath her dignity to discuss her husband with his manservant, so she returned no answer, but laid the newspaper down on the table, and moved towards the corridor which ran along the back of the western end of the house.

A series of small windows, set deep in the stone wall, lit the corridor, which led past a winding staircase to a smaller hall with a door leading out of the back of the house into Clara’s fern-garden. Beyond this, double doors gave on to a room which seemed to have been designed as a ballroom, and which had been for several years Penhallow’s bedroom.

Faith hesitated for a moment, with her hand on the door, and her head slightly bent to catch any sound of voices within the room. She could hear nothing, and after drawing in her breath, rather in the manner of a diver about to plunge into deep waters, she turned the handle, and went in.

Chapter Three

The room into which Faith Penhallow stepped occupied the whole of the floor space at the western end of the house, and had windows at each end, those at the front looking out on to the sweep of the avenue leading down to the lodge-gates, and the lawn and fields beyond; and those at the back overlooking an enclosed garden, surrounded on three sides by a grey, creeper-hung wall. This wing of the house had been added to the original structure in the seventeenth century; Penhallow’s room was wainscoted from floor to ceiling, and contained, besides some magnificent mouldings, a superb fireplace on the wall between the double doors through which Faith had come, and another, single door leading into a dressing-room at the front of the house. This fireplace was most richly carved, its lofty mantelpiece upheld, on either side of the big square cavity where a log fire burned on a huge pile of woodash, by caryatids. The room was higher-pitched than the rooms in the main part of the house, and had a very fine plaster ceiling, somewhat damaged in places by cracks, and blackened by smoke, which would occasionally puff out from the hearth, when the wind was in the wrong quarter. The heavy wainscoting made the room dark, in spite of the windows at each end, but the first impression anyone entering it was of colour, so varied and unexpected as to make the uninitiated blink.

The room was crammed with furniture, and ornanments jostled one another on the mantelpiece, on the tops of several chests, over several small tables which had been fitted into any vacant space that offered. These, like the  incredible assortment of furniture, seemed to have been chosen without regard to period or congruity, which was indeed the case, Penhallow having crammed into the room every piece that took his fancy. Thus, a red lacquer cabinet, with an ivory figure of the god Ho-Ti on the top of it, stood between the two windows at one end of the room, and two repulsive plant-holders, fashioned of bamboo and each containing some half-a-dozen pots of tropical greenery, stood under the corresponding windows at the other end of the room. Flanking the fireplace were two enormous malachite vases, on consoles, which had been wrested from the Yellow drawing-room. In one corner stood a marble-topped wash-stand of red mahogany, imperfectly hidden by a cheap Japanese screen which showed a covey of golden birds flying on a black ground. Close to this, on the wall opposite to the fireplace, was a marquetry chest, mellow with age, rubbing shoulders with a delicate table of yellow satinwood, squeezed between it and the bed. Beyond the bed, a walnut tallboy confronted a round table covered with a crimson chenille cloth, and a Carolinian day-bed of particularly graceful design, whose frayed cane seat and back were fitted with squabs of faded wine-red velvet. Penhallow’s wheeled chair stood in the corner, and a long refectory table, piled with books, papers, decanters, medicine-bottles, and a canvas-bag from which several dog-biscuits had spilled, occupied most of the space behind the front windows. A mahogany corner-cupboard hung beside the door into the dressing-room; several armchairs of varied design and colour were scattered about the room, together with a pair of rush-seated ladder-back chairs; an early Chippendale stool, with cabriole legs and claw-and-ball feet; an angular seat of Gothic design and unsurpassed discomfort; and a large chesterfield, which was drawn across the foot of the bed. There were no pictures on the walls, but a convex mirror of Queen Anne date, set in a gilded frame, hung over the mantelpiece, and there were a number of candle-sconces round the room. On the mantelpiece, a gilt time-piece with an enamelled face, and supported by nymphs and cherubim, stood under a glass dome, and was flanked by a pair of Rockingham pheasants, one or two pieces belonging to an old chess-set, and two groups of bronze horses. The corner by the double doors was taken up by a grandfather clock of Chippendale-chinois; and, placed wherever space could be found for them, were some small, spindle-legged tables, covered with punch-spoons, snuff boxes, patch-boxes, Bristol paper-weights, and Dresden figures.

But it was not the medley of ornaments, the crowded furniture, or the juxtaposition of wine-red and crimson and the hot scarlet of Chinese lacquer which instantly claimed and held the visitor’s attention. Colour rioted in the carpet which almost covered the floor, grass-green curtains swore at chairs upholstered in peacock-blue, but they all faded into neutrality beside the blaze of colour thrown over Penhallow’s bed in the form of a patchwork quilt sewn in multi-coloured hexagons of satin, velvet and brocade.

The bed itself dominated the room. It might have burn supposed that so massive and antiquated a structure had been in the family for generations: in actual fact Penhallow had bought it at a sale some years previously. It was an enormous four-poster of painted wood, hung about with curtains of mulberry velvet, much rubbed and faded with age, with a ceiling painted with a design of cupids and rose-garlands, and an intricate arrangement of cupboards and drawers set in the tall headpiece. It stood uncomfortably high, and was wide enough to have accommodated four people without undue crowding. In the middle of it, banked up by a selection of pillows and cushions, and wearing an ancient dressing-gown over his pyjamas, lay Penhallow, a mountainous ruin of a man, with a hawk-nose jutting between bloated cheeks; fierce, malicious eyes staring beneath brows that were still jet-black and bushy; and an arrogant, intemperate mouth. His hair was grizzled, and it could be seen that he had developed a huge paunch. Around him, spread over the splendour of the quilt, were a variety of books, periodicals, cigar-cases, match-boxes, ledgers, letters, and a dish piled with fruit. At the foot of the bed, panting slightly, lay an aged and rather smelly Cocker spaniel, as obese as her master. It was her amiable custom to growl at anyone entering Penhallow’s room, and she made no exception in Faith’s favour.

“Good bitch!” said Penhallow approvingly.

Faith shut the door behind her, and moved towards an armchair which stood at some distance from the fire.

The room was uncomfortably warm, the pile of woodash in the hearth glowing red under a couple of smouldering logs. Except during the very few weeks in the year when Penhallow allowed his fire to go out, the ash was never removed. It made the dusting of his bedroom one of the labours of Hercules, but that was a consideration which naturally did not weigh with him.

“Good morning, Adam,” Faith said, her anxious eyes trying to read his face. “I’m so sorry you had a bad night. I didn’t sleep at all well myself.”

She knew from the curl of his full lips, and the gleam in his eyes, that he was in one of his bad moods. He was always like that after a disturbed night. She guessed that he had sent for her to make himself unpleasant, and felt her heart begin to thump against her ribs.

“Didn’t sleep well, didn’t you?” he said jeeringly. “What have you got to keep you awake? You weren’t worrying. your empty head over me, at all events. Loving wife, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t know you were awake. Of course I would have come down if I’d known you wanted me.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “A lot of use you’d have been! By God, I don’t know how I came to tie myself up to such a poor creature!”

She was silent, her colour fluctuating nervously. He observed this sign of agitation with open satisfaction. “Lily-livered, that’s what you are,” he said. “You’ve got no spirit. Eugene’s little cat of a wife’s worth a dozen of you.”

She said imploringly: “I can’t bear quarrelling, Adam.”

“My first wife would have cut my face open with her riding-whip for half of what you take lying down,” he taunted her.

She was aware that he would like her better for storming at him; she was unable to do it: she would never all her life long, overcome her sick dread of being shouted at by a loud, angry voice. With her genius for saying the wrong thing, she faltered: “I’m different, Adam."

He burst out laughing in good earnest at that, throwing his head back, so that his laughter seemed to reverberate from the painted ceiling of his preposterous bed. To Faith’s ears, it held a note of savage gloating. She rested her thin hands on the arms of her chair, and sat tense, flushing. “Different!” he ejaculated. “By God, you are! Look at Rachel’s brats, and at that whelp of yours!”

Her flush died, leaving her cheeks very pale. She looked anxiously at him. She thought that of course she should have known that he would attack Clay.

He shifted his bulk in bed, so that he was able to look more directly at her. “Well,” he said abruptly, “I can’t discover that that precious son of yours is doing any good at Cambridge, or likely to.”

It was true that Clay’s University career had been, so far, disappointing, but he had not, to her knowledge, disgraced himself in any way, and she could hardly suppose that scholastic attainments would have interested his father. She said: “I don’t know what you mean. I’m sur —”

“I mean it’s a waste of money keeping him there,” Penhallow interrupted. “He’s wasting his time, that’s what he’s doing!”

“I don’t know why you should say so, Adam. It isn’t as though he’d done anything”

“Damme, woman, don’t be such a fool!” he exploded, making her start. “I know he hasn’t done anything! That’s what I’m saying! He doesn’t row, he doesn’t play a game, he doesn’t want to join the Drag, he isn’t even man enough to get into mischief. He’s a namby-pamby young good-for-nothing, and I’ll be damned if I’ll keep him eating his head off there for the pleasure of seeing him come home a couple of years on with a Pass degree!”

“I’m sure I don’t know why you should mind his not doing as well as — as we’d expected,” Faith said, plucking up courage in defence of her darling. “You always said book-learning didn’t run in your family.” It occurred to her that his attack on Clay was more than usually unjust. Roused to indignation, she said, “I should like to know what Eugene did at Oxford, or Aubrey either, for that matter! It’s simply because it’s Clay that you go on like this!”

A sardonic chuckle shook him. “You’d like to know, would you? They’re a couple of young scoundrels, both of ’em, but neither of ’em spent three years at Oxford without leaving their marks, I can tell you that!” He stabbed a thick finger at her. “But it didn’t do them a bit of good! That’s what I’m saying. They learned a lot of damned nonsense there, and I was a fool to send ’em. My other boys are worth a dozen of that pair. What use is Eugene, I should like to know, writing for a pack of half-baked newspapers, and keeping his feet dry in case he should catch a cold? As for young Aubrey, if I’d kept him at home and set him to work under Ray, I’d have done better by him! I’ve had trouble enough with Bart and Con, but, by God, give me a couple of lusty young rogues who take their pleasures in the way they were meant to, rather than that covey of unhealthy intellectuals Aubrey runs with.”

“It isn’t fair to blame Oxford for what Aubrey does,” Faith protested feebly. “Besides, Clay isn’t in the least like that. Clay’s a very good boy, and I’m sure—” She broke off for she saw by his face that she had said the wrong thing again.

“Clay’s nothing,” he said shortly. “No guts, no spunk, not one bit of devil in him! “Takes after you, my dear.”

She turned away her eyes from the derisive smile in his. A black cat with a nocked ear, which had been curled  up in a chair by the fire, woke, and stretched, and began to perform an extensive toilet.

Penhallow selected an apple from the dish of fruit on the bed, and took a large bite out of it. “I’m going to put him to work with Cliff,” he said casually.

She looked up quickly. “With Clifford,” she repeated. “Clay?"

"That’s right,” agreed Penhallow, chewing his apple.

“You can’t do that!” she exclaimed.

“What’s to stop me?” inquired Penhallow almost amiably.

“But, Adam, why? What has he done? It isn’t fair!”

“He hasn’t done anything. That’s why I’ll be damned it I’ll keep him eating his head off at college. You had a notion he was cut out for a scholar. I’d no objection. The hell of a lot of scholarship he’s shown! All right! If he ain’t going to be a scholar what’s the sense of leaving him there? A country solicitor’s about all he’s fit to be, and that’s what he shall be. Cliff’s willing to take him.”

She stammered: “He isn’t cut out for it! He’d hate it! He wants to write!”

“Wants to write, does he? So that’s his idea! Well, you can tell him to get rid of it! There are two of my spawn playing at that game already, and there isn’t going to be a third. He’ll study law with Cliff.” He spat out a pip, and added: “He can live here, and Ray can see what he can do towards licking him into some kind of shape.”

“Oh, no!” she cried out involuntarily. “He’d hate it! He doesn’t care for the country. He’s much happier in town. This place doesn’t agree with him any more than it agrees with me.”

He heaved himself up in bed, his countenance alarmingly suffused with colour. “So that’s the latest, is it? He doesn’t care for Trevellin! By God, if you weren’t such a spiritless little fool I should wonder if you’d played me false, my girl! Or is this a notion out of your own head? Do you tell me that a son of mine is going to tell me to my face that he doesn’t care for his birthplace?”

She reflected that nothing was more unlikely. Passing her tongue between her lips, she said: “You forget that he’s my son as well as yours, Adam.”

“I don’t forget he’s your son,” he interrupted brutally. “The only doubt I have is whether he’s mine.”

The insult left her unmoved; she scarcely attended to it. With one of her inept attempts to divert him, she said: “You aren’t feeling well this morning. We can discuss it another time.”

He pitched the core of his apple into the fire, and licked his fingers before answering her. “There’s nothing to discuss. I’ve had it out with Cliff. It’s all settled.”

“You shan’t do it!” she cried. “I won’t let you, I won’t! Clay at least shan’t be tied to this hateful place as I am! It isn’t fair! You’re only doing it to hurt me! You’re cruel, Adam, cruel!”

“That’s a good one!” he exclaimed. “Why, you bloodless little idiot, a lad with an ounce of spirit in him would thank me for it! I’m giving him a damned good roof over his head, and the best life a man could ask! He can hunt, shoot, fish”

“He doesn’t care about that kind of thing!” she said, betrayed into another of her disastrous admissions.

His anger, which had so far been smouldering, burst into flame. “God damn the pair of you!” he thundered. “He doesn’t care for that sort of thing! He doesn’t care for that sort of thing! And you sit there boasting of it! He’d rather live in town! Then let him do it! Let him show me what he’s made of! Let him set up for himself in London, and astonish us all with this precious writing of his! Let him send me to the devil, and cut loose! I’m agreeable!” He beat with one hand upon the patchwork quilt, upsetting the dish of fruit. An orange rolled off the bed, and a little way across the floor, and lay, a splash of crude colour, in the middle of the carpet. He looked savagely at Faith, out of narrowed, mocking eyes. “Can you see him doing it, this fine son of yours? Can you, whey-face?”

“How can he get away, when you know very well he has no money? Besides, he isn’t of age. He—”

“That wouldn’t stop him, if he were worth his salt! Not of age! He’s nineteen, isn’t he? When Bart was his age he was the most bruising rider to hounds in two counties, besides being the handiest young ruffian with his fists you’d meet in a month of Sundays! Hell and the devil, he was a man, d’ye hear me? If I’d thrown him out on his arse, he could have got his living with his hands! And he would have! Why, he was younger than your brat when he fathered a child on to Polperrow’s bitch of a daughter!”

“I believe you would like Clay better if he’d been as wild and shameless as Bart and Conrad!” she cried in a trembling voice.

“I should,” he replied grimly.

She began to cry, a suggestion of hysteria in her convulsive sobs. “I wish I were dead! I wish I were dead!”

“Wish I were dead, more likely,” he said sardonically. “But I’m not, my loving wife! Damn you, stop snivelling!”

She cowered in the depths of the chair, hiding her face in her hands, her sobs growing more uncontrolled. “I don’t believe you ever loved me! You’d like to break my heart! You’re tyrannical, and cruel! You only want to hurt people!”

“Will you stop it?” he shouted, groping for the worsted bell-pull, and tugging it furiously. “Slap my face, if you like! Stick a knife between my ribs, if you’ve the courage, but don’t cringe there snivelling at me! You and your son! You and your son!”

She made a desperate effort to control herself, but she was a woman to whom tears came easily, and she found it hard to check them. She was still gulping and dabbing at her eyes when Martha entered the room in answer to the bell’s summons. The promptitude with which she appeared suggested that she had in all probability been within earshot of the room for some time.

Penhallow, who had not ceased to tug at the crimson bell-pull, released it, and sank back on to the bank of pillows, panting. “Take that damned fool of a woman away!” he ordered. “Keep her out of my sight, or I’ll do her an injury!”

" Well it was you sent for her,” Martha pointed out, unmoved by his rage. “Give over, my dear, now do! You’d better go away, missus, or we’ll have un bursting a blood-vessel. Such doings!”

At Martha’s entrance, Faith had sprung up out of her chair, making a desperate attempt to check her tears.  Penhallow’s words had brought a wave of shamed colour to her cheeks; she gave an outraged moan, and fled from the room, almost colliding in the passage with Vivian. She ran past her, averting her face. Vivian made no movement to stop her but walked on into Penhallow’s room, a purposeful scowl on her brow. Encountering Martha, she said curtly: “I want to talk to Mr Penhallow. Clear out, will you?”

This rude interruption, instead of adding to Penhallow’s fury, seemed to please him. Some of the high colour in his face receded; he gave a bark of laughter, and demanded: “What do you want, hell-cat?”

“I’ll tell you when Martha’s gone,” she replied, standing squarely in the middle of the room, with her back to the fire, and her hands dug deep into the pockets of her tweed jacket.

“Who the devil do you think you are, giving your orders in my room?” he asked roughly.

She pushed her underlip out a little in an aggressive way which tickled him. “I shan’t go till I’ve said what I’ve come it, say. I’m not afraid of you. You won’t make me cry.”

“Good lass!” he approved. “Damme, if you’d the sense to know a blood-horse from a half-bred hack I’d be proud of you, so I would! Take yourself off, Martha. God’s teeth, what are you standing there for like a fool? Get out!”

“And don’t stand listening at the door either!” said Vivian, with a forthrightness to match Penhallow’s own.

Martha gave a chuckle. “Aw, my dear, it’s a wonder, surely, Master Eugene chose you for his wife! You’ll eat us all up yet you’re that fierce,” she remarked, without rancour, and took herself off with her shuffling step, and shut the doors behind her.

The spaniel, which had greeted Vivian with her usual growl, now jumped down from the bed, lumbered over to the fire, and cast herself down before it, panting. The cat paused in its ablutions to regard her fixedly for a few moments, after which it resumed its toilet.

Penhallow flung one or two of the ledgers and papers which littered the bed on to the chenille-covered table beside him, and said: “Pour me out a drink. Have one yourself.”

“I don’t drink at this hour of the morning,” replied Vivian. “You oughtn’t to either, if you’ve really got dropsy.”

“Blast your impudence!” he said cheerfully. “What’s it to you, I should like to know? You’d be glad enough to see me underground, I’ll bet my last shilling!”

She shrugged. “It isn’t anything to do with me except that it’ll make your gout worse, and that means that we shall all suffer. What do you want?”

“I’ll take a glass of claret. Claret never hurt any man yet. My old grandfather never touched anything else, the last years of his life, and he lived to be eighty-five. You’ll find the bottle in the corner-cupboard. Bring it over here where I can lay my hand on it.”

She brought him the bottle, and a glass, and set both down on the table, retiring again to her stance before the fire Penhallow heaved himself round in bed to reach the bottle, cursing her in a genial way for not pouring the wine out for him, and filled his glass. He drank it off, refilled the glass, and disposed himself more comfortably against his pillows. “Now, what’s the matter with you, eh? Do you think I haven’t had my fill of silly women this day?”

“You’re nothing but a bully,” she remarked, looking scornfully at him. “Why don’t you take it out on someone more capable of defending herself than Faith?”

“Daresay I will,” he retorted. “You, if you annoy me. You’re as discontented as she is. Spoilt, that’s the matter with you! Spoilt!”

“Spoilt! In this house? No one is considered here but you, and well you know it! That’s what I’ve come to talk about. I can’t and I won’t stand it any longer. This isn’t my home, and never will be. I want to go.”

“What’s stopping you?” he inquired amiably.

“You are!” she flung back at him. “You know very well nothing would make me leave Eugene.”

He lay sipping his wine, and grinning. “He’s his own master, ain’t he? Why don’t you get him to take you away if you don’t like it here?”

She felt her control over her too-quick temper slipping, and exerted herself to retain it. “Eugene isn’t strong enough to earn his own living without help,” she said. “He’s never got over that illness.”

“You mean he’s always fancying himself sick,” he jibed. “I know Eugene! A lazy young devil he always was and always will be! For a sensible girl, you’ve made a mess of handling him, my dear. If you didn’t want to stay here, you shouldn’t have let him come down here in the first place.”

“I never guessed he would want to stay on and on!”

He gave a chuckle. “The more fool you! Eugene’s not one to leave a snug fireside. You won’t shift him.”

“He wasn’t living here when I married him!” she said.

“No, he wasn’t. Trying his wings. I always knew he’d come back. I didn’t mind.”

She looked across at him, under the straight brows which gave her the appearance of frowning even when she was not. “Why do you want to keep us here?”

“What’s that to do with you?” he retorted.

“It’s just your love of power!” she said. “You like to feel you’ve got us all under your thumb! But you haven’t got me under your thumb!”

His smile taunted her. “Haven’t I? You try to move Eugene, and see! Think you’re going to win against me, do you? Try it! I fancy you’ll go on dancing to my piping, my girl.”

