“I believe you would like Clay better if he’d been as wild and shameless as Bart and Conrad!” she cried in a trembling voice.
“I should,” he replied grimly.
She began to cry, a suggestion of hysteria in her convulsive sobs. “I wish I were dead! I wish I were dead!”
“Wish I were dead, more likely,” he said sardonically. “But I’m not, my loving wife! Damn you, stop snivelling!”
She cowered in the depths of the chair, hiding her face in her hands, her sobs growing more uncontrolled. “I don’t believe you ever loved me! You’d like to break my heart! You’re tyrannical, and cruel! You only want to hurt people!”
“Will you stop it?” he shouted, groping for the worsted bell-pull, and tugging it furiously. “Slap my face, if you like! Stick a knife between my ribs, if you’ve the courage, but don’t cringe there snivelling at me! You and your son! You and your son!”
She made a desperate effort to control herself, but she was a woman to whom tears came easily, and she found it hard to check them. She was still gulping and dabbing at her eyes when Martha entered the room in answer to the bell’s summons. The promptitude with which she appeared suggested that she had in all probability been within earshot of the room for some time.
Penhallow, who had not ceased to tug at the crimson bell-pull, released it, and sank back on to the bank of pillows, panting. “Take that damned fool of a woman away!” he ordered. “Keep her out of my sight, or I’ll do her an injury!”
" Well it was you sent for her,” Martha pointed out, unmoved by his rage. “Give over, my dear, now do! You’d better go away, missus, or we’ll have un bursting a blood-vessel. Such doings!”
At Martha’s entrance, Faith had sprung up out of her chair, making a desperate attempt to check her tears. Penhallow’s words had brought a wave of shamed colour to her cheeks; she gave an outraged moan, and fled from the room, almost colliding in the passage with Vivian. She ran past her, averting her face. Vivian made no movement to stop her but walked on into Penhallow’s room, a purposeful scowl on her brow. Encountering Martha, she said curtly: “I want to talk to Mr Penhallow. Clear out, will you?”
This rude interruption, instead of adding to Penhallow’s fury, seemed to please him. Some of the high colour in his face receded; he gave a bark of laughter, and demanded: “What do you want, hell-cat?”
“I’ll tell you when Martha’s gone,” she replied, standing squarely in the middle of the room, with her back to the fire, and her hands dug deep into the pockets of her tweed jacket.
“Who the devil do you think you are, giving your orders in my room?” he asked roughly.
She pushed her underlip out a little in an aggressive way which tickled him. “I shan’t go till I’ve said what I’ve come it, say. I’m not afraid of you. You won’t make me cry.”
“Good lass!” he approved. “Damme, if you’d the sense to know a blood-horse from a half-bred hack I’d be proud of you, so I would! Take yourself off, Martha. God’s teeth, what are you standing there for like a fool? Get out!”
“And don’t stand listening at the door either!” said Vivian, with a forthrightness to match Penhallow’s own.
Martha gave a chuckle. “Aw, my dear, it’s a wonder, surely, Master Eugene chose you for his wife! You’ll eat us all up yet you’re that fierce,” she remarked, without rancour, and took herself off with her shuffling step, and shut the doors behind her.
The spaniel, which had greeted Vivian with her usual growl, now jumped down from the bed, lumbered over to the fire, and cast herself down before it, panting. The cat paused in its ablutions to regard her fixedly for a few moments, after which it resumed its toilet.
Penhallow flung one or two of the ledgers and papers which littered the bed on to the chenille-covered table beside him, and said: “Pour me out a drink. Have one yourself.”
“I don’t drink at this hour of the morning,” replied Vivian. “You oughtn’t to either, if you’ve really got dropsy.”
“Blast your impudence!” he said cheerfully. “What’s it to you, I should like to know? You’d be glad enough to see me underground, I’ll bet my last shilling!”
She shrugged. “It isn’t anything to do with me except that it’ll make your gout worse, and that means that we shall all suffer. What do you want?”
“I’ll take a glass of claret. Claret never hurt any man yet. My old grandfather never touched anything else, the last years of his life, and he lived to be eighty-five. You’ll find the bottle in the corner-cupboard. Bring it over here where I can lay my hand on it.”
She brought him the bottle, and a glass, and set both down on the table, retiring again to her stance before the fire Penhallow heaved himself round in bed to reach the bottle, cursing her in a genial way for not pouring the wine out for him, and filled his glass. He drank it off, refilled the glass, and disposed himself more comfortably against his pillows. “Now, what’s the matter with you, eh? Do you think I haven’t had my fill of silly women this day?”
“You’re nothing but a bully,” she remarked, looking scornfully at him. “Why don’t you take it out on someone more capable of defending herself than Faith?”
“Daresay I will,” he retorted. “You, if you annoy me. You’re as discontented as she is. Spoilt, that’s the matter with you! Spoilt!”
“Spoilt! In this house? No one is considered here but you, and well you know it! That’s what I’ve come to talk about. I can’t and I won’t stand it any longer. This isn’t my home, and never will be. I want to go.”
“What’s stopping you?” he inquired amiably.
“You are!” she flung back at him. “You know very well nothing would make me leave Eugene.”
He lay sipping his wine, and grinning. “He’s his own master, ain’t he? Why don’t you get him to take you away if you don’t like it here?”
She felt her control over her too-quick temper slipping, and exerted herself to retain it. “Eugene isn’t strong enough to earn his own living without help,” she said. “He’s never got over that illness.”
“You mean he’s always fancying himself sick,” he jibed. “I know Eugene! A lazy young devil he always was and always will be! For a sensible girl, you’ve made a mess of handling him, my dear. If you didn’t want to stay here, you shouldn’t have let him come down here in the first place.”
“I never guessed he would want to stay on and on!”
He gave a chuckle. “The more fool you! Eugene’s not one to leave a snug fireside. You won’t shift him.”
“He wasn’t living here when I married him!” she said.
“No, he wasn’t. Trying his wings. I always knew he’d come back. I didn’t mind.”
She looked across at him, under the straight brows which gave her the appearance of frowning even when she was not. “Why do you want to keep us here?”
“What’s that to do with you?” he retorted.
“It’s just your love of power!” she said. “You like to feel you’ve got us all under your thumb! But you haven’t got me under your thumb!”
His smile taunted her. “Haven’t I? You try to move Eugene, and see! Think you’re going to win against me, do you? Try it! I fancy you’ll go on dancing to my piping, my girl.”
She bit on her lip, knowing that it would be fatal to lose her temper. After a pause, she said carefully: “If you think Eugene’s lazy, you ought to want to encourage him to exert himself-’
“God bless the wench! I never do what I ought to do. Don’t you know that yet?”
She ignored this. “I’ve got a right to my own home, to have my husband to myself. It isn’t fair to expect me to live in a house full of relatives!”
“Fair! Fair!” he broke in impatiently. “You’re all alike, you women, bleating about what’s fair! Think yourself lucky you’ve got a comfortable home to live in instead of having to rely on Eugene to support you! You’d fare badly if you had!”
“I’d sooner starve in a cottage with Eugene, than go on living here!” she said fiercely.
He laughed. “Ho-ho! I’d like to see you doing it! Take Him off to your cottage, then! You’ll come back soon enough, with your tails between your legs, too!”