“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!”
She went towards the door, but he thundered at her to stop. She paused, her fingers already grasping the handle, and looked back at him with an expression on her face half of fear, half of defiance.
“Come back here, my girl!” he commanded grimly. “I’ve got something to say to you!”
“No!” she said, in a faint voice. “I can’t bear any more. I can’t!”
She made as if to open the door, but he said very distinctly: “If you leave this room till I say you may, I give you fair warning, my dear, I’ll have you brought back to me. I’ll send Jimmy for you, and tell him to see that you come.”
A sound like a whimper escaped her; she looked at him with strained, fearful eyes. “I think you’re mad!” she whispered.
“Oh, no, I’m not! Come here!”
She approached reluctantly, and perceptibly winced when he grasped her wrist. He pulled her down on to the bed, and she sat stiffly there, almost shivering under his hand. “Now, look you here, Faith, my girl!” he said. “A damned fool you’ve made of Loveday Trewithian, but what’s done can’t be undone. But if I find that you’ve been encouraging the girl to marry my son Bart I’ll make you sorry you were ever born! Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she said. “I don’t want her to marry Bart. Why should I encourage her?”
“Because you’re a sentimental little fool! There, that’ll do! You needn’t sit there looking as though you were a rabbit, and I was a boa-constrictor. I haven’t been such a bad husband to you.”
“I sometimes think that you have killed my soul!” she said in a trembling voice.
He almost threw her hand from him. “Oh, for God’s sake get out, and stay out!” he shouted. “Killed your soul indeed! What trashy book did you pick that up from? Get to hell out of this! Do you hear me. Get out!”
She got up from the bed with shaky haste, and left the room, conscious of having failed again to help Clay. When she reached the hall, and stood under the portrait of Rachel, she looked up at it, thinking that Rachel would not have failed in her place. The hard, painted eyes mocked her. “Fool!” Rachel seemed to say. “Haven’t you learnt yet how to handle Penhallow?”
She averted her gaze from the portrait, and thought of the new disaster which had fallen on the house. Although she had said that she considered Loveday to be too good for Bart, she was conventional enough to be shocked by the idea of his marrying her. It was one thing to raise the girl to the position of confidential maid; quite another to be obliged to receive her on equal terms, as a step daughter-in-law. Then she realised that when Loveday married Bart she would go away from Trevellin, leaving her old mistress without any other comforter than Clay, who was too miserable himself to have much sympathy to spare for his mother. She began already to feel herself deserted, and stood there, in the middle of the hall, with slow tears welling up in her eyes, and rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them away, but still they continued to fall. She knew that the whole family would blame her for Bart’s entanglement; and she felt that Loveday had acted treacherously towards her, abusing her trust, and perhaps only pretending to sympathise with her as a move in the deep game she had been playing.
But this was a minor evil compared with the terrible thing which had happened in Penhallow’s room. By dint of dwelling upon it, adding to it all his previous cruelties (though these had not included physical hurt), and recalling her own dutiful behaviour during the twenty years of their marriage, she very soon persuaded herself into believing that she was a deeply wronged woman. The habit of self-deception being engrained in her, she had always been incapable of perceiving that there were faults in her own character. Starting her married life on a misplaced belief that a husband, unless he were a brute, must think his wife perfect in all respects, a being to be ceaselessly cherished and indulged, she had never since been able to readjust her ideas; and as Penhallow from the outset fell lamentably short of her ideal, she early began to regard herself as a martyr. She belonged to that order of women who require a husband to combine the attributes of a lover and a father. This instinct had led her to feel a stronger attraction towards men many years her senior, and had finally betrayed her into marrying Penhallow. He had failed her; her temperament, as much as her lack of mental capacity, made it impossible for her to discern her own failures.
She heard footsteps approaching, and went out of the open front door into the garden. Here she was presently joined by Clay, who had been wandering about in an aimless fashion, awaiting the result of her interview with his father. Once glance at her face was sufficient to inform him that she had not succeeded in her mission. He said: “O God!” and slumped down upon a rustic seat, and gazed moodily at a hedge of fuchsia.