She bit on her lip, knowing that it would be fatal to lose her temper. After a pause, she said carefully: “If you think Eugene’s lazy, you ought to want to encourage him to exert himself-’

“God bless the wench! I never do what I ought to do. Don’t you know that yet?”

She ignored this. “I’ve got a right to my own home, to have my husband to myself. It isn’t fair to expect me to live in a house full of relatives!”

“Fair! Fair!” he broke in impatiently. “You’re all alike, you women, bleating about what’s fair! Think yourself lucky you’ve got a comfortable home to live in instead of having to rely on Eugene to support you! You’d fare badly if you had!”

“I’d sooner starve in a cottage with Eugene, than go on living here!” she said fiercely.

He laughed. “Ho-ho! I’d like to see you doing it! Take Him off to your cottage, then! You’ll come back soon  enough, with your tails between your legs, too!”

She said sullenly: “Why don’t you make Eugene an allowance? It needn’t cost you more than it must cost to keep us both here.”

“Because I don’t want to,” he answered.

She clenched her hands inside her pockets until her nails hurt her. “You think you’ve beaten me, but you haven’t. I’ll never give in to you. I mean to get Eugene out of this house, and away from your beastly influence. You’ve got Ray, and Ingram, and the twins: why must you have my husband too? He belongs to me!”

He made a gesture with one hand. He was a hirsute man, and strong, dark hairs grew over the back of it, and on his chest too, where the top button of his pyjamas had come undone. “Take him, then — but don’t expect me to help you. The impudence of you!”

She said with a good deal of difficulty, because she had much pride: “While you encourage him to hang about here, I can’t take him away. We haven’t enough money, and — all right, if you will have it, he does take the line of least resistance! But if you’d make him a small allowance, so that I could rent a little place in town, and keep him comfortable, I — I — I should be grateful to you!”

His smile showed her that he perfectly understood what an effort it cost her to make such an admission. He filled his glass a third time. “I don’t want your gratitude. I’d sooner keep you on the end of your chain, my lass. I’ve got a sense of humour, d’ye see? It amuses me to see you straining and struggling to break free. Think because I’m tied by the heels I haven’t any power left, don’t you’ You try setting up your will against mine, and see whether I’ve still power to rule my own household!”

“O God, how I do hate you!” she said passionately, glaring at him.

His grin broadened. “I know you do. I shan’t lose any sleep over that. Lots of people have hated me in my time, but no one ever got the better of me yet.”

“I hope you drink yourself to death!” she threw at him.

“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!”

Clifford went on fidgeting with the lid of the ink-pot. His face now wore an extremely thoughtful expression. Faith’s artless exposition of her son’s character inspired him with a strong desire to be exempt from the necessity of admitting Clay into his firm, but there were reasons which made it extremely difficult, not to say impossible, for him to refuse to oblige his uncle in the matter. It was almost equally impossible for him to explain to Faith that fond as he was of his widowed mother, he would find it very awkward indeed if she were to be ejected from Trevellin, and thus (for her private means were of the slenderest) thrown upon his hands. It was not that he was an undutiful or an unaffectionate son, but he was married to a lady who would certainly not welcome to her home anyone so eccentric as her mother-in-law. Nor, he knew, would she feel at all inclined to retrench her household expenditure so as to enable him to make Clara a suitable allowance. Indeed, he scarcely knew how he would be able to manage such a thing, considering the difficulty of the times, and the increasing demands made on his purse by his three daughters, damsels aged twelve, ten, and seven years respectively, whose careers, he was assured, would inevitably be blighted by any failure on his part to provide them with riding, dancing, and music lessons. His father having died when he had been a boy at school, and his mother having then returned to the house which was her birthplace, it had never fallen to Clifford’s lot to support her. He had spent his holidays at Trevellin, and was indebted to his uncle for his present position in a respectable firm of country solicitors. This circumstance alone made him very unwilling to disoblige his uncle; when, to ordinary feelings of gratitude, a lively dread of having to add another member to his household was added, there could be no question of his doing such a thing. He wished very much that he had not admitted Faith into his office, for although she would probably understand his reluctance to take the support of his mother upon his shoulders, he really did not see how he could put such a delicate matter into plain words without appearing to her in the guise of a most unnatural, not to say callous, son.

He cleared his throat, and began to draw patterns on the blotter with one of the pencils scattered over the table. “Well, but after all, Faith!” he said. “Clay must do something, mustn’t he? You’ll have him living at home, too, if he comes to me. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “If everything were different! Not as things are. He hates it at home. He doesn’t get on with Adam, and his stepbrothers are horrid to him. They don’t understand how anyone can be more sensitive than themselves. I’ve suffered from their absolute unfeelingness all my life, and I’m determined Clay shan’t be sacrificed as I was!”

The conversation seemed to Clifford to be soaring towards an elevated plane which he, a plain man, could not aspire to. He said in a soothing way: “Well, if he finds he doesn’t like law, after he’s given it a fair trial, we shall have to think of something else.”

“If you think that Adam would ever let him leave the firm, once he’d got him into it, you don’t know him!” exclaimed Faith.

“Well, well, a great many things may happen to alter circumstances, after all! Really, Faith, I don’t think you need...”

“You mean Adam might die,” she said. “He won’t. I know he won’t. He’ll go on for years and years, making us all miserable! Look at his grandfather! He lived to be over eighty, and had all sorts of things the matter with him.”

“Really, Faith!” expostulated Clifford, quite shocked.

She burst into tears. “Oh, I know I ought not to say so, even to you, but if you only knew what I have to put up with, Cliff, you wouldn’t be surprised at my having reached the end of my tether! I could bear it while Clay was safe from Adam’s tyranny, but if he’s to be forced into doing something he doesn’t want to do, and kept down here at the back of beyond, when he’d rather be in London, I simply can’t go on!”

He began to feel very uncomfortable, and wondered how much of this interview was audible to the clerk and the boy in the outer office. Faith’s sobs had, he thought, it peculiarly penetrative quality. He made sympathetic noises in his throat, and was glad to see her making an effort to calm herself.

““Taking him away from college, too, for no reason!” choked Faith, applying her handkerchief to her reddened eyes. “It’s so unfair!”

“Yes, well, I do feel that that is perhaps a mistake,” agreed Clifford, perceiving in this circumstance a means of pacifying, if only temporarily, his unwelcome visitor. “I’ll tell you what, Faith: I’ll have a talk with Uncle Adam, and see if I can get him to let Clay finish his three years at Cambridge. You never know: something might happen between now and then to make Uncle alter his mind.”

“He won’t,” Faith replied wretchedly, but in quieter accents. “I don’t suppose he’ll even listen to you.”

Clifford felt quite sure that he wouldn’t, but naturally did not say this. Instead, he looked at his watch, discovered, with artless surprise, that it was already one o’clock, and suggested, with a return of his usual hearty manner, that Faith should postpone her return to Trevellin until the afternoon, and should take luncheon with himself, and his wife, Rosamund. “Rosamund,” he said mendaciously, “would never forgive me if I let you go home without seeing her. Besides, you haven’t seen the kiddies for I don’t know how long! We can talk it over after lunch. It’s a pity Uncle won’t have the telephone installed at Trevellin, but I daresay they won’t worry if you don’t turn up to lunch, will they?”

“No one at Trevellin would miss me if I never turned up again,” said Faith tragically, opening her compact, and beginning to powder her nose. “But I don’t see why I should inflict myself on Rosamund, only that it’s like being let out of prison, to get away from Trevellin for a bit.

“Now, now, now!” said Clifford, rising and patting her clumsily on the shoulder. “It isn’t as bad as that, Faith. I’ll tell you what: I’ve got one or two things to see to before I leave the office. You trot off to the house, and have a chat with Rosamund. I’ll join you in a few minutes. Perhaps I shall have thought of something,” he added hopefully.

She was not very fond of Rosamund, whom she considered to be a cold, unsympathetic young woman, but being in that state of mind when it was imperative to her to unburden herself to as many people as possible, she accepted his invitation, and went out again to reenter the ponderous landaulette. The under-gardener received her order to drive to the Laurels with evident gratification; and in a few moments the landaulette was once again in motion.

The Laurels, a square Georgian house, was situated on the outskirts of the town, so that by the time Faith had walked up its well-kept front path Clifford had been able to warn his wife by telephone of the trial in store for her. Rosamund, who thought Faith the least objectionable member of the Penhallow family, received the tidings with her usual calm, issued a few necessary orders to her domestic staff, and was ready to receive her guest when Faith set her finger to the electric bell-push.

A neat house-parlourmaid (so unlike the servants at Trevellin!) admitted Faith into a square, white-painted hall, and conducted her across it to the drawing-room at the back of the house. This was a comfortable apartment overlooking the garden, and was furnished in a somewhat characterless but agreeable style, which included well-sprung chairs; a plain pile carpet of neutral hue; a low tea-table of burr-walnut; oxidised fire-irons dangling from a stand in one corner of a hearth lined with glazed tiles; a swollen floor cushion, shaped like a cottage-loaf, and covered with the same flowered cretonne which provided loose-covers for the chairs, and the sofa, and for the curtains hanging in the bay window. The pictures on the walls, which were all framed alike, were inoffensive, and gave a general air of quiet decoration to the room without attracting any particular attention to themselves. One or two illustrated papers were piled neatly on a long, cane-seated stool placed in front of the fireplace; and several books bearing the label of a local lending library stood upon a semi-circular table by the wall, maintained in an upright position by a pair of book-rests fashioned in the shape of china dogs. Everything in the room was new, and well-kept. The pictures were arranged symmetrically; no single piece of furniture had been placed in such a position that it was not balanced by another, similar, piece; nothing had been chosen to go into the room which did not match its surroundings. There was no dust anywhere to be seen; there were no thin patches on the carpet; no priceless rugs flung down with an entire disregard for jarring colours; no jumble of ornaments on the mantelpiece; no sagging springs to any of the chairs; no discordant note introduced by the juxtaposition of a Victorian chiffonier with a Chippendale ladder-back chair. Rosamund had no Victorian furniture in her house. Similarly, she had no Chippendale chairs either, although her dining-room was furnished with a set of very good replicas.

Faith, to whom the queer, distorted beauty of Trevellin made no appeal, liked the room, and envied Rosamund her possession of a clean, compact house, full of labour-saving devices and seemly, unambitious suites of furniture. She considered, looking round the room, with its nicely graduated tones of blending browns and yellows, that Rosamund had an eye for colour, and thought that if she had stood in Rosamund’s shoes she could have achieved very much the same pleasing result.

Her hostess came into the room while she was still taking stock of her surroundings. Rosamund Hastings was a handsome woman with a somewhat chilly pair of blue eyes, and a quantity of fashionably waved fair hair. She was dressed suitably in a well-cut suit of grey flannel, with a canary shirt, and low-heeled shoes over very good quality silk stockings. She was five years younger than Faith, but was possessed of more assurance than Faith would ever own. She was a good, if a rather frigid wife; an excellent mother; a competent housekeeper; and an attentive hostess, who never forgot to order sherry from the wine-merchant, nor to offer her guests Indian as well as China tea.

She came forward now, with her well-manicured hand held out, and a polite word of greeting on her lips. The two ladies kissed, without conviction; Faith was placed in a chair with its back to the light; Rosamund sat down on the sofa at right-angles to her; and while she inquired civilly after all the members of the household at Trevellin, the neat house-parlourmaid quietly entered the room with a silver tray supporting a cut-glass decanter, and three sherry glasses, and set it down on the low table in front of her mistress. Faith noticed wistfully that the tray was brightly polished, and that the decanter and the glasses all matched each other.

“It seems an age since I saw you last,” remarked Rosamund. “Now, do tell me all about yourself. You’ll have a glass of sherry, won’t you?”

Faith accepted the sherry, remembered to ask after the three daughters of the house, and prepared to unbosom herself.

Rosamund listened to her with an air of calm interest, offering neither criticism nor advice. In reality she was not at all interested. She disliked her husband’s maternal relatives, and profoundly disapproved of them. There was a raffishness about them that offended her sense of propriety. She was sorry that her husband’s occupation necessitated his residing within eight miles of Trevellin; and although she never made any attempt to stop his consorting with his cousins, she herself did not visit Trevellin more frequently than she was obliged to. She was aware of the circumstances which made it desirable for Clifford to accept Clay as an articled pupil, and .although she felt that it was disgraceful that his hand should have been forced in such an unscrupulous manner, she considered the entry of a young man, however unwanted, into the firm as preferable to the entry of Clara into her well-ordered house. She never permitted herself to utter any criticism of her mother-in-law, but she privately thought her an extremely trying cold lady, eccentric in her behaviour, not over-clean in her habits, and very injudicious in her spoiling of her nicely behaved granddaughters.

It was not, then, to be expected that Rosamund would support Faith in her endeavour to keep— Clay out of Clifford’s office. However, she lent an indulgent ear to Faith’s rather agitated history of the morning’s interview with Penhallow, and agreed with perfect sincerity that he had behaved in a thoroughly ill-bred and overbearing manner. She even bore with unmoved composure Faith’s disparaging comments on Clifford’s profession. and did not allow herself to do more than raise her plucked eyebrows slightly at Faith’s assertion that Clay’s intellect was of too high an order for the law.

Clifford came in a little after half-past one o’clock, but any hopes Faith might have cherished of reopening the discussion with him were blighted by the houseparlourmaid’s announcement that luncheon was served. Rosamund said: “You know the way, Faith,” and Faith preceded her across the hall to the dining-room in the front of the house. Here the three little girls, Isabel, Daphne, and Monica, awaited them, and any private conversation had naturally to be abandoned. The children, who attended a day-school in the town, were dressed alike, and closely resembled their mother. They were very well brought up, answered politely when spoken to, and prattled, until hushed by a sign from Rosamund, about their activities at school. Clifford was very proud of them, and encouraged them to show off by asking them leading questions. It was obvious that while they were present he had no attention to spare for Faith’s troubles, and as he looked at his wrist-watch when they all rose from the table, and exclaimed that he had an appointment, and must hurry off immediately, it became equally obvious that he did not intend, at least for the present, to go any further into the question of Clay’s future. Saying that he knew Faith would excuse him, he bustled away. The two ladies returned to the drawing-room for coffee; Rosamund told Faith what the head-mistress at St Margaret’s School had said to her about Isabel’s music; and how Monica seemed to have a real talent for dancing; and how the head-mistress believed that Daphne was going to be an influence for good in the school. Faith complimented Rosamund upon her excellent management of her children, and her household, and wondered how she contrived to get such well-trained servants in these days. In this innocuous fashion, an hour passed, at the end of which time Faith said that she must really be going. Rosamund, who was going out to a bridge-party, made no effort to detain her; the under-gardener was hailed from the kitchen, where he had been regaling the cook and the houseparlourmaid and the nursery-maid with tales of the goings-on up at Trevellin; and Faith, after bidding farewell to her hostess, once more entered the landaulette, and was driven back to Trevellin.

Chapter Five

Raymond Penhallow’s day, since, in addition to the estate, he managed not only the hunting stables, but a small stud-farm as well, began at a very early hour, for although he employed an excellent stud-groom, and Weens, the hunting-groom, had worked at Trevellin since boyhood, he was not the man to entrust the all-important business of grooming, feeding, and exercising to underlings. No groom, using a brush on a shedding coat, or seeking to impart a gloss to a coat by the administration of surreptitious doses of arsenic, could ever feel himself safe from the Master’s penetrating eye. He had an uncomfortable habit of appearing in the stables when least expected, and no fault of omission or commission ever escaped him when he made his daily round of inspection. He was respected without being very much liked; and it was generally agreed that he was an extremely ill man to cheat.

His brothers Ingram and Bart were both joined with him in the management of the stud-farm and the stables, the former having been started some years previously largely on Ingram’s representations to his father that something must be done to bolster up the dwindling finances of the estate, and that the upland situation of Trevellin made it particularly suitable for breeding purposes. But if Ingram was responsible for obtaining Penhallow’s consent to the scheme, the original inspiration was Raymond’s. It was due to Raymond’s sound sense and driving-force that the ramshackle old stables, with all their abuses of hay-lofts, high-racks, and cloying stalls, had been pulled down, and modern buildings erected in the form of a quadrangle upon a more convenient site. It was due to Raymond’s hard headedness that Bart’s wild plan of breeding race-horses was nipped in the bud. It was due to his unerring eye that few unsound horses ever found their way into the Trevellin stables. Even Penhallow, who lived at loggerheads with him, grudgingly admitted his ability to judge a horse, and could never be prevailed upon to support Ingram or Bart in any disagreement with him on the questions of buying or breeding.

Only a year separated Raymond and Ingram. They rcsembled one another in that both were very dark, with aquiline features and their father’s piercing grey eyes, but Ingram was half a head the taller, a circumstance which was a source of considerable annoyance to him, since it necessitated his riding only big, strong hunters. They had shared the same nursery, had gone to the same schools, possessed the same tastes and interests, and had never, all their lives, been able to agree. As boys, they had fought incessantly; as young men, neither had lost an opportunity to thrust a spoke in the other’s wheel; now that they had reached middle-age they preserved an armed neutrality, each being on the alert to circumvent any attempt on the part of the other to interfere with jealously guarded rights and prerogatives. The World War of 1914-1918 had left Ingram with a permanently stiff leg. He had served with distinction in a cavalry regiment, and had won the Military Cross. Raymond, producing food for the nation under Penhallow, had been exempt from military service.

After the war, Ingram, who had married a Devonshire girl during one of his leaves, settled down on his gratuity, and the small fortune left to him by his mother, at the Dower House. He was a favourite with his father, who could always be induced to disburse money for such extraneous expenses as Myra’s operation for appendicitis, Rudolph’s and Bertram’s schooling, the upkeep of half-a-dozen good hunters, and the building of a garage beside the Dower House. These depredations were a constant thorn in Raymond’s flesh; and an added annoyance was supplied by Ingram’s having inherited the whole of his mother’s private fortune. Since Raymond would inherit the estate, which was entailed, this arrangement seemed fair enough to any impartial critic, but his being wholly left out of Rachel’s will had always galled Raymond unbearably.

Alone amongst his brothers, he, who passionately loved every stone, every blade of grass on the estate, had not been born at Trevellin. Not even Ingram, uncannily swift to find out the joints in his armour, guessed with what irrational bitterness he resented this. His sturdy insularity made it revolting to him that he had been born abroad, but so it was. Penhallow had taken his Rachel on a prolonged honeymoon, attended by Martha, her maid, who came from Rachel’s own home; and joined later by Delia, her sister, who had been with her when Raymond was born. Raymond was three months old before he saw the home of his fathers. But Ingram, Eugene, Charmian, Aubrey, the twins, and even Clay, had all first seen the light in that big, irregularly shaped room at the head of the main staircase, which looked south to the valley of The Fowey.

He had been a peevish baby, a cross-grained little boy, who had grown into a taciturn man, who bade fair to develop, in later years, into an eccentric. He had no interest in anything beyond the bounds of Trevellin; and from never having been a favourite with either parent had early acquired a sturdy independence, and a habit of keeping whatever thoughts he cherished to himself. His younger brothers stood a little in awe of him; his father, recognising in him a will quite as stubborn as his own, accorded him a certain amount of respect mixed with a good deal of exasperation at the pedestrian common sense which was wholly alien to his own fantastic and extravagant character. Since Penhallow insisted on keeping his hand on the reins of government, they were obliged to see more of one another than was good for their tempers. Penhallow stigmatised Raymond as a cheeseparing hunk, with the soul of a shopkeeper; Raymond said bitterly that if some restraint were not put upon Penhallow the whole estate would be wasted before it came into his own more careful hands.

It was, however, quite impossible to put any restraint upon Penhallow. Eccentric he might be, but he was not in the least mad. His near neighbour, and oldest acquaintance, John Probus, said that he had been born into the wrong age, and reminded him of his grandfather, a hard-drinking, hard-riding, nineteenth-century squire, whom he could just remember, and who had gambled away a considerable portion of his estates, and had ended his days a martyr to gout. Penhallow did not gamble away his estates: he mortgaged them.

He had other habits, less disastrous but almost as irritating to his heir, chief amongst which was his predilection for keeping enormous sums of money locked away in a battered tin box, which he stowed in one of the cupboards of his preposterous bed. It was nothing unusual for him to hoard several hundreds of pounds in this freakish way, which he saved, or cast about with a lavish hand, just as his fancy dictated. He would bestow a casual handful of crumpled notes upon any of his children who had happened to please him; scatter coins amongst his servants; send one of his sons, or old Reuben, off with a bulging wallet to purchase some piece of furniture which he had seen advertised in the local paper as being put up for auction in a sale and which he had taken a sudden fancy to possess; bid the Vicar to help himself from the open box, when that gentleman called to beg a donation for the poor of the parish, or for the renovations to the Church; and generally behave as though he were a sort of Midas to whom gold was no sort of object. It amused him to compel Raymond to keep him supplied with money, which he did by threatening to send Jimmy the Bastard to the Bank in Bodmin with his cheque, if his disapproving heir refused to perform the errand.

