By the time Aubrey had been twenty-four hours at Trevellin, the family, with the single exception of his father, heartily wished him otherwhere. The twins took one look at the effeminate length of his wavy hair, another at his tie, a third at his socks, and gave realistic impressions of persons taken suddenly unwell. When he appeared at dinner in a soft silk shirt and a maroon velvet smoking jacket, each expressed his firm conviction that nothing short of debagging would meet the case. Had it not been for the presence of females in their midst, they would undoubtedly have put the efficacy of this cure to the test; as it was, Aubrey smiled sweetly upon them both, and told them not to be nasty, rough brutes. When they showed a tendency to make the stables the chief topic of conversation, he flicked a glance at Charmian, and began to tell them about the revue upon which he was at work. After dinner, he lit a Russian cigarette, in a very long holder, and said that the cigars which those dreadful strong men, his brothers, smoked made him feel too terribly ill. “And what do we do now?” he asked. “If the piano were in tune, which I am sure it is not, I would play to you. Or do we still congregate in Father’s room in the repellent fashion reigning when I was last here?”
“Yes, we do,” replied Raymond. “And I don’t advise you to talk in that style to Father!”
“No, no, I wouldn’t annoy him for the world!” Aubrey said. “I do think he was quite pleased to see his little Aubrey, don’t you? I have always regarded myself as the feminine influence in the family, and definitely beneficent. Oh, Char my sweet, would you let me have a teeny-weeny share of your lovely China tea for my early-morning tray? So dear and generous of you!”
“Before you go to Father I want a word with you!” said Raymond curtly. “Come into my office!”
“Oh, must I?” Aubrey said, in an appealing voice. “I do so admire you, Ray, but I can never think of anything to say to you. I always feel — but I expect it’s just my foolish fancy — that you don’t really like me, and that’s terribly daunting to anyone with a very, very sensitive nature, like mine.”
Raymond deigned no reply to this speech, but strode off in the direction of the room at the end of the house which he used as an office. Aubrey said falteringly: “Oh dear, do you think I’ve offended him? I do hope not!” and followed him meekly.
Once inside the office, which was a severely furnished apartment largely given over to the transaction of all business connected with the estate, Raymond wasted no words on preliminaries, but gave his younger brother an abrupt and unvarnished account of the financial position of the family. Aubrey said plaintively that he knew he was a dreadfully stupid about money-matters, but all these rents and things meant nothing — but definitely nothing! — to him.
“Don’t pretend to be a bigger fool than you are!” said Raymond. “There’s only one point you’ve got to grasp, and that is that the estate won’t stand the demands you’ve been making upon it. I don’t know what your prospects are, but I hope for your sake they’re good. When Father dies, you’ll come into a small amount of capital, and I give you fair warning that you’ll get not a penny out of me after that. For the immediate present, Father may or may not pay your debts. If he listens to me, he won’t.”
“Oh, I do hope he won’t listen to you!” interrupted Aubrey. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Ray dear, but he never does, does he?”
“If he goes on at his present rate, it will become a question of taking the entire conduct of the estate out of his hands,” replied Raymond grimly. “One of these days he’ll go a step too far, and do something crazy enough to convince even a damned old fool like Lifton that he’s incapable of dealing with his affairs. When that day dawns, you and Eugene and Ingram will find yourselves without the sort of support you’ve been getting whenever you asked for it. You can damned well get down to a job of work, the lot of you!”
“I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy talking to you!” Aubrey said. “You’re so rough, and unkind! I don’t wonder poor Father wants me to live at home. I expect he feels the need of a softening influence about the house.”
Raymond looked at him under his brows. “He’s told you he wants you to stay here, has he?”
“Oh, yes, definitely! And if he won’t pay my debts unless I do it’s going to be very awkward. Because I don’t really think I could stand it here.”
“You’ll have to sell your horses,” Raymond said.
“And you a Penhallow!” Aubrey said, in a shocked tone.
