Penhallow (19 page)

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!’

Bart looked at him with a little concern in his face. ‘You’re good for years yet. Why don’t you ease up on the whisky a bit?’

‘God damn it, do you suppose I want to add a few miserable years to my life?’ Penhallow demanded. ‘Lying here, a useless hulk, gasping like a landed trout every time I so much as heave myself over in bed! I, who could throw any man to my inches, and better! No, by God! The sooner I’m laid underground the better I’ll be pleased!’ He released Bart’s knee, giving it a little push, as though to drive him away. ‘Go and be damned to you! Marry the girl! I’ve taken some knocks in my time, and I can take this last one.’

‘I say, Father, don’t!’ Bart begged uncomfortably. ‘I don’t want to clear out, honestly I don’t! But I don’t see why you should be so cut up about it. I’m not going to be a ruddy literary bloke, like Eugene or Aubrey: I’m a farmer, and I want a wife who’ll be some use to me, not a blamed little fool like Vivian, or a cold poultice like Rosamund!’

Penhallow bit back an appreciative chuckle at this, and said: ‘I’m too old to change my way of thinking. It’ll be a bitter day to me when you tie yourself up to a wench out of my kitchen. I’m fond of you, Bart. I shall miss you like hell if you leave Trevellin. Wait till I’m gone, boy! When I’m in my grave I shan’t care what kind of a fool you make of yourself. You’ll get Trellick: I’ve left it to you in my will.’

Bart grinned at him. ‘Any strings tied to it, Guv’nor?’ Penhallow shook his head. ‘No. It’s not entailed. I bought it with you in my eye. I want you to have it.’

‘I know it’s unentailed. That wasn’t what I meant.’

‘I know what you meant. No strings.’

Bart flushed. "Jolly good of you, Guv’nor!’ he said gruffly. ‘Puts me in a filthy position, though. I’m not going to give Loveday up.’

‘I’ve told you, I don’t care a damn what you do when I’ve gone. All I’m asking is that you have a bit of patience, Bart.’

A vague, half-formed suspicion formed in Bart’s mind. He said: ‘I shan’t change, you know.’

Penhallow’s lips curled a little. ‘No harm done, then. If you do change, I shall be glad; if you don’t, it won’t have done either of you any harm to wait a while. You’re young yet.’

Bart got up. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said reluctantly. ‘That’s right: you think about it,’ said his father, with the utmost cordiality.

Chapter Eleven

When Bart had left the room, Penhallow settled himself, with a chuckle, more comfortably amongst his pillows. He thought he had Bart’s measure, and was fairly confident that he had averted the disaster of his marriage. It amused him to reflect how easy it was to disarm this most hot-headed of his sons. Bart had a tender heart; Penhallow did not think that Loveday would find it a simple matter to induce him to darken what he had been led to believe were his father’s last weeks on earth.

She made no such attempt. When Bart came out of Penhallow’s room she was awaiting him by the door into Clara’s garden. She saw at once that he was looking troubled, and directed an inquiring glance up at him. He took her by the wrist, and briefly said that he must talk to her. She went with him into the garden, without demur, though she should have been in her mistress’s room by that time, and let him lead her through it to the gate in the crumbling grey wall which led to the orchard. Here they sat down in their favourite place, out of sight of any window; and Bart, with his arm about her waist, told her what had passed between him and his father.

She was quick to see, and in a measure to appreciate, Penhallow’s cleverness. She thought that his appeal to Bart’s affection was pure artifice, but she did not say so, because she saw that Bart really did think that his father was nearing the close of his life, and was inclined to be distressed about it. For herself, she believed that Penhallow expected to live for many more years; and she felt certain that now that he was in possession of their secret he would never make Bart independent of him by handing Trellick over to him. She ventured to suggest this to Bart. He wrinkled his brow, considering it, and finally replied: ‘Well, if he doesn’t die, and won’t give me Trellick, we shall just have to cut loose. I’m not afraid if you’re not. I shall get Trellick in the end. He meant that all right. You know, Loveday, he’s an old devil sure enough, but it’s quite true that I’ve always been more or less his favourite. He’s been rather decent to me, one way and another, and it does seem a bit low-down not to agree to wait a bit before I marry. He knows I won’t give you up. And naturally I don’t mean to hang about for ever.’ His arm tightened round her; he turned her face up to his, and kissed her, and fondled her cheek. ‘All the same, my girl, if you’re willing to take a risk with me I’m ready to burn my boats, and marry you tomorrow — today, if I could!’