Raymond had one of these scrawled cheques in his pocket as he left the house after his morning’s interview with his parent. These daily meetings seldom passed without friction, but this one had been stormier than most. Raymond, going straight from the breakfast-table to his father’s room, had found Penhallow in a smouldering rage, shouting abuse at old Martha, who had just finished tidying the room. His eyes had gleamed at sight of his son, and he had lost no time in trying to pick a quarrel with him. Eugene would have diverted his wrath with his nimble tongue; Ingram, or either of the twins, would have gratified him by losing their tempers, and shouting back at him with a complete lack of filial respect, or self-control; Raymond merely stood before the fire, with his feet wide-planted, the first three fingers of either square hand thrust into the slit pockets in the front of his whipcord breeches, and a heavy scowl on his face. Nothing could have annoyed Penhallow more than his invariable refusal to be goaded into fury.

“Dumb, are you?” he roared, heaving himself up in his bed. “You sulky young hound, if you’d the spirit of a louse you’d find your tongue quick enough!”

“When you’ve quite finished,” Raymond had said coldly, “you can take a look at that lot!”

He jerked his head towards the ledgers he had placed on the table beside the bed, but he did not move from his position before the fire. Penhallow sneered at him. “I ought to have made you into a damned accountant! I don’t doubt you’d have been happy to have spent your life totting up columns of figures!”

As this taunt had no visible effect upon Raymond, he passed to a wholesale criticism of his management of the estate, and ended by remarking that he had heard from Ingram that the Demon colt was likely to prove a failure. Ingram had said nothing of the sort, but the shaft served to bring a flush to Raymond’s cheeks. He replied briefly: “I’ve got a hit.”

Penhallow at once forgot that he wanted to enrage his son. His brows drew together. “A hit, eh? Well! Early days yet. Got his sire’s shoulders?”

“Grand shoulder-blade and forearm. Powerful quarters; hocks well-bent; stifles high and wide,” Raymond responded.

“Back?” Penhallow shot at him. “Out with it! I remember thinking, when I saw his dam—”

“Short above and long below,” interrupted Raymond, the corners of his mouth lifting.

Penhallow grunted. “I’ll take a look at him. Got him out yet?"

“I’ve had him out a couple of weeks now.”

“Where?” Penhallow demanded.

“The Upper Paddock.”

“Good! How many have you put with him?”

“Three others.”

Penhallow nodded. “Quite right. Never have more than four yearlings to a paddock.” He looked Raymond over. “Bred him for selling, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“God, I don’t know where you get your huckstering instinct from!”

Raymond shrugged, and was silent. Penhallow’s ill humour descended upon him again. He bethought him of a piece of news likely to find no sort of favour with his grim-faced heir. He informed him casually of his plans for Clay.

That did rouse Raymond, if not to an exhibition of Penhallow rage, at least to a considerable degree of annoyance. It seemed to him poor economy to remove Clay from college before the expiration of his three years there; it exasperated him to be obliged to stand by while his father laid down a substantial sum of money to buy Clay into a firm which he would infallibly leave the instant Penhallow was underground; and in addition to these considerations he wanted no more brothers quartered at Trevellin. When Penhallow added to these unwelcome tidings an announcement that he thought it nigh time young Aubrey stopped messing about in town, and came home, he shut his lips tightly, turned on his heel, and strode out of the room.

When he reached the hunting-stables, his face still wore so forbidding an expression that a stable-boy, carrying a couple of buckets across the yard, made all haste to remove himself from his sight; and a groom, who was engaged in strapping a flea-bitten grey, exchanged a significant glance with one of his mates.

Raymond paused for a moment, silently watching the busy groom. Apparently he had no fault to find, for, to the man’s relief, he passed on. The upper halves of the loose-box doors stood open, and a row of beautiful heads looked out. Raymond stopped to caress one of his own hunters; parted the hair on the neck of a bay mare with his fingers; inspected the ears of a neat-headed Irish hunter; entered one of the boxes to examine the hooves of a nervous chestnut under treatment for thrush; and was joined presently by his head-groom, with whom he held a brief discussion of a highly technical nature. He still looked rather forbidding, but his scowl had lightened as it always did when he came amongst his horses. He glanced round the quadrangle, thinking how good were these stables of his own designing, thinking that the new groom he had engaged shaped well, thinking that he would advise Bart to have his grey’s shoes removed, thinking that when Penhallow died — But at this point his thoughts stopped abruptly, and he swung round to visit the harness-room. One of the hands was washing some dirty harness there, which hung on a double-hook suspended from the ceiling; Bart and Conrad, as well as himself, had been exercising horses earlier in the morning, and the three saddles were spread over the long iron saddle-horse. Glass-fronted cupboards running round the walls contained well-polished saddles on their brackets, gleaming bits attached to neatly hung bridles, all in demonstrably good order. A quick look over some horse-clothing, spread out for his inspection, a glance along the shelf stacked with bandages, a nod in answer to a request for more neat’s foot oil and some new leathers, and he passed on to the hay-chamber, and to the granary, with its corn-bruiser, its chaff cutter, and its many bins.

When he left the stables, he strode off to the ramshackle building which housed his runabout, and backed this battered and aged vehicle out into the yard. He decided that he had just time to pay a visit to his studfarm before motoring into Bodmin, and drove off noisily up the rough lane which led to it.

He found Ingram there, talking to Mawgan, the studgroom. The brothers exchanged a curt greeting. Ingram, who was sitting on his shooting-stick, said: “I’ve been saying to Mawgan that we’d do well to get rid of the Flyaway mare.”

Raymond grunted.

“Guv’nor all right?” Ingram asked casually.

“Much as usual.”

“Going to take a look at the Demon colt? I’m on my way to the Upper Paddock myself.”

Raymond had meant to take a look at the colt on which his present ambitions were centred, but he had no wish to do so in Ingram’s presence. He replied: “No, I haven’t time. I’ve got to get to Bodmin.”

“Oh! Did Weens show you that quarter-piece?”

“Yes.”

“Dam’ bad,” remarked Ingram, easing his game leg a little. “If you’re going into Bodmin, you might tell Gwithian’s to send me up another dozen of lager. Save me a journey.”

“All right,” Raymond said. “Nothing wanted here?”

“Not that I know of:’ Ingram eyed him shrewdly. “Bank again?” he inquired laconically.

Raymond nodded, scowling. “Going the pace a bit, isn’t he?”

“If you think you can clap a curb on him, try!” recommended Raymond savagely. “I’m fed up with it!”

Ingram laughed. “No bloody fear! Leave him alone: he’ll quieten down if you don’t fret him. You never had an ounce of tact, that’s your trouble.”

Raymond got into his car, and started the engine.

“He’s having Clay home,” he said grimly.

“Hell!” ejaculated Ingram.

“And Aubrey,” added Raymond, thrusting out his clutch.

“Hell and blast!” said Ingram, at the top of his voice.

“Laugh that one off!” recommended Raymond sardonically, and bucketed away down the lane.

It did not take him long to reach Bodmin, and his business there was soon transacted. It was when he was coming out of the bank that he encountered his Aunt Delia, fluttering scarves, veils, and ribbons, and carrying a laden shopping-basket in one hand, and a capacious leather bag in the other.

Those who had known Delia Ottery since her childhood said that she had been a very pretty girl, although cast a little into the shade by her sister Rachel. Her nephews, not having known her as a girl, were obliged to take this opinion on trust. They could none of them remember her as anything but an untidy, faded old maid, whose lustreless hair was prematurely grey, and always falling down in unsightly tails and wisps. Girlish slimness had early changed to middle-aged scragginess, and as she had never outgrown a youthful predilection for bright colours, frills, and fluffiness, this was considerably accentuated by the clothes she wore. When she accosted her nephew, becoming quite pink in the face from pleasure at seeing him, she was wearing a straw picture-hat on the back of her head, its brim weighed down by a large, salmon-coloured rose. A veil floated from this structure, getting entangled, in the breeze which was blowing down the street, with the ends of a fringed scarf which she wore loosely knotted round her neck. A frock of a peculiarly aggressive shade of blue was imperfectly concealed by a long brown coat; and since the month was May, and the weather not as summery as the picture-hat would have seemed to imply, she wore in addition a feather-boa of a style fashionable in the opening years of the century. She was of a very nervous and retiring disposition, and appeared to be almost as much frightened as pleased at walking into her nephew.

She gasped: “Oh, Raymond! Well, this is a surprise!” and dropped her handbag.

Raymond, whose innate neatness was invariably offended by his aunt’s untidy appearance, betrayed no pleasure at the meeting. He responded briefly: “Hallo, Aunt Delia!” and bent to pick up the handbag.

She stood there, blinking at him with her myopic grey eyes, and smiling a little foolishly. “Well, this is a surprise!” she repeated.

As Raymond drove into Bodmin never less frequently than twice a week, and Miss Ottery did her marketing there every morning, there seemed to be very little reason for her to feel any surprise. However, the Penhallows had long since decided that their aunt was a trifle soft in the head, so Raymond merely said: “I came in on business. You and Uncle Phineas both well?”

“Oh, yes, indeed, very well, thank you! And are you quite well, dear?”

He replied with a slight smile: “Thanks, I’m always well.”

“That’s right!” she said. “And dear little Faith? It seems such ages since I saw her. I don’t know how it is, but one never has time to turn round these days!”

“She’s much the same as usual,” he answered.

They stood looking at one another, Miss Ottery tremulously smiling, Raymond wondering how to get away from her.

“It’s so nice to see you, dear, and looking so well, too!” produced Delia, after a slight pause. “I was only saying to Phineas the other day — actually, it was Tuesday, because I saw Myra in the town, which made me think, not but what I know you young people have your own affairs to attend to, especially you, Raymond dear, I’m sure — well, I was saying to Phineas that we haven’t seen anything of you for ages. And now here you are!”

“Yes,” agreed Raymond. He could see no way, short of walking off, of escaping from her, and added: “Can I give you a lift home?”

She turned pinker than ever with pleasure, and stammered: “Well, that is kind of you, dear! Of course you have your car here, haven’t you? I was just going into the corn-chandler’s to buy some seed for my birdies, and then I thought I would catch the bus, but if you wouldn’t mind waiting for me, I’m sure it would be most kind of you. Though I oughtn’t to be keeping you, I know, for I’m sure you’re very busy.”

“The car’s over there,” interrupted Raymond, indicating its position with a jerk of his head. “I’ll wait for you.”

“I won’t be a minute!” she promised. “I’ll just pop across the road for my seed, and be back in a trice. You remember my birdies, don’t you? Such sweets!”

As it was only three weeks since Raymond had visited the grey house outside the town where Delia lived with her brother, upon which occasion it had seemed to him that as much of the drawing-room as was not filled with glass-fronted cabinets containing Phineas’s collection of china was occupied by love-birds and canaries in gilt cages, all making the most infernal din, he had a very vivid recollection of the birdies, and said so, somewhat grimly.

It was fully a quarter of an hour later when Miss Ottery climbed into the runabout beside her nephew, and disposed her shopping-basket in the cramped space at her feet. She explained her dilatoriness as having been due to her desire to get the corn-chandler’s advice about Dicky, one of her roller-canaries, who had been ailing for several days. “Such a nice man!” she said. “He always takes such an interest! Of course, we have dealt there all our lives, which I always think makes a difference, don’t you? Only you’re more interested in horses than in birds, aren’t you, dear? Naturally, you would be. It would be very strange if you weren’t, considering. And how are the dear horses?”

He did not feel that it was necessary to answer this question. He told her instead that he had one or two promising youngsters turned out to grass.

“Oh, how nice!” she exclaimed. “I was always so sorry when we gave up our stables, not but what I was never such a wonderful horsewoman as dear Rachel, only I have always loved horses, as long as they aren’t too skittish for me. Rachel used to ride anything — such a picture as she was, too! — but my dear father — your grandfather, Raymond, only you can’t remember him, because he died before you were born — used to mount me on such gentle, well-mannered horses that I quite enjoyed it. But I never hunted. I never could quite bring myself to approve of it, not that I mean anything against people who do hunt, because I’m sure it would be a very dull world if we all thought alike. But I used to drive a dear little governess-cart. You remember my fat pony, Peter, don’t you Raymond?”

Yes, Raymond remembered the fat pony perfectly, a circumstance which made Miss Ottery beam with delight, and recall the various occasions when the fat pony had been so naughty, or so clever, or so sweet.

Branching away somewhat erratically from this fruitful subject, she said wistfully that she wished she could see Raymond’s darling colts, because she loved all young animals, even kittens, though when you considered what they would grow into, and the perfectly dreadful way they played with poor little birds, and mice, it seemed quite terrible.

“You must come up one day and walk round the stables,” Raymond said, safe in the knowledge that she was a great deal too nervous of Penhallow to accept the invitation.

The suggestion threw her into a twitter of embarrassment at once, and she was still faltering out excuses when the car pulled up outside Azalea Lodge.

Refusing her pressing invitation to come in for a moment to see his uncle, Raymond leaned across her to open the door of the car. By the time she had extricated herself, and had received her basket from him, Phineas, who had seen her arrival from behind the muslin curtains which shrouded the drawing-room windows, had come out of the house, and was advancing down the garden-path.

Common politeness compelled Raymond to refrain from driving off, which he would have liked to do, until he had shaken hands with his uncle. He did not, however, get out of the car, and he did not retain Phineas’s soft, white hand in his a second longer than was necessary.

“Well, well, well!” uttered Phineas. “I declare, I wondered who could be bringing you home in such style, Delia! This is indeed kind! And how are you, my boy’ You have no need to answer: you look to be in splendid shape. You must come inside, and take a little refreshment. No, no, I insist!”

“Thanks, Uncle, I’m afraid I haven’t time. Glad to see you looking so fit.”

Phineas smoothed back a lock of his white hair, which the breeze was blowing into his eyes. There was an agate ring upon his finger, and his nails were carefully manicured. “Not so bad, Raymond, not so bad for an old fellow! And how is your dear father?”

As Raymond was well aware that Phineas disliked Penhallow intensely, this unctuous inquiry made his brows draw together. He replied bluntly: “He’s the same as he always was.”

“Ah!” said Phineas. “A wonderful constitution! A remarkable man, quite remarkable!”

“Why don’t you come up and see him sometime?” suggested Raymond maliciously. “He’d like that!”

Phineas’s smile did not lose a jot of its blandness. “One of these days…” he said vaguely.

Raymond gave a laugh, and turned to bid farewell to his aunt. She laid a timid hand on his shoulder, and since it was plain that she intended to kiss him, he submitted, leaning sideways a little, and himself perfunctorily kissed her withered cheek. A nod to his uncle, and he drove off, leaving the portly brother and the skinny sister standing in the road, waving to him.

Chapter Six

The family did not assemble again in force until tea-time, since neither Faith nor the twins returned to Trevellin for lunch. But at five o’clock everyone but Penhallow himself foregathered ill the Long drawing-room, an apartment more akin to a gallery than a room, since it was immensely long, very narrow in proportion, and contained most of the family portraits hanging on the wall which faced the line of windows opening on to the front of the house. Some extremely valuable pieces of furniture were scattered about, amongst an almost equal number of commonplace chairs and tables; there was a small fire burning at one end, so hedged about with sofas and chairs as to give the other end of the room the appearance of a desert. Tea, which was brought in on a massive silver tray, was set out on a table in front of Clara’s accustomed chair; and a quantity of food was spread over two other tables, on Crown Derby and Worcester plates, and several silver cake-baskets, which were embellished with crochet-mats of Clara’s making. Ingram and Myra had walked up from the Dower House; and while Myra, a leathery woman with sharp features and an insistent voice, regaled Clara with an account of her triumph over the local butcher, Ingram straddled in front of the fire with leis hands in his pockets, loudly arguing with Conrad on the merits of one of Conrad’s hunters.

“He’s a comfortable ride, which is more than can be said for that nappy brute you were fool enough to buy from old Saltash,” Conrad said.

“Ewe-necked!” snorted Ingram.

“A ewe neck never yet went with a sluggish gee, so who cares?” retorted Conrad, dropping four lumps of sugar into his tea-cup. “He jumps off his hocks, too, unlike—”

“Oh, dry up, for God’s sake!” interrupted Vivian. “Can’t you talk of anything but horses, any of you?”

Bart, who was sprawling in a deep chair with a plate of Cornish splits poised on the arm of it, grinned, and said: “You wait till Clay comes home, Vivian, and then you’ll have an ally. I say, Con, have you heard the great news? The Guv’nor’s going to farm Clay out on poor old Cliff.”

“Who says so?” demanded Conrad.

“Eugene. It’s true, isn’t it, Faith?”

“I have no wish to discuss the matter,” said Faith stiffly.

Conrad paid not the smallest attention to her, saying in an incredulous tone: “Go on, Bart! Cliff wouldn’t have him!”

“Well, you can ask the Guv’nor, if you don’t believe me,” yawned Bart, selecting another split from the plate, and consuming it in two mouthfuls.

“Good lord, he must have blackmailed old Cliff into it!” said Conrad. An unwelcome thought occurred to him; he added with foreboding: “I say, does it mean that we shall have Clay living here, year in, year out?”

“That’s the idea,” nodded Bart.

“Christ!” exclaimed his twin, in shattered accents.

Faith flushed angrily, but as she knew Conrad too well to suppose that he would attend to any remonstrances from her, she pretended to be listening to what Myra was saying to Clara.

“I must say, I should have thought there were more than enough people living here already,” remarked Vivian, getting up to take Eugene’s empty cup from him, and carrying it to Clara to be replenished.

“Thank you, my sweet,” he murmured. “Not quite so much milk this time, please, Aunt Clara. I do wish you would move away from the fire, Ingram; I am feeling very chilly, and I got up with the suspicion of a cold in my head this morning.”

“Eugene! You never told me!” Vivian said quickly. “Are you sure you’re all right? I thought you didn’t look quite so well today, but I put it down to the wretched night you had. Ingram, can’t you sit down? You’re screening all the warmth from Eugene!”

“Blast Eugene and his colds!” responded Ingram, without any particular ill-will. He removed himself to a chair beside Bart’s, and lowered himself into it, stretching his stiff leg out before him. “Hand over those splits, you young hog!”

“Eugene, I know you’re sitting in a draught,” Vivian said anxiously.

“Yes, darling, I imagine you might,” said Eugene, “since it is impossible to sit out of a draught in this room.”

“Somebody run and get our fragile pet a nice warm shawl,” suggested Bart. “Perhaps he’d like a foot-warmer as well?”

“No, dear little brother, he would not,” retorted Eugene, in no way discomposed by this heavy satire. “But I think if someone — you, for instance — were to move that screen a little, I, and possibly others as well (though that is not as important) should be much more comfortable.”

“Gosh, you have got a nerve!” ejaculated Bart. “I fancy I see myself!"

“I’ll do it!” Vivian said, setting down her cup-and-saucer, and laying hold of the screen in question, a massive, fourfold, ebony piece, with a peacock brilliantly inlaid upon it.

“Here, don’t be a fool, Vivian!” Bart said, hoisting himself out of his chair, and lounging over to her assistance. “You can’t move that! What a blooming pest you are, the pair of you! Where do you want the damned thing?”

"Just behind my chair,” directed Eugene. “Yes, that will do very well. I thought that I could make you move it, and you see that I was quite right.”

“If you weren’t a lazy swine you wouldn’t let Vivian haul furniture about just because you think you feel a draught!” said Bart, returning to his chair, and wresting the plate of splits away from Ingram.

“Ah, but I had an idea that your chivalry would be stirred, you see,” smiled Eugene. “Of course, I wouldn’t have risked it with Con or Ingram, but I have often observed that you have a nice nature, beloved. Now I’ll reward you by divulging a piece of news which I rather fancy will make you view the prospect of Clay’s arrival in our midst as a wholly minor ill. Our respected parent has taken it into his head to draw Aubrey back into the fold!"

“What?” demanded Bart, horrified.

“He won’t come,” said Conrad confidently. “Not enough scope for Aubrey in these parts.”

“Yes, but he’s broke,” Bart pointed out. “Oh, I say, but it’s too thick! Honestly, Aubrey puts me right off my feed!”

“Bet you he doesn’t come,” Conrad insisted.

“You ass, he’s bound to come down for the old man’s birthday!” Bart reminded him. “Even Aubrey wouldn’t miss that! Then, if he’s broke, I’ll lay you any odds he stays. Oh, Ray, is it true that Aubrey’s coming home?”

Raymond, who had just come into the room through the door at the far end, replied harshly: “Not if I have anything to say to it.”

“As you won’t have anything to say to it -’ began Ingram sarcastically.