“I know for a certainty that you’ve got one three hundred-guinea hunter. From what I know of you I should say your other hunter cost you as much, if not more. I don’t know what your debts amount to...”
“Oh, the merest nothing, Ray! It’s marvellous how I manage. I’ve no head for figures, but I feel sure a couple of hundred would put me in the clear.”
“You’re living far beyond your means, and it’s got to stop,” Raymond said uncompromisingly. “Nobody wants you to come and live here, but if I’ve either got to watch Father squandering hundreds on you every year, or put up with you under my nose all day and every day, I’ll put up with you! It’ll be less expensive in the long run.”
“How noble and sacrificing of you! No, really, I do feel for you very much, Ray! I mean, it must be so shocking to have Eugene here — and I shouldn’t think he’d ever go, would you? — and now you’re facing up to the thought of having me too in the most heroic way. Only I’m not a bit like that. I just couldn’t bear it. I find I am definitely allergic to this household.”
“Then I advise you to get yourself out of debt, and to draw your horns in!” Raymond said. “The old man’s breaking up a bit, and you’re likely to find him a damned sight more pig-headed than you’re prepared for. He’s taken it into his fool head to keep you at home — God knows why! — and if you’re banking on being able to talk him into paying your debts and letting you go, you’ll lose. There’s only one way for you to get away, and that is to do what I tell you: get rid of your hunters, cut your expenses down, and make yourself independent of Father. That’s a friendly bit of advice, and you’d be wise to take it.”
“But I don’t think it’s friendly at all,” objected Aubrey. “You’re simply trying to get rid of me. Mind you, I’m perfectly willing to be got rid of, but you can’t expect me to sell my lovely gees, and live in squalor! I’m sure Father would be shocked.”
Raymond strode over to the door, and opened it.
“You’d better think over what I’ve said,” he replied. They joined the rest of the family in Penhallow’s room.
Since eight persons, besides Penhallow, were already assembled there, it might have been supposed that even his patriarchal instinct would have been satisfied. The room seemed overcrowded, and as several different conversations were being held, anyone wishing to make himself heard above the prevailing Babel was obliged to shout. This did not worry the Penhallows in the least, but Faith looked exhausted, and Vivian was trying to read a book, with her elbows on her knees, and her hands over her ears to shut out the hubbub. Penhallow, who seemed to draw renewed vitality from his children, easily dominated the stage, contributing his share to every conversation in progress, and loudly deploring the absence of Ingram from the circle. When Raymond and Aubrey came in, his eyes glinted with satisfaction, but since he addressed no word to Raymond, and promptly began to jeer at Aubrey, it was hard to understand why he was so pleased to have them in his room. Charmian, who had escaped from his sphere of influence, was the one of his children in whom he had the least interest, and beyond making a few ribald references to her appearance, and to her friendship with Leila Morpeth, he paid very little heed to her. To Faith, spiritually outside the circle, this seemed strange, for she thought that Charmian was the most like him of them all. Charmian too desired to dominate the company, and although her energy was not as fantastically directed as his, there was a strong suggestion of his driving-force in her trenchant voice and in the belligerent tilt of her chin. Charmian, who had compelled Sybilla to make China tea, and had harried one of the housemaids into polishing the fender in the Yellow drawing-room, was like a strong and slightly unpleasant wind sweeping through the house. She criticised everyone and everything in it, and would, if she remained there long enough, set them all by the ears, Faith thought. She was still the scornful little girl who had rescued her stepmother from a field full of bullocks, and Faith both resented her interference, and feared her ruthless tongue.
As might have been expected, there was a good deal of loud-voiced dispute in Penhallow’s room that evening, developing every now and then into a sudden quarrel, which flared up between any two of the family, attracted the others to take sides, raged for a little while, and as suddenly died down. Penhallow enjoyed it all immensely, and did not seem to be in the least exhausted by the noise and the strife. He was looking forward to his birthday, boasting of his vitality, promising to surprise them all yet. He drank a quantity of whisky during the evening, and when they left him had reached a reckless, elated condition, in which he laughed boisterously, flew into quick rages, recalled tangled anecdotes of his youth, and was by turns bawdy and maudlin.
