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.