Bart cut in on this. “Well, say everything you can think of, will you? Damn it all, we can’t have Aubrey here, corrupting our young minds! Think of Con and me!”

A shout of laughter went up from three of his brothers, but Raymond remained unsmiling. He walked over to the tea-table, and stood waiting for his aunt to fill a cup for him.

“It only remains for the old man to summon Char home for the circle to be complete,” said Eugene, in his light, bored voice. “What a memorable day this has turned out to be!”

“One way and another,” remarked Conrad, cutting himself a large slice of seed-cake, “there’s a good deal to be said for Vivian’s point of view. Too many people already in this house.”

“Don’t worry!” said Raymond. “One day there will be fewer!”

Vivian flushed hotly, but Eugene smiled with unimpaired good humour. “Do tell me!” he invited. “Is that to my address?”

“Yes,” replied Raymond bluntly.

“Now you know what to expect!” said Ingram, with one of his aggressive laughs. “Raymond was always overflowing with brotherly affection, of course.”

Raymond stood stirring the sugar in his tea. He glanced at Ingram, with a slight tightening of his mouth, but he did not speak. Bart, having eaten the last of the splits, turned his attention to a dish of saffron cakes. “Oh, I say, Ray! Are you going to turn us all out when the old man dies?”

The frowning eyes rested on his face for an instant. “Shan’t have to turn you out,” Raymond said. “Father will hand Trellick over to you — if you don’t make a fool of yourself.”

Bart coloured up, and muttered: “Don’t know what you’re driving at. I wish the old man would hurry up, that’s all.”

Ingram’s eyes went from him to Raymond, with quick curiosity. “Hallo, what have you been up to, young Bart?”

“Nothing. You mind your own business!”

“Love’s young dream!” murmured Eugene.

“Oh, is that all!” said Ingram, disappointed.

At this point, Myra, who had not been paying any attention to the interchange, appealed to her husband to corroborate her statement that Bertram’s housemaster had said that that young gentleman had plenty of ability, if he would but learn to take more pains; and under cover of the animated account, which followed, of Rudolph’s and Bertram’s prowess in the field of athletic achievement, Bart lounged out of the room.

He found Loveday in one of the passages upstairs, curled up in a deep window-embrasure, and looking pensively down upon Clara’s fern-garden. She turned her head when she heard his step, for she had been expecting him, and embraced him with her warm, slow smile. He pulled her up from the window-seat without ceremony, and into his strong young arms. “Gosh, it’s an age since I saw you last!” he said in a thickened voice.

Her body yielded for a moment; she kissed him with parted lips; but murmured, with a quiver of laughter in her voice, as he at last raised his head: “"This morning!”

“For two minutes!”

“Half-an-hour!”

“It isn’t good enough. I can’t go on like this! Here, come into the schoolroom!”

He thrust her into the room as he spoke, grasping her arm just above the elbow, and kicked the door to behind him. She let him kiss her again, but when he pulled her down beside him on the old horsehair sofa, she set her hands against his chest, and held him a little away from her. She was still smiling, and there was a kind of sleepy desire in her eyes, but she slightly shook her head. “Now, Bart! Now, Bart!”

“You little devil, I don’t believe you love me at all!” he said, half-laughing, half-hurt.

She leaned swiftly forward to plant a quick, firm kiss upon his mouth. “Yes, then, I do, my dear, but you’re a bad one for a poor girl to trust in. A clean-off rascal you are, love, aren’t you now?”

He dragged her across his knees, so that her dark head lay on his arms. “I swear I’ll marry you, Loveday!”

She made no attempt to free herself from the rough grip upon her, but said softly: “No.”

His hand, which had been stroking one of her thighs through the thin stuff of her dress, tightened on her firm flesh. “You’re driving me mad! I’m not going on like this!”

“We must be patient,” she said. “Give over, Bart-love! you’ll have me bruised black and blue. Let me sit up like a decent woman, now do!”

He released her, and she began to straighten her dress, and her dishevelled hair. “You’ll get me turned off without a character, my dear, that’s what you’ll do. We’ve got to be careful.”

“To hell with that! I’m my own master, and I’ll do as I choose. If the Guv’nor won’t give me Trellick Farm, I’ll cut loose and make a living on my own! I could do it.”

“No, but you shan’t then,” she said, taking one of his hands between hers and fondling it. “There’s never one as would employ you, love. You with your wildness, and your high-up airs, and the crazy notions you do be taking into your head! The poorhouse is where we’d end, and you promising to set me up in style at Trellick!”

He grinned, but said" I’m damned useful to Ray. He’d be willing to employ me up at the stud-farm.”

“He would not, then, and well you know it. You tell Raymond you’re planning to marry Loveday Trewithian, and see what! Besides, there’s nothing he could do for us, whatever he chose, while your father’s alive.”

“Well, then, I’ll set up as a trainer on my own.”

“Not without some money you won’t, love. Leave the Master give old Penrose his notice to quit, and put you into Trellick, and you may put up the banns the first Sunday after.”

“I can’t wait!”

She sighed. “Why won’t he set you up the way he said he would, Bart?”

“What’s the good of asking why my father won’t do a thing? I don’t know — daresay he doesn’t either. He talks a lot of rot about my not being ready for it, but that’s not it.

“Seeming to me,” she said thoughtfully, “he’s set on keeping you here under his thumb, my love, the same as he has Mr Raymond. But he’ll not last for ever, not the way he’s carrying on, and so they all say.”

“Well, I’m sick of hanging about, meeting you in odd corners. I’d rather have it out with the old man, and be damned to him!”

“Wait!” she counselled him. “There’s plenty of things can happen yet, and now’s not the time to say anything to him that he wouldn’t be pleased to hear. He put himself in a fine taking over the letter he had from Mr Aubrey, by what my uncle told me. Wait, love!”

“I don’t believe you mean to marry me,” he said sulkily.

She leaned towards him, till her arm touched his. “Yes. I do mean. You know I do! And I will be a good wife to you, even if I’m beneath your station, my darling Barty. But there’s not one of your brothers, nor your father neither, would leave you marry me, if they could stop it. We must be sensible. If it were found out you were keeping company with me before you’ve twopence to call your own, they’d send me packing, and manage it so that you couldn’t come next or nigh me.”

That made him laugh; and he hugged her to him, and pinched her cheek. “You don’t know me if you think any one of them could manage anything of the kind! Besides, why should my brothers care what I do?”

“Your brother Conrad would,” she insisted. “Bart, I do be afraid of Conrad. He looks at me as though he’d like to see me dead.”

“What rot!” he scoffed. “Con? Why, you silly little thing, Loveday, Con’s my twin!”

“He’s jealous,” she said.

But Bart only laughed again, because such an idea was so alien to his own nature as to be ridiculous to him. If Conrad looked darkly, he supposed him to be out of sorts, and gave the matter not another thought. When Loveday suggested that Conrad might divulge their secret to Penhallow, he replied without an instant’s hesitation: “He wouldn’t. Even Eugene-wouldn’t do that. We don’t give each other away to the Guv’nor.”

Her fingers twined themselves between his. "Jimmy would,” she said, under her breath.

“What?” he exclaimed.

“Hush, my dear, you’ll have one of the girls over hearing you, and telling my uncle on me! Jimmy wouldn’t make any bones about carrying tales to your father.”

“If I catch the little bastard’s nose in my affairs, I’ll twist it off!” swore Bart. “He carry tales to my father! Let me see him snooping round us, that’s all! You needn’t worry, my sweet! He’s a damned sight too scared of me to pry into my business.”

“He’d do you a mischief if he could,” she said in a troubled tone.

“Rot, why should he?”

She lacked the words to be able to explain her own vague intuition to him, and sat tongue-tied, twisting the corner of a little muslin apron she wore. He would not, have understood her had she had the entire English vocabulary at her command, for he had a very simple mind, and such twisted thoughts as flourished in Jimmy’s crafty brain he would neither have believed in nor comprehended. He sat looking at Loveday’s downcast face with a puzzled frown, and presently asked: “You haven’t said anything to him, have you?”

She lied at once. She was ashamed to confess to him that her pride in her conquest had made her boast to Jimmy that she was soon to be married to a Penhallow. Besides, it was certain that he would be roused to quick wrath, and she was afraid of his anger, which, although it might be of short duration, quite possessed him while it lasted, and made him do things which afterwards he was sorry for. She said: “Oh, no! But he’s sly, Jimmy is, and there’s little goes on in this house he doesn’t know about. We did ought to be careful, Bart, love.”

“I want you,” he said. “I don’t care a damn for Jimmy, or anyone else. I’m going to have you.”

“Get Trellick, and there’s no one can stop us marrying,” she said. “I won’t have you, love, else.”

Her caressing tone robbed her words of offence. She was passionately in love with him, but she had a native caution, born of her circumstances which he lacked. She had the more subtle mind, too, and he was aware of it, sometimes a little puzzled by it but on the whole respectful of it. He said: “Well, I’ll try to get the Guv’nor to see reason. But if he won’t...”

“We’ll think of something else,” she said quickly.

His hold round her waist tightened; he forced her head up with his free hand, and stared down into her face, a little smouldering light glowing at the back of his eyes. “It won’t make any difference! Or will it? Come on, out with it, my girl! Would you turn me down, if the old man chucked me out? I believe you would!”

Her lips invited him to kiss her. He did not, and she said: “You silly! Don’t I love you fit to die? There won’t never be anyone else for me, my dear.”

He was satisfied at once. She herself could hardly have told whether she had spoken the truth or not, for she meant to have him, and to make him a good wife, too, and had not so far considered the possibilities of defeat. But without being consciously critical of him she was in no way blind to his faults, and she knew that his autocratic temper, as much as his dislike of submitting to any form of discipline, would make him a very unsatisfactory man to employ. As his own master, with his own farm, he would, she thought, do very well, for he understood farming, was generally popular with the men under him, and would, besides, be largely guided by herself.

Having put him in a good humour again, she soon impressed upon him once more the need for caution, representing to him the folly of approaching his father at a moment when he was already exasperated by the extravagance of another of his sons, and coaxing him into promising to wait until Penhallow was in a mellow mood before bringing up the question of Trellick Farm again. Bart thought her a clever little puss, and laughed at her, and kissed her until she was breathless, swearing to be entirely guided by his long-headed little darling.

Left to himself, he would have blundered in upon Penhallow then and there, blurting out the whole business, plunging into a noisy quarrel, and ending up very much where he was when he started. He could see that there might be something to be said for his Loveday’s more roundabout methods.

She slipped away from him presently, but not without difficulty. He was daily growing harder to manage, more determined to possess her utterly, less easily held at arm’s length, incapable of perceiving thee need for secrecy in their dealings with each other. He could not understand her fear of being discovered in his company, and the thought that she could be afraid of her uncle and her aunt seemed to him ludicrous. One was not afraid of one’s butler or of one’s cook.

But under her smiling front Loveday was uneasy. She had caught Reuben looking at her narrowly once or twice, and had been obliged to listen to a crude warning from Sybilla, who told her with the utmost frankness that she need not look to her for help if she let Mr Bart put her in the family way. She received the warning in demure silence, too shrewd to speak of Bart’s promise to marry her. Sybilla and Reuben might treat the young Penhallows with the familiarity of old servants, but they would have been shocked beyond measure at the notion of their niece’s aspiring to marry into the family.

There was a good deal of gossip amongst the other maid-servants, in more than one of whom Bart would have found an easier conquest, but since it was plain from their hints and giggles that they had no more suspicion of the true state of affairs than had the Lanneirs Loveday was content to suffer their whisperings, and met teasing and innuendo with unruffled placidity. She was not very popular amongst her fellows, being thought to give herself airs, and to be above her company, but as she had no intention of associating with any of the servants once she became Mrs Bart Penhallow this in no way troubled her.

In her more hopeful moments, she was tempted to think that Penhallow would not dislike the marriage as much as her native shrewdness told her clearly that he would. It sometimes fell to her lot to wait on Penhallow, carrying in his trays when Martha could not be found, and Jimmy was otherwise engaged. Penhallow blatantly approved of this arrangement, told her she was the prettiest sight that had come his way for many a long day, pinched her cheek (and any other portion of her anatomy which she allowed to come within his reach), and told her she was a hard-headed little bitch for refusing to give him a kiss. Sturdy common sense, however, made her admit to herself that this was scarcely behaviour to be expected of a prospective father-in-law, and she never permitted herself to indulge for long in undue optimism, but set herself instead to think out ways and means of achieving her ends with the least possible amount of unpleasantness.

It was characteristic of her that she sought no allies in the household. Her mistress had raised her to the role of confidante, but she gave no confidences in return for the many poured into her sympathetic ears. When Faith, with Vivian’s words of warning nagging in her head, said awkwardly, and after a good deal of circumlocution, that she hoped Loveday was too sensible a girl to lose her head over any attentions which might be paid to her by Penhallow’s sons, she was able to meet Faith’s anxious gaze perfectly limpidly, and to reply in her soft way: “You don’t have to worry about me, ma’am, indeed!”

That was quite enough to allay Faith’s misgivings, and when Penhallow remarked, with a chuckle, that if he knew anything of his sons she would soon be obliged to get rid of Loveday, she replied with perfect sincerity that Loveday was not at all flirtatious, and could be trusted to keep his sons at a distance.

Penhallow looked at her with undisguised contempt. “Lord, my dear, if ever I met such a soft fool as you! Don’t you know a hot-blooded wench when you see one? She’s got a warm eye, that girl of yours, and there ain’t a trick in the game she isn’t up to, you mark my words!”

“I think you’re all of you most unfair about Loveday!” Faith said, in her most complaining tone. “It’s simply because she’s my maid that you say these disgusting things about her!”

“I don’t trust the gal,” said Clara, who was sitting by the fire, engaged upon yards of her interminable crochetwork. “She’s sly. You’ll have Bart or Con gettin’ mixed up with her, if you don’t take care, Adam.”

He gave a laugh. “They’ve been wasting their time if one or other of them hasn’t got mixed up with her already, old girl,” he remarked. “Damn it all, the wench has been in the house close on a year!”

“It was all right before Faith took her out of the kitchen where she belongs,” said Clara. “I don’t hold with puttin’ ideas into gals’ heads.”

But Penhallow refused for once to condemn his wife’s actions, merely saying derisively: “Bless your silly old heart, Clara, you can’t put ideas into the heads of girls like that ripe bit of goods: they grow there.”

“In any case, I don’t see what it has to do with you, Clara,” said Faith tactlessly. “I’m sure I have a perfect right to employ whom I choose for my personal maid!”

Penhallow rolled an eye in her direction. “Who said you hadn’t? Don’t, for God’s sake, start one of your grievances! It’s coming to something if Clara can’t give her opinion without having you jump down her throat!”

“Oh, well!” said Clara peaceably. “I wasn’t criticisin’ you, my dear. It isn’t anything to do with me, though that Bart of yours is a young rascal, Adam, and the way the gals fall for him is shockin’.”

He roared with laughter. “Spit and image of me!” he declared. “He’s the best of the bunch, when all’s said and done!”

“When are you goin’ to set him up for himself at Trellick?” Clara inquired, obedient to her favourite nephew’s instructions.

Penhallow grunted. “Time enough for that. He’s useful to Ray here.”

“I don’t believe Ray wants him, or any of them,” said Faith.

“Oh, you don’t, don’t you?” said Penhallow, bending a fierce stare upon her. “And what do you know about it, I should like to know?”

Her colour fluctuated, as it always did when he spoke roughly to her. She replied defensively: “Oh, nothing! Only Ray never makes any secret of the fact that he thinks there are too many people in this house. And, really...”

He interrupted her brusquely. “Ray’s not master here yet, and so I’ll thank him to remember! I’ll have whom I choose in the house, and be damned to the lot of you!”

“Now, Adam, don’t put yourself in a temper for nothin’!” his sister admonished him. “Ray doesn’t mean anythin’. He’s cross-grained, but he’s got a good heart, and if Faith hasn’t got more sense than to believe every word he says when he’s a bit put out, it’s time she had. All the same, ’tisn’t natural for a young fellow like Bart to be hanging about with no more to do than Ray gives him, and, if I were you, I’d set him up on his own. Keep him out of mischief, I daresay.”

“I don’t mind his mischief,” replied Penhallow cheerfully. “I’ll hand over Trellick to him in my own good time. Won’t hurt him to stay at home for a while longer, and learn what Ray can drum into his thick head. He’s feckless, that lad. Ray’s a dull dog, but he knows his job. I’ll say that for him.”

So Clara had presently to report failure to Bart, who grimaced, and said: “Blast!”

“I daresay he’ll change his mind, give him time,” she said consolingly. She looked at him with mild curiosity. “What’s got into you all of a sudden, Bart, to make you so keen to get to work? Not thinkin’ of gettin’ married, are you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said, laughing, but reddening a little too. “Who said anything about getting married? I’ve got to settle down sometime, haven’t I?”

She shook her head dubiously. “You’re up to something: don’t tell me! Is she a nice gal?”

“Who? The future Mrs Bart? Oh, sure!” he said, grinning at her. “Don’t you think I’ve got good taste, Auntie?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “Not that it’s my affair, and when you come to think of it…” She left the sentence unfinished, and rubbed the tip of her nose reflectively.

“Come to think of what?” asked Bart.

“Nice gals,” said Clara.. “Look at that daughter-in-law of mine!”

“I don’t want to,” replied Bart frankly. “Cliff’s welcome to her.”

“Well, there it is,” said Clara, not very intelligibly. “She was a nice girl, and I daresay she’s a good wife.”

“Any time I want to go to bed with a cold compress, I’ll look around me for her double,” said Bart.

“That’s it,” said Clara vaguely. She stood looking at him in a puzzled way for a few moments, gave her head another shake, and walked off, leaving the conversation suspended in mid-air.

Chapter Seven

Clara’s representations to Penhallow on Bart’s behalf having failed of their object, it next occurred to him to approach Raymond on the matter. Raymond’s undisguised anxiety to rid Trevellin of its many inhabitants made him hopeful that he might find an ally; but his first interview with him was disappointing. Raymond said caustically that if he wished to convince Penhallow that he was fit to be entrusted with the sole management of Trellick he had better pay a little more attention to his duties on the estate and up at the stud-farm. Bart, whose resentment of his stricture way not lessened by a knowledge of having lately deserved it replied hotly, and the interview came to an abrupt close. When his anger had had time to cool, he again opened the matter to Raymond, offering him an awkward apology for sundry errors of omission, and saying in excuse that he had been busy with affairs of his own for the past few weeks.

“Yes, I know that,” said Raymond unhelpfully “Loveday Trewithian.”

Bart turned scarlet, but said: “Rot! The fact is, I’m sick of hanging about at home. I want to be on my own. Damn it, I’m twenty-five!”

“It’s a pity you don’t behave as though you were,” said Raymond.

Bart kept his temper with an effort. “Look here, Ray! You’ve as good as said you want to get rid of me! Why can’t you back me with the Guv’nor?”

“I don’t want to get rid of you. You’re quite useful, when you can keep your mind on the job. Eugene’s the one I want to get rid of.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” Bart said, momentarily diverted. “He’s so damned funny, with his ailments, and that spitfire of a wife of his. I think I should miss them if they cleared out. Mind you, I’m not in favour of Aubrey’s coming home. Or Clay. But if they are coming, all the more reason for me to make myself scarce.”

Raymond gave him a straight look under his lowering brows. “If you imagine I’m going to help you to Trellick so that you can make a fool of yourself over Loveday Trewithian, you’ve got another guess coming to you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” muttered Bart.

“Do you mean to marry that girl?”

“Look here, who’s been talking to you about my affairs?” Bart demanded.

“I’ve got eyes in my head.”

“Well, keep them off my business, will you?”

“If you’re thinking of marrying Loveday Trewithian, you’ll find I’m not the only one to take an interest in what you call your business. You young fool, so it is true, is it?”

“I didn’t say so. What if it is? I suppose I can please myself when it comes to getting married!”

“Oh, no, you can’t!” retorted Raymond grimly. “You’re a Penhallow!”

“Oh, to hell with that!” said Bart. “That kind of snobbery’s been dead for years!”

“You’ll discover your little error, my lad, if you go any farther with that girl. What the devil’s the matter with you? Do you see yourself calling Reuben uncle?”

Bart could not help grinning, but he replied: “I shan’t. It’ll all work out quite easily: you’ll see!”

“No, I’m damned if I shall! If you can’t get that girl out of your system, she’ll have to go.”

Bart’s chin jutted dangerously. “You try interfering with Loveday, and watch me!”

“Don’t be a bigger ass than you can help! God, I thought you had more pride! Since when has a Penhallow gone to the kitchen for a wife?”

Bart flushed. “That’ll be all from you, Ray! Loveday’s worth a dozen of Faith, or Vivian, or that stuck-up bitch Cliff landed himself with. The trouble with you is that you’re eaten up with conceit. Who cares two pins for the damned family, I should like to know?”