Charmian, exclaiming that the room smelled like a pothouse, strode out of it as soon as her father’s recollections became raffish. Faith longed for the courage to follow her example, and glanced at Vivian, wondering what she was thinking. Vivian’s face showed only indifference. Faith supposed that she had become inured to these evenings, or perhaps had never been very squeamish.
“One would imagine,” Aubrey said later, picking up his candle from the table in the hall, “that Father will be very, very unwell in the morning.”
“No, he won’t,” Vivian replied curtly. “Merely bad-tempered. He’s been going on like this for weeks.”
“What, every night?” asked Aubrey, horrified. “Oh, I am glad I don’t live at home!”
“You may well be!” she said, with such suppressed passion that he blinked at her. “It’s hell here! The worst hell you ever dreamed of He’s like a giant squid, lying there, sucking you all in!”
He giggled, and, with a glance of contempt, she went past him up the stairs.
The morning found Penhallow in a brittle, dangerous mood. He had apparently passed a considerable portion of the night in weaving fuddled plans for the future activities of his numerous offspring. These were in general too extravagant to be taken seriously, but the recital of them exasperated Raymond, who had been summoned at an early hour to learn his father’s pleasure, and to receive a quantity of arbitrary orders, not the least maddening of which was one to cash another of Penhallow’s lavish cheques.
“What the devil have you done with the money you drew out only a week ago?” demanded Raymond, his straight brows beginning to lower.
“What the hell has that got to do with you?” retorted Penhallow, kindling at once. “By God, it’s coming to something when you cubs start questioning my doings! I don’t want any comments from you, my lad! You’ll do as you’re told.”
“I’m damned if I will!” Raymond said forcibly. “Do you know the extent to which your personal account is already overdrawn?”
“I know all I want to know — and I’ve heard more than I want to from you! You’ll take my cheque into Bodmin, and keep your comments to yourself!”
Raymond drove his hands deep into the pockets of his breeches, and stood facing the bed, with his feet widely planted and his head a little thrust forward, in a belligerent attitude, which added to Penhallow’s anger. “You’ll have my comments whether you want them or not,” he said. “I’ll cash no more of these senseless cheques.”
“No?” said Penhallow, his eyes narrowing. “You’d rather I sent Jimmy, would you?”
“You can send whom you please. You won’t do it often. I’ve already had an interview with the manager. It may interest you to know that he wanted to know if I considered you fit to be trusted with a cheque-book. I don’t, but I haven’t said so — yet.”
There was silence for a few hard-breathing seconds. Penhallow had heaved himself forward from his supporting pillows, as though in an attempt to reach his son. His face had become suffused with dull colour, and his eyes blazed with an expression of naked hatred. “You hound, Raymond!” he said thickly, panting. “You ill conditioned mongrel-cur! So that’s it, is it? You’d like to get a couple of doctors to declare me incapable, would you?”
“No,” Raymond answered coldly. “I prefer to wash our dirty linen at home. But I won’t stand by idly while you waste the estate, so don’t think it! If you drive me to it, I will have you declared incapable — God knows it’s the truth!”
Penhallow raised his clenched fists in an impotent, raging gesture. He let them fall again, and began to rock himself from side to side. “Have me declared incapable!” he said. “By God, I’ve been too easy with you! Think yourself master here already, don’t you? You’re not! Not by a long chalk, Raymond! I’ve been watching you; I’ve seen you beginning to think you own Trevellin, grudging every penny I’ve spent on my other sons. You didn’t like it when I had Eugene and his wife give up that damned London folly. You didn’t want Clay here. You’re like a bear with a sore head because I mean to keep Aubrey under my eye. That doesn’t matter to me. I get a laugh out of seeing you play the Squire. But my hand’s still on the reins, my fine son, and there was never a horse could unseat me, no, nor get the better of me! There’s been no love lost between you and me, but I’ve made use of you because it suited me to. You were always a surly, cross-grained boy. I should have known that you wouldn’t stand corn!”
