“Speak when I ask a question. Do not give me insolence as well as ingratitude.”
He took a step towards me and I thought he was going to strike me. I almost wished he would. I believed I could have endured a hot hatred rather than a cold dislike. “Papa, I … wanted to get away. I …”
“You wanted to run away? You wanted to cause trouble. Why did you come here?”
“I… I wanted to come to Menfreya.”
“The whim of a moment. You should be whipped … insensible.” His mouth twisted into an expression of distaste. Physical violence was repulsive to him, I knew. Any dog which disobeyed him was not corrected; it was destroyed. I thought then: He would like to destroy me. But he would never whip me.
He turned away from me as though he could not bear to look at me. “Everything you want is yours. You have every comfort. Yet you have no gratitude. You delight in giving us acute anxiety and causing trouble. When I think that it was to give you birth that your mother died …”
I wanted to scream at him to stop. I could not bear to bear him say this. I knew that he had thought it often, but to hear the words gave the horror deeper meaning. I could not bear it. I wanted to creep into a comer and cry.
Yet instead of the pain I felt, my face was forming itself into those ugly, obstinate tines, and I could not prevent it He saw this, and the loathing which was deep in him for this monster who had robbed him of a loved one that it might have life was temporarily unleashed. He took brief comfort in giving freedom to the bitter resentment which had been smoldering for years.
“When I saw you . .. when they told me your mother was dead, I wanted to throw you out of the house.”
The words were out. They hit me more cruelly than any whip could have done. He had crystallized the scene. I saw the ugly baby in the nurse’s arms; I saw the dead woman on the bed; and his face. I could even hear his voice: “Throw it out of the house.”
It was there forever in my mind. Previously I had guessed at his dislike; I had been able to delude myself that I had imagined it; that he was a man who did not easily express his feelings; that deep down he loved me. But that was over. Perhaps he was ashamed. His voice had softened a little.
“I despair of ever imbuing you with a sense of decency,” he said. “Not only do you make trouble for yourself but for others. The entire household has been disrupted. We have been invaded by reporters.”
He was talking to hide his confusion; and I was only half listening, because I was thinking of his anger when he looked at the baby in the nurse’s arms. “At least,” he said, “you must not abuse the hospitality of Menfreya any longer than necessary. We will leave at once for Chough Towers.”
Chough Towers was an early Victorian mansion about a mile from Menfreya. My father had rented it furnished from a family called Leveret, who had made a fortune from china clay which they quarried near St. Austell. The house was almost as large as Menfreya, but it lacked the character of the latter. It was an ugly house and, as I have said, always seemed cold and impersonal; but perhaps that was because my father had rented it, and it was his personality which had pervaded it; inhabited by a happy family, it might have been a happy house. The rooms were large and paneled, with big windows looking out on well-tended lawns; there was a large ballroom on the ground floor of fine proportions, at one end of which was a wide, oak staircase; everything that could have been done to give an air of antiquity to the place had been done. There was even a minstrels’ gallery, which I always thought looked incongruous in such a house; the conservatory was pleasant because it was full of colorful plants; but everything else was overornate and heavy; the baroque towers and battlements were false, and it was absurd to have called it Chough Towers, for I never saw a chough near the place. It was a showy imitation, pretending to be what it was not.
It was surrounded by a park, but the trees in the drive had obviously not been planted more than thirty years before; there were none of those tottery old yews one found at Menfreya. I was hi love with Menfreya, and perhaps I felt the difference more keenly than most Chough Towers was, I suppose, a beautiful house in a beautiful setting, but it had no echoes of the past, no secrets; it was just the outward sign of a self-made man’s desire to build himself a dwelling as grand as those enjoyed by people whom, a generation before, he would have been expected to bow to as the gentry. But a house is more than walls and windows—or even fine ballrooms and conservatories, a park and lawns.
It suited my father because he only spent a certain time of the year in the vicinity; and he was not sure that he wanted to buy a house there. If he lost his seat in the House, he would certainly not wish to retain Chough Towers. As we entered the house I was aware of the hushed atmosphere. I suspected that the servants were talking of me; perhaps some of them were peeping at me. I had become an object of interest because my name had been in the papers. It would be again—for the discovery of my whereabouts would have to be known, since there had been such concern about my disappearance.
“You will go straight to your room and remain there until you are given permission to leave it,” said my father. And how glad I was to escape.
I was a prisoner. I was to have only bread and milk until further notice. None of the servants was to speak to me. I was in disgrace.
I was defiant and pretended I didn’t care, but my feelings alternated between misery and elation.
I would sometimes be able to shut out all memory of anything but Bevil, sitting there in the boat. I could see his strange eyes alight with tenderness—no, mockery really. “I might marry you myself …” He was joking; and yet perhaps not entirely. In any case in my present state it was pleasant to delude myself into believing that he might have meant it. It was a gay and happy dream.
Then there was the other—dark, gloomy; the death chamber, the shriveled-faced baby; I had seen newborn babies and thought them ugly, and surely I would have been particularly so. I could picture the mad impulse of a normally restrained man. I could feel the revulsion, the longing to be rid of the unwanted creature whose coming had cost so dear.
On the second day of my captivity my father came to my room. My spirits rose because I saw that he was dressed for departure.
“You will remain in your room for a week,” he said, “and I hope that you will be considerably chastened at the end of that time. Has it occurred to you that your life might be cut short at any moment. I should like you to consider during the next days that you are heading for eternal damnation, For your own sake—I know you are too selfish to do it for mine—reform your ways. You will remain here until it is time for you to go away to school.”
I was too astonished to speak. I was suddenly torn from the contemplation of hell’s torments to consider an entirely new life. School!
“Yes,” he went on, “you are in desperate need of discipline.
If at school you are disobedient, you will be severely punished. Miss James was too lenient with you, I fear. She will be leaving us now, of course.”
I thought of Miss James packing her bag and crying discreetly because she was frightened of the future. Poor Miss James! She would haunt me for weeks to come in spite of the alarming prospect before me.
“So she is to be dismissed …”
“You see bow your thoughtless actions affect others.”
A frightening thought occurred to me. Fanny! What of Fanny?
I whispered her name under my breath, but he heard me.
“She remains. She will be employed hi another capacity. And when you are on holiday you will need a maid.”