“Go and tell Father your plans, and you’ll find out who cares,” replied Raymond.

“Oh, go to hell!” Bart exploded, and turned on his heel.

The only result of this interview was that Raymond took the first opportunity that offered of warning Loveday to leave his young brother alone. She stood demurely before him, looking up at him under her lashes, and keeping her hands folded over her apron. She denied nothing, and admitted nothing, and she betrayed no hint of resentment. She said, “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” in her meekest tone. He thought her either a fool, or a dangerously clever young woman, and was tempted to speak to Reuben about her. Natural taciturnity, a dislike of discussing the failings of a Penhallow with a servant, and a wary foreboding of Bart’s probable reactions to any intervention of Reuben’s made him forbear. He mentioned the matter instead to Conrad, but Conrad, who had been picking quarrels with his twin for weeks, still would not allow anyone else to criticise him. “Oh, there’s nothing in it!” Conrad said. “She isn’t the first, and she won’t be the last.”

“Do you know that he means to marry her?”

“Rot!” Conrad said scornfully. “Bart wouldn’t be such a fool!”

“I’ll take damned good care he doesn’t get the chance to be!” Raymond said. “What’s got into the kid, I should like to know?”

Conrad shrugged, and would not answer. He did not know what had got into Bart, and his jealously possessive nature was profoundly troubled. Bart was as friendly as ever he had been; as ready to go off with him, a hand tucked in his arm; as willing, had he received the smallest encouragement, to confide in him; but in some indefinable way he seemed to Conrad to have withdrawn himself, to be living in a snug world of his own, which had no room in it for his twin. None of his earlier amatory adventures had affected him in this manner, and without pausing to consider the unreason of his own feelings, Conrad allowed hatred of Loveday to fester in his soul, until he could scarcely see her without wanting to do her an injury. When the turmoil in his own breast led him to snap Bart’s head off, which it often did, and he caught Bart looking at him with a puzzled, rather hurt expression in his face; he wanted to hit Bart, or to spirit him away to some unspecified locality far beyond the reach of predatory females: he was never quite sure which.

Eugene, whom little escaped, was as well aware of his jealousy as of its cause, and lost few opportunities to plant his barbs in Conrad’s flesh, impelled more by a natural love of mischief than by any real desire to wound. A spin't of considerable unrest dwelt in the house, and was not improved by a sudden recrudescence of energy upon the part of Penhallow, who, after a long spell of physical quiescence, took it into his head to arise from his bed nearly every day, and to meddle with every concern of the house, estate, and stud-farm. He sat in his wheeled chair, usually clad in his disreputable old camel-hair dressing-gown, and wrapped about in a plaid rug, and insisted upon being pushed to the various places where he was least wanted. He harried Raymond, Ingram, and Bart unmercifully, finding fault with all their activities, countermanding most of their orders, roaring abuse of them in front of stable-hands and grooms, and driving them into an uneasy alliance against him. Finding Clara triumphant at having coaxed the rare adder’s tongue to show its head in her garden, amongst the more general Osmunda regalis, and the Hymenophyllum, Tunbridgense, and Unilaterale which she cherished with such anxious care, he threatened to convert the whole area into a sunk garden of Italian design, to give pleasure to his wife. As Faith’s efforts at gardening were confined to the plucking of flowers for the house, and an unsuccessful but characteristic attempt to induce roses to flourish in a climate more suited to fuchsias and hydrangeas, no one was taken in by the blatant falsity of this reason for disturbing Clara’s peace of mind, and the family banded together temporarily to protect her interests. In this they were ably assisted by Hayle, the head-gardener, who said that he had enough on his hands already, and couldn’t get through the work of the place as it was, what with being short-handed, and Mrs Penhallow taking Luckett, the under-gardener, off his work to drive her about the country in season and out of it. This served instantly to divert Penhallow, who, after scarifying his wife for being fool enough to require the services of a chauffeur, and ignorant enough to remove him from his proper sphere in the middle of the bedding-out season, commandeered Luckett’s services himself, and spent several days in being driven up on to the Moor, down to the coast, and into the neighbouring towns of Bodmin and Liskeard, where he called upon a number of acquaintances, hailing them from their houses to stand beside the car exchanging the time of day with him, and marvelling at the robustness of his constitution. He fortified himself upon these drives from a flask of brandy, and insisted upon being accompanied by whichever member of his entourage he thought least wished to go with him. He took Jimmy with him when he went to call at the Vicarage, well knowing that Jimmy’s very existence was an offence in Mrs Venngreen’s eyes; and when the Vicar, standing in a sharp wind in the road, made his wife’s excuses, showed such alarming signs of preparing to descend from the car with Jimmy’s and the startled Vicar’s assistance, that Mrs Venngreen was obliged to come out of the house after all, to prevent his invading it, and very likely (she thought) succumbing there to a heart-attack. She joined her husband in the road, and since she had very good manners forced herself to accept with the appearance at least of credulity Penhallow’s jovial assurances that he had come to call at the Vicarage with the express purpose of discovering how she did. Her private opinion was that he was possessed of a peculiarly malignant devil. He was certainly in a riotous mood, and when she inquired politely after the health of his sons, said with a fiendish twinkle that they were all eating their heads off, including the young rascal he had with him. Under Mrs Venngreen’s outraged gaze, he indicated the regrettable Jimmy, just so that she should have no doubt of his meaning. Mrs Venngreen’s countenance became so rigid and inflamed that he drove off in high good-humour to see if he could get such interesting reactions out of Rosamund Hastings, whom he cordially disliked. Upon the whole, Rosamund’s behaviour was not so satisfactory as Mrs Venngreen’s, but even her cold air of breeding could not conceal her disgust, and Penhallow thought that she would certainly have a good deal to say to poor old Cliff about it when he came home from his office later in the day. He returned to Trevellin, considerably exhausted, but still, apparently, driven by his strange fit of energy, since although he retired to bed he summoned his entire family to spend the evening in his room, in the usual way, and kept them there till an advanced hour of the night, playing backgammon with him, discussing the merits and faults of every horse in the stables, recalling extremely funny and generally improper incidents which belonged to his youth, drinking a quantity of whisky, and consuming a sort of rear-banquet consisting of all the foods most likely to ensure him a restless night.

His medical adviser, Dr Wilfred Lifton, who had attended him for more years than either could remember, besides delivering Rachel of all her children, from Ingram down to the twins, paid him one of his periodical visits, and solemnly warned him that he was fast killing himself; but Penhallow merely laughed, and said that he didn’t want any damned leech to tell him what he could do or what he could not do. He refused to allow his old friend to sound him, but recommended him to join him in a glass of sherry instead.

Dr Lifton was neither brilliant nor modern, but since he was a sportsman, and a good man to hounds, he was popular with a certain section of the community, who in any case disliked the up-to-date methods of his partner, an earnest and severe gentleman who treated his patients with a sternness quite alien to anyone accustomed to Dr Lifton’s casual attentions.

However, Dr Lifton was sufficiently impressed by the folly of Penhallow’s present conduct to warn Faith and Raymond severally that if they wished him to survive they must put a stop to his disastrous energy, and regulate drastically his consumption of wines and spirits. Raymond, when this was propounded to him, gave a short laugh, recommended the doctor to address his advice to the patient, and walked out of the room, saying that he had something better to do than to talk about impossibilities.

Faith, when similarly admonished, faltered that Dr Lifton knew what her husband was. He could not deny this, but said that he could not be responsible for the outcome if Penhallow continued to indulge his taste for strong drink to the extent he was now doing.

“He says — he says you told him that he might take stimulants to keep his strength up,” faltered Faith.

“Mrs Penhallow, are you aware of the amount of liquor your husband consumes?” demanded Lifton.

“Yes — no — I mean, I’ve always said he drank too much, but it never seems to affect him. And really he does seem better now than he’s been all winter.”

“He has the most amazing constitution I ever met with,” said Lifton frankly. “But he can’t last at this rate. All this dashin’ about the country, too! It isn’t fit for him. You’ll have to use your influence with him, my dear.”

Faith was incapable of admitting that she possessed no influence over Penhallow — a fact of which he was well aware — and said rather vaguely: “Yes, of course. Only he has a — a very strong will, you know, Doctor.”

“He’s the most obstinate old devil in the county, and well I know it!” responded Lifton, not mincing matters.

Clara, when this conversation was reported to her, shook her head, and said that Lifton was an old woman,. and knew less about Penhallow’s constitution than she knew about the workings of a combustion engine. “He’s been sayin’ for years that Adam will kill himself with his goin’s on, but he’s not dead yet, my dear, nor likely to be. It’s my belief this heart-dropsy of his isn’t as bad as he likes to make out. You mark my words: he’ll go on for a good many years yet. As for all this dashin’ around, it’s the spring got into his blood. He’ll quieten down again if you don’t pester him or take any notice of his antics.”

Faith was roused to say with some indignation: “It’s impossible not to take any notice of him when he does such outrageous things! Do you know that he actually took Jimmy with him when he went to call on Rosamund the other day, and insisted on her more or less recognising the creature?”

“He shouldn’t have done that,” agreed Clara. “But there! He was always one to enjoy his bit of fun, and nothin’ ever tickles him more than to shock people. I’ve no patience with Rosamund for kickin’ up such a song and dance about it!”

“Well, I think it was disgusting!” said Faith. “And apart from anything else, taking Jimmy about with him in that way is simply making him more objectionable than he was before. Jimmy, I mean. He’s beginning to behave as though he could do exactly as he liked, and I’m sure I’m not surprised at it!”

“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” said Clara. “The boys will soon knock it out of him, if he gets above himself.”

“Knock what out of whom?” inquired Eugene, who had come into the room in time to overhear this remark.

“Faith thinks your father’s makin’ a fool of Jimmy.”

“Repulsive by-blow!” said Eugene, lowering himself into an easy-chair. “He’s quite beneath my notice. Of course, I see that bringing him under our roof is a truly superb gesture, but if he’s a fair specimen of Father’s illegitimate offspring I can only be thankful that he hasn’t extended the practice of adoption to the rest of them.”

“I don’t expect any of you to see the thing in an ordinarily decent light,” said Faith, “but I regard his presence here as a direct insult to me!”

Eugene regarded her with some amusement. “Oh, I don’t think you need!” he said sweetly. “That little episode was before your time.”

“I sometimes think you none of you have any moral sense at all!” Faith cried.

“Well, not much, anyway,” agreed Eugene. “Except Bart, of course.”

“Bart!”

He smiled. “It does seem odd, doesn’t it? Deplorable:, too, one must admit. There is something almost suburban about the respectability of his present matrimonial intentions.”

Faith coloured hotly. “It isn’t true! Loveday has never dreamt of such a thing! If it hadn’t been for you starting what I can only call a malicious rumour, no one would ever have thought of it!”

Clara looked from one to the other of them, with an expression of mild dismay on her face. “You don’t mean it! Well, I thought he was up to something. But I don’t like that at all, and, what’s more, his father will never hear of it.”

“Clara! It’s nothing but one of Eugene’s scandals! I’m perfectly sure Loveday has never looked at Bart!”

Clara looked unconvinced, merely remarking gloomily that she had said all along that Loveday was a sly gal. Thoroughly incensed, Faith left the room. Eugene yawned, and said reflectively that it was realy hard to discover what Penhallow had ever seen in her.

“Well, she’s a tiresome creature, and there’s no gettin’ away from that,” conceded Clara. “But you shouldn’t tease her, Eugene, when you know it upsets her. I daresay she’s got a lot more to put up with than any of us realise. She’s worried too about Clay’s havin’ to come home, which isn’t what she wants. You leave her alone!”

“If she doesn’t want Clay to come home I can even sympathise with her,” replied Eugene. “Though I should hardly have expected Faith to show such good taste, I must say.”

“Now, that’s enough!” said Clara severely. “The doctor’s been here, and he says your father can’t go on like this.”

“He’s been doing it for a good many years,” said Eugene, selecting a fat Egyptian cigarette from his case, and lighting it.

Clara rubbed her nose. “Well, that’s what I say, but I’m sure I don’t know what’s got into the man, for I never knew him quite so wild as he is this year. He’s goin’ on as though someone had wound him up, and he couldn’t stop.”

“Yes, I thought he seemed distinctly above himself,” said Eugene, with detached interest. “Perhaps he’ll have a stroke, or something. That ought to please a good many of our number.”

Clara ignored this rider. “If this story you’ve got hold of about Bart is true, he’ll very likely burst a bloodvessel,” she said. “I don’t like it at all, Eugene, and that’s the truth.”

“Personally, I feel that Loveday is just the sort of wife to suit Bart down to the ground,” replied Eugene, blowing smoke-rings, and lazily watching them float upwards. “Not, of course, that the rest of the family is likely to see it in that light. You’re all so hidebound.”

“Now, don’t you go backin’ him up!” Clara begged him. “There’ll be trouble enough without you addin’ to it. I never liked that gal.”

As Eugene showed no disposition to continue the discussion, she relapsed into silence. That she was unusually disturbed, however, was seen by her working nearly an inch of her crochet-pattern wrong, a thing no one had known her to do before.

In spite of her soothing remarks to Faith, she privately felt that Penhallow was working himself up to a crisis. His conduct had never been orthodox, but he had not until lately indulged in as many extravagances as were fast becoming commonplaces in his life. His career had been characterised by a sublime disregard for convention or public opinion; he seemed now to be taking a malignant delight in outraging his family and his acquaintance, a significant change in his mentality which made Clara uneasy. The robust and generally unthinking brutality of his maturity was changing to a deliberate, if irrational, cruelty, which seemed often to be as purposeless as it was ruthless. From having exercised his power over his dependants to force them to conform to that way of life which suited himself, he was now showing alarming signs of exercising an arbitrary tyranny for the sheer love of it. The wounds his rough tongue had dealt during the years of his rampant strength and health had seldom been intentional; now that his health had broken down, and his strength had failed, nothing seemed to please him more than to aim such wicked shafts at his victims as penetrated even the armour of a Penhallow. If he could upset the peace of mind of any of his household, he would lose no time in doing so, as if he were bent on revenging his physical helplessness on his family. The absence of motive for many of his wanton attacks made his sister wonder whether his brain was going. He had unblushingly boasted to her of the weapon he had used to compel Clifford to receive Clay as a pupil, and had appeared to be hugely entertained by her shocked face. She had said, with an odd dignity: “If you want me to leave Trevellin, Adam, you’ve only to tell me so. There’s no need to drag my boy into it that I know of. I can shift for myself.”

“Lord, I don’t want to get rid of you, old girl!” he had replied carelessly. “Catch Cliff calling my bluff! Made me laugh to see him squirming, though.”

Either he was impervious to the very natural feeling of hurt which she must experience from learning her son’s reluctance to receive her under his roof, or he had made the disclosure on purpose to enjoy her discomfiture. She could not be sure, and she would not gratify him by betraying a wound. A silent woman, she did not refer to the matter again; nor, in her behaviour, did she show the least sign of having taken his words seriously. But she was disturbed, filled with vague forebodings of disaster, regarding the growing indications of brewing strife in the house with a concern quite foreign to her aloof temperament.

Chapter Eight

Upon Clay’s learning of the fate that his father had in store for him, he lost little time in subjecting his mother to a spate of letters, which varied in tone between the darkly threatening and the wildly despairing. He informed her that death would be preferable to him than life at home; that the study of the law would kill his soul; that he had no intention of submitting to Penhallow’s arbitrary commands; that he had never had a chance in life; that no one understood him; and, finally, that his mother ought to do something about it.

To all of these effusions Faith replied suitably; and although she had no idea what she could possibly do about it, she quite agreed that it was her sacred duty to protect her only son from Penhallow’s tyranny. She paid a great many visits to Clifford’s office, and would no doubt have paid more had he not prudently instructed his clerk to deny her; and tried successively to enlist the support of each of Clay’s half-brothers. This attempt was unattended by success. Eugene and the twins, while viewing Clay’s prospective sojourn at Trevellin with disfavour, were yet too little affected by it to meddle in what was admittedly a sleeveless errand; Ingram, who believed in keeping upon easy terms with everyone except Raymond, gave her a good deal of sympathy, agreed with every word she had to say, promised to do what he could, and left it at that; and Raymond replied curtly that Penhallow was already aware of his disapproval, and that to say anything more on the subject was a waste of time which he for one did not propose to indulge in. He added that since, under the terms of Penhallow’s will, Faith would be in possession of an ample jointure upon his death, she had better contain her soul in patience for a year or two, at the end of which time she would no doubt be in a position to finance Clay in whatever wild-cat scheme for his advancement he had taken into his head. This brusquely delivered piece of advice so much annoyed Faith that she succumbed to one of her nervous attacks, complained of headache and insomnia, and sent Loveday to Bodmin to procure for her at the chemist’s a quantity of drugs the free consumption of which might have been expected to have ruined any but the most resilient constitution; and bored everyone by describing the increasing number of veronal-drops now necessary to induce the bare minimum of sleep.

It might have been supposed that she would have found, if not an ally, a sympathiser in Vivian, but Vivian, besides feeling that anyone who had been fool enough to marry Penhallow deserved whatever was coming to her, was a great deal too absorbed in her own troubles to have any attention to spare for another’s. Her last interview with Penhallow on the question of her enforced residence at Trevellin seemed to have stirred the fire of her resentment to a flame. Every petty inconvenience or annoyance became a major ill in her eyes; she tried in a variety of ways to inspire Eugene with a desire to break away from his family; wrung from a reluctant editor a half-promise to employ him as dramatic critic on his paper; obtained orders to view a number of desirable flats in London; and even evolved an energetic plan for earning money on her own account by conducting interested foreigners round London, and pointing out places of note to them. None of these schemes came to fruition, because it was beyond her power to goad Eugene into making the least alteration in his indolent habits. A perpetual crease dwelled between her straight brows; she developed an uncomfortable trick of pacing up and down rooms, smoking rapidly as she did so, and obviously hammering out ways and means in her impatient brain. It was the freely expressed opinion of Conrad that she would shortly blow up, and this, indeed, was very much the impression she conveyed to a disinterested onlooker. Inaction being insupportable to anyone of her restless temperament, and the natural outlet for her enemy being effectively plugged by her husband’s refusal to bestir himself, she took to tramping for miles over the Moor, an exercise which might have had a more beneficial effect upon the state of hey mind had she not occupied it the whole time in brooding over the insufferable nature of her position at Trevellin. When in the house, she spent her time between ministering to Eugene’s comfort, quarrelling with her brothers-in-law, and finding fault with the domestic arrangements.

It was she who was the loudest in condemnation of Jimmy’s increasing idleness, and of his dissipated habits, which were becoming daily more marked. She said that he spent all the money which Penhallow casually bestowed upon him at the nearest public-house, and complained that he had several times answered her in a most insolent manner. No one paid any heed to this charge, but none of the Penhallows was blind to the deterioration in their baseborn relative. Penhallow was becoming still more dependent upon him, and seemed to prefer his ministrations even to Martha’s. As it amused him to encourage Jimmy to recount for his edification any items of news current in the house, it was not surprising that the young man should have begun to presume upon his position, which he did to such an unwise extent upon one occasion that Bart kicked him down the backstairs, causing him to sprain his wrist, and to break a rib. He picked himself up, muttering threats of vengeance, and directing so malevolent a look upwards at Bart that that irate young gentleman started to come down the stairs to press his lesson home more indelibly still. Jimmy took himself off with more haste than dignity, fortified himself with a considerable quantity of gin, and in this pot-valiant condition went to Penhallow’s room, where he made a great parade of his hurts, and said sullenly that he wasn’t going to stay at Trevellin to be knocked about by them as was no better than himself. Had he received the slightest encouragement, he would have embarked upon an account of his suspicions of Bart’s intentions towards Loveday, but Penhallow interrupted him, barking at him: “Damn your impudence, who are you to say where you’ll stay? You’ll stay where I tell you! Broken a rib, have you? What of it? Serve you right for getting on the wrong side of that young devil of mine! I’ve spoilt you, that’s what I’ve done!”

But when Penhallow discovered that the sprained wrist made it impossible for Jimmy to perform many of the duties in the sick-room which had been allotted to him, he swore, and commanded Bart to leave the lad alone.

“I’ll break every bone in his body, if he gives me any of his lip!” promised Bart.

Penhallow regarded him with an irascibility not unmixed with pride. “No, you won’t,” he said mildly. “I need him to wait on me. When I’m gone you can please yourself. Until then you’ll please me!”

Bart scowled down at him, as he lay in his immense bed. “What you want with such a dirty little tick beats me. Guv’nor!” he said. “I wouldn’t let him come within a ten-foot pole of me, if I were in your shoes!”