Raymond shrugged his shoulders, indifferent to this flood of abuse. “You should know better than to waste your breath telling me what you think of me,” he said. “I’ve never cared what you thought, and I’m not likely to start now. All I care for is the place, which you’re doing your best to ruin. But you’ll not do it! You’ve been behaving for the past weeks as though you were out of your mind: it wouldn’t be so difficult to get all the business out of your hands.” A grim little smile curled his mouth; he said with a note of mockery in his voice: “You’re not certifiable, but it isn’t necessary that you should be. I’ve been into all that.”
“Have you?” Penhallow said. “Have you indeed, Ray? Maybe you think it’s you who are in the saddle now?”
“It’s I who am going to hold the purse-strings,” Raymond replied uncompromisingly. “Better make up your mind to that. You can yield gracefully, or you can wait to be forced into it.”
“Yield!” Penhallow ejaculated. He flung back his head, and broke into a roar of laughter. The spaniel lying at his feet sat up on her haunches, flattening her ears, and lolling her tongue at him. He kicked at her, and she jumped down from the bed, and waddled over to a patch of sunlight, and lay down in it. “Yield!” Penhallow said again. “And what would you like me to do, Master Ray? Turn Eugene out, I suppose, for a start! Ask you politely for a little pocket-money every week? You’re riding for a fall, Ray!”
“Turn Eugene out for a start,” Raymond agreed. “Leave Aubrey to settle his own debts, and Ingram to pay for his brats’ schooling! And stop squandering money on your dirty little bastard!”
Penhallow’s eyes glinted suddenly. He began to rock himself about again, chuckling with a kind of fiendish amusement. “Don’t like Jimmy, do you, Ray? God, that’s given me the best laugh of my life! It was always you who objected to him the most. Like me to turn him off, wouldn’t you?”
“Keep him to wait on you, if you want him,” Raymond said contemptuously. “But teach him his place!”
“I’ll teach you yours, you misbegotten young swine!” Penhallow said, an ugly sneer disfiguring his countenance. “He has as much right to be here as you, let me tell you!”
Raymond gave a short laugh. “Has he, by God? He’ll learn his mistake when I’m master here!”
“When you’re master here!” Penhallow repeated. “So sure of yourself, aren’t you? So damned sure of yourself You’ll never be master here except by my consent!”
Raymond glanced scornfully at him. “I shall be master here as soon as you’re dead, and nothing you can do can alter that. I’m as familiar with the terms of the entail as you are yourself, so you may as well reserve that kind of bluster for someone it’ll impress. It cuts no ice with me.”
Penhallow leaned right forward, supporting himself on one fist, and clenching and unclenching the other. “You cocksure fool, the estate goes to my eldest legitimate son!
“I am your eldest son,” Raymond said impatiently.
“Not by a long chalk you’re not!” Penhallow replied, with a hiccough of a laugh. “I had at least a couple of sons before I begot you. Bastards, of course. Like you, Ray! Like you, and poor little Jimmy!”
There was a moment’s stunned silence. The colour draining from his face, Raymond stared into his father’s wickedly twinkling eyes. He seemed for an instant to cease to breathe; then he shattered the silence with a rasping laugh. “I don’t believe it!”
Penhallow jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the painted cupboards set in the bed-head. “I’ve got papers to prove it.”
The old grandfather clock in the corner gave a whirring sound, and began timely to strike the hour. Raymond found that the palms of his hands were sweating and cold. Wisps of thought jostled one another in his brain; he was unable to seize any one of them, but the wild improbability of his father’s words prompted him to say again: “I don’t believe it! You old fool, you must be in your dotage to put up such a tale as that to frighten me with! It couldn’t be true!”