She said: ‘No.’ She was thinking, slowly, but acutely, realising more completely the hold Penhallow had established over them both. She discounted his assurance to Bart that no matter whom he married he should have Trellick in the end. He had known how to disarm his son, and would not, she thought, abide by his word an instant longer than it suited him to do. She was filled with resentment, but she concealed it. She tilted her head, which rested on Bart’s shoulder, so that she could watch his face, and asked timidly: ‘Am I to be turned off?’

‘No! Good lord, no!’

She twined her fingers in his. ‘Did he say so, Bartlove?’

‘No, he didn’t say so, but he knows damned well I’d walk out of the house tonight, if he sent you away!’

She was silent, turning it over in her mind. After a few moments she made him tell it all to her again, how his father had first stormed at him, and then softened towards him; how he had said that he did not care what Bart did once he was dead. At this point she interrupted to say: ‘That’s queer-seeming to me.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact I think the old man’s breaking up,’ Bart said.

She was again silent. She was beginning to perceive the purpose behind Penhallow’s apparent unreason. Pondering it, she did not doubt that she was to be kept on at Trevellin, for that would suit Penhallow’s plan admirably. He knew Bart: he was banking on one of two things happening, either fatal to her hopes of becoming Bart’s wife. She guessed, without precisely formulating the thought, that Penhallow expected his son’s impatience to get the better of him. For that reason, then, he would keep her hovering in Bart’s sight. She had been brought up too close to the soil to be trammelled with sentimentality, and her experience taught her to know that if she allowed Bart to enjoy her body outside the bond of wedlock it was unlikely that he would afterwards think it necessary to marry her. If, on the other hand, she denied him, he would sooner or later look elsewhere for a woman, for he was a healthy and a lusty young man, with a passionate and certainly not very profound nature. She did not suppose for a moment that he would always be faithful to her when they were married, but she was quite sure that she could handle him, that whatever favours he might bestow elsewhere he would return to his wife, just as his father had returned to Rachel Penhallow. But that he would accord as much fidelity as that to a woman who was his neither in name nor in deed was beyond the bounds of her expectation.

Hatred of Penhallow surged up in her, for she now perceived that he was fighting her with diabolical cunning. She was tempted to urge Bart to run off with her, and so to be sure of him, but even in her anger she did not quite lose sight of prudence, and when Bart, feeling her tremble in his arms, asked her what was the matter, she said: ‘Nothing.’

Holding her in his arms made Bart feel that he could not wait to possess her. He said: ‘Damn the Guv’nor! Let’s take a chance, my little love!’

She shook her head. She wanted him, and loved him with a depth of feeling perhaps exceeding his for her, but she did not believe that he would succeed in making it living if his father’s support were to be withdrawn. Poverty was too real to her to be regarded lightly; she dreaded it and, even more, the effect she dimly felt that it would have on one of Bart’s temperament and upbringing. ‘We must wait,’ she said, ‘a little while longer. Something may happen.’

‘Seems pretty steep to be looking forward to the poor old Guv’nor’s death,’ he said, grimacing. ‘That’s about what it amounts to.’

She did not answer. She had no compassion to waste on Penhallow, and would count his death a blessing.

‘At the same time,’ continued Bart, ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t come round to the idea. He really doesn’t know anything about you, my bird.’

She was sure that Penhallow would remain obdurate, but she did not say so. She wanted time to think the matter over, and so agreed with Bart.

In this state of indecision the matter was allowed to rest, the only person to be satisfied being Penhallow, who was so satisfied that his mood was unusually mellow for several days.