As this interchange took place after dinner, when the entire family had been gathered together in Penhallow’ room, after the custom which he had instituted upon first taking to his bed and ever afterwards refused to modify , it seemed good to several other people to join in the conversation, each one adding his or her mite to the general condemnation of Jimmy’s character and habits. Even Ingram, who had limped up from the Dower House to pass the evening in his father’s room, gave it as his opinion that the air of Trevellin would be purer for Jimmy’s absence; while Conrad asserted that he had lately missed a number of small articles, and was prepared to bet that they had found their way into Jimmy’s pocket.

“You’re all of you jealous of poor little Jimmy,” said Penhallow, becoming maudlin. “You’re afraid of what I’ll leave him in my will. He’s the only one of the whole pack of you who cares tuppence about his old father.”

Everyone knew that Penhallow was under no illusions about the nature of his misbegotten offspring, and was merely trying to promote a general feeling of annoyance, but only Raymond, who contented himself with giving a contemptuous laugh, could resist the temptation of picking up the glove tossed so provocatively into the midst of the circle.

They were all present, scattered about the great room, which was lit by candles in the wall-sconces, and in massive chandeliers of Sheffield plate, which stood upon tables wherever they were needed. There was also an oil lamp upon the refectory table, brought in by Faith, who complained that she could not see to sew by the flickering candle-light. She sat with her fair head bent over a wisp of embroidery, her workbasket open on the oak table at her elbow, the scissors in it caught by the flames of the candles on the wall, and flashing back brilliant points of light. She had chosen a straight-backed Jacobean chair, and drooped in it, seldom looking up from her work, her whole pose suggesting that she was enduring a nightly penance. Her sister-in-law occupied an arm-chair on one side of the fire, opposite to the one in which Raymond sat, glancing through the pages of the local paper. Clara was wearing a tea-gown, once black, now rusty with age; she had turned the skirt up over her knees to preserve it from the scorching heat of the leaping fire in the huge hearth, and displayed the flounces of an ancient petticoat. Her bony fingers were busy with her crochet; a pair of pince-nez perched on the high bridge of her nose, and was secured to her person by a thin gold chain. attached to a brooch, pinned askew on her flat chest. The disreputable cat, Beelzebub, lay asleep in her lap. Near to her, seated astride a spindle-legged chair with a rotting brocade seat, was Conrad. He had crossed his arms along the delicately curved back of the chair, and was resting his chin on them. Eugene, after a slight disputee with Ingram, had obtained sole possession of the chesterfield at the foot of the bed, and lay on it in an attitude of lazy grace. Vivian, wearing a dress of flaring scarlet, was a splash of colour in the open space immediately before the fire, hugging her knees on a stool between Clara’s and Raymond’s chairs, turning her back upon the bed, staring moodily into the flames. Ingram, oddly discordant in a dinner jacket and a stiff shirt, which Myra insisted on his wearing every evening, sat in a deep chair pulled away from the fire, with one leg stretched out before him for greater ease, his elbows on the arms of his chair, and his fingertips lightly pressed together. Bart was leaning up against the lacquer cabinet with his hands in his pockets, the light from the candles above his head, which was wavering in the draught from the windows, playing strange tricks with his face, giving it a saturnine expression, making him look, Faith thought, glancing up from her work, like a devil, which he was not. The atmosphere was heavy with the scent of the cigars Penhallow and Raymond were smoking, which overcame the thinner, more acrid fumes of the twins’ cheap cigarettes. How unhealthy it was, Faith thought, to sleep in a room stale with tobacco smoke! How hot it was in here, how fantastic the candle-light, dazzling the eyes, making the red lacquer cabinet glow as though it were on fire, casting queer shadows in the corners of the room, playing over the strong, dark faces of Penhallow and his sons! She gave a little inward shudder, and bent again over her needlework, wondering how many purgatorial evenings lay ahead of her, and how she could save Clay from being drawn into a circle as alien to him as it was to her.

"Jealous of Jimmy the Bastard!” Ingram was saying. “Oh, come now, sir, that’s a bit too steep!”

“He’s a good boy,” said Penhallow. “Damme if I don’t do something handsome for him!”

“If you want to do something handsome for anyone, let it be for one of your legitimate sons!” Vivian threw over her shoulder.

“Your precious husband, I suppose!” jeered Penhallow.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“Because I don’t want to, that’s why, you little madam!”

“That’s where you’re so beastly unfair!” she said. “You only encourage that disgusting Jimmy because you know everyone else loathes him!”

Eugene reached out a long arm, and tickled the back of her neck where the short tendrils of hair curled upwards. His fingers conveyed comfort and remonstrance both. She flushed quickly, and shifted the stool on which she sat nearer to the sofa, so that he could put his arm round her, and she lean back against his shoulder.

“Look here, Father!” said Conrad, raising his chin from his wrists. “Nobody objects to your employing your little mistakes, if you want to, but for God’s sake teach ’em to keep their places! If Jimmy treats me to much more of his bloody impudence there’ll be murder done!”

“Somebody might, at the same time, teach him to polish my shoes properly,” suggested Eugene, in a gentle voice.

“So he’s been cheeking you, has he, Con?” grinned Penhallow. “By God, he’s got spirit, that lad!”

“Spirit!” exploded Bart. “He’s a sneaking little rat. trading on your blooming protection! You lie there letting him gammon you into thinking he’s worth his salt. but if you saw how he behaves outside this room you’d darned soon kick him out!”

“That’s right,” nodded Clara. “Can’t stand corn. You shouldn’t take him round the country with you, Adam, introducing him to decent people. It stands to reason the boy must get above himself.”

“Old Mother Venngreen been complaining to you. Clara?” asked Penhallow, with a chuckle. “That did me more good than all Lifton’s drenches, I can tell you. Nearly split my sides watching the old turkey-hen gobble and ruffle up her feathers!”

The twins shouted with laughter, not having known previously of this historic encounter, but Ingram looked a trifle shocked, and said in a expostulating tone: “No, really, sir, I say! You can’t do that sort of thing! I mean, the Vicar’s wife...”

Bart gave a crow of delight. “Ingram and the old school tie! Play up for the side — don’t let the school down — stick to the done-thing, fellers!”

“White man’s burden,” said Conrad. “Example to the neighbourhood. Long live our pukka sahib!”

"Shut up, you young fools!” Ingram said, reddening. “All the same, in your position, sir—”

“Blast your impudence, are you going to tell me how I ought to behave myself?” demanded Penhallow, but with more amusement than anger.

“I don’t know how we are ever to look Mrs Venngreen in the face again, any of us,” said Faith, in a low voice.

“Speaking for myself,” murmured Eugene, drawing Vivian’s head back so that he could smile down into her adoring eyes, “I don’t find that I have any very overpowering desire to look her in the face. None that I can’t master, you know.”

“I had a horse with a face like Mrs Venngreen’s,” remarked Clara reminiscently. “You’ll remember him, Adam: a chestnut with a white blaze. He had a bad habit of jumpin’ off his forehand.”

“Talking about horses,” interrupted Bart suddenly, turning his head towards Raymond, “Weep says it’s spavin, Ray.”

“What’s that?” Penhallow demanded. “If you’ve got a spavined horse in the stables, get rid of him!”

“That’s right,” agreed Clara. “I don’t care what anyone may say: a spavined horse is an unsound horse.”

“Rubbish!” said Raymond, retiring into the newspaper again. “You manage your own horses, and leave me to manage mine, Aunt Clara.”

“Well, what’s to be done about it?” asked Bart. “Blisters?”

“Likely to cause absorption,” Raymond responded briefly. “I’ll look him over in the morning.”

“You’ll have to cool his system before you treat him,” said Ingram.

“Thanks for the tip!” Raymond retorted, throwing him a scornful glance. “Any other obvious remarks?”

“I’d fire him,” remarked Conrad.

Eugene yawned. “From which one gathers that he’s not one of your horses. Don’t you, Ray! Ruin his appearance for good and all if you do.”

“Try setons!” recommended Bart.

“Oh, shut up, the lot of you!” said Raymond. “There’s nothing but a slight exostosis! Do you think I was born yesterday?”

“Biniodide of mercury,” said Penhallow. “Nothing like it!”

Raymond grunted, and refused thereafter to be drawn into the discussion which waxed louder and louder, Penhallow recalling cases he had known of spavined horses from his youth upwards; the twins arguing hotly on the most efficacious cure for the complaint; and Ingram and Clara putting in comments and suggestions whenever they could make their voices heard above the rest.

Faith set her teeth, and rethreaded her needle, trying to shut out the sound of boisterous voices, to wrap herself up in some world of her own that contained no horses, no aggressively assertive young men, no coarse-tongued old ones, and above all no over-heated, overcrowded, fantastically furnished bedrooms where she could be compelled to sit night after night while her temples throbbed, and her eyes ached from the unguarded flames of the countless candles all round the room.

Vivian, within the circle of Eugene’s arm, leaning her head back against his shoulder, had let her eyelids droop, one part of her mind irritated by the turmoil of dispute raging about her, the other dreaming of a little flat where she could be alone with Eugene, who was so very dear , whose very touch could soothe and comfort her exasperation, and whom she wanted to possess utterly, wrapping him round her with love, keeping him safe from his lusty, unappreciative brothers. While he remained at Trevellin she could never feel him to be wholly her own. He might bicker languidly with his brothers, but he was one of them, sharing many of their interests, imperceptibly changing from the man-of-the-world, the artist, she had married to one whose life was bound up in the confines of a Cornish estate which she hated.

I must get him away, she thought. Somehow, anyhow, I must manage to get him away from this dreadful place!

The discussion on the proper treatment of, and improbable cure of, bone spavin was brought to an abrupt end by Penhallow, who suddenly said: “I want a drink! Where’s that damned boy, Jimmy?” and reached out a hand to tug at the crimson bell-pull beside his bed.

No agreement had been reached, the maximum amount of abuse had been indulged in, opinions scoffed at or shouted down, and a quantity of irrelevant anecdote recited. The Penhallows, in fact, had spent a pleasant twenty minutes giving vent to their exuberant vitality, and were now perfectly content to allow the subject to drop.

How awful they are! thought Faith. I can’t go on like this! I can’t, I can’t! I shall go mad!

The bell was answered in a few moments by Reuben and Jimmy both, Reuben carrying in the massive silver tray with all the bottles, decanters, glasses, and sandwiches with which it was the custom of the Penhallows to refresh themselves during the evening; and Jimmy, with one arm ostentatiously in a sling, bearing the overflow on a small, tarnished salver.

“What the hell makes you so late, you old rascal?” demanded Penhallow jovially.

Reuben dumped the large tray down on the refectory table, and gave a sniff. “If Master Bart would be so obliging as to leave this young varmint the use of both his arms, perhaps I wouldn’t be late,” he said severely. A glance at the clock under the glass shade caused him to add: “Which I’m not, sir, I’ll thank you to notice. Ten o’clock’s been the time for you to call for a drink since I don’t know when, and if you’re going to change your habits at your time of life we shall be all at sixes and sevens.”

“Damn your impudence!” said Penhallow cheerfully. “What the devil are you doing with that thing round your neck, Jimmy? Take if off, and come and shake up my pillows!”

“Mr Bart’s sprained my wrist,” said Jimmy, with an air of patient endurance.

“I know that, fool! Think yourself lucky he didn’t break it, and stop makin’ a damned exhibition of yourself! You leave your little half brother alone, Bart, or I’ll have something to say to you!”

Raymond looked up at this, a heavy scowl on his brow, and exclaimed: “My God, that’s too much! You can get out, Jimmy!”

“Oh, no, he can’t!” said Penhallow, grinning wickedly. “I want him to shake up my pillows. Come here, Jimmy. my boy! Don’t pay any attention to them: I won’t let ’em hurt you.”

Jimmy was so pleased at being told to disregard Raymond’s orders that he slipped his injured arm out of the sling, and went towards the bed. Bart, straightening himself suddenly, got between him and it, and said dangerously: “You heard Mr Raymond: get the hell out of this before I boot you!”

“Bart!” roared Penhallow, making Faith start nervously, and prick her finger.

“I’ll shake your pillows up for you when I’ve seen your pet cocktail off, Dad,” replied Bart, not turning his head.

“Hark forrard, Bart!” Conrad encouraged his twin, in a ringing tone.

Jimmy retreated a few paces, casting a sidelong look at the door. Reuben went on setting out the glasses on the table, as though nothing out of the way were taking place.

“Bart!” thundered Penhallow.

“Now, don’t let’s have any vulgar brawling, I do implore you, Bart!” begged Eugene. "Ware riot, my lad, ’ware riot! Really, a false scent! It isn’t worth it!”

Bart hunched his shoulders, and turned reluctantly to confront Penhallow, who had reached for the ebony cane beside his bed, and was raising it threateningly. The fierce old eyes met and held the sullen young ones. “By God, Bart, if you don’t obey me I’ll have the hide off your back!” Penhallow swore. "Jimmy, you little rat, come here!”

Bart seemed to hesitate for an instant; then, with a laugh and a shrug, he lounged back to his position by the lacquer cabinet. With an air of conscious virtue, Jimmy shook up the pillows, and replaced them, straightened the flaring patchwork quilt, and asked if there was anything else he could do for his master.

Penhallow gave a chuckle. “You take yourself off, and don’t you give your brothers any more of your impudence, hear me? One of these days I shan’t be here to hold the pack off you, and then where will you be, eh? Off with you, now!”

“And no sneaking off on the sly, either,” said Reuben, accompanying Jimmy to the door. “Since that wrist of yours isn’t too bad to let you shake up the plaster’s pillow, we’ll see if it won’t lend a hand in the pantry after all.”

The double doors closed behind them. Penhallow looked under his brows at Bart, a smile hovering round his mouth. “You young devil! Getting the bit between your teeth, aren’t you? Pour me out a drink!”

Raymond, who had risen to his feet, the local paper crushed in one hand, said with a rasp in his voice: “Hell, do you think I’ll put up with that?”

“Yes, or anything else I choose to make you put up with!” Penhallow returned contemptuously.

“Our half-brother! My God, what next?” Raymond said furiously.

“Oh, he’s one of mine all right!” Penhallow said, malice twinkling in his eyes. “Look at his nose!”

“I don’t doubt it! But if you imagine I’m going to have my orders ignored by him or any other of your bastards, you’ll learn your mistake!”

“Well, damn it, it was you who tried to override Father’s orders to him!” interrupted Ingram.

Raymond rounded on him, an ugly look on his face. “You keep out of this! What are you doing here, anyway? Haven’t you got a home of your own to sprawl in — rentfree?”

Conrad gave a crack of laughter, and started to chant: “Worry, worry, worry!” Eugene began to laugh; and Bart ranged himself on Raymond’s side, loudly applauding his conduct in having ordered Jimmy out of the room. Above the tangle of angry voices, Penhallow’s made itself easily audible. Vivian, realising that the family was fairly embarked upon one of its zestful quarrels, clenched her fists, and said sharply: “Oh, my God, how I loathe you all! How I loathe you all!”

Faith folded her embroidery with trembling hands, and slipped from the room. She found that her knees were shaking, and had to stand for a moment, leaning against the wall, to recover herself. The quarrels were becoming more frequent, she thought, or she was too worn-down to bear them as once she must have been able to. The sound of angry voices beat still upon her ears; she fled from it, down the long broad passage to the main hall, and up the shallow stairs to her room at the head of them, and sank into a chair, pressing her hands to her temples.

She found herself thinking of Clay, picturing him in the midst of such a scene as was now raging in Penhallow’s room. As sensitive as she was herself, afraid of his father, and of his brothers, wincing from a raised voice, life at Trevellin, if it did not drive him out of his mind, must surely wreck his nervous system. He would be expected to do all the things his more robust half brothers delighted in, and between his fear of their contempt if he refused his fences, and his fear of the fences themselves, his life would be a lasting misery.

His last letter to his mother had announced his intention of defying the parental mandate, and seeking employment in London, but Faith knew that this was only bluster, and not meant for other eyes than hers. He would come home at the end of the term, resentful, yet not daring to speak out boldly to Penhallow. He would pour out his troubles to his mother; he would think that somehow or other she ought to be able to protect him, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to see that she was as helpless as he in Penhallow’s remorseless grip. She did not blame him: she knew that she ought to help him, and thought that there was nothing she would not do to set him free from Penhallow’s tyranny. But there did not seem to be anything she could do, since her entreaties had been of no avail, and she was wholly without the means of supplying Clay with money to make him independent of Penhallow.

She tried to explain this to him when he came back to Trevellin early in June, but he had inherited her dislike of facing unwelcome facts and was more inclined to descant upon what they might both have done, had almost every circumstance of their respective positions been other than they were, than to form any plan founded on the situation as it was.

She went to meet him at the station in the aged limousine. His greeting was scarcely designed to flatter her. “Oh, Mother, this is too ghastly!” he exclaimed. hurrying towards her on the platform. “Can’t you do anything!”

It was not in her nature to return a baldly unpalatable answer, so a good deal of time was spent in a discussion founded on eventualities which might, but almost certainly would not, occur. “If only Cliff would have the courage to tell your father he doesn’t want you as a pupil!” Faith said. “If only I had some relations with money! If only I could get your father to see that you’d be wasted in Cliff’s office!”

“I do think you ought to have some influence over Father!” Clay said.

In this unprofitable fashion the drive to Trevellin was accomplished, mother and son arriving at the old grey house below the Moor in a state of considerable nervous agitation, Faith having developed a nagging, headache, and Clay experiencing the familiar sinking at the pit of his stomach which always attacked him at the prospect of having to confront Penhallow.

In appearance, he was not strikingly like either parent. His colouring was nondescript, inclined to fair, but although his eyes had something of Faith’s expression they were not blue, but grey. He had the aquiline cast of features of all the Penhallows, but his mother’s soft mouth and indeterminate chin. He was rather above the average height, but had yet to fill out, being at present very thin and immature. He had several nervous tricks, such as smoothing his hair, and fidgeting with the knot of his tie; from having been the butt of his brothers he had acquired a defensive manner, and was often self-conscious in company, assuming an ease of manner which it was plain he did not possess. He was apt to take offence too readily and was far too prone to adopt a belligerent tone with his half-brothers; and no amount of mockery could break him of unwise attempts to impress them by recounting unconvincing tales of his strong handling of such persons as form-masters, Deans, and Proctors.

The first person he encountered on entering the house was Bart, who hailed him good-naturedly enough, saying: “Hello, kid! I forgot you were descending on us today. Skinny as ever, I see.” He turned his head, as Eugene came out of the library, and called: “Hi, Eugene! The budding lawyer’s blown in!”

Clay bristled at once, and replied in rather too high-pitched a voice: “You don’t suppose I’m going to go into Cliff’s office, do you? I can assure you that I shall have something to say to Father about that!”

Bart grinned. “I’ll bet you will! I can hear you: Yes, Father. No, Father! Just as you wish, Father.”

Faith at once rushed to the defence of her young: “Can’t you let the poor boy set foot inside the house without starting to tease him? I should have thought that after not having seen him for three months you might have found something pleasant to say to him!”

“Kiss your little brother, Bart!” said Eugene reprovingly. “Well, Benjamin? Will you receive our address of welcome now, or later?”

“Oh, shut up!” said Clay. “You’re not a bit funny!”

“Darling, I know you’ll want a bath after that horrid journey,” Faith said, ignoring Eugene. “I told Sybilla to be sure to see that the water was properly heated. Come upstairs, won’t you?”

She took his arm, and pressed it affectionately, and he went with her up the stairs, leaving Bart to grimace expressively at Eugene, and to observe that why Penhallow should want to draw such an appalling little wet back into the fold was a matter passing his comprehension.

Chapter Nine

Clay’s first meeting with his father took place that evening, after dinner, in the presence of the rest of the family. Upon setting eyes on his youngest son, Penhallow at once demanded to be told why he had not presented himself several hours earlier, shooting this question at Clay in such a fierce way that the boy changed colour, and stammered out a rather incoherent reply, which was to the effect that he hadn’t known that Penhallow wanted to see him particularly. This had the effect of making Penhallow scarify him soundly for his lack of filial respect; and as he addressed most of his diatribe to him in a thunderous tone, and ended by asking him what he had to say for himself, Clay was speedily reduced to a state of pallid terror, and was only able to say, in shaken accents, that he was sorry, and hadn’t meant to offend anyone. Such supine behaviour roused all the worst in Penhallow, who set about bullying him in good earnest, insisting on receiving answers to quite impossible questions, and saying everything he could to goad him into making a hot retort. Faith, perilously near tears, tried to come to Clay’s support, and succeeded, in as much as Penhallow’s ire was instantly diverted, and fell upon her luckless head. Clay slid into the background, and tried to look as though he did not mind having been roared at, and was not in the least upset by the interlude. Conrad, who had seen Bart kissing Loveday in the orchard, and was in a smouldering temper in consequence, began to bait him, with so much ill nature that Bart came to his rescue, telling his twin to lay off the kid, for God’s sake! Bart was quite capable of inflicting physical hurt on anyone who roused his wrath, but he was never spiteful. But since he could not understand that his good-natured intervention increased Conrad’s ill-humour, Conrad’s jealous temperament being unable to brook his twin’s siding with another member of the family against himself, he did Clay very little service. Raymond, who had scarcely been on speaking terms with Penhallow since their quarrel over Jimmy, took no part in the general turmoil, but sat scowling into the fire, and occasionally exchanging a brief word or two with his aunt. He glanced contemptuously at Clay, when that unfortunate young man withdrew to a chair in a secluded corner, and seemed slightly amused by Conrad’s baiting of him.