Penhallow leaned back against his pillows once more. The rage had faded from his face, leaving it gloating and grinning. “I thought that ’ud make you sing a different tune,” he said, with diabolical satisfaction. “It’s done me good too. Damme, it’s gone against the grain with me to keep that secret from you during all the years that you’ve been giving yourself enough airs to make a cat sick!”
Raymond drew one hand from his pocket, found that it was shaking, and put it back again. He passed his tongue between his lips, and said carefully: “I think you’re more insane than any of us suspected. How could I possibly have been brought up here — Oh, don’t talk such damned rubbish!”
“Ah, that was Rachel’s doing!” Penhallow said amiably. “I wasn’t in favour of it, but she would have it so. She was a grand lass, my Rachel!”
“Mother.” Raymond said incredulously. “My God, you are mad!”
“She wasn’t your mother,” Penhallow replied, heaving himself on to his elbow, and picking up the decanter of claret from the table by the bed. He poured himself out a glass, and relaxed again, sipping the wine and grinning at Raymond. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you were born abroad? Lord, I made sure you’d smell a rat! Especially when Rachel left her money to Ingram!”
The over-furnished room seemed to close in on Raymond, although he saw it through a blur. He felt as though he were hot and cold at once, and became aware presently of the spaniel, which had got up, and was whining and scratching at the door to be let out. This trivial circumstance, intruding upon a moment heavy with a sense of impending disaster, recalled him from the whirling nightmare which had caught him up and threatened, for an instant, to overpower him. The dog’s insistence was not to be borne; he moved to the door and let her out, feeling this mundane action to have in it some quality of unreality. He went back to the huge fireplace, and took up his former position before it. He was extremely pale, but he thought he had himself under rigid control. Yet his voice, when he spoke, sounded unfamiliar in his ears. “If what you say is true, why did my — why did your wife bring me up as her son?”
“She was proud, was Rachel,” Penhallow responded reminiscently. “She didn’t want a breath of scandal about the business. Damned nearly murdered me, when she found out about it! But she loved me, she did, through it all. A grand lass! There was never any need to explain to Rachel: she knew what I was! Knew it didn’t mean a thing. She took me as I came: never dripping forgiveness over me, bless her!”
“I don’t want to hear about your relations with Mother!” Raymond interrupted roughly. “I should have thought you’d created plenty of scandal! She never paid any heed to what you did, that I can remember!”
“Ah, but this was different!” Penhallow said, pouring out more wine. “Touched her more nearly. She didn’t mind a village affair or two.”
There was something else in the room besides Penhallow’s malice, some dark shadow of horror creeping towards Raymond. He laid his hands on the back of the Gothic chair, and gripped it hard. “Why did it touch her more nearly?” he forced himself to ask. “Who was my mother?”
Penhallow gave a chuckle. “Delia,” he replied.
To Raymond’s shocked senses, his father’s swollen figure, lying in the bed in the middle of the room, had become inseparable from the ivory god, Ho-Ti, leering at him from the top of the red lacquer cabinet. Everything in the room assumed nightmarish proportions; the warring colours in curtains, carpet, and table-cloths almost seemed to shout at him; the bright hexagons of the patchwork quilt danced before him, dazzling him. He lifted his hand instinctively to his eyes, saying hoarsely: “No! It’s a lie!”
“Oh, no, it isn’t!” retorted Penhallow. “You mightn’t think it to look at her now, but when she first came home from some finishing school or other in Switzerland Delia was as pretty as a picture!”
Raymond gripped the chair-back again. He stared into his father’s face, unable either to believe a tale so fantastic, or to think himself in his right senses. “But I was born — Are you telling me you seduced a girl just out of school? The sister of the woman you were engaged to? It isn’t possible! Damn you, you’re making all this up!”
“Ho-ho!” jeered Penhallow. “Precious little seduction about it! She was head over ears in love with me. She thought she knew what she was about. I believed she did. The trouble was, I didn’t know as much about women in those days as I do now. You’d have thought I’d have had sense enough to realise that Delia was just the sort of romantic little fool who’d talk a lot of highfalutin balderdash about no one’s being the worse for our precious affair, and then lose her nerve, and run bleating to her sister as soon as she found that she hadn’t been quite so damned clever as she thought. But I was only a bit over twenty-one myself, and I’d a lot to learn.”