Bart told the whole to his twin, and while Conrad agreed that someone ought to break Jimmy’s neck, he was so antagonistic to the idea of Bart’s marrying Loveday that a breach was created between them, a circumstance which confirmed the suspicions of the rest of the family of what Bart’s intentions were. Penhallow mentioned the affair to no one except Faith. He told her about it in a fit of temper, and for the purpose of laying the blame of it on her shoulders. It was just like her, he said, to raise Loveday out of her proper sphere, to throw her in Bart’s way, and to encourage her to develop ideas above her station. Faith was at first incredulous, but when she heard that the story did not rest upon Eugene’s unsupported testimony, but had in fact been admitted by Bart himself, she was so much upset that she burst into tears, thereby exasperating Penhallow into throwing a book at her. She was not physically hurt, but any form of violence was so nauseating to her that she looked for a moment as if she were going to faint. Penhallow recommended her roughly to have a drink of whisky. She shuddered, and her lips formed the word No.

‘Well, don’t sit there staring at me like a ghost!’ said Penhallow, ‘Why the devil will you be such a damned little fool? You ought to know by now that I hate snivelling women!’

‘You struck me!’ she said, as though the hurling of the book had wounded her more than his bitter tongue had done over and over again. It had certainly shocked her profoundly, for he had never raised his hand against her before, and she still cherished the belief that only a brute sunk beyond recall in depravity could offer violence to a woman, and that woman his wife.

‘No, I didn’t,’ he contradicted her. ‘I threw a book at you, and damme, you asked for it! Don’t put on those tragedy-queen airs, as though I’d been knocking you about for the past twenty years! Serve you right if I had knocked you about a bit! What have you ever done but whine, and complain, and pity yourself, and treat me to enough airs and graces to give any honest man a bellyache? Oh, I’m forgetting one thing, aren’t I? You presented me with a fine son! My God, what a son! A weedy young good-for-nothing, who mistakes a commoner for a blood-horse, and has to fill himself up with jumping-powder before he dare so much as look at a three-foot fence! If I weren’t a soft fool, I’d wash my hands of him, and turn him loose to find his own way in the world!’

She forgot her own injuries as soon as he mentioned Clay, and now said quickly: ‘Then do it! Nothing could be worse for him than to be kept here, in this house where everyone despises him!’

‘What, and have him masquerading as a Penhallow, and bringing my name into contempt?’ he said jeeringly. ‘No, by God! He’ll stay at home, under my eye, and he’ll do what a Penhallow should do, or I’ll know the reason why! If Ray won’t school him, Bart shall. He hasn’t got quite Ray’s seat, or hands, but he may be able to put a bit of courage into the boy. Head free and loins free: that’s what I taught my sons! And every one but that brat of yours learned it as soon as he could throw a leg over a horse!’

‘Adam!’ she said desperately, ‘can’t you understand that there’s more in life than horses?’

‘Precious little, for one of my blood!’ he said, adding caustically: ‘There’s women, of course, but he doesn’t seem to show much of a turn in that direction either.’

‘He’s my son as well as yours!’ she said, clasping her hands nervously. ‘You don’t understand him! You’ve never tried to understand him! He’s like me: he can’t bear being bullied and shouted at, and that’s all you do, or ever have done! If I hadn’t persuaded you to let him go to school you’d have broken his spirit years ago!’

‘Bosh!’ he retorted. ‘He hasn’t got any spirit to be broken.’

‘Yes, he has!’ she cried vehemently. ‘But he’s a delicate, highly strung boy, and your treatment of him is enough to drive him out of his mind! You encourage the others to bully him, and mock at him! You force him to do the sort of things he loathes! You don’t see what sort of an effect you’re having on his nerves!’

‘So that’s the modern youth, is it?’ he sneered. ‘The best cure I know for his kind of nerves is to be made to face up to your fences.’

‘Adam, I beg of you, let Clay continue at Cambridge, and choose his own profession!’

‘Now, don’t let’s have all that over again!’ he said. ‘The whole thing’s settled. He can have a bit of a holiday before he starts work with Cliff, but start work with him he shall, make no mistake about that! If there’s anything in the boy at all, he’ll thank me for it one day. What the devil are we talking about Clay at all for? He’s provided for. It’s Bart, and that wench you took out of the kitchen, who’s on my mind just now.’

She got up jerkily, and said in an unsteady Voice: ‘You care nothing for Clay, Adam. Well, I care nothing for Bart, and his affairs, except that I consider Loveday far too good for him!’