Having worked off his rage, Penhallow was ready to discuss the affairs of the estate, the stables, the farm, and the neighbouring countryside with his sons. Clay, bearing as little part in this animated conversation as his mother, sat with clenched teeth, wondering with sick distaste whether it was worse to be berated by Penhallow than to be obliged to sit through an evening of such talk as this. When Reuben and Jimmy brought in the usual refreshments, he had to help the twins dispense these. He carried a glass of whisky-and-soda to Vivian, and told her in an undertone that he couldn’t stand this sort of thing.

She shrugged her shoulders. “You say that, but you will stand it. I know you!”

He coloured, and asserted more loudly than he meant to: “Well, I shan’t. I’m not a child any longer, and the sooner everyone realises that, the better it will be for — for them!”

Conrad overheard this, and said at once: “Listen to this, all of you! Dear little Clay isn’t a child any longer! Isn’t it wonderful what a Varsity education will do for one? What did they teach you at Cambridge, Clay? We never managed to teach you anything — not even to throw your heart over!”

“Or to stop pulling his horse right into a fence,” said Raymond dryly. “If you are going to stay at home, Clay, I suppose you will have to be mounted.”

Clay dared not assert that he was not going to stay at home, although every minute spent in the company of his family made him the more determined by hook or by crook to escape from Trevellin; but he showed so little interest in the question of what horses he could ride during the coming season that even Eugene roused himself to remark dispassionately that no one would take him for a Penhallow. Fortunately, Penhallow was too much absorbed in what Bart was telling him about the Demon colt to pay any heed to this interchange; and as any mention of the Demon colt had the invariable effect of drawing nearly every member of the family into the discussion, Clay was presently able to slip out of the room without attracting attention. His mother soon followed him, and they went upstairs together to her bedroom, where Clay at once unburdened his mind to her, pacing about the room as he did so, and fidgeting with whatever came in the way of his unquiet hands. Faith’s attention was thus divided between what he had to say, and what he was doing, and she found herself impelled to interrupt him several times, to beg him not to twirl the lid of her powder-bowl round; to take care of that chair, because one leg was broken; and please not to swing the blind-cord to and fro, because it made her giddy.

“I don’t believe,” said Clay gloomily, “that you have the least idea how desperate it all is!”

“Oh, darling, how can you say that to me?” Faith reproached him.

“I suppose you’re used to it,” pursued Clay, disregarding this interpolation. “You simply don’t realise how ghastly it is here! But I’ve been away from it, and you just can’t imagine how it strikes one, after having lived in civilised surroundings, amongst cultured people! I couldn’t bear it, Mother. It’s no use expecting me to. I mean, I should simply cut my throat. There’s nothing I wouldn’t rather do!”

Correctly assuming that this sweeping assertion excepted any form of manual toil, or office drudgery. Faith said: “Yes, but what can we do about it? I’ve tried my best to make your father see reason, but you know what he is. If only you’d done better in your First Part I think there might have been some hope, but...”

“Of course, anyone who imagines that one goes to the Varsity merely to swot, and pass examinations, just doesn’t understand the first thing about it,” said Clay loftily. “And, what’s more, I never heard that Eugene did so damned well up at Oxford, or Aubrey either, if it comes to that!”

“I know,” she said quickly. “That’s what’s so unfair! You were much too young to know anything about it at the time, but actually Eugene cost your father a great deal of money, when he was up, besides getting into the sort of scrapes I should have thought any father would have However, that’s his affair! Only, I believe the awful thing is that your father wouldn’t have minded, if you’d disgraced yourself at Cambridge, and got entangled with dreadful girls, and been sent down for sheer hooliganism!”

Clay stared at her. “Of course, he’s mad!” he said, with conviction. “Absolutely batty!”

She shook her head, but said, as though she feared to be overheard: “He’s got very strange lately. Not mad, but very — very eccentric. More than that, really. He has been doing some outrageous things, and he seems to me to be drinking more than he used to. I’m very worried about him.”

Clay accepted this conventional statement. He himself disliked his father, but he would have been rather shocked had Faith admitted that she too disliked him. He said: “He looks all right. I didn’t notice any change.”

“Dr Lifton says he can’t possibly go on as he is doing. You’ve no idea what unsuitable things he eats, and the amount he drinks, and the way he’s been rushing about the country.”

“I suppose his inside is pretty well accustomed to strong drink,” said Clay, with a slight laugh.

“Yes, but, really, darling, there are limits! I don’t mean that he gets drunk, actually, but I have seen him — well, in that reckless state which always means he’s been drinking steadily. You saw the whisky Con measured into his glass tonight. Well, that’s nothing. I mean, it isn’t only what he drinks when we’re all there, but I know from Loveday that Martha has orders to leave the whisky decanter beside his bed when he settles down for the night, and if you ever saw the drink bills you’d realise what an appalling amount he must dispose of.”

“Can’t you stop him?” inquired Clay, without much interest.

“No. He wouldn’t listen to anything I said. Reuben does what he can, by seeing to it that there’s only a certain amount of whisky left in the decanter each night, but you never know when your father will put a stop to that. No one can do anything with him once he’s determined on getting his own way.”

“Well,” said Clay, sticking out his chin, “I can’t say I care two hoots how much he drinks, but he’s not going to get his own way as far as my affairs are concerned. I’m damned well not going to be jockeyed into Cliff’s office to suit his convenience!”

“Oh, darling, I’m quite heartbroken about that, but what can you do?”

“Why can’t he make me an allowance, and let me do what I want to do?” demanded Clay. “He lets Aubrey please himself, hang it all!”

“Yes, but he says he isn’t going to any longer,” sighed Faith. “He’s got a sort of mania for keeping you all at home. I’m sure I don’t know why, because he doesn’t do anything but quarrel with you. He even went for Bart the other night, and Bart’s his favourite.”

“I shouldn’t have thought,” said Clay, in an ill-used voice, “that it was much to expect, that I should be allowed to choose my own profession!”

“If only I had the means to help you!” sighed Faith.

A gentle tap on the door was immediately followed by Loveday’s entrance, bearing the hot-water bag without which Faith never, summer or winter, went to bed. She smiled warmly upon her mistress, and, as she slipped the bag between the sheets, let her eyes flicker over Clay. Clay, who had not noticed her much on his previous vacations, was conscious of a strong attraction, and was enough a Penhallow to return the glance with a kind of invitation in his own eyes. In his mother’s presence he was debarred from making any further overtures, but when, next morning, he encountered Loveday in the hall, he slid an arm round her waist, and said clumsily: “I say, Loveday, you might welcome a fellow home!”

Her smile, though it was indulgent, excited him. He wondered how it came about that he had never till now realised how beautiful she was, and said so, stammering a little.

“I expect you’re growing up, Mr Clay,” she replied demurely. “Give over now, my dear, do!”

“Give me a kiss, Loveday!” he said, grasping her more securely.

She shook her head. “Leave me go,” she replied. “You’re getting to be too big a boy now for these games, Mr Clay!”

He coloured, for he hated to be laughed at, and would probably have pulled her into his arms had he not heard the door of Eugene’s room open. He looked round in quick alarm; Loveday slipped away, in no way discomposed, and went gracefully down the stairs.

Eugene’s face showed that he fully appreciated the situation. He said, in his light languid way: “So the puppy’s growing into a hound, is he, Benjamin? Well, I am sure that is all very edifying, but if you think my advice worth taking I can give you a piece of it which may save you from future unpleasantness.”

“Oh, shut up!” said Clay. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I wonder,” said Eugene amiably, “from where you get your instinctive love of prevarication? Keep your paws off Loveday Trewithian, little brother. She’s Bart’s meat!”

“Good lord, I was only fooling with her!” Clay said.

“I’m sure!” Eugene retorted. “The point, thickhead, being that Bart isn’t.”

“What on earth do you mean? You can’t mean that Bart’s serious about her?”

“Can’t I? Well, you trespass on his preserves, and you’ll find out,” said Eugene.

Clay looked very much astonished, but as Jimmy the Bastard came up the backstairs at that moment, with an armful of boots, he questioned Eugene no further.

Jimmy, whose ears were extremely sharp, had heard every word of the brief conversation. It confirmed his own suspicions, and he was pleased, seeing a way of revenge on Bart. His countenance, however, betrayed no emotion whatsoever, and he met Eugene’s narrowed eyes without blanching. Clay went off, whistling, but Eugene lingered to say: “You have quite a genius for turning up where you are least expected, haven’t you. Jimmy?”

Jimmy looked sullenly at him. He recognised an intelligence superior to his own, and resented it. The other Penhallows despised him, and generally ignored him, so that he was able to spy upon their doings pretty well as he chose; but Eugene, he knew, was fully alive to his activities, and, therefore, rather dangerous. He said defensively: “I was bringing your shoes up.”

“Kind of you,” said Eugene. “Do you know, Jimmy, that if I were you I’d be very careful how I trod? Somehow I feel that one of these days, when your natural protector is removed, an evil fate may befall you.”

“I haven’t done any of you any harm,” Jimmy muttered, turning away. But he knew that Eugene was right, and that if Penhallow were suddenly to die he would be kicked out of the house without ceremony or compunction; and he began to think that he would do well to make provision against an uncertain future. He thought he would rather like to go to America. His knowledge of that vast country having been culled solely from the more lurid films dealing with the underworld of bootleggers and racketeers, he was strongly attracted to a land where it seemed that his own buccaneering talents would find ample scope. His only day-dream consisted of an agreeable vision of himself as the chief of a gang, living in an opulent apartment with one of those glamorous blondes who apparently abounded in gangster circles. But he was a practical youth, and he knew that the achievement of his ambition depended largely on his amassing some initial capital. He wondered whether Penhallow would leave him any money in his will, but was inclined to doubt it. Penhallow, he knew quite well, encouraged him partly because it amused him to do so, and partly to annoy his family, and was not in the least likely to leave his money away from his legitimate offspring.

He placed the boots he had brought upstairs in their respective owners’ rooms, and went slowly back to the kitchen, where, since Sybilla was baking, he thought he would pick up one of her saffron cakes. But before he had traversed more than half the length of the stone passage, Martha came out of the still-room, and informed him that Master was shouting for him, and he had better go to him at once, or he would learn what was what.

Penhallow was sitting up in bed, with the fat spaniel sprawling beside him, and a blotter on his knees. As Jimmy came into the room he was licking the flap of an envelope. He remarked genially that he had a job for Jimmy to do. Jimmy saw at once that one of his restless, energetic moods was upon him, and reflected coldly that if he didn’t quieten down again there was no knowing when he mightn’t be took off sudden.

“I shall get up today,” Penhallow announced. “It’s time I saw something of my dear family. We’ll have a tea party. I’ve got a fancy to see that old fool Phineas again. I’ve told Con to fetch him and his sister out to tea in that flibberty-gibbett of a car of his; and you can take yourself to Liskeard, you lazy young dog, and give this letter to my nevvy. I’ll have him and his stuck-up wife out here too. And on your way back, stop at the Vicarage, and give my compliments to Venngreen, and tell him I find myself good and clever today, and I’ll be happy to see, him and his good lady to tea at five o’clock.”

“She won’t come,” observed Jimmy dispassionately.

Penhallow gave a chuckle. “I don’t care whether she comes or not. You tell her you won’t be there, and maybe she will. But Cliff will come, and what’s more he’ll bring his wife, because he knows better than to offend me. He can take a look at Clay while he’s here, and settle when the whelp’s to start work with him.”

Jimmy put the letter he had been given into his pocket, and removed the blotter and the inkstand from Penhallow’s knees. “I see Mr Clay hugging Loveday Trewithian upstairs just now,” he said, casting a sidelong look at his parent.

“The young dog!” exclaimed Penhallow, warming towards Clay. “So there is some red blood in him, is there? She’s a damned fine girl, that one.”

“Ah! Maybe there’s others as thinks as much,” said Jimmy darkly. “There’ll be trouble and to spare if Mr Bart was to hear of it, that’s all I know.”

A smile curled Penhallow’s mouth; he looked across at Jimmy with a little interest and some amusement narrowing his eyes. “One of Bart’s fancies, is she? Young rascal! If I were only ten years younger, I’m damned if I wouldn’t cut him out with the girl! All the same, I’ll tell him to be careful: Reuben wouldn’t like it if his niece got herself into trouble, and I don’t want any fuss and nonsense out of him.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Jimmy said, with a fair assumption of innocence. “Mr Bart’s going to marry her.”

“Going to what?” demanded Penhallow, his brows beginning to lower.

“Well, that’s what I heard Mr Eugene say,” Jimmy muttered, carrying the inkstand over to the refectory table, and setting it down there.

“You’re a fool!” Penhallow said irascibly. “Marry her! That’s a good one!”

“I didn’t ought to have spoken of it,” Jimmy said. “Mr Bart would very likely murder me if he knew I’d let it out. Don’t let on I told you, sir.”

Penhallow’s brow was by this time as black as thunder. “What cock-and-bull story have you got hold of?” he shot at Jimmy.

“Loveday said to me herself as how she would be Mrs Bart Penhallow.”

“Oh, she did, did she? Well, you may tell Loveday that she’s flying too high when she thinks to trap one of my boys into marrying her!”

“She’d tell Mr Bart on me if ever I said a word to her she didn’t like,” Jimmy said. “They’re only waiting till you set Mr Bart up at Trellick, Master, and that’s the truth, for all nobody dares to tell it to you.”

An alarmingly high colour suffused Penhallow’s cheeks, and his eyes glared at Jimmy under their beetling brows, as though they would drag the whole truth out of him, but he said nothing for some moments. Then he barked: “Get off with you to Mr Cliff’s, you damned little mischief-maker! I don’t believe a word of it. Trying to pay Mr Bart back for having twisted your arm, eh? I’d do well to send you packing! Get out!”

Jimmy departed, satisfied with his morning’s work, since he knew his father well enough to be sure that the information he had imparted would rankle.

Penhallow lay thinking it over for some time. The spaniel sat up, and began to scratch herself. He cursed her, and she sat on her haunches, lolling her tongue at him, and wagging her stump of a tail. “Old fool!” Penhallow said, and pushed her off the bed, and tugged at the bell-pull.

Martha answered its summons, and came in scolding.

“The devil’s in you, surely!” she said. “Ring, ring, ring, and Jimmy gone off to Liskeard, as well you know! If it’s whisky you want, I’ll not give it to you, my dear, not at this hour of the day I won’t!”

“Shut up! You cackle like a hen!” Penhallow replied roughly. “Where’s Eugene?”

“Where would un be, but keeping himself out of the draughts, and driving everyone that can be bothered to listen to un silly with his talk of neuralgia in un’s head?” retorted Martha. “There never was one of them, not even Clay, and it was not me had him to nurse, I thank my stars! That was a more troublesome child than Eugene, and un’s no better, nor never will be! What do you want with un, my dear?”

He pinched the patchwork quilt between his fingers, regarding her in a brooding way for some moments. “What’s between young Bart and Loveday Trewithian?” he asked abruptly.

She gave a dry chuckle. “Eh, you’re a nice one to ask!” she said. “What do you expect of a son of yourn, when you put a ripe plum in his reach? Why should you worry your head?”

"Jimmy’s got hold of a damned queer story,” he growled. “He’s been telling me Bart means to marry the girl.”

"Jimmy!” she ejaculated scornfully. “I reckon Jimmy would be glad to do un a mischief if he could!”

“Maybe.” He went on pleating the quilt, still looking at her under his brows. “Seems to me Con’s none so friendly with Bart these days.”

There was a question in his voice, but she merely tossed her head, and said: “Chuck-full of crotchets, Con be and always will! Marry Loveday Trewithian! Please the pigs, her bain’t come to that!”

“What’s the girl like?” he asked.

She sniffed. “As bold as yer mind to! Sech airs! I never did see!”

“You send my sister in to me!” he ordered. “You’re nothing but a doddering old idiot, Martha!”

She grinned. “Iss, sure, but I was a fine woman in my day, Maister!”

“You were that,” he agreed.

“When I was in my twenty,” she nodded. “That Loveday warn’t nothing to me, but I never took and thought to marry above my station, as well you knaw, my dear! I don’t knaw where the world’s a-going!”

“Get out of this, you old wind-bag, and send my sister to me!” he said impatiently.

She went off, chuckling to herself; and some minutes later Clara came into the room, with her hands grimed with earth-mould, a trowel in one of them, and a fern in the other. She left a clod of mud from one of her shoes on the carpet, and had evidently caught her heel in the hem of her skirt again, since it sagged unevenly and showed a frayed edge.

“You’re a sight, Clara,” Penhallow told her frankly. “What’s that miserable thing you’ve got hold of?”

“Nothin’ much. One of the film-ferns,” she replied. “You wouldn’t know.”

“No, nor care. Sit down, old girl: I want to talk to you.”

She obeyed, choosing the chair nearest to her, as though she had little intention of remaining long. “They tell me you’ve been settin’ the house by the ears again,” she remarked.

“My house, ain’t it? I’m going to get up."

“You’ll get up once too often one of these days, Adam.”

“You leave me to know what’s best for me! That wasn’t what I wanted you for. I’ve been hearing things about Bart.”

She did not speak, but he was watching her closely, and he thought that she stiffened.

“Oh!” he said dangerously. “So you know something, do you, Clara? Didn’t think to tell me, did you?”

“I don’t know anythin’ at all, Adam,” she replied. “It’s none of my business.”

““That girl, Loveday Trewithian!” he said, stabbing a finger at her. “What’s she up to? Come on, out with it!”

She rubbed the tip of her nose, leaving a smear on it from her grimy finger. “I don’t know, but I don’t like the gal.”

“Bart said anything to you?”

“No.”

“I’ll have to look into this,” he decided. “Buffle-headed, that’s what he is! Jimmy says Eugene spoke of Bart’s wanting to marry her.”

“I don’t want to hear anythin’ Jimmy said, Adam,” Clara replied severely. “And Eugene’s got a wicked tongue, which he uses to make trouble with. I wouldn’t set any store by what he says either.”

“By God, I believe you’re all of you in league to keep me in the dark!” he swore, suddenly angry. “I’ll know the truth of this business! Think I’m helpless, do you? You’ll find I can still govern this family!”

“There’s no sense in losin’ your temper with me,” she said.

“If you’d the sense of a flea you’d know what’s apparently been going on under your long nose!”

“I don’t go pokin’ it into what’s none of my business. Well for you I don’t, and never did!” she replied, rather grimly.

“Oh, get to hell out of this!” he shouted. “A fat lot of use you are! You and your ferns! I’ll have that garden of yours dug up, damned if I won’t!”

“You’ll do as you please,” she said, rising. “You always have.”

He picked up a copy of the Field, and hurled it after her retreating form. It struck the closing door, and fell in a flutter of crumpled pages to the floor. He was rather pleased with himself for having still enough strength to throw an unhandy missile so far and so accurately; but the effort made him pant, and for some time he lay back against the welter of pillows and cushions, raging at his infirmity. When he had recovered his breath, and his heart had ceased to thud so sickeningly in his chest, he reached out a hand for the whisky decanter. He splashed a liberal amount into a club-tumbler, and drank it neat. He felt better after that, but bent on pursuing his inquiries into Bart’s activities. He was shrewd enough to guess that he would get little satisfaction out of his sons, and presently sent for Loveday herself.

He looked her over critically when she came into the room, appreciating her graceful carriage as much as the beauty of her face. She betrayed no alarm at having been summoned unexpectedly to his room. Her dark eyes met his with a look of submissive inquiry; she came to a halt beside his bed, and folded her hands over her apron. “Sir?”

His lips began to curl at the corners. He didn’t blame Bart for making a fool of himself over this girl: he would, in fact, have thought him a poor-spirited young man to have overlooked charms so obvious. He addressed her with a suddenness calculated to throw her off balance. “They tell me my son Bart’s been making love to you, Loveday, my girl.”

Her eyelids did not flicker; her deep bosom rose and fell easily to her calm breathing; she smiled slowly, and after meeting his gaze for a limpid moment, cast down her eyes, and murmured: “Young gentleman do be high-spirited, sir.”

He was very nearly satisfied with this answer. He let out one of his short cracks of laughter, and reached out a hand to grasp her arm above the elbow. “Damme, if I were only ten years younger— !” he said, drawing her closer. “You’re a cosy armful, Loveday, aren’t you? Eh?”

She cast him a sidelong glance, provocative and alluring. “There be them as has said so, sir. You’re very good.” Her smile broadened, and became a little saucy. “I try to give satisfaction, sir,” she said demurely.