“But Mother — Rachel!” Raymond uttered numbly. “How can such a thing have happened, under her very nose?”
“Lord bless you, it didn’t!” Penhallow said cheerfully. “Daresay it wouldn’t have happened at all if she hadn’t been away at the time. By the time she got back, the mischief was done, and that damned fool, Delia, was spending her time shuddering at the sight of me — a fat lot of right she had to do that! — and trying to put an end to herself by drinking disinfectant, or some such tomfoolery. The wonder is that she hadn’t blurted out the whole story to her father!”
Raymond lifted one hand from the chair-back, and brought it down again. “No!” he jerked out. “It’s preposterous! Grotesque! It couldn’t have happened! Why, you must have married her, if there were a word of truth in any of this!”
“Marry her! I was sick to death of the sight of her!” exclaimed Penhallow callously. “She didn’t want to marry me, don’t make any mistake about that! I gave her the horrors, that’s what I did.” A laugh shook him; he drank some of his wine. “I’ve met her type often and often since. Don’t you ever be taken in by a girl who tells you she’s got advanced ideas! She’ll be the first to talk about being betrayed. Marry her, by God! No, there was never any question of that.”
“But Mother!” Raymond said, the words sticking in his throat. “Are you telling me that she knew this, and married you herself?”
“Put the date forward,” said Penhallow, chuckling at the memory. “Oh, she scratched my face for me all right! But she was a remarkable woman, was Rachel. She hadn’t got a pack of sentimental ideas, like that whey-faced bitch I took for my second wife, God help me! Queer, the way I’ve never been able to steer clear of baby-faced women who think you’re a sort of hero to start with, and shudder at you the instant they find their mistake. But Rachel wasn’t like that. Not she! She knew what I was like. She knew it was herself I really cared for. She never set a bit of store by any of my little sideshows. But she was proud, and she was determined no one should ever know the fool Delia had made of herself. She fixed it so that no one ever did — no one in this country, barring Martha. Unless old Phineas guessed, which he may have done, for all I can tell.”
A wave of nausea swept over Raymond. “Martha! Oh, my God, no! no!”
Penhallow regarded him with a satirical twist to his full lips. “You fool, you don’t suppose we could have worked the trick without her, or another like her, do you?” he said. “Rachel and I were married at once. She gave it out that I was impatient to put the date forward. True enough: I was. Lord, and she made Delia be chief bridesmaid, just as it had been arranged at the outset!” He began to laugh again, his great bulk shaking. “What a woman! What a woman! No half-measures about my Rachel! We went off on our honeymoon. She’d fixed it all up that Delia was to join us, with Martha, before it got to be obvious that she was big with child. She’d thought up a whole lot of cast-iron reasons for remaining abroad beyond the time we’d arranged. I had nothing to say to any of it: she’d drive the lot of us the way she meant to go, and never even see how damned comical it was, the three of us living under one roof in some Godforsaken Austrian village or other — forget its name for the moment. As a matter of fact, you’re a couple of months older than we gave out. That was all right: you were a backward, undersized brat. I never thought you’d turn out as well as you have. I didn’t want Rachel to palm you off as one of her own, but I’m bound to admit there’s precious little of your mother in you.” He set his empty glass down, and surveyed Raymond, triumph gleaming in his eyes. “But you’re only another of my bastards, Ray, and don’t you forget it! Maybe I’ll let you succeed me, and maybe I won’t! But whichever way I decide, that’s where you are, my boy!” He jabbed his thumb down hard upon the table as he spoke, and grinned malevolently at his son’s ashen face.
The gesture seemed to release Raymond from the spell of horror which had held him rooted to the ground, gripping the Gothic chair, and listening with only half-comprehending ears to the story so casually recounted. The blood rushed suddenly to his head; an uncontrollable shudder ran through him; he flung the heavy chair out of his way; and with a sound between a groan and a curse launched himself upon Penhallow, seizing him by the throat, trying with all his strength to choke the breath out of him.
