Penhallow (2 page)

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?’