He roared with laughter at this, slid his hand down her arm, and began to fondle one of her hands. “You little baggage!” he said. “I’ll swear you’re as sly as a sackful of monkeys! I’d do well to get rid of you.”

She raised her eyes. “Have I done wrong, sir?”

“That’s between you and Bart, my lass!” he retorted. “You should know better than I what’s between the pair of you. Well, you’re no innocent! I know your kind: you’re well able to take care of yourself. Have your fun: who am I to object? But don’t think to inveigle my boy into marrying you, Loveday Trewithian! Understand me?”

She achieved a look of wide-eyed innocence. “To marry me?” she repeated. “Why, who said such a thing? It’s nothing but a bit of a flirtation! I can look after myself.”

He pulled her down, so that she almost lost her balance, and took her throat in his large hand, holding her so that she was obliged to look into his face. “I’ve got a strong notion you’re maybe better able to take care of yourself than any of us guess,” he said. “Answer me now! How far’s it gone?”

Her heart beat a little faster, and her colour deepened to a lovely rose. “Indeed, I’m a good girl, sir,” she said.

“You’re a damned little liar!” he returned. “I don’t trust you, not an inch! What’s more, I don’t doubt Bart’s no match for you in wits. But I am, my girl! Don’t you make any mistake about that: I am! I’m warning you now! Don’t you make any plans to marry a Penhallow! I’d hound you into the gutter, you and all your family with you, before I’d allow Bart to take you to church! There! Give me a kiss, and be off with you!”

She made no objection to his kissing her, and stroking her smooth throat where he had grasped it, but she said, as she disengaged herself: “There’s no call for you to take on, sir. If it’s Jimmy that’s been trying to set you against me, I know well he has a spite against me.”

“And why?” he demanded. “What have you been up to give him a spite against you, I’d like to know?”

She withdrew to the door, and bent to pick up the Field. She laid this down on a table, and replied with one of her saucy smiles: “Indeed, I wouldn’t know, sir, unless it might be he’s jealous of me for being born the right side o’ the blanket.”

He slapped his thigh with a shout of laughter. “That’s one for me! You impudent hussy!”

She dropped him a mock curtsy and left him still laughing.

Outside his room, she lifted a hand to her breast, as though to feel the beating of her heart. She was profoundly disturbed, little though she had shown it; and she felt as if she had been running a great distance. She thought that she and Bart now stood in a position of danger, liable at any moment to be torn apart, for she was sure that once Penhallow suspected the truth he would be on the watch for confirmation of his suspicion. She was prepared to fight for possession of Bart; she thought that if it came to it she would fight the whole world by his side; but she had been brought up in poverty, and, unlike him, she did not minimise the hardships and the difficulties that must lie ahead of them if Penhallow disowned his son. Her most instant need was to find Bart, and to warn him not to own his intention of marrying her. She hoped she could induce him to behave prudently, but she was doubtful, knowing that he was innately honest, scornful of the tricks and shifts which were second nature to her. He did not condemn the little lies and deceits she used to protect herself; he laughed at them, believing that all women lied, and were not to be blamed for it. It was a feminine weakness, but a weakness to which he, rampantly male, was not subject. She would need all her art to persuade him to dissimulate to his father; and she became all at once frettingly anxious to find him before he could have time to go to his father’s room. He had gone off to a distant part of the estate, and had taken his lunch with him. She feared that he would only reach the house again in time to join the tea-party Penhallow was arranging, and she knew she would have no chance then of speaking to him, since she would be expected to help Reuben in the drawing-room.

Her mistress came into the hall, carrying a bowl of flowers which she had been replenishing, and exclaimed at finding her there standing with her back to Penhallow’s door. She took refuge instinctively in one of her lies. “I’ve been making up the Master’s fire, ma’am,” she said easily. “Let me take that from you!”

“I wish you would help me to do the vases in the Long drawing-room,” Faith said, with a suggestion of complaint in her voice. “Mr Penhallow has invited all sorts of’ people to tea, and someone must attend to the flowers. I have one of my bad heads.”

“You leave it all to me, and go and have a good lie down,” Loveday said coaxingly. "Deed, you look fit to drop, ma’am!”

“I don’t know what I should do without you, Loveday!” Faith sighed.

Chapter Ten

In spite of the fact that Penhallow’s determination to hold a tea-party pleased no one, least of all the invited guests, it took place, Mrs Venngreen being the only person to decline the invitation. It was considered unlikely that Delia Ottery would come, since she visited Trevellin rarely, but she did come, persuaded, it was believed, by Phineas, who, for all his dislike of Penhallow, was extremely inquisitive, and rarely refused an invitation to visit him. Rosamund obviously came because Clifford had begged her to; and the younger Penhallows held that the Vicar came because Sybilla’s scones and cakes were very much richer than any baked under Mrs Venngreen’s auspices.

Penhallow did honour to the occasion by making Jimmy and Martha dress him, a circumstance which relieved one at least of his wife’s anxieties. The apprehension that he would appear at the party in his aged dressing-gown had induced her seriously to consider the advisability of retiring to bed with an unnamed illness.

Tea was served in the Long drawing-room, and the first guests to arrive were Clifford and Rosamund, Rosamund looking cool and remote in one of her excellent tailor-made flannel suits, and Clifford overflowing with geniality, and professing the greatest satisfaction on beholding his uncle in such robust health.

Penhallow, who had been wheeled into the drawing-room, and placed near the fire, which he had insisted on being lighted, quite regardless of the sultriness of the day, saw that Rosamund was looking cool and self-possessed, and maliciously summoned her to sit beside him, where, between the heat of the fire, and the raffish nature of his remarks, she very soon began to look hot, and even a little flustered. This pleased Penhallow so much that by the time Conrad ushered the Otterys into the room he was in a state of good humour which was felt to be only less dangerous than his moods of blind rage. He looked Delia over with twinkling eyes and said as he took her nervous hand in his: “Well, well! What a sight for sore eyes! Seeing you with pink roses in your hat takes me back to the time when I first met you, Delia, by God it does! Now, how long ago would that be? How old are you, Ray? Thirty-nine? Then it must be about forty years ago, eh, Delia?”

Miss Ottery blushed to the roots of her untidy grey hair, and stammered something almost inaudible. She was always at her worst and most incoherent in Penhallow’s presence, and looked now to be so unhappy that Faith, indignant with Penhallow for jibing at the poor lady’s youthful taste in dress, affectionately invited her to come and sit beside her on a sofa a little removed from his vicinity.

“No, no, you let Delia sit next to Ray!” said Penhallow. “He’s the one she really came to see, didn’t you, Delia? Always have had a soft corner for him, eh?”

“Oh, I’m sure Ray doesn’t want to be bothered with his old aunt!” Delia said, in a flutter of embarrassment. “Anywhere will do for me — not too near the fire!”

“And how, my old friend,” inquired Phineas, softly rubbing his hands together, “do you find yourself these days? It is indeed a pleasure to find you up and about!”

“I’m still pretty clever,” Penhallow boasted. “I’ll surprise the lot of you yet, Lifton included. You’re not wearing so well, Phineas: you’ve developed a paunch. You’re flabby, that’s what you are. Gone to seed. Lord, I remember when you were as thin as a rake, with all the girls after you! Sold you a horse once which wasn’t up to my weight.”

“Indeed, yes!” smiled Phineas. “A straight-shouldered grey, always throwing out a splint. I remember him well.”

“Honours,” said Eugene, “may now be said to be even. Of course, I feel that Father would have sold you an unsound horse.”

Penhallow accepted this tribute with a grin, and upon Clay’s coming into the room at that moment, at once called upon Clifford to “run your eye over this young cub!” Clifford shook hands with his cousin, and said that he looked forward to having him in his office.

“Oh well, as to that — I mean, nothing’s decided yet, is it?” Clay said with an uneasy laugh. “I’m afraid my bent isn’t in the least legal. I’ve always been more on the artistic side — if you know what I mean.”

“You know, even Aubrey doesn’t make me feel as sick as Clay,” remarked Conrad to the room at large.

““That will do, thank you!” Faith said sharply.

“Edifying close-up of the Penhallows at home!” muttered Vivian.

“But where is the rest of the family?” asked Phineas, in a light tone plainly meant to cover an awkward breach. “I seem to descry gaps in your ranks. Aubrey and Char I suppose we must not hope to see, but are we not to have the pleasure of meeting Ingram, and his charming wife; and this tall fellow’s counterpart?” He laid an affectionate hand on Conrad’s arm as he spoke, and smiled winningly round the circle.

“Ingram’s coming up to tea, but there’s nothing charming about his wife,” said Penhallow, with brutal frankness. “She’s as rangy as old Clara here, and not so good-looking. The best thing I know of Myra is that she’s bred a couple of lusty sons, and that with no more fuss and to-do than my Rachel would have made.”

This shaft impaled two victims, as it was intended to do. Faith flushed painfully, and Rosamund, the mother of three daughters, stiffened. The entrance of Ingram and Myra was felt to create a welcome diversion.

Ingram, who was rather gregarious, greeted everyone with loud-voiced heartiness; and as Myra was both shrill and voluble, Bart, who had entered the room in their wake, was able to pause for an instant by the table which Loveday was quietly spreading with one of Clara’s crochet-edged cloths, and to exchange a low word with her. She shot him a warning glance, and whispered that she must see him presently. He said tersely: “Schoolroom, as soon as this mob has cleared off.”

She saw that Penhallow’s eyes were upon them, and said clearly: “You’ll find them in your room, sir.”

“What?” said Bart, unused to such subtleties. Then he too saw that his father was watching them, and added: “Oh, I see! All right!”

“Ah, here he is!” Phineas exclaimed, coming towards him, with his white hand outstretched. “My dear fellow, what a giant you have become, to be sure!”

“It would, I suppose, be tactless to remind Uncle Phineas that the twins attained their present stature six years ago,” remarked Eugene softly to his Auntie Clara.

“For goodness’ sake, don’t you go makin’ bad worse!” she replied “You’d better let me pour out, Faith. You’ll only go asking’ everyone whether they take milk or cream, and upsettin’ the conversation, if you do it. There’s no need to wait for the Vicar. I daresay he won’t come.”

“I’m afraid,” said Faith to Delia, with a slight laugh, “that I’m one of those hopelessly unpractical people who never can remember who takes cream, and who doesn’t.”

“I’m not at all surprised, not at all!” Delia assured her. “Such a big family as you have to pour out for! I’m sure I should always forget, for I have a head like a sieve. So unlike dear Rachel! Now, Rachel never forgot anything. I often used to say that she ought to have been a man. Not that I meant to speak of — But I’m sure you don’t mind — Always so sensible!”

“Talking of Rachel?” said Penhallow, suddenly propelling his chair towards them. “What a woman! What a grand lass she was! By God, she’d drive the lot of us the way she wanted to go, whether we wanted to or not, eh, Delia?”

“She was always so good — so kind!” Delia stammered. “Such a strong character — there was no one like her.”

“No, nor there ever will be. No offence to you, my dear,” he added, turning to his second wife.

Delia began nervously to fidget with the clasp of her handbag. “I’m sure dear Faith — Not that anyone could take Rachel’s place, but it takes all sorts to make a world, doesn’t it? Oh, Conrad, thank you, is this my tea? So wonderful of Clara to remember just how I like it!”

At this moment, Ingram suddenly became aware of his half-brother’s presence. He broke off in the middle of what he was saying to Phineas to exclaim: “Good lord, the kid’s back! Hallo, how are you?”

“I’m all right,” Clay answered.

Ingram looked him over critically, remarking with the paralysing candour of his family that it was time he started to furnish a bit. He grasped Clay’s arm above the elbow, feeling his muscle, and expressed himself as profoundly dissatisfied. “Why, my young rascal, Rudolph, could give you a stone!” he said. “Bertie’s got more muscle than you! Hi, Ray! you’ll have to do something about the kid! He’s growing up a positive weed!”

The fact that Ingram’s elder son was only two years junior to him always had the effect of making Clay feel that Ingram was even farther removed from him in age than Raymond. He stood more in awe of him, hated his loud, cheerful voice, and lost no time in escaping from his clutch. Phineas engaged Ingram’s attention once more by inquiring after the health and progress of Rudolph and Bertram, and Ingram was still descanting upon this theme when Reuben Lanner ushered the Vicar into the room.

The Reverend John Venngreen, a stout cleric with a wide, bland smile, and a gift for overlooking the obvious which amounted to genius, came in exuding good-will. Finding one member of the household, Ingram, boring the circle by the fire with an account of his sons’ exploits; another, Penhallow himself, reducing his wife and sister in-law to a condition of acute discomfort; a third, Eugene, apparently suffering from acute spiritual nausea; and a fourth, Clay, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible at his Aunt Clara’s elbow, he was prompted to exclaim: “Ah, this is a pleasure indeed! And may I be allowed to join this happy family party? Penhallow, my dear fellow! Mrs Penhallow! Mrs Hastings! Mrs Ingram, my indefatigable helper! I am more fortunate than I knew! Mrs Eugene, too, as bright and blooming as ever! Well, well, well!”

“Where’s your wife?” demanded Penhallow, wheeling his chair round and shaking hands.

“Alas!” The Vicar’s smile widened, and he made a deprecating gesture. “She sent me to be the bearer of her excuses. This east wind had awakened her old enemy, I fear, and she would not venture out.”

“There!” said Penhallow, with an air of chagrin. “And I particularly arranged for poor little Jimmy to be kept out of the way!”

The Vicar managed, by suddenly affecting to perceive Rosamund for the first time, to remain deaf to this outrageous speech. He said: “If it is not Mrs Clifford! How do you do? And your dear little girls? Your nosegay of bright blossoms!”

“Now, don’t talk nonsense!” said Penhallow. “There’s nothing wrong with the kids, but one of ’em’s got teeth that stick out. You ought to do something about it, Rosamund. You don’t want her growing up rabbit-faced.”

“That’s right,” agreed Clara. “She ought to have a plate made for her, poor little soul! I remember we had to have one made for Char, and look at her now!”

Ingram was at once reminded of all the improper uses to which Charmian had put her plate, and Rosamund, ignoring the whole family, made room for the Vicar to sit down on the sofa beside her, and engaged him in a rather conventional conversation about gardening. Clifford went over to the tea-table, and after exchanging a few words with his mother, smiled in a friendly way at Clay, and asked him when he thought of starting work with him.

“I told you, nothing is settled yet,” Clay replied desperately. “I may as well tell you that I was never consulted about this, and it’s absolutely the last thing in the world I want to do! I don’t mean that I’m not very grateful to you, and all that, for being willing to take me, but I shouldn’t be the least use to you, and I do wish to God you’d say something to Father!”

“Well, well, you never know what you can do till you try!” said Clifford bracingly. Feeling himself to be standing on the brink of deep waters, he sought to escape by hailing Raymond, who was coming towards the table with Delia’s cup-and-saucer. “Hallo, Ray, old boy! Donkey’s years since I laid eyes on you! How’s the young stock?”

Raymond set the cup-and-saucer down before Clara, saying briefly: “Aunt Delia,” and turned to his cousin. “I’ve got one hit, and several promising colts.”

“Yes, Ingram told me about your Demon colt. I’d like to have a look at him. Got anything likely to suit me?”

“I might have. Come up to the stables presently, and you can cast your eye over what I’ve got.”

“If he weren’t a bit short of bone, that liver-chestnut would do nicely for Cliff, Ray,” remarked Clara, replenishing Delia’s cup.

“Cliff likes a lot in front of him,” put in Bart. “Tell you what, Cliff, I’ll sell you my Thunderbolt!”

“Why, what’s wrong with him?” retorted Clifford.

“I don’t like a sorrel,” said Clara, with a decisive shake of her head.

“A good horse,” said Bart sententiously, “can’t be a bad colour. There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Barring his being at least three inches too long behind the saddle,” interpolated Raymond dryly.

Realising that Clifford was now embarked fairly upon a discussion of horseflesh which would in all probability last for the rest of his stay, Clay relieved his feelings by saying, “O God!” under his breath, and sighing audibly.

As might have been expected, the conversation gradually extended to nearly everyone else in the room; and after arguing loudly over the merits and demerits of quite half the horses at present in the stables or out to grass, the Penhallows surged out, under Penhallow’s direction, to conduct the guests to the stud-farm. As this lay at a considerable distance from the house, the services of all the available cars were requisitioned, Penhallow himself being hoisted into the dilapidated limousine, which Bart had had to fetch from the garage to accommodate him, the Vicar, Faith, Clara, and Phineas. Delia, after fluttering about in an aimless fashion for a few minutes, got into Raymond’s two-seater, reminding him that he had promised to show her his dear little colts. The only people to abstain from the expedition were Eugene and Vivian. The rest of the party drove off towards the uplands, taking in the hunting-stables on the way, and having most of the horses there paraded before them. Faith, who had developed a nagging headache, leaned back in the corner of the car with closed eyes, trying to shut her ears to the sound of insistent voices tossing scraps of hunting jargon to and fro; and Clay, standing in the yard amongst, yet apart from, his brothers, watched a succession of horses pass him, and with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, imagined the most restive apportioned to him. Raymond said, as Weens led out a bay whose chosen mode of progression was a sort of restless dance: “He might suit you, Clay.”

“Quite a good frontispiece,” Clay said judicially, thinking that the brute had a vicious eye. He could imagine how he would hump his back under a cold saddle, and could almost hear, in advance, his half brothers’ adjurations to himself to keep him walking, for God’s sake to keep his heels away from his sides! He knew he would soon part company with a horse like that, but he dared not say it.

Bart put him out of his agony. “Too nappy for Clay,” Bart said. “What about that half-bred mare Con picked up at Tavistock?”

“Oh, she’s a terrible brute!” Conrad said. “I’m frightened to death of her. Clay could never hold her, except on a twisted snaffle.”

Clay thought resentfully that if ever he should say that he was frightened, which he had never possessed the moral courage to do, they would all mock at him unkindly. But his brothers often swore to their terror of some horse, or some jump, and not even Penhallow did more than laugh at such confessions.

“Now, why shouldn’t Clay have my Ajax?” Clara said. “I’m sure he’s a comfortable, safe ride.”

“Oh, Clara darling, you old coper!” Bart crowed. “He rides green, and well you know it! I’ll mount young Clay. I’ve got a nice little horse: no, really, a nice little horse, that’ll suit him down to the ground!”

A fantastic thought crossed Clay’s mind. He tried to picture the scene there would be if he were to say all that was in his head: that he hated horses, hated hunting, never took any but the easiest fence without expecting to be thrown, could not see a bullfinch without imagining himself lying beyond it with a broken neck. He knew that he would never have the moral courage to say any of these things, and indeed felt quite sick as his fancy played with the idea of what would happen if he did.

Of the rest of the party, Phineas stood beside Ingram, passing quite shrewd judgements on the various animals shown him; Clifford pointed out the excellence of the new stables to his politely uninterested wife; the Vicar stood near the limousine, exchanging hunting reminiscences with Penhallow; and Delia, holding her unsuitable hat on with one hand, and clutching her feather-boa with the other, remained at Raymond’s elbow, exclaiming continually, asking foolish questions, and receiving rather curt replies to them. Occasionally Penhallow shouted criticism, or demanded enlightenment of either Raymond or Ingram. There were few better judges of a horse, but he was in a perverse mood by this time, and stigmatised a favourite mare belonging to Raymond as short of a rib; told Ingram that a brown gelding of his breeding was tied in below the knee; and bestowed haphazardly amongst the rest of the horses shown him such belittling terms as flat-sided, goose-romped, sickle-hocked, peacocky, and roach-backed. His sons exchanged significant glances. Ingram tried to argue with him, but Raymond contemptuously ignored his strictures.

When the stables had been exhausted, the company got into the various cars again, and drove up the rough track to the stud-farm. The paddock in which the Demon colt had been placed abutted on this track, and they all stopped to observe this promising youngster. Penhallow’s keen eyes picked him out unerringly, and as he merely grunted, offering no immediate disparagement, it was considered that he privately considered that his eldest son had bred a winner. Everyone except Faith had some remark to make, or praise to bestow. Miss Ottery said the darling thing had such a pretty head. No one replied to this until the Vicar said, Indeed, indeed, if, he had to choose a horse on one point alone it would be on the head. Clay then stupefied everyone by suggesting that the colt was surely a bit straight-shouldered, a criticism which provoked a storm of condemnation and mockery only exceeded in violence by that which followed the discovery that he had been looking at the wrong colt. Even the Vicar gave an indulgent laugh, and said, Tut, tut, it was not like a Penhallow to make such a mistake. Red to the ears, Clay played first with the idea of murdering all his half-brothers, and then with that of committing suicide; while Penhallow made the Vicar sheer off from his side in a hurry by once more stating his doubts of Clay’s parentage.

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 whipcord 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!”