“Devil! Devil!” he panted, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarling grimace. “I’ll kill you for this, do you hear me? I’ll kill you, you fiend, you devil!”
Penhallow grabbed at his wrists, trying to wrench them from his throat. They struggled together, Penhallow heaving his bulk half across the bed, and dragging Raymond with it, still pressing on his windpipe with his desperate thumbs, and cursing him in a dreadful whisper.
He was sprawling on top of Penhallow, one knee up on the bed, when the door opened, and Jimmy ran into the room, shouting at him. Jimmy leaped on him from behind, yelling to Reuben to come to his assistance, and managed to jerk back his head. In that instant Penhallow tore the hands from his throat, choking and gasping amongst his tumbled pillows. The table by the bed had been overturned, the papers and fruit on it spilled all over the floor, the glasses smashed, and the decanter was rolling over the carpet, leaving a trail of claret in its wake.
Reuben came hurrying in as Raymond threw Jimmy violently off, and, taking in the scene in one glance from his quick shrewd eyes, attached himself to Raymond’s right arm like a limpet. “Give over, Master Ray, give over now! You should knave better than to do like this, and you in your forty! Set down a crum! Lorjimmery, what’s got into un all on a sudden?”
“He were trying to choke the life out of Master!” Jimmy said,, picking himself up from the floor. “If it hadn’t ha’ been for me he’d ha’ done it, surely!”
“You keep a still tongue in your head, and get the whisky out of the cupboard, quick!” Reuben commanded, his concerned gaze on Penhallow. He gave Raymond a push towards a chair, and thrust him down into it, repeating: “Set down a crum! Please the pigs you haven’t done for him!”
Raymond sank down and dropped his head between his clenched fists. “I hope I have!” he said savagely.
Reuben, finding that his mad rage was waning, paid no more heed to him, but snatched the whisky from Jimmy, and bade him help him to straighten Penhallow. The laboured breath rattled alarmingly and Penhallow’s colour was very bad, but when they had laid him back on his pillows, and revived him with neat spirit, he began to recover, and even to be able to speak. “Murderous dog!” he gasped, his lips twisting into a rueful grin. “Hot-blooded ruffians, my sons, Reuben!”
“You lay quiet, Master! As for you, Jimmy, get along out of this! You’re not wanted here!”
“Happen I might be needed yet,” Jimmy said, looking at Raymond.
Penhallow waved him away with one hand, feeling his bruised throat with the other. His gaze travelled to Raymond, who had risen, and walked over to the fireplace, and was staring down at the smouldering logs in the hearth. He smiled rather unpleasantly, and transferred his attention to Reuben, directing him to pick up the table, and the scattered papers. “And clear that mess of glass away before my poor little bitch can cut her paws on it!” he said huskily. “Go and get a dustpan, you old fool! There’s nothing the matter with me. Heave me up a bit first!”
The effort of struggling into a more upright position made him pant again, and drag a hand across his brow to wipe away the sweat, but he nodded dismissal to Reuben, who,. after looking undecidedly from him to Raymond for a moment, reluctantly left the room.
Penhallow lay recovering his breath, allowing his overdriven heart to steady down. Its wild flurry made him feel sick; he pressed his hand to his side, and swallowed once or twice, and licked his lips. Raymond raised his head and, turning it, watched him sombrely and in silence.
“A nice, dutiful son you are!” Penhallow said presently. “Oh, I don’t blame you! Tickled you up a bit, didn’t I? Well, you asked for it, and, by God, you got it! I shouldn’t wonder but what we’ll get along better now.”
“Was it true?” Raymond said, in a low voice.
“Lord, yes! Truest thing you know!”
“Then God damn your soul to hell!” Raymond said, with suppressed violence, and, striding to the door, wrenched it open, and plunged out of the room.