Raymond looked up at this, a heavy scowl on his brow, and exclaimed: “My God, that’s too much! You can get out, Jimmy!”
“Oh, no, he can’t!” said Penhallow, grinning wickedly. “I want him to shake up my pillows. Come here, Jimmy. my boy! Don’t pay any attention to them: I won’t let ’em hurt you.”
Jimmy was so pleased at being told to disregard Raymond’s orders that he slipped his injured arm out of the sling, and went towards the bed. Bart, straightening himself suddenly, got between him and it, and said dangerously: “You heard Mr Raymond: get the hell out of this before I boot you!”
“Bart!” roared Penhallow, making Faith start nervously, and prick her finger.
“I’ll shake your pillows up for you when I’ve seen your pet cocktail off, Dad,” replied Bart, not turning his head.
“Hark forrard, Bart!” Conrad encouraged his twin, in a ringing tone.
Jimmy retreated a few paces, casting a sidelong look at the door. Reuben went on setting out the glasses on the table, as though nothing out of the way were taking place.
“Bart!” thundered Penhallow.
“Now, don’t let’s have any vulgar brawling, I do implore you, Bart!” begged Eugene. "Ware riot, my lad, ’ware riot! Really, a false scent! It isn’t worth it!”
Bart hunched his shoulders, and turned reluctantly to confront Penhallow, who had reached for the ebony cane beside his bed, and was raising it threateningly. The fierce old eyes met and held the sullen young ones. “By God, Bart, if you don’t obey me I’ll have the hide off your back!” Penhallow swore. "Jimmy, you little rat, come here!”
Bart seemed to hesitate for an instant; then, with a laugh and a shrug, he lounged back to his position by the lacquer cabinet. With an air of conscious virtue, Jimmy shook up the pillows, and replaced them, straightened the flaring patchwork quilt, and asked if there was anything else he could do for his master.
Penhallow gave a chuckle. “You take yourself off, and don’t you give your brothers any more of your impudence, hear me? One of these days I shan’t be here to hold the pack off you, and then where will you be, eh? Off with you, now!”
“And no sneaking off on the sly, either,” said Reuben, accompanying Jimmy to the door. “Since that wrist of yours isn’t too bad to let you shake up the plaster’s pillow, we’ll see if it won’t lend a hand in the pantry after all.”
The double doors closed behind them. Penhallow looked under his brows at Bart, a smile hovering round his mouth. “You young devil! Getting the bit between your teeth, aren’t you? Pour me out a drink!”
Raymond, who had risen to his feet, the local paper crushed in one hand, said with a rasp in his voice: “Hell, do you think I’ll put up with that?”
“Yes, or anything else I choose to make you put up with!” Penhallow returned contemptuously.
“Our half-brother! My God, what next?” Raymond said furiously.
“Oh, he’s one of mine all right!” Penhallow said, malice twinkling in his eyes. “Look at his nose!”
“I don’t doubt it! But if you imagine I’m going to have my orders ignored by him or any other of your bastards, you’ll learn your mistake!”
“Well, damn it, it was you who tried to override Father’s orders to him!” interrupted Ingram.
Raymond rounded on him, an ugly look on his face. “You keep out of this! What are you doing here, anyway? Haven’t you got a home of your own to sprawl in — rentfree?”
Conrad gave a crack of laughter, and started to chant: “Worry, worry, worry!” Eugene began to laugh; and Bart ranged himself on Raymond’s side, loudly applauding his conduct in having ordered Jimmy out of the room. Above the tangle of angry voices, Penhallow’s made itself easily audible. Vivian, realising that the family was fairly embarked upon one of its zestful quarrels, clenched her fists, and said sharply: “Oh, my God, how I loathe you all! How I loathe you all!”
Faith folded her embroidery with trembling hands, and slipped from the room. She found that her knees were shaking, and had to stand for a moment, leaning against the wall, to recover herself. The quarrels were becoming more frequent, she thought, or she was too worn-down to bear them as once she must have been able to. The sound of angry voices beat still upon her ears; she fled from it, down the long broad passage to the main hall, and up the shallow stairs to her room at the head of them, and sank into a chair, pressing her hands to her temples.
She found herself thinking of Clay, picturing him in the midst of such a scene as was now raging in Penhallow’s room. As sensitive as she was herself, afraid of his father, and of his brothers, wincing from a raised voice, life at Trevellin, if it did not drive him out of his mind, must surely wreck his nervous system. He would be expected to do all the things his more robust half brothers delighted in, and between his fear of their contempt if he refused his fences, and his fear of the fences themselves, his life would be a lasting misery.
His last letter to his mother had announced his intention of defying the parental mandate, and seeking employment in London, but Faith knew that this was only bluster, and not meant for other eyes than hers. He would come home at the end of the term, resentful, yet not daring to speak out boldly to Penhallow. He would pour out his troubles to his mother; he would think that somehow or other she ought to be able to protect him, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to see that she was as helpless as he in Penhallow’s remorseless grip. She did not blame him: she knew that she ought to help him, and thought that there was nothing she would not do to set him free from Penhallow’s tyranny. But there did not seem to be anything she could do, since her entreaties had been of no avail, and she was wholly without the means of supplying Clay with money to make him independent of Penhallow.
She tried to explain this to him when he came back to Trevellin early in June, but he had inherited her dislike of facing unwelcome facts and was more inclined to descant upon what they might both have done, had almost every circumstance of their respective positions been other than they were, than to form any plan founded on the situation as it was.
She went to meet him at the station in the aged limousine. His greeting was scarcely designed to flatter her. “Oh, Mother, this is too ghastly!” he exclaimed. hurrying towards her on the platform. “Can’t you do anything!”
It was not in her nature to return a baldly unpalatable answer, so a good deal of time was spent in a discussion founded on eventualities which might, but almost certainly would not, occur. “If only Cliff would have the courage to tell your father he doesn’t want you as a pupil!” Faith said. “If only I had some relations with money! If only I could get your father to see that you’d be wasted in Cliff’s office!”
“I do think you ought to have some influence over Father!” Clay said.
In this unprofitable fashion the drive to Trevellin was accomplished, mother and son arriving at the old grey house below the Moor in a state of considerable nervous agitation, Faith having developed a nagging, headache, and Clay experiencing the familiar sinking at the pit of his stomach which always attacked him at the prospect of having to confront Penhallow.
In appearance, he was not strikingly like either parent. His colouring was nondescript, inclined to fair, but although his eyes had something of Faith’s expression they were not blue, but grey. He had the aquiline cast of features of all the Penhallows, but his mother’s soft mouth and indeterminate chin. He was rather above the average height, but had yet to fill out, being at present very thin and immature. He had several nervous tricks, such as smoothing his hair, and fidgeting with the knot of his tie; from having been the butt of his brothers he had acquired a defensive manner, and was often self-conscious in company, assuming an ease of manner which it was plain he did not possess. He was apt to take offence too readily and was far too prone to adopt a belligerent tone with his half-brothers; and no amount of mockery could break him of unwise attempts to impress them by recounting unconvincing tales of his strong handling of such persons as form-masters, Deans, and Proctors.